alternatehistory.com

It took less than a half day for the motley crew of Genoese and sailors of other Italies to strip bare the mouth of the river of all gold nuggets and flakes on the Isle of Olympia (née Guadalcanal). Sir Augustin of St. Ives sat under shade on a fat rock and watched them, at peace. Lady Olympia Anne de Breuil was a tad more troubled. She stood by his side, iron heeled and armed to the teeth, and studied the sailors. At the sign of first fist-fight about to commence, she set a heavy gloved hand on Augustin's shoulder.

"Generosi, cool your tempers, there is plenty more to be had, but we must head inlands."

At this, all stopped and listened. For Augustin had led them to half way around the world to this paradise where gold was strewn at their feet. True, they had their suspicions and there was little trust to be had from men that could barely be made to believe in things Holy Mother Church taught them, much less a strange foreigner with even stranger notions, but you can't argue with gold.

"This, all of this, is but discharge from a source. The true source is inlands, and unless I am mistaken, the source is that hill over yonder."

At this the men peered at the slumbering volcano standing tall over trees.

"We have had us a long journey, and it is far from over. More gold is to be had, do not exhaust. Build shelter, then rest and be merry. I have not made you as rich as yet as I will."

There came forth a cheer and glazed eyes at the words of the Englishman and he was obeyed.

As for Augustin, he appeared quite exhausted and although it is a good military man who stays with his troops, he bade his companion to get him a boat to return to the ship, where he crawled into berth in their shared cabin and slept for two days.

Let us take leave of our sleeping Odysseus and return to Italies, which we have not visited in some chapters. For much time had expired since we last saw Cardinal Mazarini be tempted by a fool plot of family Franciotti to help them seize power, and we have not made since then any note of the cruelly expensive war between papacy with family Barberini against that of the Medici and their Northern convenient friends, to say nothing of the travails of Augustin's twin sister, who at this moment was trying to find on war-torn Italies a painting worthy of a new palace the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II in a fit of exuberance promised to build.


A raw boned, pock marked fellow walked into Church of Saint Peter in Chains in Rome. As was the case for all buildings not under direct family Barberini patronage in the Eternal City, the once great church was crumbling from neglect. Years of abuse and a century of fiscal abandonment dimmed its luster, save one artifact. Michelangelo's "Moses." It sat in an apse and was as magnificent then as when it was first created, or now. Before the statue sat a not entirely unattractive, fleshy, almost young woman. Her clothes would have marked her for a good burgher, were not they most carefully masked by a plain cloak. Her face was a mask of concentration as she studied the Moses. There few other worshippers in the old church on that day, as it was out of the way and much south of the thousand-fold more famous Saint Peter's.

The pock marked fellow, who stuck with the name Allesandro for now close to a year, walked about. Some of the worshippers he discounted, but one other stuck out. A greasy lipped pretty boy in flash clothes of not quite cavalier fashion lounging about in the nave. Allesandro observed a hidden blade on his person, though how it was positioned on the belt told him the man was no fighter. The almost young woman by Moses packed weapons as well. There was a small curved dagger at the small of her not quite small back, and iron castanets that were dipped into hard leather by her belt. The toes of her boots were likewise ironed. Allesandro retreated from church and ushered in Cardinal Mazarini.

The pretty boy in the nave roused himself from boredom and, with all the subtlety of a witchfinder examining an old lonely woman on the edge of town with no living relatives, rushed to warn the woman by the Moses. She gave a nod, dismissed her inept bodyguard and made no effort to face strangers.

Allesandro guided Mazarini to the bench by the young woman.

"Lady Ashley?"

"Please sit, Excellency."

Mazarini did as he was bidden, but found his partner in conversation still looking at Moses.

"Tell me, your Excellency, what Moses do you think it?"

"Forgive me, dear lady, I do not grasp."

"Is it the Moses coming down from Mount Sinai the first time and seeing his people debased and practicing idolatry at the feet of the Golden Calf, his anger deep dwelling within him, and his body coiling to lash out at the unfortunates at the foot of the mountain? Or is it the Moses who came to plead with his Creator for the sake of his people, imploring Him to give them another chance?"

Mazarini puzzled and turned to the Moses. He never studied art as much as his fellow Italian high churchmen. He loved good things as much as the next, but the Roman and Northern obsession over this particular art for the sake of mere art did not move his Southern soul. He understood art in the context of worth. That a Michelangelo was beautiful because it was made by Michelangelo and as such could command gold, were his thoughts, and if it were made by another, it would not be as great in his eyes, for it would then fetch a much smaller sum. But for the sake of conversation, he studied the Moses now and after some minutes expired, could not hazard a guess.

"I confess I know not."

"Pity. I always wanted to know what a cardinal would say on the subject."

"Ah, then good Leopoldo Medici did not comment on it?"

"No, he did not."

Ashley finally deigned to look at the cardinal by her side.

"You have word of my brother?"

"Fourth hand gossip."

"Go on."

"I preface it that it is only idle gossip once more."

"Still go on."

"He sailed with three ships. One did not survive the crossing of the Strait of All Saints."

"Which ship?"

"'Damsel,' I'm told."

"He sails on the 'Female Bastard'."

"The 'Bastard' was seen victualing at a post on the side of the South America that is washed by the Tranquil Sea. So he seemed to have survived the passage of the Strait."

"So I hope, but the flow of news from that part of the distant world is delayed and we may not know for a long time whether his great journey was one of success or utter failure, or fell somewhere between."

Mazarini gave a nod.

"How would you like, Excellency, to go back to France with a long lost Da Vinci?"

Mazarini studied the woman before giving reply:

"There are some who would rejoice of it, I am sure."

