by Eric Flint
"Fuck," he said, and left.
"So why's this guy such a problem?" Sharon asked.
"Gah!" Ruy was pacing back and forth like an agitated cat. "Say better how is Francisco de Quevedo y Villega not a problem! Say, rather, is there any way in which his presence is not an omen of the direst deeds, the most ridiculous catastrophes, the follies most lacking in sanity! The man is born to make trouble!"
Sharon's mockery was well placed in reply. "Sounds like a fellow you'd get on with then, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz."
"The difference, mi corazon, to use your charming American phrase, is that I know my ass from my elbow. I am not, to pick just one example of many, away abasing myself in a Venetian whorehouse when I ought to be organizing a coup d'etat, thus leaving my compatriots to get out of town one step ahead of an angry mob."
"Oh," Sharon said, catching the reference. "You think Borja's using this guy?"
"There is nothing more certain save my love for you," Ruy said. Then, feeling more amplification was called for, went on. "I was once pleased to count him as a friend. A younger fellow, just starting in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, with a slight taint of disreputability but a man with fire and soul none the less, forced to be abroad after an unfortunate duel. I taught him much, but he learned rather less. Since those days, there has not been a botched plot or a bungled maneuver anywhere in Spain's dominions in Italy that that whore-hopping drunkard has not had a full hand in making into a worse disaster than it need have been."
"So this is good news, right?" Sharon asked, "I mean, if they've put a complete idiot in charge?"
"Would that it were so! God grant that he were simply an idiot. It is worse, Sharon, so much worse. Not only is he stupid, he is indefatigable, a force of nature! He has skills, skills that I, to my shame, taught to him. He has resources, furnished by that child of a diseased donkey and a dockside whore Borja. He will mean to achieve great things, Sharon, and the result will be tragic farce such as Cervantes himself could not have compassed. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, and as God is my witness I am no coward, I tremble at the thought of what he might do."
"Oh." Sharon said again, this time quietly. "Do you think he recognized you?"
Ruy shrugged. He had had time to think about that on his way through Rome's nighttime streets. "It may be so," he said, "but I was disguised somewhat. Nothing of great invention, but I was doing my best not to look or sound like my inimitable self, you understand?"
Sharon just grinned.
"And I think the years have changed him less than they have me. He is, as I recall, some years younger than I and is not yet embarked upon the full maturity of manhood." He drew himself up. He knew he was an old man, of course, but he was in much better shape than many men half his age. Activity had been the key, constant training and living well. But a little self-mockery seemed to amuse Sharon far more than anything else he essayed by way of humor, and so it pleased him to indulge for her sake.
"I figure you're about to say we should plan on the basis he did recognize you, I think," Sharon said, grinning at his comedic posturing, "since you are so astonishingly well preserved. Why, you might pass for a man of sixty."
Ruy gave her his best bristling affront. "Why, I am not a day over, well, ah"-he made great play of counting on his fingers-"Fifty-three. I think."
Truth be told, Ruy was not exactly sure how old he was. All he was truly certain of from his mother was that he had been born on the day after Ash Wednesday, a fact that did nothing to help fix his birthdate, and if his mother had told him what year that had been, or ever made any mention of precisely how old he was, he could not now remember. And it was thirty-eight years since he could have gone back and asked her. Nearly that long, he realized with a start, since he had last visited her grave. A practice that would have immediately exploded his pretense to gentility.
Sharon noticed his sudden shift of mood. "Bad memories, Ruy?" she asked, gently.
He shook his head. "A melancholy moment. God did not grant that I retain much from-from my earlier life. And what little there was I had to abandon to make my way in the world on the best terms I could secure. That the path led to my present happiness does not prevent me recalling what was lost along the way." He sighed, deeply. "For now, though, I have you, my love," he said, and took her in his arms.
Chapter 16
Rome
"Your Eminence," Quevedo said, bowing fulsomely.
