1636: The Cardinal Virtues (13 page)

Chapter 19

May, 1636

Magdeburg, USE

“There’s just no relief, is there, Rebecca?”

Ed Piazza leaned his head on his hands and rubbed his temples. It had been a long year: the Crown Loyalist revolt, the uprising in Saxony, the war in Poland, the business in Italy, Lefferts’ antics in the Balearic Islands, whatever was going on among the Turks—and now this.

“Relief.” She laughed. “Try being one of God’s Chosen People for a few years and you’ll understand what ‘no relief’ means. This—pfah!—this is just diplomacy.”

“I’m trying to figure out what the ruckus in France means for us,” mused Piazza. He rose and went to the window of his office. Like the office itself, the window was on the small side and provided no view of the Elbe, as was considered prestigious. Instead, the window looked out over an alley.

On the positive side, the alley was kept much cleaner than most such in the USE’s capital. If Ed opened the window and leaned out, he’d be able to determine the reason for that unwonted tidiness. Just half a block to the south he’d see part of the royal palace and, beyond it, Hans Richter Square.

He didn’t mind, though. Given the pollution in the Elbe coming from the factories south of the city, the river was not all that nice a sight anyway. And the political situation called for as much discretion as possible. The unpretentious office tucked away in an unpretentious (if very large) government building was just part of that. Since the collapse of the counterrevolution launched by the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna a few months ago, the precise nature of political authority in the United States of Europe had become . . .

Murky
, he thought.
Let’s leave it at that.

Wilhelm Wettin was still the prime minister, even though he’d been up to his neck in the Swedish chancellor’s plots and schemes. Luckily for him, though, he’d balked at outright treason and been pitched into a cell by Oxenstierna. That had been enough—just barely—to save him from the imperial wrath that came down on the plotters after Gustav Adolf recovered from his brain injury and Oxenstierna was shot dead by Colonel Hand. Where many others had been stripped of their titles, positions—even their lands, in some cases—Wettin had come out of it officially unscathed.

Still, in the real world the prime minister’s authority was now threadbare. The political coalition he’d led, the so-called Crown Loyalists, was in outright tatters. Most people expected that when the next election was held—which would be soon, even if no specific date had been set yet—the Fourth of July Party would come back into power. And although no public announcement had yet been made, it was an open secret that Mike Stearns had already told the emperor that he did not intend to run for office again.

Which left, as the most obvious person who’d assume the post of prime minister if the Fourth of July Party won a majority in Parliament, the man who was currently the president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia—Ed Piazza. Who’d moved to Magdeburg weeks earlier, leaving the running of the SoTF in the capable hands of the province’s vice president, Helene Gundelfinger.

In fact if not in name, Piazza was running a shadow government whose claim to being a “shadow” was thin at best. Still, he tried to keep up appearances. Hence the humble office—and hence also, the fact that he was using that humble office to deal with foreign affairs. Rebecca was here because she was serving him for the time being as his informal (and very unofficial) secretary of state.

All things considered, alleys do not make for interesting scenery. After half a minute or so contemplating its nonexistent wonders, Ed turned away from the window and moved back to his desk.

“I know that King Louis XIII was never what you’d call our friend,” he said, easing into his seat, “but Gaston is a real wild card. He came down on the side of Borja, and from what I’ve been able to tell, he’s had his hand in every major plot against his brother for a dozen years. He’s
got
to be involved in this.”

Rebecca gestured toward the stack of paper on Ed’s desk. “The intelligence reports say that it was a band of outlaws that attacked the cardinal’s party. Gaston was not there. He may have been visiting his mother at the time.”

Ed flipped through the sheets until he pulled out the one he wanted. “Let’s see. Marie de Medici. Does that name mean what I think it means?”

Rebecca shrugged. “Intrigue and conspiracy. Medici . . . Strozzi . . . Colonna . . . they’re pretty much all the same.”

“Great. She strikes me as a real beaut. Louis exiled her too, from what I read.”

“Just before the Ring of Fire. She forced him to choose between his mother and his minister. She’d been dominating his life ever since Henry IV was killed, and I think Louis was tired of it. He wanted Richelieu to take care of things for him so he could hunt and paint and act like a king
looks
.”

