Ring of Fire(52)

Jones glared. "You snapped at me for lawyering?" he said. That had been Mazzare's response to Jones' last attempt to jolly him out of his gloom. "Look, Larry, if the pope's not infallible— If there's—well, what I mean to say is that what you've got there"—he jabbed a finger at the missal—"is the best the Catholic Church knew how to be up to, what, '98? The turn of the millennium in your own case. So take it forward. Look, the Inquisition won't get called in to Grantville if anyone around here can help it. They're in for the bum's rush if they turn up anyway. Just keep your corner of the Church of Rome as clean as you can."





"Can I do that?" Mazzare's tone said that he didn't believe it. "What do we do, Simon? Sit on our asses and pretend the word of God isn't being used as toilet paper everywhere more than three miles from this spot? What does that do to our parishioners, when some asshole, pardon my mouth, preaches a damn crusade because we're setting a bad example? Or do we just join in the lunacy?"





There was a silence between them for long moments, broken only by the refined tick of the sacristy clock. Jones said nothing.





"It's a tough one, Simon," said Mazzare into the silence.





Jones offered a face that, had he ever played poker, would have been a winner. Eloquence, polished before his own congregation, deserted him for a moment. What to say? Then it came. He pointed at a spot on the wall, where the only answer to his friend's worries was hanging.





Mazzare understood, laughed ruefully. "But," he said, "as the Irishman said, if you want to get there, you don't want to start from here."





Jones shrugged. "We've time to think. Come on, you old papist, there's a better use for the day."





Together they went out to find the party. The real trick would have been avoiding it.





3





The months passed, and Mazzare and Jones settled into something that was not routine. There were too many changes and shocks for that. But it was at least an accommodation with the life of twenty-first-century clerics transplanted to the seventeenth. They did not speak again of Mazzare's troubles, for the day-to-day hard work of pastoral responsibility for congregations that doubled and redoubled was enough to take the load off either priest's mind, just as five minutes of real stomach cramps will cure any amount of heartache.





It was February of 1632 before the issue arose again. The Reverend Jones answered the telephone late in the evening.





"I've had a letter, Simon." The voice was Mazzare's, abrupt as usual. He spent most of his time exhausted these days.





"Letter, Larry? Who from?" Jones had been half-asleep himself when the phone had rung.





"You remember we were talking about what'd happen when the hierarchy heard about me? I think the other shoe's dropping."





"Oh. What does it say? And who in particular is it from?" Jones sat up straighter in his chair.





"Guy name of Mazarini. He's a papal diplomat at Avignon."





"In France?" It was the best Jones could do. Mazzare was assuming he knew more than he did.





"Not for a while. Avignon's a papal state, this guy works for the head of it."





"Sounds heavy."





"Might be. Why don't you come over, we can have a chat while I think what to do."





Jones begged off until morning, when he made his way to Mazzare's presbytery in the quiet hours of the late winter dawn. Mazzare was already up and waiting.





"Someone I want you to meet, as well," he said, by way of greeting. "Father Augustus Heinzerling."





The priest in question was a short, wide, brawny-looking man, his shoulder-length hair and prize-fighter face clashing with his clerical dress. He nodded to Jones. "Ein Ehre, Herr Jones." He said it "Tschones."





"Pleased to meet you, too," said Jones, glancing across at Mazzare, whose face was impassive. "You come from Avignon?"





It turned out Heinzerling's English was reasonable, if German-accented and scented with cheap tobacco. "I am come presently from Avignon. I have the honor to be from Germany in my origins."





"I guessed," said Jones.





"Father Heinzerling is here in violation of King Gustavus' prohibition on Jesuits, it seems." Mazzare's mouth twisted, wry. "But we have freedom of religion here, so I think we needn't turn him in just yet. He brought Monsignor Mazarini's message for me. Here, before we go any further. I've written out a translation."





Jones took the two sheets of paper, one a heavy, ragged-edged sheet with wax seals and pale brown ink and the other feint-ruled with Mazzare's neat handwriting. Neither version was a long document.