by Eric Flint
"Your Eminence?"
Richelieu smiled in response, small and sad, suddenly wearing every one of his years. "Neither of our other selves was to know. Not Cardinal Richelieu, nor the Cardinal Mazarin who succeeded him so capably. While we made France anew in the image of a beautiful, strong, holy nation, the English simply spread out over the world and . . . stole it."
Mazarini nodded. The governance of the English might be in the hands of fools and outright villains more often than not, but there was no denying the inventive, indefatigable wanderlust they seemed to imbibe with their mothers' milk. Or the roving commission of violent larceny each Englishman seemed to grant himself as soon as he could walk. Other nations fought the Algerine or the Dunkerker to suppress piracy. For the English, it was to serve the competition a bad turn.
How typical of such, thought Mazarini, to steal the whole of a future, for there was much in what Richelieu had said that he had seen in the little of the future's history that Harry Lefferts had known. Harry had cheerfully admitted having paid precious little attention to his studies, but his every act and thought spoke of the domination of the Anglophone peoples of the world he had come from.
On the other hand, that hegemony had also created Grantville. On which, Mazarini reminded himself, he had felt called to wager so much.
"I see," was all he said.
Richelieu nodded. "I will not find extravagance of use, here and now, will I? I should keep my hat on, not so?"
Mazarini smiled. He remembered the theatrics Richelieu had displayed himself at Lyon, tearing off his hat and stamping on it. The cardinal as well as the monsignor could take pleasure in executing a coup de theatre.
"You wish time to think about this?"
And there it was, finally, laid out as clearly as possible. In another world, another future, another universe, Richelieu had groomed Mazarini—by then known as Jules Mazarin—to be his successor. And such a glorious career he had had, under that Francofied name! Reckoned, in the annals of France, to have been the equal of Richelieu himself.
There were precious few ministers of state in the history of the world whose names would be remembered by any but antiquarians centuries later. Richelieu was one of them. Mazarin, another.
"If you please, yes." With those words, Mazarini felt himself grow cool, more ordered.
"There is no urgency," said the cardinal. "For the time being you have obligations as nuncio extraordinary, and doubtless there are many with calls upon your time."
Mazarini nodded. "Monsignor Bischi's office has much work for me, augmenting the regular offices of the nunciature here. And I find my lodgings with le comte de Chavigny most congenial."
"Ah, yes. Young Leon is very much the coming man among my creatures, you know. A promising young fellow, very much in the image of his father. I understand he and young Monsieur Lefferts found much in common?"
Mazarini grinned. "I fear I may not mention much of what they found in the presence of a churchman of Your Eminence's famed piety."
Richelieu chuckled. "There are times when I do feel my age, all—what—forty-eight years of it? I remember when it was thought that I would follow His Majesty's colors rather than take the cloth—oh, the stories I would hear of military debauchery."
"I could tell you more than one such of Harry Lefferts. A man to watch, that." Mazarini smiled at the memories. Now that Harry was leaving, he could afford to do so. Granted, the disemboweling of Agnelli had been perhaps excessive. Then again, Agnelli had been a notorious bully and there had been few, even in Rome, who had mourned his passing. Had he been an outraged husband or father, sentiment would have been different. But Agnelli had simply been a rival for a lady's affections—and one whose own past conduct did not bear close examination.
"As are all the Americans." There was a trace of acerbity in the cardinal's voice. "I shall be meeting some of them in a few weeks, sent by way of an embassy, if my intendants report aright. Apparently they propose to send the wife of their president, Monsieur Stearns. I do look forward to—" Richelieu shook his head. "But you have met the young lady."
"She is charming, of that there is no doubt. Very intelligent and well read, also." Mazarini shrugged. "As a diplomat? Hard to say. She is certainly pleasant to talk with, as well as look upon."
