Jones groaned. "Our security's perfect, then, and we're totally compromised anyway. Wait'll I see Luzzatto again."

The Jewish commercial agent was back in the ghetto for the night. Venetian law might be elastic on the restrictions on its Jewry, but Luzzatto liked to observe the proprieties. Doing so practically defined the man, in Joe's limited experience with him. Buckley realized that Jones had a point about Luzzatto's handling of the set-up of the embassy. His own sources said that Luzzatto had regarded the Committee as a good voucher for the reliability of prospective staff. If he hadn't, he'd have had trouble getting any help at all for the embassy. The plague a couple of years before had sorely depleted Venice and everyone from the doge on down was having trouble keeping servants. Being picky about who one hired was a recipe for a very short queue of applicants.

Still, it sounded like Mazzare didn't want to frighten the notables, and there was every chance that the Committee connection would be spotted. Whatever the history books might say about Venice being in the first years of its decadent period, the Council of Ten's agents were still justly feared.

"The girl probably wasn't a prostitute," he said, in an attempt to change the subject. "She could have borrowed the clothes, easily enough, assuming she's connected to the local Committee. The CoCs almost always have a presence in the needle trades. It's easy enough to get your hands on finery for an evening, if you know a seamstress working on something. Just hope you don't run into the real owner or that she doesn't recognize her own outfit on someone else."

"If you wind up doing a story on them, Joe, let me have a copy. Although I did get a briefing and I should have-" Mazzare let out another deep sigh. "What's done is done. I suppose we should look at what we're paying our staff, make sure the girls don't have to sell themselves."

Buckley bit down on what he'd been about to offer, that the embassy was in fact paying very generously-even by the standards of Venice, a town where plague had made pretty much every job market a seller's market. He was, he told himself, a reporter, not a researcher for the embassy.

"I gave the boys a lecture about exploitation, just to be on the safe side," Stoner said, looking considerably more serious now. "Maybe we should say something to the soldiers?"

The two pastors digested that in silence.

"Doubt it'd do any good," Jones said at length.

"True," Mazzare agreed gloomily. "Although I suppose they'll be discreet about it. Maybe we should say something to them about security?"

More silence.

Buckley thought the gloom was misplaced. First, there was something downright comical about two ministers fretting about security lapses on the part of the soldiery when they had a Scotsman named Lennox in charge of that very matter. Buckley knew for a fact-he'd gotten two different accounts, both agreeing on all the major points and both wickedly amusing-that Lennox had thoroughly reamed out Billy Trumble and Conrad Ursinus for their behavior the night the embassy had finally arrived in Venice. Since then, the two young officers looked to have ramrods up their ass.

Secondly, and more important, Mazzare and Jones underestimated-by about an order of magnitude, Buckley thought-the difference that up-time social habits made in the attitude of their hired help. Just being treated like a regular working stiff was a major step up from the condescension of the served to their servants that was the norm in the seventeenth century. Half of Buckley's journalistic success depended on that simple fact, which infected even the journalists of the time. They went for interviews with the Great Men and their hangers-on and wrangled for admission to the councils and conferences at which great matters were discussed and decided. Buckley just asked the waiters and footmen what they'd seen and heard, and so got in on things that others were excluded from. He had to be careful sometimes to cover up sources, but it worked every time.

He'd gotten the idea while doing a story on Admiral Simpson. The man's household staff had fallen over themselves to dish on the man and his wife. To Buckley's surprise, it had all been praise. But getting that experience stood him in good stead in Venice. The French embassy, in particular, leaked like a sieve.

Which reminded him of what he'd actually written. "I'm for my bed," he said, gathering up his papers and nodding to the other three.

They bid him good night, and he left with all the dignity of a half-drunk journalist getting the hell out before anyone asked him what he was actually going to file for this week's story.

After Buckley's departure the two pastors and the hippie lapsed into companionable silence for several minutes. Lennox's snores took on the breathy, whistling tone of a man well away in the land of Nod.

"You think pinching that Scot warthog's nostrils would help?" Jones finally grumbled.

"Oh, I don't know," said Stone, "I find the noise kind of restful. Almost as good as a ticking clock."

Mazzare chuckled at the banter. Jones's acid wit and Stone's casual, good-natured humor had eased a lot of the frustration of their journey to Venice. Switzerland in winter had been no joke, even for the hard-bitten cavalrymen of their Marine guard. "What we could do with, I think," he said, "is pinching Buckley's mouth."

"You think he's up to no good?" Stone asked.

"Depend on it," Jones said, still glaring at Lennox. "Man's a damned nuisance. He's bound to be up to something that'll bite us all on the ass."

Jones' run-in with Buckley had been a fairly quiet business, for all the newsman's efforts at scandal-mongering after the Ecumenical Relief Committee had gotten its mysterious boost in funding over the winter of 1631. Away from prying ears in the garage at Mazzare's rectory, Jones had waxed positively sulfurous, using a great deal of what he called "agricultural metaphor" to describe the journalist and the inquiries he'd been making.

"Has anyone heard what he's been up to?" Mazzare asked. "I asked Gus to look into it, but he hasn't gotten back to me. Fortunately, Joe can't use the radio to file anything-although I'm sure he knows we have one. But Joe's plenty ingenious, so he'll figure out some other way to get his stories across the Alps."

"Set Gus and his sneaky Jesuit tricks onto him," recommended Jones. "Of course, knowing Gus, he'd probably start by laming every horse in Venice."

Mazzare laughed out loud at that. Whatever the reputation of the Society of Jesus for subtlety of approach and cunning casuistry, Father Augustus Heinzerling, SJ, was one of the most direct and straightforward men anyone knew. Gus was about as devious as a charging boar.

"We can't just shut him up, can we?" Stone asked, sounding a little worried.

"No, Tom, we can't." Mazzare said. "I just think we should all be very, very careful about what we say when Joe is around."

"And then some," Jones grunted. "Man's a muckraker. Emphasis on muck."

"Should we give him press releases to distract him, then?" Stone asked.

"Tell him Elvis was spotted rowing a gondola, be about his speed," Jones snarled.

Mazzare snorted. "Leave off, Simon. Two years-more than that, now-is a bit much to be bearing a grudge, even for you. But yes, Tom, I think giving him a prepared statement or two to use would be a good idea. If we can plant ideas in his mind we may influence what investigations he actually goes off on. In fact, if he thinks he's going to get the straight goods from us without having to work for it, he'll go off and annoy someone else."

Jones grinned, and snapped his fingers. "That," he said, "for the Jesuits."

The next morning, as he returned to the embassy in a gondola in bright sunlight, Frank was in a much more sanguine mood. All was well with the world.

It must have still showed when he reached the embassy. His brothers took one look at him and simultaneously shook their heads.

"Boy, do you look like the cat's meow," Gerry commented.

"Something exciting happen?" asked Ron.

Frank was grinning from ear to ear. "Sure did. Giovanna kissed me. Twice. Once before she went to bed-right in front of her dad! Okay, it was more like a peck on the cheek, but still. And this morning, she kissed me again when I left-and that was a real one, since her dad wasn't watching." The grin was in serious danger of dislocating his jaw.

"That's it?" Gerry demanded. "Nothing else? Then what caused that bruise on your forehead? That's one hell of a hickey."

"You have a dirty mind." Frank thought about it. "Well. There was a spot of trouble with some goofs outside her house. No big deal. Did I tell you she kissed me?"

Part III:

March, 1634

She thanked men,-good! but thanked

Somehow-I know not how-as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift.

Chapter 21.