by Eric Flint
There were a few rueful grins and flowery apologies.
"Really," she said, getting in to the spirit of the thing, "it is no trouble at all. I wish every audience I had was this appreciative."
Barberini's grin was impish. "And in some quarters, getting an audience at all would have been a help, perhaps?"
Here it comes, she thought. She and Ruy had discussed the matter, and there had been a couple of hours of back-and-forth radio traffic with the State Department over it. No one really had a clue why Barberini had invited her to her salon, except to manage the stunningly obvious conclusion that the pope's nephew was hardly likely to invite her over to the family palazzo for an afternoon of wine and chit-chat in learned company if there wasn't some deeper purpose. If it was purely for the sake of her scientific knowledge, entirely practical and rule-of-thumb by the standards of the twentieth century but cutting-edge theory here and now, why not earlier?
There had been some change, and she was probably about to find out what. "Your Eminence need not worry," she said, uncomfortable at how stilted she sounded in the more formal Italian they used hereabouts. "The doctors have been most kind, and I in turn have learned far more about their own fields of expertise than I have been pleased to help with from my own small knowledge."
Of course, that brought a round of flowery protests from the doctors-why, their own arts were nearly medieval-the new learning far outstripped their own-the dottoressa was a legend, and deservedly so. Polite fictions, all of it, and Sharon realized there was a huge difference between the way in which polite society functioned and the cut-and-thrust of scientific debate. The conversation she'd had had up to now had been far more colloquial and informal, more near to what she'd been used to back home. Earlier, they had, to their credit, been challenging what she'd said and taken notes when she'd described high-school lab experiments they could do to verify some of it. Not that they needed scientific method explained, though. That was familiar to all of these good Lyncaeans, in its practical terms if not as a formal methodology.
The flowery protests ran down, and Barberini beamed. "Nevertheless, doctors, I shall claim the privilege of rank and steal the dottoressa away from you for a time. Doubtless you will seek to recapture her later, but for the time being let me show her that this symposium is not of natural philosophers alone?"
Well, Sharon thought, it's his party. And, truth to tell, she was dying of curiosity as well. She got to her feet. "Thank you, Your Eminence. I should like that very much, if only to repay your generosity as host in some small way."
Barberini offered her his arm. "Let me show you around some of the things we have here, Dottoressa. Doubtless you have heard the stories of Barberini peculation?" Not waiting for her to acknowledge the reference to the principal charge against his family's tenure in the papacy, he added, with a sly smile, "I should like to show you what it has bought."
"I should like that very much indeed, Your Eminence," she said, and that was the plain truth. The place had more art about the place than any museum she'd been in back in the up-time U.S., although her experience in that line hadn't been much. She wasn't a great connoisseur of art, really, but she'd tried not to be a complete philistine. And Cardinal Mazzare had told her that the collection that this man had assembled was, in the twentieth-century Rome that Mazzare had worked in as a young priest, the nucleus of the Italian state's national art collection, in a museum housed in this very palazzo. So she was getting a tour of one of Europe's better art collections conducted by one of Europe's leading patrons of the arts who was also, despite being only three or four years older than Sharon herself, recognized as one of the leading experts in the field as well.
Indeed, it soon became apparent the man was encyclopedic on just about everything in the place, and there were dozens of rooms packed with beautiful things. The rest of the salon was taking place in the huge hall on the ground floor that still looked a little bare. Apparently Cortona was due to begin work on it soon, although Sharon hadn't a clue who he might be. But the Palazzo Barberini was a huge building with a dozen or more rooms on each floor and even the parts that were still under construction were breathtaking.
At length, she could resist no longer. "Your Eminence," she said, "I love what you've done with the place."
He creased up at that. "Yes, it is a little overwhelming all in one go, isn't it? I confess, I am a thieving magpie."
He was looking at her expectantly, and she realized there was a reference she wasn't getting here. And there was no guarantee it was even one she could ask about. From what she'd heard, he'd had a lot brought from Grantville and there was every possibility he knew more about twentieth-century art and literature and music than she did. She decided to brush past it if she could. "Who wouldn't be, if they could?"
"True. It does not stop my family's enemies upbraiding us for it." His face twisted up in a sour expression for a moment. "Horseflies, they call us. Still, Cardinal Mazzare tells me that one day all this will edify the multitudes." He waved a hand around.
"He told me that, as well," Sharon agreed. "He said he found it strange to be staying here in what he last came to as a museum." She paused a moment to take in the profusion. The decor was remarkable in every detail, the themes varying from room to room in wild profusion without ever clashing, and almost completely hidden with every square inch covered in art and sculpture. You could, she realized, lose days in here. It was a wonder that this Barberini, whose enthusiasm seeped out of every pore, ever left the place.
As it was, he was ranging his eyes over the collection. "Mazzare," he said, after a moment, "is a man who is destined either for great things or to be remembered by history as the worst disaster ever to befall the Church."
"How so?" Sharon asked. "The disaster part, that is."
"It is… hard to explain," Barberini said, after another long stare at the paintings. "I do not, you understand, pretend to understand all of the politics. Or the theology. Or how the two go together."