He choked the rest off. Richelieu had almost, he realized, drawn him out into the betrayal of confidence—even by what might be inferred from what he said. None other of the notables he dealt with would cause him to speak so. It was, he felt, unfair to require a diplomat of his comparative youth to deal with beautiful women in the course of his work. What could he say, after, that could not be misconstrued?
Richelieu interrupted his indignant reverie. "While we are on the subject of diplomats, has Sable spoken with you? He has a few things he wishes to discuss about our deployments in northern Italy."
"Sable? Oh, you mean the cousin of—" Mazarin waved at the wall behind which Richelieu's dark-lanternist lurked. It made sense to refer to the senior Servien by his marquisate de Sable when there was room for confusion. Although the near-invisible man in the next room could hardly be confused with the elder Servien in the flesh. The instantly forgettable factotum was one creature. The caustic, bombastic military intendant Mazarini had met at Casale could scarcely be credited to have come from the same family. "Yes, he has sent me a note on the subject. There are doubtless some small issues along the Pinerolo border that we must discuss. Tiresome, but necessary."
"Now, to change the subject. Have you been presented to Her Majesty?" Richelieu returned from the window and perched on the edge of his desk.
"Formally? Naturally, when I arrived. I have not had the pleasure of closer acquaintance, as yet."
"If you will forgive an old prelate's idle curiosity," said Richelieu, stroking a little at his beard, "does the monsignor speak Spanish at all well?"
Mazarini inclined his head in mock modesty. "Your Eminence is perhaps aware that I spent some time in study in Madrid, and learned the language there?"
Richelieu held up a hand. "Of course, of course." He was waxing positively avuncular, and Mazarini felt a sudden twinge of unease. "Her Majesty is a native speaker, and takes great delight in being so addressed."
"Indeed?" Mazarini raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, indeed." Richelieu rose from his desk. "If the monsignor will do me the honor of accompanying me to the Louvre this evening, Her Majesty will be holding an informal levee, where I would be honored to effect a more personal introduction. Her Majesty will be pleased to make your acquaintance, I think. You have something about you of someone she once held very dear. Yes, very dear indeed."
* * *
As Richelieu's carriage bore them to the queen's levee, Mazarini had time to ponder his situation. He and Harry Lefferts had set out from Grantville almost half a year before, barely a week after the Americans had fought successfully no fewer than three prongs of attack that had threatened to eradicate them.
Harry had been an officer in the American army that had defeated many times their number at Eisenach, and the next duty he had been given was to accompany Mazarini back to Rome. Mazarini had talked with the President of the United States about Harry before leaving Grantville.
"Monsignor," Mike Stearns had said, weary and rambling, "I've had any number of folks give me lectures about how this place ought to be defended. The longest one was from the guy I'm sending with you. What he thinks isn't my position, frankly. I want to see the new United States prosper, and since King Gustavus is right here it's him I'm talking with. But what I want isn't Fortress America, like Harry thinks we should do. I think it'll be good for him to see why not, eh? And for the people who think there's a military solution to what the United States represents in this time and place, well, I think it'll be good for them to hear Harry talk about what we're capable of."
After that, Stearns' wife Rebecca, the Jewess, had taken over. She had had more to say, and in more detail, and had put the Grantville Constitution in
terms Mazarini was more familiar with—passages from Plato and Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli and Tacitus. It was pleasant to see that at least one of the members of the U.S. government had had a proper education.
It turned out that Harry was, like a lot of Grantville's natives, possessed of some Italian ancestry and knew a few words of the language. He was also nominally a Catholic, although Grantville's priest Father Larry Mazzare could not recall having seen him inside a church more than eight times in as many years. Midnight mass at Christmas—conspicuously filled with Christmas cheer—was about the limit of Harry's observance. And, come to that, his religion.
Mazarini didn't mind that so much. He had only lately even troubled to wear the dress that went with his being, technically at least, a clergyman. No more than a deacon with a couple of lucrative benefices to support him—and his expensive sisters and profligate father, he reflected—as he scrambled at the greasy pole of Europe's power politics.
