"This has to be the most modest cardinal's palace anywhere," Mike muttered to Don Francisco as he got out of the carriage. Lawrence Cardinal Mazzare, otherwise known as Larry, newly promoted the year before, was a cardinal without a cathedral as yet. Magdeburg, the capital of the USE with its policy of freedom of religion, had several new Catholic churches for the city's Catholic minority, but no grandiose cathedral, just an ordinary parish church that served the function when needed. A proper cathedral, apparently, took more time.
Lacking a cathedral, Mazzare had apparently decided to do without a palace as well. He was using his cardinal's stipend—which was, Don Francisco understood, substantial—to rent two fine, but not too grand, townhouses in the middle of the city, one of which he had had fitted out as offices.
They were, however, heading for the one Mazzare lived in, since this was purely a social call. Or, at least, as social as the prime minister of the USE and his chief spymaster could ever get with the head of the Catholic church in their nation. Which, Don Francisco reflected as they mounted the steps to the front door, was not very social at all. There was a substantial Protestant propaganda mill—now much more aboveboard and respectable than it had been—which would make a great deal out of the prime minister formally receiving the cardinal or vice versa. Not to mention the USE's Catholic propaganda mill, a sizeable minority of which wasn't happy at all with the latest pronouncements from Rome, still less with the appointment of an up-timer as cardinal over them all.
"Modest? Compared with a prime minister who works in an office that would humiliate a senior clerk in the Ottoman Empire?" Francisco had initially found the Americans' unpretentious ways amusing, but lately more than a bit exasperating as the shock of their arrival wore off and Europe's power-brokers lapsed back into old habits of confusing ostentation with authority. Being underestimated was all very well, when it came to military strategy, but in diplomacy and espionage an ounce of bluff was worth a pound of credibility, to paraphrase one of Mike's sayings.
The staff was efficient, mostly lay personnel, and they hardly had to wait at all for Mazzare to see them. Long enough, Nasi judged, that there would be small wait for coffee and pastries and, indeed, this was the case. "Good evening, Mike, Don Francisco," Mazzare said when he came to sit with them. "Thank you, Dieter," he said to the servant who brought the tray, "that will be all for the time being."
Once the coffee had been poured—excellent stuff, Nasi found, to his surprise, it seemed there was at least one American who didn't like his coffee weaker than a schoolboy's excuses—Mazzare came straight to the point. "Well, Mike? What exactly about the situation in Rome seems to be the problem?"
Stearns chuckled. "What isn't?" He waved a hand. "Oh, it's not that it affects us much one way or the other. Papal neutrality is a bit of a help but we managed without it before and no doubt we will again, and the political hay Wilhelm is going to make over it makes no odds either. It's just, well, predicting what Borja might do and how the college of cardinals is going to react to it. Since you're the nearest cardinal, I figured I'd come right out and ask."
It was Mazzare's turn to chuckle. "Second newest cardinal, as it happens. Father Joseph got his hat and ring shortly after I did, since my appointment made His Holiness' excuses for not elevating the man look pretty thin, and it wasn't like an extra French cardinal more or less makes much difference these days. And probably about to be the third newest, if rumors about Giulio Mazarini being appointed in pectore have any truth to them. And what I know about the internal workings of the cardinals in Rome, frankly, you could fit on the head of a pin and still have room for a troupe of dancing angels doing a Busby Berkeley number. You see, I'm not really much of a political cardinal. There are a few of us like that, you know."
"Yeah," said Stearns, "I figured you wouldn't be much for the machinations of the fancified folks in Rome. By the way, where's Father Scheiner?"
Nasi took a moment to ensure that his face was fully under control. The barb was a true one. His last update to Mike Stearns had been on the whereabouts of the Jesuit astronomer-priest whom Mazzare had asked for as his senior scientific advisor when he had been appointed cardinal. The man didn't spend all of his time with his eyes on the stars, however. His travels around the various archbishops and secular nobility on the fringes of the USE were an itinerary that made interesting reading. Mazzare was, in his own quiet and understated way, doing some hard politicking of his own.
