Sharon stepped over to Larry to offer her congratulations, but was stopped by the grim look on his face. “Why so glum, Larry? You won the day.”
Mazzare glanced over at Wadding, who seemed unusually serene in defeat as he gathered his papers. “It’s not today that concerns me, Sharon. Wadding pulled an exegetical judo move on me just now, one from which I may not be able to recover in the next session.”
“You mean that he has used the rationale of your own defense of the infallibility of Vatican II to establish a reasonable doubt as to its applicability in this world?”
“Exactly.”
Sharon frowned. “And do you think he can prove that Vatican II is inapplicable here?”
Larry shrugged. “He doesn’t have to, Sharon. The burden of proof is upon me. I have to establish that its infallibility extends from our up-time land of never-never-when, all the way back down into this very real down-time world.”
One of Ruy’s eyebrows raised slightly. “And can you accomplish that, Cardinal Mazzare?”
Larry sighed. “Damned if I know.”
“Do you really think they came this way, Valentino?”
Given the number of times he had now heard the question, Valentino would probably have slashed the inquirer across the face with his dagger-except that this time, the inquiry came from Cesare Linguanti. Quiet Linguanti, who was the only other senior-and therefore, trustworthy-man that Rombaldo had assigned to this search group, and who had not once showed any doubt in Valentino’s leadership. Of course, he had yet to speak fifty words since leaving Venice. “Where else do you think we should search?” Valentino asked him.
Linguanti shrugged. He looked at the land humping up between the mountains that were rising ever higher around them as they entered the Asiago region from the south. “It’s a lot of empty country and tall mountains, here at the gateway to the Dolomites.”
“Yes,” answered Valentino, surprised at Linguanti’s relative loquacity, “but this is where the trail leads.”
“Some trail,” intruded a broad, brash Milanese accent behind him. “These days, there could be any number of groups on horseback with some English speakers. Since those up-time demons arrived, everyone and his father’s whore is speaking English, it seems.”
Valentino turned, schooling himself to patience as he did. The new voice in the discussion belonged to Odoardo de Mosca, who was so large that his horse looked like a pony, sagging under him. Odoardo was arguably one of the ten most dangerous-and contrary-men Valentino had ever met. It was an unpromising mix, and Valentino half-suspected that, after this job was done, he would have to preemptively, albeit surreptitiously, “retire” Odoardo from Rombaldo’s payroll; the burly Milanese man-ogre was as indiscreet with secrets as he was with cheap, barnyard grappa. “Yes, Odoardo, there are a lot of English-speakers abroad these days, but that’s not the main reason we’re on this group’s trail.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s the big difference?”
“This group used an unusual method of victualing.”
Odoardo spat; thick and phlegmy, the gobbet didn’t carry as far as he intended. It hit his own horse square in the eye. The beast bucked; Odoardo smiled and wrestled it back under control, sawing at the reins cruelly. “That’s bullshit, Valentino. From what we’ve been able to learn at each town this group visited, they bought the right amounts of food and drink for a big group. So what’s so unusual?”
Valentino smiled and resolved to kill Odoardo in his sleep just as soon as the pope was dead. “Odoardo, you should pay a little more attention to the details. Yes, the men seen in the towns always bought the right amount of supplies for the group they claimed to be traveling with, but then why did that whole group never pass directly through any of the towns where they got their provisions?”
Odoardo frowned and shrugged a single shoulder diffidently. “Maybe they’re shy.”
“No one’s so shy that they don’t want to bring their horses or wagons to load up the provisions directly from the supplier, instead of dragging them off beyond each town’s outskirts and then loading them.”
“I thought you said that they didn’t have wagons,” Odoardo muttered, half annoyed, half confused.
“I was just trying to make a point-but you’re right: we’ve not found much in the way of wheel ruts and the other spoor we’d expect if the group had any heavy wagons. So the reason they traveled so quickly is that they traveled light. And they took precautions so that no townspeople ever saw but a few of them, and usually not the same ones, from what we can tell.”
“I thought the English-speakers always went to town.”
“Odoardo, my boy,” Valentino patronized, enjoying the rare opportunity to torture the insolent behemoth, “you really must pay more attention to the details. Yes, an English speaker-or several-were always in the group that went to town. But that might simply be because most of the party are English-speakers. Which would be exactly what we’d expect from a group of up-timers, don’t you think?”
What Odoardo lacked in perspicacity, he made up for in stubbornness. “If this group is our target, then they’d have servants-from their Roman embassy. They could’ve sent them to do the ‘victualing.’ Then no one would have known there were so many people who could speak English. If they were trying to travel without being detected, that’s what they’d have done.”
“Yes. Of course they would. They’d send their servants. Servants who probably can’t keep from inadvertently revealing their secrets any more than you can resist blabbing your own to anyone who’ll listen. Not exactly the team I would send to buy provisions if I wanted to maintain a low, largely undetected, profile. And besides, although each provisioning group always contained English speakers, the shop keepers have reported very different accents: a few were genuine English, a lot used this Amideutsch that you hear Germans speaking these days, some say they heard genuine up-time dialect, and a few report strange accents, maybe from Ireland or Scotland. Which, when you consider the group we’re looking for, matches the mix of expected nationalities.”
“Merchants might be that mixed.” Odoardo tried to sound confident.
It was Linguanti who answered. “If they’re merchants, then where are their wagons?”
Odoardo’s head went forward in a silent sulk.
Valentino had already forgotten him, looking at the northern panorama of mountains; far to the left, the Little Dolomites were leaning north, in the direction of the true Dolomites, whose distant peaks were painted bright pink and silver by the setting sun. “No,” declared Valentino, “every other lead we found north of the Po checked out, made sense. But this one, this group-no. And what the devil would merchants be doing heading up into this country, anyway? If they wanted to traverse the alps from western Veneto, they would have gone via Lake Garda and then Trent, up toward Bolzano.”
Odoardo’s voice rumbled up from where his chin was tucked into his chest. “Maybe they’re trading to the valley folk.”
Valentino laughed heartily. “Oh, yes. Of course. How foolish that I didn’t see it earlier. But I see it clearly now-thanks to you, Odoardo. In fact, we are actually tracking a multinational rabble of merchants who have journeyed all the way from the British Isles and Germany. For here, in PreAlpine Italy, they mean to set up a thriving trade going from one unpopulated valley to another, selling their big city baubles to the local troglodytes in exchange for riches such as smelly cheese, old goatskins, and the dubious favors of their cross-eyed daughters.”
Odoardo was silent, except for the steady grinding of his teeth.
Valentino ignored him. He looked up at the failing light that was plunging the strange mix of both naked and pine-forested peaks into a rosy pre-dusk gloom. “No,” breathed Valentino to no one in particular, “we’ve finally got the scent of these damned up-timers and their renegade pope. They’re up here. Somewhere.”