Brussels, The Spanish Low Countries
“So the Spanish tried to kill the pope? And did kill John O’Neill in Rome?”
Thomas Preston, oldest officer among the Irish Wild Geese who served in the Lowlands, and Maestro-de-campo of the eponymous Preston Tercio, stared back at the group that had summoned him and delivered this shocking news. Seated at the center was Fernando, king in the Low Countries and brother of Philip IV of Spain. To his right was Maria Anna of the House of Hapsburg, Fernando’s wife and sister of Emperor Ferdinand of Austria. And sitting to one side, but in the largest, most magnificent chair of all of them, was the grand dame of European politics herself, the archduchess infanta Isabella, still an authority in the Lowlands and aunt of both Fernando and Philip. And therefore, Preston’s employer for the last twenty years. Oh, and then there was Rubens, the artist and intelligencer, sitting far to one side of the power-holding troika that ruled here in Brussels.
Maria Anna leaned forward slightly. “Colonel Preston, I assure you, my husband would not tell you such things unless they were true.”
“Your Highness, I apologize. I did not intend that response as a sign of doubt, but of disbelief. It is shocking news, to say the least.”
Fernando nodded. “To us, also, Colonel. And that is why we asked you to meet us alone. It may cause, er, unrest in the Irish tercios, if it comes to them as rumor. Coming from you, however, we might hope for a different reception.”
Thomas Preston shifted in his suddenly-uncomfortable seat. “Your Highness, the reception might be somewhat different—but not as different as if it came from one of the Old Irish colonels.”
Maria Anna’s eyebrows raised in curiosity. “‘Old’ Irish?”
“Yes, Your Highness. My family name, as you are probably aware, is not an Irish name at all, but English. That makes us Prestons ‘New’ Irish, associated with the old, pre-Reformation landlords who eventually married into the Irish families. We are often wealthier than our Old Irish neighbors—which makes us suspect to begin with, I fear—but no amount of money will ever equate to having ancient Gaelic roots, to being one of the families whose names are routinely associated with the High Kingship’s tanists—”
“The tanists?” Maria Anna echoed.
It was Isabella herself who answered. “The royal families of Ireland designate one of their number as chief among them. And it is usually from among these that, in elder times, the current king’s successor—the tanist—was chosen.”
“Ah,” breathed Rubens, “so this is why Hugh O’Neill the Elder was known as ‘The O’Neill.’ He was the chieftain of that dynasty and all those subordinate to it.”
“That is my understanding, but I suspect that Colonel Preston would add details I have missed or misunderstood. Most pertinent to our concerns, though, is that there are—or were—only two scions of the royal houses remaining free, outside Ireland, who had clear entitlement to becoming tanists of the vacant throne: the recently deceased John O’Neill, the earl of Tyrone, and Hugh O’Donnell, the earl of Tyrconnell.”
“Attainted Earls, My Grace,” added Rubens.
“Yes, yes,” she replied testily, “so the English have it. The same English who just happened to steal Ireland from its own people, and whose attainting of its few remaining nobles is merely the conclusive legalistic coda to their campaign of usurpation and rapine. It is not as if any legitimate monarch on the Continent, Catholic or Protestant, cares a whit for the juridical rationalizations of England’s theft of a whole nation. But let us return to Colonel Preston’s point. The Old Irish will, unfortunately, not hear this news as well from him as they would from one of the survivors of their royal families. But there is nothing to be done about that. The last O’Neill, who is not directly in the line of titular inheritance, is Owen Roe, and he now commands the pope’s new bodyguard. The last O’Donnell is my godson, Hugh Albert, and he is . . .” She paused, either catching her breath or mastering a quaver in her voice: Preston could not determine which. “. . . is engaged in other matters and unable to return at present.”
Preston sat straighter. Whereas John O’Neill had been insufferable and Owen Roe tolerable, Hugh O’Donnell had been a good fellow: clever, a shrewd soldier, well-educated, well-spoken, and without regal airs. So why the hell wasn’t he here? He’d disappeared in April, and now, when he was needed most—
“Colonel Preston,” Fernando articulated carefully, as if aware that he would have to reacquire the mercenary’s attention before continuing.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“I should add that news of the earl of Tyrone’s death, and the attempt on the pope’s life, are only precursors to the primary reason I asked you to join us today.”