A revolving greasy pole in a high wind, now that half of the old verities had vanished in the harsh glow of the Ring of Fire that had brought the up-time Americans. Mazarini, gambler, diplomat and showman that he was, had tried to slip a few cards off the bottom of the deck by opening a direct, unofficial channel with Grantville.
He had succeeded in that, certainly. In Grantville he had made friends, left one of his own behind as a contact there, been mightily impressed by the parish priest of the town and dined, with him, with the other pastors there who were all different kinds of Protestant. He had also seen Grantville's civilian population chew up and spit out more than a division of Croat horse, the most reckless and brutal light cavalry that Wallenstein had had under his command.
Mazarini had been impressed by the feat of arms. He had seen two wars at first hand, the first of them—the Valtelline War, to give it a bloodier name than it deserved—as a soldier himself. His captaincy in the papal regiment of the prince of Palestrina had largely been a garrison command, though; his main distinction was in being the only liaison officer sent to Gonsalvo de Cordoba who was not frightened or offended by the fiery Spaniard's rages. By the time of the real bloodletting of the Mantuan War he had been a papal diplomat.
He understood just enough to know how much nerve it took to stand and keep your head in the teeth of a cavalry assault. It had nothing to do with military training or nobility or the peculiar merits of any nation as a nursery of virtue. Just people who did what was needed to do right by the people beside them.
There were so many places in Europe where one found no one but the selfish and the self-glorifying, who wanted nothing better than to be—not even wolves, for wolves hunted in bands, but lone raptors—the better to eat the soft and weak they happened upon. Rare were the places where people felt themselves to be part of something greater and acted as such, individuals who felt the greater good in their bones so deeply that they would not even think to ask the questions that so troubled the philosophers of altruism. Grantville was such a place. Even Mazarini's cynical aide, Father Heinzerling, had taken to behaving more like a decent human being than a wild boar given the power of speech and walking upright.
Mazarini had come away impressed.
He had also come away with a mission. A mission, what was more, that might well see him humiliated by abjuration before the Inquisition, if the political winds did not blow right. Or worse, more imprisoned than not for the rest of his days, like that poor fool Campanella.
Father Mazzare, the parish priest of Grantville and a man who lived up to the vows of his ordination in a way that verged on sainthood by seventeenth-century standards, had asked Monsignor Mazarini, priest in name only, to carry books that showed three hundred years of the Church coming ever closer to curing the abuses that Luther nailed to that church door. And which showed the Church refining and developing its teaching and tradition and its understanding of Scripture to the point where wars became impossible to paint as wars of religion. If the catechism exhorted a man to reject nothing that was good or holy in the religion of others, where then for the call to burn heretics?
Either the light at the end of the tunnel of the Council of Trent or the blackest of heresies. The books had weighed little in the hands, but in the mind—oh, in the mind!
Mazarini was no theologian. For him, faith flowed naturally from all that was good in the world, was part of who he was and where he was from. But nevertheless he had had to examine himself closely as he picked his way through the unfamiliar doctrines by lamplight at inns on the way from Grantville to Rome. Had it not been for the cheerfully vicious earthiness of the young American with him—it was easy to think of him that way, despite there being only a few years between them—Mazarini felt sure his journey to Rome would have ended with him in the deepest of melancholy humors.
That journey had been easy enough. The year's campaigning had settled into the siege of Regensburg, so there were few enough soldiers about on the route he led Harry along. The difficulties of the trip had been those of finding decent inns and good horses. Harry had demonstrated himself a competent rider and, on the one occasion when bandits had accosted them in the Piedmont, an excellent shot. Other than that, no one had troubled with two respectable-looking and well-armed young men with no obvious wealth about their persons.
* * *
"We have arrived," announced Richelieu.
Mazarini looked up from his brown study. "Ah."
