by Eric Flint
"—like to offer you a job."
Mazzare sat up abruptly. "I've, ah, already got one." He gestured vaguely at the bulk of St. Mary's over the fence of the rectory garden. He was uncomfortably aware of having missed something important. Beer at lunchtime probably wasn't a good idea, however nice a day it was, and whatever down-time custom might have to say on the matter.
"Yes, but this one's important, and for the government," Mike replied. "And I don't think we've got a better man for the job available, frankly. I want you to be an ambassador."
"I can't!" Mazzare protested, almost as a reflex. "Anyway, parish priest's a very important job by itself." So's ambassador, a treacherous little part of him said. He grabbed for the first lifeline to hand. "Anyway, I can't. Separation of Church and State."
"Ah, not so," said Nasi. "We rather ignore your status as an ordained minister—"
"Priest!" Mazzare barked, wincing as soon he did so. Just because he was suddenly panicking, there was no reason to be rude.
"Priest, I thank you for the correction," Nasi continued smoothly, "but we employ you in a secular capacity, if you follow me?"
Mazzare spotted the flaw immediately. "My parish, Don Francisco. This is my first responsibility, the cure of souls or to see it discharged. If you found a curate for me, another curate rather, while I'm away, that's the state funding the church right there."
"Again, and with the greatest of respect, not so, Father." Don Nasi gave every impression of already having reached this point in the argument and having passed it some time ago. "Your stipend as an ambassador will be suitably generous to compensate you for the expenses of the post. Insofar as you choose to disburse some of it to a curate, that is done by you in your private management of what is, in law, your own household. Not a matter for the State at all."
Mazzare detected the authentic whiff of lawyering. A sort of brimstone reek. He fumed to himself, keeping his face straight the while.
For all of Nasi's smooth legalese, there was still a real problem involved. Since the Reformation, southern Thuringia's Catholic Church had ceased to exist—there were no archdeaconries, no dioceses, no Catholic ecclesiastical administration of any kind. The impact of the Thirty Years' War, especially since Gustav Adolf's decisive victory at Breitenfeld two years earlier, had spread the disorganization into the parts of Franconia that made up the remainder of the territory that Grantville was managing for the Swedish king. The bishops of Wuerzburg and Bamberg were in exile at the Habsburg court, as was the prince-abbot of Fulda. The archbishop of Mainz had fled in the other direction, to Cologne, also outside of the CPE, which removed that link in the religious chain of command.
The normal clear hierarchies simply didn't exist any longer in Thuringia and Franconia. For all practical purposes, there was nobody between Father Larry Mazzare and . . . well, the pope himself. Although Mazzare always insisted that he was simply a parish priest, in fact he'd increasingly been playing the informal role of "the bishop of Thuringia and Franconia."
That was part of the reason, of course, that the Jesuits were so eager to come to Thuringia and set up shop. Protestants in the area tended to view their activities as part of a fiendish Jesuitical plot. But Mazzare knew that most of the explanation was simply that the Jesuits were delighted not to face the usual hassles with a diocesan bishop.
So. It would have to be a curate hired by Mazzare himself while he was off—he stamped down hard on that thought. Granted, it was flattering that they thought he was up to . . .
No. Blast it, I'm just a parish priest!
"I can't," he said, trying to be as firm about it as he could. Listening to himself, he thought he was just doing a good job of sounding obdurate.
"Sure you can," replied Mike, relaxed. "In fact, you're perfect for the job."
"I'm not related to you," Mazzare retorted. "That was why you had to send Rita and Rebecca, wasn't it? Put your own good name on the line, and all that?"
"Priests do the same job, you know. Look at what Father Joseph does for Richelieu, or the emperor's confessor, what's his name—"
"I'm not your confessor. You're not even Catholic, Mike." Mazzare had an inkling of where this particular line was going, and didn't much like it.
"I'm not really much of anything, religion-wise," Mike said, raising his hands. Rough hands, Mazzare noted. No strangers to hard work. Hard, unsentimental work. "It's something I rather tend to gloss over, of course, when it comes up. Especially these days, when everyone and his dog in Europe wants to know."