"Excellency, may we speak plain for but a moment? Your patron is dying if not dead already and the news have yet to reach us here in Rome. Once he expires, you will not tarry back to Paris, though for propriety's sake you may wait to be called back by some official at court. The King of France is dying, but long as he lives, he may set you aside in favor of a host of rivals, all smaller men than you to be sure, but such is luck. If you bring him a gift from your time here in Rome, he may greet you with favor, or more importantly you may curry favor with his wife. And a long lost Da Vinci would signify."

The cold logic made Mazarin blanch for a moment. He had underestimated Ashley, as well he should. There were too many stories of her gorging herself on drink and bed chamber pleasures. Her body was built for comfort not intellect. And then there was her sex. Mazarini was not of the opinion that women are inferior to men, far from it, but the general opinion could not help but set its hooks in him and he was clouded by it. No more so than today. He spoke casually now, but directly:

"And in return?"

The generous mouth parted in smile.

"When the time comes, and you are true master of France, I will do my utmost to do right by you and your kingdom, and when that commences, I will want an estate, a title of nobility and three villages along the Ligurian coast. That is all."

"That is all. And for that, you risk your patron discovering you have given away a precious painting?"

"Titian was precious, Excellency. Da Vinci is much more valuable. Do not mistake what I am about to grant. And yes, I will give it away to you here and now, for a chance of profit in the future. As to the risk, all life is risk. What say you now?"

"What have I to lose? I shall accept."

"Good. And if you could, as a token of your good will to match mine, here is a paper with a name of a fellow who needs killing. My man is not much for such arts. But your cur there, with whom you have entered, he looks like he could slit a throat and rid me of body."

"We are in a church and you ask murder."

"Much worse was done in this place over time. My sin is but a drop of rain in the Tiber."

"When will I have the Da Vinci?"

"When that man is found dead. Then my man shall find yours and tell him the place."

"Good day then, lady."

"And you as well, Excellency."

The Cardinal left, with his assassin in tow.

Salvatore, the pretty boy in the nave, attended to his lady.

"He will betray us."

"All men betray. Now please fall silent, our time in this city draws to a close and I have yet to learn which Moses sits now before us."


That night, Allesandro killed the man Ashley wanted gone. And that morning, Salvatore told Allesandro the location of the Da Vinci:

"It's in the Louvre."

For this he was shoved to a wall and a blade was put to his balls.

"It is misidentified. No one knows it's a Da Vinci. All think it by Conti."

Allesandro kept blade to the man's balls.

"You bloody idiot do you not understand? It is the third female portrait. Do you not...? Da Vinci painted only two in his life, or so all thought. Now there is a third. Think, you pocked bastard. Think. Think how much it is worth!"

Allesandro eased the blade from the man's balls.

"Describe it."

"A beautiful woman with a jeweled chain across her forehead. Three-quarter turned portrait. Oil on wood. One braccio tall and two palmi across."

"Which sort of braccio and which palmi? Each town measures things different here."

"Florentine braccio and Roman palmi."

The blade was removed and Salvatore fled, while his mistress paid the hapless and now masterless assistant of the now dead picture monger to sell her a large tempera and oil on walnut panel drawing of a gaunt and haunted St. Jerome in the wilderness getting ready to beat his chest with a rock.

The carriage with Ashley and her bed warmer then sped out of Rome. They joined a caravan heading northwards in stages, passing wide the camps of the German mercenaries, of whom there were many ill stories were said, and all true. And it was in one such camp, that Captain-General of the Papal Armies, Taddeo Barberini now watched snow on the ground and drank warmed wine and thought of the war.


The deliberately spiraling costs of the war between Barberini and the alliance of Farnese & Medici were meant to end it, to cut the fighting short for making it far too cruel. But with neither the Grand Duke of Tuscany nor the Pope willing to see reason and shorten the war, instead both sides adjusted their fragile economies and restructured debt and played a different war. Oh, the Germans were there and they were sent into combat as before, with all the bloody expenses that entailed, but they were sent far less than in the first year of the war. Thus a new type of war was born in the Italies at the close of the year of Our Lord 1642, one that combined the elaborate staging and pageant of traditional Italian warfare of centuries past with the naked brutality of the German sort raging for last three decades in the Holy Roman Empire. War finds a way. It adjusts. And so with it must men caught up within it who cannot direct it, be they soldiers or generals commanded by fate or mayhap older brothers.

And so Taddeo Barberini, who knew with stark simplicity that the best way to end the war was to end your foe, sat in a camp full of armed to the teeth killers and was forbidden from entering new sieges or shifting his men too far North, lest things escalate further than now.


But if Taddeo Barberini cursed and blasphemed his orders, same could be said for Mattias Medici, Captain-General of Medicean forces opposing Barberini hordes. But being a Medici, he now resided not in a camp, but in a villa, granted well away from a bustling town, but a villa still, and he too stared at his maps and forces and waited for permission to march southwards and sweep all away.

The last conversation he had with his brother, the Grand Duke, replayed in his head.

"How much?"

Mattias did not know how much it would cost to end Barberini, battle by battle and siege by siege. That is, he knew of the human effort, but not the coin it would take. He was a bright man, full of promise in the arts of war, whether old Italian or the German, but this new type of warfare, where every battle and siege is a bloodletting, but few of them were to be had, addled his maths.

"How much?"

The question would not let him gain respite.

"How much?"

It made him stand before maps.

"How much?"

He had to find out. He had to find a way to end this war, his own way. He was no Taddeo. He could not be meek. He was a warrior, and he was being denied. It would not stand. He would find out how much. And he would find a way to finance it. And he would crush Rome.