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While Augustin's fleet sped eastwards bound for Genoa, Mazarini paced in his apartments in Rome. The dilemma was stark, as Augustin's twin sister predicted. He wanted to fly back to Paris to ensure he was seen and talked with by the dying King of France, to ensure he was not overlooked for the position of the principal minister of the Eldest Daughter of the Holy Mother Church now that Richelieu succumbed. But, to come to Paris uninvited was no easy matter.

If Mazarini would look too much as if he was campaigning for the position and that would invite ridicule, and all it would take would be for one flash cavalier with a pretty face and smooth hands hovering near the sodomite King to whisper in his decrepit degenerate master's ear, "That one, the Italian, does he not try too hard? A foreigner wants to guide France, my King. Dear me, I shudder to think of him taking the place of our now dead good French cardinal." And if the King was in the right carriage of mind or a wrong one, he would let the young pretty thing dictate Mazarin's fate, and then what? Sit about in Avignon and wait for the King to die and hope the new man who temporarily took Richelieu's place in Mazarini's absence would not do too well? No, no, no. That was no answer.

Mazarini stopped pacing and looked out the window. If only Richelieu had died while he was still in Paris. Oh then... But the husk sent him off to Rome. Was this too a test? To be sent off and find a way to come back? No, no, no, not even the husk could have been that devious. Or...? No, no, no. It could not have been. Mazarini gave a sigh of indulgence in self-pity, then found his left mustachio not curled as well as right one and adjusted. But he then overcorrected and had to adjust the right and then found he had to adjust the left. Then found his hands trembling. He looked away from the window and paced some more, his eyes suddenly falling on Alessandro sitting in a chair and reading a letter.

"Ah, Allesandro, what good news have you?"

"Depends on whether you hate the English, Excellency."

"I hate no one. But perfidious Albion is no friend of my adopted kingdom."

"Then you will rejoice they are tearing themselves apart."

"Ah, yes, yes. The Earl of Essex has risen against poor King Charles. Tragic."

"Not just the Earl of Essex, Excellency. All of Parliament as well. Or, more than half of it, at least."

Mazarini gave a nod. The fate of England held no interest to him until he was properly installed as principal minster of the King of France and attended at the Louvre...

Mazarini suddenly beamed. The Louvre. The missing Da Vinci. He had his reason to return. Why it was so simple! He, on his duties in Rome, learned of a treasure in Paris and returned to unearth it.

"Allesandro, tell the servants to pack. We are going back to Paris."

***


"How much?"

"Two million florins I am told, my lord Cardinal-Inquisitor."

"And the Grand Duke thinks such sum can be found in the Medici coffers?"

"No, not his coffers, Excellency, but in lines of credit. Once Gian Carlo and Mattias were able to convince him of the... feasibility of the, uh, plan you now have before you."

"You may go."

The spy bowed and left, leaving Cardinal-Inquisitor Francesco Barberini alone with dark thoughts. Mattias Medici had designed a path for the gradual expulsion of all Barberini forces from the North. It was a good plan regarding lands of Northern Italies, and it was then seasoned with Gian Carlo's knowledge of the seas. Between the two men, they conceived of a way to strangle Barberini interests. And though the plan's details now lay before the Cardinal-Inquisitor he knew he could not stop it. Delay it, mayhap. But not stop. Oh to be sure assassins could be sent to kill key generals, sea-captains and bankers and buy a half year atop the yearlong plan now before him, but in the end, the weight of force and gold (by way of credit) would press down and choke off the gold starved papal forces. It was the end. And end in eighteen months, at most.

There was little point in bringing this up to his good uncle. His Holiness the Pope was no longer in the mood to listen to anyone but his own counsel, which grew worse with each passing year. The first inkling of abandonment of reason came during the silly Galileo affair. Regardless of what was whispered by those set against or for the blind heretic, the whole sordid thing was not over science versus faith. The mule stubborn alchemist and peeper of Heavens had simply done the unpardonable in the eyes of Francesco's uncle, he had written a book in which the character known as Simplicius (that is idiot) repeated the arguments against Galileo's works first advanced by the Pope in his letters to the blind heretic (back when the two men wrote to one another). In essence, the Pope was called an idiot, and for that Galileo had to pay and pay he did. Foreign affairs with the North were set on their ear and a chill descended on the men of learning in Rome, all because one man called another a fool in a roundabout way and that fool did not take kindly. If someone had called the Cardinal-Inquisitor a fool, he would have laughed and taken a sip of good wine. His uncle...

His uncle was the problem. His brothers were little better. Taddeo was a good general now, that much was plain, but what can a general do against armies outnumbering him? Get lucky and be better than good? How often would that hold? Taddeo was no Caesar reborn. He was good, but the plan before the Cardinal-Inquisitor was not for a single battle, but for a stratagem. Taddeo could not oppose it. As for Antonio... He could have detach an ally here and there from the North by offers of truce, both real and feigned, but he would not be allowed. Their uncle would not allow it. The old man wanted his glory upon the fields of valor, now strewn with thousands of corpses and watered by rivers of blood and paid for in gold as well. It was the end.

