Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [127]
This was Cesare Borgia. Don’t drink the wine. Appointed to the College of Cardinals by his father, Pope Alexander VI. My God, what had Shel got himself into?
Borgia smiled pleasantly, crooked his index finger, and signaled Dave to approach. “Good afternoon, Father . . . ?”
“David Dryden, Eminence.”
His lips were full and sensuous. The eyes were dark and detached, the nose straight, the jaws lean. He wore a constant smile, rather like a cassock, something to be taken off and put on. “Dryden.” He tasted the name. Let his tongue roll around on it as if he might swallow both it and its owner. “Your accent is strange. Where are you from?”
“Cornwall, Eminence.” Good a spot as any. “I am a poor country priest.”
“I see.” He placed his fingertips together. The hands were long and thin and had not seen the sun recently. “Somehow you do not look the part.” Dave bowed slightly, as if he’d been complimented. “You wished to see Father Shelborne?”
“If possible, Eminence. I am his confessor.”
His teeth were straight and white. “And where did you take orders, Father?”
“St. Michael’s.” David inserted pride into his response. Good old alma mater.
“In Cornwall?”
“Yes.” He tried not to hesitate. What sort of priest has no idea where his seminary is?
“We’ve had other visitors from St. Michael’s recently,” Borgia said. “It has a magnificent view of the Umber, I understand?”
Where in God’s name was the Umber? “Actually,” he said, “it is the rolling hills of Cornwall that attract the eye.”
Borgia considered the response. “And how do you stand on the matter of the Waldensians?”
The Waldensians were men who gave away all their money and traveled the roads of southern Europe helping the poor. By their example, they had embarrassed the more powerful members of the Church and had therefore been branded heretics. “They should commit to Mother Church,” Dave said.
“Quite so.” Cesare’s tone sharpened. “Obviously, you are a man of piety, Father. But tell me, where does a country priest get gold with which to bribe my guards?”
“I had not intended it as a bribe, Eminence. I thought rather, in the tradition of the Faith, to share my own largesse. I have come recently into good fortune.”
“What kind of good fortune?”
“An inheritance. My father died and left his money—”
Cesare waved the story away with a gesture that was almost feminine. “I see.” The two muscular priests came to attention. “Who is paying you, Dryden? The French?”
“I’m in no one’s pay, Eminence. I mean no one any harm.” The Cardinal glanced at the priests. A signal. They came forward and took hold of Dave’s arms and did the equivalent of a patdown. It was not gentle. One came only to about Dave’s eyes, but he looked like a linebacker. The other was younger, trim, athletic, with a cynical smile. He was the type who, in a later age, would have been at the Y every day playing squash. The linebacker saw the converter attached to Dave’s belt and removed it. The squash player found the other one, hidden in Dave’s cassock. They held them out for Cesare, who took them, did a quick inspection, and placed them on the desk. They found his gold and gave that to him also. Then they stepped back.
Cesare smiled at the coins and dropped them on his desk. It was the converters that held his interest. He held one close to an oil lamp and examined it. “Father,” he said, “what are these things?”
Dave had a feeling the relic story wasn’t going to sell here. “They’re candlestick holders,” he said.
“Candlestick holders?”
“Yes, Eminence.”
“Show me how it works.” He gave it back to Dave, who thereby received another chance to get clear.
“It’s not completed yet. It still needs a saddle.”
“You are, I assume, referring to a socket.”
“Yes, Eminence. In Cornwall, we call them saddles.”
“I see.” He smiled. It was actually a benevolent smile. “May I ask why you are carrying two nonfunctional candlestick holders?