1635 The Papal Stakes (31 page)

“At what?” the Irishman asked, puzzled.

“At the Spaniards in the apse.”

He took a quick squint around the corner. “Can’t see ’em.”

“You don’t have to. Just shoot in their general direction. Keep them busy.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see. Well, more like ‘you’ll hear.’ Now be a good fellow and shoot at nothing, please.”

The Irishman shrugged, sensibly did not expose more than the barrel and his right eye, fired, and hit the lintel of the door into the apse.

“See,” asked Thomas, “now how hard was that?”

“Harder to understand than do—sir,” came the answer. “What the bollocks good is it to—?”

The sudden multiple shotgun discharges within the church sounded like a short, intense bombardment by light artillery.
Wonderful acoustics in these Italian churches,
reflected Thomas, as he stepped out into the line of fire. He considered whether or not it would be prudent to swap magazines again. He became aware of someone staring at him: the Irishman with the discharged Spanish musket.

“So all we were doing—”

“—was keeping the musketeers in the apse focused on us, yes. And making sure there was plenty of noise covering the approach of our counterflankers. The Spanish had no way of knowing that all their own flankers had been cut down so quickly by Harry in the arboretum. So we just had to keep them from glancing back at what they thought was their secure flank—the front door of the church—long enough for Harry to make his counterflanking strike there. Now, relieve the doctor at the annex door; he has two wounded men to tend to.” North headed back toward the rectory.

John managed to stand up a little straighter when the
sassenach
came back into the rectory. Father Wadding had grown very quiet, staring round at the bodies littering his sanctum sanctorum. Owen approached, asked, “Father, I’m sorry to have to ask, but is this all of them?”

“What do you mean?”

Owen bit his lip before continuing. “Is this the full lot of the guards? Are there any more?”

Father Luke stood suddenly, and John saw that the infamous Wadding ire had ignited. His dark eyes seemed to stab into Owen. “Why do you want to know, Owen Roe? Haven’t you slaked your thirst for blood just yet?”

Owen looked away. He was afraid that if Wadding saw the look in his eyes the priest would know that he’d already given the order to have any surviving enemy soldiers slain. He’d disliked giving that order, but hadn’t seen any choice. They simply couldn’t afford to leave any eyewitnesses behind.

It was a moot point, in any event. From their actions, it was obvious that Lefferts had given his own people the same order. Father, “he said, quietly, “we didn’t want this to happen. But it has. And now we must leave. But we can’t know how to do that most safely until we know if there are any guards left.”

“Ah, so you need to know how many you have yet to hunt down? Well, there might be some hiding under the altar. It’d be a fine place for the crowning glory—or should that be gory?—of his unholy bloodbath. This is a church, blast you, a church! It is sacred, a sanctuary for all who come within its walls. And you have—”

The up-timer woman spoke. “Father Wadding. You are certainly right. And I think we should hear everything you have to say. But if there are any guards left, they could be running for help. From what we’ve seen of this area, the Spanish have a lot of troops billeted just north of here, in the Villa Ludovisi. If that’s right, they will have heard the shooting and will come to investigate, sooner or later. I’m betting on sooner. But if someone runs from here to tell them what happened, their response time will become ‘right now.’ So please, for the sake of our survival, let me put this to you: other than the ones you see here in the rectory, we’ve accounted for about thirty more guards. Is that the full complement?”

Wadding’s shoulders slumped. “I believe so. Most of them, for a certainty—but I do not keep close track of their numbers. And there are always some coming and going, delivering messages, taking a day or two of leave, or taking an hour or two to pursue other—pleasures.”

Harry entered, hearing the end of the report. “I think some soldiers and one or two cooks may have run off right at the start of the fight, but they won’t be able to report anything specific that would identify us. I kept Paul stationed out back, watching for leakers who did see something and who might head toward the Ludovisi place. He’s still there, and waved all clear. As long as we get out of here quickly, we should be all right.”

John remembered to wipe his sword—on a Spaniard—before sheathing it.

“You would so defile the dead, you young scut?”

