1635 The Cannon Law: Chapter Eighteen

    Cardinal Antonio Barberini was not, in any measure, a happy man. He stood at the window overlooking the square where, money permitting, he would be wheedling his uncle to commission a new fountain. The piazza needed it, frankly. Something by Bernini, if the man had time to work on it any time before he died. The trouble with Bernini, of course, was that he was so good, he had more commissions than he could truly keep up with.

    Right now though, the problem with the piazza Barberini was not so much the absence of fountain, but the very real and present presence of what looked like a couple of hundred people. Not, if one were to be truly pedantic, a mob. They didn’t seem to have a great deal to say for themselves, and while there would certainly be pockets being picked and minor scuffles, the whole scene just didn’t look criminal. Or, at least, not from this elevated and removed vantage.

    It was just—untidy. Badly-composed. An eyesore. A pain, in crude terms, in the ass. A little while ago, he’d asked that someone be sent to wander through the crowd and see what had drawn them. Idle curiosity, really. The fellow who’d gone out—someone had picked out one of the below-stairs porters as being most likely to blend in, and Barberini could see the point, the man looked quite charmingly villainous—had come back a few moments ago saying that the crowd wasn’t really there for much; a couple of the fellows Barberini’s man had talked to had been paid to turn up and the rest had hung around to see if anything was going to happen. That alone would just have been an amusing oddity of idleness and the beginnings of a long, hot summer.

    It was not alone. There was the paper. That had been handed to the porter, he said, within minutes of him setting foot in the square. There were street-boys down there giving them to anyone with hands to hold them. The porter could not read it, but had kept it to show his boss. Barberini had it in his hand now, read once and then gripped. Naturally, the thing was scurrilous beyond belief. No-one who actually knew him would believe a word of it. Not least because the author had at one and the same time accused him of sins against nature and of patronizing Gentileschi simply in order to fornicate with her. In its way, quite amusing. And damnably infuriating.

    “Your Eminence is -” a long pause—”Angered?”

    “Father General,” Barberini said, not turning away from the window, “I did not hear you enter.”

    Vitelleschi moved over by Barberini, but did not, the younger cardinal noted, stand in the window. “Your Eminence’s majordomo vouchsafed that you seemed ill at ease. I took the liberty of entering unannounced.”

    “To be sure of seeing me helpless in fury? Knowing my weakness?” Barberini drew on every drachm of civility and manners at his command not to snarl at the Father General. It would not do for the pope’s nephew to lose his temper with his uncle’s most dependable ally. And most useful, at a time like this.

    “Your Eminence recognises it for the temptation it is. Wrath is a deadly sin.” Vitelleschi’s dry rasp had softened somewhat, Barberini noted, and he found himself all the more angry with the old man.

    “I need no catechism from you, Father General.” Barberini took pride in the fact that his voice was icy calm. Another deadly sin.

    “It is a provocation, nothing more.” For a wonder, Vitelleschi said it without sounding patronising. “Similar things have been written about your uncle. Many times, over the years since he was elected.”

    “I also need no schooling in such footling tricks as this,” Barberini said, snapping at last. “Did I need such, there would already be squadrons of horse in the square, slaking my wounded name in blood.” He realised as he said it that he was losing his white-knuckled grip on his self-control, and had brandished the paper at Vitelleschi.

    “I doubt they seek to provoke anything so crude.” Barberini noticed for the first time that Vitelleschi had brought a slim brief-wallet, and took from it other handbills like the one that was passing in the square below. Barberini could see that the ones from the case were different, for all that could not read the contents from where he was standing. Vitelleschi was silent for a long, long moment, before he went on. “Your Eminence might perhaps consider the possibility of other hasty reactions which those responsible for this libel might have sought to provoke.”

    What little patience Barberini retained was barely a shred. “Such as?”

    Vitelleschi’s glare was as baleful as the basilisk of legend. “What did Your Eminence think to do after dismissing the thought of ordering a massacre of innocents?”

    Barberini’s urgent desire to slap the Father-General across the face parsed the full measure of the insults in that question faster than his sentient mind could. He actually raised his hand before realising that the barb had been a deliberate goad. The sharp sting of the schoolmaster’s cane. Never forget that the Jesuits are educators as much as they are anything, he told himself and lowered his hand. “Father General,” he said, bowing his head and folding his hands together, “I must apologise most humbly for my unseemly and unwarranted action,” he said.

    “It is nothing, and still less to forgive. Your Eminence will please remember that I am your uncle’s most obedient servant, and he and I have grown old in the service of Christ. Yet neither of us has forgotten what it was to be a young man, with a young man’s passion and impulses.” There was the faintest ghost of a smile about the Jesuit’s lips.

