1635: The Cannon Law

Chapter 24

Rome

Frank returned from the embassy to find his place full of people, most of whom he'd never seen before. Pretty much all the regulars were in, though. And everyone wanted to know if it was true that the Spanish were about to invade. The best Frank could manage was "not right now." He could tell a lot of folks weren't believing him, but nobody seemed to be calling for barricades and the like yet. In fact, everyone seemed to have settled in for a goodly long evening of drinking, dancing and generally hanging out.

Dino, Fabrizzio, Benito and Giovanna were moving quickly and dealing with the rush for beer and wine and pizza. Frank had a moment's unease about whether a crowd like this could drink his bar dry, and decided he was probably okay for stock-and it looked like some of the guys from the soccer league were starting to get down with the whole working-together thing they did in Germany's Freedom Arches and were helping out.

Frank had taken a flying leap earlier in the day. Getting people to spread out in the right neighborhoods and find the guys hiring rent-a-mobs had been easy. Lots of his regulars didn't have day-jobs, as such, being hired by the day, and could afford to take the occasional day off. And, being as they were pretty pissed about the whole nearly getting killed thing, and Frank had goosed 'em up a bit by ranting about the Spanish-he was kind of pissed himself-they'd been pretty enthusiastic about getting themselves planted in today's faked demonstration to find out where it was.

What hadn't been quite so certain was that anyone would show, when he asked for volunteers to turn up and bring friends. He'd timed it for after the usual working hours, since the bad guys had done the same thing. They were having trouble recruiting, according to a couple of reports. The crowd he'd got was gratifyingly large, and not a penny spent. If anything, he'd had more trouble persuading them not to just charge in and rip the poor slobs who'd taken the money limb from limb. Frank had managed to bring them round to the idea that it wasn't right to beat up on someone for being so desperate he had to take Spanish money. And it'd all come off pretty sweetly, so now he'd just led maybe fifty guys-the others had peeled off into other tavernas on the way back-into a bar that was already crowded.

Giovanna took one look and just dealt with it. It was a warm night, the stable yard was clean and hadn't been used for stabling in a while, so she got a few of the soccer players to drag some tables out there and break the really old furniture out of storage in the stables. Then, with the musicians persuaded to play an outdoor gig and the dancing moved outside, it was all going smoothly again. Frank took a moment to open the yard gate as well. If he could turn this into a really good party, that was so many more people not off somewhere else rioting. And there was the local goodwill part to remember too.

Frank found himself playing politician, or at least as near to it as he got. Yes, they'd run those sorry fools off. No, this wasn't the revolution, not yet; it was a long way off still. Yes, the beer was good here; they tried their best. Yes, pizza was a good idea, wasn't it, and no, he didn't want a bite, he'd already eaten.

All in all, pretty good-natured, considering, but he'd seen how that could change in a minute. Wasn't like he could even spot the provocateurs, either. He had to force himself not to act suspicious, in case he set everyone else off. For all that everyone was eating and drinking and having fun, there was an undercurrent in the crowd.

Damned Spaniards!

It wasn't so much that the militia was breaking heads, although if it had been women and kids, that'd be different. A lot different. It was the fact that they were doing it at the bidding of foreigners. Being Romans, big-city folk from a very cosmopolitan city, they had a much suppler notion of what constituted "foreign" than you got out in the sticks. The year before, Frank had met one old guy who figured foreign parts started about ten miles from his house, any direction. Romans, though, while they preferred fellow Romans, were pretty much okay with most other Italians. So the Committee weren't foreigners, much. Venetians, to be sure, and apt to be a bit strange. Frank seemed to be either getting a bye as an honorary Venetian, or, as an American, they were assuming-until they met him-that he was too weird to count one way or the other. Foreign, but an okay kind of foreign. Not trying to be the boss of anyone. Looking back, Frank realized that he'd probably done himself good by starting out low-key. He'd done it to avoid the Inquisition, but it'd probably stood him in good stead with the people he was trying to reach. Let him earn some trust and credibility before he tried anything. So now, he had some to spend with his neighbors, when they were pissed off enough to be buying.

He probably still couldn't lead them to much of anything, mind. The folks who'd nearly gotten killed here last night had been royally ticked off and looking for someone to beat on good and hard. Frank had just directed them to the spot they wanted to go anyway. No biggie. Afterward, he hadn't even been able to lead them all to an open bar. Still, he'd work with what he'd got.

Then he heard the cheers. Uh oh.

Frank didn't know where he'd acquired his instinct for trouble, but his chicken-sense was tingling now. It didn't take long to find out why.

The news went through the place quickly:

They've gone to the Villa Borja.

Hundreds of guys.

Some of 'em got weapons.

They're going to run that fat son-of-a-bitch Spaniard out of town.

Frank pasted a smile on. Not a thing he could do about it, clear over the other side of the city. And trying to stop anything would just get him ignored.

