1635 The Cannon Law: Chapter Thirty Six

Rome

    "Your Eminence!" Mazarini senior, excitable as usual, was pointing out of the window. "Gun smoke, from the Castel Sant’Angelo!"

    Barberini walked over, making himself retain his dignity and decorum when all he wanted was to dash madly and press his face against the glass, or hurl the window wide and lean out to see. No doubt remained. The assault on Rome was devoted to removing his uncle from the chair of St. Peter.

    "We will hasten our departure," he said, staring at the columns of dirty-looking white smoke that were appearing over the roofline in the direction Mazarini was pointing. Barberini wished idly, for a moment, that it was the calm, icy-nerved son, now a cardinal in France, that was his majordomo, not the father. That apple had fallen a goodly ways from the tree.

    "As Your Eminence wishes," Mazarini said, and bustled away to see to whatever fine details remained. There would be little. The majority of the people of casa Barberini had gone either the night before or with first light, the morning's party going ahead under the command of Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Where others had implied that he was starting at shadows, Cardinal Antonio Barberini—essentially, left to mind the store while older and wiser heads were about the business of the house—had quietly but firmly made all of the necessary preparations for flight. And had been ruthless. It was sad to think of it, but a large proportion of the art he had so painstakingly assembled, on top of the centuries-old collection that his forebears had amassed, would soon be gone. Looted, if the world was fortunate. Destroyed, if the historical tales of how a sack proceeded were correct. Paintings tossed aside while the frames were taken for their gilt. Fine pieces pried apart to make change for whores.  Sculpture knocked aside; its value unrecognized or too heavy to carry. Or worse, hurled from upper floors, as Barberini had once seen small boys do with bottles, for the amusing sound as they shattered below.

    The more portable pieces, items that would be a worthy kernel of a future collection, had been sent away. A pitiful salvage from what would surely be a terrible wreck. It was all he could do not to weep. He had remained behind to at least see, with his own eyes, what this latest wave of barbarians proposed to do with the Eternal city. And his family. And his church. And, in some sense, because it felt right to be the last of his house to leave. Honorable. And, finally, to take one last look at what it was that was about to be lost.

    "Your Eminence?" Mazarini's voice interrupted his morose thoughts. "We are ready, if Your Eminence pleases."

    Barberini could not contain the deep sigh. It was that or begin sobbing. His eyes were hot, and stung. Only the firmest of self-control permitted him to turn away from the window without being unmanned. "Lead on, Mazarini," he said. "This must surely be the last moment."

    Mazarini did not answer, but the expression on his face betrayed his opinion that the last moment had passed some time since. Outside in the palazzo mews he reflected that the weather had no sense of dramatic unity. Such deeds should not be done on a balmy early-summer day, in bright sunshine with a light scatter of fleecy cloud in the sky. Stormy winds, lightning and thunder would have suited the mood better.

    The streets were deserted, the populace hiding or fled. Barberini looked about himself. A small party, and Barberini had taken the precaution of shedding his clerical garb in favor of more modest attire. Of course, there was a limit to how modest the attire he possessed was. He was still at risk of a robbery, but at the least there was much less chance of him being recognized and captured. And the last few of the casa Barberini guardsmen were gathered about him. A dozen troopers surrounding the cardinal and his majordomo.

    "Very good," he said after a moment. "Let us go."

    The street outside looked empty, or at least the first trooper out waved back to say as much. As he rode out into the street, Barberini realized that there was another disadvantage to the good weather. He felt as though the entire world could see him, a sensation that hitherto he had found quite pleasant, rewarding even. Now, it made him want to leap from his horse and curl up in whatever hole he could find quickly. He felt sure that the sweat that was starting all over him, and trickling down the small of his back, had little to do with the heat of the morning. He tried looking around to distract himself. The piazza for which he had decided upon a new fountain was away to his left; he saw figures moving there, some of whom seemed to be pointing and starting to move in his direction, but his horse was following that of the lead trooper and he quickly lost them. Trying to look behind oneself from a moving horse, unless one was a much more expert horseman than the cardinal had ever had the inclination to become, was a sure route to a painful fall, or at least a very confused horse. He turned to face ahead.

    The troopers ahead—Barberini realized, as suddenly they exploded into action, that he knew none of their names and the thought choked off the question he wanted to ask. He could hardly believe that ill manners were preventing him—and he still could not see why all of the dozen troopers ahead of him had suddenly spurred their mounts and drawn pistols. He looked about himself frantically, tried to rise in his stirrups for a better view—

    "DOWN, Your Eminence!" it was Mazarini shouting that, although several other voices said the same without the honorific, in one case with an insult. The horse, startled by the sudden motion and then Barberini's antics, began to rear, and then began to dance sideways, shaking its head.

