Ring of Fire(55)

No doubt there would be fowl-grease and tobacco-scorches where he had composed the notes in taverns on the ride back. Mazarini gestured for the paper. "I shall look forward to reading this. Father Heinzerling, does the priest at Grantville need a curate? Can he afford one?"





"He is alone, yes. He seems rich enough to hire a curate, too. Why?"





"Because you did not meet me here, Father Heinzerling."





"But Deacon Bazin said you'd be—"





"Never mind that little turd. If he asks, I wasn't here. No, you go back to this Grantville, make yourself at home. Get a living of this priest who thinks de Paul is dead, and wait for word. While you're waiting, get letters to me in Rome, where I'm going, eh? You have the address of my usual correspondent there, yes?"





"Yes, but—"





"I cannot go to Grantville. I need a pair of eyes and ears there, and someone who will keep me informed. You're going back of your own free will because you missed me here, yes? I left word—I'll see Bazin later to leave it—that you were to follow me to Rome, but like the thickheaded German oaf you are you went back to this town of wonders in Germany, with that woman you think no one knows you keep, yes?"





"Ja—"





Mazarini waved to shut him up. "You've come out, missed me here and gone and got drunk, all right? That's the excuse you've used every other time you've been at home with the woman, yes?"





Heinzerling grinned. "Your spies are good."





"You have a lot to live up to, eh?"





5





Heinzerling returned to Grantville with what appeared to be a small party of refugees: a woman and three small boys.





"I have no response for you," he said to Mazzare. "The monsignor is recalled to Rome."





"Why?" Mazzare had had hopes of a response that would ease his own tension.





"I cannot say for sure. He did leave word that I might come to Grantville if I wished it, and would come himself when he might."





"What as?" Mazzare frowned. "You, I mean. His spy?"





Heinzerling shrugged. "He would have reports of me, ja. Will you have a curate in whose ears you might speak no secrets?"





Mazzare stared at him, hard. Then, coming to a decision, sighed. "Fine. I need the help. You can stay at least until Monsignor Mazarini arrives."





Heinzerling nodded. "And Hannelore can keep the presbytery. And clean the church."





"Ah," said Mazzare, "let us discuss Hannelore . . ."





* * *



The months passed. Work, again, was the remedy for Mazzare's doubts. Grantville's population swelled. The expanding cordon of rumor and report was like an osmotic membrane, sucking in the frightened and unsettled, the hopeful and the greedy.





Mazzare was far and away the busiest of the pastors in town. His responsibilities to what had already been the largest congregation in town doubled and redoubled; more of the refugees, immigrants and outright carpetbaggers were Catholic—or at least decided to be so on arriving—than any other denomination.





On top of that, he was working as part of Grantville's corps of mechanics and teaching at the high school, evening classes for those who wanted to try their hand at the new trades the Ring of Fire had brought.





"I'm doing the work of a bishop, Simon."





"Put in for the promotion, then," said Jones, muffled inside another recalcitrant engine. "You got a ten-millimeter nut?"





"Sure." Mazzare rummaged in one of the drawers of his rollaway. "Joking apart, if we hadn't been such an ageing town, we'd have been in real trouble."





"Eh?" Jones stood up.





"Well, the Ecumenical Relief Committee. What'd we have done without all the old—"





"Battle-axes?"





"May you be forgiven, my son. Good word, though. Here's the nut."





"I know what you mean. I never thought I'd say this, but having a supply of fierce elderly ladies on hand was a godsend when it came to soup kitchens, if nothing else."





"I'm getting sidetracked again. We're getting to be a fair-sized deanery here and practically a diocese. It's more than six priests can deal with, never mind the two of us. And I'm worried about things getting, you know, tense."





"Tense? I haven't seen any of that sort of thing other than maybe some brawling now and then. As to the workload, I know what you mean. Well, I would, but we don't get half so many Protestant refugees and there's plenty of a whole lot of denominations hereabouts so we're not so stuck for hands."