If nothing else, ensuring that all of those prelates and princes, weaned on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, got regular updates on how well the Catholic church—as distinct from the Catholic powers—could do in an area where there was freedom of religion. Mazzare was meeting regularly with the upper levels of the German Jesuit hierarchy—Scheiner's influence again—to direct efforts to proselytise the Catholic religion. Nasi had been including that in his reports on the "good news" side of the balance sheet, not least because the Jesuits' efforts to get as many schools open as possible in as many places as possible were saving the USE a tidy sum in education spending. There were public order problems as well—there were plenty of places where riots against "popery" were easy to provoke, and would be, if Nasi was any judge of how Christians behaved, for many years to come.
Mazzare grinned disarmingly. "Fine, you've got me on that one. But there's a world of difference between smoothing the ruffled feathers of a lot of bishops who think they're about to be forced to turn Lutheran and knowing what Borja's playing at."
"So you think it is Borja, then?" Nasi asked. "I don't have any hard information on that myself. I have, shall we say, limits on how much information I can gather on the internal workings of the Catholic Church. Or any Christian institution, to be completely candid." It was a blind spot in Nasi's otherwise—false modesty aside—excellent espionage organization. Commercial and political rumor he could have for the asking; the correspondents he had already had before working for the USE had been collecting that kind of information for years for their own business. Mailing it to a new address represented no great change. Developing contacts within the religious institutions was going to take time and effort that Nasi simply had not been able to expend, thus far. Nasi was hoping for something to come of his contact with Mazzare on that account; an exchange of intelligence with someone who was developing his own contacts within the Catholic church from a position of near-supreme advantage would be invaluable, given how much stock Europeans had in their competing theologies.
Mazzare nodded. "I do think it's Borja. And you may be assured that my sources are of the best. What I get, I get a few weeks behind the times, but all the thinking as of the last report was that Borja was up to no good, and almost certainly behind the attempts to foment civil disorder. I guess you've had reports on that business already?"
Stearns said, "Yeah, we have. Sharon saw one incident right up close, as it happens. Ended up having to help the wounded."
Mazzare frowned. "She wasn't hurt? Everyone at the embassy is fine? Any word on Frank and Giovanna?"
"All unharmed as at my last report, Your Eminence," Nasi said hastily. "That was last night, from Ms. Nichols."
"Oh, good." Mazzare's relief was palpable. "All too many of the people I have to deal with either don't know that their little games get people killed, or simply don't care. You will, of course, remind Sharon from me, and ask her to tell Frank from me as well, to be careful? From what I gather Borja's trying to revive an old family tradition."
"He wants to be pope?" Stearns asked.
"What cardinal doesn't?" Mazzare shot back, smiling. "Seriously, though, I was talking more about the way the Italian branch of his family carried on back in the day. You might remember that they were a byword for lying, scheming, treacherous manipulators as late as the twentieth century."
"Figures," Stearns said. "So you don't think he's trying to make himself pope?"
"Doubt it," Mazzare said.
"You have intelligence on that as well?" Nasi asked, intrigued.
"Not really. It's just that Borja can do the math as well as His Holiness can. There are only so many cardinals who can get to Rome for a vote in consistory, even now that Borja's called in every Spanish cardinal he can scrape up from every backwoods cathedral in Spain. Of those, neither the Spanish nor the Barberini party—of whom I'm pretty much one, by the way, since I really don't like any of the alternatives, and I like what Urban's doing—can really force an issue by themselves."
"The college of cardinals is tied, then?" Mike asked.
Mazzare rocked a hand back and forth. "On the raw numbers, yes. Normally, though, most of the other cardinals are out of town and His Holiness can get his way, with only a minimum of horse-trading. He only really has to persuade the cardinals that're in town—"
Stearns held up a hand. "Isn't the pope the supreme authority? I thought it was his way or the highway, and that was what infallibility actually meant? Did I misunderstand?"