John stared at Wadding, and remembered the resentment he’d often felt for the man before. “I’m thinking I’d rather you go back to calling me ‘Don John,’ from here on in, Father. And I’m not in the mood for one of your pious lectures. Where are the domestics, and the other clergy?”

Wadding had drawn up to his full height. “We only had two servants working here, now. And only one was in today. Who no doubt had the good sense to flee when the firing started. And no, he will not go to the Ludovisi Villa; he lost half his family to the Spanish. He will want—need—to avoid questioning upon the events of this day.

“I sent the students and the other priests to Gondolpho, where the Pontifical Irish College has a house for religious retreats. Only Father Hickey remains here with me.”

“Who is, I think, approaching,” reported Connal, from the antechamber.

Sure enough, Anthony Hickey hobbled into the rectory. Although only two years older than Wadding, the years did not rest lightly upon the priest. Arthritis had already struck permanent, gnarling blows against Hickey’s knees and hands, and his lank white hair fit all too well with his much-lined face.

But John hardly saw all that. This was Father Anthony, the priest who had always been more sympathetic than strict, more paternal than profound. Yes, he was an excellent scholar, but he had been better still as a surrogate uncle to the young heir of the great and impossibly detached Hugh O’Neill. A father who had never had time for or interest in this son, who some had snickered was “Johnnie-come-lately…and -slowly.” A father who, in the eight years he lived in Rome, never once summoned the boy to his home, and hardly ever wrote him a letter from the time that he was deposited with Archduchess Isabella at age seven.

John felt his command persona fall away, and did not care in the least that it had: “Father Anthony,” he said. And opened his arms.

The frail priest doddered toward him. But somehow, when he got there, despite John’s slightly greater height and much greater mass, it seemed that it was Father Anthony who enveloped the earl in a great, fond hug, rather than the other way around. After a few moments, John realized that the room had become very still. “Father Anthony,” he repeated; his eyes stung a bit.

“Ah, Johnnie,” breathed the priest. “You’ve not changed.” He looked around at the bodies for the first time. “What a hash,” he breathed. “Johnnie, did you have to?”

John hung his head. “It was them or us, Father. Not what we wanted. We thought to nick the two of you out of here with a piece of paper and a wink, as it were. But—” He looked at Lefferts, who looked away. “—but things didn’t work out that way. No evil intended by anyone, Father, but it happened nonetheless.”

“Man always runs afoul of man’s plans.” The priest nodded, looked at the group, smiled at Owen, with whom he had a passing acquaintance, and the other Wild Geese in the room. But the smile dropped away when his eyes found the Wrecking Crew, first resting upon Harry, then Sherrilyn, then Thomas, then George, and then back to Harry. “Johnnie, who are these—persons?”

“Eh—chance met fellow-travelers, Father.”

“Travelers? Why ‘travelers’?”

“Because we’re leaving now, Father. All of us. You too.”

“With them?”

“With all our friends,” John amended, earning a small smile from Harry.

Anthony looked at the Wrecking Crew yet again, and, alarmed, looked back at his old pupil and unofficial charge. “They’re friends, are they? So are you consorting with the Devil, now, Johnnie?”

John sighed. “I just may be, Father; I just may be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The up-timer security precautions surrounding access to their aircraft facilities in Mestre had been challenging to navigate, Valentino admitted, but time and luck had been on his boss Rombaldo’s side.

As Valentino tugged his uniform coat straight, he conceded that the up-timers had an almost impossible job maintaining tight security around their flying machines, simply because the complicated vehicles needed so many mechanics and support crew. In addition, there was a constant running back and forth by special artisans who manufactured precision replacement parts, including screws and bearings. With all that traffic, flawless base security was an impossibility.

But as it turned out, there had been an even easier way into the USE’s waterside airplane repair and refitting complex in Mestre. Although the aviators themselves oversaw most of the primary engine and structural repairs, they had almost a dozen assistants. Classified into two strata, mechanics and junior mechanics, it was they who did the physical hammering and lifting and replacing and tightening and loosening. All under the watchful eyes of the two aviator-mechanics.

