by Eric Flint
They were perhaps halfway across when a carriage, guarded by four outriders, came rumbling by. Barberini cringed away from the thing, not knowing which cardinal was present in it. He took note of the arms painted on the door and saw that it was the carriage of Cardinal Bischi. An ally, by God! And not just an ally-Lelio Bischi was a personal friend and fellow enthusiast of literature and the arts. Barberini offered up a silent prayer of thanks and turned to try to-but no, there was no hope. Lelio was making good his escape, and doubtless none of his men would be looking back along the road to see if there were stray scions of the pope's house scattered in their path.
The point was moot within seconds. The carriage had proceeded barely fifty yards farther when a group of soldiers Barberini had not noticed dashed into the street and lined up to block the carriage's progress. The driver halted, as a man will when he has a dozen muskets pointed at him and his team. Men came forward to take custody of the outriders, the driver, the footman and the postillions. Another man, some manner of officer, judging by the sword and the better clothes, came forward and spoke to whoever was in the carriage.
Barberini heard nothing of what was said. The officer stepped away from the carriage door and waved his sword in an idle gesture of some kind. Four musketeers leveled their pieces at a range of perhaps three paces, and fired. Screams issued from the carriage, and it began rocking. The officer stepped forward, opened the door, and reached inside. With some apparent effort he dragged the occupant-which was wearing a cardinal's purple, although Barberini could not have sworn to the identity of the mewling, bleeding thing that was within those clothes.
The struggle was brief. The cardinal, if it was he, clung to the sides of the carriage door for a moment. A flash of the sword, hitting the wood of the carriage with a thump and sending at least one finger spinning through the air, ended that. The cardinal fell on to the cobbles. The officer planted his sword in the cardinal's throat and leaned on it, as if on a walking stick on a pleasant country stroll.
Barberini could not watch, flinching away. When he looked back, the officer was wiping his blade on the hem of his victim's garment, apparently oblivious to the spattering of blood that now coated him from shoulder to knee down his right side.
Barberini shuddered. Cardinal Lelio Bischi, a lively wit and gifted lawyer, a man of letters with few equals in Rome or anywhere, a man responsible for nurturing several literary talents and an avid collector of books, snuffed out with four bullets and two strokes of the sword. Simply, it would seem, because he was publicly and clearly a Barberini man. Borja truly meant to have Rome for his own. Or for his master's own.
"Mazarini?" he said, after a few seconds of silence, noting as he spoke that the people were starting to move all the faster to get away from something to the south, giving this small party of troops a wide berth but still flowing northward.
"Yes, Your Eminence?"
"We are leaving. Now."
It was another two hours before they reached the Porta Salaria by roundabout ways, back alleys and much circumspection. As Barberini had guessed, the ancient gate was now manned, and Barberini suspected that the guard was both more numerous and less bribable than the customs men who ordinarily stood there. They had reached a small shop doorway before the little piazza that opened out before the gate, and tried not to attract suspicion as they looked carefully over the situation.
There were troops on the piazza, apparently lounging about any old how, but Barberini decided that that was probably deception. Surely they would spring to more efficient action if any person tried to flee the city? Still, it was a quiet gate. As they had crossed the city, each main street that they had had to scurry across like mice had been less and less crowded with refugees. Whatever was rousting the common folk from their homes was happening in the south of the city, and to the west. The last blocks had been incredibly nerve-wracking, as they grew distant from the sound of gunfire that might have covered their own sounds. The crowds in which they had vanished as simply two more frightened citizens had thinned until, in this final quarter, people were again hiding behind bolted doors and shutters.
Behind them, the sound of hooves on cobbles. Barberini turned to look, and it was all he could do not to fall to his knees and praise God in his most extravagant voice. It was Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, in the flesh, turning a corner into the street that Barberini and his man were lurking on. Even if the man could not help directly, there was no reason why he should not pass on information.
"Mazarini, wait here," Barberini said. "If I have made a misjudgment, your task is to survive to bring word of my death to such of my house as survive."