    Realizing how thoroughly he had been stung, Barberini could not help but smile himself. "I confess, Father-General, that I had not as yet passed beyond the thought of horses stampeding through the piazza. Except, and I offer this in the most desperate mitigation, that when you entered I was musing on the possible themes for a new fountain in the square." He smiled again, a more amiable smile this time. "It does so need it. Far more than it does a carpet of libellous handbills."

    Vitelleschi's smile became almost discernible. "Come, Your Eminence. We must discuss more constructive suggestions."

    "I fear the Father-General will be far ahead of me," Barberini said, still rueful at having been chided like a slow-witted schoolboy. "We have confidence in our estimates of what mischief Borja intends to work, and I have considerable confidence that the Father General's subordinates have done excellent work in securing that the cardinals who will vote in His Holiness' favour will be present in Rome at or before the critical juncture."

    He nodded, the smile fading to a mere spectral hint of earthly pleasure. "The Society attempts as ever to repay the confidence Your Eminence and, through Your Eminence, His Holiness places in us. I have every expectation that on this occasion the account will be paid in full measure."

    Barberini felt his mouth crook up into a smile of genuine amusement at that. Vitelleschi must be well pleased in his peoples' efforts if he was prepared to be that flowery in his description of their success. Barberini clapped hs hands together. If Vitelleschi was prepared to be mildly pleased, it behoved lesser mortals to be demonstrative. "Excellent," he cried, "and therefore it only remains to ensure that there is nothing lurking beneath the surface of Borja's plot?"

    "There's the rub, Your Eminence." The smile was gone, now.

    "No further success?" Barberini asked, turning away from the window at last, and beginning to rub his chin. "Maddening, to lack definite answers."

    "Normal," Vitelleschi corrected him.

    "For the Father General, perhaps," Barberini said, looking about for a chair. "and, please, rest those bones that have grown old in the service of Christ. I find my fit of childish pique is quite past, now."

    "Very good, Your Eminence."

    "Now, " Barberini said, when they were both seated and he had rung for a servant to bring refreshments, "We may be no more certain beyond our educated guesses as to what Borja is about, but what is Quevedo doing?"

    "Printing handbills," Vitelleschi said, promptly, and Barberini could have sworn there was an impish tone in his voice as he said it.

    Barberini refused to be baited, suspecting the while that he was being taught a lesson thereby. "I presume that there are more handbills than simply these that slur what there is of my good name?"

    "Your Eminence presumes correctly. We have identified twelve distinct ones, in the course of the last week alone. Each framed so as to be as barely coherent as the one which I note Your Eminence still has in his hand."

    "I do? I do," Barberini said, putting the offending paper down on the table, grateful for the moment of levity. "It is as if Quevedo does not care what rumour he starts, so long as he starts some rumour to the general disorder of Rome."

    "Just so, Your Eminence."

    "What is to be done?" Barberini asked. "What can be answered in the one about myself does not merit the dignity of a response, I feel."

    "Your Eminence's considered response is commendably temperate. It is usual for the populace to be restive at this time of year when the price of bread is at its highest, seemingly each year higher than the year before. Quevedo seems, in our estimation, to be casting as many seeds as possible on the ground."

    Barberini caught the biblical metaphor. "And he hopes for fruit from the stoniest of ground?"

    "He does not act alone. Borja, directly and indirectly, can exert control over what is preached from a number of Rome's pulpits. Things are being said from those pulpits, Your Eminence."

    Barberini thought about that for a moment. He had had, in the course of analysing what Borja was up to, to review the control of all of Rome's churches. "I do not believe the Spanish party controls any churches in the poorer quarters. Those that are in the localities frequented by the common folk of Rome are all in the gift of the old families of Rome -"

    "The Borghese."

    That was a connection that shed a great deal of light, Barberini realised. The Borghese were among the oldest of Rome's nobility and controlled the benefices of some of Rome's oldest parishes. And the older parishes tended to be the poorer neighbourhoods. And if they were preaching Spain's interest-"The Borghese are definitely against us?" he asked.

    "Subtly so. Their more popular pulpits speak against the malign influence of the United States of Europe. Sermons against the Strega Nichols have been preached in at least two churches in the last week, and much is being said about foreign plots against the Church of Rome. In the more affluent neighbourhoods, they are viewing the discontent of the people with great alarm."

    "Stirring up class against class?" That was the very definition of sedition, Barberini realised, and if the Borghese had gone that far, then whatever efforts had been made to ensure the Borghese remained at least loyal to Italian interests over foreign ones had been in vain. Barberini had not personally been involved. Discussions between the noble houses of Rome were delicate business at the best of times, and never left to men in their twenties, however dizzyingly they had been promoted. "This grows grave."

    Vitelleschi made no reply.

    Barberini thought further. Nothing suggested itself. The report he would give to his uncle would be an uncomfortable one. He tried to anticipate the course of that audience. His Holiness would almost certainly suggest that approaching the problem from its fundamentals would yield results; the schools of philosophy and theology he had adhered to all his life left clear imprints on the way he thought. So, what was at the root of Borja's stratagem? "They are making allegations about the influence of the United States of Europe on His Holiness, yes?" he said.

