1634- the Galileo Affair

by Eric Flint

  He swiveled his head and gave his daughter an intense scrutiny. "Intense," as in Marcoli-intense.

  Then, seemingly satisfied, Marcoli looked back at Frank. "I give my permission. I will trust you not to take advantage of the situation until you can find the time and place for a wedding. I would not see my daughter dishonored."

  "My word on it, sir."

  Massimo had awakened, apparently, somewhere in the middle of all this. Frank heard him issue a derisive snort.

  "You are mad, cousin. Look at them! As well command water not to run downhill."

  Marcoli glared at his cousin. Massimo was now levering himself upright on his bed. "Still," he said, "I agree with the decision itself. We must be decisive at all times—here above all others. Better to risk—"

  Massimo gave Marcoli a glare of his own. "—something which has been known to happen in this family—my own sister! Giovanna's mother! two days before the wedding! don't try to pretend!—"

  Antonio Marcoli flushed and looked away. His eyes carefully avoided his daughter's.

  "—without any noticeable catastrophe, I would point out." Massimo cleared his throat. "Better that than to fail in saving our great Italian savant. The young man here—fine young man, yes, I fully agree—will do far better if he can concentrate on the task without worrying about what might have happened to his betrothed."

  Massimo was now sitting fully upright and, concussion or no concussion, was gesticulating with his usual intellectual's enthusiasm. "Besides—I am the theoretician here, don't forget—I suspect we need to modify our program on this matter in any event."

  He came to an abrupt halt, eyeing Frank and then Giovanna. "After these two impressionable youngsters have departed, however."

  "Leaving right now," Frank announced. He extended his hand. "Giovanna?"

  She skipped to her feet. "Coming!"

  * * *

  "You're sure?" Tom Stone demanded. "I mean, like, positive? They didn't just, you know, maybe go off on a long picnic or something?"

  Lennox was shaking his head before Tom had finished the sentence.

  "Goan," said Lennox, in a tone lugubrious even for him. "I found yon papist drunkard bemoanin't the lack ae 'em."

  Sharon felt a chill run down her spine. This was too much. Buckley dead, Ruy fighting for his life, and now Lennox had brought Heinzerling in to report that all three of the Stone boys had definitely vanished. And, more to the point, that they had discovered several people who'd seen them leaving the city in the company of the Marcolis.

  That had been the last, lingering hope—that, maybe, the bizarre "evidence" of a plot against the pope's life which they'd found in the Marcoli house had been entirely faked by Ducos' agents.

  Sharon didn't have any doubt at all that the so-called evidence about a plot to kill the pope was fraudulent. No matter how scrambled his brains might be by hormones, she knew Frank Stone well enough to know that he'd never have agreed to something like that. But the other business . . . about rescuing Galileo . . .

  It was all she could do not to groan out loud. When she'd passed on the information to Ruy just an hour ago, he'd immediately confirmed her own private assessment.

  "Oh, yes," the Catalan had said confidently. "It all makes sense, Sharon. The business about assassinating the pope is nonsense, of course. But a rescue of Galileo? That would be exactly the sort of idiot scheme that a man like Marcoli would develop—and which would seem attractive enough to naive boys. Very romantic. It also explains Ducos' involvement—as well as his murder of Buckley. He would plant evidence trying to implicate them in a much worse design, in order to embarrass your embassy still further, increase the Venetians' ties to the French, and drive a wedge between Paris and the Vatican. But, then, he had to murder Buckley to keep Buckley—the one man everyone would believe, in this matter—from being able to deny it."

  Lennox had had the first report from one of his sergeants, the Catholic one named Southworth, that there had definitely been something afoot in Venice among the Committee crowd. The urchin Benito was not the only one, apparently, before whom the Marcolis had carelessly prattled. Lennox had gone looking for Heinzerling then, to ask him if there was anything he was mindful of. When he found Heinzerling, he had practically taken the Jesuit by the scruff of the neck to make his report.

  "Gus?" Stoner asked.

  "Ja," Heinzerling said, his voice croakier even than usual. "It is that we had drinks—Ron Stone and Fabrizio Marcoli and myself—in the Casino dei Tre Radi, several days ago, and there were more drinks at another Casino whose name I forget. It is Carnivale, ja?"