“Precursors, Your Highness?”
“Yes. First, I welcome you to share your opinion on how your men will receive the news. This is material to the next matter we must discuss.”
“Well, Your Majesty, I am not one to make predictions, especially not in regard to my own somewhat mercurial countrymen. But I feel sure of this: ever since news came that Urban had been forcibly removed—rather, ‘chased out’—of the Holy See, and was being actively pursued by Borja’s own cardinal-killing Spaniards, every one of my senior officers has expressed their support for Urban. When they learn that Borja and his Spanish army tried to murder the pope and killed John O’Neill while he was trying to rescue an up-timer and his pregnant wife . . . Well, let’s say my biggest concern will be to make sure that they don’t start picking fights with our ‘comrades’ in your own Spanish tercios.”
Fernando raised a finger. “You happen to have used an interesting turn of phrase, Colonel Preston. In fact, those Spanish tercios are not mine, they are my brother’s. They are on Spanish payroll, direct from Madrid.”
Preston heard Fernando’s tone shift, heard it move from the full-voiced, natural cadences of a frank conversation into one laced with slower, quieter insinuations. Careful, now, Thomas. When a well-manicured Spanish gentleman starts addressing his topics on the slant, you can be sure there’s a snake in the grass somewhere nearby. “Yes, Your Highness,” Preston agreed carefully, “the Spanish are paid directly from Spanish coffers. Unlike us.”
Fernando smiled. “Precisely. Unlike you.” And then he looked down the table at Rubens.
Which told Thomas Preston that now he was going to hear the real dirt, the snaky facts of real politick that Fernando could not afford to utter with his own lips. That way, if later asked to admit or deny having mentioned those facts, he could offer a technically truthful denial. Kings: even the best of them had a bit of viper’s blood running in their veins. Thomas supposed they’d be dead, if they didn’t.
Ruben moved his considerable bulk closer to the broad, gleaming table at which they all sat. “Colonel Preston, given recent events, we are concerned that this year, when the time comes for our hired troops to renew their oaths to Spain, that there may be, er, resistance in your ranks, particularly.”
Preston waved a dismissive hand. “Then let’s skip the renewal of the oath. After all, it has no explicit term limit. The renewal is symbolic.”
“Yes, and it is a most important symbol. So, in order to preserve that symbol and yet also preserve the genuine loyalty of the four tercios of Wild Geese that are the ever-stalwart backbone and defenders of this realm, we have come up with a reasonable expedient: to simply change the oath.”
“Change the oath?”
“Yes.”
“In what way?”
“This year, when you take the oath, it will omit the reference to Archduchess Isabella as being Philip’s vassal. You will take your oath to her as you have for twenty years, but without mentioning King Philip of Spain.” Rubens paused, his eyes sought Preston’s directly. “I presume you see the political practicality of this adjustment?”
Oh, I see it, painter. I see everything you hope I’ll see without your having to say it. On the surface, the change of oath was just to minimize any possibility of disaffection or departure arising from any mention of direct fealty to the increasingly unpopular King of Spain. But, there was an underlying subtlety which, Preston was quite sure, was the real intent of the change of oath. We’ll only be swearing fealty to Isabella. And, unless I’m much mistaken, to her nephew.
Rubens’ next words confirmed his suspicions. “However, as a precaution, we will not point out the fact—which could be easily misconstrued, of course—that, in agreeing to renew your oaths to Her Grace the Infanta, that your service is most likely to be commanded by her nephew, whom she has been pleased to confirm as the senior power in her lands. So, although you now also serve the king in the Low Countries, that additional, extrapolative detail will remain unadvertised. For the moment.”
Yes, for the moment. But Preston had been a pawn on the chessboard where kings played their games for many decades and could see where this political compass was pointing. With the oaths of the Wild Geese transferred directly to Fernando, their obedience and their fates were locked to him, not to Spain. Yes, technically Fernando was still a vassal of Spain, but how long that would continue was debatable. And so, when and if the Lowlands became fully and officially separate from the throne in Madrid, the Irish tercios would follow suit. And they would indeed comprise the loyal core of its army, since Philip’s tercios in the Lowlands would most assuredly not follow the same path. But, problematically, they would still be in the same country. Preston flinched at the thought of his tercio squaring off against their former Spanish counterparts. That would be a bloody, internecine business indeed—
“Is this change in the oath acceptable to you and your men, Colonel Preston?” Rubens asked. His small eyes did not blink.
