1635: The Cannon Law (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  "We need to find another way," Ruy said.

  "Reckon you're right," Tom said. "Let's get upstairs, go along the wall."

  Chapter 44

  Rome

  "News, Ferrigno!" Cardinal Borja barked as he stared out over the rooftops of Rome. The terrace atop the Palazzo Borghese afforded a fine view of the Vatican, the Castel Sant'Angelo and the district within the Leonine wall that was the focus of effort of the troops he had wheedled out of the viceroy of Naples.

  For hours the Castel Sant'Angelo had spat its defiance at the surrounding troops. The ring of bonfires illuminating its walls and the crash of the bombard shells it was firing lighted, by turns, the assorted vile and filthy little alleys around it. Borja had been assured by some military functionary or other-not one of the generals, he was sure, but some under-officer detailed to keep the prelate happy, in the mistaken belief that Borja would not notice the implied slight in fobbing him off with a second-rank myrmidon. Doubtless it was to do with their embarrassment at the fact that this simple assault on a fortress whose defenses had been out of date a hundred years ago was taking hours, that an operation that had been planned to be complete during a single day had now proceeded beyond sunset. The cardinal-infante had managed the reduction of an entire city in not much more time than this, scarcely two years before.

  Borja had grown weary of the excuses some hours before. The just execution of the Barberini was now long overdue and the final prize, the completion of God's holy work in righting the wrongs done Holy Mother Church was close, tantalizingly close. And so he had bid Ferrigno shut his weaselly little mouth and hold the reports this half hour past, while Borja watched the shells fly and prayed furiously for calm.

  Now, though, something seemed to be happening. Only a small part of the outer defenses of Castel Sant'Angelo was visible from this vantage, but there seemed to be movement there.

  "Well?" he barked again. What was keeping the man?

  "Your Eminence," Ferrigno said, coming to his side, "word reached us some moments ago that the ladders required for the escalade on the inner ward were prepared and the assault would proceed momentarily. The courier assured Colonel Don Pablo and myself that the first ladders would be reaching the walls only a few moments after he himself arrived here, and indeed-"

  "Enough!" Borja held up a hand. Ferrigno was a good enough secretary, if kept well-whipped by his master's tongue. But the man's besetting sin was a tendency to prattle when nervous. Raised to the priesthood from a family barely removed from the common sort of folk, the man had not had the proper composure of a gentleman under fire. Nor, he being from some middle order of persons, did he have the brute indifference to peril that marked the true lower orders. Thus, with the fire of great guns echoing over the tiled roofs of Rome, the man seemed in near danger of soiling himself.

  Christian charity bid Borja silently recognize that his own impatience had contributed nothing to helping the man's temerity. Still, it was unseemly. He sighed. "Fetch this Don Pablo"-it was a help, at least, to know the man's name; since Borja had not troubled to remember it past the initial instruction-"and bid him explain to me, as will undoubtedly be the case, why the Barberini will not be in our hands before dawn."

  "Yes, Your Eminence," Ferrigno said, his relief evident. Where Don Pablo might be was anybody's guess. Borja had made his boredom with the technicalities of the man's explanations-excuses, to give them their right name-entirely plain some hours before.

  Borja turned and looked again over the rooftops of Rome. To the east, the seven hills of Rome rose away from the river, their shapes lost amid the nighttime shadows and the shifting light from the explosions of shells and the fires burning round the city. The hills seemed to burn themselves, great rolling waves of fire like ocean swells of dark flame. Here and there, a house, some great palazzo or the town residence of some prelate, burned. There seemed to be no way of preventing it, unfortunately. The confiscation of the worldly goods of those heretics who had thrown in with the Barberini would have done much to defray the costs of this business. God's work it might be, but much of it was done by men who expected to be paid. A company of soldiers sent to ensure that some cardinal was arrested seemed to turn into ravening bandits the instant they were out of sight of responsible oversight. Quevedo was quite clear on the orders he was giving to these men, but deeply regretted, in his every report to his master, that the houses were being looted and the looters giving in to incendiary impulses.

