by Eric Flint
"Aged and infirm maybe," Tom muttered, "but with the mind of a teenager."
There was movement above, and a shout of " Who did you say you were?"
"Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, and with me is Signor Thomas Simpson of the Embassy of the United States of Europe. We are here to rescue His Holiness." Ruy was now standing right in the shadows under the wall, practically invisible even from five feet away where Tom was standing. Method in his madness, Tom thought.
The madness part had been spotted by whoever was on top of the wall. Tom didn't quite catch all of the idiom, but he figured "madder than a hatful of assholes" was probably a fair translation.
"Precisely!" Ruy shouted back, "No one will be expecting it! May we come in and discuss the matter like gentlemen, or will you keep us out here all night like unwelcome peddlers?"
A shout came back that they should wait. A few nervous minutes later and a pair of thick ropes dropped over the wall.
"See?" Ruy said, grabbing a rope and bracing one boot against the wall to begin the climb. "Now for the difficult part."
"Getting out alive?" Tom said, giving the rope an experimental tug. It seemed to be securely attached. It better be, given what he weighed.
"No," Ruy said, between grunts of effort. "Persuading His Holiness to come with us."
It would pretty much figure that the pope would be as nuts as everyone else was acting tonight and want to stay in here. He's nuts? Tom Simpson, you're going in there with him. "Right," Tom said, and began to climb.
Chapter 41
Rome
"I cannot believe that just worked," Tom said, as he hauled himself over the parapet onto the lower battlement of the Bastion of St. John of the Castel Sant'Angelo. "Did someone forget to pay the reality bill?"
That got him a whole series of frowns. From Ruy, because he'd used an idiom that wouldn't mean squat for about three hun-well, maybe a hundred years, if electricity caught on here the way it had up-time. From about a dozen suspicious-looking Swiss Guards, a really suspicious-looking Swiss Guard officer and several incredibly suspicious-looking priests, because he'd said it in English, and they didn't appear to understand the language. All of the guards were armed; halberds, slung matchlock muskets and each with his own individual assortment of close-quarter mayhem. Plus grenades. He noticed that Ruy was very ostentatiously keeping his hands well clear of his weapons, and he did the same. "Hi!" he said, brightly and with a big smile. "Tom Simpson, pleased to meet you," he added, almost certain he'd mangled the Italian he'd switched to.
The Swiss Guard officer nodded. "Adolf Weisser, and it is an honor to meet you also, Signor Simpson. I understand you are one of the Americans who are said to be from the future? For the moment I take it on trust that you gentlemen are who you claim to be."
"I am, although these days I'm from the United States of Europe," he said. "Has Senor Sanchez already asked for an audience with the Holy Father?"
"I had not," Ruy said, "but this is indeed why we are here."
"I do not see that this is a good idea," Weisser said. "This man is a Spaniard, and while you claim to be one of the Americans, I have no way of knowing if what you say is true. An assassin, at this time, would spare those outside our walls a great deal of trouble."
"I understand your problem," Tom said. "Have you heard about the technical marvels we Americans are capable of?"
"I have," one of the priests said, not bothering to introduce himself.
Tom decided the man was probably an inquisitor, or whatever branch of the church it was that did the pope's spying for him. He'd boned up a little on the distinctive dress of the various religious orders within the Catholic Church and from the looks, this guy was a Jesuit. "If I could just show you one or two things, I think I can prove I'm not with the Spanish army. For what it's worth, Senor Sanchez here is married to Dottoressa Nichols, our ambassadora to the Holy See, and the prime minister of the United States, Michael Stearns, is my brother-in-law. Now," he dug in his pocket, "see here-"
They'd anticipated this problem during the brief-very brief-planning session they'd had before riding back to Rome. As well as getting a short message from Cardinal Barberini that would identify them to the pope-committed to memory, as it would work pretty well for anyone who captured the message-Tom had picked up a few items that they had had among the embassy party that were unquestionably up-time in origin. A solar-powered four-function calculator, a little flashlight whose batteries were currently charged courtesy of a great deal of sweat from one of the radio guys and the pedal generator that usually went to working the radio, and his own personal shotgun. Originally belonging to Dan Frost, it was a real hit with the Swiss Guards, who politely asked to see it fire. Tom had brought a whole satchelful of rounds for it, some of the first coming out of the new munitions works at Suhl producing percussion-cap rounds for the private market, and let off three cartridges of buckshot in the general direction of the Spanish army by way of demonstration.
