"Do we even have a white flag?" Piero asked.
"Bound to be a shirt we can use," Frank said. "And I think there's a broom handle behind the bar. That ought to do it."
"You realize we're probably going to get a beating even before the Inquisition starts asking us questions, right?" Piero was looking serious for a moment.
"Yeah, I'd figured," Frank said, although he hadn't. Made sense, though. These guys could've been off robbing the Vatican while they'd been trying to get in here, and a couple of them had been winged or scorched right at the start of the day. They'd be pissed. And Frank knew all about what jocks did when they got pissed. They found someone smaller and weaker than them to take it out on. Somehow Frank didn't think he'd be running any pranks on these guys, either.
It was, as his dad would say, a bummer. Still, it beat being dead. "I'll get the white flag and tell the wounded guys to get out," he said. "You remind everyone that when we get taken to the Inquisition, we tell 'em everything. No sense getting tortured, and we haven't committed any heresy, so the worst they can do is lock us up for a while."
"I wish I shared your confidence that that would stop them," Piero said. "I have heard stories about the Spanish Inquisition."
"It's that or total despair, right at the moment," Frank said.
"Despair has this to say for it, Frank: why did they come straight here?"
Frank heaved a sigh. He'd been hoping that the silence on that subject was because no one but him had noticed. "They want me, Piero. When I go out, I'll ask if me surrendering will mean the rest of you get out, okay? I wasn't going to say anything, and don't tell anyone because I don't want anyone trying to be a hero on my account."
Piero frowned. "What? And let you be a hero on our account?" Frank's expression must have been all the answer he needed. "Fine, fine. Whatever, we've saved nearly everyone, yes? Do what you feel you have to, but I'll not be running if it comes to it."
Frank shook his head. "Nuts, all of you," he said, and scuttled off to find a white flag.
Waiting for a lull in the shooting was a nervous few moments for Frank, because to get where he could poke the flag out through a ruined shutter he needed to get in front of the barricade of furniture. Someone over the street must've spotted the movement, because suddenly every single bullet that came over came through the window he was crouched under. Bits of glass and splinters of wood fell all over him and he couldn't help screwing up his eyes and trying to burrow in to cracks in the plaster. Muskets might not be real accurate weapons, but across the width of a street they did just fine. A few seconds pause, and he thrust the broomhandle with its dirty dishrag attached out into the evening sunlight.
A couple more shots and then there was shouting from outside. No more shooting. He got up and looked out of the window, holding the flag out and waving it as vigorously as he dared. Every last bit of him wanted to dive back behind the barricade and cower there like a mouse.
Someone across the street leaned out of his window and shouted something at Frank. Problem number one, he thought. "No hablo espanol!" he shouted back, hoping that that was the right language, and at the same time using pretty much the whole of his vocabulary in it.
" Momento! " came the shout back, followed by something that included what sounded like " capitan." Were they telling him to wait for an officer? He hoped so.
A nervous wait. Five minutes? An hour? The soldiers across the street were leaning out of their windows and hollering to where, Frank could now see, they had a barricade of their own up. Somewhere to watch the action from shelter. Their barricade was a lot more professional looking than the ones Frank had been squatting behind all day, and there seemed to be a fair number of horses down there, too.
Frank squinted against the glare of the setting sun, which had now moved around to shine the other way along the street. Definitely horses, maybe two dozen. What use were cavalry going to be? Or maybe they just had a lot of officers here. And then Frank remembered what else horses did on battlefields. He couldn't see them from where he was, but he was willing to bet there were at least a couple of cannon waiting behind that barricade. Looks like we did this just in the nick of time, he thought.
Then a couple of guys emerged from behind the barricade and began walking briskly up to where Frank was. One of them was holding a pole-arm of some sort, Frank couldn't remember which name went with which weapon, but it was the one with a big spike and an axe-blade. Some sort of white cloth had been tied to it.
Frank sighed in relief. They were willing to talk, then. Best news he'd had all day. When the two soldiers got closer, Frank saw that they were an officer-type, all fancy clothes and waxed moustaches and wearing a sword, and another, older guy who, if you cut him in half, probably had "sergeant" written right through him. When they reached Frank, the sergeant immediately planted the staff of his weapon and began to lean on it with the air of a man who could, in that position, loaf all day. The officer took a considerably more martial stance, feet apart, hands clasped behind him.
"I am Don Vincente Jose-Maria Castro y Papas, Captain in the army of His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain," he said, in good, if accented, formal Italian. "To whom do I have the honor of speaking?"
"Uh, Frank Stone, of Lothlorien." Frank was impressed in spite of himself. This guy was being polite and civil even though he and his men had spent all day being shot at and firebombed by Frank and his guys. Maybe the fact that no one had gotten badly hurt yet helped. "I was hoping we could discuss surrender," he went on, realizing as he did so that, hippie upbringing or not, sensible tactical decision or not, he felt deeply ashamed.
Don Vincente's iron mask slipped a moment. He seemed, for just an instant, genuinely saddened. When he spoke again, he had softened his tone still further.
"Senor Stone," he said, "I am a man under authority. I have orders to accept no surrender and to reduce your resistance by force of arms. Apparently the Inquisition does not want you to surrender voluntarily. The most I can say is that I have no orders to ensure the death of you and all your comrades, and, more, that I would refuse orders to fire on a flag of parley. But I cannot take your surrender."
Frank looked back at Don Vincente. The man seemed genuinely upset by what he was being ordered to do. "Is there some way around your orders?" he asked, "We've only held out long enough to let the women and children get away."
"Some of them," Don Vincente said.
Frank just looked at him, hoping like hell that that didn't mean "We discovered a woman, a cripple and some children attempting to escape from where you had hidden them along the street, there." Don Vincente shrugged. "One of them was identified as your wife. If there were more, and note that I carefully do not ask that question of you for I would not have you stain your honor with even a ruse of war, the search the inquisitor ordered me to make did not reveal them."
Frank suspected there was a whole other story behind that little summary, not least because the sergeant there was grinning his head off, but he was too overtaken by shock to process it properly. Giovanna captured!
Don Vincente must have figured out how Frank was feeling, because he went on to say, "Alas for my good name with the inquisitor, the cripple and the children made good their escape. The sergeant here, you will note, is being punished for it. I am making him carry that heavy burden"-the sergeant flicked the white cloth tied to his weapon to show which burden was meant-"in the hopes that it will cure his most unmilitary sloth. I fear the man is irredeemably lazy. Had I known of his shirking tendencies earlier, I might have ordered some other man to search the building. Who knows what he missed?"