"Can we hae missed 'em?" Lennox was an old campaigner, used to the hurry-up-and-wait pace of a cavalryman's life, but for some reason a single day spent in Ferrara was grating on his nerves. They had spent most of it just outside town, by the north road that led back to Padua.
Heinzerling grunted a "maybe."
They'd gotten in late the night before. Naturally, the weather had picked last night to drop an unseasonal rain on them, so they had all the extra trouble of caring for horses that were muddy as well as tired. They'd mounted a watch on the road over the night, and didn't really have enough men to make it an easy watch, so everyone had been tired all day. He'd had Lieutenant Trumble stand the lads down by twos for a nap in the shade of some trees by the road, and that had helped, and there was a roadside inn just outside the town which had been only too glad to take USE silver thalers for food and wine. No sense in wasting their hard-tack, or eating it for that matter, when there was real food to be had. Not that Lennox was overjoyed to be eating the stuff they called food hereabouts. The sausage was all right, he grudgingly allowed, but the rest of it wasn't a patch on what they got back in Grantville. Or even Magdeburg.
It was an improvement on what they got in Venice, though. He'd remarked as much to Cavriani, who'd laughed and told him that Venetians were renowned as the worst cooks in Italy. That made sense. He'd been surprised to discover, when the innkeeper brought dishes out to where the Marines had taken their station, that the stuff called pasta was a lot better if it wasn't served up as near sludge, stuck together in a gluey mass that was a sore trial to a man missing as many teeth as Lennox did. It still wasn't a patch on—
He squashed the homesickness hard, and looked to the sun. Then, remembering, took out his watch. "Four of the afternoon clock," he remarked. The shadows were already starting to lengthen.
Virtually no one had passed their position during the day. He'd ordered the weapons kept out of sight and the horses picketed off the road a short way. It wasn't the way he'd ordinarily have done things, since looking well-armed and alert was a sure way to prevent attacks. On the other hand. they were within sight of a grand big town and he didn't want to have to explain anything to the town guards, or watch, or whatever they had. Best not to provoke any complaints.
Cavriani was pacing across the road, back and forth. Lennox wandered over to join him.
"Could they have taken another route?"
"Hmm?" Cavriani seemed distracted by something.
"Could they have taken another route"
"Ah?" A pause, it looked like for thought, and then, "Not without going far, far out of their way. And taking back roads, at that. I doubt that Messer Marcoli has traveled much outside Venice other than his trip to Grantville, you see. He must rely on whatever map he could afford, which will not be much. He will see the old Roman road through Bologna—"
"Which we're on, aye?" Lennox asked.
Cavriani smiled. "I beg your pardon, Captain. Roman road built by ancient Romans, rather than the road to Rome, which this most assuredly is."
"Aye?" Lennox nodded for the man to continue, intrigued in spite of himself. He'd heard some things about the pagan Romans of old, largely from hearing better-learned men than himself talk. If nothing else, a lot of the officers he'd served under got their drill and tactics out of Julius Caesar, or claimed to.
But Cavriani was carrying on, and Lennox chided himself for getting distracted. Old, and tired, and mithered with this sod of a job. "You see," Cavriani was saying, "on most maps the other route to Rome is shown as departing from this one along the Via Emilia, and that runs through Bologna. I feel sure they will have trouble even finding the route through Ravenna, let along knowing it is there. It is not so important a town as it once was, a backwater you might say, and many maps do not even show it. Especially the cheap ones."
Lennox nodded. Had he not been thinking about the worthlessness of most maps only the day before?
"Aye, weel," he said with a sigh. "Happen they passed us in the night, or hae yet tae get on the road. Or they're coming after us e'en now." He stretched the back he'd made ache by standing up most of the day. "We'll stand our watch here until last light, and have sentry-go on the road from yon inn tonight. We'll wait out tomorrow as well, and then make good speed with rested horses for this Bologna at first light the day after. If we've missed them, we've remounts and we're good Borderers all. If yourself and the big yin there"—he jerked a thumb at Heinzerling—"canna keep up, we'll see ye's in Bologna."
