"Oh," Sharon said, catching the reference. "You think Borja's using this guy?"
"There is nothing more certain save my love for you," Ruy said. Then, feeling more amplification was called for, went on. "I was once pleased to count him as a friend. A younger fellow, just starting in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty, with a slight taint of disreputability but a man with fire and soul none the less, forced to be abroad after an unfortunate duel. I taught him much, but he learned rather less. Since those days, there has not been a botched plot or a bungled maneuver anywhere in Spain's dominions in Italy that that whore-hopping drunkard has not had a full hand in making into a worse disaster than it need have been."
"So this is good news, right?" Sharon asked, "I mean, if they've put a complete idiot in charge?"
"Would that it were so! God grant that he were simply an idiot. It is worse, Sharon, so much worse. Not only is he stupid, he is indefatigable, a force of nature! He has skills, skills that I, to my shame, taught to him. He has resources, furnished by that child of a diseased donkey and a dockside whore Borja. He will mean to achieve great things, Sharon, and the result will be tragic farce such as Cervantes himself could not have compassed. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, and as God is my witness I am no coward, I tremble at the thought of what he might do."
"Oh." Sharon said again, this time quietly. "Do you think he recognized you?"
Ruy shrugged. He had had time to think about that on his way through Rome's nighttime streets. "It may be so," he said, "but I was disguised somewhat. Nothing of great invention, but I was doing my best not to look or sound like my inimitable self, you understand?"
Sharon just grinned.
"And I think the years have changed him less than they have me. He is, as I recall, some years younger than I and is not yet embarked upon the full maturity of manhood." He drew himself up. He knew he was an old man, of course, but he was in much better shape than many men half his age. Activity had been the key, constant training and living well. But a little self-mockery seemed to amuse Sharon far more than anything else he essayed by way of humor, and so it pleased him to indulge for her sake.
"I figure you're about to say we should plan on the basis he did recognize you, I think," Sharon said, grinning at his comedic posturing, "since you are so astonishingly well preserved. Why, you might pass for a man of sixty."
Ruy gave her his best bristling affront. "Why, I am not a day over, well, ah"—he made great play of counting on his fingers—"Fifty-three. I think."
Truth be told, Ruy was not exactly sure how old he was. All he was truly certain of from his mother was that he had been born on the day after Ash Wednesday, a fact that did nothing to help fix his birthdate, and if his mother had told him what year that had been, or ever made any mention of precisely how old he was, he could not now remember. And it was thirty-eight years since he could have gone back and asked her. Nearly that long, he realized with a start, since he had last visited her grave. A practice that would have immediately exploded his pretense to gentility.
Sharon noticed his sudden shift of mood. "Bad memories, Ruy?" she asked, gently.
He shook his head. "A melancholy moment. God did not grant that I retain much from—from my earlier life. And what little there was I had to abandon to make my way in the world on the best terms I could secure. That the path led to my present happiness does not prevent me recalling what was lost along the way." He sighed, deeply. "For now, though, I have you, my love," he said, and took her in his arms.
Chapter 16
Rome
"Your Eminence," Quevedo said, bowing fulsomely.
Borja choked down the first retort that came to mind, which would have been an ungracious comment that the man was at once late and improperly attired. Instead, he nodded in return, proffering his ring for the formal kiss. "Señor Quevedo y Villega," he said, "what have you to report?"
Quevedo took a seat a moment after Borja did—without being invited!—and cleared his throat. Ferrigno poised his pen. The matter had now gone beyond maintaining full and formal confidence, and Borja had taken to admitting Ferrigno into his meetings simply in order to have notes of what was going on. It was becoming fearfully complicated, between the dealing with the cardinals and other notables of Rome, receiving updates on His Majesty's forces in the kingdom of Naples, the reports from the spies with which Rome was now liberally infested, even more so than usual, and keeping track of Quevedo's machinations. There was nothing for it but to bear the load, however. Above all else, he was a Borja, and that was a line that had never been found wanting where scheme and maneuver had been at issue. Still less could he flinch from the work where, as here, the work in hand was clearly God's.