He left before Mazarini could say anything, and stepped out of the shady doorway into the street and shuffled over to meet Sanchez. Between the gash in his thigh, the ache in his back and the nagging pain of the wound to his shoulder, he moved like a mendicant. A perverse whim made him want to stretch out his hand in supplication for alms, but he suppressed it.
"Senor Sanchez," he said, as the intended of the USE's ambassador-or had he actually married her? He had been told the date of the wedding but could not now remember when it was, or had been to be. "I must most humbly apologize for my most unbecoming attire." His voice was cracked and choked. Even for a day as warm as this was promising to be, and for the amount of unwonted exercise he had had to take, Barberini's throat was dry with thirst.
Sanchez reined in his horse before he came too close to Barberini and stared at him for a long moment. "Your Eminence?" he asked, frowning.
"Senor Sanchez," he said, smiling as much as he could while working his jaw to try to get his mouth to moisten, "I have had a long and trying day, but I surely am not entirely so disheveled-"
Sanchez dismounted, a smooth and flowing motion that surprised Barberini, who knew how old the man was. "My apologies, Your Eminence. I had completed my business in Rome and was distracted by thoughts of my return to my wife. How may I be of assistance?"
So, married after all, Barberini thought, trying to calculate the angles while framing his response. "I am desirous of escaping the city while I still can. I delayed my departure-"
Sanchez held up a hand. "My own people also. It seems our timing was slightly better than yours, Your Eminence. By perhaps half an hour. You were set upon? In your palazzo or while evacuating?"
"In the street," Barberini said, interrupted by a cough that rasped his throat and sent ice-hot needles of pain dancing up his back and left side. He screwed up his eyes, despite the way that brought back the sight of Cardinal Bischi, dumped like refuse in the street. "I think we interrupted their preparations to storm the palazzo. We were ambushed. There was confusion. My man Mazarini brought me away after I was shot and fell from my horse." Since that moment he had felt nothing but fear and a constant sense of being hunted, at least during those times when he had not been groaning in pain or unconscious.
Sanchez seemed to notice his hoarse voice for the first time, and handed him a metal bottle that turned out to contain water. "I thank you," he said, after taking a swig. "Mazarini found a hiding place near the Ripetta while I recovered enough to walk. We made our way here, but the gate is guarded. Senor Sanchez, how were you proposing to leave?"
Sanchez laughed. "I had every intention of riding to the gate, calling a surprise inspection, damning every one of them for slovenly curs not fit to bear the name of soldiers of His Most Catholic Majesty before riding out of the gate threatening condign punishments for every last one. A stratagem I have used before. It is of less effect with mercenaries, who tend to listen only to their own officers, but few of those are among these raiding parties."
Barberini's answering chuckle-there was something about Sanchez that simply demanded good humor, but winced as all the ribs up his back twinged at once. "A stratagem that will not work for me, alas. Have you seen whether any of the ruined wall by the Castra Praetoria is guarded?"
"I have not," Sanchez said, his face suddenly becoming blank. A moment of th
ought. "I shall assist you in your escape. I cannot speak for the USE embassy as to any further aid, but I shall see you safe to a doctor and shelter."
It was all Barberini could do not to faint with relief.
Chapter 37
The countryside, near Rome
"Tough little guy," said Doctor Nichols, rolling his sleeves down as they came out of the back room the taverna's proprietor had let them have as an impromptu consulting room. "Give him an hour or so for it all to catch up with him, though, and he's going to be out like a light. I prescribed a good meal and a night's sleep, but he says he's going to be up and about for a little while."
"What's he doing now?" Melissa asked.
"His servant's helping him get dressed. Rita scared up some fresh clothes for them both. That'll be half the recovery right there. I don't think they were either of 'em used to being dirty and ragged." He ambled over to the serving counter and waved for attention.