Borja choked down the first retort that came to mind, which would have been an ungracious comment that the man was at once late and improperly attired. Instead, he nodded in return, proffering his ring for the formal kiss. "Senor Quevedo y Villega," he said, "what have you to report?"
Quevedo took a seat a moment after Borja did- without being invited! -and cleared his throat. Ferrigno poised his pen. The matter had now gone beyond maintaining full and formal confidence, and Borja had taken to admitting Ferrigno into his meetings simply in order to have notes of what was going on. It was becoming fearfully complicated, between the dealing with the cardinals and other notables of Rome, receiving updates on His Majesty's forces in the kingdom of Naples, the reports from the spies with which Rome was now liberally infested, even more so than usual, and keeping track of Quevedo's machinations. There was nothing for it but to bear the load, however. Above all else, he was a Borja, and that was a line that had never been found wanting where scheme and maneuver had been at issue. Still less could he flinch from the work where, as here, the work in hand was clearly God's.
He fixed Quevedo with his best glare. "Pray continue."
"As the Cardinal wishes," Quevedo bore the cardinal's regard without so much as a flinch. "During the course of the last week we have instigated three incidents of a serious nature, at the Lyncaean Institute, the Palazzo Borghese and the Palazzo Barberini. Efforts to suborn captains of militia continue and we hope to provoke another massacre soon. Also in hand is the production of broadsides and handbills linking the incidents to the Committee of Correspondence. We also seek to start rumors that the Committee is linked to the USE embassy and further that they are also provoking the militia massacres in order to destabilize Rome and the Church."
"The militia business is new," Borja said. He still maintained his suspicions of Quevedo, even though over the last few weeks he had done all that was asked of him. There was always the danger, however, that the man would develop an uncomfortable amount of initiative at some inopportune moment.
"Indeed, Your Eminence," Quevedo said, "but the discontent that the fortuitous actions outside Grassi's house provoked was most useful. We had volunteers for several incidents thereafter, and we hope to capitalize on that reaction. In the event that we can provoke full-scale disorder, popular hatred of the militia will be to Your Eminence's advantage."
"And the prospect of full-scale disorder?" Borja was, he would admit to himself, impatient to have the business done with. If for no other reason, the amount of money that Quevedo had spent thus far on hiring ruffians for his business was eye watering.
"Thus far, Your Eminence, not much greater than when we began. We face a situation where the populace was laboring under no great burden of discontent, although the usual seasonal rise in food prices at this time of year will undoubtedly help us for a few weeks. Bringing them to a mood of insurrection by spending money on them, Your Eminence, represents an exercise in futility. What we hope to achieve is a sufficiently bad reaction from the civil authorities that popular discontent will develop naturally."
"And the chances of that?" Borja asked, resisting the impulse to remind Quevedo that he had not asked for a lecture.
"The same as the chances of the civil government of Rome doing something remarkably stupid, Your Eminence. I fear that Your Eminence's best chance will be to pay for sufficient public disorder, which I must remind Your Eminence is very much not the same thing as popular discontent, that Your Eminence will have a pretext for the intervention Your Eminence has in prospect."
"I thank you for your most cogent analysis, senor," Borja said, fighting to keep sarcasm out of his voice. He had been resigned for some weeks to the fact that simply spending money on agitators would not produce the anarchy he was hoping for. His instructions from the count-duke were simply to hamstring the Barberini pope and ensure he could do nothing more to harm the interests of Spain. The promise of troops from Naples had been extracted by his own efforts, and could not be fulfilled easily beyond a few months away.
Once matters proceeded against France, Spain's strategic bases in Spain and Italy would be all but uncovered save for what was needed to suppress revolt. Troops would be hard to come by for any purpose, no matter how high and holy. Not to mention that what troops were left in Naples would more than likely have their hands full; discontent there was genuine and naturally occurring and the agitators of it were of a far more sincere character than Quevedo was ever likely to be. Even now that he had managed to quiet Osuna for a while with promises of future preferment and a few trifles in earnest of that preferment, there remained a most pestiferous infestation of malcontents.
