- Chapter 27






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Chapter 27
Rome
Sharon looked at the clock again. Still only half-past nine. Ruy had risen early and gone for a walk around town, to get a sense of what was happening. Talk to a few people, pick up on the gossip. He'd gone out in his other persona, the simple porter from Barcelona, and had promised to be back by lunchtime, or possibly a little earlier.
Frank would be along shortly, she hoped. The night had been broken more than once with the sound of gunfire, and not just the occasional shot, either. Volleys, such as Sharon hadn't heard since her first months after the Ring of Fire. She hadn't done much trauma medicine since those days, what with one thing and another, but the effects of a three-quarter-inch musket ball on a human body were hard to forget.
Again, the ballroom had the best view of the street. The usual swordplay session had been cancelled due to press of business, and all of the Marines were busy about the place. Captain Taggart was making preparations so he could rapidly fortify the house or organize an evacuation as the situation demanded. Although, looking out over the city and listening through the open windows, Sharon wondered whether or not either would be necessary. There was smoke rising over the river and in a few other places. Not just the usual fug of cooking fires, but the thick black columns of roiling smoke that came from burning buildings. A couple of them were in the general direction of the Vatican, which meant Frank's neighborhood, and she knew he'd been a target once already.
"Penny for your thoughts?" It was her dad.
She turned and smiled at him, suddenly realizing how tired she was. She'd tried hard to sleep, but she'd been woken three times that she could remember. Ruy, the rat bastard, had been fresh as a daisy at some ungodly hour. The side effects of a life spent soldiering, she supposed. "Just tired and wondering what the hell's going on," she said.
"Ruy's not back yet, then?"
"No, but he only promised to be back for lunch. I figure he'll hear a thing or two, one way or another. There's nothing in from any of Don Francisco's people either, yet, although I reckon they'll be looking after their own business first."
"I suppose so. Most of 'em are Jewish, aren't they?" He shrugged. "I figure that's going to be part of it."
Sharon shook her head. "Not here, no. The restrictions on Jews in Rome are among the worst in Italy. Most of our commercial contacts hereabouts are Cavriani affiliates of one sort or another, selling us commercial intelligence. I think Don Francisco maintains someone in the ghetto, but they don't get about much outside the rag trade. As for them being targets last night, I doubt it. They're locked in at night, and apart from some nasty rituals they used to do during carnevale they don't tend to get bothered much. Just a horrible example of what it's like not to be Catholic. A lot of Jim Crow, but no real popular feeling behind it."
Her father nodded. "You think Frank's okay?" He sounded more than a little worried.
"I don't honestly know, Dad," she said. "I think Ruy will have gone that way first to see what happened. If he went there, he got there early; he was out the door by half past seven. If everything was okay, he didn't think to send someone with a message. Frank's supposed to be coming by this morning to let me know what happened, but I keep seeing smoke from over that direction."
"Try not to worry, Sharon. Frank's got a sensible head on his shoulders, and isn't fool enough to go looking for trouble. If I'm any judge, he'll have buttoned up tight for the night and waited it out."
"That wasn't what I was worried about. I have visions of his place getting attacked and set on fire. You haven't been there, but it's got no back way out and it's in a real rough neighborhood. Ruy reckons they'd need a pickaxe to get out any way but the front."
"Oh." She could see her father deflating. He'd been trying to keep up a cheerful front, almost verging on his bedside manner, but the facts had punctured that.
Just then, there was a tap on the ballroom door. It was open, and Adolf was peering in. When Sharon smiled an acknowledgement of his presence, he said, "If you will forgive the interruption, Doctors, Señor Sanchez and young Herr Stone are here."
Both Sharon and her father heaved a sigh of relief. "He's early," Sharon remarked, to cover the slightly weak-kneed feeling she was experiencing. "Both of them, come right to it. Where have you put them, Adolf?"
"He has put us nowhere, Sharon," Ruy boomed, from behind him. "When foul deeds are afoot, I stand on no ceremony."
So saying, he came in to the ballroom with Frank in tow. Ruy looked furious, there was no other word for it, although his voice had not betrayed the emotion written in every quiver of his mustachios.
Frank, behind him, looked weary and generally pissed off. And smudged about the face in a manner that could only be soot.
"Frank?" she asked, not seeing any obvious place to begin.
"What Ruy said." Frank shrugged. "Everyone back at my place is okay, though. We had a little trouble, but it was just a few rowdies and Giovanna saw 'em off with the shotgun."
Ruy's face changed like spring weather, from thunderous to delighted. "Frank is a lucky man, Sharon. Such a one, ah, she bids fair to match your own marvelous spirit! A woman to daunt the mightiest, not even all the eloquence of all the poets could do justice—"
Frank was chuckling. "Give it a rest, Ruy. Sharon, he's been lecturing me on how I've got to do right by Giovanna ever since we left my place, like I couldn't figure out that part by myself."
Ruy was all affronted dignity in an instant. "It is the proper place for those wise in years to guard against the folly of youth."
"Damn straight," said Doctor Nichols, senior.
Sharon groaned. "I take it from this display of what passes for wit among the nearly senile that things aren't too bad?"