  Stoner nodded. "Go on."

  "There was discussion of the Galileo book, which has been recalled recently by the Inquisition." Heinzerling stopped and rubbed his forehead. "It is there that I began to debate with Monsignor—I cannot remember his name—but he is now the state theologian at Venice."

  "He was at the casino, consorting with Committee members?" Sharon was a bit intrigued. The monsignor in question was a notorious firebrand who had spoken out for Galileo. The thought of him squaring off with Heinzerling's drunken eloquence was—entertaining, she realized, but not relevant. And the issue of what a senior theologian was doing in a casino knocking down drinks with the likes of Ron Stone and Fabrizio Marcoli could also abide. "Never mind that," she said before Heinzerling could respond, "when did you realize the boys were missing?"

  Heinzerling bit his lower lip and sighed deeply. The glum expression made his muttonchop whiskers bristle, reinforcing the impression he gave of being a prize boar in a clerical outfit. "Well. Not until today, for a certainty—but I should have seen it coming then. The problem is that I was preoccupied. The monsignor and I came to words over the proposition of whether summa fideei should be expressed through—"

  Sharon held up a hand. Gus' capability for theological excursion was vast, creative and best stopped before it started if there was any urgent secular business at hand. "What should you 'have seen coming'?"

  "Galileo." Gus's tone managed to grow a notch gloomier. He looked to Sharon like he was on the verge of tears. "They would rescue him, I am now sure of it."

  Stoner's voice was soft, although he sounded like he was on the verge of shouting. "Rescue," he said. "Rescue." And then a long pause. "The Inquisition have got him, then?"

  Heinzerling gave a little groan, by way of running up to coherent speech. "The Inquisition have had him since last year," he said. "He was ordered not to travel or to print further copies of his latest book, which is about the motion of the Earth. The news is that he is recovered the illness by which the Inquisition excused him travel to Rome, and is now going there under guard. Some stories say he is in irons. I do not believe that myself but—"

  He was interrupted by the door banging open. "Where are they gone?" shouted Magda as she swept in. She was flushed and looked—dangerous. She was a young woman, slender and usually dignified, grave even, in her manner. Spitting fury was not a state Sharon had ever seen her in. Even Magda's anger at the boor Falier had been moderate in comparison.

  There was this to be said for Hanni's tendency to haul off and belt her husband upside the head—she could cool off fairly quickly when she had vented her rage and never quite seemed to be unhappy for long. Sharon began to wish one or another of the Stones would cut loose properly at Gus—

  And Magda did. She paused hardly a moment before letting rip. Fully five minutes of sustained invective in two languages—no, three, it sounded like there had been some Latin in there.

  "And you!" she said, rounding on Lennox. "You will send men! All your men if you have to! You will get them back!"

  Lennox joined Heinzerling in the group cringe that looked set to take in every man in the room. "Aye. I'll do that, right enough. I'll take yon papist, wit' y'r permission?"

  It was unclear exactly who was being asked for permission. Sharon glanced at Stoner. He seemed in too much of daze to think clearly.

  Sharon decided her temporary ambass
ador status was still operating. "Yes, certainly. Will you leave some of the guard?"

  "Aye. Lieutenant Taggart will hae command of't. Young Trumble I'll take wit me—'e can be the second, for his education. No tellin' what mischief the lad would get into if left behind. Sergeant Southworth and four lads will come wi' me too. Sergeant Dalziel will have the running of the guard here, since he's the senior man."

  "Why Southworth?" Sharon asked. The young English sergeant seemed to be something of an outsider among the mostly Scots troops, an infantryman who had joined the Marines and been assigned to the wholly anomalous Marine Cavalry Troop.

  "He's a friend o' Frank Stone, to start wit'. 'At may coom in handy. Beyond that, Aidan's a guid lad, right enough, f'r a sassenach, an' wi' the lads short-handed I want an old hand here and Dalziel's that. Besides, if yon drunkard"—he nodded toward Heinzerling—"takes to his cups, Southworth has the heathen talk o' these parts better than any other man w'hae."