By the time he alit from the coach and followed Richelieu toward the palace entrance, Mazarini's good spirits were back. Yes, yes, it was all very difficult. Vexing to the soul, trying to the spirit, an endless palpitation of the heart.
It was also supremely exciting.
* * *
In person, in casual and intimate discourse, Mazarini found Anne of Austria quite a charming woman. The queen of France was now entering the eighteenth year of her marriage to King Louis XIII—a marriage that had taken place when she and her spouse had been merely fourteen years of age. By all accounts, the marriage was one of name only, and always had been.
Anne of Austria seemed to find Mazarini equally charming. Not surprising, really. In addition to his fluency in her native tongue, Mazarini was charming—as one would expect from a man who, despite being a year younger than the queen, was already a top diplomat in the service of the papacy. He was even—or so he had been told—fairly handsome.
So.
On his way back to his domicile after the levee, Mazarini had time to reflect on the full dimensions of Richelieu's offer. That the cardinal would wish to discreetly arrange an affair between a new protégé and Anne of Austria made perfect sense, of course—at least, a protégé intended for the highest honors. The marriage between Anne and Louis was childless and likely to remain so. In the absence of an heir, that meant the line of succession passed to the king's younger brother, the duc d'Orleans, better known simply as "Monsieur Gaston." And should Gaston ever ascend to the throne . . .
No one had any doubt at all that the first act of the new king would be to send Richelieu to the executioner. Monsieur Gaston was a thoroughly treacherous schemer who had proved willing to ally with anybody to advance his designs upon the throne. Rebellious nobles, foreign enemies, anybody. That he had so far failed—quite miserably—was due to Richelieu's opposition and the cardinal's far greater skill in the savage infighting of French politics.
So.
Chapter 2
"Bonsoir, Monsignor." The servant seemed nervous as he took Mazarini's coat.
Mazarini's fatigue-blurred mind was still alert, despite an evening of glitter and repartee that had tired him more than a week's riding. He nodded acknowledgement of the servant's greeting. "Is something wrong?"
"Monsignor?" The question was in an almost affronted tone.
Mazarini had not yet learned the names of all the servants at the maison Chavigny—come to that, he had not seen all of them yet—but they were generally a lively lot, less cowed than most. Something was definitely up with this one; his manner wen
t beyond the usual scraping of the servants that so annoyed Harry. "Is Monsieur le Comte at home?"
"Non, Monsignor. He is with Monsieur le Vicomte de Turenne."
That would be the younger Tour de l'Auvergne, the elder being largely out of Paris these days, while the younger basked in the sudden favor of the king and Richelieu.
"Monsieur Lefferts has passed the evening in your chambers," the servant finished.
Mazarini was not surprised. Harry was set to depart in the morning, and had decided to take an evening's rest. He needed it. Rome had had its high spots for Harry, but Paris, to any young man with dash and money and a hint of the exotic was a city that opened its . . . arms.
Mazarini smiled slightly at the thought of what he had all but left behind, middle-aged before his time. "I shall retire, then. Have something brought to me in my chambers. I shall take supper before my bed."
"Very good, Monsignor."
Mazarini walked up alone. Now that he thought about it, the house seemed entirely normal. Even with its owner out for the evening, the place was home to dozens of servants. Only in the very small hours was it free from the tick and rustle of people distantly going about life and work. Those sounds—for all that there seemed to be no one around—were still there, muted to their night-time level.
He paused at the door of the apartment that the comte had given to him and Harry for their residence while in the city. "Harry?" he called. The room—the first, a salon—was lit only by the dim glow of red embers. "Harry?" he called again, feeling slightly foolish.
He looked to either side. The corridor was well lit. Lamps, and a chandelier over the stairwell. That was not normal, the risk of fire usually caused all lamps to be doused by this hour. He suddenly realized that standing in the doorway—
Mazarini was on the floor before he heard the snap of a flintlock. A jet of burning powder roared out through the door.