Sharon looked around, and realized that, for the first time since they had started on this little tour, they were alone. Barberini had stopped in a spot where, with only a little effort, easily covered as contemplation of the surrounding artwork, he could see for quite some distance into the adjoining rooms whose doors had been thrown open. They would not be easily overheard by anyone. After Barberini's pause had grown uncomfortably long, she said, "I don't really understand all of it myself. Really, I just wanted to be a nurse. It wasn't my fault I ended up a politician. As for theology, well, I went to church on Sundays and that was it." She refrained from mentioning which church, since the African Methodist Episcopal church didn't even exist in this time and place. Not that Barberini wouldn't have had full reports on her accompanying Ruy to mass on Sunday.
"There are those that do, Dottoressa. And they have taken decisions I do not pretend to understand, and cannot see the wisdom of. There are times when I wonder whether we would not be better simply to denounce everything from your time as witchcraft as some of the older generation want to." He sounded weary. "It would spare us all so many complications. After all, everyone understood the world before the Ring of Fire came, even though some of us affected a certain skepticism. Cynicism, even. Now? My esteemed uncle seems to have an idea fixed in his mind that God himself is speaking to him in this matter but is not yet convinced he knows what he is being told."
Sharon didn't know what to say to that. And so the uncomfortable pause stretched even longer than the one before it. She said nothing, and just waited. What was up with the man? Either he thought she was going to be offended or he wasn't happy with what he'd been ordered to say to her.
She hoped-no, she wasn't sure what she hoped. She could take offense in stride, she figured. It wasn't like most of what she saw around here wasn't offensive in some way or other, and after a while she'd stopped noticing, most of the time. If he was unhappy about what he had to say, what was the worst of it? Business as usual, the pope carefully pretending h
e didn't have one more ambassador in his city, one who wasn't getting invited to his court. Something that, between any other nations not actually at war, would be an insult but which the USE was being very forbearing about since they'd had the bare minimum recognition that protocol required. So either way there was no need to worry.
Barberini was making it look like there was, though. After a moment or too more, he turned back to her. "I must apologize, Dottoressa. I am being most unmannerly with you. I am uncharacteristically unsure of how to phrase what I would ask of you."
Well, that was easy enough to deal with. It wasn't like a bashful patient wasn't something she had the training and experience to handle. She shrugged, and summoned up her best bedside manner. "So begin at the beginning. I promise I won't hit you."
He smiled a small, sad, smile. "For all that I would extend you every courtesy, Dottoressa, it is not for your sake that I hesitate. I am unconvinced of the wisdom of what must follow as it affects the interests of the Church, nor as it affects the interests of the Papal States. I am, I confess, no diplomat, nor yet much of a politician, measured against those who instruct me. So perhaps I am naive."
Sharon decided to try firmness. "Please, Your Eminence, stop beating about the bush. I'm a doctor, for goodness' sake. You can bet I've heard much weirder things than you have in store. And it might be that I'll have to say no, and you can heave a sigh of relief."
"I must apologize once again. So, I screw up my meager courage. Dottora Ambassadora, " he said, and she caught that he had suddenly started using her other title, which couldn't have been idly done since he'd completely left it out so far, "I must ask what contact you have with the Committee of Correspondence in Rome? And whether they would follow directions if you were to communicate them?"
Well, that was unexpected. "Officially," she said, "I don't have any contact with the Committee of Correspondence anywhere. Unofficially, Frank Stone is a friend of mine. His stepmother is a very close friend and business partner. His wife is one of my patients. So if you want a message passed, I have plenty of opportunity, although I can't promise anything. I suppose that ethically I have to pass on any message you want me to pass. Although Frank's his own man these days, not just a kid, and it's him in charge of the Committee, not me. And if you want to hold a discussion, I'd rather not act as your messenger-girl. I can ask Frank to come talk to you. I'm guessing you can't go haunting low tavernas like the one he runs, right?"
"Not that my reputation could get any lower, if the handbills are to be believed," he said. "But the Ambassadora is most generous and gracious. A message is, indeed, what I would have passed. What, rather, those instructing me would have passed."
"I guess I ought to mention that even though you married Frank and Giovanna, neither of them is really likely to take any message from any part of the Church on trust. Not after their last experience of you included a spell in one of your jails."
Barberini laughed aloud. "And ours of them included them shooting up one of our churches in the middle of a most solemn occasion! Monsignor Mazarini might have bent his considerable talents to making that particular outrage disappear, but I need hardly say that such things are not readily forgotten, whatever the public appearance."
Sharon shrugged. "Well, with bad blood on both sides I guess asking a diplomat to act as go-between makes sense, then. What's the message, Your Eminence?" Truth be told, she was getting a little impatient with Barberini's constant dodging around the point.
"We would prefer they were less solicitous of official concerns," he said, flatly and without intonation.
"You want them to start being more-" she groped for the right word "-Revolutionary?"
"Just so, Ambassadora."
"Forgive me for saying it, Your Eminence, but that sounds like a trap. What's to say that they won't find the Inquisition landing on them and getting a little payback for, as you say, shooting up one of your churches?" She figured a little annoyance was safe to show. There had to be more to this, since surely an institution as long-lived and subtle as the Catholic church wouldn't be that simple-minded?
