1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [197]
Borja turned and looked again over the rooftops of Rome. To the east, the seven hills of Rome rose away from the river, their shapes lost amid the nighttime shadows and the shifting light from the explosions of shells and the fires burning round the city. The hills seemed to burn themselves, great rolling waves of fire like ocean swells of dark flame. Here and there, a house, some great palazzo or the town residence of some prelate, burned. There seemed to be no way of preventing it, unfortunately. The confiscation of the worldly goods of those heretics who had thrown in with the Barberini would have done much to defray the costs of this business. God's work it might be, but much of it was done by men who expected to be paid. A company of soldiers sent to ensure that some cardinal was arrested seemed to turn into ravening bandits the instant they were out of sight of responsible oversight. Quevedo was quite clear on the orders he was giving to these men, but deeply regretted, in his every report to his master, that the houses were being looted and the looters giving in to incendiary impulses.
The demise of so many cardinals would doubtless become convenient later. Some would have had to be released from prison in order to see to it that the canon lawyers were satisfied. Sinceri had been quite clear on the forms that would have to be followed to assuage the narrow, pinched consciences of such men. Doubts would otherwise be raised, he had said, and although nothing overt would ever be said and nothing printed that named him specifically, there would be lingering doubt about what had taken place. So there would need to be forms observed to ensure that once Barberini was in custody, he could be kept there without any whispering.
With no suggestion, of course, that whoever replaced him in the ensuing conclave was an antipope. Borja remained mindful of the old saying that he who went into conclave a pope would come out a cardinal, the folk wisdom that reminded all of the Holy Spirit's dispensation to punish presumption and the sin of pride.
"Your Eminence?" Don Pablo's gravelly tones came from behind. It was quite clear why he had been visited with the duty of liaison to the cardinal. An ageing warhorse whose wind and vigor were no longer up to the vicissitudes of combat, he had been shuffled off to the roof of the Palazzo Borghese to be out of the way. Borja could not bring the rest of the man's name to mind, he being of some country-gentry, hare-catching little hidalgo family of scarcely any account whatsoever. The cardinal had never heard of them nor could he place who of consequence they might be related to.
Still, Borja could not shake a vague feeling that the man was laughing at him.
"Enlighten me, Don Pablo," Borja said, turning away from a last glance at the Castel Sant'Angelo. The Barberini's defiance was no longer being hurled by the bombard-shell full from its ramparts, or battlements, or whatever they were called. Bastions, possibly.
"As Your Eminence wishes. I will beg forgiveness if, in describing what may be, beyond the discernment of my eyes, I err in some small detail—"
"Fine, fine," Borja said, waving aside the excuse. "How soon is this assault likely to succeed?"
"Your Eminence strikes for the very nub of the matter." Don Pablo's salt-and-pepper mustachios crinkled upward in an ingratiating smile. "The walls of the inner ward are some hundred paces around, perhaps a hundred and fifty if I am any judge of these matters. Seventy-five to a hundred, leaving out of account the river wall where an escalade is not practical. Along that wall, perhaps two thousand men can be brought to the point of decision. Against two hundred who will be defending the walls."
"Ten to one odds, eh?" Borja said, hearing the first cheerful news in some hours. "Surely the slaughter will be brief?"
"Alas, Your Eminence, would that it were so. There will be perhaps a dozen ladders, and at the top of each will