"Your Eminence is most welcome," Quevedo said. "And I also am most pleased to able to report that the prospects of an intervention by the United States of Europe are now much improved."
"What?" The involvement of the heretics from Germany had been no part of his plans, other than as a target of mob violence if the providence of the Holy Spirit should be generous. Borja would take a frank and unalloyed pleasure in the sight of that den of vipers being made to scatter with a swarm of enraged ruffians on their heels.
"The people of Rome are, like common folk everywhere, suspicious and untrusting of foreigners, Your Eminence. The sight of them meddling in the politics of Rome will provoke them, I am sure of it."
"And what have you done to bring the United States of Europe into the play?" Borja asked, almost dreading the answer.
"Nothing, Your Eminence. It appears that Sanchez has involved himself of his own accord. I saw him questioning a pimp last night."
"A pimp?" Borja was now prepared to admit to himself that he was completely baffled by this turn of events.
"A procurer of women for the purposes of prostitution, Your Eminence. Please accept my apologies for presuming that a churchman of your standing would be aware of the existence of such men."
Borja stared hard at Quevedo, but could detect no trace of sarcasm. "I am not so unworldly that I do not know what a pimp is, or what one does, Senor Quevedo. I requested enlightenment as to how it is we know Sanchez is involved from his conversation with a pimp. How do we know, for instance, that he was not transacting the ordinary business of such a fellow?"
"If Your Eminence will forgive me, I have some prior knowledge of the character of Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz. It is the defining character of the man that he is honorable, almost to excess in certain matters, and he is engaged to be married to the American moor. If there is one thing he was not doing, it was engaging the services of a prostitute."
"And do we have information as to why he was actually speaking to this pimp?" Borja asked. "Did we, for example, overhear the conversation?"
"I must ask Your Eminence's forgiveness," Quevedo said, "but my surmises are based on observations of Sanchez's character and habits, and of his actions during the time I saw him. He was affecting some rudiments of disguise, sufficient that he would not be readily recognized at a distance by anyone who did not know him well. I myself did not pick him out for some considerable time, and was not certain of my identification of him until he called attention to himself. His voice, Your Eminence, is quite distinctive. His actions, in so far as I observed them, were that he was haunting a popular taverna close to the church of San Gioacchino, engaging the patrons in conversation. The taverna was too crowded for me to overhear every conversation, and as I have adverted to Your Eminence, I did not at first notice Sanchez's arrival."
Too busy drinking and whoring, Borja thought, but kept the spiteful remark to himself. This was shaping up to be interesting. Sanchez was Bedmar's creature, and Borja had a personal dislike for the sarcastic little Andalusian cardinal. Anything that redounded to Bedmar's potential embarrassment was worth the listening for entertainment value alone.
"Sanchez spent some time in conversation with a pimp known to me as a regular in that taverna," Quevedo continued.
And you known to him as a regular customer no doubt, Borja silently added.
"The pimp in question is a low and uncouth fellow even by the standards of such," Quevedo said, oblivious to Borja's silent commentary, "and is apt to grow insistent on the subject of his business. I gather that when he did so, Sanchez picked a fight with another patron in order to divert attention from his departure. The manner in which he did so was typically flamboyant, I must inform Your Eminence, and it was at this point that my identification was certain. The resulting disturbance embroiled the entire taverna, and Sanchez made his exit under cover of the fighting. I did not discern the moment at which he made good his escape, as the fighting spilled over into the part of the taverna where I was sitting and I was forced to defend myself."
"Am I to presume you spoke to this pimp after the event?" Borja asked, picking up on Quevedo's obvious inference.