"Oh, I can keep up," Cavriani said, with a smile. "And Father Augustus might surprise you."
Lennox grinned. "Oh, aye, that'd be a surprise, all right."
By the following morning, Lennox had changed his mind about waiting the day. "We hae missed 'em," he pronounced.
"Probably," agreed Heinzerling, stamping his feet against the dawn chill. He was looking down the road back to Padua, although the chances of anyone coming down it at this early hour were nil.
Lennox grunted. Well, at least Heinzerling could see something that was as plain as the nose on his face. "We'll make a fast ride to this Fee-rensey place, then, since Messer Cavriani says that's where the road goes after the nearest place to cross yon mountains." He nodded over to where the tops of the Appennines were shining in the dawn light over the mist.
"You mean Firenze?" Heinzerling grinned. He pronounced it exactly as Cavriani did. The Jesuit spoke several of the Italian dialects, from being chaplain to an assortment of mercenaries over the years.
"However they say it, mon," Lennox snapped back, but without real anger. He had good English and German and enough of the Gaelic to swear at the few highlanders he'd commanded over the years. A bit of Swedish too, lately. Heinzerling liked to flaunt his learning, one of his more annoying habits. The fat fool still knew as little proper theology—just as Lennox had learned at kirk!—as any other papist. One step from heathens, the lot of them.
He stamped his own feet again. He'd heard Italian summers could be scorching. For him, this was about the only time of day with a civilized temperature and it was only spring. Aye, weel . . .
"Get Messer Cavriani up, will you? I'll see the lads are getting ready for the road. We'll either pass the boys on the way or be waiting for them there. We happen might have Messer Cavriani's people hire a few local lads there to help watch, eh?"
"Turning spymaster, Herr Kapitan Lennox?" Heinzerling grinned through two days' worth of stubble.
Would it kill him to bloody well shave? "Hiring local scouts, ye daft gobshite," Lennox retorted. Spymaster, indeed. It was not as though he had any low opinion of the good Don Francisco, mind. It just wasn't honest work for a soldier. "An' no' another word, ye bugger, o' spyin' or the like. And while we're aboot changes o' career, do ye think to make a cavalryman? For today's ride'll see that fat German arse broken."
Heinzerling's sneer was magnificent; Lennox had to allow him that. It was just possible to admit a sneaking regard for the drunken tub of guts. He might sit a horse like a side of fat bacon, but at least he stayed on the thing and, more or less, kept up. He seemed to be able to look after his beast as well, although he'd passed the word for the troopers to keep an eye on him. Any horse bearing Heinzerling's weight was bound to see more wear and tear than a mere Romish priest could remedy. Lennox himself was no small man, but at least he wasn't carrying a half-hundredweight of butter with it.
The sniff that followed the sneer was another masterwork. "We shall see, Herr Kapitan, which arse is broken, this day. I have the better padding, I think you will agree. Am I not the fat papist?"
Och, the bugger's a smart one. Took ma ain line off me and turned it around. And there was a sting in it, too. Lennox wasn't the young man who could once have ridden days and nights on end and not noticed it, and truth be told he was considerably bonier about the behind than Heinzerling. "Aye, ye've y'ain cushion, right enough. It'll be threadbare by dusk, mind. Now run and get Messer Cavriani up and about."
"You called?" Cavriani stood in the inn doorway, a buff-coat wrapped tightly about him. "Curse these cold mornings."
The worst of it, the man was not joking. Lennox sighed. "The day'll warm up. And I was just saying we'll ride on for—" he paused to get the sound of the placename right "—Firenze straight away. Mind, we'll stop as little as we can, press the pace good and hard."
Cavriani groaned. "Christ, have mercy!" he exclaimed. "My ass is already about broken."
Lennox and Heinzerling looked at each other.
