1635 The Cannon Law: Chapter Twenty Five

Rome

    The drive back from the Palazzo Colonna was anything but dull, Sharon noticed. Cities being what they were, pre-automobile, sound carried. The cool that came with the Mediterranean spring night let it carry even further. Somewhere, there was trouble. The roaring of a crowd, somewhere, and the sound of shooting.

    "Sounds like it's a long, hot, night," her father remarked as the carriage-driver trotted his team along a broad street.

    "It would appear that the disturbance earlier was not the last," Ruy added. "It is the time of year for it."

    "Bread prices?" Rita asked.

    "Indeed. This year's harvests are not yet in, and last year's are running low, and last year's was nothing special. If there is trouble, it spreads quickly." As if to underscore Ruy's words, a column of cavalry came along the street in the opposite direction, heading toward the river.

    "Where will they be heading?" Melissa asked, craning her neck in the open-topped carriage as the horsemen went by.

    "Probably to the rougher neighborhoods across the river," Sharon told her. That side of the river had become run-down during the years the papacy was in Avignon. Despite the fact that the Pope had been back in the Vatican for decades, the area had never recovered. The neighborhood right under the Vatican's walls was the roughest of all, and the adjoining parish where Frank had sited the committee's headquarters wasn't much better. There were tough neighborhoods on this side of the river, the area around the Ripetto docks for one, but for sheer nastiness the streets within the Leonine wall that was part of the Vatican's mediaeval defenses were Rome's low point.

    Dr. Nichols harrumphed. "Always the same. Poor folks wreck their own neighborhood first."

    "I wouldn't be so sure, Dad," Sharon said. "You hear gunfire too?"

    "Isn't that part of it?" Dr. Nichols asked.

    "The preferred weapons in those quarters are knives and cudgels, Senor Nichols," Ruy said. "I would wager that there are bodyguards and the better militia bands attempting to restore order."

    "By killing everyone?" Melissa sneered.

    "If their officers feel it necessary, yes," Ruy said, plainly not much more impressed than she was. Sharon was reminded of something Ruy had once said, shortly after she had met him. If it was my duty, yes. Not simply because it was ordered.

    "We should be safe enough, right?" Rita asked. "If it's staying in the rougher neighborhoods, we should be okay, I mean. I'm supposed to be here on holiday."

    Sharon laughed. "Rita, honey, if I'd known this was all going to break out, I wouldn't have invited you. Everything was quiet two months ago."

    "Perhaps, Sharon," Ruy said, "if these disturbances go on past tomorrow night, we might consider postponing the wedding. I am uncomfortable with keeping the Donas Melissa and Rita in a situation of danger, and I am certain the Senor Simpson and Doctor Nichols are being too polite to suggest we postpone our nuptials."

    "I wouldn't say that, Senor Sanchez," Tom said, hurriedly. "But if you're offering to do that, I would like to see Rita safe. But let's wait a little longer than just tomorrow before you take that decision. After all, Rita and Melissa and I have been in stickier situations than this."

    Sharon nodded, then grinned at Ruy. "You don't get out of standing at the altar that easy, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz," she said, wagging a finger at him. "We're getting married even if we have to have the aisle cleared with grapeshot."

    "She'd do it, too," her dad said.

    "I well believe it, Doctor," Ruy said, "for did she not resort to disembowelling me to get me into her bed?"

    Sharon groaned, and looked to Rita for support. "They're ganging up on me," she pleaded, "help me!" There was no help from that quarter. Rita was smirking.

    "I suppose," Melissa said to no-one in particular as they drew up to the embassy, "that it's too late to issue any warnings about men and their juvenile senses of humor?"

    "Entirely," Sharon said.

    They sat up talking a while. Tom and Rita finally had time to fill everyone in on the details of their frankly hair-raising escape from the Tower. Ruy said that he should very much like to meet Harry Lefferts, a notion that made Melissa go a little pale.

    For her part, Sharon made sure her report had gone with the night's radio dispatches before settling down with the others. Once Tom and Rita had gotten through a blow-by-blow of the dash out of London and the wine was going around, Sharon realized she was pretty much bushed. "I'd tell you all what you're missing at the palazzo Barberini," she said, "but I don't reckon I can stay up another minute."

    "Now you mention it," Tom said, "beauty sleep is calling to me, too. And a guy like me needs all he can get."

    Just then, Corporal Ritson stuck his head around the door. "Mistress? There's trouble out."

    "What?" said everyone at once.

    "Brawl in the street outside. Lads've barred't door."

