The Cannon Law—ARC(41)

He held out a piece of paper. "Someone gave me a flyer. I couldn't read all of it, but it looks like someone else is starting a Committee."



"Thanks, Benito," Frank said, taking the paper. "Where'd you get it?"



"Some kid was handing them out on the Via Crescenzio. I took one as I went past." Benito shrugged. "I didn't recognize the guy, though. Just some kid, probably handing them out for a mouthful of bread." A year ago, Benito had been that kid, or very much like him.



Frank nodded. "Thanks again. Go get yourself a cold drink, you look like you could use it." As Benito excused himself, Frank turned the paper over a couple of times—cheap rag paper, smeary printing—looked at the text and whistled. Then, grimaced.



This had the authentic smell of Problem. "Well, here's your first piece of intelligence from the Committee, Señor Sanchez," he said, handing the handbill over.



Ruy looked at it, holding the paper at arm's length. "I take it you did not print this?"



"Nope. Although some of the quotes on there are from Massimo's early stuff. Back before we persuaded him to tone it down a little."



Ruy chuckled, but there wasn't much humor in the sound. "Tell me, Frank, how would you go about proving you did not print this?"



Frank had been annoyed. Edging toward angry, even. Ruy's question made him realize that he might have, all unknowing, ended up in serious trouble. "My word of honor?" he tried.



Ruy had the grace not to laugh out loud. "That might actually work, you know. The standards of proof before the Inquisition are quite high, and they have strong rules of evidence. One of which, alas, is putting you to the question to see if you stick to your story under threat of torture."



"Can we complain that someone's passing themselves off as us? Protest now that that stuff—" Frank waved his hand at the leaflet, which had taken all of Massimo's more inflammatory stuff and combined them into one absolute scorcher of a broadside "—is nothing to do with us?" A thought came to him. "Maybe if we demand they do something about these frauds?"



Ruy threw back his head and laughed. "Truly, that would be a rare jest! Who knows? It might even work."



Frank grinned back. "Hey, don't knock it. If it's dumb but it works, it ain't dumb." Then he pulled his face straight. "Seriously, Señor Sanchez, I think the main thing in our favor at the moment is that we don't have a printing press yet. It's due to arrive soon, I'm told, but for the time being all the propaganda we've got is what we brought with us, and we've had to pay printers to get flyers done for this place."



"I hope for your sake you are right, Frank. For now, perhaps you might try an indignant protest to the authorities. If nothing else, they will not be expecting that. Although whoever produced this also knows about the efforts of Messer Marcoli in Venice, and can readily send in a few samples for them to compare with." Ruy's tone was serious, too. It looked like he had recognized some of Massimo's choicer phrases right off the bat, which left Frank with the uneasy feeling that some bright guy at the Inquisition could easily do the same thing.



Frank nodded, and picked the leaflet back up. "Well, maybe I can talk us out of that situation. After all, this stuff is mixed and matched from a lot of different broadsides and pamphlets, you know. If I point out that whoever prepared this edited it to distort our message, we might be able to get away with it. I dunno, though. Massimo's pretty fiery in the original Venetian as well."



Sharon came back just then. "Ruy, if you guys are finished, I'd like to get back to the embassy. I've got some meetings in the later part of this afternoon, and I'd like to see what we've got on file that we might have missed about what happened today."



"The most pleasurable of duties calls me away, Señor Stone," Ruy said, rising to his feet. "Perhaps I might visit you again in a few days and we can compare notes over a convivial glass of wine?"



"Sure thing, Señor Sanchez. Don't be a stranger, by any means."



"Thanks for lunch, Frank," Sharon said. "Come on, Ruy."



After they had gone, Frank rounded up the others from their various chores. "Guys," he said, "Committee meeting. We have a problem . . ."





Chapter 11

Rome



"The immediate problem is Quevedo," Vitelleschi said.



That, thought Barberini, was the father-general of the Society of Jesus to the life. Straight to the point, not a word wasted. Still, there were drawbacks.



"How is he the problem?" Barberini asked. He'd heard of Quevedo, of course. The man's poetry was well worth the reading, if one took the trouble to learn Spanish. And he had a history that was equal parts pure romance and pure picaresque. The man's capacity for getting involved in the hairiest and most alarming scrapes Europe had had to offer for the last twenty years was, to say the least, prodigious.