 

---

 

    The sound of shots rang out, and Barberini's horse began to turn around. He was still turning his head frantically, looking for the source of the trouble, and tried to control the beast by pulling at its reins. One of the rearguard troopers leaned from the saddle and grabbed the rein, his twisted expression supplying the snarling condemnation of idiot priests who could not ride that he did not speak. Barberini let the man pull his horse back around, still seeking—there! Puffs of gunsmoke from either side of the street they had been riding along. One of the troopers slumping in the saddle, a bright red mist puffing from the back of his coat. Barberini's horse becoming frantic again, wrenching its head away to try and escape the grip on its reins.

    More shots. Another trooper, this one falling from his horse with his face scattering small pieces into the morning sunshine and his head smacking wetly into the cobblestones, spattering blood and brains in a bright and glistening red star. The trooper who was trying to control Barberini's horse losing his fight with the animal and his seat at the same time.

    Barberini realized he was screaming, and that his leg was burning and cold at the same time. His right leg. His thigh. A mist of blood, his own blood, was settling out of the air around a red gash that had somehow appeared there. I have been shot, he thought, his mind suddenly clear. There were men on foot near him in the street, men with muskets, with swords, and with pikes. His horse screamed.

    He was vaguely aware of falling, and then the world was suddenly bright with a dark border, and he could not breathe, or hear. Someone was grabbing him and hauling him up, and his vision began to clear, although he still could not breathe and his back was a single mass of pain. I fell from my horse. He had done that before, although not since he had been a boy disappointing his riding-master.

    It was Mazarini helping him up, and now he could hear the ring of weapons clashing. More shooting. Something punched him, this time in the left arm, and he spun round. He staggered once, twice, and then regained his balance. He groaned. It hurt.

    And then he was being lifted bodily, thrown over a saddle. He fainted.

    Not for long. When next he had his wits, he could still hear fighting. Every jolt as the horse galloped hurt. His leg, his back, his chest, his arm. He fainted again.

    "Your Eminence? Your Eminence? " Mazarini's voice seemed to come from a very long way away.

    "What time is it?" That somehow seemed important. Did he have a morning appointment? He was cold, and thirsty. "Have water brought, Mazarini," he murmured.

    Something wet, suddenly, on his face. And cold. Wakefulness came like fire, and he groaned. Memory returned. "I've been shot," he said, not entirely believing it himself.

    Mazarini pulled the wet cloth off. "Yes, Your Eminence. My most humble apologies."

    "Why? Was it you that shot me?" It was all Barberini could think of that Mazarini might be apologizing for. With the cold compress off his eyes, he could see that they were in a small and noisome back alley. Trash was heaped everywhere, and several mangy cats were watching to see if the strangers were going to do something interesting. The smell was … remarkable.

    Mazarini looked puzzled. "It was for the manner of waking Your Eminence I apologized, Your Eminence," he said. "I was able to escape; the party of soldiers we encountered were nearly overmatched by our own troopers, and so I caught up Your Eminence onto my own horse and made good our escape from the fighting. Our enemies mounted their principal assault at the front of the palazzo while we were leaving at the rear, Your Eminence, and—"

    "Mazarini, you are babbling," Barberini said. He looked again at the ageing majordomo. "And bleeding."

    Mazarini fingered the cut on his neck, which was weeping small drops of fresh blood from where it had not already scabbed. "A mere scratch," he said.

    "Where are we?" Barberini asked, looking around again for more clues. A poor neighborhood, certainly. And one that did not seem to object much to the streets being largely paved with cat-shit.

    "Near the mausoleum of Augustus, Your Eminence. Close to the docks."

    A very rough neighborhood, then. Another throb from his shoulder, arm, whatever it was that hurt so much—he dared not look—made him groan.

    "Your Eminence, it was the only place I could find where there was no fighting, or no sound of it. I have lost the horse, Your Eminence."

    "Stolen?"

    "By now, certainly, Your Eminence. I perforce had to bring Your Eminence where the horse would not come."

    "Sensible animal. What are they doing?" Barberini could hear more and more shooting, now. It was reassuringly distant, though.

