In the timeline that had been, Mazarini had been a rising star in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. Famous in his twenty-ninth year for rescuing the settlement of the War of the Mantuan Succession that had nearly been blown by Richelieu’s creature, Father Joseph. Fortunately for France, the manner of the treaty’s near-undoing was completely forgotten in the drama of its rescue. Mazarini had galloped his horse between two armies at Cherasco, waving a blank piece of paper and calling out that peace had been made. His flamboyant coup de théâtre, founded in a flagrant lie, had convinced the near-combatants that there was a treaty just long enough for one to be remade in reality.
Later in that timeline, after the time when the Ring of Fire had split the here and now away from what would have been, Mazarini had gone on to take service with Richelieu, and had become a naturalized Frenchman, changing his name to Jules Mazarin. On Richelieu’s death he had succeeded to the position of prime minister of France as Cardinal Mazarin, the architect of the absolute state of Louis XIV. There were monuments to the man in the Paris Mazzare had briefly played tourist in, even a Mazarin library.
Grantville had not had a detailed biography of the man, but the basic facts were there in the better encyclopedias. Mazzare was fairly certain that Mazarini’s future career was known, for good or ill, in every quarter where the knowing was thought worth knowing. Mazzare himself, ordered by the pope to report on the future, had listed the known details of Mazarini’s career, giving particular prominence to the man’s later support for the Barberini after their patron Urban VIII—born Maffeo Barberini—died and they began to lose faction-fight after faction-fight within the Church. Not that they couldn’t have guessed at Mazarini’s future sympathies; he counted at least one Barberini cardinal among his close friends, by all accounts.
The best bit was his key role in the Peace of Westphalia, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. That was important. Mazarini’s career, a few blips apart, was—had been, the normal tenses didn’t seem to work properly—devoted to the making of peace after peace. The man had been an inveterate diplomat throughout the life he’d led, and probably saved a good many lives by his efforts.
Mazzare wondered whether Mazarini had fully digested any of it. Or if—no, but Harry Lefferts had come back to Grantville with the news that Mazarini had gone to Paris. If Richelieu had not used the knowledge of future history that he undoubtedly had to make Mazarini an offer, there was no hope at all for France.
Was there a tactful way to ask?
Mazzare realized that the moment was stretching and that Mazarini’s having called attention to his new title was in itself a message. Reminding the American priest that he was a diplomat himself now, that they were both at work in the practice of what was now their mutual trade, and there was no such thing as idle chit-chat for such as they.
“Yes,” he said, “although that title is much less official than it was—or will be—back in my day.” He grimaced. “Doubtless you too have noticed the trouble that normal tenses have with these circumstances.”
Mazarini chuckled. “One’s conception of oneself can be a little shaky, as well.”
Mazzare had been braced, he had thought, but not for that. One could never be ready for that kind of revelation. He felt his pulse bound and then settle as he decided on a tactical misinterpretation. “Quite,” he said, smiling ruefully. “There I was, a simple parish priest in a simple country town, and now here I am an ambassador. Perhaps I could prevail upon our acquaintance to sit down with you for a few pointers from a professional?”
Mazzare realized as he said it that he actually meant that. Whatever Mazarini’s final allegiances would turn out to be, he was actually a genuinely nice man. When first they had met, Mazzare had been at the bottom of a long, deep depression brought on by his doubts about his place in this time, and the church that represented God to its people and their world. Mazarini had said and done the right things to make Mazzare feel that there was some hope. It could have been a diplomat’s professional patter, of course, but then there had been the raid on Grantville by Wallenstein’s cavalry, and the bloody aftermath. Mazarini’s response had been too smooth, sustained and practical for anyone to believe that it was entirely or even partly feigned. The man cared, and seemed to have the natural touch of friendship about him.