Marcoli bestowed the razor smile on the man Frank had kicked. “I guess we won’t need to cut his balls off.” He swiveled his head and bestowed the smile on Frank himself. For an instant, there actually seemed to be some warmth in it.
But the instant passed. Marcoli’s head swiveled back to regard the captured muggers. “I warned you,” he said softly. “And now—you assault even my own daughter.”
Frank could only see the faces of two of the muggers. Well, three—but it was obvious now that he had broken that man’s nose. His face was still covered with blood.
They looked very scared already. The moment Marcoli said the last sentence, Frank discovered that another hackneyed old expression was true. Men actually could turn as white as a sheet.
They must not have recognized Giovanna, Frank realized, wearing that borrowed finery. Apparently, they really had thought she was—
“They called me a whore, Papa!” Giovanna hissed. “Hissed” as in locomotive. Very healthy lungs.
Marcoli nodded judiciously. “Yes, outrageous. But we must not allow personal animosity to enter the business. This is a matter of revolutionary justice, not family vengeance.”
That didn’t seem to cheer up the muggers any. Frank suddenly had a very bad feeling about the situation.
“Uh, Messer Marcoli,” he said, half-protesting. “If it had just been the money, you know, I would have given it to them. I mean, it’s only money.”
Again, that judicious nod. “Yes, I understand. Very generous, your spirit—and it is true that money is not something we should worship. But that is not the point.”
He gestured, his hand sweeping the surroundings. “See where these carrion lurk? They prey on their own kind. Too cowardly to rob the nobility. We will put a stop to that, by making this more dangerous still. I gave them one warning, and they paid no heed. Let us see if they will pay attention this time.”
He didn’t pause at all, so far as Frank could see. “Beat them to a pulp. Slit their noses. Then cut off one ear each. We will nail them up in prominent places.”
The Marcolis and their confederates set to it immediately, and with a will. The one Frank had kicked and the one he’d head-butted got no bonus points for their existing injuries either.
But Frank didn’t watch it, after the shock of the first few seconds of violence held him immobile. He blew out his breath and turned away. Giovanna was still hugging him and now he finally returned the embrace. With a will.
Frank didn’t really know what to think. He’d heard of stuff like this happening in Magdeburg. That raw boom town had nothing much in the way of a police force, outside of the few areas where Swedish or U.S. soldiers patrolled, and the crime rate had initially rocketed. Until the Committees of Correspondence had established their own rough-and-ready street law. “Rough-and-ready” was the right expression, too. Frank knew that some criminals had wound up in the Elbe river.
He’d even approved of it himself, when he’d heard about it. But somehow “street justice” was harder to take in person than at a distance. He found himself wishing—for the first time in his scapegrace life, ha!—that Dan Frost were here. Grantville’s one-time police chief had been a pain in the ass often enough, sure. But nobody had ever worried about being beaten in a cell, much less the ley de fuega, when Dan Frost took them into custody. There was a lot to be said for professional law enforcement, when you got right down to it, at least when it was done fair and square.
By then, though, Frank discovered that he was nuzzling Giovanna’s hair. Which was every bit as luxuriant and healthy as her lungs and . . . well, everything else. So he found it easy enough to forget about the rest.
At least, until he realized that Antonio Marcoli had left off supervising the mayhem and was standing at his elbow.
Frank froze. Okay, so he wasn’t doing anything with Giovanna you could really call “feeling her up,” but . . .
On the other hand, she was practically feeling him up—boy, those little hands felt great—and he suddenly remembered that The One’s papa standing at his elbow was the very same guy who’d just calmly given orders on the subject of broken bones, slit noses, sliced-off ears . . . judicious decisions that castration wasn’t probably necessary even though it was a charming idea and maybe another time . . .