“He always was a bit of a wimp, I guess.”

Rebecca hesitated for just a moment, as if she was trying to locate the definition of the word
wimp
. “You underestimate him, Ed. Do not take the portrait of him in that
Three Musketeers
movie for good coin.”

“Which
Three Musketeers
movie? There have been a jillion of them.”

“Don’t be silly. The one with Charlton Heston playing Richelieu. The rest—
pfah.
” She made a dismissive gesture. “The real Louis XIII is—was—quite an athlete, for one thing. He rode to war in Mantua, and against rebellious Huguenots. My impression was that he simply didn’t like the day-to-day parts of the role and wanted to leave those to Cardinal Richelieu.”

“Who is—who was—very good at it.”

“Is, I think.”

“The report says the ambush party killed everyone,” Ed said. “Richelieu’s dead also, isn’t he?”

“The body of the king was carried back in state,” she answered. “It was buried in a great ceremony. Nothing was said about His Eminence the cardinal. Certainly someone so important would have been publicly laid to rest as well.”

“Big funeral.”

“With bishops and archbishops. Several of each, I would expect. There are a few there now, from what we hear—but not the number that
would
be there to perform the memorial for the man who’s run the whole country for a dozen years. So if he is dead, the body hasn’t been recovered.”

“Or he isn’t dead at all. He’s . . . I don’t know. He’s Elvis? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Ed leaned back in his chair. “Elvis. Elvis Presley. He was a singer, a big star performer. They called him ‘The King.’ When he first started he was young and strong and everything, every girl’s dream.” He smiled; Rebecca frowned. “Anyway. As he became more and more famous he got fat and—strange. Eventually he died, big funeral . . . they turned his house into a museum—Graceland, the king’s home. Except that over time people kept reporting that they’d seen him here and there—”

“Performing?”

“No, but there were people
pretending
to be Elvis, dressing up like him. But that’s not what I meant. There were ‘Elvis sightings.’ He was washing dishes, or waiting for a bus, or shopping, or something else. So the rumor started that the king wasn’t dead at all. It was some sort of giant hoax. He was working for the government undercover; he was getting ready for a big comeback; organized crime needed to believe he was dead.”

“Ed,” Rebecca said. “Are you trying to tell me that in your so clever up-time world there were people who believed that someone who was
dead
was secretly alive? A popular figure, an—an entertainer—had somehow made up his own death?”

“You’d be amazed what things people believed up-time.”

“I guess I would. So . . . you think that Cardinal Richelieu is dead and people think he is still alive.”

“Or he is alive, and is content to have people think that he is dead.”

“People like Monsieur Gaston,” Rebecca said. “I have met Richelieu. He’s a brilliant man, Ed—one of the most perceptive men I’ve ever met—and quite charming, too. Even cut off from his base of power, he would be a formidable enemy. If he is still alive, he is Gaston’s enemy. As is the queen, wherever she is.”

“Our ambassador in Paris said that there’s a rumor at court that she’s gone back to Spain with the baby,” Ed said. “I don’t believe it, but it’s the sort of thing that would be put about to discredit her.”

“By Gaston’s people.”

“No doubt. So if she’s not in Spain—and not in Paris—then where is she? And where is Richelieu?”

“You mean, ‘Elvis.’”

“Yeah. Elvis in a red robe.” He smiled. “Well, considering some of the stuff he was wearing at the end of his career, it wouldn’t be too far off. It would have to be covered with sequins, though.”

Auxerre, France

“Look at the happy family reunion,” Artemisio said, looking out the window at the group at the edge of the trees that bordered the courtyard, sheltering from the rain.

“His brothers?” Terrye Jo pointed down at the three men.

“Donna Teresa!” He pulled on her arm. “
Attento.
” He gestured, and she squatted down, below the level of the window.

They were in the loft of the almoner’s house of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre, looking over the inner courtyard. Monsieur Gaston had been installed at the bishop’s palace, and most of them remained there, while Gaston and his gentlemen-in-waiting had come here.
To view the frescoes
, he had said to his wife before departing.

