“We have known merely that he was christened Ugolino Conti de Segni and was a nobleman in the city of Anagni, probably a kinsman of Innocent III.”
Conti! speared through Everard. Anagni!
“What is it, Manse?” asked Tamberly.
“A notion,” the Patrolman mumbled. “Go on, please.”
Volstrup shrugged. “Well,” he said, “my idea was that we might begin by finding his origins, and for that purpose I instituted inquiries. Nobody could identify any such birth. Therefore, in this world, it most likely never took place. I did turn up a fact, buried in an incidental memory of something that one of our agents happened once to have heard. This agent is to be active during Gregory’s reign. He chanced to be taking a holiday in the farther past and—At any rate, with the help of mnemotechnics, he retrieved the year of Gregory’s birth, and the parentage. It was as far downtime as certain historians later assigned it, in 1147 in Anagni. Therefore this Pope lived well into his nineties. His father’s name was Bartolommeo and his mother was Ilaria, of the Gaetano family.” He paused. “That is what I have to offer. I fear you have come to me for very little gain.”
Everard stared before him, into shadows. Rain hissed down the walls. Chill sneaked beneath clothing. “No,” he breathed, “you may have hit on the exact thing we need.”
He shook himself. “We have to learn more. Just what went on. That needs an operative or two who can work themselves into the scene. I expected this, and thought of you, though I didn’t know till now exactly where and when we’d want to send our scouts. They should be able to carry it off without getting into trouble. They should. I think”—I’m afraid, Wanda—“the pair of you are the logical choice.”
“I beg your pardon?” choked Volstrup.
Tamberly sprang to her feet. “Manse, you mean it, you really do!” she jubilated.
He rose also, heavily. “I figure two will have a better chance of learning something than one, especially if they go at it from both the male and the female sides.”
“But what about you?”
“With luck, you’ll find us some necessary evidence, but it won’t be sufficient. A negative can’t be. Gregory was never born, or he died young, or whatever it was. That’s for you to discover. To understand what came of that—whether it was the unique factor—I aim to work uptime of you, when Frederick’s breaking the Church to his will.”
1146 A. D.
To Anagni came a hired courier from Rome early in September. He bore a letter for Cencio de Conti or, if the gentleman be deceased or absent, whoever now headed that noble house in those parts. Albeit age was telling somewhat upon him, Cencio was there for a cleric to read the message aloud. He followed the Latin readily enough: It was not so very remote from his native dialect; and, besides religious services, men of his family rather frequently listened to recitals of the warlike or lyrical classics.
A Flemish gentleman and his lady, homebound from pilgrimage to the Holy Land, sent respects. They were kinfolk. True, the relationship was distant. Some fifty years ago a knight visiting Rome had become acquainted, asked for the hand of a daughter of the Conti, wedded her and taken her home to Flanders. (The profit was small but mutual. She was a younger child who might well otherwise have gone into a convent, thus her dowry need not be large. On either side there was some prestige in having a connection across a great distance, and there might prove to be some advantage, now when politics and commerce were beginning to move in earnest across Europe. The story went that it had, moreover, been a love match.) Little if any word had since crossed the Alps in either direction. Chancing to get this opportunity, the travelers felt it behooved them to offer to bring what scanty news they could. They prayed pardon in advance for their unimpressiveness, should they be invited. All their attendants had been lost along the way, to disease, affray, and at last desertion; belike tales of libertine Sicily had lured that rogue from them. Perhaps the Conti could, of their kindness, help them engage reliable servants for the rest of the journey.
Cencio dictated an immediate reply—in vernacular, which the priest Latinized. The strangers would be welcome indeed. They must for their part forgive a certain uproar. His son, Sir Lorenzo, was soon to marry Ilaria di Gaetani, and preparations for the festivities were especially chaotic in these difficult times. Nevertheless he urged them to come at once and remain for the wedding. He dispatched the letter with several lackeys and two men-at-arms, in order that his guests might fare in such style as would shame neither them nor him.
It was quite a natural thing for him to do. About his Flemish cousins, or whatever they were, his curiosity was, at best, idle. However, these persons had just been in the Holy Land. They should have much to tell of the troubles there. Lorenzo, especially, was eager to hear. He would be going on crusade.
And so, a few days later, the strangers appeared at the great house.
Ushered into a brightly frescoed room, Wanda Tamberly forgot surroundings whose foreignness had amazed and bewildered her. Suddenly everything focused on a single face. It did not belong to the elderly man but to the one beside him. I’d pay attention to looks like that anytime in the universe, flashed through her—Apollo lineaments, dark-amber eyes—and this is hung on Lorenzo. Got to be Lorenzo, who’d have changed history nine years ago at Rignano if Manse hadn’t—Hey, quite a bod, too.
Dazedly she heard the majordomo intone: “Signor Cencio, may I present Signor Emilius”—a stumble over the Germanic pronunciations—“van Waterloo?”
Volstrup bowed. The host courteously did likewise. He wasn’t really ancient, Tamberly decided. Maybe sixty. The loss of most teeth aged his appearance more than did white hair and beard. The younger man still had a full set of choppers, and his locks and well-trimmed whiskers were crow’s-wing black. He’d be in his mid-thirties. “Welcome, sir,” Cencio said. “Let me introduce my son Lorenzo, of whom my letter spoke. He has been ardent to meet you.”
“When I saw the party coming, I hastened to join my father,” said the young man. “But pray pardon our forgetfulness. In latine—”
“No need, gracious sir,” Volstrup told him. “My wife and I know your language. We hope you will bear with ours.” The Lombard version he used was not incomprehensibly different from the local Umbrian.
Both Conti registered relief. Doubtless they spoke Latin less well than they understood it. Lorenzo bowed again, to Tamberly. “Doubly welcome is a lady so fair,” he purred. His glance upon her made plain that he meant it. Evidently Italians today had the same weakness for blondes as in the Renaissance and afterward.
“My wife, Walburga,” Volstrup said. Everard had supplied the names. She had already noticed that when the going got tough, his sense of humor got extra quirky.
Lorenzo took her hand. She felt as though an electric shock went through her. Stop that! Yes, this is weird, history once more turning on the same man, but he’s mortal … He’d better be.
She told herself that her emotion was no more than an echo of the explosion in her head when first she read Cencio’s letter. Manse had briefed her and Volstrup as thoroughly as possible, but with no idea that Lorenzo was involved. For all he knew, the warrior never left that battlefield. The information the Patrol had was bare-bones. Ilaria di Gaetani should have married Bartolommeo Conti de Segni, nobleman of this papal state and kinsman of Innocent III. In 1147 she should have given birth to that Ugolino who became Gregory IX. Volstrup and Tamberly were supposed to discover what had gone wrong.