1635 The Papal Stakes (44 page)

“All is well, Signor Stone. A mild disturbance in the street.”

“Sounds more like a riot, to me,” Giovanna offered from the doorway of their bedroom, her dark eyes lightless but tracking Vincente around the room as he inspected it for—for what?

“Is it? A riot, that is?” Frank asked.

“What? Yes, yes it seems so.”

“A shortage of food? A new round of executions?” Giovanna had folded her arms and stood planted in the space between the rooms. “A toddler trampled under the hoofs of Spanish horses?”

Don Vincente did not look at her directly as he retracted the wick of the room’s oil lamp, dimming the light. “A scuffle over drawing water from the fountain. A minor nuisance. It will pass quickly.”

“Yes, no need to worry about Italians, eh? An easily routed rabble.”

Now Don Vincente looked at her. “Signora, of this, be sure: I have never said, or thought, such a thing. Only a fool discounts the anger and resolve of patriots seeking to liberate their homeland.”

If that did not mollify Giovanna, it was at least so blunt an admission that it momentarily took the wind out of her sails.

Frank however, had a new topic of conversation he wanted to pursue. “So Don Vincente, I wonder if you could explain something.”

“Certainly, Signor Stone.”

“If the riot is just a minor nuisance that will pass quickly, why are you here?”

Vincente looked up at him and sighed. “Because those are my orders.”

In the hall just outside their suite, Frank heard movement: men in equipment, jostling lightly against each other. He looked in that direction; Sergeant Ezquerra was now standing in the doorway, hand on the hilt of his sword. That worthy shrugged when both he and Giovanna looked at him, and the accompanying smile was so brittle that Frank thought his face might break into a shower of terra-cotta pieces.

Frank turned back toward Vincente, pointed. “And he has the same orders? Along with the dozen or so others I can hear behind him?”

“Yes.”

“And just how many more of your men are waiting even farther beyond the hall outside my room?”

“That,” said Vincente, averting his eyes uncomfortably, “I cannot tell you.”

“You don’t know?”

“I am not allowed to say.”

Frank stared at him until Vincente met his eyes again. “It’s not just a riot, is it?”

Vincente looked sad. “Of course not.”

Harry watched as Sherrilyn and the others reached the roof of Palazzo Giacomo Mattei, just east of the room in which Frank and Giovanna were being held. As soon as they got in position, they crouched low, Matija shrugging off a haversack: Gerd’s demolition gear.

Harry swung his scope right, to the south and the east, and saw, at a considerably greater distance, Gerd’s spare outline, returning from his first assignment. He was moving spiderlike across the roofs, keeping to the shortest path that would bring him back to Sherrilyn’s vertical entry team. Behind him, a wisp of smoke was now visible: the diversionary fire he had started near the southeast corner of the
insula,
the point furthest away from the northwest corner occupied by the palazzos Paganica and Giacomo. Harry cheated the scope a little farther south to the rooftop belvedere on the Palazzo Giove: empty, now. Maybe one of the folks in the crowd had heaved a few rocks at the observer he had seen there earlier. At any rate, the coast was clear.

Harry turned toward the
lefferto
with the light and nodded. Once again, the young fellow commenced signaling with his bull’s eye lantern.

John O’Neill saw the second signal window illuminate on the second floor of the tall building beside the Porto Giuda. He pushed open the storeroom door, revealing the fountain that dominated the small square. He jerked his head toward the street and the arched entrance of the Palazzo Giacomo’s courtyard. “On me, at the trot,” he ordered, and then led the way, as he always did. But this time he went forth with his sword still in its scabbard; there was no need to make clear their intents until they reached the entrance, only fifteen yards away.

Frank, staring out the slightly open window himself, began assessing the scene in the courtyard more carefully, seeing if there were any hints to be gleaned as to what, other than the riot, might be going on nearby. Given the long, slanting shadows of dusk, it was almost impossible to see beyond the arches that dominated both levels of the two-tiered loggia that faced opposite the street entry.