“I will have to put it to them. However, given recent events, I think it will not only be acceptable but preferable. However, they will ask a question I cannot answer: how will they be paid? Already, the reales from Spain are few and far between. If it wasn’t for the deal Hugh O’Donnell struck with the Frenchman Turenne, earlier this year, I don’t know what we would have done for food these past three months. But that supply is almost over—and truth be told, I was never comfortable with the arrangement.”
“And why is that?” Maria Anna asked.
“Because, your Highness, until France and Madrid cooperated at the Battle of Dunkirk, the French had been the enemies of this realm, ever threatening the southern borders of the Brabant. I should know; I spent many months in garrison there, over the years. And then suddenly we are at peace—but it’s a peace which is already fraying. So in taking bread from Turenne, we took bread from a past, and very possibly future, adversary of this court. I was not comfortable condoning it, but I was less comfortable seeing my men’s families starve. So when O’Donnell arranged it by serving Turenne along with sixty of the men of his tercio, I had little choice but to accept it. And, I must speak frankly, it brought trouble along with it.”
“Oh?” asked Rubens. “What kind of trouble?”
“French trouble, Your Grace. Their agents have been lurking around our camps, letting it be known that the king of France is hiring mercenaries, and can pay them in hard coin, not cabbages and watered beer.”
Rubens looked at the ruling troika. They just kept watching Preston. None of them blinked, but Maria Anna might have suppressed a small smile.
Rubens rotated one thumb around the other. “And have any of your men left our service for theirs?”
“No, but I worry that they may. I’ve heard rumors—rumors from this court—that some nobles here speak ill of us Wild Geese, say that we should be grateful for the scraps we’re given, and that some of us are already taking service with the French.”
“Yes,” said Ruben, twirling his moustache, “we have heard the same thing. Largely, because we spread those rumors ourselves.”
Preston gaped. “You what?”
Maria Anna leaned forward; Preston tried to ignore the way it compressed her bosom. “Colonel, the privations of your people have never been intentional, but in the last two months, we discovered that they lent credence to the belief in Paris that our grasp upon your continued loyalty was weak, and that certain members of the Wild Geese were indeed finding it necessary to seek employment elsewhere. To be more specific, to seek employment with the French themselves.”
Preston felt heat rise in his face. “Your Highness, one of us did. The very best of us, some might say. Hugh Albert O’Donnell may have fed us, but he did it by agreeing to serve Turenne. Turenne! He’s Richelieu’s hand-picked military favorite. If the earl of Tyrconnell will take service with the French, then why shouldn’t they think more of us will follow? And sixty of us did, the ones who went with O’Donnell.”
“And whose service there fed you,” Isabella observed from behind gnarled knuckles folded before her on the table.
“Yes, Your Grace, but at what cost? Where was Hugh when the pope was threatened? Where does he tarry, now that he is the last earl of Ireland, the last hope of his people? Where has he been since late in April?”
“Evidently working for his employer,” Rubens observed smoothly.
“Yes, evidently. Abandoning us to work for the French. Which makes him, for all intents and purposes, a traitor!”
Isabella was on her feet in a single motion, cane brandished in one hand, the other pointing in quavering fury at Preston—or maybe at the word “traitor,” which seemed to hover invisible in the air. “You call Hugh Albert O’Donnell a traitor?” she cried.
Preston stood his ground. “Your Grace, if he serves your traditional enemy, that makes him—”
With a swiftness that belied her age, her infirmity, her arthritis and the gray habit of her order, she dashed her cane down upon the table: the heavy oak rod splintered with a crash. “A traitor?!” she shrieked, livid. “How dare you say—how dare you think—such a thing!”
The room was not merely silent, but frozen, all eyes on the trembling, imperial, terrible old woman who had risen up like a wrathful god from an elder age to silence them all with her fury and undiminished, magnificent passion.
