Naturally, they wanted to know how it worked, and they took turns away from trying to see what the Spaniards were doing past the ring of bonfires to listen attentively while he explained the cartridges and the pump-action mechanism. The questions were intelligent, and they were all professionally impressed with such a convenient and useful weapon.
Tom decided he could get to like the Swiss Guards. He still kept in touch with the German ex-mercenaries in the regiment he'd helped organize just after the Ring of Fire, and the Swiss Guards were from a similar mold. A little less rough-and-ready, what with having to be on their best behavior at various church functions all the time, but basically the same. And after having dealt with a dozen different dialects of German, Tom found the Swiss dialect pretty easy to understand within a few minutes. While he was chatting with the Guards, Ruy had been convincing the Jesuit who had spoken that they were safe to be allowed into the papal presence, even agreeing that they would check their weapons at the door of the audience chamber. The Guards seemed fairly sorry to see the shotgun go, if nothing else.
Getting to see the pope turned out to be something of a trek. Once out of the bastion, the interior of the Castel Sant'Angelo's citadel was a lot more convoluted than it had been when Tom had played tourist there as a teenager, when it had been a museum. The building had had a nearly two thousand year history by then and Tom had found it confusing. Now, at sixteen hundred years and a working fortress and prison rather than a museum, it was even worse. There was the detritus of extensive renovation and building works shoved aside everywhere, and the place was full of scurrying priests, nuns, and assorted guys with guns and other weapons who were being soldiers for the day.
The route up through the central keep of the Castel Sant'Angelo, which had begun life as the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian, was like traveling through a layered history of Roman architecture, starting with the remains of the original tomb at the bottom, a spiral corridor up through the monument, proceeding to the medieval prison level and thence up to the renaissance apartments built on the top of the fortress, an oblong block of papal luxury standing across the drum of classical fortification.
His Holiness was, of all places, on the roof. He was dressed in what Tom had to suppose had to be called "civilian" clothes, although they were a couple of decades out of fashion and rather expensive-looking. There was a small breastplate in evidence and a helmet on the table next to him. Clearly what the well-dressed pope wore to a battle. In fact, there seemed to be no cardinals nor bishops nor any other senior clergy in evidence. The only priests Tom could see were in the regular dress of ordinary priests or Jesuits and one or two other orders of priests that Tom didn't know well enough to tell apart.
That figured. If what Barberini had seen was typical, any senior priest in this place was on a hit-list of some kind. Either they'd heard the same story or were smart enough to figure it out, and were ready to take it on the lam incognito. And the fact that they were all ready to run pretty much summed up the way they were thinking inside the Castel Sant'Angelo.
One of the priests who had guided them up to the papal presence went over to converse with the aides surrounding the pope. Looking around, Tom could see that the rooftop had a commanding view of the defenses, although if the army outside got any artillery worth the name organized it was going to be a place they'd have to get the hell out of pretty quickly.
While they waited, he turned to Ruy, who was leaning over the parapet watching the gunners below heave and grunt to service their bombards. "You reckon they can hold here?" he asked, quietly.
"No," Ruy said, not taking his eyes from the sight of the men laboring over the bombards by torchlight below. "The first escalade will carry the wall, possibly in many places at once. With more men, more time to prepare, or the outer defenses intact, or any of a hundred other things not as they are, there might be hope for some days. As it is?" Ruy shrugged. "And they know it. But these are the Swiss Guard. It is a little more than a hundred years since they died, almost to the last man, guarding a pope. They will not surrender so long as His Holiness still stands here, his flag flying."
"I wonder if they've tried asking for terms."
"I know not. It would certainly seem like the prudent course, and there is no good reason why they should not leave with full military honors." Ruy sucked at his mustaches a moment. "No reason for a reasonable besieger to refuse such, of course. They would wish His Holiness given into their captivity first, which of course they cannot do, but if His Holiness surrendered himself-"
"I wonder if he offered?"
Ruy shrugged. "We will discover this momentarily," he said.
There was time for four more bombard shots to go off. From here, Tom could see that they were mounted on the battlements of the inner keep, three stories below. They were being worked by crews that consisted mostly of uniformed Swiss Guards, another sign that the fortress had been caught woefully unprepared. If there were professional gunners to work those cannon, they had been caught outside the castle. Tom wondered what they were achieving with all that effort, other than to piss the attackers off. There were regular cannon on the walls as well, guns fixed to fire out over the outer defenses, and maybe cover the outer part of the outer ward. Maybe they could be depressed to cover the inner ward, but it didn't look like it. They might be some help if the walls of the inner ward were about to fall, but again it didn't appear as though they'd depress to fire that close. Maybe there were guns lower down that would serve. Ruy didn't seem to think so, though. And, when it came down to it, with thousands of attackers in the assault there would be little the cannon would achieve anyway. They took minutes to load, and were hard to aim accurately. The medieval inner defenses of the Castel Sant'Angelo depended on having a great deal of manpower to make them effective. Tom had to admire the poor doomed bastards who were going to try anyway. And if the army outside is really alert for escapers, we'll end up joining 'em.
"His Holiness will see you now," said the priest who had guided them up.
Tom had been expecting an old guy-somehow he had been imagining someone who looked like John Paul II, the only pope he had ever known back up-time.
"Your Holiness does us much honor," Ruy said, and knelt. Tom wasn't sure of protocol for a non-Catholic visiting a pope, so he followed what Ruy was doing.
"A rescue party of two?" the pope asked, when they had regained their feet. "I have heard much of the marvelous machines possessed by the Americans. Can it be that some such contrivance is to be employed? An airplane, perhaps?" There seemed to be genuine yearning in his voice at that last.
"Your Holiness," Ruy said, "no great wonders, simply myself and some few brave companions. We bring an offer of the assistance of the United States of Europe, and asylum in that nation if Your Holiness so desires."
"Alas, I cannot abandon-"
"Your Holiness," Tom said, "that's so much crap. It's you they want to kill."
The pope's old-fashioned look in reply had a good three hundred years' head start on any such look Tom had ever had before. "Did they desire only that, Signor Simpson, they would have accepted my offer to give myself into their hands. As it is, all offers of parley have been rejected."