    Sharon had to think about that for a moment. Ritson's accent was pretty thick—he pronounced door as 'do-er'. "Will we see from the windows?" she asked.

    "Best not, mistress," Ritson said. "They're hoisting stones at one another. I've sent a lad to wake't cap'n, Mistress, and come t'tell you and the Senor, Mistress." He looked worried, which probably meant pretty much the same from the case-hardened borderer as it did from Ruy.

    "I predict you will want to go and see in any event, Sharon," Ruy said, not bothering to embroider it with any weary tone of resignation. "I shall accompany you, and I would esteem it a great service if Senor Simpson came also. Your presence, Senor, will do much to deter the common sort of ruffian and avoid the need for steel to be drawn."

    "Be glad to oblige," Tom said.

    The embassy fronted straight onto the street, so there was no easy way to defend the building and still have the door open. The Marines on guard had come inside and barred the big double-leaf main door, and one of them was looking out of the spy-hatch at the street outside. There were four of them, all with their carbines at the ready, and Sharon could hear booted feet jogging into other rooms. The windows were shuttered, but to a determined man with a prybar they were unlikely to be much defense.

    "Let me see," said Sharon, already hearing the sounds of a commotion outside. The marine at the hatch stood aside and let her peer through the little iron grille. With a four-inch square to look through, she couldn't see much other than a confusion of ragged clothes and flying fists. There were hoarse shouts, the sounds of blows landing and yells of pain, fear and anger. And, lying in the street, mostly clutching at parts of themselves but in one case ominously still, people who had been hurt.

    "The scunners hae been at each other like that f'r a wee while, Mistress," the marine who'd been at the hatch said. "Two mobs ae 'em come at once, and fell tae blows. We came within doors, Mistress, rather than be involved wi'oot the rest o' the lads, Mistress."

    Sharon had the feeling that that was out of an unselfish desire to ensure the fun was shared. "Did you hear them say anything about why they're fighting?"

    "Some ae' em're agin all foreign folk as they see it, Mistress," he said, plainly doubtful that a Scotsman could be called a foreigner by anyone, least of all someone who was a foreigner himself, "and t'others are riled aboot yon Spaniard papist."

    The Marines seemed to have a fair bit of Italian between them, Sharon had found. Every single one of them could order drink, and probably less savory pleasures, within hours of arriving in Rome, and most of them had a working vocabulary. Several of them had spent years, before the Ring of Fire, in the notoriously polyglot armies that fought the wars in Germany, and would have gone back and forth between the loosely-defined sides as the tides of battle ebbed and flowed. Colonel MacKay, who had brought most of these cavalrymen to Grantville originally, had a distant cousin whose mercenary regiment, raised originally to fight for the Protestant powers, had been on each side at least twice. "Can you tell which gang is winning?"

    "Them as is angry at all foreigners, I think, Mistress," he said. "A' wouldnae go oot, Mistress, 'tis awfy rough." Again, a slightly wistful tone that he was missing the fun.

    Sharon had no intention of opening the door. There was at least one pair of fighters not three yards away, and between the knife one had and the cudgel the other one was swinging wildly, anyone who got near them was in as much danger as their mutual opponents. "Dad?" she said, "Can you have your emergency kit ready? Only I think we're going to have casualties. One of you Marines get word to Captain Taggart—"

    "Here, Mistress," the captain said, behind her.

    "Oh. Well, we'll want an aid station setting up. I think the ballroom will be best. It's at the back and there's plenty of space," she said.

    "As many lanterns as you can find," Dr. Nicols added, "and at least two tables big enough for a man to lie on."

    "Aye," Captain Taggart said, "We've a field manual for the such as that these days, and I've lads here who assisted the lady doctor in Venice when she mended the guts of the Senor."

    "Good," Sharon said. "Hopefully this will—”

    Stars flashed before her eyes and she flung herself back from the grille. She felt, rather than heard, the resounding clang of a rock hitting it, and chips of stone stung her face and eyelids where they spattered.

    Shouts of alarm, steadying hands, and she got her eyes open. "I'm okay, okay, really, I'm okay," she said, "more surprise than anything. Someone threw a rock at the door."

    There was a volley of thuds and crashes as more and more rocks hit the front of the embassy.

    "Permission to return fire, Mistress?" Captain Taggart asked.

    "No," Sharon said, hearing her dad, Melissa and Rita say it at the same time. "Not unless it looks like they might get in, please. I don't want any more casualties than we've already got. I don't think it's safe to bring in any of those wounded quite yet, but let's have that aid station anyway."