Preston swallowed, but did not avert his eyes. “Your Grace, I mean no disrespect, but how are Lord O’Donnell’s actions not those of a traitor? Before Philip set Borja upon Rome, before the pope was threatened and John O’Neill was slain, he turned back all his honors and Spanish titles and went to work for France. For France, Your Grace. Your enemy, Spain’s enemy—and now, his employer. How is that not traitorous?”
“Colonel Preston, do you truly not see any other way to interpret Lord O’Donnell’s actions?” When Preston shook his head, Isabella continued. “Hugh was the only one of you Wild Geese except Lord O’Neill who was made a naturalized Spanish citizen by the Crown, who became a knight, and a fellow of the court at Madrid. But then, when he saw that the same Crown never intended to make good its promises and debts to you and your countrymen, I understand that he came to your camp incognito, and explained his dilemma. Specifically, what response could he make if Philip had asked him, as an intimate of the court and loyal gentleman of Spain, to function as Madrid’s special factotum and commander here? Which, given the current situation, could mean leading either his, or Spanish, tercios against those loyal to me, if Philip’s displeasure with the Lowlands were to become so great. Was Lord O’Donnell to obey orders to attack me, or to attack you and his fellow countrymen, if that is how the loyalties of such a moment played out?”
Preston felt as though the chair he was seated in had been turned upside down. Or the world had. Or both.
“Think it through, Colonel. Lord O’Donnell had to step down from his post. And in doing so, it was incumbent upon him to return the beneficences he had received, and remove himself from Spanish territory. But not before he visited his men and yours, and enjoined you to think carefully to whom your allegiance would lie if faced with the eventualities that now seem to be hastening upon us. Philip is already attempting to compromise our non-Spanish tercios.”
“Your Grace, all this I see plainly. But—France? Why not some other power? Why our old foe?”
Isabella reseated herself slowly. It was an almost leonine action, despite her age. “Because, it is through our old foe that he will orchestrate a solution to both your problem and our problem: money. Enough money for the Lowlands to survive without recourse to Madrid’s coffers. Enough money for your families to eat, and your men to have ample coin in their pockets.”
Preston knew the room wasn’t spinning, but at the moment, it felt as though it was. “And how will Hugh’s service to France make possible this solution? And why has he not communicated this to us, as well as to you? My Grace, I mean no offense, but we are his countrymen: why has he not reassured us with the particulars of his plan?”
Isabella closed her eyes. “Because it is not his plan. It is ours. And I,”—she opened eyes suddenly bright and liquid, but from which she refused to let tears run down—“and I could not tell him of it.”
“But why? If he doesn’t know how serving the French will more profoundly serve us, then by what inducement has he left us to—?”
Maria Anna silenced him with a small, sly smile. “My good Colonel Preston, I counsel you not to let these unexplained—and apparently inexplicable—events perturb you. You will note they do not perturb us. Indeed, our plans are well set. But it is often necessary that a cog spinning in one part of a complex machine has no knowledge of how its peers are turning elsewhere in the same device.”
Preston frowned at her words, heard two of Isabella’s sentences once again in his head: It is not his plan, it is ours. And I dare not tell him of it. Implying that the truly ignorant cog in Maria Anna’s machination was not Preston, but O’Donnell himself.
And he felt the oblique implication strike him so hard and so suddenly that the room seemed to tilt momentarily. Had O’Donnell’s apparent defection been planned? Had he been maneuvered into it so that he was then a properly situated, yet unknowing, piece of some larger stratagem?
He looked quickly at Isabella, who was looking intently at him. He did not see canniness; he saw—
Love. Maternal love. Intense, irrational, desperate. But why would she do such a thing to O’Donnell, unless it was—?
To save him. Of course. Now it made sense. And suddenly Preston saw how, since the arrival of the up-timers and their library’s revelation of the duplicity of the Spanish in regard to their Irish servitors, the grand dame of European statecraft had realized that in order for her cherished god-child to survive—and thrive—she would have to shift the game board so that he could weather the change in fortunes.
