The affable smile he had painted on his face was starting to make his cheeks hurt. He had to force himself to remember that only those of a proper rank could be called out to a duel. If he was to pick a fight with any of the idiots he'd had to deal with this evening, it would simply be a common tavern brawl.
That thought was a cheering one. Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, brawling like a vulgar ruffian in a tavern. It would be far from the first time. And it just might prevent this expedition from being—what was that phrase Sharon used?—a "total bust." And that started another chain of happy thoughts. The English language had some truly excellent synonyms for the dedicated punster.
Ruy picked up a glass of wine—on the better side of mediocre, and he'd paid a little extra to get it out of the proprietor of this particular pesthole of a taverna—and looked around again. It was the third watering hole he'd visited this evening, and like the others it was a noisy and boisterous place. Staying in the middle of the room where everyone could see you meant you got jostled. A lot. Which meant that every time he recovered his good humor, some idiot would barge past and annoy him again.
It would be different if he had come out in his own proper person, of course. No one would dare provoke Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz. That was half the reason for the finery. It kept the idiots at bay. Tonight, though, he was simply Manuel, in town because he'd hired on with the traveling arrangements of cardinal thus-and-so. He'd got away with not being specific so far and meant to continue in that vein. A simple porter, at a loose end until his master decided to go back to Spain, out for a few drinks and to see the sights. A complete and utter hayseed who would want anything and everything explained to him in short words. For the first time in years, he felt severely underdressed. And no one seemed to give a crap about offending Manuel, no matter how impressive the set of knives he had at his belt. He might not be able to arm himself as a gentleman, but without weapons he felt not just underdressed, but naked.
While he mused, someone was jabbering at him. "Que?" he asked. Manuel, he had decided, didn't speak Italian well, and was a bit simple.
"I said, you're not from around here, are you?" The speaker was an oily looking, pinched-faced fellow with pox scars on his cheeks who had come and sat on the bench beside Ruy at the scarred, scorched and splintered table. Ruy made a small wager with himself that he was about to be offered the services of whatever tired and ugly drab the wretch was pimping tonight.
"No," Ruy replied, downgrading his command of Italian a good few notches, "I from Barcelona. Just came to Roma, yes?" He gave the fellow his best friendly-country-idiot grin.
"Know your way around the city, yet?" There was a calculating light in the man's eyes, and Ruy shortened the odds on him being a pimp considerably.
"No' really," Ruy said. "Mostly I just shift boxes and things for cardinal." He shrugged. "First time off I get in two weeks. All done now, though, till we go back to Barcelona. Getting paid to do nothing." Ruy made his friendly-idiot grin good and ingratiating. However odious this fellow was, pimps, being idle, usually had good gossip.
"'S that right? You know, if you're looking for a little fun, I might know someone who can help you." The fellow's leer got so broad Ruy began to imagine it falling off one side of his face. And, of course, he mentally handed himself a large bag of gold in satisfaction of the wager.
Try the obvious approach first, then. "I don't know," he said, frowning a bit as if worried. "I hear of trouble in Rome right now, lots of riots and disorder and things. I figure maybe there's constables working extra-hard, eh?"
The pimp—Ruy noted that like many such, he wasn't going to give his name to anyone he wasn't sure was a customer—waved a hand in idle dismissal. "Naw, don' worry about nothin' like that. Ain't any real riots, except maybe one or two. Most of it's just guys turning out to cause a little ruckus and run away before the militia come. 'S a couple of guys organizing it, got a whole bunch of money to spend, too."
"Why?" Ruy felt quite proud of the puzzled frown he now wore. He felt that anyone seeing him would expect him to start grazing. And, of course, the effort of pretending to be this stupid was helping cover the fact that he was delighted to have hit paydirt so quickly. Only four hours of damnably awful wine and worse tavernas. Just this pox-rotted pimp to endure, and he could call it a night and get back to civilized company such as he had grown used to over the years.
The pimp shrugged. "Who knows? They say they're Committee of Correspondence, but they ain't. Those guys are all over by the Borgo, at Frank's Place, and they don't want no trouble, whatever they say about those crazy folks up in Germany and Venice. Me, I'm in eating money, mostly, so I don't bother with 'em. Don't go looking for trouble, that's my motto. And the militia caught one lot of guys went out for these other guys, y'know? Some guys got hurt."
"Bad?" Ruy tried his best to get his eyebrows into his hat, made his eyes go big and round. Stop overacting, Sanchez, he told himself.