Ruy's fury was suddenly back in evidence. "The answer to that, mi corazon, is both yes and no. The trouble is subsided, Frank's place and the embassy are secure and all seems quiet. But there is news of foul work, this night past. Frank, the rumors you have heard?"
"Right," said Frank. "First thing we heard after we got back last night was that there was a crowd going over to Borja's place. Word was they were going to storm it and run him out of town on a rail."
"It was not so," Ruy finished for him. "Frank and I went by the villa on our return here, hence our slight tardiness, for I was certain you would wish earlier news of Frank's well-being than you asked for last night."
"It was a massacre," Frank said. "Nothing but."
Sharon could suddenly see the reason for Frank's weary demeanor. She could guess that he'd been up all night keeping watch, but Frank was still, in all but name, a teenager. A missed night's sleep wouldn't leave him much out of sorts at all. When he'd trudged into the ballroom, he'd looked beaten.
"It is as Frank says," Ruy said, his face growing stonier with the recollection. "We arrived to find burial parties at work. We saw eight corpses, Sharon, and that after those poor souls had been at work for some time. We questioned bystanders, and heard of perhaps thirty. They also spoke of Borja sending a rider for Spanish tercios to suppress the populace, and the pope calling in his own forces for the same purpose. Such may be accounted wild rumors, but these people witnessed a slaughter last night."
"How many went there last night?" Sharon's dad asked.
"Fifty, sixty from my place alone," Frank said. "I don't know how many of them made it back. From what we heard, I'd be surprised if it was less than a couple hundred all told. Borja's goons just fired into the crowd, from what I hear."
Doctor Nichols nodded. "And you can figure on three times as many again wounded who got away in the night. Maybe half of those will die of their wounds, too." He shook his head.
"The only mercy, Doctor Nichols," Ruy said, "is that the crowd ran at the first shots, and were not so hemmed in that many would have been trampled."
"But it's worse," said Frank. "Tell 'em, Ruy. I never would've spotted it, not being a soldier and all."
"That—" Ruy broke off here to snarl a few choice phrases in broad, rural Catalan. "Quevedo. And his stinking swine of a master, Borja. It is almost certain that they enticed that crowd with the express purpose of firing into it."
"Surely you don't get that from just rumor," Sharon protested. While she was quite prepared to assume many bad things of the Spanish government, cynically engineering the murder of civilians was, she thought, something they'd left behind with the previous century.
"Not rumor, Sharon," Ruy said, the gravity of his tone not mellowing the fury in his eyes one bit. "Simple inference. I saw, with my own eyes, the firing platform which Borja had had built behind his wall. Right up to the gate, and still manned in broad daylight."
"Oh." Sharon said. He'd been expecting the rioters.
"Indeed," Ruy said. "I am no doctor of natural philosophy, no student of mathematics, but I can add two and two and reach the same conclusion as any peasant, haggling in the market. With your permission, Sharon, I will seek out Quevedo and deal with him. This cannot go on."
Sharon knew, without having to think about it, that right here and now she could order a man assassinated, and be sure it was going to be carried out. And, furthermore, that she could refrain from giving the order, and know that Quevedo would be safe from Ruy. She tried to think about it. Was there something to be—
She cut the thought off. Horrible as the man's actions had been the night before, the proper way to proceed was with an arrest and a trial. The fact that she didn't think they did things that way around here didn't affect, not one little bit, the fact that she knew what was right and what was wrong. Ruy's values were different, but bless him, he was making sure that he didn't do anything she wasn't happy with. "No," she said. "If you run into him and can't avoid it, and can't take him prisoner, then I figure he'll get what's coming him. But I'm not going to order an assassination."
Ruy nodded, and behind her Sharon thought she could hear her dad letting out a soft sigh of relief. Somehow, that pleased her immensely.
"For now," she said, "Frank, we're going to get a hot meal inside you, and some coffee, and you can give me all the details. And Ruy, we need to get more information. I need to make a report to Magdeburg and take a decision on whether or not we should postpone the wedding. I want to hear a plan from you."
"And Sharon?" her dad said.
"Dad?"
"See if we can put out the word that there's free treatment here for anyone who got hurt last night. Maybe we can save a few lives, build up some goodwill. I brought plenty of supplies down from Germany, so I reckon we could do some serious good on both sides of the ledger."
Magdeburg
"My sister's in that mess." Mike Stearns' tone was quiet and understated.
"We cannot be sure it is a mess quite yet," Don Francisco said. This message had come in overnight in time for this morning's twice-weekly briefing, and Ed Piazza had joined them.
"From what I hear," Ed said, "the real mess is further south. Whatever Borja's up to, it'll be a sideshow to what's brewing in Naples. Or to whatever the Spanish are doing to stop it."
"Just so," Francisco agreed. "Mike, there is nothing unusual in there being rioting at this time of year anywhere in Europe. Borja seems to have made it a little worse, but truly, the political situation in Rome will not support sustained disorder. The people I have reporting to me are natives of the city, Mike, and they know how it goes."
"When you say natives, Francisco," Mike said, his tone level, even and, Francisco knew, very angry indeed, "you're talking about guys who work as lawyers and bankers and the like, aren't you?"