Naturally, they wanted to know how it worked, and they took turns away from trying to see what the Spaniards were doing past the ring of bonfires to listen attentively while he explained the cartridges and the pump-action mechanism. The questions were intelligent, and they were all professionally impressed with such a convenient and useful weapon.
Tom decided he could get to like the Swiss Guards. He still kept in touch with the German ex-mercenaries in the regiment he'd helped organize just after the Ring of Fire, and the Swiss Guards were from a similar mold. A little less rough-and-ready, what with having to be on their best behavior at various church functions all the time, but basically the same. And after having dealt with a dozen different dialects of German, Tom found the Swiss dialect pretty easy to understand within a few minutes. While he was chatting with the Guards, Ruy had been convincing the Jesuit who had spoken that they were safe to be allowed into the papal presence, even agreeing that they would check their weapons at the door of the audience chamber. The Guards seemed fairly sorry to see the shotgun go, if nothing else.
Getting to see the pope turned out to be something of a trek. Once out of the bastion, the interior of the Castel Sant'Angelo's citadel was a lot more convoluted than it had been when Tom had played tourist there as a teenager, when it had been a museum. The building had had a nearly two thousand year history by then and Tom had found it confusing. Now, at sixteen hundred years and a working fortress and prison rather than a museum, it was even worse. There was the detritus of extensive renovation and building works shoved aside everywhere, and the place was full of scurrying priests, nuns, and assorted guys with guns and other weapons who were being soldiers for the day.
The route up through the central keep of the Castel Sant'Angelo, which had begun life as the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, was like traveling through a layered history of Roman architecture, starting with the remains of the original tomb at the bottom, a spiral corridor up through the monument, proceeding to the medieval prison level and thence up to the renaissance apartments built on the top of the fortress, an oblong block of papal luxury standing across the drum of classical fortification.
His Holiness was, of all places, on the roof. He was dressed in what Tom had to suppose had to be called "civilian" clothes, although they were a couple of decades out of fashion and rather expensive-looking. There was a small breastplate in evidence and a helmet on the table next to him. Clearly what the well-dressed pope wore to a battle. In fact, there seemed to be no cardinals nor bishops nor any other senior clergy in evidence. The only priests Tom could see were in the regular dress of ordinary priests or Jesuits and one or two other orders of priests that Tom didn't know well enough to tell apart.
That figured. If what Barberini had seen was typical, any senior priest in this place was on a hit-list of some kind. Either they'd heard the same story or were smart enough to figure it out, and were ready to take it on the lam incognito. And the fact that they were all ready to run pretty much summed up the way they were thinking insid
e the Castel Sant'Angelo.
One of the priests who had guided them up to the papal presence went over to converse with the aides surrounding the pope. Looking around, Tom could see that the rooftop had a commanding view of the defenses, although if the army outside got any artillery worth the name organized it was going to be a place they'd have to get the hell out of pretty quickly.
While they waited, he turned to Ruy, who was leaning over the parapet watching the gunners below heave and grunt to service their bombards. "You reckon they can hold here?" he asked, quietly.
"No," Ruy said, not taking his eyes from the sight of the men laboring over the bombards by torchlight below. "The first escalade will carry the wall, possibly in many places at once. With more men, more time to prepare, or the outer defenses intact, or any of a hundred other things not as they are, there might be hope for some days. As it is?" Ruy shrugged. "And they know it. But these are the Swiss Guard. It is a little more than a hundred years since they died, almost to the last man, guarding a pope. They will not surrender so long as His Holiness still stands here, his flag flying."
"I wonder if they've tried asking for terms."