"So you're sending me somewhere Catholic, then? Is that how it is, Mike?" Mazzare realized he sounded peevish, which only made him more peevish. "You want to dissemble yourself as a Catholic?"
Mike never even blinked. "I swear, Father, that thought hadn't occurred to me."
He looked as sincere as Shirley Temple. Mazzare didn't believe it for an instant. Whatever else he was, Mike Stearns was the slickest politician Mazzare knew.
"It had occured to me," said Francisco Nasi, suddenly blunt and pugnacious in his manner; from the courtier to the bazaar-haggler in barely a heartbeat. "Father Mazzare, I will not try to pour sugar on this. A mission to Venice, which is indeed Catholic, is vital to our interests—and possibly even our survival. Your presence as leader of that mission represents the best hope we may have of the success of that mission. And, yes, the fact that you are a Catholic priest is part of what fits you so well for the task. For all that nearly everything in Venice turns on money and trade, Father, they need to see a face of Grantville they can trust. Even had we all our pool of potential ambassadors present in Grantville to choose from, most are women, or Jewish."
"Or Jewish women," Mike added, with a brief flash of a grin.
"Just so," said Nasi. "You, Father, are a Catholic priest and, however indirectly"—he gestured at the notes, now weighted down with a brick on the chair where they had been put out of the way—"you have the ear of the pope. Added to this, you are an up-timer and, if you will permit me the compliment, renowned as a man of conscience and integrity among the diplomats of Europe."
"Come again? That last part?" Mazzare shook his head. "Hardly anyone outside this town knows me at all, let alone well enough to give me a character reference."
There was genuine warmth and humor in Nasi's laugh, for all its quietness and brevity. "No, Father Mazzare, many have heard of your reputation. For one thing, you count among your acquaintances one of the rising stars of modern diplomacy, Monsignor Mazarini, and he is, when not keeping secrets, a terrible gossip. Well, not a 'gossip' exactly—nothing that man says is uncalculated. For another thing, surely you cannot think you have escaped the notice of the spies that infest this town?"
"Place is thick with 'em," Mike added. Though he didn't seem terribly aggrieved at the thought.
"Oh, quite," said Nasi, smiling widely. "It is all I can do not to have a guidebook printed so as to be sure that they get everything. Most helpful, in the matter of sending clear messages to our adversaries."
Mazzare gave a little shudder at the kind of mind that would welcome and take advantage of pervasive espionage. For all his affable urbanity, Don Francisco was a deeply devious man. He was, after all, from the city that gave the world the term "Byzantine" in the first place.
"Why would they be interested in me?" he asked, almost afraid of the answer.
"They pay attention to all the churches in this town," Nasi answered. "Also attracting them was the fact that Monsignor Mazarini paid you close attention and in his own person carried your first message to Rome. A message, I might add, that it is widely known was read by either the pope or one of his closest advisers. Hardly the sort of thing that characterizes 'a simple parish priest.' "
Mike snorted. "Hardly. Come on, Larry, cut it out." He gave Mazzare a hard and level gaze. "You know perfectly well that you're in a special position in this world. And, by now, probably the most famous 'simple priest' since a guy named Martin Luther." He pointed a finger at the thick stack of
paper on the chair. "Do you really think the pope asks every 'simple parish priest' to send him a tome on theology?"
Mazzare didn't try to meet the gaze. Mike was right, and he knew it. He'd known it since the day he decided to ask Mazarini to take those first books to Rome.
For the first time, be began seriously considering the matter. Where would he do more good?
Hesitations came first. "I don't know anything about Venice, especially not in this day and age. And what I know about diplomacy and negotiations you could . . ." Metaphor failed him. "It's not very much. Nothing, come right to it."
Nasi waved those objections aside. "Briefings. Training. Weeks of it. We do not propose to send you on the morrow. Then, when you reach Venice, there will be a staff from the Abrabanel and Nasi holdings in the city to advise you and to handle the details of negotiations. Finally, Father Heinzerling here has some experience as a diplomatic aide."
"Gus?" Mazzare looked sharply at his curate. "Did you have a hand in this, this—?"
Not a muscle moved in Heinzerling's face. "Don Nasi inquired, and I informed him that there would be no difficulty in obtaining the services of a curate or two during any time we spent away. He did not say for how long, where, or on what particular business."