    Another series of crashes. "Aye, Mistress," the Captain said, sounding dubious, and left to give the orders.

    "Last thing we want's a massacre," Dr. Nichols growled. "Surest way to make this last longer than it has to. Eventually they'll get tired and go home to sleep it off."

    "This is most likely," Ruy said.

    It was the dawn of a sleepless night before the last of the hooligans began to drift away, not notably pursued by any militia presence. Sharon hoped that that was because they had been busy with worse trouble elsewhere. No-one else on the same street had been much troubled, from the looks, and certainly the armed retainers in those houses would likely have a lot less compunction about firing into a crowd. The casualties were few in number, in the end, and if there had been fatalities, someone had removed the bodies under cover of darkness. Those that were left were being helped away by others by the time Ruy and Captain Taggart would let her or her dad open the door and go out, so in the end there was nothing to do. Sharon wondered if any of them would have refused treatment after a night spent hurling stones at her residence, and supposed she would never know.

    Then she then realized that the rioting had probably gone all through Frank's neighborhood, and she had no way of knowing even whether he was alive.

    Frank shoved the broom across the floor with angry, bashing motions. They'd had maybe half an hour of quiet followed by the first sounds of trouble. The band had quit—half of them had gone off to join in the so-called fun—and when it was quiet, it was eerily quiet. Everyone who'd stayed behind had gotten a little bit subdued. Even the lefferti, normally a boisterous bunch, were hunched over their tables and conversing in low tones. Frank was making an early start on the cleaning once the patrons had been persuaded to shift in close to the bar. Some nights like this had been pleasant, convivial even. A few regulars, up half the night and putting the world to rights.

    Tonight, it was small knots of people around the couple of tables nearest the bar.  Frank figured he’d get the place near enough that it wouldn’t be too much trouble in the morning and call it done. Then he’d pour one for himself, see that Giovanna was getting some rest, and see if he couldn’t get the worry out of his head. He kind of wished he’d inherited more of his dad’s calm approach. Or maybe it was something his dad had learned; there were a couple of incidents in the early seventies that dad was pretty quiet about.

    Benito wandered over with a dustpan just as Frank got the crap into one tidy heap. “It’s not a good night,” he remarked. Frank had been about to think of him as a kid, and then stopped for a moment. When he’d first met Benito, nearly a year and a half before, he’d been a snot-nosed little guy that Frank had taken for about eight, maybe nine. Since then, with a fair chunk of help from Frank’s dad, who had remarked that you couldn’t solve world hunger by buying everyone dinner but you could at least make a start, Benito and a fair few of the other youngsters whom Massimo was more or less bringing up as Committee cadets had gotten a good deal more feeding. Benito was now nearly as tall as Frank and occasionally his voice wobbled a bit. It would be easy enough to take him for a kind-of-short fifteen now.

    Frank caught himself. “Sorry, Benito, I was daydreaming. I think I’m getting old.”

    Benito shrugged. “Kid on the way, I figure you are old, or will be soon.” He stooped to hold the dustpan where Frank could make use of it. “Gonna be weird, you’re the first guy I know to have a kid.”

    “Eh? Messer Marcoli’s got—“

    Benito stood up with the pan full of garbage. “You know what I mean. Regular guys. Guys I, like know …" He trailed off, expecting Frank to get it.

    He didn't, of course and he was trying to think of something to say that would make any sense when there was a godalmighty bang from the shutters out front. "Shit!" he yelled as he flinched.

    "What was that?" Benito said, and there was a chorus of scrapes as everyone in the bar-room got to their feet.

    Then the door flew open, banging back against the wall. Frank didn't get more than a split second to take in the sight of half-a-dozen guys bursting in through the door, before one of them yelled "There he is! -" The guy doing the shouting was a local, a short, wide guy who'd been in a couple of times maybe. Frank didn't know his name, he was just one of the neighborhood bums. Some kind of small-time criminal, if Frank was any judge. The mob with him—there were more coming in the door, maybe fifteen or twenty, started to move in on Frank.

    "Basta!" Frank looked to his right when he heard the word snarled, and saw that Piero and a couple of his friends had stood up and come over by Frank. All three had the big knives, the nearest the local cutlers could get to Bowie knives from descriptions alone, that the lefferti tended to favor if they didn't carry rapiers. Piero, being a bit more of a high-roller than the others, had a rapier as well and was using his bowie as a main gauche.

