The Confusion

“Bob! You make too much and too little of him at the same time. As a ’fencer he’s a caution, ’tis plain enough to see, but in the larger scheme, Bob, what is he but a friggin’ tosser wavin’ a poker around in the dark.” By this time Upnor had advanced to within about eight feet and so Teague gave his stave a toss upward, gripped it with both hands at the end, and with a grunt, swung it round in a long arc parallel to the ground, catching Upnor in the side and flattening him. Upnor made a grab at the end of the staff, which had ended up hovering over his face, but his movements were cramped by his steel cuirass, which now sported a huge dent jabbing deep into his side. Teague withdrew the stave, shifted his grip so that he was holding it in the middle, raised it up above his head, and began to execute a series of brisk stabbing motions, with the occasional mighty swing. These were accompanied by metallic bashing sounds and screams from Upnor’s end of the stick.

Between these efforts he sent the following, loosely connected string of comments and observations Bob’s way:

“You have responsibilities now, Bob. You must lose this naive understanding of violence! You are embarrassin’ me in front of the lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies. Like that. D’you see, boys?”

“Aye, Uncle Teague,” came back two voices in unison.

Bob looked to the other side of the ditch and saw a pair of blond lads there, each holding the reins of a horse. One of them-it looked like Jimmy-had the horse Bob had rode in on, and the other-by process of elimination, Danny-had the standard-bearer’s.

“There,” Teague said. “Now get you over the ditch and be gone with the lads.”

“I’ve been run through the liver.”

“All the more reason to stop your lollygaggin’. You’ll bleed to death shortly or heal up in a few weeks-the liver has a miraculous power of regeneration, while the body lives. Take it from an Irishman.”

Bob slumped forward on his hands, then got his knees under him. He could hear blood dripping onto the ground. But it was only dripping, not coming in a continuous stream, or (worse) a series of spurts. If he had seen a private soldier with such a wound, he’d have guessed that the fellow would live, once the wound was packed with something to stop the bleeding. Upnor had been right; if Bob died of this, it would be because it festered in the days to come.

“I’m not askin’ you to walk. You may ride one horse and the boys may share the other.”

“And you, Teague?”

“Oh, it’s into the ditch with me, Bob, into the bog. I’ll collect a musket from one of the Englishmen I killed today, and go a-rappareein’.” Teague’s eyes now turned into running pools, and he tilted his head back and sniffled. “Get you gone, none of us has a moment to waste.”

“I’ll raise a monument in London,” Bob promised, and got up slowly. He did not pass out.

“To me? They wouldn’t have it!”

“To Upnor,” Bob said, staggering past the Earl’s smashed corpse, and kicking the rapier aside into the watercourse. “A fine statue of him, looking just as he does now, and an inscription: ‘In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.’ ”

Teague considered it for a moment, then nodded. “In Connaught,” he added.

“In Connaught,” Bob agreed, then eyed the ditch. It looked as wide as the Shannon. But the boys were waiting on the other side: Jack’s boys, and now Bob’s. For under the circumstances they were likely the only children Bob would ever have. Teague gave him a mighty shove in the arse as he flew back over the water. By the time Bob got up from a rough, agonizing tumble on the far side and turned to thank him, Teague Partry was gone.

A Hay-rick, St.-Malo, France 9 APRIL 1692

The mind is its own place, and in it self

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

–MILTON,

Paradise Lost

“THIS MUST BE how syphilis spreads: blokes like me, hopping from place to place.”

“Why, Bob! I don’t believe anyone’s ever said anything quite so romantick to me.”

“I can’t guess what you were expecting when you roger an old sergeant in hay.”

“Come, lace me back up.”

“Would you hold your hair up out of the way? There, that’s better…”

“…”

“…tedious work, ain’t it?”

“Oh, stop complaining.”

“I’ve no complaints. But we could have left this bit on, you know.”

“Yes, and the stockings as well, and we could have done it standing up, and you with your boots and breeches on. But for me to enjoy it, Bob, I require a sense of abandon, of freedom, that only comes with removal of clothes.”

“This tight enough?”

“It is fine…for the same reason, Bob, I could do without your idle ruminations on syphilis, and how it spreads.”

“I don’t have it, mind you. Haven’t rogered anyone in years.”

“Nor do I. And neither have I.”

“What d’you mean, you told me you’ve a baby boy, six months old-”