Eric Flint: 1635: The Cannon Law

"True," Don Vincente said, and it was. Not least because Borja was one of the Inquisition's senior cardinals. "Still, I want the men mustered for musket drill tomorrow, and every day until Gonzalez calms down. I don't know what the other companies will do, but I think training the men might well stop them finding idler pursuits until we have real trouble to deal with."

"The men won't like it, Don Vincente." Ezquerra's tone betrayed how little he cared about that. The man was a veteran, and had himself walked the Spanish Road to the wars in Flanders. Don Vincente could tell how much he approved of training the men by the simple fact that there was none of the usual obfuscation and delay whenever the suggestion arose.

"They aren't meant to like it, Sergeant. They're meant to have a reason to be up early in the mornings so they start to think twice about spending their wages all night on whores and drink."

"I shall give them the terrible news, Don Vincente," Ezquerra said, relish in his eyes and voice. "Will there be training with powder and ball?"

"Not every day." Don Vincente was now thankful that he'd been going over exactly that paperwork when the sergeant arrived. "I only have so much money to spend on powder. Two or three volleys, I think, tomorrow morning, so the idiots who get themselves hangovers really suffer. After that we'll run them until they puke if they turn up looking hungover."

"As the Don wishes," Ezquerra said, grinning.

Don Vincente decided, as the sergeant left, to let the paperwork go hang for the afternoon, and bellowed for a bottle of wine to sit in the afternoon sun with. He would beg off messing with the other captains tonight, to ensure he had a clear head for the firing in the morning, but for now a short break to recruit his strength before an arduous couple of weeks was just the thing. He wondered, for a moment, if the sergeant's attitudes were contagious?

Venice

Frank Stone slammed the door behind him. Giovanna looked up at him from the table where she was going over some of the Committee's paperwork-the interminable minutes of one of Massimo's interminable theory workshops, from the looks-and her face suddenly grew pensive.

Uh, oh, Frank thought. Shouldn't bring it home with me. He forced himself to take a deep breath and stand up straight, relax. "Sorry," he said. "Been talking with your dad again."

"I hope it wasn't too bad, this time?"

Frank chuckled, feeling his bad mood evaporate. "I guess we're sort of feeding off each other a bit. Massimo's no help, either. He gets all prickly and defensive about everything, these days."

"What was it about?"

Frank waved it away and went over to pour himself a glass of wine. "Wasn't anything, really."

"Then why could I hear you from three floors above?" The tone of her voice was… ambivalent.

Not that Frank could blame her. She'd been Daddy's Little Girl when they'd met, on the very day that Frank first arrived in Venice, and then she and Frank had fallen head-over-heels in love. After that there'd been all that stuff that had happened when they went to try to rescue Galileo, although describing it as just "stuff" was on a par with describing the Civil War as a bit of a disagreement-which had somehow managed to culminate in their wedding.

Now they were settling down to as near a normal married life as you could get in a family that was still doing most of the work of the Committees of Correspondence in Italy, work that was organized on traditional Marcoli family principles. Everyone pulling in three directions at once, followed by a huge argument.

And when it came to arguing, the Marcolis were Italian to the bone. Frank had tried sweet reason a few times-and the mess that that had gotten him into was still causing minor political shockwaves-and had slowly found himself going native in fine style, complete with full volume and waving arms.

Usually at Messer Marcoli, Senior, Antonio of that ilk, a man who'd very nearly made himself seventeenth-century Italy's own John Brown, hanging after Harper's Ferry included. Injury had kept him off that particular mission, which would then have failed if they hadn't happened to have had a mad Frenchman along to supply, with hindsight, most of the planning and, just to put the cherry on the top of it, an assassination attempt on the pope.

Frank wondered what his own dad would have made of it. He certainly wouldn't have approved of making Giovanna suffer the spectacle of the two guys she cared most about, her father and her husband, getting in to blazing rows about…

What had it been this time? Frank was already having trouble remembering how it started, but he seemed to recall something about organizing the soccer league.

How it had ended was with Antonio Marcoli telling Frank he was a poor excuse for a son-in-law, disobedient and wayward. In return, Frank had reminded Antonio of some choicer passages from the Venetian Committee's statements as to the rights of free people, and all but called the old guy a fascist.

Not that that would have made much of an impression, but the yelling and swearing probably did. And would be the cue for a good couple of days' sulking. On both sides, Frank realized, thinking back.

He sighed. "Giovanna, it's going to be a lot easier when we get some help down from Germany. Your dad's going to have someone else to rail at instead of me."

The Committee in Germany had promised some help, training if nothing else, but for the moment they were all busier than they could handle up there, what with the wars and the other mayhem. The promise of aid-reading between the lines, on Mike Stearns' all-but-orders-had become increasingly abject apologies that the assembly of a team of activists was being delayed by one urgent necessity after another.

It wasn't that Frank didn't believe them. Given what he'd heard about what was happening north of the Alps, at least some of that "urgent necessity" was pretty damned urgent. That still didn't make him any happier about the fact that he'd have to maintain the daily walk on eggshells he needed to make in order to deal with his in-laws for some time to come.

"Frank," Giovanna said, and then stopped.

"Yeah?" he said, encouraging her to go on.

"Maybe we shouldn't wait for the German Committee."

Frank frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I think maybe we should start working on Massimo's plan to spread the Committee elsewhere in Italy, no?"

Frank noticed she was chewing the inside of her lip, the way she did when she was thinking hard and deep about something. That made him feel good about the way the conversation was going for two reasons:

First, because Giovanna was probably the smartest of the Marcolis, if only because she had the same brains her dad did without the hairy-eyed temperament that went with it. And, second, because it was cute as all hell.

Frank cleared his throat. "Okay, lay it out for me-how are we going to do that with your dad dragging his heels all the way?"

"We should go back to Rome," she said. "I think."

It was all Frank could do not to sigh. There were also some disadvantages to having a smart wife.

There was no point lying to her, either. Giovanna had an ability to detect Frank telling lies that bordered on the supernatural.

"Well, yes," he admitted. "Venice is just too… different, I guess, from the rest of Italy. It's ultimately a side show, here. Politically speaking."

She seemed to be only half-listening to him. "Naples, maybe? Instead of Rome, I mean."

Frank was paralyzed, for just an instant. It had suddenly dawned on him that, from the standpoint of the danger involved to Giovanna, Rome was almost infinitely better than Naples.

Slowly, he sat down at the kitchen table, while he thought about it.