    "Yes, Your Eminence," Vitelleschi said, his face betraying nothing.

    Vitelleschi had received his education, if not at the same time then at least from teachers trained in the same tradition as Pope Urban VIII. Their generation was the last of the mediaevals, in truth, where that of Cardinal Antonio Barberini the Younger was really the first to be untouched by that old way of thinking. It could make for conversations at uncomfortable cross-purposes, especially when the older man was bound and determined to make a Socratic dialogue of it. Very well-"and it remains the case that the contact between His Holiness and the United States of Europe since the conclusion of the Galileo affair has been only of the most perfunctory and formal kind, not such as to permit any opportunity of influence? And that their time in Rome has been spent making and maintaining contacts with merchants on the one hand, and learned men and doctors of physic and natural philosophy on the other, to the almost total exclusion of anyone with real political influence?"

    "So far as I am aware, Your Eminence."

    "And that has not prevented Quevedo's busy printers from nevertheless telling anyone who will listen that His Holiness is wholly under the spell of these wonder-workers from the future?"

    "It has not, Your Eminence."

    Barberini searched the older man's face. There was not a clue to be read there. Nary a twitch nor crease out of imperturbable place. "It therefore follows that there is no harm to be done by opening informal, social contact with the Dottoressa Nichols?"

    "None that is not already being done in the fullest measure within our opponents' power, Your Eminence," Vitelleschi said.

    "But why would I do such a thing? I confess I have not taken any steps since my uncle last spoke to me of the matter."

    Vitelleschi avoided the trap of Barberini's rapid-fire question by mis-parsing it. "Your Eminence needs no excuse to invite a notable lady of high repute in the medical arts and sciences to one of his salons. Your Eminence already cultivates several doctors of natural philosophy."

    "I would have us drop the pretense, Father General," Barberini said after a short pause. "While your efforts to educate me in matters perquisite to my position are greatly appreciated, in this matter I must ask that you advise me."

    Vitelleschi's smile returned, for the merest scintilla temporis. The blink of an insect would have sufficed to miss it. "On Friday last in the forenoon Frank and Giovanna Stone, at whose wedding Your Eminence was pleased to administer the sacrament, attended the embassy of the United States of Europe in the first of what will be regular meetings. Giovanna Stone is under the medical care of the Dottoressa Nichols."

    "Is she ill?" Barberini's concern was genuine. While he had been scared out of his wits by the gunplay at Galileo's trial-that-was-not-a-trial, he had found them to be a pleasant young couple, only a few years younger than he was himself, for whom he had heartfelt wishes of every happiness.

    "On the contrary. The marriage Your Eminence performed is to be fruitful in the latter part of this year, if God grant there be no complications. The girl is young and healthy, so as these things go the prospects must be accounted good."

    "Excellent!" Barberini cried aloud, thinking at least someone is getting good news. "And this bears on my contact with the Dottoressa-oh." Now he said it aloud, it seemed obvious. Vitelleschi had scored against him again. Which was, given the man's age and formidable learning, only to be expected. "The Committee of Correspondence is dedicated to organising mass action. You believe they -?"

    "Almost certainly not in our direct interests. But they have a laudable commitment to honesty in their dealings, or so I understand from my brethren in the Germanies. We would find them foes, but honourable foes," Vitelleschi said.

    "I understand, though, that Stone is, as far as the activities of the Committee of Correspondence in Rome are concerned, careful to undertake no mass organisation. Given his history with the Inquisition, it seems wise of him."

    "True. But we face many months of Borja's actions, and given time, the presence of an organisation which concentrates the minds of the mob on ills which can be remedied will prove useful. In the longer term, we would have to deal with them more directly."

    "Surely such things take time? The reports I have seen on the Committee-"

    "We should have time. The present unrest is sporadic, and small. There has been little call for the militia. It will take time to build to a serious problem. By then, with a guarantee of the Inquisition's restraint, it may be that the Committee will be working against the machinations of Quevedo's agitators. They do something very much like it in the Germanies."

    "I am unconvinced of the value of such a strategem, Father-General."

    "I would ask Your Eminence to cultivate the contact nevertheless. It will be some time before I can meet with His Holiness without attracting comment. Please pass to him that this is my recommendation also."

    Barberini sighed. "I feel sure that he, too, will not think well of a plan that involves inviting revolutionaries, anti-clerical revolutionaries at that, in to Rome. But, be that as it may, I shall speak with Dottoressa Nichols in any event. Her presence at my salon will be stimulating."

    "I thank Your Eminence for the consideration."

    Barberini reached for his drink again, and saw the handbill on the table. "Of course, I will be accused in print of inviting her in order to fornicate with her. I had better invite Bedmar's man as well. He is her intended, and I have heard stories about that man."