1635 The Papal Stakes (85 page)

“My son,” he whispered forcefully.

The Englishman’s eyes fluttered open, moved about uncertainly: blind. The pale lips in his blood-clotted beard moved feebly.

“Who—?”

“It is I, the pope. I fear to ask it, that you might refuse, but—my son, would you take a blessing from me?”

“Why—why would I refuse, Father?”

“Because—well, what manner of Christian are you?”

George seemed to smile, brighten. “I’m a Christian of my own conscience, Father. I don’t…I don’t…I believe…”

And as George’s coughing of blood suddenly returned, and whole-torso spasms began to wrack his body, Urban VIII, tears starting from his eyes, commenced the speediest, yet most heartfelt rite of extreme unction that he had ever carried out.

Luke Wadding clutched his crucifix, kissed it, and felt his heart explode into a hundred “Our fathers” and “Hail Marys” for each of his companions, for surely, he hadn’t enough time left to say even one such prayer. Anthony McEgan, whose sturdy defense of the left flank of lightly armored Lieutenant Hastings had kept that worthy from death at least half a dozen times, was slow coming back from a riposte that wounded an enemy. The adjacent assassin swept out his cutlass, opened a nasty cut across McEgan’s right forearm. The Irishman snatched it back—at just the moment he needed it to protect against a hand axe wielded by a cutthroat who’d slipped into his left flank. The axe made a crunching sound as it caved in the lower left side of McEgan’s cuirass. The blow did not penetrate, but over the wounded man’s grunt, Wadding heard the snap of ribs. Hastings’ protector was thrown sideways, writhing as he fell.

The other assassins rushed to get in at the lieutenant, so eager that they bunched up, knocking together. Hastings, dripping sweat and blood from almost half a dozen wounds, was still alert enough to discern which of the assassins was too hemmed in by his mates to effectively parry. The tall Englishman slashed with his sword; the targeted cutthroat staggered back, now weaponless and clutching the stumps of three missing fingers.

But the remaining assassins continued pushing Hastings back, and still more came behind them.

Wadding wanted to close his eyes while he gave his cross a final kiss, but would not do so.
I owe it to this man to watch his last sacrifice. I shall not look away; I shall not blink.

Larry Mazzare fired, cursed himself, fired again, heard a groan up the staircase, winced when a pistol discharged down in his general direction. The balls chipped the stone less than two feet from where he’d positioned himself, kneeling half-covered at the doorway, with a firing angle all the way up to the bend in the staircase.

He couldn’t see the bend, but he had a pretty good estimate of where it was. Like many priests and pastors in Appalachia, Larry was an experienced hunter—and his case, an excellent one, especially with a shotgun. Hunting pheasant, quail and turkey to put meat on impoverished tables and charity dinners in his parish had given him a passing acquaintance with aiming by sound as much as sight.

The assassins had tried rushing down twice now, and he’d sent up two rounds each time, ready to fire more—but that had broken their spirit. However, his ability to drive them back was now reduced to one round in the pepperbox, which had only five chambers. He turned to Antonio, who was, in a ghastly juxtaposition of activities, rifling through George’s pockets as the pope was gently sliding the big man’s eyes closed with his palm.

Trying not to sound impatient, Larry asked, “What have you found, Antonio?”

“Eh…eh, not much. Maybe most of them are under him. But it would take two of us to roll him over so—”

“Antonio. What have you found?”

Cardinal Antonio Barberini held up two shotgun shells, one in either hand. “These.”

Sherrilyn was already running for the kitchen door before Rolf had blasted down the last of the assassins who had rushed them, firing from a range of less than two feet.

Hobbling desperately, Sherrilyn pressed the magazine release, heard the empty box clatter down even as she had the other out, up, and into the grip in one smooth motion. She cocked the action, thanked the powers above for seventeen-round magazines, and staggered forward.

She found herself in a veritable obstacle course of enemy bodies: many motionless, many more writhing or crawling off in some deluded hope of escape. However, at least half a dozen live ones were preparing to carve up the last poor defender, who—
Good god, that’s Hastings!
She brought up the Glock and started squeezing off rounds, aiming as best she could, praying she wouldn’t hit the lieutenant, but knowing—knowing—that if she wasted one split second, he’d be dead anyway.

