Frank wondered what the hell he was doing calling himself a leader any more. Michel had made the plans that got them into Rome. Michel had done the scouting when they'd laid up in the grotty tenement house that—yes—Michel had found. Michel had sketched out their route into the church where the trial was being held; their way back out again. Michel had found the coaches and the trustworthy drivers who'd get them down to the boat on the Tiber which would take them and Galileo to freedom. Just like he'd found a reliable captain and crew. The coach drivers and boat crew were all members of Rome's Committee of Correspondence, he explained. That had come as a surprise to the Marcoli youngsters as much as it had to Frank and his brothers. None of them had even known there was a Committee in Rome.
Sure, the others had contributed, too. They'd all done a turn casing the Villa Medici, where Galileo was being held. That hadn't gone anywhere, though. All of them agreed that there was no way they could fight their way in past a small horde of Medici retainers, find out which room the old guy was being held in, and get him out.
So, they'd have to spring Galileo from the trial itself. They couldn't even be sure of their moment to do it, but they reckoned it would go best if they waited until the last minute. After all, then would be the best moment. Right after he'd been convicted and they could wring the maximum amount of propaganda out of the forces of reaction. There was no sense not giving them enough rope to hang themselves with, Ron had said—an image that Frank felt he might have chosen a little more carefully.
Still, Michel had planned most of this. He'd really been the one running the show since they'd finally arrived in Rome. Frank was finding his dislike for the man growing all the time, but he was too honest with himself not to admit that Ducos seemed a veritable wizard at this sort of thing, all of his modest protestations notwithstanding.
And, truth be told, the closer they got to the actual deed, the more Frank felt as if he'd entered some kind of weird virtual universe where he didn't trust his own judgment. Too many things just . . . didn't make sense to him, even though he could never figure out exactly why they didn't.
Take the location of the trial itself. The whole thing was freaky, to Frank. The Inquisition held its trials in an ordinary church, it turned out, not a dungeon. A church that happened to have some extra side rooms, but a church nonetheless. Made sense, Frank supposed, when you tried to look at the thing with the sort of bizarre logic that put a man on trial for saying the Earth went around the sun, but Frank still couldn't get his head around it.
The days of leaving church buildings locked were a long way in the future, so everyone had taken a turn over the last couple of days to go in, kneel down, and case the place. That, at least, was easy to do. It wasn't like there weren't whole bunches of other people in there at the same time. It had come as a surprise to Frank to discover that the church was used as something of a social center when it wasn't being used as a house of worship. People met there, and talked, and sat around to shoot the breeze. Frank had actually never set foot inside a church before, which was maybe a little freaky when he thought about it, but it was true. The only idea he'd had about how you ought to behave in a church came from television: hushed tones; respectful whispers; slow-moving priests with hands folded before them, coming to offer wise counsel to troubled souls.
Come right to it, that was mostly where he'd gotten his impression of Father Mazzare from, since he barely knew the man.
And there was something else for Frank to worry about. Despite the best efforts of Michel Ducos, they'd been unable to learn anything about where Mazzare was being held or when his trial was scheduled.
Well, they could only do so much. If Father Mazzare wound up in a second trial in that church, he was going to have to rely on the USE's diplomatic efforts to get him out, or be a martyr or something. That left Frank more than a bit dry-mouthed, but there was just no way they'd be able to pull off a second rescue, even if they managed the first one.
The plan had been to get to the church at the crack of dawn and take their places down front. Fabrizio was the biggest problem there, although the other Marcolis had warned him the night before that he was getting a bucket of water if he wasn't up smartly just before dawn. Perhaps more to the point, Ducos—in that utterly chilling manner he sometimes had about him—had predicted that the bucket of water would be followed by immersion in the Tiber. An immersion, he gave the distinct impression, that would be permanent.
But . . . it worked, as so many things Ducos did worked. Fabrizio got up with the rest of them.
And now they were on a wide, cobbled street looking across at a church that, later in the morning, was going to be the scene of the Venetian Committee of Correspondence's greatest triumph.
Or greatest disaster, a quiet little voice told him.
He looked around. For, he realized, probably the fifth time in as many minutes. Everyone was here. Well, everyone who was coming. Thankfully, that didn't include Giovanna. Frank had put his foot right down with Giovanna, to keep her back with the coaches. Frank never thought he'd say it, but Gretchen Richter was a prize pain in the ass on that score, just for the example she set. After all, if Gretchen could take part in all manner of daring adventures—fighting off pirates, even—why couldn't Giovanna? The fact that Gretchen was a big and frankly scary Amazon who'd been around soldiers and fighting since she was a kid and Giovanna was, well, none of the above.
