1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [111]
"Largely, no. The unpredictable nature of the common folk and a number of useful coincidences were among our principal advantages. That the matter worked on the first provocation was of great good fortune. The matter could so easily have died away to the status of street-gossip for the next week."
"The hand of the Holy Spirit!" Borja cried aloud. "I was surer of nothing else!"
"Your Eminence's insight into such matters is well known," Quevedo said gravely.
In the end, the dispatch went on a fast horse to Naples at two in the morning. The shooting at the gate had died down an hour before.
Chapter 25
Rome
The drive back from the Palazzo Colonna was anything but dull, Sharon noticed. Cities being what they were, preautomobile, sound carried. The cool that came with the Mediterranean spring night let it carry even further. Somewhere, there was trouble. The roaring of a crowd, somewhere, and the sound of shooting.
"Sounds like it's a long, hot, night," her father remarked as the carriage driver trotted his team along a broad street.
"It would appear that the disturbance earlier was not the last," Ruy added. "It is the time of year for it."
"Bread prices?" Rita asked.
"Indeed. This year's harvests are not yet in, and last year's are running low, and last year's was nothing special. If there is trouble, it spreads quickly." As if to underscore Ruy's words, a column of cavalry came along the street in the opposite direction, heading toward the river.
"Where will they be heading?" Melissa asked, craning her neck in the open-topped carriage as the horsemen went by.
"Probably to the rougher neighborhoods across the river," Sharon told her. That side of the river had become run-down during the years the papacy was in Avignon. Despite the fact that the POPE had been back in the Vatican for decades, the area had never recovered. The neighborhood right under the Vatican's walls was the roughest of all, and the adjoining parish where Frank had sited the Committee's headquarters wasn't much better. There were tough neighborhoods on this side of the river, the area around the Ripetto docks for one, but for sheer nastiness the streets within the Leonine wall that was part of the Vatican's medieval defenses were Rome's low point.
Dr. Nichols harrumphed. "Always the same. Poor folks wreck their own neighborhood first."
"I wouldn't be so sure, Dad," Sharon said. "You hear gunfire too?"
"Isn't that part of it?" Dr. Nichols asked.
"The preferred weapons in those quarters are knives and cudgels, Señor Nichols," Ruy said. "I would wager that there are bodyguards and the better militia bands attempting to restore order."
"By killing everyone?" Melissa sneered.
"If their officers feel it necessary, yes," Ruy said, plainly not much more impressed than she was. Sharon was reminded of something Ruy had once said, shortly after she had met him. If it was my duty, yes. Not simply because it was ordered.
"We should be safe enough, right?" Rita asked. "If it's staying in the rougher neighborhoods, we should be okay, I mean. I'm supposed to be here on holiday."
Sharon laughed. "Rita, honey, if I'd known this was all going to break out, I wouldn't have invited you. Everything was quiet two months ago."
"Perhaps, Sharon," Ruy said, "if these disturbances go on past tomorrow night, we might consider postponing the wedding. I am uncomfortable with keeping the Doñas Melissa and Rita in a situation of danger, and I am certain the Señor Simpson and Doctor Nichols are being too polite to suggest we postpone our nuptials."
"I wouldn't say that, Señor Sanchez," Tom said, hurriedly. "But if you're offering to do that, I would like to see Rita safe. But let's wait a little longer than just tomorrow before you make that decision. After all, Rita and Melissa and I have been in stickier situations than this."
Sharon nodded, then grinned at Ruy. "You don't get out of standing at the altar that easy, Ruy Sanchez de Casador