1635 The Cannon Law: Chapter Thirty One

Rome

    Frank heard Benito coughing in the dawn mist as he trudged along the street to get a look back at the night's work. He'd seen Piero handing around the handrolled cigarettes that Harry Lefferts had made popular, and had thought about trying to issue a health warning. The tobacco that they got downtime was way, way stronger and harsher than Frank remembered from back up time. When he'd thought about it, it had seemed hypocritical . He'd been thinking wistfully about having a smoke himself to calm his nerves and settle his stomach.

    Just not of tobacco.

    He reached the corner of the next block down from the Committee building, about the furthest away you could stand and actually see it, given how crooked the streets were in Rome. If the  rumors were right, he was standing about where a Spanish soldier would when he first caught sight of it.

    So, he thought, I've been marching all day. Maybe had to fight a couple of times getting here. Imagining being tired wasn't hard. He'd gotten an hour or so's nap in just now, and it hadn't done him any good at all. He'd been running himself ragged-assed since yesterday afternoon. Which meant the footsore and pissed-off part wasn't exactly tough to get into either.

    Oh yeah, he thought, I'm a jock, too. He hunched forward a little and let his arms hang loose. Knuckles down, to drag on the floor. Enough method acting, he thought, and chuckled to himself.

    Right now, the light was in his eyes. The sun wasn't over the roofline yet, but the sky was bright and the morning mist that had come up off the river hadn't burnt away yet. The diffuse and silvery light hurt his eyes and made details hard to pick out. Later on, there'd be early summer glare, and maybe smoke. And maybe we'll make sure there is smoke, he thought. Bound to be someone who can tend a smudge. Me, if no-one else. Not that he'd ever thought that the gardening he'd picked up from his dad would find a use in this kind of situation.

    He closed his eyes, counted slowly to ten, and then opened them and tried to make himself really see what was in front of him. He'd tried to remember what the place had looked like when they'd first moved in, all those months ago. They'd done a lot. Frank couldn't remember sleeping much in those first weeks, could remember spending money like water and having workmen in every day. And with enough hands the work had gone fast and come in less than they'd guessed at.

    Then we wrecked most of it in one night, he thought, and looking at the facade of the building he could see that they hadn't wasted their time. The yard gate was nailed shut, a couple of baulks on the outside for show and a much stronger reinforcement on the inside. The windows had had all the outside shutters replaced with boards nailed over them, and most of the glass smashed. Soot had been smeared everywhere they could reach—leaving Benito and a couple of guys he'd gotten to help under firm orders from Giovanna to get washed. Like chimney-sweeps. Although that was a real job here and now, even though the sight of one walking down the street made Frank start humming songs from Mary Poppins. The door was ready to be nailed shut as well.

    Inside, most of the stock had been hidden on the still-mostly-derelict upper floors, and Dino had thought for about two minutes about how to keep the Spanish from looting the booze and then ripped out the staircase. It had taken him the best part of an hour with a prybar and provided a lot of the scrap timber for the frontage.

    Basically, the place didn't look like it was worth looting at all, and inside they'd find pretty much nothing where they could get at it easily. There were plenty of more tempting targets, even if the soldiers strayed into this neighborhood despite richer pickings elsewhere. Hell, even after they'd vandalized it, Frank's place was still in better shape than most of the places around it. A quarter of them were derelict for real.

    Doing it had been the toughest call Frank had had to make. The easy choice, the obvious choice, was to take it on the lam and hide out in the sticks for a week or so. That wouldn't have been hard. It was what he'd meant to get everyone organized on when he started back from Sharon's wedding, refusing to run and strolling along with Giovanna on his arm and the rest of the guys trailing after him, taking their cue from him and chatting as they ambled along.

    Probably no-one had noticed, but Frank at least figured that anyone who looked would see the revolutionaries fearing nothing while the nobility scurried. When he'd gotten back, though, the reaction of the neighborhood had been weird. Benito and Roberto had been left minding the store, and they were swamped. The place was packed. Well, not packed, but definitely full. It wouldn't have surprised Frank to have everyone go quiet when he walked in and look at him expectantly.

    They didn't. It took Frank a while to get around everyone who was there and figure out what was going on, but it boiled down to a fairly simple notion: these were the people who weren't leaving. A few, because it was sheer defiance. Leave on account of a few fucking Spaniards? No way!