Sharon decided to butt in. "Did he ask for any help?" That was going to be an interesting question. The radio guys were upstairs in what would, later, be Sharon's bedroom, getting ready for the broadcast window that wouldn't be open for a short while yet. On the one hand, the fact that they had to relay through the embassy station at Basel was a pain in the ass if Sharon wanted to have a conversation with someone at the State Department. On the other, it was a real help if she had the distinct feeling that a fait accompli was exactly the right way to Do The Right Thing as it appeared to the woman on the spot.
"Beyond stitching him up? No." Her dad hoisted a large glass of wine and offered a silent toast before taking a gulp. The watered wine they served like it was a cold soda was actually quite refreshing, and if you were careful about it you kept a clear head. The kitchen had boiled some drinking water for them, money being a perfectly good explanation for any oddity, but it wouldn't be cool enough to drink for a while yet. Except for Melissa, who'd made tea. "Although I think we might well have a foot in that particular door, what with my new son-in-law making up policy on the hoof."
There was no particular note of disapproval in her dad's voice, Sharon noted. He was a doctor, and before that a Marine, and picking up the wounded and getting them to a doctor pulled some fairly well-worn levers in her dad's mind. In her own, come right to it. Rita was nodding her approval as well.
Sharon still had no particular inspiration about how to proceed from here, though. "How bad was he?" she asked, covering her lack of clear ideas with small talk.
"Two, maybe three busted ribs, a cracked collarbone, two nasty cuts and assorted scrapes and bruises. I've strapped the ribs and immobilized the arm, and the cuts just needed cleaning and a few stitches. Nothing a few weeks' rest won't cure," her dad said. "He kept moving all day after being shot up, though, which won't have helped. Adrenaline's powerful stuff, and like I say he's a tough little guy under the flab, but he's going to be one sorry little cardinal tomorrow."
Sharon chuckled. Cardinal Barberini had looked like death warmed up when Ruy had brought him in earlier. His servant, Mazarini, who was apparently the father of the diplomat Sharon had briefly met in Venice, had looked less battered but a lot more tired. Ruy had made him stirrup all the way from Rome, nearly seven miles, while the wounded cardinal had been given a ride behind Ruy on the horse. Ruy had, since handing the two refugees over for care and attention, been out of sight in the stables with a Marine helping him get started on fixing the poor animal up after the strain they had put him under. "Did he tell you how they got out of Rome?" she asked. Ruy would be making his own report once he'd finished caring for his horse, a sense of priorities Sharon wasn't prepared to overrule right now.
"Apparently Ruy found them trying to figure out how to get past a bunch of gate guards, used a rope to get them over the wall well away from any Spanish soldiers and then went back to bullshit his way past the guards so he could get his horse out. Apparently he conned 'em into thinking he was an officer of the Spanish army, pulled a surprise inspection and just rode out while they were still braced up and sweating. Way Barberini tells it, Ruy was still chuckling when they got in sight of this place."
"Sounds like Ruy," Rita said, grinning. She'd only known him a couple of weeks, but there were some things that you learned about Ruy quite quickly. The main one was his low sense of humor.
"Actually," Sharon said, "Ruy wasn't fooling. He is an officer in the Spanish army. I don't think he ever resigned his commission. Or sold it, if that's what they do."
"Sold it," her dad agreed. "Came as a bit of a shock to the guys who joined the new army, that. They were expecting to have to buy their commissions and have something in the bank for their old age. Getting given a commission and a pension plan messed with their heads a little, till they got used to the notion."
Melissa had been looking pensive throughout the conversation. "Any thoughts, Sharon?" she asked.
Sharon sighed. She knew exactly what Melissa was driving at, and she pretty much had to have made a decision before the transmission window opened up, or she'd be stuck with whatever State came up with in about a week's time. One thing she did know was that the time to act was right now, while there was still fighting in Rome. The sound of cannon had started coming out of the city, silhouetted as it was against the setting sun, and the columns of smoke had been rising since mid-morning and were now probably visible from hundreds of miles away. The USE presence right here right now was small enough to fit into this tavern and rented space in half a dozen nearby farmhouses and barns. So if they were going to do anything to intervene against the USE's avowed enemies, then they'd have to do something very well focused and accurate. Which meant doing it now, before whatever Borja was up to came off completely and he was settled in to-what, exactly? Knowing that would be half the decision made for her.
