The Cannon Law—ARC(165)

"I see," Borja said. That there were limited benefits to flogging a brute beast once it was too tired to work was obvious to even the dullest wit. He sighed. "So we must pray that God grants a swift end to the performance of his will in Rome this night."



"Indeed, Your Eminence." Don Pablo bowed and left the terrace.



"Your Eminence?" It was Ferrigno again.



"What now?" Borja asked. Surely it was too much to hope that this was news of the successful assault already?



"The heretics of the Committee of Correspondence, Your Eminence. We have word from Father Gonzalez who is supervising the arrest."



"There has been an arrest?" Borja said, not troubling to hide his disbelief that, for once, there was something going right.



"After a fashion, Your Eminence," Ferrigno said, visibly cringing.



All Borja had to do was raise one eyebrow to complete Ferrigno's collapse.



"Your Eminence," he went on, talking quickly now, "there was a cannonade to force an entrance to the building, which the heretics had fortified against the possibility of their capture. The structure was an old one, Your Eminence, and there was a collapse."



Borja could not see where the trouble was more than a minor annoyance. So the alchemist's whelp would not live to publicly repent of his sins. The loss of a heathen soul to Satan was a matter for the most profound grief, but a commonplace tragedy.



"Send word," he said, "that the search for survivors should be diligent and thorough, but that I am satisfied that the nest of heresy has been destroyed. My compliments to Father Gonzalez and the soldiers assisting him, also."



"Yes, Your Eminence." Ferrigno fled to do the cardinal's bidding.



"Your Eminence?" The next voice Borja heard was one that caused him to delight and groan in dismay in equal measure. And one whose owner took a positive delight in Borja not seeing him enter. As though Borja cared a whit for how well the man did his work of skullduggery, provided results were forthcoming. A matter on which Borja was growing impatient this night.



"Well, Quevedo?" he snapped, turning to see the man. Over his shoulder, the flare and flicker of the battle around the Castel Sant'Angelo was visible against the night sky. A pall of smoke hung over that part of the city and every flash of cannon and the constant flicker of arquebuses and muskets lit it like the visions of hell offered by second-rate country preachers.



"Your Eminence will be pleased to hear that the final reports on the prelates Your Eminence wished to have prevented from working against Your Eminence are received. All are accounted for, albeit that two were overtaken on the road out of Rome. Your Eminence was most wise to disburse monies on the maintenance of horses for the soldiery to use on their arrival."



"I was?" Borja realized that he might well have not paid complete attention to everything Quevedo had done on his behalf in the last few weeks. The man had spent a remarkable amount of money, that was certain. Doubtless he had foreseen the possibility of flight and—Borja pulled himself back to the matter at hand. No matter that Quevedo had planned well, it was the results that mattered. "How many are accounted living?" he asked.



"Three, Your Eminence," Quevedo said, gravely. "Caetani is within the Castel Sant'Angelo, where as Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church he was required to be, and Vitelleschi seems to have been forewarned and escaped Rome before the arrival of the army."



Borja chuckled. "Vitelleschi, eh? The spider not in his web when you went to catch him?"



"Indeed not, Your Eminence. There are few who may reckon themselves any man's equal in such a business as this one, Your Eminence, but Vitelleschi is one such. And he is master of the Jesuits, to boot. I believe I may have adverted as much to Your Eminence?"



Borja waved it aside. "Religious orders can be suppressed, given sufficient will on the part of the Holy See." And there would be sufficient will. "Who was the third prelate accounted living?"



"The youngest Barberini, Your Eminence, Antonio. He seems to have been better prepared to flee than others. The Palazzo Barberini was, as I mentioned in earlier messages to Your Eminence, largely empty when Your Eminence's men entered it. The cardinal himself was apprehended in the course of his departure, but being by far the youngest man on the list, had the wherewithal to cut himself free of the men who attempted his capture. His guard died to a man covering his escape."



Borja nodded once, slowly, and then shrugged. "It is of little import. The man is a butterfly, of minor consequence save insofar as he bears the Barberini name and wears the purple. He may serve yet as a scapegoat for his family's peculations these ten years past. I am more concerned that there have been no captures alive, Quevedo. I gave orders for capture, not assassination."