Vitelleschi's mask had cracked, for a moment, and was then back in place. "Shall I have a physician attend Your Holiness?"

"No, no," Urban said. "I am well enough, in body. It is in the spirit I ache, in the spirit. At once an opportunity and a challenge. I am reminded of that English saint, Thomas a Becket."

Neither of the other two priests spoke. Barberini, for his own part, could not place the Saint Thomas that his uncle was referring to.

Urban went on. "He was commanded by his king to overlook some matter of the church's interest, and refused. I misdoubt that that king's penitence after the fact made the swords of his knights hurt any the less."

"I can assure Your Holiness that there is no sign of any current plot-" Vitelleschi began, almost hotly. Whatever the efficiencies of the Holy Office in Rome, the Society of Jesus had its own fearsomely effective apparatus of informers and spies, and had indeed been first on the trail of the last, albeit comical, plot to murder the pope.

Urban waved him aside. "No, no, I do not doubt you or your eyes, Muzio. I know for a fact that there will be such a plot, however."

"Your Holiness has decided-?" Vitelleschi's voice had a note of doubt in it.

"Not in any formal sense, no." The pope's face had turned brooding. "But in my heart I see that there is a way to step ahead of the errors and missteps of the next centuries. I pray every hour for the courage to take that way. For, more importantly, the wisdom to see the path that leads on that way."

"Ah," said Vitelleschi, and fell silent.

"I do not understand," said Barberini after a moment trying to follow. "What way?"

Urban smiled. "My dear, dearly beloved nephew, have you read those papers that the American priest sent?"

"Some of them, yes, but . . ."

"But you are no theologian, or at least no more than you need to be a priest on those occasions when you discharge that small part of your office?"

Barberini felt himself blush. Holiness and piety were no great part of his character and in the august presence of his uncle there was no way to hide that fact. He said nothing.

"Ah, Antonio," Urban said, "even if there is no truth in the picture that the American priest paints for us of that future, there is a terrible plausibility and such a great weight of learning. In itself, this speaks to its truth, does it not? How well might one man fabricate such a thing, with all its inconsistencies and blank spots? A liar would try harder to dress up the rough parts, plaster over the cracks."

"You believe the Americans' accounts of future history?"

"With caution," Vitelleschi murmured.

Urban nodded. "In some regards they may be being selective with the information they release, the father-general tells us. It is what he would do in their place, for in the father-general's eyes the only word that should be passed freely is the Gospel, is that not so, Muzio?"

Vitelleschi nodded.

"But there have been too many unplanned releases, I think. The book that caused such trouble in England, for example, and the Congden Library, which may be under control in Grantville now-" Urban paused to let Vitelleschi speak.

"The change in the information coming out of Congden argues for it. It is no longer the original printed books, but manuscript copy. Who knows what is added by the copyist?"

Urban chuckled. "Muzio, I take counsel of your caution. But it remains"-he grew serious again-"that I have either an opportunity or a sure route to disaster and it lies in a Protestant nation."

"You seek to ally the Church with the Swede?" It was the only Protestant nation Urban could mean, and Barberini could hardly refrain from blurting out his amazement.

"Ah, there is the beauty of it, Nephew," said Urban. "There is no establishment of religion in the United States of Europe. I cannot be their ally, can I? If nothing else, meeting the priest whom their prime minister trusts enough to appoint as an ambassador will give me some clue, some hint about how to harness their strength to the betterment of the Church."

"And what is that?" Barberini asked.

"I do not know, Antonio," said Urban, and turned away to look at his new-growing garden. "I do not know."

The pope spent some time studying a moving insect. "I only know that I had never imagined it would come to this, in the long decades of my life. That, in my old age, God would place me before that same choice he gave Becket. What thoughts move through His unknowable mind, that He would choose two such worldly men for such a test?"

When he had been silent for a quarter hour or more, both Barberini and Vitelleschi left, in different directions.

Chapter 28.

Ducos coughed discreetly at the door. D'Avaux nodded, once, permitting the man entry. At least Ducos remembered that Seigneur le Comte deserved a modicum of dignity and took pains to respect it. D'Avaux, feeling guilt at indulging a passion so strong as hatred, darted his glance across the desk to the pile of papers on the corner. All of the reports on Buckley, and by him. He forced calm upon his troubled soul. To grow irrational through the righteous anger of wounded honor would simply not do.

"Seigneur le Comte," Ducos said, after the silence had grown uncomfortable, and bowed.

D'Avaux collected himself. Yes, he had grown distracted and omitted the proper protocol. Permissible between familiars, but with even so exalted a servant as Ducos-not unpardonable, but nevertheless noblesse oblige required otherwise. "Ducos, if it please you, do you have something to report?"