Inside of five minutes, the place was nearly empty again. Everyone had gone to the Villa Borja, to find the nearest Spaniard or just to look for trouble.

Frank sat down and wondered what tomorrow morning would look like.

Another long, long night.

"What are they chanting?" Borja asked Ferrigno. The cardinal and his secretary were standing halfway along the drive of the Villa Borja, just about able to see, at a hundred yards' distance, the crowd gathered about the iron gate. Enough of them had torches and lanterns that it was possible to see them, and the lanterns at the gatehouse made them quite acceptably visible. Borja's people had roused him at this late hour-certainly past midnight-in a state of near-panic about a mob at the gates. What was present certainly fit the description well enough. Borja could see, even at this distance and with his ageing eyes, that the assorted refuse who had come to his threshold were ill dressed and filthy looking. He offered a small prayer of thanks that he stood upwind.

"Insults to Your Eminence," Ferrigno said, without being specific. Roused from bed after midnight, disturbed at his rest by a mob of ruffians and jeered at and calumnied by utter scum? Not even the most forbearing master would be in a good humor, and at such times even the most obtuse servant walked with a nervous tread. How wrong Ferrigno was, this time, although Borja reflected that it was no great folly to decline to repeat the slur.

Borja smiled. It was being chanted clearly enough that he could determine exactly what the slander was. Exactly what he wanted, in general, dislike the specifics though he might. "And how many would you say there are?"

"Several hundred, Your Eminence." Ferrigno's tone remained nervous. The estimate seemed about right, although the company of mercenary musketeers Borja had kept on hand for just such an eventuality seemed, for the moment, to be sufficient threat to keep them from coming over the walls of the estate or trying to force the gate. Ferrigno seemed to find that nearly as alarming as the prospect of the cardinal's displeasure.

Of course, Ferrigno had not heard everything that had gone on. Nor was he privy to everything that Borja had compassed in his designs-much of that was kept only in the secret counsels of Borja's own heart. The orders he had received from Olivares-who was presumptious in the extreme to give such to a prince of the church-had encompassed particular ends purely to Spain's advantage. It was only with the guidance of the Holy Spirit that Borja had been able to see the best and most effective way to do that, and at the same time cut out the rot growing at the heart of Christ's Body on Earth. Ferrigno had been gifted with no such insight. Nor had he been present at Borja's meetings with Osuna, when the fullest possibilities of what might be achieved had been discussed between the two men.

Thus, his bearing of news of the mob at the very gate of the estate had been nervous. Fearful, even. He could not have known that Borja had prayed for just such as this for weeks. Perhaps he was nervous that the insults being chanted by the crude and ruffianly types at the gate would anger Borja? Not a bit. He welcomed it. Even the part about him having no cojones was, in its way, mortification of the spirit.

He could still feel nervousness streaming off Ferrigno like sweat from a lathered horse. The temptation to make sport of the frightened Italian was almost overwhelming. Almost. Borja heaved a deep and theatrical sigh. "So sad, that the Holy Father's misgovernment should come to this. Have you pencil and paper, Ferrigno?"

A sound of rummaging. Doubtless while Borja had been being dressed, Ferrigno had been arming himself for his professional offices. "Yes, Your Eminence."

"Then, to His Excellency The Viceroy of Naples-fill in the proper protocol and apologia when you prepare the dispatch for my signature, it is to go tonight-I have the misfortune to report disorder, unrest and revolution of the most serious kind, as I have seen with my own eyes at the very gates of my villa."

"… at the very gates… of my villa," Ferrigno repeated, his pencil scratching away.

Borja paused for thought. He had, of course, made arrangements that a modest force, sufficient to every likely eventuality, had been reserved for just this occasion. They could be here in a week, ten days at the most. Any closer deployment than the closest anchorage to the border between Naples and the Papal States would have been a giveaway of the most disastrous kind.

At that moment of contemplation, a messenger boy ran up. "Your Eminence," the lad gasped. Borja was some little way along the driveway that led to the front gate, and the youngster had clearly hared about looking for the cardinal for some minutes. "Senor Quevedo y Villega attends Your Eminence at the house. He says he has most urgent news."

"Does he?" Borja mused aloud. "Preserve that draft, Ferrigno, I may find myself adding to it momentarily. Let us go indoors and learn what news Quevedo brings us of riot at our very gate. The boy will inform Captain Mancini at the gate that my orders are to fire upon the crowd. Scum such as that must not be gently handled."

Borja heard the first crackle of musketry just as he reached his front door, and smiled. He would have to task Mancini with finding more myrmidons of his own stripe to deal with the consequences. A single company would hardly suffice for the next such assault, although the preparations he had had the man make to resist an assault would help for the time being. The works Mancini had erected behind the walls had not been cheap-neither carpenters nor lumber were inexpensive-but Mancini had assured his master that the saving in the soldiers required to hold the wall would more than pay for it. Borja dismissed the matter from his mind; the diminishing sound of musketry, replaced as it was with the screams of wounded scum, told the tale of how successful the preparations had been.