"A promise, which His Holiness instructed me to make on his behalf." He winced, and Sharon got a feeling that the meeting at which Barberini had been told what to say by his uncle had not been an easy one for him. "The Inquisition will be restrained. We make no promises in respect of other methods of opposition. Counterpropaganda, other methods. But the persons of the Committee themselves will not be molested."
"I have to ask why," she said flatly.
"Because my masters would rather the Committee fought back openly than let themselves be used as a tool against us. If people were not being duped about the Committee, it is felt that they might not be so ready to create disorder in the streets." He sighed deeply. "The disorder they would create if some of their firebrands from the Germanies come here is quite overlooked. But I am a man under authority."
Sharon felt quite sorry for the little cardinal, then. Well, almost sorry. He might be wearing a priest's robes, but he was really every inch the consummate nobleman. A plot by other nobles, he was comfortable with, and if he lost, well, there was no great shaking of the world order as a result. If Sharon had to guess, this particular idea came straight from the Jesuits, who were making great strides back in the USE. Their reasoning was that freedom of religion was freedom to convert the Protestants, one at a time if they had to. They were doing a lot of good educational work, and leave it to the Committees of Correspondence to be brutally pragmatic about working with them on things like setting up schools. Or, at least, to leave them alone. An organization mentally supple enough to make as many converts as they had in Japan, of all places, would regard the USE as easy pickings. And the Committees of Correspondence as no particular obstacle. Allies, even, in some matters.
Barberini, on the other hand, saw the social and economic consequences for his own class first and foremost. And if there was one thing Sharon had no sympathy for, it was the nobility clinging to their power and wealth, no matter the consequences.
But she was enough of an ambassador to realize that rubbing it in wouldn't be a good thing to do, just now. "You can pass the message back that I'll speak to Frank. I can't speak for his response, and I've no idea what good it'll do you if he starts doing what you want, but I will tell him."
"I thank you, Ambassadora."
"If there's anything further the USE can do to help, again, I can't guarantee what my instructions from Magdeburg will be, but feel free to ask. And I'm always happy to come to your salon, Your Eminence. The company is excellent, and your home is a pleasure to visit."
"And for my part, Ambassadora, if there is any service I can perform in a purely personal capacity, you have only to ask. Your presence in my home is a pleasure and a privilege, and"-the impish grin came back in full force-"too much of a social coup for me to resist, when so graciously offered."
"Well," she said, "we should be getting back, or people will talk." She realized it was a feeble joke, but she felt she had to lighten the young cardinal's mood.
It seemed to work. "They already do, Dottoressa," he said, giggling a little. "Mostly they say that your honor is quite safe from the likes of me, I am afraid, except when they denounce me as a fornicator."
Sharon couldn't help chuckling. "I could help with that first one," she said, "I could claim you tried to press your attentions, and I had to fight you off…"
He wagged a finger. "Not even in jest," he said, mock-serious. "I have heard stories of your intended, Senor Sanchez. A most bloodthirsty devil, it is said, who has left corpses on dueling fields from here to America. Deadly with any weapon and completely without compunction in killing on the slightest provocation."
"Oh, true," Sharon said, "but how well squashed those rumors will be! Who could think a man slain by a jealous fiance was anything other than red-blooded?"
"Enough! Before you tempt me, woman. Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz is a lucky man, and I would not deprive anyone of such ha
ppiness."
Chapter 21
Rome
"Well, that could've gone better," Sharon said to Ruy after seeing Frank and Giovanna out.
"Frank is not so young a man as he once was, Sharon," Ruy said, in that rumbling he-man voice he put on when he thought she wasn't being too smart.
"I know, I know." She sighed. "And if I was to be honest I'd say I pretty much expected him not to buy it. He was pretty okay about it otherwise, though." Actually, Frank had doubled up laughing when Sharon had told him what Barberini had said. At first, anyway. And then he'd pointed out that even if Barberini was serious, he knew from his own sources that the Inquisition was a power in its own right and while the pope could restrain them for a time, they were waiting for an opportunity. And since he'd already made himself a pain in the ass by regularly denouncing the fake propaganda-Sharon had chuckled herself when Frank described the reaction of the junior priests there whenever he walked through the door-he wasn't going to put himself where the pope couldn't save him, not for anybody. And if these people really were plotting against the pope, where was the pope's guarantee if he lost?
Frank was quite happy to just keep his toehold in Rome and make sure there was a core of support that would discount the bullshit that was going around. They had a soccer league going, running more or less without their help, and numbers had picked up a bit at the club he was running. Soon enough, he'd said, he'd have a press of his own and he sure as shit wasn't going to use it to put himself or anyone from his organization in jail. And if he had to bug out if the pope lost, he'd do it, too. They could always come back when the heat died down.
And Sharon couldn't disagree with any of it. She wondered, idly, for a moment, how Barberini was going to react at the salon she'd been invited to in two weeks' time. Would he be disappointed, or relieved? She'd find out soon enough, of course. Enough daydreaming; she had an appointment, right after lunch.