"With one exception, yes." Don Francisco was determined to stop this before it started. Mike Stearns was apt to grow increasingly testy of late, and small wonder. "Mike, I have worked for you for the best part of three years and I have learned a thing or two. Yes, the outlook of people in different social classes is different, and the view is indeed very different from the street. However, one of my informants is a distant cousin who makes his living in a small way in the ghetto, a saddler. And one of the things people do in a saddler's shop, Mike, is gossip. Artisans among themselves and the customers with the man himself. He is no maker of fine harness for the gentry, he makes work harness for other artisans. Well regarded for that sort of thing, he tells me. And what he heard was that the disturbances were all fomented by Spaniards with money. The talk was all over Rome. My last report from him—he sends his dispatches in the regular mails, not through the embassy—was dated two weeks ago. All was not quiet then, and he predicted some such outbreak as occurred last night. His assessment then was that it would come to nothing. Rome is not a city much given to civic disturbance, Mike."
Stearns held up his hands, his expression a little less icy. "All right, I surrender. So the Turkish nobleman is getting a little class-consciousness, good. Won't be the first time we've been caught on the wrong foot by a popular movement, though, Francisco."
Ed Piazza chuckled. "Mike, you're just jealous because there's a risk of an uprising you can't get up in front of, and that wasn't your idea."
"Hold on a minute," Mike said, "which is it? No popular uprising at all, or one I should be jealous of?" He was smiling as he said it.
"You know what I mean, Mike," Ed said. "Happens I think Francisco's right. We that is, the State of Thuringia-Franconia—have our own sources—"
Don Francisco hazarded a guess—"The Cavrianis?"
Ed nodded. "Useful guys to have around, once you allow for the selection effect— they only report on what interests them. I suppose I could get them to do some more general reporting for us, but budgets are kind of tight. That wasn't a hint, by the way," he added hurriedly in Mike's direction.
"Money's tight all round," Mike said, "so it wouldn't have done any good if it was." His smile was a little rueful. What with trouble breaking out in all directions, the treasury of the USE was starting to look a little threadbare as the available credit began to run low. The deficits were a lot more manageable than those of other European powers, on the other hand. So when stability came to the USE, it would recover faster and harder than any of the other powers.
However, in the present, Ed was running through what Spain's major concerns in Italy really were. Nothing that was surprising to Don Francisco. He let himself muse over what could be happening in Rome. A coup? Unlikely. The Church hadn't had an antipope in over a hundred years and on the record of the future history had already got that particular disease out of its system. In any event, Francisco's own people had bought good information—confirmed from several sources—that Borja's instructions specified simply obstructing the pope's business, not deposing him, whatever that mysterious letter-writer had hinted at a few weeks ago. Likewise outright arrest. There were good reports on every major concentration of troops in Naples, which was all in all the only place Borja could get military help from. And it would take regiments to arrest the pope. The Swiss Guard were a serious fighting force all by themselves, and while the various regiments of Rome's nobility were not of the best in the military field—Italy's better soldiers tended to be condottieri—they would perform adequately in supporting the Swiss Guard and increase the troops needed for such an endeavour beyond what anyone thought Borja could shake loose from Naples, which was a tercio at most and more likely a couple of companies of musketeers.
The risks to the embassy at Rome were of the more ordinary kind. Riots were chancy things, especially if the sentiment against foreigners that Miss Nichols reported was a genuine popular feeling and not simply a slogan the crowds she had heard had been paid to chant.
"—and so while I'm sure the Spanish would like to be able to commit those troops further north, pretty much anyone with eyes to see can tell they're going to have a better use for them real soon now, Mike," Ed was finishing up.
Mike looked to Francisco, "And your assessment?"
"As I say, it is the season for domestic troubles. We have been seeing something like it here. It is simply that much of it is handled at a local level if it does not go beyond street-brawling. I think you have been spoilt by life in the twentieth century, Mike. The seventeenth century is what you would call a rough neighborhood."
"All right," Mike said, "so I needn't give them a recall order, then? Because that's what it'll take to shift Sharon away from the job she's doing."
"I reckon not, Mike. Or at least, not right now," Ed said. "Although I reckon she'll git if she has to, and she'll know way before you will when that time is."
Don Francisco frowned. "You think it will come to that?" He couldn't see it, himself. Rioting was one of those things that simply happened, and the options Borja had for action that was at least within shouting distance of rationality precluded anything worse. His actions so far were of a kind to make cardinals and senior churchmen and Rome's other notables a little more nervous than they might otherwise be, and demonstrated a certain looseness of grip on the part of Urban VIII, but as a prelude to something more serious?
"Just covering my ass, Francisco," Ed said, "You know and I know that there's probably nothing deeper to this. I just get the feeling that Borja's playing with fire and even if he doesn't mean to make everything blow up in everyone's face, well . . ."
"Yeah," Mike sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face. "Life would be so much simpler if we didn't have all these assholes who played games with other peoples' lives. On the other hand, we wouldn't have as much support as we do, either. For now, then, we'll leave things as they are. I want to hear about it if things really start boiling down there, though."
 
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