Within, Quevedo had, to Borja's irritation, retained the street-ruffian attire in which he went about Rome doing Borja's bidding, and had his filthy clogs on the furniture. He made no effort whatsoever to rise on the cardinal's entrance being announced. "Well?" Borja asked, deciding that drawing attention to Quevedo's loutish behaviour would be undignified.

"Your Eminence ought to know that there was rioting at the embassy of the so-called United States of Europe earlier in the evening. Rival gangs brawled in the street outside." Quevedo smiled thinly. "It appears that the ambassador is fomenting unrest of her own, and the rivalry between the insurrectionary factions is spilling into the streets of Rome."

"Take note, Ferrigno," Borja said. "You will append a full report on this latest outrage to the dispatch to Naples."

"Yes, Your Eminence," Ferrigno said distractedly, his pencil scratching away.

"Is there more?" Borja asked.

"Much, Your Eminence, if I might anticipate the contents of Your Eminence's next dispatch to those set in authority over him."

"Do go on," Borja purred. Truly, he thought, the providence of the Holy Spirit is in generous humor tonight. It was humbling, truly humbling, to be the agent of God's will in the mortal world.

"Your Eminence is already aware from earlier reports that the ambassador from the United States of Europe is in communication with the anarchist elements of the Committees of Correspondence?"

Borja nodded. "Yes, yes."

"The ambassador of the United States of Europe and the sister of the prime minister of that nation were both seen in conversation with the ringleader of the Committee, following the disturbances outside the embassy. That it should be coincidence that there followed the unpleasantness at Your Eminence's very doorstep is to strain credulity, I most respectfully suggest. Furthermore, I have reports that a large party of ruffians departed the very nest of these vipers shortly before I set out to report to Your Eminence and warn him of the impending danger. I made haste to outpace those miscreants and bring advance warning. It seems, however, that these were but reinforcements for an assault already in hand, and for my failure to deliver warning of that, Your Eminence, I, Francisco de Quevedo y Villega, must most humbly apologize."

"And, in view of your most diligent and excellent work otherwise, Senor Quevedo y Villega," Borja said, amazed at the man's ability to keep his face straight, for the provocation of just such an assault had in no small measure been directed by the agent himself, "I can do no other than accept your most gracious apology in the spirit in which it was offered, and tender the forgiveness which is by Christ's law your merest due."

Quevedo sketched a bow of acknowledgement from where he sat, but did not trouble to disarrange his footwear from the chair on which his feet took their ease. "Your Eminence is most charitable in overlooking his most humble servant's many failings." It was all Borja could do not to strike his insolent face where he sat.

He took a deep breath. "Is there anything further that I should include in my dispatch?"

"Only, Your Eminence, that the Committee of Correspondence, as well as acts tending to the general disorder, are inducing the common citizenry of Rome to acts of immorality. I had agents present earlier in the evening at their principal den, and I grieve to report to Your Eminence that the place was the scene of the most lewd cavortings and intoxication. The corruption of the city's youth seemed to be their principal end, Your Eminence. Such lasciviousness and abandon must needs be stopped. I also have a full dossier of the material circulated about the city under this organization's aegis and name. Your Eminence, it is fomentation of the most disgusting sort, calling for revolution, brigandage and the atheistic folly of separation of church and state. Production is in the thousands, and naturally Your Eminence will be concerned about an attack on the morals and faith of the best-educated of the common folk-those who can and do read. Not least because the Inquisition appear to have been suborned by these wretches. The felon Stone visits there regularly, twice a week it is said, and not once have efforts been made to arrest him. The connection is obvious."

"I thank you, Senor Quevedo y Villega. Doubtless my secretary will take a full report from you in due course. Ferrigno?"

"Yes, Your Eminence?"

"Go and prepare the draft. I want a dispatch for my signature within the hour. Ensure His Excellency is asked to put in hand the measures already agreed with all possible haste, and encypher that part. Use your discretion as to what other parts must be encyphered, but have a mind that this matter is urgent, both here and in Naples."

"Yes, Your Eminence." Ferrigno was still scribbling as he left.

"So, Senor," Borja said when Ferrigno had shut the door, "was it the stupidity of the civil authorities?"

"Largely, no. The unpredictable nature of the common folk and a number of useful coincidences were among our principal advantages. That the matter worked on the first provocation was of great good fortune. The matter could so easily have died away to the status of street-gossip for the next week."

"The hand of the Holy Spirit!" Borja cried aloud. "I was surer of nothing else!"

"Your Eminence's insight into such matters is well known," Quevedo said gravely.

In the end, the dispatch went on a fast horse to Naples at two in the morning. The shooting at the gate had died down an hour before.