1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [16]
Quevedo gave a small sneer at the very prospect, although Borja knew full well that Quevedo's reputation—indeed, his all-but bragging in some of his bawdier poems—included a great many dalliances and the patronage of houses of ill-repute.
"It sounds like a most promising beginning. Señor Quevedo, your specific orders are now to raise all the foment you find yourself able to in Rome. You are unleashed to this task, and may draw on funds through my man Ferrigno. Anything and everything which may be done to the discredit of the House of Barberini and their governance of the city and the Church will be of assistance in our designs. Spare neither pains nor funds in your agitations."
Borja took up a cup of wine, noticing that Quevedo had not, in fact, done so already. "A toast, Señor Quevedo, to success in your enterprise!" he said, and drank.
Quevedo picked up a goblet for himself. "To the successful execution of Your Eminence's orders," he said, and drank in turn.
Borja set down his cup: the wine had been passable, at least, but he noticed the turns of phrase Quevedo had been using. "Let us indeed hope you are successful, Señor Quevedo," he said. "I should be unhappy to have to condemn a luminary of the Spanish Court before the Inquisition for foul deeds committed in Rome. It would embarrass His Most Catholic Majesty unduly, in a time when any embarrassment must be avoided by all of his loyal subjects."
"Your Eminence makes himself most excellently clear," Quevedo said, again with that little smile. "I, Francisco de Quevedo, assure Your Eminence of my most diligent efforts."
"See that it is so," Borja said, and dismissed the man.
It was, Borja reflected, good to know that someone who was, in the event of failure, utterly expendable was also so utterly disagreeable. Hidalgo himself to the core, Borja nevertheless recognized that the touchy honor and ferocious independence of those gentlemen of Spain who had not devoted themselves to the Church and its hierarchy was more than frequently an obstacle to the efficient ordering of affairs. Although, in this case, a certain inelegance and readiness to resort to violence would do no harm and might actually help.
There remained only one final piece to play in this first move. Cardinal Pietro Maria Borghese was a Genoese nobleman; therefore, at least nominally a Spanish client. Nevertheless, he and his cousins in the curia would have to be brought in to the fold for the upcoming enterprise as cardinals in their own right by persuasion. Since they were not directly subjects of the king of Spain, they could not simply be ordered as the Spanish cardinals were.
The interview with Borghese nevertheless promised to be a simple and uncomplicated one. At Urban VIII's election the other cardinal who had been regarded as papabile had been a Borghese, and the somewhat odd chain of circumstances that had left a Barberini on a papal throne that the Borghese had regarded as theirs was still a source of mild resentment. They regarded themselves as eminently papabile in the event of another vacancy in the Vatican, so they would be inclined to assist in any scheme that might create one. And, of course, they could read one of those so-called future histories as well as anyone else, and see the surname of the pope who would have been.
For the moment, though, Borja would be meeting with the youngest of the Borghese cardinals. Pietro Maria was a man in his early thirties placed in the church more out of dynastic convenience than any real commitment to religion on his part. There was a distance to be maintained in the early stages of a plot such as this. Not that the man's youth would be any indicator of his easiness to deal with. Like all scions of the great houses of Italy, he had imbibed politics and chicanery with his mother's milk.
Borja took up another cup of wine and composed himself to await Borghese's arrival.
PART TWO
March 1635
Chapter 4
Rome
"You know, Ruy, this guidebook is next to useless," Sharon Nichols remarked. She'd had