    For the rest, they simply couldn't leave. Or had no reason to. And they wanted to get together somewhere and try and stay safe. Frank would be the first to admit that he was far from being a highly experienced political organizer, but even he could see that bugging out right now would pretty much doom the Committee in Rome, and harm it everywhere else in Italy.

    A straightforward defense—and some of the folks in there were already well in to the wine and talking about barricades—would have been suicide, however. Frank had, precisely once, seen the results of a real battle up close, when he'd been running about as a medical orderly after the battle of Badenburg. And had seen that what it took to stop a tercio was a whole bunch of guys with rifles and a machine gun. And even then, from what he'd heard, they'd sucked it up and kept coming. The amount of firepower they had at the Committee was two pistols, the shotgun, a revolver and whatever collection of rusty antiques the neighborhood managed to turn up. Likely nothing. A decent pistol was pretty much no use at all in a street fight and could be sold for at least a week's food for a family. Or a couple of days' drinking, depending on who was doing the selling.

    So a stand-up fight was out of the question. Some of the older folks in the neighborhood remembered stories their grandparents had told them about the last sack of Rome. Also by the Spanish, as it turned out, although that time they'd had Germans along to help. The town was going to be sacked, no question. Anything not nailed down was going to be stolen, because that was how soldiers got paid. And once the soldiers got good and drunk, or right away if they'd had to fight hard to get in and they were good and mad, the nasty stuff would start.

    Rape, said a little voice in the back of Frank’s mind. He'd tried, in the wee small hours of the morning, to persuade Giovanna to take some of the women and kids over to the embassy, to leave with the convoy they'd be getting ready to roll with right about now. He winced at the memory. They'd fought before. Blazing rows, fit to loosen plaster three streets away. In a way, they were kind of nice, they cleared the air. And often the prelude to some excellent make-up sex.

    So having Giovanna ream him out in a low, sneering monotone had been pretty awful. She was, in some ways, a stereotype Italian girl, raised to be feisty. Hot tempered. She'd defer to her husband, but would make sure her input into his decisions had been fully and clearly registered beforehand. This time, though, she'd come off as genuinely offended that he'd even considered the possibility. The idea of sending people to live on the charity of the USE Embassy had pushed the Revolution Button.

    He'd given ground as gracefully as he could, which wasn't very gracefully at all. The best he'd been able to manage was a promise that she'd stay on one of the upper floors, throwing firebombs if they had to defend themselves.

    Would it come to that? Frank looked at the building again. Hopefully not. It looked like it had before they moved in, just another dilapidated wreck of a place, nothing valuable inside. Hopefully they wouldn't get so stuck for billets that they'd try and move soldiers in. Hopefully they wouldn't just torch the entire neighborhood. Hopefully they'd stick with attacking the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo and the rich folks' houses, where the good pickings were.

    Hopefully.

    Frank was finding it hard to hold on to his hopes after a night without sleep.

    A figure walking through the mist, silhouetted against the light that scattered from the eastern sky, resolved into Piero. "Does it look good?" the lefferto asked.

    "See for yourself," Frank said, gesturing back up the street.

    Piero gave it an appraising look. "Much the same as the other buildings around here. Which is to say, a shithole. I would not want to loot it. A Spaniard? They say they would steal dogshit from the gutter, but there are better pickings in Rome. My own family's place, for one."

    "Why aren't you there?" Frank asked. "Not that I'm not grateful you're helping, but won't your folks need the help?"

    "I won't discount stupidity, Frank," Piero said, shrugging. "Truth be told, I asked myself what Harry would have done. I think here is where he would choose to be."

    "True," Frank said, guessing as much as Piero was doing. He'd not really known Harry—the guy was a good few years older than him and had left high school just as Frank was starting.

    "And," Piero went on, "my folks can afford a fast carriage and armed riders to remove my mother and sisters and the real valuables to safety. For the rest, a few barrels of wine on the ground floor will likely satisfy the Spaniards. Our real wealth is in land and buildings, Frank, which cannot readily be stolen. There will be some breakage, and my father will complain loudly about the loss, but my allowance will not dry up nor anyone who depends even on a casa as modest as my own go hungry."

    "Still, they're family," Frank said, probing. "Surely they could use—"

    Piero wagged a finger. "Yes, but there I make little difference, as one more guard among many. At worst, we lose a fraction and it is already well-guarded. Here? These people came to you for the protection of everything they have. If they lose, they lose everything."