The pimp didn't notice. "Some guys got killed. A few more didn't make it after they got hurt. That American moro from Germany, the one they say is such a miracle-working dottoressa, she was there and helped some guys. I figure if that's what these folks from the future do, they're okay with me."
It was intriguing that the fellow had dropped an American term into the flow of Roman dialect, but Ruy cautioned himself not to make too much of it. He'd already concluded that whatever other changes the up-timers were making to history, "okay" seemed certain to infect every language in Europe. The pestiferous word seemed as contagious as the plague.
"But they are witches!" Ruy expostulated.
Pimp blew a raspberry. "Merda. Good doctors. Good cooks. Run a clean and sensible tavern, man. Stuck it to the great and good last year, stuck it to them right in the ass. That makes 'em okay by me. Nobody believes they're witches, 'cept maybe a lot of excitable priests. They should get laid, y'know?"
Ruy chuckled. "True, they should. But I keep hearing where they do all kinds of magic, and burn people alive." He realized as he said it that he'd let his Italian improve, but it didn't look like the pimp was noticing.
"Burn people alive? I heard the same about your Inquisition, friend." There was a slightly wary look appearing in the pimp's eyes now.
Ruy realized he was probably pushing too hard for a reaction from this fellow, especially if he wanted to stay in character. He held up his hands, spread. "Hey, I'm from Catalonia. The Inquisition's a lot of damned Castilians, humiliating decent people. I know plenty of good folks who're shamed by their family names being hung up in the church as marranos and moriscos. They complain but nothing is done."
"That's the same all over, man," pimp said, shrugging. "Now, about that good time?"
"What kind of good time?" Ruy wondered how he was going to wriggle out of this one. It had never been his idea of fun to spend money that way, never mind that there was Sharon to think about. Some fellows he'd known had had no other idea of pleasure, and in a way he pitied them more than the poor souls rotted by drink. And since he'd taken that fateful decision that there was more to life than was traditionally offered to country boys from Catalonia, he'd learned that there were ways of getting laid that were a hell of a lot more fun, too. He'd never wanted for that kind of action, and the pleasures of romance and seduction were more lasting and more real.
The pimp laughed aloud. "What kind of town is Barcelona anyway?" he asked, sneering the question. "What you do for entertainment there? Goats? What kind of good time, Christ have mercy, man, what kind d'you think? Pussy, man, pussy!"
"Oh," Ruy said, "Look, I'm sorry and all, but I've got a wife, you know?"
The knowing leer he got back for that one was pure pimp. "Yeah, sure, man. And where is she tonight?"
"Uh, Barcelona," Ruy said. "But I never told her a lie yet, you know?"
The pimp's face was a picture of a building rant. Ruy had the gloomy suspicion that he was going to have to hit him to get him to shut up, and that was going to fix him in this man's memory. And that he'd pumped the man, none too subtly, for information about "those guys" who were paying for the riots. If he wouldn't sell that information, first chance he got, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz was no judge of the breed.
Fortunately, just at that moment, someone jostled past. Ruy let the slight nudge spill his drink, then rose to his feet and roared "Watch what you are about, you dog-fucked son of an Italian whore!" He stuck his face right into that of the fellow who'd jostled him, trusting that the sentiment he'd expressed in Catalan would carry over into Italian.
Truth be told, the fellow wasn't much of a threat to anyone. Weedy, at best. But Ruy needed a distraction to get him out of the place with everyone remembering him as an obnoxious drunken out-of-towner rather than anything more noteworthy. "I—I'm sorry, friend," the fellow stammered, flinching back.
"Sorry?" Ruy shouted, switching to Italian, "I make you sorry, shit-britches!" Under the bluster and fury he was cool and calm and noticed that the taverna had gone gratifyingly quiet. It had been so long since he'd done this that he'd forgotten how much fun a good bar-fight could be.
"Look, if I spilt your wine, I'll get you more," the fellow said, already looking pale and nervous. Ruy realized he'd not picked a very good target for this, but then he'd been improvising as he went along. Clearly this fellow didn't know how to stand up to a bully.
"Damn right you'll get me more, you fucking coward," Ruy shouted. "Same as all Italians, no fucking cojones!" He made the filthiest gesture he could think of, hoping it meant the same here as it did back home. The circles he'd moved in every other time he'd been in Rome, no one made gestures like that. Not out in front where they could be seen, anyway.
Amid the silence, there was the scrape of stools on the floor as—he counted the sounds, two of them were behind him—four men got up. From somewhere over his right shoulder, he heard "Watch your fucking mouth, Spaniard."