However, in just the past week, one of the senior mechanics had announced his departure. He had apparently been offered a position with a firm determined to build airships; they needed a person with extensive knowledge of, and experience with, up-time engines. In addition to even better pay, it was the chance of a lifetime: the mechanic, a down-timer, was now going to work as a senior, hands-on motor expert.

Predictably, one of the junior mechanics was be bumped up to fill this hole, and that in turn put a hole in the roster of the junior mechanics. With the Jupiter’s support staff thus down one man, the aviators had interviewed a number of the more experienced technical assistants: a glorified term for the even larger work crew that fetched parts, maintained regular supplies, and ensured the safe storage of fuels and lubricants. The inevitable result: one of these was promoted to become a new junior mechanic. And this meant that someone had to be brought in to become a new technical assistant, which was itself understood to be an apprenticeship position. Which, for Rombaldo, had been the operational equivalent of finding a diamond under his pillow.

Having comparatively modest entry requirements, the position of technical assistant had been a perfect fit for any one of a dozen persons a local underworld chief had markers on. In the juridical parlance favored by the shady lawyer retained by this underworld chief, these were persons who were susceptible to extortion, due to their prior misdeeds—the evidence of which was now in the underworld chief’s hands, thanks to some tips by the shady lawyer. Rombaldo had purchased the marker on one of these compromised individuals: a rakishly handsome thirty-year-old precision tool-maker who had indulged in a rather torrid affair with a slightly older woman, a fading beauty who had married well above her station. To a brother-in-law of one of Venice’s august Council of Ten, no less.

The arrangement was simplicity itself. The tool man—a nickname which became a predictable source of bawdy humor, given the nature of his indiscretions—would apply for the position of technical assistant. If successful, he would then follow a few simple instructions. He would, on completing his assignment for Rombaldo, receive the incriminating evidence on him back into his hands. No doubt he would burn those damning (and deliciously indiscreet) letters as soon as he received then. And would just as surely rush to reassure, and possibly reembrace, the nervous Venetian trophy-wife, who would once more be secure in the unassailable esteem—and legally-filed will—of her elderly spouse.

Rombaldo had been forced to purchase the tool man’s letters for the exorbitant sum of three hundred lire. However, it was a crucial resource and worth the great price, much like any other valuable commodity.

And so, thought Valentino, to business. He looked over at one of Rombaldo’s better local hires, a cheery fellow named Ignatio who enjoyed a good joke and the occasional torture of hijacked house pets. Valentino nodded approval of Ignatio’s matching uniform. Arguably, it looked even better on this new henchman, who had served briefly in the militia. Ignatio had not joined those ranks out of civic-mindedness, of course; it had been for the quite lucrative black market contacts he made there.

Valentino glanced at their papers, fakes which had been quite challenging for Cesare, Rombaldo’s forger, to duplicate. The up-timers had evidently employed a few rather clever tricks in the crafting of them, but Cesare had painstakingly overcome the difficulties. Valentino now passed the fruits of those labors to Ignatio. He stared at them. Valentino shrugged. “Our lives could depend on these papers. I thought you might like to check yours, at least.”

Ignatio shook his head. He smiled, but also blushed. “No need. I can’t read.”

“Oh,” answered Valentino, who pocketed the papers and suppressed his admiration for Ignatio’s honesty—all the more because he concealed his own illiteracy with shamed diligence. He led them out of their rented room, down the stairs, and toward the door that would put them upon the streets of Mestre.

And in plain sight of the up-timers’ aircraft repair compound.

Valentino arrived at the gate, hand upon sword, a firm, almost grim look plastered on his face. The face that stared back at him was fair, sunburnt, topped by auburn hair scorched into red-gold by the Italian sun. The uniform of a USE Marine from the embassy detachment was unmistakable. Two of his comrades cradled carbine versions of their army’s standard flintlock; the posture was not threatening, but their weapons could easily be swung into a ready position.

“Business?” asked the one at the gate.

“Extra guards for the compound,” Valentino answered in Italian. “Sent by the Arsenal.”

The freckled nose of the guard quirked a bit at the stream of clearly unfamiliar words. “
Arsenal? Garda
? You help USE?”