"Definitely?" Mike raised his eyebrows.
"From Leopold Cavriani. Definitely."
"Why is it causing trouble in Naples instead of Portugal?"
"'Instead' probably isn't the right word. Perhaps, 'as well as,' but I don't have anything current on Portugal," Ed answered. "In that world, the world that wrote the encyclopedia, the duke of Osuna-the third one- who was stirring up trouble in Naples died in 1624 and his son, the fourth duke, didn't follow up. In this time, however…"
Mike raised his eyebrows. "Yes."
"Would it give you a clue if I said that the fourth duke's mother is a granddaughter of Hernan Cortes?"
"The Mexico Cortes? Implying a certain inherited adventurousness?"
"Yes, that Cortes. Anyway, through his paternal grandmother, this Osuna the Fourth is also a cousin of Joao of Braganza-the man who will end up on the throne of Portugal six years from now if things go the same way here that they did in our old world. Osuna's somehow gotten hold of the article."
"Heaven forbid," said Mike, "that our friend Leopold should have put a copy in the mail when he was in Grantville last year."
"Heaven forbid," Ed agreed piously. "Anyhow, he's apparently thinking, 'If Joao can do it, why can't I? King of the Two Sicilies? Now that has a nice ring to it.' The Spanish aren't happy, as you can imagine."
"Ed, where do you dig up all these connections?"
"Count Ludwig Guenther's librarian, mostly-royal genealogies are his hobby. With some assistance from Cavriani."
"Okay. That explains a lot. Is this project of Osuna's going anywhere?"
"It probably wouldn't by itself, but when it's combined with all the other factors, it could. Conditions in Naples-not just the city but the whole Spanish viceroyalty-have been wretched for years. Antonio Alvarez de Toledo was there from 1622 to 1629 and actually tried to do something, but the crisis, both commercial and monetary, has kept rolling merrily along. His successor, the duke of Alcala, has taken some measures to try to solve the problem of grain supplies and storage for the city itself. That's been popular enough. However, there have been a series of bad harvests. The famine situation is pretty grim."
Ed grinned suddenly. "But they've recently invented a mechanical pasta machine that is about to make the cost of spaghetti, ziti, and many of the other staffs of life affordable to the average man. SoTF has sent formal enquiries about opening trade relations."
Mike frowned a little. "Now that we have the USE rather than the CPE, a union rather than a confederation, what is the State of Thuringia-Franconia doing conducting its own foreign policy?"
"Foreign policy?" Ed gestured. "Heaven forbid, once more, I assure you. Just a modest venture into a mutually profitable field of economic development. No different at all from the trade relations that we are opening with Genoa. Until such time as the USE adopts a constitution that specifically says we can't, we can."
"Spaghetti diplomacy," Mike groaned. Then, "Why Genoa?"
"Jeans," answered Ed. "Everybody's jeans are wearing out. Genoese sailors wear work pants made of cotton denim. Obviously…"
"I don't," said Mike, "even want to know about this. Really."
"All right, then. Back to Naples. We've covered Osuna, so that brings us to the second guy: Dom Giulio Genoino. He's a priest-a scholar, a political theorist. And, I think, a lawyer. I figure that he's about seventy years old, but he's going strong. He has interesting ideas about equity in taxation. He's been in jail for his ideas, which include wanting the voice of the people on the city council to be equal to that of the patricians. Even without the Committees of Correspondence, there's a lot of agitation going on there. The question is whether it will just be one more rebellion-people rioting, attacking the prisons, attacking the armories, lynching a few unpopular persons, and then being put down by the Spanish military. Or if something actually comes of it… Which it might, if Genoino somehow links his people up with Osuna the Fourth. Anyway, that's part of why the Spanish and the Curia aren't exactly on speaking terms at the moment, because for various reasons, Urban VIII isn't doing anything firm to oppose Osuna the Fourth."
"Why not?"
"I honestly don't know. Then, thirdly, there are the Albanians."
"What are Albanians doing in Naples?"
"They've been there for a hundred fifty years, at least-exiles."
Mike groaned. "Don't tell me about it, please don't. Is there any spot on the map of Europe that isn't harboring exiles from somewhere else?"
"The short answer is, 'No.' Shall I proceed?"
"Yes. But I don't want to hear it."
"Scanderbeg. Famous Albanian hero. His son turned the Albanians' holdout against the Ottomans over to Venice in 1474. Venice turned around and sold it to the Turks. The Albanian nobility took off for refuge in Naples. Some of them, like the Arianiti family, have been very prominent in the Imperial diplomatic service; others have burrowed in. The Kastriotes heiress married into the Orsini, for example, which pulls a whole complex of the Italian nobility into having interest in what the Albanians do. Anyway, the Albanians have decided that this would be a wonderful time to try to get Skopje back, and they're throwing almost all of their resources into mounting a flotilla. Think Cubans in Miami. If it goes out, we'll have a Balkan crisis on our hands, of course."
"We don't need a Balkan crisis," Mike protested.
"You can't avoid having a Balkan crisis," Ed answered quite serenely. "Cavriani tells me that this falls under the rubric of predestination. There is always a Balkan crisis. If we had arrived five hundred years ago, there would have been a Balkan crisis. If we had been thrown five hundred years into the future, there would have been a Balkan crisis, too. It's a given. So, think about what this means."
"It means that there will be a lot of small boats in the Adriatic Sea."
"At the most elementary level, true. But factor in the word, 'crusade.' For the guys down at the Curia, 'crusade' has the same ring as, 'The South will rise again' for the Sons of the Confederacy. It causes emotional reactions in the most improbable sort of people. Think of Pius II, for goodness sake! Aeneas Scipio Piccolomini, the ultimate secular humanist-say 'crusade' and he started to drool. If the curia doesn't excommunicate Osuna or take some kind of action that could give his more wavering supporters a religiously acceptable excuse to leave his camp, the Spanish will have to focus mainly on him, which means that the Albanians will have enough wiggle room to launch their little fleet."
Mike winced. "It doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't make sense. Some things don't, but that doesn't make them any the less real."
"We don't need a crusade on top of everything else," Mike protested.
"It will," Ed answered cautiously, "be a small one. I think."
"How is Cavriani involved with the crusade?"
Ed's answer came as something of a relief. "Not at all, I think. He is, after all, a Calvinist. They're having the crusade on their own. Next."
"More?"
"More," Ed agreed cheerfully. "Now, to move on to the fourth factor, there's Tommaso Campanella. He finally-or, at least, in combination with Dom Genoino-probably gets us to what the Cavrianis are messing about with."
"Who's he? Campanella, I mean. Never heard of him."
"Well, Campanella's a Dominican. He has been for the past fifty years or so. He's a philosopher. He's probably a heretic. At least, the Inquisition has been trying him for heresy of one form or another for the last forty years. You will note, however, that he's still alive to cause trouble. If nothing else, the man has a genius for attracting influential supporters, climbing right up the ladder from local feudal lords in Naples to the Orsini again to the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence to Maximilian of Bavaria to the Austrian Habsburgs-the late Rudolf and our beloved Ferdinand II both. At this point in our old world, up-time, he was in Paris under Richelieu's protection."