Ruy reflected that he ought to be getting used to this by now. Signora Fontana and Father Maratta had planned—conspired would be as good a word—with Sharon to ensure that the nuptials he was now awaiting the commencement of were fully prepared for. And, like a well-drilled soldier, Ruy's job was to stand in line and advance on command.
The customs surrounding the ceremonial were a little different from what he was used to. Or, at least, had been used to recently. He had, after all, been married three times before, in three countries—counting Spain's overseas territories as different countries, which they were—on two continents. So the way in which Sharon had quietly insisted on some slight departures from what Father Maratta was expecting was not, in truth, that odd to him. Or, at least, it was odd, but he was comfortable with odd.
The custom of not seeing the bride in her wedding dress until she arrived at the church was odder than the others, though. The first time he had been married his newfound in-laws had made sure he and his intended had had a thoroughly good night according to their own, pre-Christian standards before escorting them all to the church in the morning. Indeed, he had half suspected that many of the older members of the family had regarded the pagan festivities as the real marriage. In fact—
Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, you are nervous. He took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled it. Calm. Nothing had shown on his face. That much was certain. A lifetime of battles and fields of honor, and every moment of near-unmanning has happened in the course of getting married. It was not even as if he had ever not wanted to be there. There was probably some deeper spiritual point to be made, but for now concentration was certain to elude him.
He looked at the congregation. An unusual mixture, certainly. Rome's notables were, in the main, not represented. The wedding of an unregarded ambassador and her intended was not an occasion that would cause them to turn out. From the Barberini, no one save Giulio Mazarini the elder, Antonio Barberini's majordomo. His son, who would doubtless have been present had he not been in Paris about his masters' business, was thus represented as well. More than a few natural philosophers, acquaintances made by Sharon at the Barberini salons, were present and, indeed, bickering while they waited for the service to begin.
Also, grinning and offering the thumbs-up gesture that meant good luck among the Americans and up your ass to just about everyone else, was Frank Stone. He had, it turned out, enough money from his father for a gentleman's outfit and wore a sword, even after only a few weeks' tuition, like he meant it. Today, for certain, purely because it was part of proper dress for a young gentleman, although Sanchez was pleased to see he had taken advice and obtained a rather heavier item than a rapier in the Italian pattern. A strong arm, the boy had. A back-sword might not be so suited to the swift kill of la destreza but it carried real authority in a close fight. As did, unless Sanchez missed his guess, the crowd of young near-gentlemen who were present as Rome's Committee of Correspondence. He'd heard the term lefferti going around. There were a lot more of them than turned out at Frank's place, and the sight of them made him wonder about Harry Lefferts. Did the horde of imitators mean he was a fellow worth meeting or just another charlatan?
Mind wandering again, he thought. I grow senile. On which note, a sight appeared in the nave of the church that caused the years to fall away from him—Sharon, in a dress that, truly, he was glad he had not seen. Nothing should have been allowed to detract from the impact of this moment, and though he should live a thousand years he should never find the words to express it truly.
Some indeterminate time later, filled vaguely with the memories of a nuptial mass, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz stepped in to the afternoon sunlight of a spring day in Rome with the most beautiful woman in the world on his arm and heard the pealing of bells.
Many bells.
Many, many bells.
In fact, the whole of Rome was being deafened with the pealing of bells.
Tocsin bells.
"Mierda," he said, with feeling.
Frank had the confetti improvised and ready to throw. He'd briefed the guys on the proper use of the stuff and given them positions to take. Distributed it freely. Damn it, his own wedding had been a truly strange affair, surrounded by Swiss Guards, in a world heritage monument, conducted by a bemused guy in cardinal's robes who wasn't much older than Frank.
This one, he'd decided, was going to go off just like the ones on TV, and the party that followed it was going to be a blast or he, and every other regular member of Rome's Committee of Correspondence, was going to die trying.
Just as he'd gotten the guys out in position, and just as Ruy and Sharon were heading down the aisle toward the door into the sunshine, the pealing bell of the church was joined by another bell, from a nearby church.
