The wide, eagle-wing mustachios flickered once, briefly. Even Frank, standing close enough to smell the man, could not swear that he had smiled.
Giovanna captured! He could see how it had gone. They had tried to sneak out in small groups. Giovanna would have insisted on making the first, riskiest, run. And someone, probably someone who'd been a regular at Frank's Place, had taken money to point her out to the inquisitor. And if the inquisitor hadn't pissed this Captain Don Vincente-whatever off, everyone else would've been caught too. Or maybe the inquisitor hadn't done it by himself. Everything about Don Vincente said he was a man who might be a first-class bastard any way you looked at him, but he had his honor and orders could go right to hell. Ordering him to knowingly slaughter civilians-especially cripples and children-probably grated like a bitch with the guy. Yay for hidalgo honor, Frank thought.
Frank reckoned he'd probably have got on okay with the guy, another time and place. Hell, Ruy was a nice guy once you got past the weirdness and the constant stream of wisecracks. He took a deep breath. "Don Vincente, is there any chance your inquisitor would be satisfied with just my surrender?"
"My orders are for everyone," Don Vincente said, his eyes narrowing, like he was weighing Frank up afresh. "I will inquire as to the specifics. I will offer no great hope in the matter, please understand." He turned and barked a stream of Spanish at the sergeant, who snapped up straight, brought his weapon up in some kind of salute, and marched off at a surprising turn of speed for a man supposed to be such a layabout.
"I see you brought cannon," Frank said, trying to combine small talk and intelligence-gathering in one fell swoop.
"Indeed," Don Vincente said, apparently not too troubled about what Frank knew. "Only the horses can be seen from here, but I have been given three medium field pieces with which to blast a way into your dwelling. A shot or two through your front door, now that your burning oil is exhausted, will open it handily. Except, of course, that this street is not wide enough for the gun to recoil without smashing against the house behind me. But, the inquisitor ordered cannon, so cannon I must use. I will fire on the oblique, from along the street. No more than a few hours cannonade will create a small breach, certain to be a death-trap to any man attempting to force it. But force it we shall. I have nearly three hundred men in this neighborhood now, as various parties of men have been sent to reinforce my company."
"Right," Frank said. "And, maybe, if those guys got through the breach and didn't get slaughtered doing it, they might be inclined to take prisoners?"
"Indeed," Don Vincente said, not cracking his face one bit. "And the inquisitor would be most disappointed if we did not take one or two prisoners. I will order a most careful search of the remainder of the premises for anyone who might be hiding, for example on an upper floor or in a cellar. It might be that my sergeant will redeem himself of his besetting sin of sloth? I certainly pray God that the fellow takes the path of righteousness."
Frank smiled, then. "He has an excellent example to follow, Don Vincente," he said. "I see that you follow every order you are given to the letter."
Don Vincente inclined his head briefly to acknowledge the compliment. "I see that my worthless layabout of a sergeant is returned."
Another exchange of Spanish, and Don Vincente turned back to Frank. "I must regretfully inform you that this parley is concluded. The inquisitor demands to know why I have not shot or arrested you. May I request a further half-hour's truce while I explain to the tiresome fellow what a white flag actually signifies?"
"By all means," Frank said, grinning in spite of himself.
"I shall have a bugle blown at the end of the half-hour, Senor Stone. Until we meet again, I wish you much joy of the day."
With that, and no further ceremony, Don Vincente and his sergeant walked away.
"Shit," Frank said, and went inside to tell the other guys.
Chapter 40
Rome
"Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, you are just plain freakin' nuts ."
Even in the gathering gloom, Tom could see the man's grin and the way the mustachios flared like the wings of a bird. Tom knew what kind of bird, too. A loon. "No, my way is perfect sanity. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, am perfectly sound of wits. It is those who would turn down the chance for such a magnificent adventure who are, as you say, freakin' nuts. And if we succeed, it will be spoken of in a thousand years."
Tom snickered. "Yeah, they'll be saying jeez, were those guys nuts, or what? Or possibly, man, that was a horrible way to die! "
Darkness had all but fallen, the sky a pale and purplish hue and the sun well down behind the skyline of Rome, if not fully over the horizon quite yet. And here they were, loafing about in plain view on the left bank of the Tiber, looking across the river at the Castel Sant'Angelo. The Ponte Sant'Angelo was out of the question, but Ruy was talking about boats as a way out of the city, and, now, a way across to the Castel itself. Two birds with one stone.
They'd left Doctor Nichols and a couple of Marines downriver a ways. They'd ridden around to the south, right through the gate as bold as brass, and left the horses, the doctor, and a small guard with orders to pick their way out of the city. The doctor had gotten away with his rather distinctive appearance so far by being dressed up as a Spanish soldier. They didn't have many black soldiers, but there were nevertheless a few who, through one misadventure or another, ended up bouncing around Europe. Tom had seen a couple as far north as Thuringia, although hadn't had much chance to talk to them. Ruy said that in a soldier's outfit, Doctor Nichols would attract mild curiosity, but would pose no particular problem.
Now, though, having seen what Ruy thought amounted to a perfectly reasonable proposition, Tom was beginning to doubt the man's sanity. To start with, there was the Castel Sant'Angelo itself. The walls were, from the looks, thirty to forty feet high. And guarded by enough men to keep up a constant cannonade from behind them. There was no telling if, or when, they'd take it into their heads to lob a few shells over to this side of the river. For now, they were pasting the general area around their fortress with a bombard shell every thirty seconds or so.
There didn't seem to be any pattern to it. Just, every now and then, a loud crash and, against the softly glowing evening sky, a trail of sparks would shoot up from somewhere inside the fort, arch over, and drop with a crash somewhere in the buildings around the fort. About every fourth shot was a dud, but otherwise there would then, a moment or two later, be a crack and a puff of smoke shot through with a flare of yellow flame. Sometimes, if the bombardiers got lucky, a few screams.
Which was bad enough. But to get a chance to get blown up on the way to the sheer walls and alert guards, they first had to get past what looked like, allowing for the dim light, the entire Spanish army. All of whom had their attention very, very firmly fixed on the aforementioned sheer-walled fortress and its alert guards, et cetera.
The plan to get across the river seemed sound enough. Most of the wall was pretty well lit up with bonfires that the besiegers had lit, just outside accurate shooting distance. The exception was on this near side, where the fortress stood right at the riverside. The main defense here was the river itself, and getting across the river to the esplanade under the fort walls basically meant coming right under the fort's guns. So there were no fires there, and the fires to either side cast long, deep shadows right along the wall. Once they got that far, they would be all but invisible. The Spanish commander had apparently decided that sending men over there was a waste, a certain slaughter as there was no cover anywhere on the Ponte Angelo. He had simply left a guard force on the near end of bridge to contain any sally the defenders might make.