    "Well, I can't fault your logic, and I'm grateful as all get-out for you acting on it. Wish I could be certain I'd be as good as that in a pinch."

    "You are, Frank," Piero said. "You could have left. I heard what that runner from the embassy said. Although you have a reputation as a tireless champion of the people to uphold. Me, I am a ruffian and a layabout and a philanderer. If word should get about that I engaged in—" he shuddered theatrically—"altruism, why, I should be ruined."

    "My lips are sealed," Frank said, chuckling, "I'll tell everyone a jealous husband hit you over the head with a bottle while you were dead drunk, and your brains were scrambled."

    "True," Piero said, grinning back. "Why, I hardly know what day it is. How many fingers am I holding up?"

    "One," Frank said, dryly.

    "See? I had to ask for help even with that. Must remember that gesture. If the Spaniards spot us, I shall need it again."

    It was less than an hour before Ruy turned up. "I see you hope to hide, Frank," he said, dispensing with the pleasantries. His face was stern, and the effect over the rough traveling gear he was wearing in place of his usual peacock finery was more than a little scary. No-one would think he was anything but a tough customer any other time, but dressed for a fight, he looked like a battle waiting to happen. The elegant rapier had been replaced with a much heavier weapon, he had a pair of downtime-made revolvers thrust through his waist-sash, two knives in each boot-top and there were metal reinforcements glinting from the gauntlets he had tucked in to his sword belt. There was also a small arsenal of lethal hardware neatly stowed around his horse's saddle.

    He paused to look around the place. "Most sensible. I think that if it comes to a sack, you will likely be overlooked." Another fierce glare at the preparations still under way. "And your defensive works, within the limits you are under, are also practical and sensible. If misfortune should strike, you will buy time for many to escape. You have made preparations in the cellar?"

    Frank nodded. "And we've cut through to the place out back and either side. It's vacant, mostly falling down inside. We can get out that way if we have to."

    "Good," Ruy said. "More sensible still would be to bring your people out of the city. We aim to make a temporary place of safety, a refugee camp, on the outskirts of the city. You should come there, Frank. The army is a few hours away, if their commander knows his trade, but in that time you may cover far more distance than a marching army can." Something on his face seemed to have trouble with the words.

    "I know it's sensible, Ruy. And believe me, I've tried to figure a way to get people out. It's just not something we can do." Which wasn't quite true. If it was just a case of finding enough handcarts and such to carry those who couldn't walk, and enough provisions, Frank reckoned he could probably organize a pretty fair refugee column. And an army that had to cover every mile on foot or horseback, and had to work to kill people, wasn't going to be massacring refugees. And they had enough people to make sure they wouldn't be casually robbed. The problem wasn't practical. It was that if he ran now, the Committee in Rome was finished. And, come right to it, Frank would have to spend the rest of his life not liking himself a whole lot.

    Ruy nodded in turn. "I understand. Honor and duty compels you, just as duty compels that I should obey the order to ask. Your wife?"

    Frank couldn't help rolling his eyes heavenward. "She feels the same way. Won't go. I tried."

    Ruy's face was somber for a moment. Reflective even, seemingly lost in memory for a moment. "The best ones are ever thus, Frank," he said, and Frank wondered, for a moment, what story lay behind that remark. Ruy, in a sure sign that he was minded for serious business today, didn't go on to tell it. Or launch into some improbable—and hilarious—fiction.

    Still, Frank had managed to find a few minutes to be ready for this. "Can I ask a favor, Ruy?"

    "I am at your service to whatever extent my duties permit, Frank," he said. And not the usual flowery declamation of his public persona, either.

    Frank realized that he'd just heard a man lay down his name's word on something, and mean it. That was good. He pulled out a small bundle of letters, scribbled on mismatched bits of paper, hastily sealed with candlewax and tied up with string. "I think we're probably going to be okay," he said, "but if things go badly wrong…"

    Ruy nodded, and took the packet. "I will see your letters delivered. I shall return to the embassy now; our own convoy will be ready to leave soon. We are heading east into the countryside, there are villages there where we can find shelter and a defensible position until Rome is once more secure. I wish you good fortune, and a long life, Frank."

    After that, there was little to do save wait.