    "I do not know," Mazarini said, in tones that were even more lugubrious than all he had said so far. "If Your Eminence will permit, I will attempt to bind your wounds. The arm needs a sling, I think. I have already—"

    "Please, just get on with it," Barberini said, gritting his teeth. He looked. There was a neat hole in his jacket, just above where his left collarbone would be. He could not turn his head further to look without unbearable pain; his back felt as though his every rib was broken.

 

---

 

    Ten minutes of fiddling and more pain later, Barberini had to admit he felt more comfortable with his arm in a sling. With a lot of groaning and effort, he was able to get to his feet. When the flashing in his eyes and the dizziness had faded, he answered Mazarini's look of concern. "What now? Have you made a plan?"

    "Your Eminence, I must counsel escape from the city."

    Barberini forced a smile. "Indeed. Shall we discuss a plan for doing so? I will advance, for learned disputation, the proposition that any member of casa Barberini is wanted dead at this time. Or captured, which will likely be worse." Oh, yes, much worse. Borja was scarcely the most moderate man to wear a cardinal's hat, and he was a Spanish inquisitor. There were things one expected of such a man. Barberini could only hope that his uncle would be protected in at least some measure by the office he held. However, it was not a day to inspire optimism.

    Mazarini looked nervously to where the alley they were in—a small passage, barely open to the sky, wide enough for two men to walk abreast if they were close friends—turned left toward somewhere rather better lit.

    "I saw many parties of soldiers about the city as we fled the battle in which Your Eminence was wounded. We were gifted by providence with the great good fortune of being pursued solely by foot-soldiers, and for much of our flight we retained the horse. Alas, Your Eminence, every attempt I made to strike north, east or south proved to be fruitless at first. I decided later to see cover in some such alley as this one, but I could not move in such with a horse. The invaders had not reached this quarter yet, so I turned the horse loose, hoping to rouse you and bind your wounds that we might make a better escape on foot."

    "Reasonable," Barberini said, and indeed it was. Military ignoramus that he was, even he knew that Rome's defenses were, more or less, non-existent. That, with only modest preparation or a little effort, there were dozens of places where the walls were no defense at all without extensive preparation. The gates were all still present, but functioned only as customs posts, and those during daylight hours only. Only cargoes too big and heavy to be brought to one of the unrepaired breaches got taxed. At night, a modest bribe to the gate guards brought any cargo through. So, it would have been trivial to send ahead parties of men tasked with taking important points—and people—and charging them to find their way in to the city however they could. Doubtless many of them would include local guides; it was too much to expect that the mercenaries who were originally from Rome would scruple overmuch about it. In truth, knowing first-hand the wealth in Rome, they would be more eager than most for a sack.

    Why? Barberini found he needed not think too long or hard about that. It would avail Borja nothing to take Rome if he could not hold it, in any and every sense save the purely military. In the military sense, he had rather better prospects of holding the city than the present defenders had had. It was the political holding of the city that would matter now. And that certainly meant one Antonio Barberini the Younger would do well not to be caught escaping. Or, indeed, that he would not be caught escaping, but would simply turn up dead, a regrettable victim of 'the chaos attendant on the civil disorder in Rome'.

    The best hope Rome had was that Osuna, or Gentili, or one of the other figures fomenting revolt in Naples took advantage of this draw-down of troops from their city. Naples, right now, was likely simply over-defended rather than home to overwhelming force. But any such hope would be weeks away, nothing that could be depended on right now.

    And if Borja had flooded the city with raiders as thoroughly as Mazarini was suggesting, it was not stopping at casa Barberini. There was time enough to be sure of that, though. "Let us move," Barberini said. "We gain nothing by remaining here. I can walk, if slowly, and if we remain on the back routes, we may well evade capture."

    "But, Your Eminence, how will we leave the city? The gates are surely guarded."

    "We will deal with that when we must," Barberini said, "Although I invite you to consider that defenses that fail to keep attackers from coming in will also serve to permit fugitives to go out."

    "Your Eminence is most perceptive," Mazarini said, offering his arm for Barberini to lean on.

 

---

 

    It was only a short walk through winding alleys to the Via di Ripetta. This was by no means a salubrious district of Rome, being as it was close by the docks. The area around the Palazzo Borghese to the south was somewhat better, but north and south of that particular piece of river-front it was dilapidated at best. The Via di Ripetta had been carved through the neighborhood some years before, to improve access to the docks, and as such remained a wide and straight street uncluttered by encroaching buildings. It was, therefore, dangerous to cross in broad daylight with hostile soldiers in the area. Mazarini was leaning around the corner and checking both ways. Barberini wished that the musketry was not echoing around the city so promiscuously, so that he could hear what was going on. Over Mazarini's shoulder, despite being somewhat dazzled by the sunlight in the street against eyes that had been in shady alleys for the last half-hour, Barberini could see that the previous cowering of the citizens of Rome had ended, and there were many already trying to flee through the streets. That will help, he thought, feeling a slight remorse over being so callous. Many of those people would be hurt, even killed, as the soldiery sought to move about the city and simply swept them aside.