That's nice, Frank thought. Perhaps they all join in when they hear good news. And then some guy came running into the church, skidded through a hard left toward the belltower and was lost in the gloom inside the church porch. A few seconds after that, the bells of this church changed to a single, constant note.
Frank realized that the same sound was being repeated from every direction. He looked around at the other guys there. All of them were either native Romans or at least Italians, and all of them looked concerned. He realized that while he'd learned to recognize many of the other signals you got from church bells, from funeral-in-progress, as he thought of it, to the angelus, he'd never heard this one before. And it was making even the tough-but-cheerful Piero look a little worried.
Then Ruy and Sharon stepped into the sunlight and Ruy's face instantly went from beaming-fit-to-burst to an iron soldier's mask, the face of a man who's about to face death and doesn't want to betray any weakness. He was worried too.
The little voice at the back of Frank's mind said the word you're looking for is "Tocsin."
"Crap," he murmured.
She felt Ruy's arm on hers stiffen. She heard him mutter something, but couldn't tell what it was over the sound of the bells. Lots of bells. Sunday mornings could be good and loud in Rome, but at a little distance from the belltowers the noise was bearable. They were standing right under the belltower here, of course, and for some reason the whole of Rome seemed to be ringing its bells.
Sharon put two and two together. "Back to the embassy, everyone!" she said loudly, and tugged on Ruy's arm to get him moving again.
Beside her, Ruy called out to Frank. "Señor Stone, go by your place and see that it is secure. If you hear word of—"
He broke off as someone came out of the belltower behind them and dodged around to run into the street. Ruy's reflexes were simply unnatural for a man his age. Sharon had seen him with weapons in hand many times—once against armed opponents and repeatedly in training sessions with the embassy's Marine guards. Reaching out to snag hold of the runner, he all but blurred.
"What news?" he barked as the guy was pulled up short. He was not much more than a teenager, now that Sharon got a look at him.
"Invasion!" the messenger panted. "Spanish troops at Ostia on this morning's tide. Signor, please, let me go, I must spread the word."
Ruy let him go. "Borja," he spat, "Quevedo. How stupid?"
"Very?" Sharon answered, trying to lighten his mood a little.
Ruy's laugh was little more than a bark. "There will be fighting, Sharon. Hard fighting. His Holiness may not command many troops, but there are militia troops all about Rome. If given time to organize, they may be able to mount a spirited defense."
"Should we evacuate?"
"For a certainty. Let Captain Taggart begin the preparations." Ruy turned back to Frank. "Signor Stone, see that all is secure with you and yours. I would counsel that you withdraw outside the city as soon as you may."
"Figures," Frank said. "I heard what the messenger said. Good luck, Ruy, Sharon." He set off at a fast walk, collecting Giovanna on his arm as he went and trailed by the small crowd of genial ruffians he'd brought along.
Tom, Sharon's dad, Rita and Melissa Mailey were next out of the church. Tom spoke first. "What's up, everyone? Why the long—oh," he trailed off, as he caught the sound of the bells.
"What kind of trouble?" Sharon's dad asked.
"Those bells are a tocsin, aren't they?" asked Melissa.
"You cut it too fine with the nuptials, girlfriend," Rita said, grinning. "Looks like neither of us could get married without trouble brewing."
Sharon chuckled. That was true enough. Rita had been married less than half a day before the Ring of Fire dumped them all in the middle of the Thirty Years War. "Yeah, well," she said, "this is one lot of trouble we can bug out of. Ruy and Captain Taggart are organizing the evacuation."
She turned to where those two were conferring. The Marines, who had been drawn up ready to form an arch of swords outside the church, had already spread out to form a watchful perimeter, and their captain nodded some final confirmation to Ruy and turned to Sharon. "The coaches are ready, mistress," he said, "and I've sent a lad back to the embassy at best speed to get things stirred about there. Happen we'll be ready to go before dusk."
"That's a relief," Tom said. "This all has the authentic feel of somebody else's problem."
"True enough," Sharon's dad said. "Glad to see there's some sense in that man of yours, Sharon," he said, smiling.