"Several matters, master," Ducos said. His face hardly moved as he spoke, but there seemed to be a faint smile in every syllable his voice spoke. The smile of a cat sauntering away from a mousehole licking his chops. D'Avaux pulled his desk lamp closer-the hour was late, midnight close at hand-and turned to face his man. A crook of the eyebrow invited him to proceed.

"As to the American Buckley, I have arranged matters. Seigneur le Comte's proposal that the Turks be involved or implicated proved impractical, and I have therefore suborned a member of the Holy Office's retinue to the deed."

D'Avaux felt a thrill of shock. "Ducos, I gave orders for no such . . ." He trailed off. "No," he said when he had collected himself again, "first give me the remainder of your report."

"Yes, seigneur. The Turk delegation declines to speak of Buckley. They are well disciplined and bring all their own slaves, so it is very difficult to make any progress with them. Had they a long-established presence in Venice there would be known avenues of approach, but this mission is ad hoc and improvisation has availed nothing in the time I have had. The short time since they arrive also means that Buckley has had no time to give plausible offense. I can do nothing to place any Turk even near the scene of the deed, or Buckley plausibly in the company of any Turk."

D'Avaux leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "Pray continue, Ducos. How did you proceed from there to the Holy Office?" This was beginning to sound intriguing, particularly as Ducos had had to improvise, a practice foreign to his nature. To both their natures, if it came to it. The unexpected was not an experience d'Avaux relished.

"Seigneur." Ducos made a little bow before going on. "I proceeded with ordinary matters after my rebuff early in the day with the Turks. I had news, perhaps some small moments earlier than the seigneur did, of the latest developments in the business of the astronomer Galileo, when I paid a visit to my contacts with the Holy Office."

D'Avaux began to wonder where this was going. The business with Galileo was a slightly vexing one, to be certain. Few people of education regarded the matter as anything too serious; perhaps the interpretation of Scripture required to be looked at afresh, as the Lyncaeans suggested, or perhaps the astronomers were chasing proverbial moonbeams as well as the real thing. D'Avaux considered himself a man of parts, but there seemed to be a new advance in natural philosophy every year-this Galileo responsible for a fair fraction himself-and just keeping up with his own country's advances in the mathematics was hard enough. Although . . .

D'Avaux had heard, he now remembered, that this affair with Galileo was apparently something of a notoriety in the history books brought by the Americans through the Ring of Fire. Those wretched, miserable history books that had caused so much unexpectedness in d'Avaux's well-ordered life. Cardinal Richelieu could say what he wanted. In private, the comte was quite certain the Ring of Fire was of diabolic origin.

He blinked once, twice, suddenly aware he was wandering away from the point. "He is to be tried, yes?"

"He is to be tried. This will come as something of a relief to the Holy Office, I understand, which will be pleased to stop paying bounties on copies of Galileo's book." There was a hairline smile on Ducos' face. "There are some enterprising souls in Venice who, when they heard there was a bounty on each copy, began printing cheap and shoddy copies and turning them in by the box-full."

D'Avaux frowned back. "I should think such a mockery was hardly a laughing matter, Ducos." To a pious man like d'Avaux, the situation was all the more aggravating in that the Venetian authorities were obviously complicit in the matter. Tacitly, at least. Such a clandestine printing press was quite illegal in Venice, and the Council of Ten's agents were perfectly capable of closing it down had they chosen to do so. Just another instance in which the Venetians were subtly thumbing their noses at the Church and its institutions.

Ducos' face straightened immediately. "Seigneur, my apologies. I simply have regard for an audacious scheme, while at once condemning the motivation for it."

D'Avaux felt his own face cracking. "And the fact that the Holy Office is made the butt of this joke is of no account, eh?"

Ducos nodded acknowledgement. There were subjects troubling even for his icy demeanor-the Holy Office had hardly been needed for his Huguenot coreligionists in France. It was only understandable that Ducos should find jokes at the expense of organs of Mother Church to be entertaining. But it would not do to let him laugh out loud without reminding him he was, when all was said and done, a heretic.

"Seigneur," was all he said. Though his face seemed tighter than ever.

"And how will Galileo's trial assist?" d'Avaux asked, after granting Ducos a moment to compose himself.

"It had been said that the pope would surely instruct the Holy Office that there was to be no revision of scriptural interpretation, seigneur. It was further said that there was no prospect of Galileo's book remaining lawful to possess anywhere in Italy, and there had been some suggestion that Galileo might be prevailed upon to flee to the Swede's territories. To that end, he had been kept under close watch while his ill health prevented him from traveling to Rome."