    "There are soldiers, Your Eminence, but the streets grow busy. We are unlikely to have a better prospect of—"

    "Yes, yes," Barberini said, "Move. I think we should make for the east. Salaria or Pia, I think, and if those are guarded we may try the broken section of wall south of the Castra Pretoria. If nothing else, there may be Jesuits there who might help us."

    "Yes, Your Eminence," Mazarini said, and began sidling out into the street. It was comical to watch; the man was all but tiptoeing.

    "Come, Mazarini," Barberini said, affecting as normal a walk as he could with his leg burning with pain and his back and shoulder contorted into the only position he could find that even approached comfort. "Let us not skulk. Courage and honor demand it, and in any event a man attempting stealth on a sunlit street may attract attention."

    As they made their way across, Barberini realized that they had inadvertently disguised themselves. Between the dirt and the pieces he had torn from his clothing to make bandages, Mazarini looked like a vagabond. Barberini realized that he could look little better, and likely worse. As a prince of the church, he made a good pauper. Did critics of my lavish living see me now, they would expire of shock.

    They were perhaps half way across when a carriage, guarded by four outriders, came rumbling by. Barberini cringed away from the thing, not knowing which cardinal was present in it. He took note of the arms painted on the door and saw that it was the carriage of cardinal Bischi. An ally, by God! And not just an ally—Lelio Bischi was a personal friend and fellow enthusiast of literature and the arts. Barberini offered up a silent prayer of thanks and turned to try to—but no, there was no hope. Lelio was making good his escape, and doubtless none of his men would be looking back along the road to see if there were stray scions of the Pope's house scattered in their path.

    The point was moot within seconds. The carriage had proceeded barely fifty yards further when a group of soldiers Barberini had not noticed dashed into the street and lined up to block the carriage's progress. The driver halted, as a man will when he has a dozen muskets pointed at him and his team. Men came forward to take custody of the outriders, the driver, the footman and the postillions. Another man, some manner of officer, judging by the sword and the better clothes, came forward and spoke to whoever was in the carriage.

    Barberini heard nothing of what was said. The officer stepped away from the carriage door and waved his sword in an idle gesture of some kind. Four musketeers leveled their pieces at a range of perhaps three paces, and fired. Screams issued from the carriage, and it began rocking. The officer stepped forward, opened the door, and reached inside. With some apparent effort he dragged the occupant—which was wearing a cardinal's purple, although Barberini could not have sworn to the identity of the mewling, bleeding thing that was within those clothes.

    The struggle was brief. The cardinal, if it was he, clung to the sides of the carriage door for a moment. A flash of the sword, hitting the wood of the carriage with a thump and sending at least one finger spinning through the air, ended that. The cardinal fell on to the cobbles. The officer planted his sword in the cardinal's throat and leaned on it, as if on a walking stick on a pleasant country stroll.

    Barberini could not watch, flinching away. When he looked back, the officer was wiping his blade on the hem of his victim's garment, apparently oblivious to the spattering of blood that now coated him from shoulder to knee down his right side.

    Barberini shuddered. Cardinal Lelio Bischi, a lively wit and gifted lawyer, a man of letters with few equals in Rome or anywhere, a man responsible for nurturing several literary talents and an avid collector of books, snuffed out with four bullets and two strokes of the sword. Simply, it would seem, because he was publicly and clearly a Barberini man. Borja truly meant to have Rome for his own. Or for his master's own.

    "Mazarini?" he said, after a few seconds of silence, noting as he spoke that the people were starting to move all the faster to get away from something to the south, giving this small party of troops a wide berth but still flowing northward.

    "Yes, Your Eminence?"

    "We are leaving. Now."

 

---

 

    It was another two hours before they reached the Porta Salaria by roundabout ways, back-alleys and much circumspection. As Barberini had guessed, the ancient gate was now manned, and Barberini suspected that the guard was both more numerous and less bribable than the customs men who ordinarily stood there. They had reached a small shop doorway before the little piazza that opened out before the gate, and tried not to look suspicious as they looked carefully over the situation.