    Frank hefted his broom, feeling more than a bit silly. The crowd came up short, the guys in front staggering a bit as the ones in back crowded up behind them. Frank saw clubs, a couple of lengths of chain and some knives in evidence. Piero and his friends—more were coming over to join them and they all looked like they were looking forward to a fight—certainly had them outclassed in the blade department.

    That cheerful thought was followed by another that made his belly sink. People are going to die, tonight. Right in my bar. He took a deep breath. He wasn't going to let this happen without he at least tried—

    "Everyone calm down!" he yelled, trying to keep his voice steady, hoping that the various noises behind him didn't include Giovanna getting tooled up. "Nobody needs to get hurt, just head back on out, okay?"

    "Damned foreigner!" That was “Shorty”—as Frank found himself mentally naming the first guy to speak. "You think you can tell us what to do in our own neighborhood?"

    Frank took a step forward. "No," he said. Then, with another deep breath and a step toward Shorty, he yelled, "But in my own damned bar I can! See if you get served another drink in here, asshole!"

    Shorty seemed a bit nonplussed at that. So Frank decided to try and defuse it some more. He let the broom fall and leaned on it. "Anyone who wants a drink, take a seat. Except you, asshole," he said, pointing at Shorty, "Get out of my place."

    That got a laugh. Frank let himself hope that the situation was about to defuse, when there was another crash and something smashed through the window and shutters both. A kerbstone, or something like it, Frank thought, as he watched it come through and smash a chair to kindling.

    And then the place just erupted. Frank never did figure out who started it, but there was a sudden swirl of bodies, he brought up the broom to fend someone off, gave him a face-full of bristles, swayed back as someone else slashed at him with a knife and missed, stumbled as someone else jostled in to him from behind, and flinched again as the first shot was fired.

    Oh crap, he thought, now it's really serious. Except that the mob seemed to be retreating, and there were clouds of plaster dust in the air. Then he heard, slicing through the din, female shrieks. His heart tried to sink and soar at the same time, as That's my girl! tried to shout down It's not safe! in his mind. Still, he stood up straighter, and looked around. There were a couple of the crowd on the floor, mostly still moving, and clutching bits of themselves. And there, coming from behind the bar, eyes flaming and Venetian invective in full Marcoli flow, was Giovanna, working the slide on the shotgun.

    "Who's next?" she shrieked. That was followed by comparisons between the crowd and various animals, all of them greatly to the disfavor of the crowd. But as far as Frank could see she'd only shot holes in the ceiling so far. "Come on? Lackeys of the exploiters! Class traitors! I'll give you a taste of what's waiting for your noble masters—"

    She punctuated it with another round into the ceiling and the last few die-hards turned and bolted for the door.

    Frank let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

    Giovanna handed him the shotgun and a handful of shells from her apron pocket. The sound of the broom hitting the floor as he dropped it was the only sound. Into the silence, she said, "Next time, we have someone waiting for them."

    Frank wondered what to say. What he dared say. In the end, like husbands since the dawn of time, he settled for "Yes, honey."

    Ten minutes later and it was hard to tell whether or not there'd been a fight. The lefferti had ordered more drinks and were congratulating each other. None of them had had chance to close in on anyone and hurt him; they were all too well armed for anyone to have tried anything in the few seconds the fight had lasted. A couple of the other regulars had been hit, and had bruises, and a couple of others had gotten in a few licks, and left some of the crowd limping as they left.

    Benito was watching out of the door, occasionally orbiting the windows on to the street, and looking worried. After a while he came back over. "There are still some guys out in the street, Frank," he said.

    "Doing what?" Frank asked, checking where his pistol was holstered across the back of his belt where he could get at it without looking too threatening.

    "Just watching the place," Benito said, looking worried.

    Frank remembered that Benito had grown up in a far, far rougher neighborhood than Grantville, West Virginia, which while not exactly high society had been a quiet and decent place. He pretty much ought to know what trouble in the offing would look like.

    "Okay," Frank said, thinking about it. They'd been driven out once, they were more than likely pissed about it, but most of them wouldn't want to come back in and get shot at. After a while, though, only the real die-hards would still be out there. What would they do? A few unpleasant possibilities crossed Frank's mind. The building was brick, solid brick, but most of the internal floors and the furniture and fittings were wood. Extremely flammable wood. And all the lamps that made the place so bright and cheery at night were, from one point of view, simply fragile bottles of oil held up where they could shatter easily. "I figure we keep watches all night," he said after looking around the place. "Fire watches."

    Benito nodded. He'd probably been thinking the same sort of thing.

    It was a long, hot night. Uneventful, in the end, but long and hot.