It had been a long and ferocious argument. Truth to tell, Frank was pretty sure that there was only one reason he'd won the argument at all. Ever since—his thoughts got really misty and warm here, for a moment—that night, Giovanna's behavior had changed subtly. She was reacting to him as a husband, now, not a boyfriend; and Italy, after all, was the country that had given the world the term paterfamilias. Okay, it was cheating, but Frank was willing to cheat if it'd keep Giovanna alive.
Still, he was pretty sure he'd be hearing about it for a long, long, long time if they got out of this alive. That too, he suspected darkly, was part of the tradition.
Ron and Gerry were along, Marius, Michel, Dino and Fabrizio. Michel had also insisted on bringing one of the members of the Roman Committee into the church with them. He'd even insisted that the man had to be given one of the six flintlock pistols, which left Dino and Fabrizio unarmed. Local liaison, he explained, in case something went wrong and they had to use a different escape route. Frank didn't even know the guy's name.
Salvatore was back with Giovanna at the coaches and Roberto was going to be watching the route back, ready to spring a couple of the surprises from the Revenge Kit that they'd brought with them. Michel had approved of those, and Roberto turned out to have a knack for the gadgetry. So, Gerry had spent days eagerly lecturing the Marcoli youngster on the subjects of pyrotechnics and related mayhem. At least it had kept Frank's often rambunctious youngest brother out of his hair for a good long while.
"Nervous, Frank?" Ron asked. He was doing his best to look nonchalant on the street corner in the first light of dawn. The church was open, all right, there were guards there ambling about and, off to one side, having a quiet smoke. That was a worry in itself.
"Sure, who wouldn't be? I think we wait until we see someone else go in. I want to know if those guys are searching folks at the door."
"Sure." Ron yawned widely. "These early mornings don't agree with me."
Frank laughed. "Yeah, and this is early-early, too. Electric lighting can't come too soon for me, these predawn starts are a killer." The street was starting to get light, though, and Rome was already fairly busy. Not a patch on Venice, packed as it was into a much smaller space, or Magdeburg with its industrial bustle, but there was still plenty going on.
Michel was standing nearby, silent and impassive. Naturally, he'd found a shadow to stand in, and had gone from his usual Gallic morosity to something harder and colder, something that gave Frank more than a bit of a chill. Marius stood next to him; the two had somehow grown quite close over the last few weeks. Talk about an Odd Couple.
"When's the trial start, Michel?" Gerry asked.
"As soon as all is ready, Monsieur Gerry," Michel said. "Everyone must wait on the convenience of these prelates." Another shrug, this one conveying Michel's disdain for the prelates in question.
"Someone's going in," Ron said.
Frank looked. It was hard to see whether the figures going in were old women or priests. The light wasn't good. It seemed fairly clear, though, that the guards weren't searching anyone on the way in. That was damned odd. A courthouse up-time would have cops and probably rent-a-cops around it as a matter of routine, surely? They did on TV, anyway.
Oh, well. A lot of things about the seventeenth century didn't make much sense to Frank. He took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "Dino, since neither of you have guns, take Fabrizio and see if you get searched on the way in. I figure you can come back out if there's a search and let us know."
"And if there is?" Michel asked.
"Then we've got a real problem," Frank said. "Probably have to figure out a different plan altogether. Maybe wait till Galileo's been moved somewhere else."
Oh, please let there be a search, came the Voice of Treason. Frank squashed it as best he could. Which was not too well at all.
"Maybe we could find some other way in where they're not searching," Gerry said, "Get the weapons in that way."
"Whatever," said Frank. "Get going, Dino. Fabrizio. If you don't come out in ten minutes, we'll follow you in."
And so it was done.
There was no search. Ten minutes later, they all went in.
The church was all but empty.
Outside of the church of San Matteo where Galileo's trial would be starting soon, the crowd was seething but quiet.
Lennox looked around to Heinzerling, who was holding him up on a stone balustrade. "I can see naught," he said. "Leave me doon, Heinzerling."
"Can we go in?" Heinzerling was already going beet-red in only the mild morning sunshine of a Roman summer.
"Nae the noo. Yon Swiss laddies hae the place ringed." He nodded to himself. "Just as I would do't. The maist fowk'll aye be in an' set, and the place needs closed while the quality arrive."
"The quality, you say?" Heinzerling's voice had taken on a slow, thoughtful character.
Lennox pulled his canteen from his belt and took a drink. By all that was holy, if he'd known he was going to be this thirsty he'd have had another drink the night before. "Ye've a notion how we're to get in, have ye not?" he said, as matter-of-fact as he could be.
"V'leicht," murmured Heinzerling, his eyes growing a little far-away as if he was unfocusing them to see the inside of his own mind a little more clearly. Lennox sympathized; his own head was throbbing gently, and the heat and smell of this abominable city of papists was not helping.