  Sharon nodded. For all Lennox talked a bigoted line, he was actually a lot less prejudiced than most men she knew.

  Lennox snapped a salute. "Richt. C'mon Father Heinzerling, ye sot of a Jesuit. Ye're to come and lead us tae Rome or wherever."

  "Wait a minute," Sharon said. She had a sudden nightmare vision of Lennox and Heinzerling blundering about northern Italy with no real clue where they were going. "Start by going to Maestro Luzzatto. He won't be any use himself, but he can put you in touch with Giuseppe Cavriani. Tell Cavriani that I—Magda and I, rather—insist that he serve you as a guide."

  Stoner stared at her. "Why would he agree to do that? He's got a business to run."

  Madga snorted. Sharon just grinned. "Stoner, you really need to pay more attention to all those papers you sign. You are Cavriani's business, these days. Well, in the real world, me and Madga are. It's just disguised by this idiot business—and where's Gloria Steinem when you really want her?—of not accepting women as signatories on commercial deals. The point is, you are now one of the richest men in Italy."

  "I am?"

  "Yup. And she and I"—Sharon pointed a finger at Magda—"are two of the richest women. She because she's your wife, and me because I don't do anything in business without getting a cut. My father's a bit oblivious to these things, but my momma didn't raise no fools."

  Stoner looked back and forth between them. "You are?"

  "Are what? Rich, or a fool? Yes to the first, no to the second. But to get back to the point, Crazy Giuseppe is by now easily the most successful Cavriani on record. The one thing he will not want to do is tick off his meal ticket. If we tell him to go, he'll go. Knowing Giuseppe, he'll even go cheerfully. They don't call him Crazy for nothing."

  "T'will lose us time," Lennox objected. "Be a full day afore we c'n nab yon swindler and muscle him along."

  Sharon managed not to sneer. Barely. "Big deal. You lose a day at the beginning—instead of losing two weeks getting lost. And what's a day? You're tracking the Marcolis, Captain. By all accounts, their progress across Italy will look like Buster Keaton building a sailboat."

  That got a round of laughs. Anyone who lived in Grantville for any length of time became a Buster Keaton aficionado. For some reason, Keaton's brand of silent slapstick comedy struck a chord with down-timers that Charlie Chaplin rarely did.

  "True enough," Lennox grunted. He gave Heinzerling a glance. "Let's be off, then."

  The two big men went out, grimly silent.

  "Uh," said Stoner, "shouldn't they be going with more men?"

  "I'm sure Captain Lennox knows best how to organize a chase," said Sharon.

  "He had better," said Magda. "He had better."

  For his sake, Sharon hoped he did.

  Part V: May, 1634

  Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

  Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

  Much the same smile? This grew; I gave

  commands;

  Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

  As if alive. Will't please you to rise? We'll meet

  The company below, then.

  Chapter 42

  It was, of course, too hot. Lennox had grown up near Dunbar and spent the last few years rattling around northern Germany. This, by all accounts a balmy spring day for Venice, was what he would think of as a scorching summer day. Venice was still just visible as he looked back, blued in the distance and hazy with the miles.

  The horses were sweating already, although part of that was the nervousness of crossing on the flotilla of boats they'd hired in a hurry to take them to the mainland. They'd brought two remounts for everyone except the commercial agent, Giuseppe Cavriani, who'd joined them at the last minute. Cavriani seemed to know what he was doing around a horse, though, even with Lennox not inclined—between the heat and the shudders of his stomach after so short a boat trip on the virtually flat lagoon—to be in the least charitable.

  And charitable he'd have to be to describe that fat papist Heinzerling as any kind of horseman. Oh, he was a fine enough fellow, for a damned Jesuit, but putting him on a horse was a cruelty to man and beast alike. Not just for the weight of the man—there were such things as big horses—but for the way he sat the poor creature. They could put a lad behind the horse with a shovel, pile the results in a sack across the saddle, and there'd be a definite improvement in the overall grace of the whole picture.

  For all that, the Jesuit could stay in the saddle and ride well enough to cover ground. They'd have to keep to roads, though. The thought of Heinzerling going neck-or-nothing across the Borders of Lennox's youth was almost as good as a Buster Keaton movie for laughs.