Yes, there was no doubt about it. It was clear enough that, in the days before the up-timers, she had, every step of the way, protected him, groomed him, got him a knighthood. Of course, then Father Florence Conry had almost ruined it all with his hare-brained proposal to invade Ireland. But whereas the priest had envisioned a force jointly led by the Earls O’Donnell and O’Neill and the predictable co-dominium that would arise in its wake, Madrid had embraced a different solution. Philip was no fool, and he had the benefit of the count-duke of Olivares’ advice, to boot. So Philip had summoned young O’Donnell, knighted him in an order more prestigious than O’Neill’s (which had been Isabella’s intent), but then chose him to lead the Irish expedition alone. It was a politically prudent choice, one which Isabella had not expected, probably due to O’Donnell’s youth and his clan’s less storied name. But the Spanish king and his counselor had seen the qualities, and restraint, in the younger man that would make him both a more capable general of armies and a more capable revolutionary orator than his mercurial peer, O’Neill.
But, since the invasion never came off (largely derailed by Isabella herself, as Preston recalled), the only lasting effect of all this maneuvering was that it ensured that the already difficult relationship between O’Donnell and O’Neill became as bad and bitter as it could be. It hadn’t helped that, in addition to simply choosing the younger over the older, Philip and Olivares had made their assessment of Hugh’s superior qualities well known at court, and thereby, throughout Europe.
So Isabella had saved her godson from the disastrous invasion, just as she had taken pains to ensure that he was college-educated, naturalized, knighted, and furnished with a tremendously advantageous marriage. All done to both ensure his success, and ensure his survival. A target of English assassins since birth, the higher Hugh O’Donnell’s station became, the more pause it gave to those who sent murderers across the Channel: were they plotting the death of a renegade member of the Irish royalty, or an immigrated Spanish gentleman? The former was an affair of no account, but the latter could easily become an international incident, and was therefore best avoided.
And having thus protected and provided for her charge, Isabella of the up-time history had died in 1633, presumably satisfied that she had seen him safely married with a title and land. But within the year, those plans had come undone, here as there. His wife having died without producing surviving issue, he lost more than his love; he lost the land and titles that had been her dowry. In that world, with his godmother dead, he had had little choice but to do what he might as the colonel of his own tercio. That he had recruited and commanded well there no less than here, that much was clear. But there, Fernando had evidently inherited Philip’s utilitarian attitudes toward the Irish, and had spent them like water. Which was sadly prudent, Preston had to admit. After all, as the opportunity to reclaim Ireland became an ever-thinner tissue of lies, the Spanish masters of the Wild Geese feared that they would be increasingly susceptible to subornation by other, rival powers. And so the last of them were sent to Spain, and then to their destruction in putting down the Catalan revolt that began in 1640.
But what about in this altered world, where Hugh had no future with Spain and none in the Lowlands either, unless it officially broke with Madrid? What place for O’Donnell? Indeed, Preston realized with a sudden chill up his back, what place for the Wild Geese, for Ireland? And evidently, the old girl Isabella had hatched a scheme to correct some, maybe all, of these problems. But it was a scheme so deep, and probably so devious, that it had to be kept from one of its primary executors: Hugh Albert O’Donnell.
Isabella had obviously seen the understanding in Preston’s eyes. “So you see, now.”
The Irish colonel swallowed, nodded. “I believe I do, Your Grace. Just one question. Is there something my people, my Wild Geese, can do to help?”
“You already have.”
Preston started. “I have?”
“Specifically, four hundred of the men of Lord O’Donnell’s tercio have. They were not sent to garrison in Antwerp as you, and they, were originally told. They were sent there to board ships and have now joined a task force in order to fulfill their part in our plan.”
Preston was too stunned to feel stunned. “And if they succeed?”
Fernando leaned forward. “If they succeed, our futures are secure. Both yours and ours. For many, many years to come.”
“And if they fail?”
Isabella sat erect. “Colonel Preston, I am surprised at that question. Tell me, as the most senior officer of my Irish Wild Geese, how often have they ever failed me?”
“Only a very few times, Your Grace. But their determination in your service has a dark price, too.”
“Which is?”
“That, rather than retreat, they die trying.”
Isabella sat back heavily, looking every year of her age. She responded to Preston—“I know, Colonel, I know”—but her eyes were far away and seamed with worry.