"What?" said Cavriani.
Florence seemed like a neat and pretty enough town, although Lennox would be the first to admit he was no great admirer of architecture and buildings and what-not.
The ride had been just as bloody painful as advertised, for the horses as well as his own backside. They'd pressed hard for the best part of two and a half days to get to Florence, and gotten away without any serious problems. That the embassy had enough funds to see them right for two remounts apiece had been their salvation, of course, even if it did make them look like a gaggle of tinker horse-copers.
Heinzerling, rot him, had coped admirably. Lennox supposed, all other things being equal, that the fat priest wasn't such a bad fellow, if he could endure a ride like that without complaint. He had to be hurting just as badly as Lennox was.
Cavriani was a sight to inspire pity. Suffering though Lennox was for not having been in a saddle for weeks before this wild goose chase, Cavriani had last sat a horse years before. And he was by no means the youngest man in their party, either. The lads—none of whom seemed to be feeling a damned thing, God rot their callow souls—had ribbed him with a good nature and seen to him without orders. They all, no doubt, remembered their own first days in the saddle.
They'd left Lieutenant Trumble in charge of keeping a watch on the road while the horses were cared for and rested at a livery on the edge of town that had been positively ecstatic to see so much business in one fell swoop. Cavriani had ambled about—conspicuously bow-legged; Lennox would have to see about getting the man some goose-grease for his sores—asking after the Marcoli party.
There had been no sign, yet. So Lennox and Heinzerling had rented a couple of nags—nothing much to look at, just not half-blown from nearly three days' hard ride across mountains—to take a look in town. Walking would have been agony, and a carriage was no way to see a town. They weren't expecting to see anything, it was just that Lennox liked to get a feel for a new place as quickly as he could. They'd wait here for a few days, he thought, keeping a watch, and if Messer Cavriani could—
Heinzerling reached over and tugged his sleeve. "Herr Kapitan? If I might disturb your rest?"
Lennox realized that he had, in fact, been nodding a little in the saddle as they rode along a cobbled streets and into a large, open square. "Aye?" he said, daring Heinzerling to comment further.
"Father Mazzare." He pointed.
Lennox stared. "Aye, so it is." The American priest was standing on the other side of the square with, it looked like, the Reverend Jones, studying the front of some building or other. A Romish church, from the looks of it. Even the outside of the thing looked idolatrous. "I'd thought myself he'd be nearer Rome by now. We should report."
"Ja," agreed Heinzerling, and they rode across the square.
Mazzare and Jones both did double takes when they turned at the sound of approaching hooves and saw Lennox and Heinzerling. It turned out that they'd reached Florence two days before, and were proposing to depart in the morning.
"You nearly missed us here," the priest-turned-ambassador said. "I'd finished writing up my notes from the things we discussed in the coach, and we were just sightseeing before getting a good night's sleep and moving on. You must have just missed us at Ferrara, if I'm keeping any track of the time we've spent on the road."
"Seems like," said Lennox. "And you didn't pass anyone you recognized on the road?"
"Should we have?" Mazzare frowned.
"Aye, weel," said Lennox, sighing deeply. "It's like this, y'see . . ."
The report took a few minutes. The Reverend Jones simply let his face drop open. As well he might.
Father Mazzare's face grew progressively blanker as Lennox progressed with his report.
"Well," he said, when Lennox had finished.
"Aye," Lennox responded. "It's a muckle great stew of a thing, right enough."
"And Ducos is with them," Heinzerling added.
"Aye," Lennox added. "We were wondering about that, as it happens. Yon Marcoli fellow's none of your great schemers, it seems, and the French want to see him succeed and embarrass us all."
"That'd work," Jones said. "What were the boys thinking?"
Mazzare's face was growing eerily still. "I can guess what Frank was thinking," he said, in a voice with almost no tone to it at all.
Lennox saw that Heinzerling was growing even redder in the face than he normally was, and shifting from foot to foot.