He waited a moment. For all he cursed the big German for a fattened, drunken papist gobshite, he was a frighteningly smart man when he sobered up. What was coming might not be perfect, but—
"Ja!" said Heinzerling, beaming suddenly and snapping his fingers. "We shall need two good horses, the rest of the Marines and for you and Billy Trumble your dress uniforms with all speed. Und Lennox?"
"Aye?"
"Can you sneer?"
"Sneer?"
"Ja, like ein Adel—like a nobleman?"
Realization crept up on Lennox. "Oh, aye," he said, "I can do that wee thing richt enow." He grinned.
Heinzerling grinned back. The pair of them threw their weight against the crowd to get back to the hostelry where the Marines were sleeping off the exhaustion of the last hard-driving stretch of their journey.
"Simon," said Mazzare, "I'm scared."
Jones snorted. "No kidding, Larry. The pope has ordered you to talk the greatest scientist who ever lived—most famous, anyway—out of the clutches of the Inquisition. This is called a 'pressure situation.' "
The priest chuckled, feeling the tension lighten a bit. Today was the day of Galileo's trial, and Mazzare had prepared as well as he felt he could. Still, and it was a heavy burden he had borne these past weeks past since he received the pope's summons, and there was not a lot that all the science that Grantville had to offer would help. Mazzare knew full well that, when all was said and done, the issue was really theological and political. Both of which were frequently the same thing in this town.
Mazzare sighed, heavily. He had retired early the night before after one last consultation with Galileo, who was now fluttering between terror and ill temper. Now that was most of the problem—but no. This was Mazzare's own burden to bear. He and the Reverend Jones, who was along as his clerk and moral support for the trial, had been given an anteroom in a palazzo next door to the church of San Matteo. Ostensibly it was for use as a workroom, but all the use Mazzare had been able to find for the cool marble floor dotted with elegant furniture was as a space to pace in. On an escritoire by the window there was a bundle of paper, his notes for the day. Every turn he took at that side of the room showed him those notes, and each time he felt his gut sink a little.
"What's eating you now, Larry?" Jones asked after a while.
Mazzare looked at the Methodist minister, where he sprawled on an antique of the future that looked too gracile for his weight. He realized he had known the wise-cracking Methodist for the best part of twelve years, and neither of them could much fool the other any more. They were too alike, for all their differences. Jones was just as full of stage fright as Mazzare was, but he was carefully wearing his professional face in these slow hours before the proceedings began. Jones would doubtless insist that that was for Mazzare's benefit, but it was as much for Jones' own peace of mind. Seeing Jones trying so hard to pretend he wasn't nervous gave Mazzare a sudden sense of warmth. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees and loudly thank God for the blessing of friendship. Al Green, Grantville's Baptist minister, would have done just that. But a pastor had to stay in his own character.
Mazzare stopped his pacing squarely in the bright golden patch of light from the big window that lit the room. He took a deep breath. "It's my client, Simon."
"Galileo? What's wrong with him? Apart from being an ornery old coot without a good word for anyone?"
"He's guilty, Simon." There, far easier to deal with now it was out in the open. There was that much truth in the old sixties saying.
"Guilty." Jones repeated the word flatly. "Go on, then, Larry, tell me about it?"
Mazzare walked over to where the window stood open and leaned against the plasterwork of the jamb. Outside, and some way below, there was the murmur of a crowd. Hushed, like the ordinary street noise of Rome never was, but noisy as thousands of people all together must always be.
"He's charged with heresy, Simon."
Jones frowned. "Well, yes. That's why we're here, isn't it?"
"Yes and no. When he was tried in our history, it happened a year earlier than this. And there was the Bellarmino memorandum, which they hung the plea on that they got him to cop. But that isn't in the papers for this trial, so they can't find him guilty of violating a direct order."
"That's to the good, isn't it?" Jones looked at the stack of trial papers, most of which he could barely read. "I mean, we don't have to answer that charge?"
"We don't. It means, though, that the Holy Office—and forget this stuff about Committees of Inquiry, it's the Inquisition—that, as I say, the Holy Office are only charging him with what they can convict him on."
"Yes, but it's still only vehement suspicion of heresy, isn't it?"
"That's the charge. The trouble is, the only defense for Galileo is to admit the actual charge of heresy."
Jones was silent a moment, working though the implications. "Oh," he said after a while.
"You see? He got off the main charge last time and they caught him on vehement suspicion of holding and defending Copernican opinions he couldn't prove."
"But we can prove them, surely?"
"It won't do any good, Simon. Didn't you pay any attention to the make-up of the court?"
Jones sat up straight and laughed, although there was little humor in it. "Sure I did. Especially the bit of the list that went Barberini, Barberini, Barberini."