Terrye Jo would have been just as happy to stay and read, but Artemisio Logiani—who had somehow attached himself to Monsieur Gaston’s party as a household servant—was determined to follow along, and begged her to come with him.

If the frescoes are beautiful enough to be viewed by a prince, Donna,
he had said to her,
then I must compare them to your loveliness.

Which somehow, impossibly, had led to their present location. While they were walking around the edge of the courtyard, trying to keep dry, a party of horsemen had arrived at the porter’s gate. Artemisio had pulled her aside into the almoner’s house, and they had made their way to the upper floor.

“A bird’s-eye view,” he had said.

“Of what?”

“We shall see.”

But not be seen,
she thought now, wondering if she’d been pulled into a Mark Twain adventure.
Hell,
she added:
the whole freakin’ seventeenth century is a Mark Twain adventure.

“His brother and his
father
,” Artemisio said. “Interesting.”

“Why?”

“Monsieur Louis de Vendôme’s brother François, and his father the duke, César, are exiled from the realm. His Majesty the king—” and here Artemisio stopped and crossed himself, looking toward heaven like a side character in a Renaissance painting—“sent the duke away for conspiring. Well, actually, Cardinal Richelieu did it, but that’s the same thing. And now
here he is
, with his two sons. Who knows what they’re here for.”

“But
this
is what you came to see, isn’t it, Artemisio?”

“Well,” he answered, “not necessarily
this
, Donna. I didn’t know what it was about, but I heard . . . you know how servants talk . . .”

“I certainly do.”

“Well, I heard that something big and important was going to happen when we got to Auxerre. And here we are, and here it is.” He peeked very carefully over the sill, and Terrye Jo did likewise.

The three men—clearly Louis, she could clearly make out his features, and two others, one young and one older—seemed very happy to be together. The older one, the duke, was speaking to his two sons. He paused for just a moment and looked around, as if he was trying to determine if he was being spied upon.

Terrye Jo and Artemisio ducked back down.

“What do you think this big and important thing might be?”

“Well, you know,” Artemisio said. “It’s all above me. But if I were to guess, I’d say that the duke is here to pledge allegiance to Monsieur Gaston—and get a pardon.”

◊ ◊ ◊

“Father,” François said quietly as they walked slowly down the stairs to the crypt. “This is a perfect place for Gaston to betray us.”

“Yes,” César de Vendôme said. “It is.” He did not look away, but continued to stare straight ahead, walking slowly down the stairs. “But he would not go to all this trouble—at least at
this
point—to do so. He still needs us.”

By now, several weeks after he received the ball fired from Richelieu’s pistol, the duke’s injury had completely healed. As was often true with head wounds, it had initially looked much worse than it really was. His son François, on the other hand, was still recovering from the great gash in his side left by the king’s sword. He was lucky to have survived at all.

“For what does he need us?”

The duke shook his head. “I am not sure. But there is still something.”

“I am not sure either—”

César stopped walking and turned to his son. He leaned close, so that their escorts could not easily hear.

“Do you trust me, my son?”

“Of course. With my life, Father. You know that.”

“Then you must rely on my judgment. Now and in the near future. Gaston d’Orleans has
already
betrayed me after a fashion. It is now our task to make sure that when he pulls the noose tight, his own neck is caught in it as well.”

François was accustomed to his father’s stern gaze: it was how he always pictured him—proud, noble, with a hint of scarcely concealed anger. This expression was different in a way: totally serious, focused, intense.

“I will do whatever you ask.”

“Then I ask now that you do nothing. And say nothing. I want you to remember that our time will come, François.”

“I understand.”

César stood straight, and they began to descend once more.

In the Abbey of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre, beneath the frescoes in the crypt, the brothers had placed the sub-prior’s chair on a small platform. It was something short of a throne, but was sufficiently elevated above the floor that it gave the appropriate separation that the prince desired.

The Vendôme men walked through the open area and between a pair of tall support pillars, looking straight ahead at Gaston d’Orleans, presumptive king of France. César did not spend a moment of attention on anything other than the figure of his half-brother.