"Sense?" Ruy interjected with a wry smile, "I shall have you know that I have slain men for less offensive suggestions. Sense is for Castilians and other like dullards, Doctor Nichols."
"Whatever. We're getting out of town, then?" he replied.
"Certainly. I would propose that we withdraw into Lazio for the time being and seek lodgings in one of the smaller towns or villages. With those under our protection safe, we can assess the possibility of returning when the fighting has died down. For now, though, as Señor Simpson so aptly puts it, the fighting in this city is somebody else's problem."
Sharon saw the carriages pulling up, the Marines directing them into a line. "Well," she said, loudly, "It'll be our problem if we don't move. Everyone who wishes to join us on the road out of town, be at the embassy in two hours. We won't wait, but if you're there then, you're welcome to join us."
More than a few of the notables who had been following her and Ruy out of the church looked at her and gave noncomittal nods. Most of them, she suspected, would stay put, or would have places to go in the defense of the city.
Adolf was running around in a state of what looked like barely controlled panic. Captain Taggart and two of his men were out securing extra transport; the embassy had two carriages and a cart, but it was starting to look like the entire staff would want to come with the evacuation party.
Sharon suspected that most of them would be safer—far, far safer—to simply get to relatives' houses and hole up until the fighting was over. The USE nationals, on the other hand, had no such option. On the drive back to the embassy, she had thought for a minute about staying put and relying on diplomatic privilege. She'd tried the idea out on Ruy.
"No," he'd said. "Borja is plainly out of control. I cannot conceive of such as this being ordered, even by that pack of fools in Madrid. And where Borja has flouted authority in one way, he cannot be trusted to conform to it in another."
"And even if Señor Sanchez is wrong about Borja, which I doubt," Melissa said, "I've seen what diplomatic privilege amounts to in this day and age. One spell of house arrest is quite enough, at my age."
Tom Simpson chuckled. "And one Harry Lefferts and Julie Sims rescue is quite enough for an entire lifetime."
"I desire to meet that young caballero," Ruy said. "Truly I do."
Now, though, the embassy looked like it was shaping up for a reasonably orderly departure, even with all the dependents they'd be taking.
"Lot of these folks are going to have to walk," her dad observed. The housekeeping staff had refused to let her help pack her own things. They had, quite sensibly, pointed out that the dottoressa should be overseeing, and if she was packing, then Gavriella and Maria were unable to take over the being-the-boss part.
"I don't see any alternative," she said. "None of them want to take the chance of staying in Rome, and they all figure we're a better bet for getting out of Dodge than just setting out and walking."
"It's going to slow us down, some," her dad had said. "Refugee columns aren't ever what you'd call fast-moving."
Sharon nodded. Her dad would know, of course. He almost never spoke about what he'd done and seen in Vietnam, but back up-time Sharon had been able to read a history book as well as anyone. And for this evacuation, they'd have no helicopters. Or motorized transport, even. The three sets of wheeled transport they had would be just about enough to get a bare minimum of baggage aboard, the classified stuff and some supplies for the road. The Marines would have their horses, but even without any military knowledge at all, Sharon could see that burdening them with baggage when they might have to fight was a bad idea. On the plus side, the Marines had two remounts each, one of which wouldn't be needed for the journey. A shame to use such pretty animals as pack beasts, but it would spread the load even further.
Still, most of them would be walking.
"Dottoressa!" it was Carlo, one of the embassy's resident runners. "You are wanted in the secret room, please." He dashed off for whatever errand was next on his list.
She mounted the stairs. Only the three radio guys, all USE nationals, were allowed in there. Sharon figured it was probably pretty much an open secret by now that messages came and went through the secret room, but the local staff seemed to be pretty good about at least keeping up the fiction that they didn't know what went on in there.
The downside was that the housekeeping staff never went in, and while Odo, Matthias and Jurgen might have started out as apprentice boys from good homes around Thuringia, they had become geeks with a vengeance. The place smelt slightly of old socks and stale toasted cheese—the down-time equivalent of packet ramen—and until they came up with a new word for it, "mess" would have to do.
