The Cannon Law—ARC(23)

Not that Marcoli senior wasn't, for the most part, a great guy and as pleasant a father-in-law as a man could wish for, especially from the perspective of a couple of hundred miles. It was just that when he was thinking inside the box marked "Revolution" he got a little . . . scary.



Frank could see the point of that, in places where things got rough. On the other hand, a lot of Italy wasn't what you'd call a bad neighborhood, not these days, so Frank figured they could do it with food, drink, sports and a lot of social organization.



"Frank," said Giovanna, after a long and comfortable time spent staring into the fire and musing in this way.



"Hmmm?" he replied, not really being up to much else after horsing heavy furniture and making makeshift beds on top of a long half-day's travel.



"I think I'm going to have a baby."



That stopped Frank's train of thought. Derailed it completely, rather. "Baby?" he said, weakly, unable to think of anything else.



"Yes. I'm fairly certain. Two months, now." She looked up at him. "I think. It's hard to be sure."



"Uh," he said. And then, collecting himself, "Well, I guess there's one way to know for certain and that's wait and see if you are pregnant."



"Are you happy, Frank?" she asked.



Frank paused a moment. How did he feel about it? After a moment he realized that what he felt was pretty good. Very, very good, in fact. He looked down at her upturned face, paused a moment to fall in love all over again, and let his grin do all the talking.



She smiled back, and it was pure sunshine. "Frank!" she chided him. "Don't tease me like that." Then she reached up and dragged him down for a heart-stopper of a kiss.



When she let him up for air, he chuckled. "Giovanna, darling, it's great news. We'd better start making sure you ain't doing any of the heavy work, though."



She frowned and wagged a finger. "Oh no, you don't! My mamma never stopped working, and none of the other women back on Murano ever stopped working. I am not some stupid noblewoman, finding excuses to lie about all day with the vapors, Frank, and don't say I should."



"Whoa, don't bite my head off. All I'm saying is take it easy for a bit, we're not in any great hurry here, and you've got someone else to think of now." He looked down at her hand, with the wineglass in it. "Speaking of which," he said, and reached down to take her glass away.



"Hey, I hadn't done with that," she protested.



"Yes you have," Frank said. "Drinking while you're pregnant is bad for the baby. I don't know much about pregnancy, but I do know that."



Giovanna's eyes narrowed. "Who told you that?"



"It's common knowledge in the twentieth century," he said. "No drinking or smoking while you're carrying a baby."



"No wine?" There was a hurt tone in her voice. "I always learnt it was best for a pregnant woman to be happy, so the baby will be happy. No wine with food?"



"Well, you can be happy without wine, Giovanna." Frank could see that this idea wasn't going over so well, even though Giovanna never usually had more than a glass or two of wine with meals, and that watered. "Tell you what, Sharon's in Rome at the moment; we can go see her and she'll tell you. Wine, beer, grappa. It's all bad for a baby if an expectant mother drinks."



"I'll believe it if the dottoressa says it. Meantime, give me that back." She took the wineglass back from him.



Frank didn't protest further. Thinking about it, if pretty much everyone drank and they still managed to have babies, it was probably one of those things that was only bad if the mother did too much of it. When all was said and done, Giovanna didn't drink much by anyone's standards. Certainly not by seventeenth-century standards, and especially not by seventeenth-century German standards. It could probably keep until Sharon gave Giovanna the straight dope.



Besides, Frank realized a little later at bedtime, the state of mind his mother almost certainly spent most of her pregnancy in didn't seem to have done him any harm. So far as he could tell, anyway.



The next morning, after breakfast and after an hour or so getting the carriages unloaded and Piero and Nicollo on their way home, Frank took a moment to check out the neighborhood. They were on the northern fringe of the Borgo, which was apparently one of Rome's roughest neighborhoods.



Frank could well believe it. Half of the neighborhood, even though it was right between the Vatican and Castel Sant'Angelo—you could just about see the dome of St. Peter's from an upper-story window—was in outright ruins. The rest would need a lick of paint and a good sweep just to look shabby.