1635 The Papal Stakes (70 page)

“For it is not enough that our pope survives this moment; he must rally the faithful to his banners. But how many of our brethren, summoned from the far corners of Christendom and traveling in constant fear of assassins serving a murderous anti-pope, will trust a host who is mostly known for hostility towards their faith? How many will stay away—or more tragically, will come to that place only to succumb to the same moral weakness that I fear in myself? Some? Many? Most? Whatever you respond, I ask one last question: is this path—one which places the heart of our Church in the terrestrial hands of one of its bitterest foes—truly a pathway to grace? Or are we prostituting sacred Mother Church for an old foe’s dubious promise of temporary shelter against a storm?” Wadding resumed his seat amidst absolute silence.

Sharon looked at Ruy, clasping his hand even more tightly. “Damn, Wadding is good,” she whispered.

“Distressingly so,” Ruy agreed and fell silent, his eyes upon Larry Mazzare’s back.

Mazzare, still seated, began quietly. “Our Savior unveils His Will in the examples of the Gospels. And what we discover in his deeds—even more loudly than his words—are lessons about the limits of strong places. Christ was born in a manger; he preached in open fields; he fished for souls in open boats upon rolling seas; he broke bread in a humble house nestled in the very shadow of the palaces of those who meant to kill him. Christ and his message did not require—indeed, they proved the prideful pointlessness of—strong places and great cities.

“Yet Father Wadding insists that the Church must maintain walls against any possible interference. Perhaps he can explain to us how his exhortation to protect and refurbish our terrestrial power does not also put us on the slippery slope of perdition, since if we must protect the Church absolutely, then we must have absolute power—which, of course, corrupts absolutely. The most recent proof of this is Borja himself, whose rule illustrates where unrestricted authority and an obsession with worldly power ultimately lead.

“Now, it is sad but true that sometimes, in order to follow the will of our Heavenly Father, a pope might have to take steps that will send some of his own lambs to slaughter.” Larry rose. “But surely, a loving God would not be profligate with the lives of his sheep, nor urge his good shepherd to send multitudes of the faithful to needless deaths. Rather, is it not more likely that the Savior would whisper into each pope’s mind: ‘Good shepherd, care well for my flock, both in their souls and in their bodies. Do not forsake them in any way.’

“So I put it to you: in this dark hour, does ‘caring for the flock’ mean pursuing a course of action which not only commits this continent to further generations of sectarian strife, but will almost surely end in the martyrdom of the pope? For if he has no safe refuge while he labors to save the Church and end strife, it means nothing less than this: his death beneath the knives of assassins and the ascension of Borja, unobstructed, to the Holy See.”

Mazzare’s voice, usually fluid and pleasing, became sharp. “Is that grace, to have the butcher Borja seated upon the
cathedra
? You know him, Cardinal Wadding; you have seen him and his acts. Can any course of action which allows that man to steal the staff from the legitimate and loving shepherd of the Church be a course of action that is consistent with heavenly grace?”

Wadding closed his eyes. “I question not the will of the Lord.”

“Nor should any of us. But tell me: do you claim to have the Charism of Sacred Magisterium, of direct inspiration from godhead, yourself? Is the humble Franciscan Luke Wadding not only to be the first Irish cardinal, but the first Irish pope?”

Wadding bristled. “I have neither intimated nor made such an absurd claim.”

“Not directly, perhaps, but since you assume that it is the will of God that Pope Urban should shun the USE’s offer, then tell me: by what special power have you divined His Will in this matter?

Wadding became very still and very pale. “Cardinal Mazzare, do not construe my words of caution to be evidence of heretical hubris. I simply point to what God
may
wish. Just as you are doing. Perhaps I am slightly more emphatic in my diction; consider that a sign of my ardor, not arrogance.”

