Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(5)
Don McCarthy leaned back. “So—France. You are becoming a true soldier-of-fortune now.”
“You may say the dirty word: yes, I am now a ‘mercenary.’ I have little choice. So too for all us Irish ‘Wild Geese’ in Spanish service. Our employer’s ‘alliance’ with England runs counter to any hope that Philip will make good his promise to liberate Ireland. It is a failure that is anticipated in your own histories—although there, the reasons were somewhat different. Besides, I do not wish to find myself fighting you.”
“Fighting us? How?”
“How not? Spain’s enmity toward your United States of Europe is unlikely to abate soon. So, if I am not willing to become the physical instrument of that hatred, I must take service elsewhere. And that decision reflects not just my loyalty as your friend, but the practicality of a seasoned officer: becoming a military adversary of the USE seems best suited to those who are in an intemperate rush to meet their maker.”
Michael Sr. smiled a bit. Michael Jr. frowned a bit.
Hugh leaned toward the latter. “What is it, Michael?”
“Nothing. Just thinking, is all.”
“Thinking of what?”
Michael Jr. seemed to weigh his words very carefully before he spoke. “Well, Hugh, we might be working for the same boss, soon.”
“You, Michael—working for the French? How could that be? Just last year, they attacked the USE.”
“Well, yes . . . but that was last year. We have a treaty now.”
“Michael, just a few days ago, did your own father not quip that the honor of nations is, in fact, an oxymoron?”
“Dad did, but I’m not counting on French honor.” He snorted the last two words. “I’m thinking practically. My guess is that the French are going to be lying low for a while, at least with regards to the USE. So it should be safe for me to do a short stint of work for the French, just to make some extra money. To handle some extra expenses.”
Hugh frowned, perplexed. Then, through the kitchen doorway, he saw Mike Sr.’s German nurse bustling busily at a shelf lined with his many special ointments, potions, and pills.
Michael Sr. spoke up. “Yep, I’m the ‘extra expense.’”
“Perhaps I remember incorrectly, but isn’t your wife—?”
“A nurse. Yes, but she’s needed elsewhere, and there’s not a whole lot she can do for me that any reasonably competent person can’t.”
“And the USE does not provide you with adequate care in exchange for both your wife’s service, and your son’s?”
“Oh, they provide, but it’s pretty costly, taking care of a crusty old coot like me.”
Hugh smiled, not really understanding what a “coot” was or how it might acquire a crust, but he got the gist by context.
Michael leaned towards his father, subtly protective. “So I found a way to make a lot of money pretty quickly, I think. But it involves going over the border.”
“To France.”
“More specifically, to Amiens.”
Hugh started. “You mean to work for Turenne?”
Michael nodded, looked away.
Hugh did his best to mask his surprise. “Really? Turenne? And his technical, eh, ‘laboratories?’”
Michael nodded again. “I negotiated the leave of absence a while ago. My bags are pretty much packed. Literally.”
“And Stearns, and Gustav, will allow you to provide technical assistance to Turenne?”
Michael shrugged, still looking away. “This down-time version of America is still a free country. We brought that with us and kept it. Mostly. Besides, I’ll only be showing the French how to achieve something that I’m sure they’ve already studied in our books.”
Hugh nodded, wondered what this “something” might be, and also if there might be some way for Michael and he to combine their westward journeys. He leaned back, feeling a surge of relief at even this nebulous prospect of having a comrade as he began to seek his fortune in France. It was a relief to think one might not start out on a new career completely alone, almost as comforting as the fire which threw flickering shadows around the walls and even painted a few on the back of the front door.
Six days ago, Hugh had knocked on that front door—unannounced—to begin his second visit to Grantville. This was a considerable departure from the formality of his first visit, made about three months earlier.
That initial visit had been something of a low-level affair of state. Technically still the earl of Tyrconnell (in everyone’s opinion but the English), Hugh Albert O’Donnell’s name was known to some up-timers not only in reports from this present, but also from the tales of their own past. And it had been that past, and the future that had followed from it, that Hugh had come to explore.