As I circuit the many manors you have seen fit to bestow upon me for my assistance at Hastings, I remain profoundly grateful for your beneficence and generosity. All are bountiful with crops and livestock, the serfs healthy and none excessively aggrieved. In all, I receive it as a tremendous boon.
However I am sorrowful to inform you that my search for the hero-colony of Dintagel has come to naught. Dintagel, from which sprang that most renowned and admired knight Tristan, who is featured so valiantly in the Song of Collinet in its defense of the holy reliquary of the martyr St. Septimus of Pontchardon against the incursions of the heretics of Lisieux that enthralled us in our youth, has proven to be nothing but a spit of land with a ruined Roman fortress. In the nearby village of Bossiney (Boskyny), my men have asked after the fellowship of knights from which Tristan sprang, and are met universally with stupid looks from the villagers.
There is however an abundance of sheep, which may be exploited to the profit of your majesty and the greater glory of God.
Yours in great love and all homage,
Robert, Count of Mortain and Earl of Cornwall
Post by Dr. Roger Blevins to LTG Octavian K. Frink on private ODIN channel
DAY 1805 (JULY, YEAR 5)
Okie, this is just to give you a heads-up on a possible situation that is developing. You’ll recall a bit of unpleasantness two and a half years ago when Lieutenant Colonel Lyons went off half-cocked during a DEDE in 1045 Normandy and got into a brawl with the locals. I said at the time, and I still maintain, that this was a serious error in judgment that called his qualifications for the job into question. Well, now it looks like the chickens are coming home to roost. LTC Lyons has gone back to 1203 Constantinople to finish out the big DEDE we have been working for the last three years. That’s fine as far as it goes. Unfortunately his actions in Normandy, 160 years earlier, have had incalculable reverberations, with the result that he is now revered as some combination of a romantic folk hero and Christian saint by people all over the Nordic and Christian worlds. One of the Varangian Guards at the Constantinople DTAP seems dangerously close to putting two and two together.
No action needed or requested at this time, but I wanted to put this up on your radar just in case it blows up in our faces in a few days or weeks.
I just finished a rather unpleasant meeting with Dr. Stokes who is reflexively defensive of LTC Lyons and doesn’t seem to appreciate the magnitude of the problem.
Reply from LTG Frink:
Blev, I’ve read this a couple of times and don’t see why you are so excited. I’ve spent my career running operations in places like Fallujah and Jalalabad and I’ve never seen anything go off without glitches. But you have a better grasp of these diachronic operations than I do and so I’ll take it under advisement.
Are you doing anything to mitigate the problem?
From Dr. Blevins:
We have a young MUON here who I am sure you will remember since she is the one who crashed the ribbon-cutting party by materializing in the ODEC. Rachel is her name. She is now one of our most experienced witches, and is obviously an expert on 1203 Constantinople since it’s where she was born and raised. I have a meeting scheduled with her in which I will explore some options for cleaning up the mess that LTC Lyons has left in his wake.
From LTG Frink:
How’s it going with the portable ODEC and so on? Knowing how your mind works, Blev, I can see where all of this is leading: a de-emphasis on diachronic operations per se, in favor of C/COD psy-ops centered on witches in mobile units.
From Dr. Blevins:
You know me well, Okie. Yes. The ATTO, as we call the portable ODEC, is shaping up quite well. To develop the psy-ops wing of the organization, we are getting ready to bring forward Gráinne, who is, after all is said and done, still the most powerful witch we have ever encountered.
From LTG Frink:
The Irish super-witch?
From Dr. Blevins:
That terminology is deprecated. We have been calling them Wenders for their superior ability to navigate between Strands while maintaining an unbroken thread of consciousness. In the entire history of DODO we have only encountered three of them. Gráinne has been by far the most loyal and it’s time we rewarded her with a promotion.
LETTER FROM
GRáINNE to GRACE O’MALLEY
A Tuesday of High Summer, 1602
Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, milady!
It’s a brief but timely warning I’m writing you with, Your Grace, and no action does it require on your part, but only alertness. Sir Francis Bacon, the gentleman whose demeanor does command this fleet of thinkers and doers of the age, including Monsieur Cardigan my benefactor . . . he urges the nobles of the court to redouble their efforts in Ireland. He would have the crown take over our entire island as a means to “honor.” Therefore if any courtier from England do come courting you, it’s wise to be testing the waters of their acquaintanceship with Sir Francis. If they are even indirectly under his sway or in his circles, then surely it’s disingenuous they’re being.
And meanwhile merely to keep you apprised of my circumstances, they continue apace with some fascinating developments (more fascinating to myself than to you, I warrant). It’s Norwich we’re spending the summer in, and here I’ve come to know three witches, something older than myself, and sisters to each other . . . all of them half-nieces of Sir Francis Bacon himself! For isn’t their father Nathaniel his half-brother. But this isn’t the only peculiar thing about them, there being three other facts of note:
First, being that they know of Tristan’s guild and likewise work to abet them on occasion (not so oft as I do). Of course I knew that there are many other witches working for them (their term for us, collective, is KCW), but I had not realized I had contemporaries.
A second and stranger fact of note being that they were never recruited, but rather raised in a tradition of service to Tristan’s crew, for sure their mother Anne and before that her mother Winnifred worked with Tristan’s people, although there is nothing in the family history of working with Tristan himself. ’Twas Winnifred was won over to the work by an agent named Esme, forty years ago. Here again, a minor detail Tristan’s not telling me about how his guild be doing their business.
But here’s the final and most interesting note, and might even be of direct interest to Your Grace: besides their connection to Sir Francis, these weird sisters are the granddaughters of none other than Sir Thomas Gresham, who as you know was an associate of the Fugger banking family . . . who, despite their unholy religion, have long financed your resistance on occasion, for the sheer joy of causing headaches to Queen Bess. I’m thinking it must be no coincidence that all of these particular lineages and associations twine together through time in some way that Tristan sees more clearly than I do, and surely it’s use he’s getting out of it in ways that I’m not seeing yet. But I will. Oh yes, Your Grace, it’s soon enough I’ll see as clear as he does.
Whether I be near or far, may I hear only good things of you, My Lady Gráinne! Your Gráinne now of Norwich