“Fair enough. But if that is so, if only the pope may rely upon the direct inspiration of God, then the actions and ideas of we lesser servitors of the church must arise from purely human insight, correct?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Mazzare pounced. “So then, must we not employ upon our God-given powers of reason to protect our pope, preserve his flock, and provide for their future? Which is to say: is there to be no prudent preparation and self-guidance in a life of faith? Are we to sit motionless alongside the river of flowing events, stirring not, only accepting what the currents bring into our laps? And should we drown where we sit, when the waters of barbarous perdition rise? Is it God’s will that we must not change our position—even if it means being swept to our deaths when the river of present events floods its banks? Faith in God may require acceptance, but does it necessitate apathy? Or rather,” Mazzare’s eyes glimmered with passion, “or rather, does it not, instead,
require
us to act? To
materially
nurture grace and defeat perfidy?”

Wadding raised his chin. “Just because I reject the comfort of Protestant heretics does not mean I support this anti-pope.”

“No, perhaps you do not support him—but by doing nothing, you are still doing something. You are choosing not to acknowledge the need for human action. And Borja will not fail to teach you the error of inaction, both as a practical philosophy and as a pathway to grace.” Mazzare sat.

Sharon, who had never seen Larry so emotional in this—or any—debate, was too stunned to react for a moment. But Ruy was able to. “They both did very well. I can tell nothing from looking at the pope or Vitelleschi; they could both instruct the Sphinx in the fine arts of impassivity.”

“Yeah, and that means we need to talk to Cardinal Barberini before the next and last session.”

“To see if he knows how Urban is leaning on this matter?”

“No: to see if the nephew can push the uncle in the direction of a USE fortress, no matter how he’s leaning right now.”

Sherrilyn Maddox leaned down to rub her aching knee just as a deep voice from the bushes behind her intoned, “Who goes there?”

Sherrilyn jumped, drew down on the bush. “The bitch who’s going to kill you, asshole. Damn it, is that you, Hastings?”

The big English lieutenant emerged from the bush. “It is. My apologies. How is your knee?”

“Goddamnit, my knee is fine.” Sherrilyn holstered her automatic, thought about resuming her walk around the perimeter, and then thought the better of it; the last thing she should do was walk where Hastings, or anyone else, could see her. “I don’t have a limp,” she commented unasked.

“No, ma’am; of course not,” responded Hastings. He stared squarely at her knee.

Sherrilyn fidgeted. “What the hell are you doing out here, anyway? I thought you were off-duty now.”

Hastings shrugged and hooked a thumb back toward the villa. “I was testing the alertness of our reserve force in the root cellar. Since the rest of us must walk around pretending they’re not there, it also means that no one is checking in on them. I felt it best to—well, break the monotony. By surprise.”

Sherrilyn grinned. “I’ll bet they just loved you for that.”

“Yes, for a moment I felt every bit as warmly beloved as my own, cheery Colonel North.” Hastings’ grin now matched Sherrilyn’s. “But at least the hidden reaction force was relatively alert.”

“Good to hear. The bad guys will try real hard not to give us any warning before they strike, so everyone has to maintain peak readiness around the clock.”

Hasting nodded and looked at her knee again. “For some of us, that might mean resting our knee instead of walking the perimeter.”

“Look,” Sherrilyn grumbled, “it’s just an old sports injury. I’m fine.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m sure you are, but—”

“Shhh!” hissed Sherrilyn, ripping her Glock 17 back out of its holster. “Do you hear that?”

Hastings cocked his rather square head and listened. “Yes, I do. Music, from the house.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m hearing, too. Damn it, what the hell is wrong with them?” Stalking back to the villa, she chose not to put her pistol away again; maybe seeing it in her hand would shock a few of them back to their senses. “If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them twenty times—”

“Miss Maddox, listen more carefully. Wait a moment, wait—there. Did you hear it? Do you know what that is?”

“A big, bad baritone voice.”

“Yes. The pope’s voice.” Hastings looked at her patiently. “Tell me, Ms. Maddox, do you think you can get a pope to stop singing?”

“I can damned well try.”

“You might find your efforts frustrated.”

“You don’t think this is a security risk?”

“On the contrary, Miss Maddox: I
know
it is a security risk. But given the current tensions among the priests, I suspect it helps them to relax together at the end of the day. And by having all the other folk in the house join them, sitting in a circle and shouting their hopeless harmonies—well, I imagine it helps to bridge the gaps across which they’re arguing.”

Sherrilyn glowered back at the villa, then up into the black and silent slopes rising steep and forbidding about them. “Yeah, well—I just hope it’s worth the risk.”