The trouble with Gus, Mazzare thought as he parsed that, was that it was desperately easy to assume that he was plain and straightforward all the time, rather than just most of it. The man could be damnably devious when he put his mind to it, and his loyalty to his parish priest would probably cause him to. The trouble was that his idea of Mazzare's best interests was decidedly seventeenth century. Heinzerling was bound and determined that Larry Mazzare would become—bare minimum—a bishop. In this day and age, that almost required political prominence.
Mazzare sighed. He didn't doubt that Gus' conversation with Francisco had gone considerably beyond the possibility of getting curates while they were away. Nasi seemed to be altogether too well prepared for this meeting for Mazzare's liking.
Nothing for it, then, but to bull ahead. "All right, Gus, who did you sound out for the job?"
"Father Kircher." Again, not a muscle in Heinzerling's face betrayed him. "He is willing, and kind enough to find his own assistant priest if asked to undertake the parochial work here at St. Mary's in addition to his duties at the school."
Mazzare tried not to laugh at his own defeat. Kircher, no less!
Athanasius Kircher, SJ. Scientist, scholar, and all round genius, was willing to cover his parochial work? The Jesuits must be very keen to see Mazzare get on. Kircher had made the first serious attempt on Egyptian hieroglyphics, some of the first experiments in rocketry, was a known man in the fields of physics and chemistry. The only reason he hadn't been remembered as a great astronomer was because Galileo and Kepler were his contemporaries and were more dedicated to it than he was.
And this—this genuine polymath—was willing to add ten masses, confession, novena and benedictions to his working week? So that Father Lawrence Mazzare could junket to Venice?
"It's a done deal, isn't it?" he said to Mike.
"You can always say no."
"How? With everyone, including at least one leading light among the Jesuits, greasing the rails, all this effort to get me to agree, how can I refuse?" There, that put it in terms his conscience could handle.
Mike had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Look, Father, I'm sorry and all, but I wouldn't be pressing so hard if it wasn't so important."
A sudden wild whim overtook Mazzare. He turned to Jones, who had been watching the conversation in silence, his head following the action like a tennis spectator. "Simon, how about it?"
Jones swallowed, hard, before replying. "Larry, I can't decide for you, you know that. It sounds like there's nothing to get in your way, though, and I think you'd be good with a bit of training. Seriously."
"No, not that. I mean, do you want to come to Venice with me? Call it 'assistant ambassador,' or whatever the appropriate diplomatic title is. Show 'em we're not just Catholics here, and that religion is completely separate from politics?"
"He's starting already," Mike said.
Jones went a little pale. "Me? Why?"
"I'm going to need help."
"You should, Simon, if there's a place for you," said Mary Ellen, over her knitting but not actually looking up. "I can fill in for you while you're gone. And you can bring me back some of that nice Venetian glassware I've always wanted."
Jones, in that moment, looked like Mazzare felt.
Chapter 7
Frank Stone had every nerve, every fragment of concentration on the ball, the wide-open goal, Klaus off his goal-line and with the evening sun in his eyes—
—and so he never saw Aidan pounding in from his left to slide in for the ball in a spray of turf and distinctly seventeenth-century English.
Frank's cry of alarm was part scream, part roar, part a word that would have gotten him a real old-fashioned look from Magda. His new German stepmom had learned about some parts of modern English with surprising speed.
He kept his feet, just barely. The ball went out of play in a low, curving loop, just as the whistle blew for full time. "Damn," said Frank. And, with more feeling, "Damn!"
Away on the other side of the eighteen-yard box, Heinrich jogged to a halt. His expression said it all. Had Frank managed to cross the ball, Klaus' sloppy goalkeeping had left the net wide open for the winner to go in: as it was, the game had finished three-all. Freda, back at the other end of the pitch, wasn't much better than Klaus—she got focused on the main attack and a good cross or diagonal through ball could easily leave her off her line and the net wide open for a sneaky striker to score.
Part of the problem, Frank decided, as he heaved air back into his lungs, was that most of the sports-minded Germans seemed to have taken up baseball. That just plain wasn't fair. True, the up-timers had fixed on baseball as a strong reminder of home. On the other hand, they had been dropped back in time into the nation that had produced Beckenbauer and Klinsman and . . .