Mazzare chuckled. "Well, that's closer than most misconceptions about what infallibility means. But the doctrine's purely for matters of faith and teaching, not the government of the church, and even then it only applies if the pope says it applies to something he's said. And when it comes to running the church, the pope's word is law, except for where it isn't, if you take my meaning. The cardinals are the governing body of the church. They were originally the principal priests of Rome's parish churches, you see, and selected their bishop from among their number. Whoever was bishop of Rome was also the pope as a sort of side benefit. Anyway, the pope rules but by law some things require the consent of the cardinals. It's a system that seems to work in spite of the rules, if anyone's asking me. Sorry, I seem to be lecturing."
"Most absorbing, Your Eminence," Nasi said. "Do go on." Behind his polite face, Nasi was trying not to laugh out loud. Mazzare had ceased to be a simple parochial priest some years ago, but he still maintained the act. When it slipped, it turned out that there was a shrewd mind behind the facade, a mind that could claim all day long to be politically naive, but the reality was, well—
Nasi realized he could almost come to believe in the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit from watching Mazzare rise to each new challenge.
"Thank you, Don Francisco," Mazzare said. "As I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself, the pope does need the cardinals to run the church, and the cardinals are definitely needed if there's an election for a new pope. Now, if it just comes to throwing a spoke into Urban's government, that's easy enough for Borja to do. Some of the bribes will be enormous, but certainly not beyond the means of the king of Spain. The disruption to civil life in Rome seems to me to be just a pretext to let Borja frustrate the pope. Plus I know someone who knows someone who thinks he's getting the straight dope from Madrid, and that's as far as Borja's orders went."
Stearns was frowning. "You mentioned needing the cardinals to elect a new pope. You think that's a possibility?"
"Unless Urban dies a lot earlier this time around than he did on the historical record, no. I think we can assume that his state of health remains the same, so the old boy's got a few years left in him yet, God willing."
Nasi couldn't resist the obvious question. "And if Borja brings about a worsening in the state of the pope's health? Under cover of rioting, say?"
"No."
Mazzare was firm about that, at any rate. Nasi hoped that whoever Mazzare's source was had that right. That started Nasi wondering who that source was. In a way, Nasi hoped it was Vitelleschi: there was a mind worth having on one's side. The actions of the Jesuits in response to the new opportunity the USE presented indicated that Vitelleschi was one of those prepared minds whom fortune was said to favor.
Mazzare went on. "As I said before, Borja can do the same math His Holiness can, that anyone can do. There are two big parties in Rome right now, and one small group who might go either way. There are the cardinals who'll not stand with Spain, and the ones who will. If Spain tries to put their own man in, they'll need the unaligned cardinals, which basically means the Borghese, to do it. And since the currently most papabile cardinal is a Borghese, and he can read the encyclopedias as well as the next man and see who was supposed to replace Urban VIII in a few years' time, they're not likely to help anyone into the Vatican other than one of their own."
"So it's a competition between two factions as to who can promise the most to the Borghese in return for loyalty after the event?" Stearns asked.
"Well, yes, but Spain pretty much has to lose that one. Most of the Spanish cardinals are going to have to return to Spain eventually, while everyone else remains in Rome. Able to help the new pope a lot more. Pretty much the only way that Borja would be able to ensure a Borghese cat's paw kept his end of the bargain would be to leave troops there. And people remember the Avignon captivity. I don't think having the pope leaned on to change policy will play that well with a lot of the kings and princes and archdukes and what-not."
Mazzare took a sip of his coffee. "Same goes if Borja makes His Holiness change policy at the point of a pike. He's got to leave troops there to keep Urban's nose to the grindstone, and still a lot of people are going to think their consciences are free of any kind of obedience. Me, for one."