  The demise of so many cardinals would doubtless become convenient later. Some would have had to be released from prison in order to see to it that the canon lawyers were satisfied. Sinceri had been quite clear on the forms that would have to be followed to assuage the narrow, pinched consciences of such men. Doubts would otherwise be raised, he had said, and although nothing overt would ever be said and nothing printed that named him specifically, there would be lingering doubt about what had taken place. So there would need to be forms observed to ensure that once Barberini was in custody, he could be kept there without any whispering.

  With no suggestion, of course, that whoever replaced him in the ensuing conclave was an antipope. Borja remained mindful of the old saying that he who went into conclave a pope would come out a cardinal, the folk wisdom that reminded all of the Holy Spirit's dispensation to punish presumption and the sin of pride.

  "Your Eminence?" Don Pablo's gravelly tones came from behind. It was quite clear why he had been visited with the duty of liaison to the cardinal. An ageing warhorse whose wind and vigor were no longer up to the vicissitudes of combat, he had been shuffled off to the roof of the Palazzo Borghese to be out of the way. Borja could not bring the rest of the man's name to mind, he being of some country-gentry, hare-catching little hidalgo family of scarcely any account whatsoever. The cardinal had never heard of them nor could he place who of consequence they might be related to.

  Still, Borja could not shake a vague feeling that the man was laughing at him.

  "Enlighten me, Don Pablo," Borja said, turning away from a last glance at the Castel Sant'Angelo. The Barberini's defiance was no longer being hurled by the bombard-shell full from its ramparts, or battlements, or whatever they were called. Bastions, possibly.

  "As Your Eminence wishes. I will beg forgiveness if, in describing what may be, beyond the discernment of my eyes, I err in some small detail-"

  "Fine, fine," Borja said, waving aside the excuse. "How soon is this assault likely to succeed?"

  "Your Eminence strikes for the very nub of the matter." Don Pablo's salt-and-pepper mustachios crinkled upward in an ingratiating smile. "The walls of the inner ward are some hundred paces around, perhaps a hundred and fifty if I am any judge of these matters. Seventy-five to a hundred, leaving out of account the river wall where an escalade is not practical. Along that wall, perhaps two thousand men can be brought to the point of decision. Against two hundred who will be defending the walls."

  "Ten to one odds, eh?" Borja said, hearing the first cheerful news in some hours. "Surely the slaughter will be brief?"

  "Alas, Your Eminence, would that it were so. There will be perhaps a dozen ladders, and at the top of each will be a single man. Against him will be ranged two, perhaps three Swiss Guards. Only the very skilled and lucky will achieve the wall, and they in turn must be still luckier to survive long enough atop the wall for his comrades to get over and assist him."

  "It will, however, be inevitable? Surely with so many-?" Borja was keen not to let Don Pablo-what was the rest of the man's name again?-make too many excuses and deflate the small moment of hope Borja had felt that the thing would be over soon.

  "Your Eminence, the prospects are good. For it is true that we require only one lucky man with the courage of a lion. The Swiss Guard surrounding His Holiness require to be fortunate at the top of every ladder long enough to break the spirit of the attackers."

  "How so? With such numbers-"

  "Your Eminence, while these men wait at the foot of the walls, the
y will be showered with bullets and grenades and even rocks thrown from above. Men will be wounded and die. Soldiers will bear much with the scent of victory in their nostrils, Your Eminence, but however willing their spirits, their flesh is weak. If they do not carry the walls quickly, Your Eminence, the defenders might break their spirit."

  "And how likely is this?" Borja asked, his earlier ill-humor returning in force.

  "Moderately, Your Eminence. Even with the conditions for a successful escalade being as favorable as they are at this time-"

  Don Pablo's shrug was very expressive. It expressed hope, great hope, all the hope that a Christian gentleman might bear in an imperfect world where stout hearts stood firm against the sin of despair, yet allowed for those imperfections and admitted that to express true confidence in anything was to admit the cankerous worm of the sin of pride.

  Borja sighed. "So it might be that a second attempt would be required?"

  "Indeed, Your Eminence. And it would be my recommendation, and a course of action that will naturally suggest itself to your commanders at the Castel Sant'Angelo, that the men be well-rested before a second attempt is made. Waiting for dark tomorrow would also be well advised, at the very least. An escalade by daylight would be far less certain of success, and it would be a counsel of perfection that an assault wait for the following dawn."