Even if the three Barberini brothers were to get together and come to an agreement and present the findings in a unified showed of force... The uncle would dismiss them as men of bad kidney. And, then, when the plan would unfold in all its horror, he would still not listen or bring them back for then they would have committed the ultimate sin, shown him for the fool that he is and worse still would have had proof of his foolishness writ plain. It was the end.

Turning to Medici, they now had their plan. All the brothers. So it was no use killing one of them and hope it would all fall. And trying to kill senior Medici all in one full swoop had been tried before by men who probably plotted those murders in the same room where the Cardinal-Inquisitor sat, and it all ended wrong for the papacy. They did not rid themselves of the Medici and made them lions and heroes instead, and to this day Pazzi meant fool in the North in honor of the family of the local idiots the papacy recruited in Florence to help assassinate the Medici in the age of Da Vinci. And though the Cardinal-Inquisitor wanted to believe he was smarter than other men who occupied this very office before him, he knew that trying to kill four well defended crafty men at the same time required not so much planning but pure dumb luck. No one was that lucky, and not with the Medici either. It was the end.

But it was the end in eighteen months, extremis. The total end. With the last nine months being agony of watching the final destruction (that is nine, if the whole thing took eighteen). But at what point would prior to those seven months would the true end begin, a point after which there was no return nor hope, save for the appearance of a rock from the sky to flatten both Florence and Venice. The Cardinal-Inquisitor did his unhappy maths. He had eight months before the pieces of the board would be placed as such as to make an honorable chess player sitting opposite lay down his king to prevent needless exertion. Eight months. Whatever had to be done, had to be done in less than eight months.


There was a soft peal of a bell.

"Enter."

"My lord Cardinal-Inquisitor, you wanted to be told the moment Mazarini would show signs of departing for Paris?"

"Yes. Has he?"

"Yes, Excellency. He has bidden his servants to pack."

"You may go."

The fifth secretary bowed and left.

Cardinal-Inquisitor winced at a thought, tried to chase it away, but it lingered. He picked up the bell and tolled it. The fifth secretary returned.

"Tell Cardinal Mazarini I wish to speak with him before he leaves. You have my leave."

The man bowed again and departed.


Mazarini met the Cardinal-Inquisitor shortly after Vespers. After wasting an hour of idle talk, the Cardinal-Inquisitor came to the nut of it:

"Would you be so good as to loan me your servant Allesandro?"

"Oh. For how long?"

"I should think eight months and no longer."

"I... Naturally, my good brother Cardinal."

"Thankee."

***


The next morning, after Terce, the Cardinal-Inquisitor in his civilian clothes admired the throngs of pilgrims, tradesmen, merchants and simple tourists snaking their way through the great northern entrance of the Eternal City. He stood on a hill and overlooked people's square and looked to the people. Allesandro approached him as if a cat, but the Cardinal-Inquisitor saw him coming.

"Shall we talk of weather and news, or can I just tell you why I kept you here?"

"As my lord the Cardinal-Inquisitor wishes."

"And what does Avram wish?"

"Nothing. He's dead."

"And being a dead man he does not eat pork, nor cook with lard, nor travels on Sabbath?"

"Being a dead man he can do nothing but stay dead."

"It is not an easy thing to be dead, when some many around him are alive."

Allesandro said nothing.

"The ghetto is a terrible place. One fountain for 3,000 people..."

"... 9,000, my lord..."

"Is it? Well, that is even worse. Little clean water. People living atop each other. And still they come, because compared to the rest of the lands now under papal control, Rome appears as free as Amsterdam."

Allesandro said nothing.

"All it would take is a single stroke of a quill to throw open the four gates and allow free mingling."

"And there would come a slaughter."

"What should be done then to aid those living in the ghetto?"

"This is not a serious conversation."

"Oh it is. For I am serious man, Allesandro."

Allesandro said nothing.

"I need a man killed."

Allesandro said nothing.

"What is the bride price?"

"Who is the bride?"

"I cannot say that now. It is far too early. He will be well guarded, however. And it will take all of your not inconsiderable skill to get even close to him. And, and this is where you will separate yourself from all others, it must be done to make it look like a natural death."

Allesandro said nothing.

"Suppose it would be announced the ghetto can enlarge?"

Allesandro said nothing.

"Suppose these three things were done in the next three months: no more compulsory Saturday Catholic service attendance for adults living in the ghetto, expansion of ghetto walls by a quarter mile in each direction, save those pushing against Tiber, and creation of a second, uh, enclave here, on this hill."

"Right to own land and property."

"Ah, yes. That. In the ghetto, I cannot change that, but everywhere else, it will be allowed. Including here, on this every hill. Where houses behind me will be bought and sold by Jews."

"In the next three months?"

"Yes."

"Who is this man that you wish dead?"

"As I said, you may not even have to kill him. But the decision will come in eight months."

"I will need time to plan if he is heavily guarded."

"Ah, then you will know in, uh, six months."

And thus that conversation ended.