"So all he can really do is bring Urban's government to a halt and hope Urban sees reason convincingly enough to keep his word after Borja stops?" Stearns sounded skeptical.
"No, I think Borja means to keep this up until the papacy is unable to affect anything. It reinforces the primacy of the king of Spain within the church. Whoever's the next pope will have the awful example of Urban to look back to. If Urban changes policy, then that's a useful bonus, but I don't think that's what he's really looking for. He wants a lame-duck pope. Politically, at least."
Stearns sat quietly for a little while. Nasi didn't think there was anything he could add, and Mazzare seemed content to let him ruminate.
After a while, and after draining his coffee cup, Stearns said, "There's absolutely nothing we can do to affect this one way or the other, is there?"
"Not that I can think of," said Mazzare.
So you've been thinking about it too, Nasi thought to himself. "I must also wonder what we might gain from intervening, if there was some way we might?"
"Well, there is the safety of our people in Rome," Mazzare said, looking Nasi straight in the eye. "And the fact that if you help, and you're seen to help, then there's a very real political benefit. Especially if you're helping prevent the kind of mess that Borja seems to be hell-bent on making."
"Cardinal Mazzare is right, Francisco," Stearns said, sighing wearily. "Trouble is, there's not a damn thing I can think of to do to help. All the USE has is one embassy with a dozen or so Marines out at the end of the longest communications link we have. And even then, we'd have to know where and how to act, and I ain't got clue one. And I'm prepared to guarantee you that neither Gustav Adolf nor Wilhelm Wettin does, either. And your 'simple parish priest, no knowledge of politics' act aside, Cardinal," he went on, and Nasi could hear the testiness building in Stearns' voice despite the fact that he used the same stratagem himself, "you haven't got the know-how either. More than I've got, for sure, but still not enough."
"True," Mazzare said.
"You could maybe ask the father-general?" Stearns asked, hopefully.
"I could, at that," Mazzare said, and Nasi couldn't keep himself from opening his eyes wider and jerking a little. Surely that was deliberate, he thought. Revealing that his source in Rome is Vitelleschi cannot have been an accident. And Stearns had primed him for it by simply asking the question outright. Truly, when the simple hillbilly union organizer and the naive parish priest sat down together, what a wealth of subtlety was unleashed!
Mazzare was continuing, "Look, if you tell the embassy folks to stand by to be of assistance, I'll let Vitelleschi know that he's got help in that quarter. It'll raise both our stocks there and maybe do some good."
"I will see to it, Mike," Nasi said. "And pass the word to my own people in Rome to take whatever action they can without compromising their own cover."
"Please, Don Francisco," Mazzare said, "I don't want any more risks run than have to be."
"I can assure Your Eminence," Nasi said, "that I will order no one to run any extraordinary risks. I value these people highly, and even were that not the case, there is the future to think of. I will need agents in Rome when this is all done."
"Good," Mazzare said, in the tones of a man who had gotten thoroughly used to being obeyed. "Although perhaps your people could keep an eye out for Frank Stone? He doesn't have a platoon of Marines to get him out of town if things get rougher. And from what I hear, someone's trying to pin the blame on him. It could get very nasty, and he's really not much more than a kid."
Stearns held up a hand. "Already in hand, Cardinal. And try to remember that that 'not much more than a kid' managed to achieve some quite useful things last year."
"By accident," Mazzare said, his tone growing waspish. "Although, yes, from what I hear he does seem to be doing things sensibly down there."
"Yep." Stearns grinned. "I'd had a notion to get someone down there and teach that boy some tactics, but it looks like he figured out a few things by himself, once he got settled down. I reckon that girl civilized him some."
That produced a reaction. Mazzare's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. "Giovanna? Giovanna Marcoli? Civilized?" Mazzare paused and coughed. "Well, I suppose it ill behooves me of all people to deny the possibility of miracles."