Ruy turned nice and slowly around. "Going to make me, cat-eater?"
This was more like it. This fellow almost certainly did something that involved lifting and moving heavy things. And obviously liked a good fight just as much as Ruy did. He was taller than Ruy by half a head, a good deal wider, and was built like an ox. And plainly wasn't even thinking about buying him a drink.
Beside him, he heard the pimp draw a blade. Something short. Ruy hadn't lived to his mature years by being slow, however. Without really thinking about it or doing more than glance to his side, he had a stiletto against the fellow's scrawny throat. "Put it away, little pimp, or I shave you real fucking close."
He pressed the edge of the blade against the man's Adam's apple. It was a stabbing weapon, with no edge to speak of, but where he was holding it the pimp couldn't see that. The pimp's knife went back into its sheath, which it had hardly cleared.
Ruy looked back at the big guy. "You want to make something of it?" he said, ostentatiously returning his stiletto to his belt. He didn't want anyone to get the idea this was a knife-fight. A few bruises and broken furniture was no one's concern, but if there were dead bodies it would be an effort to clear up.
There was doubt in the big man's eyes now. Ruy knew his speed had that effect on many people. Nevertheless, and credit the fellow for courage, he took a step forward, curling up his fists. "I got no knife, Spaniard," he said. "You man enough to face me without?"
Ruy spat in front of his new opponent. Behind him, he heard the fellow he had originally challenged backing away and getting the hell out. Good, he thought, fighting the likes of that milksop would be no fun at all. He heard the others who'd stood up resume their seats, and around the place there were knowing grins. Clearly this fellow was the local hero. Best to get him good and mad. "I'd face you without hands, you fat fuck, and beat you with my cock. You ever seen a real cock, bitch?"
That did it. Elegant and flowery insults were wasted in a place like this. The fellow charged. Ruy's sidestep would have done a matador proud, and it was hardly any effort at all to trip the lumbering mass so he went into a table full of revelers, scattering their drinks and spilling the two whores who were with them to the floor. That got them up and advancing on Ruy with blood in their eyes, while Big Fellow got to his feet, shaking his head to clear it.
A quick step forward, and a couple of punches rocked one of them back on his heels. A space cleared, Ruy stepped back, grabbed a vacant stool and threw it at the others. The rebound cleared another table, they barged two more tables, and suddenly—the speed at which these things happened was too fast for even Ruy to follow—everyone in the taverna was on their feet jostling and shoving and shouting and in the ruckus, and the original cause of the disturbance was starting to feel quite surplus to requirements.
It was still a good imitation of pandemonium. Fighting his way to the door, Ruy had to hit another guy with a stool, then two more with the leg of the stool that had somehow come apart in his hand—damned shoddy Italian carpentry—and finally kicked a fourth in the crotch and whacked him in the ass with the makeshift club as he doubled over.
He paused at the door, waiting his turn in the stream of people leaving before knives came out, and looked back to survey his handiwork. Complete chaos and mayhem, he felt, quite compensating for the tedium of the evening so far. And, yes, the pimp was on the floor with blood running from his head. Accident, or a score settled in the confusion, Ruy didn't care. Couldn't happen to a nicer fellow. He took one last look around before dodging out, and froze. Then, he uttered a whole stream of swearwords under his breath.
"Not him," he murmured, "anyone but him."
There, across the room, flanked by a couple of bravos, holding off the swirling brawl from their corner table with stools and chairs with unmistakable whores cowering behind him for protection, was Francisco de Quevedo y Villega, in the flesh. Ruy Sanchez had sat in plain view in the same tavern for nearly an hour before standing up and picking a fight.
"Fuck," he said, and left.
"So why's this guy such a problem?" Sharon asked.
"Gah!" Ruy was pacing back and forth like an agitated cat. "Say better how is Francisco de Quevedo y Villega not a problem! Say, rather, is there any way in which his presence is not an omen of the direst deeds, the most ridiculous catastrophes, the follies most lacking in sanity! The man is born to make trouble!"
Sharon's mockery was well placed in reply. "Sounds like a fellow you'd get on with then, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz."
"The difference, mi corazon, to use your charming American phrase, is that I know my ass from my elbow. I am not, to pick just one example of many, away abasing myself in a Venetian whorehouse when I ought to be organizing a coup d'etat, thus leaving my compatriots to get out of town one step ahead of an angry mob."
"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.