Almost impossible. But now that he looked carefully, he could see faint silhouettes hidden behind the supporting pillars of the upper gallery’s arches. Silhouettes of large men. In helmets. With weapons. Then Frank noticed movement: a window’s louvered shutters rotated slightly, briefly revealing a dim light in the room behind it. And in the moment before that light was extinguished, Frank saw, quite distinctly, the barrel of a very long gun, set on a pedestal, aiming out into the darkness at a slight elevation. Holding his breath, Frank followed the muzzle’s invisible trajectory out over the top of the courtyard wall and then between nearby roofs, at which point it was impossible to determine its precise path. But there were only a few two-story buildings out in that direction, and only one that was three stories, topped by a shabby belvedere, at the edge of the Ghetto. Where he saw, faintly, a tiny twitch of movement: maybe a nodding head, backlit by the setting sun. Or maybe silhouetted by the flash of a mostly shaded lamp…

Before he could think the better of doing so, Frank turned toward Vincente; cold pierced the pit of his stomach even as his brow suddenly burned with panic and rage. “You bastard—!”

Sherrilyn scanned the
insula’s
roofs nervously; she wished the riot could be a little more—well, quiet. Eyes were not enough when trying to make a covert entry; you needed your ears as well. And the tides of raucous protest at the main gate was rendering her ears useless.

Gerd was almost done placing the entry charges so that they would—hopefully—send most of their force downward. The tests he had run weeks before had yielded limited success; hopefully, this time would be no worse than those. With any luck, it would be a bit better.

Gerd played out the fast-burning fuse as he low-scrambled back to where the rest of the Crew was waiting, behind a low roof-peak, just six yards from his crude demolition charge.

“Ready?” asked Sherrilyn, rubbing her knee.

“
Ja
, we can start the fireworks,” smiled Gerd, who sat up a little higher to reinspect his handiwork, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

Owen pulled out his pepperbox revolver as almost a dozen more
lefferti,
led by Frank Stone’s friend Piero, emerged from a building on the opposite side of the fountain’s piazza and swung in behind the leading wedge of Wild Geese. From an adjoining wain-shed, another half dozen
lefferti
burst out onto the street, but they turned sharply to the right, sprinting southward toward the riot outside the massive gates of the Palazzo Giove.

Owen reached, and sidled up alongside, the much smaller double-doors that led into the courtyard of the Palazzo Giacomo and nodded to David Synnot. The Ulsterman, standing six foot two and heavy-thewed, was carrying a maul.

Since the guards, if they were highly motivated, might be looking out the vision port in the door, Synnot wasted no time. He planted his feet wide, reared back with the maul, and then swung it forward in a fast, overhand arc.

“Knock, knock,” John O’Neill snarled wickedly, just before its iron head landed.

Frank saw Vincente’s jaw tighten, and then his eyes shot towards the gateway into the courtyard, where a thundering crash sent the doors themselves flying into pieces. Without turning toward Ezquerra, the Spanish captain ordered: “Ready my gun.”

The splintering smash of Synnot’s maul even drowned out the ongoing protest for a moment. Along with John, Owen shouldered open the tattered remains of the doors. Into that gap rushed Turlough Eubanks and Gerald O’Sullivan, swords out in their right hands, pepperboxes in their left, cuirasses glimmering faintly in the last light of day.

The fight for the door was over as soon as it had begun. The two guards, disheveled and nursing the dregs of nonregulation libations, were cut down swiftly. John grinned, sped past Owen, and then waved in the
lefferti
, who were tasked to secure the ground floor level of the two-tiered loggia at the opposite end of the courtyard. So far, so good: it was all proving to be just as easy as Harry had foreseen.…

Owen lagged a step. It was
too
easy, too clean. He scanned the two gate guards; oddly, neither affected the coiffure stylings popular among the Spanish. No beards either, but ill-shaven, and a bit thin; one had distinct hollows in his cheeks. And where was the inevitable detritus that collected around such a low-trouble watch post? There should have been a smattering of garbage, or the little conveniences that guards brought to their posts: stools, rain-capes, a deck of cards…

That was when Owen heard the gunfire start up on the roof, and it didn’t sound like one of the Wrecking Crew’s weapons.

Sherrilyn saw the flash near the base of the main palazzo’s rooftop belvedere a split second before she heard the sharp report—and before Gerd dropped forward like a bag of rocks. He slid a yard down the shallow slope of the roof, upsetting tiles as he went.

