1635 The Papal Stakes (41 page)

John looked like he was going to spit in disgust. “I’ll not have my hands tied by that nervous old biddy’s apron-strings. Our courage is needed—wanted—here.”

“Our courage may be, but our faces are not. Think on it, John: what happens if one of us is killed or captured, particularly you, or me? Borja—and through him, Philip—could learn that we were here.”

“So what of it?” John restively loosened his sword in its scabbard, as he looked over at the poker lesson that was starting. “Philip’s abandoned us. It’s high time that we abandon him.”

Always spleen first, brain last, with you, isn’t it, Johnnie?
“Yes—maybe that’s how it is for
us
. But Fernando and Isabella still receive some
reales
from Philip. It’s a tense situation between the two courts, and there’s a conflict of interest, but still no hostility between the king of Spain and the new king in the Low Countries. Not yet. But if our involvement here were to come to light—”

“It won’t,” snapped John. “It may be a bold plan, but it’s a good plan. Even the
sassenach
said so.”

Yes, he did—but I can see he has the same indefinite misgivings that I do,
Owen thought, but said instead, “And so it is a good plan, but, given our employers’ explicit concerns, we shouldn’t be assigned to the main assault force.”

John turned, the lack of expression on his face all the more chilling because that bluff countenance was typically open and immediate in transmitting the state of the earl of Tyrone’s somewhat tempestuous heart. “Owen, if you’ve grown too old to be comfortable leading men in a head-long charge, then maybe it’s time for you to put down your sword and pick up a pen. As our quartermaster, or the like.”

Owen hardly knew how to respond. If those words had come from any other man on the face of the Earth, it would have meant a challenge and one of their deaths. He exhaled slowly, carefully, “I’m to be following orders, not the path of a coward, Lord O’Neill.”

“Suit yourself. Maybe there’s no cowardice in you. So, who’s to blame? I guess it’s Isabella and Fernando who haven’t the nerve to stand tall and fight openly for what they believe. No stain upon your honor or good name, then—not even for continuing to obey people who’ve admitted that, for almost thirty years, they’ve used us worse than a tinker’s forgotten dog. There. Feel better, now?” And he swaggered off, making sure for the second time that his sword was loose in its scabbard.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The tall, lanky man entered the small stables quickly, refastening the baldric of his hanger as he turned towards the stalls lining the right wing of the building.

And came to an abrupt stop. There was a medium-sized man—well, an older gentleman, from what little he could see beyond the large traveling cloak—standing directly in his way. Moving to pass him, the tall lanky man made a hasty apology. “Pardon; I must pass—”

And then he stopped again and took a closer look.

“Yes,” said the older man. “It’s me. You are not the only one who can effect a disguise.”

The tall man leaped forward, sword singing a single metallic tone as it came swiftly out of its scabbard in a fast, fierce, back-handed down slash—

Which the older man nimbly hopped back from, sweeping off the traveling cloak with his left hand, while he drew a rapier. His age-wrinkled eyes narrowed, measuring. “Matadors should never accept bony bulls, but it seems I have no choice.” He smiled. “
Toro!
” he whispered.

The tall man feinted a stab, then went for a short forehand cut that the rapier intercepted, not so much blocking it as redirecting it. Which elicited a grin from the tall man; this old fool of a Catalan was not so skilled as Rombaldo had told him. The parry, while effective, had left the younger man’s weapon with plenty of momentum—

—which he redirected toward his target yet again: he rolled his wrist, the hanger’s path of deflection sweeping into an s-shape that brought it right around into a forceful back cut.

But the old Catalan seemed to have anticipated this. Rather than giving or standing his ground, he came closer—an even more foolish tactic, given that the rapier’s advantage was in distance, not proximity. But instead of working with his steel, the Catalan brought up the traveling cloak, its folds wrapping around his attacker’s hanger early in its swing. Almost like a matador, the older man gave way before the cut and twisted the cloak as soon as the hanger’s edge bit it.