Sharon came into the villa’s common room and stared. Fully two thirds of her staff, all the off-duty soldiers, and all the priests were sitting in a large circle, singing, playing an instrument, or clapping their hands. Only the profoundly nonmusical Larry Mazzare was not joining in, a bemused, even sheepish look on his face.

What surprised Sharon the most was that Ruy, behind her, began clapping his hands, too.

She turned to look at him. “Uh—isn’t this the part where you step in and shush them all? For security reasons?”

“Dear heart,” he said as the tempo increased, the players changing songs without stopping, “a few more minutes is unlikely to cause any more harm than may have already been done. They have been singing for five minutes, maybe ten. If any of Borja’s villains are in earshot, they have heard it by now and deduced what they will surely deduce. The probability that one of them is just moving into or out of earshot at this very moment—well, it is also possible that lightning shall strike me dead every day I go out wearing a sword. But it has not happened just yet. And in the meantime, the good it does to let these people have a few more minutes of joy must outweigh the scant chance that they are doing any harm that has not already been done.” And he went back to clapping his hands.

Sharon sighed, looked back at her staff, and saw that, for the first time in weeks, they were smiling. Wide, happy, unworried smiles—not the ones that signify willing obedience, or encouragement, or resolute cheer in the face of adversity. These were just folks enjoying themselves without a care in the world.

And they were enjoying themselves with a vengeance: instruments had materialized seemingly out of nowhere. Odo the radio operator was playing a well-worn cittern, two of the staff were keeping up with more traditional lutes, and no less a personage than Cardinal Antonio Barberini was putting a reasonably skilled hand to the strangest stringed instrument Sharon had ever seen: an oddly-fretted (was it almost double-necked?) monstrosity about the size of an overgrown bass guitar with a lutelike body and two sets of strings. The lower set, the ones Barberini was working currently, sounded like—well, probably what an electric bass guitar would sound like if someone could make it acoustic. Sharon shook her head at that inherent contradiction and was immediately struck by the powerful mezzo that rose up to meet the rollicking tune that had emerged.

The voice was coming effortlessly out of the wide mouth of the embassy’s somewhat hefty cook: usually cheery, always passionate, and now saucily belting out lyrics that went too fast for Sharon to follow.

But it was, of all people, Pope Urban VIII who identified the song. “Ah!” he shouted, with a clap of his hands and suddenly bright eyes, “
A Lieta Vita
! As it was played in my youth!” And, from behind the cook, he commenced to roar out a harmony—more or less. Vitelleschi looked as though he was going to die of heartburn, but kept clapping anyway.

As Sharon stared, Carlo the messenger-boy came prancing into the circle that had been cleared for the cook and, like some upland sprite, twirled to the music, delighted to cavort about her skirts. And in the way she looked at him, eyes warm and her voice suddenly richer, huskier, Sharon understood: in her heart, the cook had adopted orphaned Carlo. And the little fellow knew it.

Ruy touched Sharon’s elbow, whispered, “Shall I stop them after this song? It is a short one.”

Sharon smiled. “Oh, I don’t suppose another ten minutes will hurt.”

When Valentino returned to the camp near Valsondra, it was three hours later than he had intended. His group had hit upon a new lead after scouting the skirts of Monte Campolon, and had actually hoped to find a sign of the renegade embassy, but it had been a dead end.

Consequently, Valentine was surprised when the camp, instead of being tense with worry over his tardiness, seemed to be quiet, waiting. Not that these men loved him—the nearly sixty cutthroats and ruthless mercenaries with him certainly did not—but they loved the notion of getting paid, and it had been made clear to them all that if Valentino did not come back alive and successful, the drink money they had been given upon signing up would be the only coin they would see from this venture.

“Linguanti?” Valentino called. “Is there news?”

Linguanti’s long face turned toward him, painted faint yellow by the firelight. “Ask Odoardo. When he came back, I had to ask a lot of questions which he didn’t feel like answering. Because he is not scared of me. And because he was sure it was unimportant.”

Valentino turned toward Odoardo, who had his obscenely broad back to the fire. “Odoardo?”