  Lennox kept his gaze carefully away from the hustle and shift of his fellows getting their gear triced up and themselves mounted, until an expectant silence told him that his sergeant was satisfied with the state of things. That was the hardest thing to do, something that came easy to the likes of Mister MacKay, who'd been born to his gentleman's station and was used to being done for. The Inner Sergeant kept telling Lennox to turn about and fuss over the detachment he'd brought. He resisted it, though, and turned to his men.

  Good turnout, he thought, looking over them. Heinzerling and Cavriani were beside him, discussing something about their route in an undertone. Both of them spoke in Italian, Cavriani's first language despite being born in Geneva, and one of the huge number Heinzerling spoke. Lennox didn't have a notion what they were on about, so he addressed his men.

  "Lads," he said, "We've tae catch the Doctor Stone's boys before they get in any mair trouble. So we've not to add to yon trouble our ain selves. Beggin' your presence, Sergeant Southworth, we're Protestants in a nation o' Catholics and soldiers o' the United States Marines abroad on duty. So we've to give no bad account o' ourselves." He dropped to a growl. "T'at means keep ye're thievin' honds tae yersels and ye're britches buttoned."

  Not that that much needed saying, he thought. He'd picked good lads against that eventuality. Ritson, a sassenach but a solid, older man. Chosen man, in the regiment that was but didn't have his letters well enough for the new armed forces, he'd do if Southworth ever didn't. MacNeish, a teuchter but a solid man for all that, and Faul and Milton, both Scots. Southworth was a new lad, on the young side for a sergeant. He been a corporal until recently—the new American word for a chosen man still sounded odd to Lennox—but he had his letters and seemed to want to prove himself as the only papist noncom in the largely Protestant Marine Cavalry.

  Good troopers—Marines, rather. Lennox still found himself occasionally using the old term. Well, to business. He turned to the priest and the facilitator, as Cavriani chose to call himself. "Have you gentlemen decided on our route?"

  Cavriani nodded. "Captain, if you can lay us a course due southwest?"

  "Aye, right enough I can." Lennox pulled from his pocket one of the new compasses that were being made in Grantville. They weren't much like the Silva ones that had been brought back—those had all gone with the engineers surveying for new roads, cana
ls and mines—but they were a good deal better than the kind of instrument Lennox was used to seeing officers getting lost with.

  "I've no good map, mind." The best one, which fit in his sabretache, had been traced from one that showed all of Italy on one small sheet. The major roads of the old Roman Empire were on it, and not much more. The other one, in a roll he'd tied across his saddle, had been drawn a few years before, and they had bought it in Venice just after they had arrived there. Lennox had realized, looking at it, that he had been badly spoiled by the kinds of maps Grantville had had; even the kind of maps they were making now in the USE. From the point of view of a cavalryman, down-time maps . . . sucked.

  "We will be able to manage, I think," said Cavriani. "Southwest from here, cross the Adige as soon as we may and continue until we reach the road south to Ferrara. We should be there by tonight. Perhaps thirty, forty miles?"

  "We'll be ahead of them?" Lennox liked the sound of a mere thirty or forty miles before sundown. With this small a party and with remounts, that should not be difficult.

  "Assuming that they proceed to Rome, and I have every belief that they are going there, yes. I also have information that Marcoli chartered boats to Padua." Cavriani was beginning to sound less like a commercial agent and more like a solder with every word, Lennox noticed. He supposed it was like riding a horse; you never really forgot how. He'd be interested to find out what the man's history had been. He hadn't always been a facilitator, of that Lennox was well-nigh certain.

  "Padua?" Lennox frowned. From memory that was off to the west of Venice, and Rome was almost due south.

  Cavriani nodded. "From Padua, the road south takes you through Ferrara, Bologna, Firenze, and thence on to Rome. Very simple, very easy, and the most direct route. Coming to Chioggia and going across country to Ferrara, I think we will cut the corner and arrive there first. They will have passed much of the first day traveling to Padua, stayed there the night, and set out for Ferrara on the morrow. Despite having started three days before us, they'll be moving much more slowly. My reports tell me that they are hauling a volume of baggage which borders on the insane. We should expect them either late tomorrow or early the next day."