Quevedo smiled slightly, in a smug manner that Borja found even more irritating than usual. "Your Eminence is most astute. The fellow was stunned in the fighting. It was a simple matter to pick him up from the floor after the brawl had subsided, revive him with cold water and ply him with strong drink. I received a full account. Sanchez was posing as a porter from Barcelona, in Rome with the retinue of one of the cardinals Your Eminence has summoned on his own business. I identified Sanchez to the man as an agent of the United States of Europe, and enough people saw the disguised Sanchez that when the rumor spreads, the sight of him in the company of Dottoressa Nichols will confirm the rumor that the United States is fomenting discord in Rome in an attempt to suborn the See of Rome for their own nefarious purposes. I suggested as much to the pimp, and I have no doubt that the rumor is already beginning to spread. Your Eminence may depend upon it that I made much of Sanchez's hand in the Venetian conspiracy."
Borja realized that it would be ungenerous to begrudge Quevedo his smug expression, not least because there was a delicious irony in him, of all people, exploiting Sanchez's involvement in Bedmar's attempt to take Venice: Quevedo had been Osuna's man on the inside of that plot and had done just as much as Sanchez had, if not more. Irony aside, Quevedo had exploited a providential opportunity in a manner that would undoubtedly open up further opportunities to profit. If it became a matter of general gossip in Rome that the pope was somehow under the sway of the United States of Europe, for preference at the hands of that scheming Jew Nasi that styled himself a Don, much could be done to undo the harm that the Barberini had done to Spain's cause by publicly withdrawing his support. If, after all, he had been induced to do so by the machinations of a sinister Byzantine Jew…
Borja returned from his musings to ask Quevedo, "And what do you propose to do to further exploit this opportunity?"
"For the moment, Your Eminence, I will, with your permission, observe closely and react to whatever actions Sanchez undertakes. I would remind Your Eminence of my earlier remarks regarding the natural development of popular dissent. It is seldom that attempts to force such matters past their proper pace prove fruitful. The disorder we are provoking will create a soil in which any seed of genuine dissent may prove fruitful, but it is in God's hands whether any such seeds fall on the ground we have prepared, Your Eminence."
Borja nodded. It was as well to trust in Providence in such matters, for there was little that the agency of one man, or even a whole combination of men, could achieve. "I shall pray for the success of your efforts," he said, and realized that there was more. "I shall also thank God," he said, "for His having placed this opportunity in your path."
"Your Eminence is most kind," Quevedo said. "I only hope that the Lord G
od Almighty saw fit to direct Sanchez's eye to where I sat."
"Truly?" Borja said, intrigued, "Why so?"
Quevedo's smile was impish in the extreme. "The man bears a grudge like no one else I have ever known, Your Eminence. If he believes me to be involved in Your Eminence's business, he will stop at nothing to intervene and foil me. It is his rather rustic notion of hidalgo honor. As well the fact that he is a Catalan, a breed notorious for their touchiness. I feel we may depend on Sanchez to worsen his own party's position quite unintentionally."
Borja allowed himself a smile. "And, of course, he is Bedmar's man. And Bedmar is now firmly aligned with Flanders, and they in turn are making overtures to the United States of Europe. The opportunities for placing the blame do rather multiply." He savored the thoughts, for a moment.
"Senor Quevedo y Villega, your work goes well, and I am indeed pleased. I thank you for your efforts, and shall indeed pray most earnestly that God grant you further successes. You may go."
"Thank you, Your Eminence," Quevedo said, and with the proper formalities, left.
Chapter 17
Rome
"Well, this is a grand house," Giovanna remarked.
"All of 'em are, around here," Frank said. And it was true. The USE embassy was in a very nice neighborhood indeed, on the outskirts of the huge Borghese estate. That said, there did seem to be a lot of people just… hanging around. That wouldn't have been much out of the ordinary down toward the Borgo on the other side of the river. Frank was pretty much used to the sight of the street-life being seasoned with a fair few of what you could only call "colorful characters"-assuming, that is, you didn't want to call them bums and petty criminals. He had the feeling that seeing more than one around here would be a little odd. Come right to it, a few streets away there hadn't been quite so many specimens of the local wildlife mixed in among the well-to-do.
