“Formally? Naturally, when I arrived. I have not had the pleasure of closer acquaintance, as yet.”
“If you will forgive an old prelate’s idle curiosity,” said Richelieu, stroking a little at his beard, “does the monsignor speak Spanish at all well?”
Mazarini inclined his head in mock modesty. “Your Eminence is perhaps aware that I spent some time in study in Madrid, and learned the language there?”
Richelieu held up a hand. “Of course, of course.” He was waxing positively avuncular, and Mazarini felt a sudden twinge of unease. “Her Majesty is a native speaker, and takes great delight in being so addressed.”
“Indeed?” Mazarini raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, indeed.” Richelieu rose from his desk. “If the monsignor will do me the honor of accompanying me to the Louvre this evening, Her Majesty will be holding an informal levee, where I would be honored to effect a more personal introduction. Her Majesty will be pleased to make your acquaintance, I think. You have something about you of someone she once held very dear. Yes, very dear indeed.”
* * *
As Richelieu’s carriage bore them to the queen’s levee, Mazarini had time to ponder his situation. He and Harry Lefferts had set out from Grantville almost half a year before, barely a week after the Americans had fought successfully no fewer than three prongs of attack that had threatened to eradicate them.
Harry had been an officer in the American army that had defeated many times their number at Eisenach, and the next duty he had been given was to accompany Mazarini back to Rome. Mazarini had talked with the President of the United States about Harry before leaving Grantville.
“Monsignor,” Mike Stearns had said, weary and rambling, “I’ve had any number of folks give me lectures about how this place ought to be defended. The longest one was from the guy I’m sending with you. What he thinks isn’t my position, frankly. I want to see the new United States prosper, and since King Gustavus is right here it’s him I’m talking with. But what I want isn’t Fortress America, like Harry thinks we should do. I think it’ll be good for him to see why not, eh? And for the people who think there’s a military solution to what the United States represents in this time and place, well, I think it’ll be good for them to hear Harry talk about what we’re capable of.”
After that, Stearns’ wife Rebecca, the Jewess, had taken over. She had had more to say, and in more detail, and had put the Grantville Constitution in terms Mazarini was more familiar with—passages from Plato and Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli and Tacitus. It was pleasant to see that at least one of the members of the U.S. government had had a proper education.
It turned out that Harry was, like a lot of Grantville’s natives, possessed of some Italian ancestry and knew a few words of the language. He was also nominally a Catholic, although Grantville’s priest Father Larry Mazzare could not recall having seen him inside a church more than eight times in as many years. Midnight mass at Christmas—conspicuously filled with Christmas cheer—was about the limit of Harry’s observance. And, come to that, his religion.
Mazarini didn’t mind that so much. He had only lately even troubled to wear the dress that went with his being, technically at least, a clergyman. No more than a deacon with a couple of lucrative benefices to support him—and his expensive sisters and profligate father, he reflected—as he scrambled at the greasy pole of Europe’s power politics.
A revolving greasy pole in a high wind, now that half of the old verities had vanished in the harsh glow of the Ring of Fire that had brought the up-time Americans. Mazarini, gambler, diplomat and showman that he was, had tried to slip a few cards off the bottom of the deck by opening a direct, unofficial channel with Grantville.
He had succeeded in that, certainly. In Grantville he had made friends, left one of his own behind as a contact there, been mightily impressed by the parish priest of the town and dined, with him, with the other pastors there who were all different kinds of Protestant. He had also seen Grantville’s civilian population chew up and spit out more than a division of Croat horse, the most reckless and brutal light cavalry that Wallenstein had had under his command.