“But no matter how hard I try, which way I turn, I find myself mired deeper and deeper in the savagery, the blood-lusting, the senseless violence on which people here and now seem to truly dote. Oh, yes, I did my full share of it for King Arthur, but with the last of the foreign Crusaders driven out or killed, with a friendly emperor on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, with the Irish High King and the King of Scotland both suing not only for peace but for alliances against the Roman Papacy, with peace throughout most of England and Wales and London certain to fall to the king any day now, I’d been hoping that soon I could hang up this sword and the pistols and never have to so much as look at the damned deadly things again. Then I could get back to being the kind of a man I really am, not the killing machine I’ve had to become.
“When the king failed to formally muster the horse this past spring, didn’t even visit the Essex cavalry camp to inspect such units as did arrive on time and intact, no one was more overjoyed than the Lord Commander of the Royal Horse. I figured this gory business was finally winding down, and my biggest worry was how to get that pack known as the Royal Tara Gal lowglasses back to Ireland before they got bored enough with the lack of bloodshed to slip their leashes and get themselves and me into deep shit. Those men arc frightening enough, God knows, on our side. I’d hate like hell to be the one who had to hunt them down on a royal writ for crimes against the populace.
“That galley thing, now, that seemed like the perfect plan to give the crazy Gaels exercise, if nothing else, since they can seldom be induced to take part in formal cavalry drill. How did Burns put it? “The best-planned lays of mice and men . . .’ or something similar. The galleys captured a ship and now the damned ship has captured me and I’m back on the same old treadmill I thought I’d escaped. How the hell do you get off? Or do you ever get off in this world and time?”
He continued to muse as the barge came alongside the Revenge and was still so lost in thought that he forgot his usual vertigo and clambered up the ladder hung over the rail of the galleon’s waist as nimbly as any seaman might have done.
The rambling waterfront palazzo of the Archbishops of Palermo had been built by the Moors on a Roman foundation, heavily fortified by Normans, modernized—according to thirteenth-century standards—by Germans, refortified by Spaniards, remodernized by Neapolitans, and, most lately, made comfortable by current standards by its occupant of some years, his Eminence, Cardinal Bartolomeo D’Este, holder of the archdiocese.
The D’Estes were a very well-known noble family of Northern Italy. For generations the various branches of their house had produced princes of both worlds, temporal and ecclesiastical—dukes and cardinals, counts and archbishops, barons and bishops and abbots, great captains and equally great scholars. Almost every D’Este who had ever entered the public eye had been in some manner remarkable, and Bartolomeo was no exception.
Shrewd investment of the modest incomes from certain of his patrimonial properties, and then reinvestment of accruing proceeds, had in two decades made of Bartolomeo a rather wealthy man. The original incomes from northern vineyards and farms continued to trickle in, moreover, though now virtually submerged in the floods of returns from his investments, which now included his outright if often covert ownership of trading ventures, warehouses and inns and stables, oil presses and cooperages and foundries and mills. Through other agents, the cardinal owned ships, dealt in maritime insurance, and even practiced usury on occasion.
And Bartolomeo was gifted in other ways as well. Without ceding any easily noticeable aspects of security, he had transformed a marginally habitable Neapolitan waterfront garrison building into a palazzo in every sense of that word.
When the complex had been rendered as clean as the hand of man could make it, from deepest subcellars to highest, half-hidden garrets, the then-new Archbishop of Palermo had had the living areas furnished with carpets and drapes and wall hangings and tasteful, modern furniture before he moved in his household. With his staff, his servants, his guards, his women, and his children and their servants comfortably ensconced, he had set to work on the exteriors of the residence.
The outer face of every stone was painstakingly cleansed of centuries’ worth of grime, birdlime, rust stains, and oxidation. Then, while master stonemasons applied to some areas facades of costly marble, each and every other visible bit of stonework was thickly coated with a long-wearing exterior plaster composed of powdered marble. Roofings of slate and tile were repaired where needed, then given a generous coating of the same expensive cement.
Dusty interior courts and wellyards, filled with the trash, debris, and filth of half a millennium, were dug out, sodded, and transformed into tiny green oases, where flowers grew beneath the fruit trees and small, brilliantly colored birds hopped and twittered and sang, while fountains plashed their silvery water.
“Very nice, Bartolomeo, all very nice” had been the comment of old Cardinal Prospero Sicola when he and the younger Cardinal Murad Yakubian first came down from Rome. “Nonetheless, comfortable life or no comfortable life, 1 cannot imagine how so vibrant and astute a man as yourself can stand to not be more in Rome. You could rise far higher than a mere backwater archbishop, you know, but the opportunities are fleeting and they always lie in Rome.
“Oh, Til never rise higher, not forceful enough, I suppose. But had 1, at your age, been blessed with your undeniable talents and resources, I’ve no slightest doubt but what I’d be Pope Sicola, this day … if some Moor hadn’t poisoned me already, of course.”
“Speaking of Moors . . . ?” Bartolomeo paused, eyebrows raised.
Prospero sighed forcefully, his mouth twisting as if he had unexpectedly bitten into a piece of sour fruit. “His holiness grows more senile every day, more feeble physically, too. His physicians despair that he’ll last another year. And when Abdul goes …” Prospero paused and stared hard into nothingness, loudly cracking all his knuckles at once. “It’s really that bad, is it, then?” probed Bartolomeo. “Worse, my boy, ten times worse than anything you could have imagined. The African faction doesn’t intend for its control of the Papacy to die with Abdul; its supporters— hellfire, let’s call it a private army and have done with subterfuge!—are armed to the very teeth, but so too is the Spanish faction. Of course, Rome has had those two competing factions locked in a virtual death struggle for fifty years and more, but now, with the election of this intemperate young hothead as Holy Roman Emperor, the long-quiescent German faction is rapidly consolidating and openly recruiting support. Most of the Slavs are solidly on the German hip, now likewise the Savoyards, and not a few Northern Italians. You can be certain that the Swedes will not be long in joining, so too the Danes, likely even the damned Burgundians before it’s done with.
“The French and the Portuguese are the wild cards, of course. They and the Scots and Irish, for you can bet that England will be kept powerless in Romish politics, no matter what may occur in worldly affairs, at least until Abdul’s successor is installed.”
Bartolomeo shrugged. “No, the English will likely hate Moors for many a year to come. And who can blame them, all things considered? Certain of my correspondents, among whom are many recognized authorities on the subject, maintain to this day that the original interdictions of England and Wales, the excommunication of Arthur Tudor and the preaching of the Crusade against England were none of them strictly legal according to Canon Law.”
“All quite true, more’s the pity/’ Prospero agreed sadly. “Nor, I fear, will a simple hatred of Moors alone be ail of it or even the worst of it. So disillusioned are the English and the Welsh clergy and laity that they seem to be going very forcefully about the establishment of what may amount to a fourth Papacy! Their Archbishop Harold di York appears to be the prime mover in this, and he has attracted clerical interest from outside the Kingdom of England, too—parts of the Empire, Burgundy, Scotland, the Swiss Cantons, and Ireland.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Bartolomeo, feelingly. “What a motley pack! Burgunds and Switzers? Irish and Scots and English? It’s akin to persuading lynx and fox or owl and rat to unite in a common purpose. The mere thought of such is frightening in its implications. Wasn’t this di York tried for witchcraft in his youth, or was that his father or uncle? Only a proven warlock could effect such irrational alliances.”