  "Why not dawn tomorrow?"

  "Your Eminence would not flog a horse past its endurance?" Don Pablo's tone was the very model of politeness, but Borja could detect just a hint of testiness. Not sufficient that he might reprimand the man without being unseemly.

  "Of course not," Borja said. He was no great horseman, but he could ride and owned several horses in addition to the mule he used on public occasions. A good horse was a valuable animal. In some circles, the suggestion that a man might abuse a horse was a fit subject for a duel-the title of caballero being taken very seriously by some.

  "It is a similar case with soldiers, Your Eminence." Don Pablo's tone remained equable and patient without ever quite straying over the line into patronization. "These men have marched hard, with little rest, from Ostia after a sea voyage itself a source of discomfort and little sleep for men not habituated to the sea. That they remain able to fight is testimony to how stout their hearts are, Your Eminence, but a prudent commander will not attempt to press them beyond endurance, for in that direction lies certain failure."

  "I see," Borja said. That there were limited benefits to flogging a brute beast once it was too tired to work was obvious to even the dullest wit. He sighed. "So we must pray that God grants a swift end to the performance of his will in Rome this night."

  "Indeed, Your Eminence." Don Pablo bowed and left the terrace.

  "Your Eminence?" It was Ferrigno again.

  "What now?" Borja asked. Surely it was too much to hope that this was news of the successful assault already?

  "The heretics of the Committee of Correspondence, Your Eminence. We have word from Father Gonzalez who is supervising the arrest."

  "There has been an arrest?" Borja said, not troubling to hide his disbelief that, for once, there was something going right.

  "After a fashion, Your Eminence," Ferrigno said, visibly cringing.

  All Borja had to do was raise one eyebrow to complete Ferrigno's collapse.

  "Your Eminence," he went on, talking quickly now, "there was a cannonade to force an entrance to the building, which the heretics had fortified against the possibility of their capture. The structure was an old one, Your Eminence, and there was a collapse."

  Borja could not see where the trouble was more than a minor annoyance. So the alchemist's whelp would not live to publicly repent of his sins. The loss of a heathen soul to Satan was a matter for the most profound grief, but a commonplace tragedy.

  "Send word," he said, "that the search for survivors should be diligent and thorough, but that I am satisfied that the nest of heresy has been destroyed. My compliments to Father Gonzalez and the soldiers assisting him, also."

  "Yes, Your Eminence." Ferrigno fled to do the cardinal's bidding.

  "Your Eminence?" The next voice Borja heard was one that caused him to delight and groan in dismay in equal measure. And one whose owner took a positive delight in Borja not seeing him enter. As though Borja cared a whit for how well the man did his work of skullduggery, provided results were forthcoming. A matter on which Borja was growing impatient this night.

  "Well, Quevedo?" he snapped, turning to see the man. Over his shoulder, the flare and flicker of the battle around the Castel Sant'Angelo was visible against the night sky. A pall of smoke hung over that part of the city and every flash of cannon and the constant flicker of arquebuses and muskets lit it like the visions of hell offered by second-rate country preachers.

  "Your Eminence will be pleased to hear that the final reports on the prelates Your Eminence wished to have prevented from working against Your Eminence are received. All are accounted for, albeit that two were overtaken on the road out of Rome. Your Eminence was most wise to disburse monies on the maintenance of horses for the soldiery to use on their arrival."

  "I was?" Borja realized that he might well have not paid complete attention to everything Quevedo had done on his behalf in the last few weeks. The man had spent a remarkable amount of money, that was certain. Doubtless he had foreseen the possibility of flight and-Borja pulled himself back to the matter at hand. No matter that Quevedo had planned well, it was the results that mattered. "How many are accounted living?" he asked.

  "Three, Your Eminence," Quevedo said, gravely. "Caetani is within the Castel Sant'Angelo, where as Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church he was required to be, and Vitelleschi seems to have been forewarned and escaped Rome before the arrival of the army."

  Borja chuckled. "Vitelleschi, eh? The spider not in his web when you went to catch him?"

