Sanchez was now looking toward the Arsenal. “Hmm. Interesting,” he murmured. “And such a pleasure that would be . . .”
He turned back to her, smiling. “But let us not jump to hasty conclusions. To be sure, it probably was the French. Ungallant bastards. Shoot a woman! Still, other possibilities cannot be overlooked. Perhaps a triton or some other fantastical creature took offense at Buckley.” He waved at the canal. “These waters are said to be full of them.”
Sharon snorted. “Your prejudices are showing, Ruy.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. For the moment, I think we should begin on Murano. Most likely the Committee had nothing to do with the affair. They are said to be most ineffective. Still, it is a beginning.”
* * *
Padua was a nice-looking town, at least in silhouette. As the boats pulled up at the river-dock below the town, Frank couldn’t see much more than that, what with the midafternoon sun begin to set behind it.
“We stay here tonight,” Antonio Marcoli said. “I know an inn.”
“A lot of work to do getting unloaded first,” Frank remarked.
“Oh, sure,” said Marcoli. “We got plenty of big strong boys with us, though.” He grinned. His own hands were no strangers to hard work, it had to be said.
It was still going to be hard work. Frank and Messer Marcoli were in the third boat of three. Rather than get faster, oared boats, Marcoli had hired three smallish sailing boats. Big dinghies, Frank supposed they were. There were twelve of them on the mission, and any of the three boats would have held them all comfortably with any reasonable amount of baggage. For some reason, though, trying to fit all seven Marcolis and the word “reasonable” into the same plan was something that just couldn’t be made to happen.
First of all, Massimo had to be forcibly dissuaded from bringing the printing press. Yes, it was portable. Yes, it disassembled into easy-to-carry sections. Yes, you could have the thing up and running from its box in under two hours—once you had a Philips screwdriver and were familiar enough with the thing to do without the instructions. On the other hand, “easy to carry” meant two strong men on each of three boxes, and if it got dropped it’d probably be ruined.
What had clinched it was the simple argument from time and speed. Four hours a day just setting the thing up and taking it down, not counting the time spent actually printing. Time spent buying paper en route. Time spent composing propaganda en route. Time in which Galileo was being held in Rome awaiting trial, and a date would be set any day now.
Massimo had given in. The idea of instant, reactive propaganda . . . Frank hadn’t dared ask, but he suspected that Massimo had been thinking of passing out progress bulletins on the rescue as it went along. Frank privately thanked whatever deities, watchful spirits, guardian angels and even Great Cthulhu that they didn’t have TV or radio in Italy yet. Massimo would have been trying to lug a transmitter along to do a play-by-play.
Of course, Massimo had only given in for small values of “given in.” Then the negotiations had begun as to how many crates of preprinted propaganda they would take along for distribution en route . . .
So now they were approaching Padua slowly, when they could have been here by lunchtime. They were doing it in three boats—eating still further into their store of funds—where they could have used one. And before they got to dinner and a bed for the night, apparently with a friend of Marcoli’s wife’s sister’s husband, they had about a ton of revolutionary propaganda to haul out of the boats and up to wherever they were staying. They wouldn’t even start on trying to hire a couple of wagons until the next day. Coaches were out of the question, of course. They had too much baggage for anything that was likely to move.
Bright side, Frank, bright side. Spending the night meant they’d have time to track down their father. In fact, as soon as the boat docked—he’d already arranged it—Gerry would make himself scarce and set off to find him. None of the Stone boys knew exactly where their father and Madga were staying, here in Padua, but they knew it was somewhere in or right next to the university where he gave his lectures.