Sharon grinned widely. "Someone told you?"

"Yes, someone told us," Magda said. She was looking serene now, Mazzare noticed. Perfectly composed, serene and smooth. Like the flawless concrete curve of a mighty dam.

"Oh." Sharon caught the mood. "I was just talking to the Spanish bishop's guy-more like, he was talking to me-"

"The cardinal's gentiluomo," Mazzare murmured.

"Whatever," Sharon said. "I already think of him as Feelthy Sanchez. He's an old lecher."

Magda barked once, a "Ha!" that summarized her current opinion of the male of the species.

Sharon tilted her head to one side a moment, thoughtful. "Well, maybe I'm being unfair. He was kind of twinkly, really. I bet he's pushing sixty."

"Nothing wrong with being mature," Jones said, his face as innocent as all get-out.

"Reverend," Sharon said, "this guy is ripe. Anyway, he was saying Frank had done well to get himself fixed up so quickly."

"Ha!" Magda barked again.

"Oh, Magda honey," Sharon said, suddenly emollient. "It's not so bad. Courtesans are nearly respectable around here. Of course, I didn't realize it was something anyone did part-time."

"Part-time?" Stone looked confused.

"Well, she was working at the embassy this morning." Sharon said it matter-of-factly.

Mazzare suddenly realized why the girl had looked familiar. "One of the chambermaids at the palazzo? That's who Frank brought?"

Mazzare decided the conversation had gone far enough. It also finally occurred to him that perhaps everyone was jumping to conclusions. Venice, he was beginning to realize, was a contagious sort of place. The kind of city where Think no evil is a laughable motto and rumors are guaranteed to be as wicked as possible.

"Let's not get into any more detail, everyone. It may be the girl is just what she seems to be-to anyone except Venetian gossips, at least. Or, well . . . okay, maybe not. If not, we raise the chambermaids' pay so they don't have to, ah-well, you know."

"Quite," Jones said.

"On the other hand," Stone said, "I think I need to have a talk either way with the guys. Like you say, they're young men abroad in a big city for the first time and I think they need to be warned-"

He trailed off, clearly reminiscing. "Heh. I remember the first time I went to San Francisco. The Haight was past its prime, but it was still-" He cleared his throat, seeing the look Magda was giving him. "Well, never mind."

"Did you wear some-" Jones began, but Mazzare waved him down.

"Only you, Simon," he said, "could take that conversation downhill. People, let us mingle. We are supposed to be diplomats. Be nice, listen, give a friendly impression and go easy on the sauce."

"Speaking of which," said Jones, "where's Gus?"

"Unfair, Simon." Mazzare frowned. "Anyway, I left him with the monsignor who's the state theologian here. Gus doesn't usually get to hobnob with the rich and famous, so he's knocking himself out. Anyway, raus, the lot of you. Mingle." He made shooing gestures, and as they broke away he saw the first of many coming to pay him their regards.

Mazzare found he didn't even have to think about it. Whatever the other Americans were doing, he was kept busy being affable-easy enough, the company was all witty and polite-to a constant stream of people. He'd done similar duties in the past, and had learned the trick of the thing. Sip only, because otherwise helpful people come along and freshen your drink without you noticing, and before you know it you're paralytic.

He was barely an hour in, on perhaps his fiftieth how-do-you-do of the evening, when he realized that perhaps he should have passed that tip on. Especially to Jones, who had no capacity for booze and-but he'd surely been-

With an effort of will, he forced himself to stop worrying.

"Still worrying, Monsignor?" The mask was the traditional Mask of Comedy, worn with a close-fitting hood and a cape and a merely moderately lurid doublet. The voice he recognized, and would have even if it hadn't spoken in English.

"Monsignor," Mazzare said. "I had heard you were in Venice to receive short shrift from Messer il Doge?"

"Indeed. And I must also call you monsignor now, yes?"

Mazzare felt a sudden chill. He had last spoken directly to this man nearly eighteen months before.

Canon Monsignor Giulio Mazarini, Nuncio Extraordinary, was a man who gave Mazzare great hopes and the shivering willies in about equal measure. He was another of the great names of history that Mazzare, and all the other up-time Americans, were having to grow used to sharing a world with. In Mazarini's case, rather earlier than the events for which he was mostly famous, but shortly after his actual rise to prominence.

In the timeline that had been, Mazarini had been a rising star in the Vatican's diplomatic corps. Famous in his twenty-ninth year for rescuing the settlement of the War of the Mantuan Succession that had nearly been blown by Richelieu's creature, Father Joseph. Fortunately for France, the manner of the treaty's near-undoing was completely forgotten in the drama of its rescue. Mazarini had galloped his horse between two armies at Cherasco, waving a blank piece of paper and calling out that peace had been made. His flamboyant coup de theatre, founded in a flagrant lie, had convinced the near-combatants that there was a treaty just long enough for one to be remade in reality.