For a long moment, the tall man was utterly disoriented, trying to cut through the cloak and keep a solid grip on his sword at the same time. All the while, the old Spaniard was sweeping around with him like a counterweight, the cloak joining them, a common center of rotation. But then the Spaniard, rather than stepping ever wider in their accelerating, lethal gavotte, planted his front foot, rotated at the hip, and held fast.

The tall man, suddenly swirling faster than his opponent, tried to compensate, tugging, stumbling a bit. He felt his wrist twisting, and took a quick extra step to help stop and ground himself without falling over. And in that moment, with his sword arm committed to balancing himself rather than holding his weapon ready, the Spaniard struck.

He must have been waiting for that near-stumble; the smaller man’s rapier—which he had drawn back when he planted his front foot—jetted forward, but not directly at the tall man’s midriff. Instead, it shot out on an intercept trajectory: though the thrust seemed slightly ahead of its target when it began, the taller man’s forward stumble brought him into alignment with it, the blade transfixing him just two inches under the sternum.

The tall man’s half-stagger became a full stagger, and in the second it took him to reorient himself, he felt the blade go in again, just beneath and outside the lower right extreme of his groin. He felt a hot spurting there, felt an onset of vertigo, and then noticed—almost calmly—the tip of the rapier disappearing under his own chin. He smelled hay—quite strongly—and thought he might be falling…

A second after Rombaldo’s agent fell to the floor of the stable, two of the Hibernians came in. “Don Ruy,” one of them muttered, worried, “I thought you said you would call us when—”

Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz shrugged. “There was no time, and there was no need. But I note and appreciate your concern.” He could not resist smoothing the left wing of his mustache, which had become slightly displaced by the brief swordplay. “You have seen to the other one?”

“Yes, sir. He was writing a message, as you suspected. And there is a boy already waiting in the tavern to receive it, apparently.”

“Then we do not have very long. When the messenger boy eventually inquires if his services are actually required, the innkeep will no doubt check the message-writer’s room and find his body. Did you remove the message itself?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Now, let us hide this one under the straw and leave. It will take some time to catch up with the rest of our group, and my wife will no doubt be getting worried about me.”

Sharon looked down for the third time. The toe of Ruy’s left boot was spotless, still somewhat moist from a recent cleaning, but just past the ankle, slightly behind where Ruy would be able to see it, was a telltale smear of blood. The smallest bit, not even enough to shed a drop upon the floor. But as an EMT, Sharon Nichols had seen plenty of blood, enough so that she didn’t miss it when her eyes roved across it, no matter the backdrop.

Sharon remained silent. Not only was she reluctant to interrupt Ruy’s report to the clerics gathered round the modest fire; she wasn’t sure she wanted to start down a path of questions that could not help but bring the other, ominous side of her husband into high relief. He had been a Spanish soldier on at least three, perhaps four, continents over the course of more than thirty years. That was a job which, within a year or two, either hardened a man to unthinkable cruelties, or drove him away. And her charming, sexy, amusing, effervescent Ruy—
feelthy Sanchez
as she had dubbed him during his first amorous advances—was not one of the ones who had fled the ranks, but had gone on to successes and triumphs in them.

How many innocents had he been ordered to kill? Because after all, that was often the duty of soldiers in this time, particularly Spanish soldiers. How many more had he slain during his varied service as a confidential agent for several of Spain’s cardinals and diplomats? The gentle, passionate, loving hands of Ruy were always immaculately clean when they touched her, yet, at moments like this, they also seemed indelibly stained with the blood of multitudes. Many of those notional corpses, which she now imagined littering the road behind him, had no doubt deserved to die. But not all. Possibly not even most. Sharon closed her eyes and did not open them again until they were raised beyond where she could see the faintly stained boot that bore witness to the prior life and deeds of Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz.

Who was explaining, “So the ambassadora and I decided not to alert anyone else to the fact that the two men who arrived with Father Wadding and his escorts were, in fact, enemy agents in disguise. We needed enough time to surreptitiously organize a tracking party, while also ensuring that sufficient security forces remained behind with the main group.”

Antonio Barberini still seemed amazed at the entire course of events. “But when did you suspect these two of being disguised agents?”

Wadding coughed lightly. Vitelleschi might have smiled, or it might have been a momentary facial tic.