"That didn't amount to a message?" Mazzare straightened up from the window-jamb and sat on the windowsill, which was at just the right height and sun-warmed. The sun on his back made him realize how tired he really was.
"Sure. The pope stacked the court with his brother and two of his nephews. He wants Galileo let off."
"Or convicted."
"Eh?" Jones stared hard at Mazzare with narrowed eyes. "That's not what you've been saying. What made you change your mind?"
Mazzare shrugged. "Perhaps simply being in Rome. It's an ancient city, Simon, and the Catholic Church is almost as ancient. The pope, in the end, will do whatever he does because he believes it is for the good of the Church." Mazzare felt strangely light and calm as he spoke. "I find myself much less prepared to state that I am certain what he will decide. His Holiness does not necessarily agree with you—or me—what the interest of the Church might be. And if he decides otherwise, he has made certain that he has a tribunal which will accommodate him."
"Now hold on—" Jones rose out of his chair and wagged a finger at Mazzare. "Don't you be getting all paranoid on me, Larry. The issue is as straightforward as it gets."
"It certainly is not!" Mazzare grew sharp, then, and stood up from his warm perch on the windowsill. "Simon, we aren't preaching to small-town congregations any more. With the best will in the world, Grantville is a rural town full of plain people who don't truck with subtleties."
Jones made a sour face. "Peasants, you mean—"
"Knock it off, Simon, you know what I mean. Pollyanna it up all you want, old friend, but there won't be any straw-man arguments in that church this morning. Every single person in that tribunal is at least as good a theologian as either of us, and most of them are better. And any of them can tell you the difference. Since you're pretending not to know better, and bless you for trying to cheer me up with it, the difference is between assuming that all that is, is by the will of God, and assuming that all is according to God's ineffable plan for the universe."
Jones held up his hands. "Pax."
"Thank you, Simon, graciously done." Mazzare smiled, resuming his pacing with his head bowed and hands clasped behind him. "The prosecution will certainly advance an argument in favour of the law of necessity that is straight out of scholasticism."
"Which I'm too rusty on to know if that's right or not, but go on."
Mazzare waved Jones's objection aside for the mere bagatelle it was. "You can look it up later. The important thing is that among the schools of philosophy His Holiness Urban VIII clove to was—" He smiled encouragingly at Jones.
"Scholasticism." Jones finished the sentence in a weak voice. "And His Holiness is also a temporal ruler who will see an immediate increase in temporal power if he steps on Galileo and publicly thwarts the USE, as represented by you, and especially me, the Protestant."
"Just so."
"Oh, damn," said Jones, with feeling. "I hadn't thought of that. We've been suckered! Set up!"
Mazzare chuckled harshly. "Don't get all paranoid on me, Simon. I didn't say that's what His Holiness would do. Just that it was indeed a very possible option."
Jones cocked his head. "What's your best estimate?"
The American priest shrugged. "My guess is that Pope Urban VIII hasn't really quite made up his own mind yet. He wants to wait and see how the trial shapes up. Which means . . . I'm on the spot, Simon. I think he is leaning in our direction, actually. But I don't think 'the fix is in.' I think he wants to see if I can do the fixing."
"Ah." Jones thought about it for moment. "Pressure situation, then, like I said. But don't forget our trusty motto, Larry. When the going gets tough, the tough go theologizing."
That brought a genuine laugh from Mazzare. "The ending of that, as I recall—the last time you recited it, anyway—was 'the tough change the oil filter.' "
"There's a difference?"
One of the palazzo's servants ushered in Monsignor Mazarini.
"It is time, Father," he said. Mazarini's voice, as usual, was calm and soft-spoken; intimate, even, without being presumptuous. The voice of a master diplomat, despite still being short of his thirty-second year of life.
Mazzare stared at the young man who, in another universe, would become France's great minister of state in the fullness of time, in that era when France was the center of the Western world. A universe in which Galileo had been convicted.
A universe where the Ring of Fire had never happened.
It all fell into place for the American priest, in that moment. Larry Mazzare had wondered himself, for three years, what God's purpose had been when he ripped Grantville out of its own time to send it to another.
Many others had as well, of course, and come to their own conclusions. Gustavus Adolphus thought it was a warning to the world's princes. So, in a different way, did Cardinal Richelieu.
But they were princes themselves. Mazzare was not. He was simply a small-town priest; ultimately, a very humble man.
Yes, that was the key. Humility, nothing more.
The Ring of Fire had not been a warning at all. Just the Lord's subtle reminder that, in the end, it was not for mortals to presume to know His purpose.
"Good," said Mazzare. "I am ready."
He gave Mazarini a comforting little pat on the shoulder, on his way through the door. The man needed reassurance, he thought. In his own way, Mazarini too was a humble man—perhaps the only such, among Europe's great diplomats. Mazzare had great hopes for him.