The bodies fell faster than she fired—and she became aware that one of the Hibernians had arrived alongside her, adding to her fusillade.

When the last of them fell, she saw Hastings on the ground.
Oh god, please no: please don’t let me have been the one who killed him—

But Hastings raised up on one elbow, clutching a leg wound with one hand, pointing toward the cellar with the other. “Down there,” he gasped, “the pope—”

Larry got the two shotgun shells in the breech just as he heard the thunder of feet coming around the corner above him. There was a determination to the sound that he hadn’t heard before; they had decided it was do or die, evidently.

Larry had come to the same decision long ago; he raised the shotgun, realized he’d never have the time to use the last round in the pepperbox, idiotically had a pang of regret for leaving any ammunition unexpended, and saw the first clear sign of movement in the dimness above him. He fired: screams, a man fell down the stairs, clutching his face and sobbing out his last breaths.

But they kept coming, Larry fired again, and this time, one actually staggered out of the darkness, still mobile enough to take a weak swing at him with a falchion before he collapsed. Larry jumped back, the pope and others clustered behind him.

More bodies came out of the dark rectangle that was the secret passage. Larry raised the shotgun one-handed, like a club; Vitelleschi moved to stand beside him, short sword out. Wadding was crying—evidently to God—“Help us; help us now!”

The assassins loomed out of the darkness—

—and Larry was startled by God’s own thunder roaring over his shoulder and sweeping his enemies before him. Dumbstruck, he wondered:
Good grief, can Wadding actually call down God’s wrath?
But then, a sideways glance showed him the visage worn by divine vengeance this day: it was the powder smeared, high-cheekboned face of Sherrilyn Maddox, whose pistol maintained its steady thunder of death and damnation upon the would-be assassins of God’s own Pope. The last few of them turned and fled back up into the darkness.

Larry staggered forward as two of the Hibernians pushed past Sherrilyn and began edging up the staircase cautiously. Then he heard—very faintly from above—Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz addressing the last few cutthroats who apparently encountered him when reentering the hall of the northern wing. The Catalan’s merry tone raised the small hairs on the back of Larry’s neck: “Ah,” he said, “do not leave yet. Tarry awhile.” Then Larry heard the scuffling begin and the first body hit the floor.

Larry, oblivious to the Hibernians now charging up the narrow stairs to help Ruy, looked at his watch, wondering how many hours it had been since the first rattle of musketry had startled Vitelleschi to silence in the Garden Room.

He discovered that, all told, it had not quite been five minutes.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Frank and Don Vincente were still staring at each other, one in hope, the other in amazement when Harry Lefferts came pounding down the stairs and poked his head in the room. “What the hell are you still doing here? Evacuation is via the roof. So let’s get going.” He looked at Castro y Papas. “You too, if you’re coming.” And then he was gone.

Don Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas looked thunderstruck, probably not so much by the offer, but by the casualness with which it had been tendered—and by a man who had been sent to kill him, no less. He looked over at Frank and asked both the up-timer and himself aloud: “Should I? Come with you?”

Frank shrugged. “Why not?”

Don Vincente opened his mouth—and realized that he had no good answer to that very simple question.

Walking toward the south end of the main roof, North heard more outbound rifle fire—black powder lever-actions—from the second floor. As predicted, the Spanish were now trying to turn around the guns in the embrasures of the ravelins to fire at the castle door. Which meant they would destroy the raised drawbridge in the process. Not exactly an optimal strategy for reentering the fort, reflected Thomas, but he suspected they were now being driven by a frustrating need to Do Something, rather than by calm military logic. Just as well: it gave them something to do, and kept their attention off the sky, from which a dirigible would soon be descending.