Ruy shrugged. “Father Wadding told me of his suspicions as soon as he arrived.”

Barberini swiveled to stare at the Irish priest. “You?
You
knew they were assassins, Father Wadding?”

“You needn’t sound so stunned, Nephew,” chided Urban through a smile. “A priest who comes from, and has constant involvement in the affairs of, occupied Ireland is no stranger to duplicity and subterfuges.”

Wadding shrugged. “Our one horse threw a shoe after our second day journeying north from the Po. Threw it while we were overnighting in a stable, no less. The subsequent appearance of two mule-drivers who’d just lost a contract seemed an even more providential event than our Lord is wont to orchestrate.”

“They did not betray themselves in their actions?”

“Not directly, but there were intimations that they were not what they seemed.”

“Such as?” Mazzare’s interest was keen, clinical.

“Such as their enthusiasm for their work as mule-drivers, and for conversation with us. I mean no slight to mule-drivers as a class, but I have not found them to be exemplars of industry and motivation. They have much the same pace and personality as the creatures they tend, I find.

“That was not the case with these two. The were lively, alert, and not so much familiar with the animals as they were determined to make a good job of it. And whereas most teamsters and ostlers are of a taciturn nature, these two were quite talkative and inquisitive—except with each other. I found them an odd example of their trade.”

“And on this alone you ordered their deaths?” Barberini’s stare at Ruy was now tinged by horror.

“No, Your Eminence. There was more. When we offered them a commission to continue on with us—pure theater, of course—they declined, saying they had to return in great haste to the Po. Another impending job, according to them. Yet they had never inquired of Father Wadding or his party how long the job of escorting them was going to take; they were simply happy to take their daily wage as it came. But now, suddenly, they had urgent business back by the Po? No, we knew what they were. But just to be sure, on an occasion when one was sharing wine with me and the other was relieving himself in the bushes, I had Taggart check their bags.” Ruy spread his hands atop his knees. “Mule-drivers are much skilled in stick, staff, and cudgel; they wield them every day as the media whereby they impart their tender encouragements to the lagging creatures in their team. What Taggart found instead were: one well-hidden hanger, two
couteaux-breche
, two eight-inch daggers, and a garrote. These are not the weapons of mule-drivers, Your Eminence, of this you may be certain.”

“So you suspect they saw Father Wadding arrive on the northern bank of the Po, trailed him, lamed his one horse, and then serendipitously arrived as the solution to his sudden lack of sufficient transportation?”

“Exactly. And when they pleaded the necessity of returning to the same town on the Po, we simply followed. Albeit at some distance; assassins are, themselves, inherently untrusting souls.”

The silence that usurped the final piece of Ruy’s narrative—how that surreptitious pursuit had ended—was long, and not entirely comfortable.

“So,” exhaled Cardinal Barberini, “it seems the danger has been averted. Narrowly, perhaps, but averted.”

“Yes, Your Eminence,” agreed Ruy in a voice that was full of unspoken caveats. “For now.”

Barberini looked like he might have an episode of incontinence, despite his comparatively tender age. “What do you mean, ‘for now’?”

Ruy shrugged. “By eliminating these blackguards shortly after they began their return journey to report to their master, Borja’s spymaster here in the Republic will have considerable difficulty picking up our trail. Had the two been able to send word that they had encountered us, and where, then he would have been able to resume his search from where we sit now, which is far too close to our ultimate destination.”

Barberini spread his hands as if beseeching Providence itself for fair treatment. “But since that information was not relayed, Borja’s spymaster will not know where to search at all; his assassins will have to return to watching for signs or connections at the Venetian embassy.”

Vitelleschi shook his head. He looked at Ruy, who nodded that he was happy to let the vinegary Jesuit point out the flaw in Antonio’s reasoning. “Cardinal Barberini, this would only be true if the man ‘running’ these agents was so foolish as to keep no track of which of his teams were deployed to which towns upon the banks of the Po. When this team is the only one that fails to return, the enemy spymaster will logically deduce two things: that this was the team that encountered Father Wadding and his escort. And that we discovered their true purpose and eliminated them. Meaning he knows at least where along the Po to resume his search.”