"I know not. It would certainly seem like the prudent course, and there is no good reason why they should not leave with full military honors." Ruy sucked at his mustaches a moment. "No reason for a reasonable besieger to refuse such, of course. They would wish His Holiness given into their captivity first, which of course they cannot do, but if His Holiness surrendered himself-"
"I wonder if he offered?"
Ruy shrugged. "We will discover this momentarily," he said.
There was time for four more bombard shots to go off. From here, Tom could see that they were mounted on the battlements of the inner keep, three stories below. They were being worked by crews that consisted mostly of uniformed Swiss Guards, another sign that the fortress had been caught woefully unprepared. If there were professional gunners to work those cannon, they had been caught outside the castle. Tom wondered what they were achieving with all that effort, other than to piss the attackers off. There were regular cannon on the walls as well, guns fixed to fire out over the outer defenses, and maybe cover the outer part of the outer ward. Maybe they could be depressed to cover the inner ward, but it didn't look like it. They might be some help if the walls of the inner ward were about to fall, but again it didn't appear as though they'd depress to fire that close. Maybe there were guns lower down that would serve. Ruy didn't seem to think so, though. And, when it came down to it, with thousands of attackers in the assault there would be little the cannon would achieve anyway. They took minutes to load, and were hard to aim accurately. The medieval inner defenses of the Castel Sant'Angelo depended on having a great deal of manpower to make them effective. Tom had to admire the poor doomed bastards who were going to try anyway. And if the army outside is really alert for escapers, we'll end up joining 'em.
"His Holiness will see you now," said the priest who had guided them up.
Tom had been expecting an old guy-somehow he had been imagining someone who looked like John Paul II, the only pope he had ever known back up-time.
"Your Holiness does us much honor," Ruy said, and knelt. Tom wasn't sure of protocol for a non-Catholic visiting a pope, so he followed what Ruy was doing.
"A rescue party of two?" the pope asked, when they had regained their feet. "I have heard much of the marvelous machines possessed by the Americans. Can it be that some such contrivance is to be employed? An airplane, perhaps?" There seemed to be genuine yearning in his voice at that last.
"Your Holiness," Ruy said, "no great wonders, simply myself and some few brave companions. We bring an offer of the assistance of the United States of Europe, and asylum in that nation if Your Holiness so desires."
"Alas, I cannot abandon-"
"Your Holiness," Tom said, "that's so much crap. It's you they want to kill."
The pope's old-fashioned look in reply had a good three hundred years' head start on any such look Tom had ever had before. "Did they desire only that, Signor Simpson, they would have accepted my offer to give myself into their hands. As it is, all offers of parley have been rejected."
"That figures," Tom said. "They can't just shoot you after taking you prisoner; that makes you a martyr. Have you heard what's happening to cardinals who support you?"
The pope inclined his head and cocked an eyebrow in silent inquiry.
"They are being assassinated," Ruy said. "We have word of nearly a dozen dead so far, from the father-general, and your own nephew saw Cardinal Bischi done to death in the street only this morning. It is the father-general's estimation that any cardinal who might not cooperate with Borja in the next conclave is being killed, if there is any chance he might be in Rome in time for the conclave. He has no conclusive information in relation to the cardinals elsewhere in Italy, but-" Ruy's silence, and small, discarding gesture with his left hand, was as suggestive as a whole litany of dead priests.
"We suspected…" the pope said. His face had gone from drawn and tired and harassed-looking to masklike. Almost as if the undertakers had been at work. Serene, even.
"Now the Holy Father knows." Ruy's tone was flat. "I have a message from Cardinal Antonio Barberini the Younger by way of authentication, if Your Holiness' advisers are in any doubt."
Tom caught the parsing. One look at the face of His Holiness Urban VIII would reassure anyone that he doubted not a single word, and would have believed if it had come from Satan himself.
Some of the papal aides began to get it. "He means to make himself pope," one of them murmured, and there were several gasps and not a few angry mutters.