Later in that timeline, after the time when the Ring of Fire had split the here and now away from what would have been, Mazarini had gone on to take service with Richelieu, and had become a naturalized Frenchman, changing his name to Jules Mazarin. On Richelieu's death he had succeeded to the position of prime minister of France as Cardinal Mazarin, the architect of the absolute state of Louis XIV. There were monuments to the man in the Paris Mazzare had briefly played tourist in, even a Mazarin library.

Grantville had not had a detailed biography of the man, but the basic facts were there in the better encyclopedias. Mazzare was fairly certain that Mazarini's future career was known, for good or ill, in every quarter where the knowing was thought worth knowing. Mazzare himself, ordered by the pope to report on the future, had listed the known details of Mazarini's career, giving particular prominence to the man's later support for the Barberini after their patron Urban VIII-born Maffeo Barberini-died and they began to lose faction-fight after faction-fight within the Church. Not that they couldn't have guessed at Mazarini's future sympathies; he counted at least one Barberini cardinal among his close friends, by all accounts.

The best bit was his key role in the Peace of Westphalia, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648. That was important. Mazarini's career, a few blips apart, was-had been, the normal tenses didn't seem to work properly-devoted to the making of peace after peace. The man had been an inveterate diplomat throughout the life he'd led, and probably saved a good many lives by his efforts.

Mazzare wondered whether Mazarini had fully digested any of it. Or if-no, but Harry Lefferts had come back to Grantville with the news that Mazarini had gone to Paris. If Richelieu had not used the knowledge of future history that he undoubtedly had to make Mazarini an offer, there was no hope at all for France.

Was there a tactful way to ask?

Mazzare realized that the moment was stretching and that Mazarini's having called attention to his new title was in itself a message. Reminding the American priest that he was a diplomat himself now, that they were both at work in the practice of what was now their mutual trade, and there was no such thing as idle chit-chat for such as they.

"Yes," he said, "although that title is much less official than it was-or will be-back in my day." He grimaced. "Doubtless you too have noticed the trouble that normal tenses have with these circumstances."

Mazarini chuckled. "One's conception of oneself can be a little shaky, as well."

Mazzare had been braced, he had thought, but not for that. One could never be ready for that kind of revelation. He felt his pulse bound and then settle as he decided on a tactical misinterpretation. "Quite," he said, smiling ruefully. "There I was, a simple parish priest in a simple country town, and now here I am an ambassador. Perhaps I could prevail upon our acquaintance to sit down with you for a few pointers from a professional?"

Mazzare realized as he said it that he actually meant that. Whatever Mazarini's final allegiances would turn out to be, he was actually a genuinely nice man. When first they had met, Mazzare had been at the bottom of a long, deep depression brought on by his doubts about his place in this time, and the church that represented God to its people and their world. Mazarini had said and done the right things to make Mazzare feel that there was some hope. It could have been a diplomat's professional patter, of course, but then there had been the raid on Grantville by Wallenstein's cavalry, and the bloody aftermath. Mazarini's response had been too smooth, sustained and practical for anyone to believe that it was entirely or even partly feigned. The man cared, and seemed to have the natural touch of friendship about him.

Mazzare had seen all kinds of faith in his years as a priest, throughout his career in the hierarchy. Some outstanding, in both scales as such things are measured. Most, the workaday belief of those whose faith is part of who they are and their family history. That was the reliable sort, Mazzare felt. A man whose trust in God fell with the dew, that he soaked up in warm spring sunshine and the mists of autumn was a man you could depend on.

The mask in front of Mazzare was nodding. "I would be honored, Monsignor."

"That is good to hear, " Mazzare said. Mike Stearns had told him that listening was better than talking in these sorts of situations, something Mazzare had already known. He allowed himself a silent snort at politicians everywhere, for thinking they had a monopoly on the stratagems by which people could be induced to open their hearts to others. And for thinking that the only reason to use those stratagems was in conflict.

Mazarini had the advantage, since behind the mask his thoughts were inviolate. Of course, with Mazarini, that was something of a moot point. His genial, ever-smiling face was the carefully controlled instrument of a trained negotiator and card-player, as much a mask as the painted thing he wore. He knew it, too, and the apologetic tone sounded sincere. "I should take off the mask, Monsignor, save that I am not here."

Mazzare confined himself to raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. Not here at all. The doge has not invited me and it is strictly forbidden to speak with me."

"Forbidden?"

"Forbidden. Perhaps this should be your first pointer from a professional? If, that is, Don Francisco did not instruct you."