It was not alone. There was the paper. That had been handed to the porter, he said, within minutes of him setting foot in the square. There were street-boys down there giving them to anyone with hands to hold them. The porter could not read it, but had kept it to show his boss. Barberini had it in his hand now, read once and then gripped tightly. Naturally, the thing was scurrilous beyond belief. No one who actually knew him would believe a word of it. Not least because the author had at one and the same time accused him of sins against nature and of patronizing Gentileschi simply in order to fornicate with her. In its way, it was quite amusing. And damnably infuriating.
"Your Eminence is . . ." A long pause. "Angered?"
"Father-General," Barberini said, not turning away from the window, "I did not hear you enter."
Vitelleschi moved over by Barberini, but did not, the younger cardinal noted, stand in the window. "Your Eminence's majordomo vouchsafed that you seemed ill at ease. I took the liberty of entering unannounced."
"To be sure of seeing me helpless in fury? Knowing my weakness?" Barberini drew on every drachm of civility and manners at his command not to snarl at the father-general. It would not do for the pope's nephew to lose his temper with his uncle's most dependable ally. And most useful one, at a time like this.
"Your Eminence recognizes it for the temptation it is. Wrath is a deadly sin." Vitelleschi's dry rasp had softened somewhat, Barberini noted, and he found himself all the more angry with the old man.
"I need no catechism from you, Father-General." Barberini took pride in the fact that his voice was icy calm. Another deadly sin.
"It is a provocation, nothing more." For a wonder, Vitelleschi said it without sounding patronising. "Similar things have been written about your uncle. Many times, over the years since he was elected."
"I also need no schooling in such footling tricks as this," Barberini said, snapping at last. "Did I need such, there would already be squadrons of horse in the square, slaking my wounded name in blood." He realized as he said it that he was losing his white-knuckled grip on his self-control, and had brandished the paper at Vitelleschi.
"I doubt they seek to provoke anything so crude." Barberini noticed for the first time that Vitelleschi had brought a slim brief-wallet, and took from it other handbills like the one that was passing in the square below. Barberini could see that the ones from the case were different, for all that he could not read the contents from where he was standing. Vitelleschi was silent for a long moment, before he went on. "Your Eminence might perhaps consider the possibility of other hasty reactions which those responsible for this libel might have sought to provoke."
What little patience Barberini retained was barely a shred. "Such as?"
Vitelleschi's glare was as baleful as the basilisk of legend. "What did Your Eminence think to do after dismissing the thought of ordering a massacre of innocents?"
Barberini's urgent desire to slap the father-general across the face parsed the full measure of the insults in that question faster than his sentient mind could. He actually raised his hand before realizing that the barb had been a deliberate goad. The sharp sting of the schoolmaster's cane. Never forget that the Jesuits are educators as much as they are anything, he told himself and lowered his hand. "Father-General," he said, bowing his head and folding his hands together, "I must apologize most humbly for my unseemly and unwarranted action," he said.
"It is nothing, and still less to forgive. Your Eminence will please remember that I am your uncle's most obedient servant, and he and I have grown old in the service of Christ. Yet neither of us has forgotten what it was to be a young man, with a young man's passion and impulses." There was the faintest ghost of a smile about the Jesuit's lips.
Realizing how thoroughly he had been stung, Barberini could not help but smile himself. "I confess, Father-General, that I had not as yet passed beyond the thought of horses stampeding through the piazza. Except, and I offer this in the most desperate mitigation, that when you entered I was musing on the possible themes for a new fountain in the square." He smiled again, a more amiable smile this time. "It does so need it. Far more than it does a carpet of libelous handbills."
Vitelleschi's smile became almost discernible. "Come, Your Eminence. We must discuss more constructive suggestions."
"I fear the Father-General will be far ahead of me," Barberini said, still rueful at having been chided like a slow-witted schoolboy. "We have confidence in our estimates of what mischief Borja intends to work, and I have considerable confidence that the Father-General's subordinates have done excellent work in securing that the cardinals who will vote in His Holiness' favor will be present in Rome at or before the critical juncture."