    There were troops on the piazza, apparently lounging about any old how, but Barberini decided that that was probably deception. Surely they would spring to more efficient action if any person tried to flee the city? Still, it was a quiet gate. As they had crossed the city, each main street that they had had to scurry across like mice had been less and less crowded with refugees. Whatever was rousting the common folk from their homes was happening in the south of the city, and to the west. The last blocks had been incredibly nerve-wracking, as they grew distant from the sound of gunfire that might have covered their own sounds. The crowds in which they had vanished as simply two more frightened citizens had thinned until, in this final quarter, people were again hiding behind bolted doors and shutters.

    Behind them, the sound of hooves on cobbles. Barberini turned to look, and it was all he could do not to fall to his knees and praise God in his most extravagant voice. It was Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, in the flesh, turning a corner into the street that Barberini and his man were lurking on. Even if the man could not help directly, there was no reason why he should not pass on information

     "Mazarini, wait here," Barberini said. "If I have made a misjudgment, your task is to survive to bring word of my death to such of my house as survive."

    He left before Mazarini could say anything, and stepped out of the shady doorway into the street and shuffled over to meet Sanchez. Between the gash in his thigh, the ache in his back and the nagging pain of the wound to his shoulder, he moved like a mendicant. A perverse whim made him want to stretch out his hand in supplication for alms, but he suppressed it.

    "Senor Sanchez," he said, as the intended of the USE's ambassador—or had he actually married her? He had been told the date of the wedding but could not now remember when it was, or had been to be. "I must most humbly apologize for my most unbecoming attire." His voice was cracked and choked. Even for a day as warm as this was promising to be, and for the amount of unwonted exercise he had had to take, Barberini's throat was dry with thirst.

    Sanchez reined in his horse before he came too close to Barberini and stared at him for a long moment. "Your Eminence?" he asked, frowning.

    "Senor Sanchez," he said, smiling as much as he could while working his jaw to try and get his mouth to moisten, "I have had a long and trying day, but I surely am not entirely so disheveled—"

    Sanchez dismounted, a smooth and flowing motion that surprised Barberini, who knew how old the man was. "My apologies, Your Eminence. I had completed my business in Rome and was distracted by thoughts of my return to my wife. How may I be of assistance?"

    So, married after all, Barberini thought, trying to calculate the angles while framing his response. "I am desirous of escaping the city while I still can. I delayed my departure—"

    Sanchez held up a hand. "My own people also. It seems our timing was slightly better than yours, Your Eminence. By perhaps half an hour. You were set upon? In your palazzo or while evacuating?"

    "In the street," Barberini said, interrupted by a cough that rasped his throat and send ice-hot needles of pain dancing up his back and left side. He screwed up his eyes, despite the way that brought back the sight of Cardinal Bischi, dumped like refuse in the street. "I think we interrupted their preparations to storm the palazzo. We were ambushed. There was confusion. My man Mazarini brought me away after I was shot and fell from my horse." Since that moment he had felt nothing but fear and a constant sense of being hunted, at least during those times when he had not been groaning in pain or unconscious.

    Sanchez seemed to notice his hoarse voice for the first time, and handed him a metal bottle that turned out to contain water. "I thank you," he said, after taking a swig. "Mazarini found a hiding place near the Ripetta while I recovered enough to walk. We made our way here, but the gate is guarded. Senor Sanchez, how were you proposing to leave?"

    Sanchez laughed. "I had every intention of riding to the gate, calling a surprise inspection, damning every one of them for slovenly curs not fit to bear the name of soldiers of His Most Catholic Majesty before riding out of the gate threatening condign punishments for every last one. A stratagem I have used before. It is of less effect with mercenaries, who tend to listen only to their own officers, but few of those are among these raiding parties."

    Barberini's answering chuckle—there was something about Sanchez that simply demanded good humor, but winced as all the ribs up his back twinged at once. "A stratagem that will not work for me, alas. Have you seen whether any of the ruined wall by the Castra Praetoria is guarded?"

    "I have not," Sanchez said, his face suddenly becoming blank. A moment of thought. "I shall assist you in your escape. I cannot speak for the USE embassy as to any further aid, but I shall see you safe to a doctor and shelter."

    It was all Barberini could do not to faint with relief.

 

---

 

    Melissa had been looking pensive throughout the conversation. "Any thoughts, Sharon?" she asked.