Frank decided wishing soccer was more popular wasn't going to get him to the showers any quicker. He staggered over to where Aidan was flat on his back in the penalty box, and leaned down to help him up.
Aidan was just about everything Frank wasn't. Frank was an up-time American, raised on a hippie commune dedicated to peace, egalitarianism and really, really good weed. Aidan Southworth was a seventeenth-century Catholic English mercenary, formerly of the Spanish army in Flanders. He'd been taken prisoner at the Wartburg the year before, when the Spanish troops had surrendered after the fortress was bombarded with napalm. Thereafter, he'd elected to stay in Grantville and was now back at school to "get his letters." Aidan had decided to try to make a military career in the armed forces of the CPE, in the Grantville regiments of which literacy was a requirement to advance beyond the rank of private soldier.
Aidan had said he knew no other trade and wanted to learn none for the time being. Soldiering was what he knew and he'd stick with it until he had a little put by. Privately, Frank wondered if Aidan knew what he was letting himself in for. From Aidan's accounts of drinking, fornicating and fighting his way across Europe since going to war alongside his father as a twelve-year-old drummer boy, he was likely to find life in the CPE's increasingly professional armed forces a mite boring.
"Th'art quick, Frank," said Aidan, as he got to his feet, "but not quick enough, eh?"
Aidan's English had been all but incomprehensible when he'd first arrived at school. He'd been from Lancashire, where apparently the English were mostly still Catholic, and had never bothered to learn the more comprehensible speech of the south of England, and simply got by in Spanish and Dutch instead. He'd picked up American English fairly quickly, though.
"Aidan, I'm quick enough not to get cropped by a dirty fouling English bastard like you."
Aidan laughed. "That'd be dirty, fouling, literate English bastard, thank ye kindly."
"Cool!" Frank
grinned. "You passed, then?"
Aidan grinned back. "That I did. I learned on't this day, and shall have my ticket for it directly."
"Great!" Frank realized his own feelings were a bit mixed on the subject. On the one hand, he'd rather looked forward to a spell in the army—he'd been just that bit too young for the fighting the year before. On the other hand, reforms had just been announced to the effect that the army was going all-volunteer and more professional. Frank Jackson's take on military punctilio—which was largely that it was horse manure that he couldn't be bothered with—was going out of the window. There were already uniforms and drill starting to appear around town, and the U.S. Marine Horse were looking decidedly smart lately.
Frank wasn't sure he wanted any part of that kind of thing. Even if he'd be allowed to join the military at all, for that matter. Frank served as his father's chief assistant and bottlewasher in the pharmaceutical end of his business—with his brothers, Ron and Gerry, being respectively the second and third assistants—and Frank knew that the powers-that-be considered him far more useful in that capacity than as another spear-carrier. He fell into the category of "critical industrial worker." The one time he'd raised the matter with Frank Jackson, the head of the army had quietly told him he'd be a lot happier if Frank kept working to save ten sick or wounded U.S. servicemen than signing up to maybe kill one French or Spanish soldier.
"Wouldst have a beer with me?" Aidan asked. "In celebration?"
"Oh, sure. We'll get Gerry as well, and Ron if he's not busy." That was something neither Frank nor his two younger brothers had any trouble with. Up-time and down-time attitudes to drinking had met somewhere in the middle, though probably a bit nearer the seventeenth-century side of the issue. The down-timers in Grantville had gotten used to water that was relatively safe to drink, and the up-timers had gotten used to beer that was worth drinking for its flavor.
"Uh, I'd better check in with home first, though." Frank and his brothers Gerry and Ron had come home the best part of paralytic one night, and their father had gotten the nearest he ever did to angry. The sons all thought Tom Stone's attitude was decidedly irrational. Not to mention unfair. He'd spent a lot of his twenties in alternative states of mind, after all. But now he regarded getting anything more than a little buzzed as a serious personal failing. Tom had pulled his usual sneaky parental trick of relying on his sons' senses of personal honor and responsibility, and Frank felt he had to check in now when he was going for a beer.