"Father Mazzare," the big German said, "Vielleicht we can be charitable toward the boys, ja? They think to do good, by their lights, ja?"
"Good?" Mazzare's tone was still mild. Lennox realized, with more than a little discomfort, that Mazzare was one of those dangerous men who got more controlled and calm the angrier they became. The man was positively icy, now. Lennox realized that he really, really did not want to be the Stone boys when Mazzare next saw them. Come to that, he didn't want to be himself if he didn't stop the Stone boys before they did whatever it was they were planning.
"Yeah, steady there, Larry," Jones said. "You said yourself lots of folks have some, ah, slightly wild ideas about what's going on with the Inquisition and Galileo and all."
Mazzare took a deep breath, murmured something quietly to himself—probably a prayer, Lennox realized—and: "Okay. Getting angry isn't going to help. Captain Lennox, you say you've not passed them on the road?"
"Aye, Your Excellency," Lennox said. Out of reflex, he was calling on all his reserves of sergeantliness.
"And you're certain they headed for Padua first?"
"Aye, Your Excellency."
"Such was the news Messer Cavriani got for us from the watermen, Father." said Heinzerling, "The Marcolis were poor at keeping secrets, it seems."
"Except from us, apparently," Mazzare snapped. "Sorry, Gus, it wasn't your fault. Will they have met Tom at Padua? Maybe he got them to turn back, and you've chased down here for nothing."
"Schade, no," said Heinzerling. "Herr Doktor Stone returned from Padua without meeting his sons. He is very worried, mein' ich."
"As well he might be, Gus. Not that I'm telling you anything on that score. Lord knows I did some dumb things as a teenager, but this has to beat all." Mazzare heaved another deep sigh, pondered for a moment and then seemed to reach a decision. "Let's assume they're definitely on the way to Rome. Captain Lennox, continue your attempts to find and stop the boys on the road, but please try and make sure you're in Rome before they can possibly arrive. Don't let trying to catch them keep you out on the road while they're up to mischief in Rome. I'll be staying at the palazzo Barberini, apparently; get word to me there. I'll let you know where Galileo's being held and when and where the trial's to be, and you can mount a discreet watch. Stop them quietly but firmly, please. Gus, Captain Lennox, I don't know much about the Marcolis, but Tom's boys are three good kids at heart with all their lives in front of them. Try and keep them out of trouble, eh?"
Lennox and Heinzerling murmured their assent.
"And another thing," Mazzare went on, "make yourselves scarce in town until say noon tomorrow. We're traveling with Monsignor Mazarini, and I'd prefer not to have him know anything he might feel duty-bound to report."
As Gus and Captain Lennox rode away, Jones said "Larry, I'm not sure this is the best way to handle this."
"Why not, Simon?" Mazzare wasn't sure himself, but it was the first improvisation that had occurred to him. Trying to explain about American traditions of teenage independence, about youthful high spirits and the sheer improbability of them doing any harm would cut no ice at a trial for what was, by anyone's standards, a plot to commit a major felony.
"Well, if we explain and all . . . oh." Jones dried up as his thought processes caught up. "Yeah, I see what you mean. 'Cardinal, we need extra guards. The three sons of a friend of ours—one of our delegation, in fact—are plotting to spring the star attraction at this summer's biggest show-trial out of the pokey.' " He snorted. "Go down real well."
Mazzare nodded. "Thinking aloud, here, Simon, we're dealing with a propaganda event. If things really are starting to crack open on this, if it's really like we hope it is, then we can't let anything throw grit in the gears. Although I'd throw it all up in a heartbeat if I could keep those boys from doing something that they'll regret for the rest of their lives."
Mazzare realized, as he said it, that needn't be a very long time at all. While he wasn't familiar with any of the local penal codes, he was pretty certain what the penalty would be for trying to organize a prison-break. This was an era where people could get executed for petty theft.
"Come on, Larry," said Jones, after a long silence. "I think I'm done sightseeing."