“With respect, I shan’t. I’ll be with you.”
“With me? Now see here, O’Rourke-”
“ ‘O’Rourke’ me no ‘O’Rourkes,’ Hugh O’Donnell. You’ll not be leaving me in France to tend a bunch of turnip-pullers while you sail into high seas and perdition.”
“Sergeant O’Rourke, you are a man I can trust and a man who enjoys the respect of the entire regiment. You will see our men safely over the border, and then through their stay in France.”
“With respect, sir, I will not. There’s many as can baby-sit them better than I. Shane Connal is the one you’ve been grooming for this kind of work. Most of the men will hear and heed his voice almost as if it were your own. And m’lord, if fair speech is required in dealing with our French hosts, then let’s speak plain and admit I’m not the man for that. But Shane’s got your way with words and manners-and he’ll oversee a just and proper succession of your title here, should something ill befall us out there.”
Hugh considered the arguments. “You rehearsed that speech earlier, didn’t you, O’Rourke?”
“I thought I might have occasion for words such as those, m’lord. I figured a man of genius like yourself often lacks a bit in the common sense department; he might leave his right hand at home if the right hand wasn’t determined to stay attached all by itself.”
Hugh smiled. “You’re a pain in my neck, O’Rourke.”
“And other parts of the body as well, I’d wager.”
“Another bet you’d win. Now, for our trip to the New World, we’ll need about a half of a company for the landing and defense-as well as repelling pirates, if we’re unlucky. Recommendations?”
“I’ve been thinking about just that, m’lord, and the men that seem best suited to those purposes-”
O’Donnell clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I trust you, O’Rourke-in all things. Go get your list-and while you’re at it, fetch Shane Connal from the blockhouse, as well. Let’s not keep him in the dark on this any longer.”
O’Rourke rose quickly. “In a trice, m’lord.” And he was out the tent flap in a rush.
He had gone half the way to the blockhouse when a suspicion began to churn in his gut. Bt the time he had turned and sprinted back up the low rise to the commander’s tent, his misgiving had become a certainty. Pulling the flap aside, he burst into the dim interior.
One orderly looked up from his tasks, startled.
He was the only person in the tent. Of course.
O’Rourke smiled and shook his head; it was sad to think that after all these years, he was still so easily conned. He should have seen it coming: O’Donnell would want to slip out of the camp as stealthily as he had come in. And he’d have-rightly-known that O’Rourke would have had none of that: two guards, at least, to escort one of the last two princes of Ireland. But O’Donnell had given him the slip.
Again.
O’Rourke went over to stand by the table they’d shared but two minutes earlier. He rested his hand on the back of his earl’s chair. And smiled:
See you in Amiens, old friend.
Falser Messiah
Lost in Grantville, 24th of Av, 5394
(T minus 5 hours and 43 minutes)
“I am not the Son of God!” he screamed at the library.
At least he thought he was screaming in the direction of the library.
With eyes red with tears, Shabbethai Zebi ben Mordecai spun about, glaring at the world which was suddenly bright and out of focus, frightening and repulsive. The world he could not wait to see each morning and wept over as he closed his eyes every night was suddenly wrong.
Or, maybe, he was wrong.
Memories came; out of focus, silent, out of any order.
He remembered his mother crying on the dock in Smyrna as he left on a ship, a real ship, with his father and elder brother.
His mother had not waved at him.
He remembered how eager he was to learn everything and show his father what he had learned and how hard it was, all of a sudden, to get his father to simply look at him.
There was the trip to this magical place, Grantville. Here, he had forgotten how often his questions went unanswered, his small discoveries went unnoticed, how often his father and elder brother seemed to talk quietly to each other and occasionally looked at him as if he had done something wrong.
Here was the town of Deborah and an entire community of Jews who lived and worked amongst non-Jews and not once, not even once, had he heard a single bad word or seen an evil look directed at any Jew, and how exciting it was and how he wanted to ask questions.
No Sabbath had ever been so beautiful as his first in Deborah. Never had he sung the Torah so fervently, so fervently he did not remember, until now, how his singing caused so much silence.
“Why, Abba?” he whispered, sniffing. Grantville had been a magical place and now it felt like it was burning and he was the fire. “Abba!”
No answer. No one looked at him. They told him what to do and where to be and conversations stopped when he entered rooms and there was arguing but never did anyone look him in the eye or ask him how his day went or what new and magical thing had he learned today.
Silence.
Even the other children viewed him with suspicion. Games ended when he joined them. Meals were quiet and even during prayer he felt he prayed alone.
So, as he had learned in the schools in Smyrna, the Jewish ones with dour old men who were quick with a harsh word to those who seemed inattentive, he went to answer his questions. He went to the library at Grantville.
He listened and heard his father and his elder brother and rabbis, learned men, arguing about him, about little Shabbethai Zebi and how his name was in the library, the great library in Grantville.
In a place where Jews could move about freely, it had been simple for him to go to the library.
And now?
Silence.
He tried hard in the silence of the library to translate an entry in a book, an entry that had his name in English.
A girl saw him and, miracle of miracles, she spoke Greek and this English that not even his own father could understand well, let alone read, and she had told him.
“You are the Messiah? You are the son of God?”
What was he to do? What could he do?
The silence shouted at him as he ran from the library and out into the streets of Grantville.
Shabbethai Sebi: Son of God. Messiah.
“I am not the son of God!” Shabbethai shouted, though his voice had less strength. He spun about looking for something familiar, something to hold onto, something not silent.
Grantville was not silent but its voice was not familiar to him. There were people and magical things called “cars” and horses, and children screaming.
Shabbethai sniffed and looked about, hunting the source of the screaming.
There had been a time when he had screamed like that, screamed with the pure joy of play and running and jumping.
Now, since that last view of his home in Smyrna and his mother standing motionless, crying on the dock, there had been silence.