“This half, all clear,” called Anthony Grogan from the fortified walkway that marked the north end of the main roof. North signaled his acknowledgement; so far, only a few survivors had been found, and they were so badly wounded and semi-conscious that the only options were to leave them or dispatch them. North had decided that whatever dubious god there might be to smile, frown, or chortle over man’s self-important follies should be the arbiter of these Spaniards’ fates, not a humble colonel of mercenaries. Accordingly, he had given orders to leave the wounded undisturbed. North resumed walking toward the southern half of the main roof to finish his own sweep: they needed the security on the upper levels to be absolute before bringing the balloon down and exposing the hostages.

Evidently, the survivors who had been ambulatory enough to leave the roof had done so long before he and the Wild Geese arrived to begin their search for stragglers: there was no sign of any holdouts here, either. He turned to shout to Grogan, to give orders to start running fuses and powder trails to the roof battery’s ready powder casks, when he noticed a white handkerchief protruding from beneath the carriage of one of the larger culverins. North, fairly sure he had not seen it before, swung his gun up—

Just as the handkerchief twitched a bit, and a voice said, “Señor, if I might come out?”

North wondered at the polite tone, consented: “Yes. But come out slowly.”

A bit of scrabbling and grimy hands emerged, which in turn pulled out a man of small to medium height, who rose holding both arms in the air. “Sergeant Ezquerra, sir. At your service…eh, so to speak.”

North cocked an eyebrow at the sardonic introduction. “Hmm. Rather strange to see a veteran under there. I’d have thought a man like you would have died leading the charge across this roof.”

“It would be a stranger thing for a veteran not to understand that, in extreme cases such as this one, discretion is very much the better part of valor.”

North smiled before he could stop himself; reflexively, he already liked this man. Not that he was under any delusion that, given a hair’s breadth opportunity, Ezquerra would fail to cut him down: that was his job, after all. But from the more detached perspective of military professionals who could recognize each other across the dividing lines of national boundaries and conflicting oaths of fealty, North already knew this sergeant: a resilient career NCO who was an inevitable fixture of armies everywhere and a curmudgeonly blessing to any unit and captain lucky enough to have him.

“So, Sergeant, now we have a quandary: what do I do with you?”

Ezquerra nodded in the direction of the lazarette. “Take me there.”

North frowned. “Why?”

“My captain—Don Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas—he went in there. Does he live?”

North gestured with his left hand but kept his right firmly around his the grip of his pistol. “Let’s find out. After you.”

Sean Connal turned to Miro, smiling like a boy. “Signal confirmed: all clear for descent. Hostages recovered safely.”

Miro smiled back, started hauling in on the gang-line of the mooring cables. “Virgilio, as soon as you have sight of the lazarette, bring us around to the east side; there will be fewer Spanish there, at first.”

“They will come from the ravelins on the north and west quickly enough,” muttered the airship’s pilot.

Miro reflected that the little Venetian, although barely older than himself, was already well on his way to becoming a crabby old man. “True enough, which is why we must still act swiftly.”

Virgilio shrugged. “So pull harder.”

Owen limped, stiff-legged, back to the staircase, and discovered one of the Hibernians rousing Matija Grabnar, who blinked groggily and swayed up to his elbows. “Damn, I thought I was dead.”

“I’m acquainted with that feeling. D’you think you can walk, lad?”

“Uh…yes. But not well.”

“Right. McDonnell, Jeffrey, move Mr. Grabnar up to the roof; he’ll be going with the balloon if they can manage it. Now, you other men who aren’t busy teaching Spanish artillerists how to dance the lever-action gavotte, get yourselves downstairs in a trice. Start spreading the powder kegs from the magazine, just as we planned. Remember, eight minute fuses. And mind you, listen for the whistle; you don’t want to be left behind.”

As Frank poked his head out onto the roof of the lazarette, Castro y Papas put a restraining hand on his shoulder: “No, stay low: the men at the ravelins will be scanning for targets.”

“In this darkness?”

Castro y Papas shrugged. “Even without torchlight, a silhouette might be seen moving against the night sky. It is unlikely, but are you so eager to take a chance?”

Frank kept his head down as Harry Lefferts came away from the battlements, scooping up the empty magazines and counting the people on the roof. “Well, that’s all of us. Nothing left to do here.”

“Not quite,” came Thomas North’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Do you have a captain Castro y Papas with you? Or has he—erm, become a permanent resident of the tower?”