“Damnit, Gerd! Gerd!”

But even before Sherrilyn got to his side, she knew Gerd was dead; the bullet had hit him just left of the sternum, and the blood was welling up out of him like a slow spring.

“Bastards,” growled Sherrilyn, thumbing the safety off her rifle and popping a round at the site of the flash. “Follow my fire,” she shouted to the rest of the Crew, “and suppress.”

As another bullet whined overhead, and the Crew’s shotguns roared in response, Sherrilyn Maddox lit the fuse of Gerd’s demolition charge. Then she scrambled, low and fast, to rejoin the Crew, hoping against hope that the second shot from the belvedere meant there were only two shooters concealed there.

Because if there were more, she might be taking her final breaths and last steps.

Frank looked down into the courtyard; all those men pouring through the shattered gate were coming to rescue him. Whoever they were. And they were going to get slaughtered by the well-prepared Spanish. Slaughtered. But what could he do—?

Frank snatched the oil lamp off the table with his right hand, yanked open the shutters with his left, and threw.

The lamp traced a guttering arc that carried it neatly over the low wall of the arcaded upper gallery; it shattered just to the right of the window with the open louvers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Harry saw Gerd slide down the roof, Sherrilyn going over to him. But where had the shot—?

“Muzzle flash: base of the belvedere on the main roof,” snapped Fabrizio Marcoli from directly behind him.

So the Spanish had their own shooter on the roof? What the hell—? Harry tracked over with the rifle, asked, “Do I have a shot?”

“No shot. He’s on the far side of the belvedere,” Fabrizio announced. Harry saw that Fabrizio was right—and then started to wonder how the Spanish had not only known to put a sniper in the belvedere, but to put him on the side away from Harry’s own position—

Back in the courtyard of the Palazzo Giacomo, a faint arc of light traced itself against the gathering darkness. Harry rapidly tracked over to the left, just in time to see an oil lamp, or maybe a molotov cocktail, flare angrily on the second-story gallery. And were those silhouettes up there? With weapons?

Harry was staring so hard at the shadowy figures that he almost missed the small, bright wink of light from behind the louvered shutters of the window closest to the impact point of the oil lamp—

Harry ducked, realizing:
Holy shit; they have us spotted and ranged
.

And he heard, an instant after the distant report of the gun, Fabrizio grunt and fall.

Harry spun, hair raising up.
No. No no no—

Fabrizio was stretched out his full length, coughing, eyes rolling listlessly. A bullet-hole just under his heart was leaking out his life faster than any up-time surgeon could have staunched; in any century, this kind of sucking chest wound was a death sentence. A quick one, perhaps, but that was the coldest of all possible comfort.

Harry closed his eyes and felt his molars grinding together. He’d come here to rescue Giovanna—and he’d just gotten her brother killed.

Captain Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas was fast—terribly fast. He crossed to Frank in a single step, grabbed him with both hands and hurled him bodily away from the window. Airborne for at least five feet, Frank crashed into, and slumped down along, the opposite wall.

“Beast!” Giovanna screamed at the Spaniard as she dashed to her stunned husband’s side. “Murderer!”

Don Vincente had stepped back from the window. “Signora Stone, I may have just saved his life—”

That’s when the gunfire started in the courtyard, and an explosion slammed the roof in the adjacent room, quaking half the plaster off the ceiling.

Harry swung back up into his firing position, slammed the Remington into his right shoulder, and jerked his scope over to the courtyard. As he did, he saw the tail end of another small flash, right next to where the first one had been, but now half-obscured by the leaping oil flames.

Before Harry could react, he felt a red-hot poker lance into his right shoulder, just above the clavicle, and push out the other side with the force of a sledge-hammer. Lefferts went off his stool, but kept his grip on the rifle.
Damned if I’m going to jar the scope out of alignment now
, he thought.

He threw himself upright without delay and snugged the gun tight—agonizingly tight—into his savaged right shoulder. He dropped the crosshairs on some movement he saw through the louvers and fired. At that precise moment, the dark arches lining both the second and ground floor galleries of the courtyard’s loggia were raggedly illuminated by a volley of murderous fire.