  "Indeed not, Your Eminence. There are few who may reckon themselves any man's equal in such a business as this one, Your Eminence, but Vitelleschi is one such. And he is master of the Jesuits, to boot. I believe I may have adverted as much to Your Eminence?"

  Borja waved it aside. "Religious orders can be suppressed, given sufficient will on the part of the Holy See." And there would be sufficient will. "Who was the third prelate accounted living?"

  "The youngest Barberini, Your Eminence, Antonio. He seems to have been better prepared to flee than others. The Palazzo Barberini was, as I mentioned in earlier messages to Your Eminence, largely empty when Your Eminence's men entered it. The cardinal himself was apprehended in the course of his departure, but being by far the youngest man on the list, had the wherewithal to cut himself free of the men who attempted his capture. His guard died to a man covering his escape."

  Borja nodded once, slowly, and then shrugged. "It is of little import. The man is a butterfly, of minor consequence save insofar as he bears the Barberini name and wears the purple. He may serve yet as a scapegoat for his family's peculations these ten years past. I am more concerned that there have been no captures alive, Quevedo. I gave orders for capture, not assassination."

  "Indeed, Your Eminence, and I tender my most humble apologies. However, the constraints of time and hands to turn to the task have meant that in many cases those guarding the prelates in question have felt themselves able to make a show of defiance. In all cases, either the subject has died in the fighting or was killed to prevent his escape, a point on which Your Eminence was most forceful. There were to be no fugitives."

  Borja sighed, again. "So be it. It seems the Holy Spirit has sentenced each of these men to death, for in the wager of battle is the providence of the Almighty most clearly to be seen. Let us turn to a more happy chance. Is it confirmed that Barberini is within the Castel Sant'Angelo?"

  "It is, Your Eminence. The man I set to watch the Leonine wall is most reliable, and positively identified Barberini as he passed from the Vatican to his current redoubt."

  "Good, good. I will ask, Quevedo, that you go personally an
d see to it that there is no escape there, either. I would desire greatly that the man publicly answer for his crimes against the church, but not at the price of his being granted any period of liberty during which he may wreak further mischief."

  "I am Your Eminence's to command." Quevedo withdrew with a bow.

  Borja turned back to watch over the roofs of Rome, and tried to guess whether the confusion and tumult about the Castel Sant'Angelo meant he would see success before the dawn.

  Chapter 45

  Rome

  Tom rubbed at his eyes. The courtyard between the inner keep and the wall was sheltered from the wind and there were two hundred men in it and on the wall around it doing their level best to burn their own weight in black powder. A few bombards were still firing, lobbing shells out over the walls in an attempt to drive off the crowd of Spaniards at the walls. The assault had been going on for nearly twenty minutes, now, and everyone who could work a gun was doing so. The Swiss Guard knew that an attempt was being made to get the pope to safety, and a few of them had grinned savagely at Tom and Ruy as they cast about for a way to get out.

  They'd tried the riverside wall already. By the time they'd got up onto the upper level of the walls and gone along to find a place to rappel down, there was a spillover from the assaults on the north and south walls, and there was only a narrow gap that was not now covered by Spanish soldiers awaiting their turn at the ladders. For all the bravery of the Swiss Guards, there was no driving them off, now.

  The grenades had been exhausted in minutes. There were more in the armory, but with everything else that had had to be done to get the fortress into a condition fit for even the little defense they could manage, there had been too few hands available to fill many of them with powder. The men on the walls were reduced to tossing rocks and cannonballs over the walls in an attempt to put the attackers off, but it was unlikely to achieve much.

  Possibly, if the defensive works had actually been finished, the fortress might have held longer. Or at all. For now, there were small parties at the top of each ladder who had beaten off three concerted rushes at the wall, but the attackers were not retiring after each attempt. They were ranged at the bottom of the wall and any man who showed himself over the battlements received a hail of bullets for his trouble. There were already forty or fifty casualties, most of them dead. They wouldn't want for last rites, either. The place was full of priests. Tom had stayed with the pope by the river gate while Ruy went to discuss the escape further with the commander of the Swiss Guard. Hopefully, there would be some kind of diversion, but Tom couldn't imagine what.