Vitelleschi was speaking again, not heeding Barberini's frantic attempts to arrest his descent into unmanly panic. Barberini hoped that his condition was not visible, but he could readily imagine a stench of fear rising from him like steam from a winter dungheap. Everyone around him seemed so controlled, so sure, despite the disaster.
". . . and the principal papers of the Society were removed to separate caches in the small hours of this morning. Our agents reported the arrival of the last of Your Holiness' party of cardinals in the late hours of yesterday. Arrangements to evacuate them again are being made, although it grows difficult to find transport suiting their dignity."
His Holiness laughed once, and then smiled in the most sardonic manner Barberini had ever seen on the face of a living man. "Let them choose, then, between dignity and capture."
That confused Barberini. "Capture, Your Holiness? To what end?"
"Whatever that foul Spaniard has in mind. I do not doubt that we will see many martyrs from this business." His Holiness sighed. "Nor is it right to expect it. The governance of the church is more secular than divine, and in time Borja will feel his leash tighten about his throat. Madrid will not let this folly stand."
Barberini realized that he had heard that before. And it had been wrong before. And there was a clear and obvious way in which Borja could present Madrid with a fait accompli that none short of the Almighty himself could undo. "Your Holiness is assured of his bodily safety?" he ventured, diffidently.
"As sure as the walls of Castel Sant'Angelo and the prowess of my guard may make me," was the reply, His Holiness' gaze leveled at Barberini. "I hope to continue to be a troublesome priest for some time yet."
Barberini recognized the allusion, and smiled. Even Vitelleschi's pursed and narrow mouth twitched up slightly, at one corner. Did the Spanish government want to make a modern Saint Thomas out of the pope, they had picked the right method for it. For all that, much of the Castel Sant'Angelo had been built in Hadrian's time, little of the purely defensive works were of more recent vintage, and the Swiss Guard was only two hundred men. The Palatine guard would be mustering, but that took time for artisans, tradesmen and shopkeepers to gather their arms and report for duty. Those of them, that was, that did not elect to defend their own homes and places of business.
Any more military help would have to come from the militias, and they were a weak reed at best. Many of those would be neither use nor ornament against formed troops. The rest would simply remain in their homes.
There would be no assistance from any of the few papal troops that remained stationed near Rome. By the time they mustered and marched, the Spanish would be here and about their business. It went without saying that everyone expected there would be a sack. The last one was only just past living memory. There were ways and means of hiding what one had, of that Barberini had no doubt, but by far the simplest method of avoiding the horrors of a soldiery unleashed on a town was to pile belongings on whatever could be found with wheels and leave. Or simply carry it. Barberini had seen one family, every member of which from the grandmother to the toddlers had been carrying a bundle, heading north into the Lazio countryside.
The general who had spoken earlier—whatever his name was—had been speaking while Barberini had thus been moping quietly to himself, and was winding up his rather gloomy presentation. Spain had sent perhaps as many as ten thousand troops from Naples, and there were five hundred professional soldiers in Rome to resist them. The remainder of Rome's defense was whatever the citizens managed through their own unaided efforts. And they were fleeing.
Rome's fortifications were, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. His Holiness had a program of construction in prospect, but very little of the work had been done. Indeed, the scaffolds around Castel Sant'Angelo would have to be brought down over night lest they provide the Spaniards with ready-made scaling ladders.
Chapter 31
Rome
Frank heard Benito coughing in the dawn mist as he trudged along the street to get a look back at the night's work. He'd seen Piero handing around the handrolled cigarettes that Harry Lefferts had made popular, and had thought about trying to issue a health warning. The tobacco that they got down-time was way, way stronger and harsher than Frank remembered from back up-time. When he'd thought about it, it had seemed hypocritical. He'd been thinking wistfully about having a smoke himself to calm his nerves and settle his stomach.
Just not of tobacco.
He reached the corner of the next block down from the Committee building, about the farthest away you could stand and actually see it, given how crooked the streets were in Rome. If the rumors were right, he was standing about where a Spanish soldier would when he first caught sight of it.