Padway had rescued Mathaswentha from a forced marriage at the very altar, and for a while he'd been smitten with her, and vice versa.
Brrrr, he thought; the memory of his narrow escape never failed to send a chill down his spine. Luckily he'd wised up in time, and had had Urias on hand-a Goth smart enough and tough enough to keep that she-leopard on a leash, and a good friend of Padway's.
Gentle, scholarly Drusilla had been much more the American's style.
"Pity your parents couldn't get back from Gadez," he said, feeling slightly guilty.
The truth was he'd never much liked his daughter Maria. That was unjust. It wasn't her fault that Drusilla had died in childbirth. He'd tried to be a good father anyway, but between that and press of business, she'd mostly been raised by relatives and servants. Jorith was the delight of his old age.
And doesn't she know it, he thought indulgently.
They walked out together through the Quaestor's Offices, her arm through his left elbow. He was slightly-resentfully-conscious of the fact that she was walking slowly and ready to catch him if he stumbled, despite the cane he used with his right hand. He was in his mid-eighties now. Moving hurt. He'd spent nearly six decades back here, and he wasn't that spry, brash young archaeologist any more.
Not even the same person, really. A few weeks ago he'd tried to make himself think in English, and found it horrifyingly difficult.
I should be grateful, he thought, as they walked down corridors past offices and clerical pools, amid a ripple of bows and murmurs. I'm not senile or bedridden. Or dead, for that matter. And he'd done a lot more good here than he could have in his native century; nobody who'd seen a real famine closeup, or what was left of a town after a sack by Hun raiders could doubt that.
He ignored the quartet of guards who followed, hard-eyed young men with their hands on the hilts of their swords and revolvers at their waists. They were part of the furniture. Justinian and assorted other enemies would still be glad to see him go. He chuckled a little as they came out into the broad marble-and-mosaic foyer of the building.
"What's so funny, Grandfather?" Jorith said.
"That there are still men prepared to go to such efforts to kill me," Padway said.
"That's funny?" she said, in a scandalized tone.
"In a way. If they'd killed me right after I arrived here, they might have accomplished something-from their point of view; stopped me from changing things. It was touch and go there, those first couple of years. It's far too late, now…»
"But not too late for the theatre," Jorith said. "It's a revival of one of your plays, too-A Midsummer Night's Dream… what are you laughing at this time, Grandfather?"
"There's nothing here," the archbishop fretted.
"Well, the Cathedral wasn't built until the 700s," the historian pointed out with poisonously sweet reasonableness.
The field wasn't empty, strictly speaking. There was a big two-story brick building, so new that the tiles were still going on the roof. The rest of it was trampled mud, wheelbarrows, piles of mortar and brick and timber and boards, and a clumsy-looking steam traction engine.
"But why should… marvelous are the works of the Lord," the archbishop said. "If His Son could be born in a stable, a saint can rise to heaven from a building yard."
"We're redirecting traffic, my lord," the policeman said, walking up to the door of the carriage.
"What for?" Padway said. Mustn't get testy in my old age, he thought. And it was a pretty good performance. Thank God for a good memory; he'd managed to put down something close to Shakespeare's text.
"There are rumors of riots," the policeman said, sweating slightly. Nobody liked having the Big Boss suddenly turn up on their beat when something was going wrong. "Riots among the football spectators, my lord."
"Oh. Well, thank you, officer," Padway said. As the carriage lurched into motion, he went on: "I keep outsmarting myself."
Jorith giggled. "Grandfather, why is it that all the other politicians and courtiers are dull as dust, but you can always make me laugh?"
It does sound funnier in Latin, he thought. Plus he'd gotten a considerable reputation as a wit over the past fifty years by reusing the clich-s of the next fifteen hundred years. He chuckled himself.
And Drusilla swooned over things like parting is such sweet sorrow, too. That brought a stab of pain, and he leaned out the window of the carriage.
"What I mean," he went on, "is that I introduced football to quiet people down. Didn't think anyone could get as upset about that as they did over chariot races."
"I've never seen the point, myself," Jorith said. "Polo is much more exciting."
Padway grinned to himself. The Gothic aristocracy had taken to that like Russians to drink. In fact, they'd virtually reinvented the game themselves, with a little encouragement and some descriptions from him.
They remind me of horsy country-gentleman-type Englishmen, he thought, not for the first time. Particularly now that they've taken to baths and literacy.
They were out of the theatre crush now, the carriages moving a little faster as they moved downhill. The clatter of shod hooves on pavement was loud, but at least most of them had rubber wheels these days, which cut down on the shattering racket iron-clad ones made on city streets. He stopped himself from making a mental note to look into how automobile research was coming.
Leave it to the young men, he thought.
There were enough of them coming out of the universities now, trained in the scientific world-view. In the long run, it would be better not to intervene any more, even with "suggestions." There were enough superstitions about "Mysterious Martinus"; he wanted the younger generation to learn how to think rationally, and for themselves.
He smiled, thinking of the thrill he'd had the first time a young professor had dared to argue with him about chemistry-and the whippersnapper had turned out to be right, and Padway's vague high-school recollections wrong, too. And after that…
Jorith was smiling at him indulgently. He blinked, realizing he'd dozed off, lost in half dreams of decades past.
"Sorry," he said, straightening on the coach's well-padded seat, wincing a little at the stiffness in his neck.
"You deserve to be able to nap when you feel like it, Grandfather," Jorith said. "It's a sin, the way you work yourself to a nub, after all you've done for the kingdom. Why, I remember only last month, how everyone cheered in the Senate when you made that speech-the one where you said we had nothing to fear but fear itself-"
A short crashing baaammm rang out ahead. Padway's head came up with a start, the last threads of dream slipping away. He knew that sound of old-was responsible for it being heard a millennium or so early.
Rifles, firing in volley…
"Fire!" Tharasamund said reluctantly.
The sound of fifteen rifles going off within half a second of each other battered at his ears. The front rank reloaded, spent cartridges tinkling on the pavement, and the sergeant bellowed:
"Second rank, volley fire present-fire!"
Dirty-white powder smoke drifted back towards him, smelling of rotten eggs and death. Ten yards away the crowd milled and screamed, half a dozen lying limply dead, twice as many more whimpering or fleeing clutching wounds or lying and screaming out their hurt to the world. The rest hesitated, bunching up-which meant a lot of them were angry enough to face high-velocity lead slugs.