Odo was sitting by the main radio set, a thing cobbled together from spare parts that Grantville had had. The electronics industry was primitive and likely to stay so for years to come. He had earphones on—big, bulky, down-time manufactured things with curved trumpets in place of amplifiers—and was hunched in on himself, eyes screwed shut and plainly listening hard.
Matthias was coiling up the mess of wires and spares that had littered the place, and disassembling the assortment of bits they had been tinkering with when not occupied sending and receiving messages. Jurgen broke off from decanting the huge array of wet-cell batteries that powered the thing. "We think we had an acknowledgement, Your Excellency Mrs. Sanchez," he whispered.
Sharon got a little thrill from hearing that. "Any message?" she asked, whispering in turn.
"We think not." Jurgen shook his head. "This time of day? We might reach Basel, we might not. And maybe Odo was wrong about hearing a reply. And even so, we will do well just to send a code signal."
"Do what you can, but please try to be packed up within the hour," she said. "And don't forget to keep the classified stuff separate so we can burn it if we have to."
"Kein problem," Jurgen said, and returned to draining the batteries.
Back downstairs, Ruy was coming back in the front door, pulling off the battered felt hat and tatty old coat he wore for visiting low-life tavernas. She'd made him promise, when he got out of the carriage, that if he ran into Quevedo he would avoid the man. She'd been a little surprised when he'd agreed. "We have an evacuation to organize, wife," he'd growled, "and it is business before pleasure, duty before honor. But when the duty is done, I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, swear that Francisco Quevedo y Villega will rue his spoiling of our wedding day. Briefly."
"I'll hold your coat," Tom had added.
"Get in line," her dad had growled.
"Amazed we aren't passing out from the testosterone fumes," Melissa had said, although from her expression one might have thought she was about to grab a rapier and have after Quevedo and Borja herself.
Now, though, Ruy was wiping sweat from his brow and tossing the disguise into a corner, to be abandoned as no longer needed. It had been pretty threadbare today, anyway, as he'd not bothered to change out of his good breeches, which had been plainly visible over the battered boots he normally wore for training sessions.
"Bad," he growled, "and worse."
"The Spanish are already in the city?"
"Not yet," Ruy said, "although if rumor were right they were already firing the Vatican and molesting nuns. No, the one fellow I found who was not panicking had word that the Spanish had overrun Ostia and would be ready to march in the morning. For myself, I think they will attempt a night march, and be here late tomorrow after resting in the small hours. Otherwise, they will not arrive until the day after."
"So we can relax some, then?" Rita asked the question Sharon was already thinking.
"Perhaps," Ruy said. "Although, Your Excellency, there are arguments on each side of the scale."
"Why they pay me the big bucks, I reckon," Sharon said. "How far away is Ostia?"
"Fifteen, sixteen miles," Tom said. "I was here on vacation one time, back-when."
"A long day's march for any sizeable body of troops," Ruy said. "Let us presume that the man ordered to this folly is competent. More than likely an Italian, and it never pays to assume they do not know their trade as soldiers. He will allow two days for the movement, and if he has even the ordinary ration of cojones he will be beginning the march now with plans to march into the evening and begin early in the morning. We should not count on being able to depart safely for more than an hour past dawn on the morrow."
"We'll have to chance it," Sharon looked around her and casting her mind back to the scene of harried bustle and near-chaos that Ruy had missed out on. "We need more time to organize, damn it. We're picking up dependents every minute, it's already more than just the USE nationals taking it on the lam. Tom, go tell the guys upstairs to hold off on packing, they'll be able to send a message tonight. Melissa, calm the housekeepers down a little. I'll get with Adolf and revise the plans. Ruy, take charge of the Marines while Captain Taggart is gone and if anyone sees my dad tell him to take a moment to be sure he's happy with his traveling medical bag. If we're cutting it a little finer, we might be seeing wounded on our way out and we should at least be able to help if we get time. And we need to send someone over to Frank's place. If he's not planning to leave, he damn well should be."
Everyone moved at once. And, while it was good to be the boss, Sharon decided she could wish it wasn't of a grade-A mess like this.