Urban was shaking his head slowly. "Then I must ask myself whether, in these most difficult of times, Holy Mother Church can survive an antipope." He turned on its aides. " Can it? Advise me."
A lot of blank looks was the reply. A lot of blank, worried looks.
"Your Holiness," Tom said, "if I understood Father-General Vitelleschi correctly, there is going to be an antipope come what may. I don't know the law of the church, but assassinating your predecessor, even if it's covered up as confusion of the battle, has to make an election invalid, doesn't it?"
"Debatable, my son," the pope said. "There is precedent." His mouth twisted into a wry grin. "Not all of what the Protestants say about previous holders of my office is entirely slanderous."
"Your Holiness, would you have the likes of Borja as the true pope?" Ruy asked, and there was venom in his voice as he said the name. That figured. Ruy had seen more of what Borja had ordered done in Rome today than anyone else here, if Tom's guess was right. "If he holds the throne of Saint Peter, he can do so only as antipope while you yet live."
For long moments, no one spoke over the sound of the cannon roaring and the hubbub of the defenders about their work. "I must think about this," the pope said, at length. "And I must pray for guidance. There remain yet some hours-"
There came a distant roar, as of hundreds, thousands of throats yelling defiance. All along the parapet, heads turned, men leaned over and peered into the darkness. Tom looked himself, as did everyone in the party around the POPE.
Beyond the fires that the besiegers had lit in the outer ward, the outer defenses were visible as vague firelit blurs. Only now they seemed to heave and writhe and move, and gleam here and there as the firelight caught on helmets, breastplates, and weapons.
"They begin the escalade early," Ruy said. "Foolish. Many more will die than might have in a dawn attack. Your Holiness, if you will go, you must go now."
Outside, in the firelight, the advancing columns were plainly visible, lit by the fires they themselves had set. From within the advancing columns-merging into a crowd as they neared the walls-little jets of flame marked where musketeers were optimistically shooting at the walls. From the walls themselves, jets of flame in answer as Guards emptied their pieces at the oncoming horde. It wasn't enough. It would never have been enough. Tom could already see ladders beg
inning to rise.
That sparked a thought, and he dashed over to the far side to check the riverside wall. Nothing so far, and he could see the Guards on that wall running to either end to hold the bastions. "Ruy," he called out, "we can get out through the gate in the river wall if we go now. I don't see an assault coming over the bridge."
Ruy had been urgently addressing the pope, then appealing to the bodyguard who were with him even here. Now he headed for the stairs down, surrounded by Swiss Guards and holding the pope's arm. He managed to make it look like a gesture of support for an elderly gentleman-only a few years older than he himself was, but in attitude the gap was decades wide-but in truth it was the nearest he could get to frogmarching the pope.
Tom carefully kept his face straight as he joined them. "His Holiness tried to order the Guard to surrender while we escape," Ruy said. "Their commander has refused the order. They will fight to the last to cover our flight."
The pope began to say something.
"No, Holy Father," Ruy said, cutting him off, "do not waste this. These men serve the Church in their way, serve her in yours that they do not do so in vain."
The laughing adventurer, making light of every difficulty, was gone of a sudden, Tom noticed. Ruy's face had set hard into the mask of a conquistador, intent on deadly purpose and grim slaughter to all who stood in his way. A far cry from the joker who'd simply waltzed in to a fortress under siege simply by asking nicely.
Oh shit, Tom thought, if Ruy's getting serious, we are in deep, deep shit.
Chapter 42
Rome
Frank looked at the gun on the shelf under the bar in front of him. He'd been halfway to giving the thing to the guys upstairs for the last hour. He'd kept it in case he needed it, but made sure it wasn't actually in his hand in case the assault started. He wanted to be down and in a posture of abject surrender immediately and with no possibility of being mistaken for a threat by even the most nervous musketeer. Which meant that it was pretty silly to have it here where it was guaranteed to be no use whatsoever. And it wasn't like he was in any shape to fight either. What with splinters in various bits of him, cuts and bruises and the pain from his hand, he really didn't feel like fighting at all.