And that would be the half she was missing. Truth to tell, she liked Cardinal Barberini. He was an easy man to like, being a cheerful little butterball most of the time. She'd been to a few of his salons, seen the kind of company he liked to keep, gotten more than a little giddy on the kind of art he collected, and marked him down as Good People. Politically, he was humane, forward-thinking, liberal and-leaving aside some unthinking assumptions that went with being a nobleman-quite decent. Not the brightest light in the harbor, maybe, but you couldn't have everything.
"Not right now, Melissa," she admitted. "I think maybe we should get something to eat. I'll take suggestions over dinner, have a talk with Cardinal Antonio, hear Ruy's report and then see how it looks." Ruy had come in from the stable yard while she was speaking, still looking travel-stained and a little weary around the edges. "Hi, Ruy. Is the horse okay?"
Ruy rocked a hand in a gesture he'd picked up from the up-timers. "Two or three days of rest, I think. A noble beast, to be sure, to bear the strain I asked of him without complaint. The Marines are coddling him yet, assuring him all will be well. I fear I may have gone down in their estimation for straining the poor animal so." His mouth quirked a little in a tired smile. Sharon found Ruy looking tired and vulnerable rather appealing and realized that they hadn't had a proper wedding night quite yet.
Down, girl.
"I think you need a little coddling yourself, Ruy," she said. "Get yourself cleaned up and I'll order dinner. You can tell me what's going on in Rome while we eat."
Dinner was, as with all rural Italian food, what a good Italian restaurant was a pale imitation of. What was more, it was fresh and there was plenty of it. Ruy, who plainly hadn't troubled to stop and eat while riding around Rome, got through enough for about four and washed it down with plenty of wine. He still managed to keep up a constant stream of narrative. The news from the Committee saddened Sharon, although if Ruy was right and Frank followed the advice he'd been given there was a good chance he'd come out of it alive. Adolf, for whom Sharon made a mental note to see that there was something left for him to eat, managed to get all of it down on paper.
The news wasn't good. Barberini, who was taking his meal in t
he room they'd found for him, had seen one other cardinal summarily executed. Ruy had chatted with several soldiers and learned that they had been force-marching all through the night across country and, after a short rest to give the main body time to catch up, had gone into the city with a whole list of targets, chief among which had been the homes or lodgings of several dozen senior churchmen. Quevedo had been busy throughout the time he had vanished from home, as well. The fortifications at Ostia had more or less been sold to the incoming fleet at Naples, and the lighter pieces of artillery kept there would likely have arrived in Rome by now.
There was heavy fighting around the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo, but Ruy had not gone close. If there was anyone who might recognize him among the invading army, that was where they would be, and pretty much all the information he needed had been in the sounds of gunfire and the screams of the wounded from that quarter.
What it added up to was another question. The obvious answer was that there would shortly be a new pope, one who was probably sympathetic to Spain and certainly hostile to the USE. The official papal neutrality on the current wars would come to an end. For the USE, a nation with a significant Catholic presence, that was likely going to be a problem. Not all, or even many, of the Catholic clergy in the USE would be beating Spain's drum as a result. Spain having invaded Rome in order to install a new pope would result in a lot of consciences feeling a lot freer than they might otherwise.
But some would. And that would be a problem, in a nation with freedom of religion. A big problem. Not least because there was a sizeable chunk of the Protestant confession that already regarded the Catholic population as a fifth column. Of course, the fact that the USE's cardinal, thankfully not in Rome right now, was Larry Mazzare, would mitigate that to some extent. Only the loopier pamphleteers claimed that an up-timer from Chicago was a Habsburg agent. But putting Larry, one of Sharon's closer friends after all they'd been through in Venice, in that position by not acting right now was definitely not something Sharon was prepared to do.