    Sharon sighed. She knew exactly what Melissa was driving at, and she pretty much had to have made a decision before the transmission window opened up, or she'd be stuck with whatever State came up with in about a week's time. One thing she did know was that the time to act was right now, while there was still fighting in Rome. The sound of cannon had started coming out of the city, silhouetted as it was against the setting sun, and the columns of smoke had been rising since mid-morning and were now probably visible from hundreds of miles away. The USE presence right here right now was small enough to fit into this tavern and rented space in half a dozen nearby farmhouses and barns. So if they were going to do anything to intervene against the USE's avowed enemies, then they'd have to do something very well focused and accurate. Which meant doing it now, before whatever Borja was up to came off completely and he was settled in to—what, exactly? Knowing that would be half the decision made for her.

    And that would be the half she was missing. Truth to tell, she liked Cardinal Barberini. He was an easy man to like, being a cheerful little butterball most of the time. She'd been to a few of his salons, seen the kind of company he liked to keep, gotten more than a little giddy on the kind of art he collected, and marked him down as Good People. Politically, he was humane, forward-thinking, liberal and—leaving aside some unthinking assumptions that went with being a nobleman—quite decent. Not the brightest light in the harbor, maybe, but you couldn't have everything.

    "Not right now, Melissa," she admitted. "I think maybe we should get something to eat. I'll take suggestions over dinner, have a talk with Cardinal Antonio, hear Ruy's report and then see how it looks." Ruy had come in from the stable-yard while she was speaking, still looking travel-stained and a little weary around the edges. "Hi, Ruy. Is the horse okay?"

    Ruy rocked a hand in a gesture he'd picked up from the up-timers. "Two or three days of rest, I think. A noble beast, to be sure, to bear the strain I asked of him without complaint. The Marines are coddling him yet, assuring him all will be well. I fear I may have gone down in their estimation for straining the poor animal so." His mouth quirked a little in a tired smile. Sharon found Ruy looking tired and vulnerable rather appealing and realized that they hadn't had a proper wedding night quite yet.

    Down, girl.

    "I think you need a little coddling yourself, Ruy," she said. "Get yourself cleaned up and I'll order dinner. You can tell me what's going on in Rome while we eat."

    Dinner was, as with all rural Italian food, what a good Italian restaurant was a pale imitation of. What was more, it was fresh and there was plenty of it. Ruy, who plainly hadn't troubled to stop and eat while riding around Rome, got through enough for about four and washed it down with plenty of wine. He still managed to keep up a constant stream of narrative. The news from the Committee saddened Sharon, although if Ruy was right and Frank followed the advice he'd been given there was a good chance he'd come out of it alive. Adolf, for whom Sharon made a mental note to see that there was something left for him to eat, managed to get all of it down on paper.

    The news wasn't good. Barberini, who was taking his meal in the room they'd found for him, had seen one other Cardinal summarily executed. Ruy had chatted with several soldiers and learned that they had been force-marching all through the night across country and, after a short rest to give the main body time to catch up, had gone in to the city with a whole list of targets, chief among which had been the homes or lodgings of several dozen senior churchmen. Quevedo had been busy throughout the time he had vanished, as well. The fortifications at Ostia had more or less been sold to the incoming fleet at Naples, and the lighter pieces of artillery kept there would likely have arrived in Rome by now.

    There was heavy fighting around the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo, but Ruy had not gone close. If there was anyone who might recognize him among the invading army, that was where they would be, and pretty much all the information he needed had been in the sounds of gunfire and the screams of the wounded from that quarter.

    What it added up to was another question. The obvious answer was that there would shortly be a new Pope, one who was probably sympathetic to Spain and certainly hostile to the USE. The official Papal neutrality on the current wars would come to an end. For the USE, a nation with a significant Catholic presence, that was likely going to be a problem. Not all, or even many, of the Catholic clergy in the USE would be beating Spain's drum as a result. Spain having invaded Rome in order to install a new pope would result in a lot of consciences feeling a lot freer than they might otherwise.

    But some would. And that would be a problem, in a nation with freedom of religion. A big problem. Not least because there was a sizeable chunk of the Protestant confession that already regarded the Catholic population as a fifth column. Of course, the fact that the USE's cardinal, thankfully not in Rome right now, was Larry Mazzare, would mitigate that to some extent. Only the loopier pamphleteers claimed that an up-timer from Chicago was a Habsburg agent. But putting Larry, one of Sharon's closer friends after all they'd been through in Venice, in that position by not acting right now was definitely not something Sharon was prepared to do.