Ring of fire II (assiti shards) Read online

"Which leaves Tyrol to worry about Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. If, of course, the Swede does not manage to smash him." The duchess-regent smashed her hand down on the table. "I like that English word. It has such a satisfying sound."

  "General Horn is not given to smashing."

  "So I have heard. Duke Bernhard accepted Our physicians?"

  "And, apparently, their advice. There is the whole winter to prepare for what we may, according to the up-timers' encyclopedias, expect next spring. They will work with the up-time 'nurse.' "

  "Perhaps our agents in the Vorarlberg should initiate diplomatic relations with him?"

  Dr. Bienner stroked his beard without replying.

  Duchess Claudia walked to the window. "We are well matched in age. I am only thirty and proven fertile."

  Dr. Bienner nodded. Her first marriage, little over a year in duration, had produced a child who still lived. Female, unfortunately. The second, five children in eight years, four of them still alive and healthy and two of them boys. Claudia de Medici was a woman to gladden any ambitious dynast's heart.

  While his mind wandered, she had continued talking. "Perhaps it was prescient that Leopold and I chose to name our first daughter Isabella Clara. Two years before this 'Ring of Fire.' If the king in the Low Countries and Maria Anna have a son right away, the age gap will not be too great. A boy is old enough to beget years before a woman has matured enough to give birth with maximum safety. And the symbolism should appeal to them."

  Dr. Bienner nodded silently.

  "Duke Bernhard is a heretic, but that is no insuperable obstacle. After all, the pope granted a dispensation for the French king's sister to marry that stupid Englishman. Lutherans are no more heretical than Anglicans."

  She tapped her fingernails, one by one, on the window pane. "I am scarcely in Vienna's confidence, of course. But if it should happen that Our cousins are too preoccupied to think seriously about the, um, 'challenges and opportunities' presented by the situation in Vorderoesterreich and the Breisgau… ah, not to mention Alsace and the Franche Comte…"

  She turned around from the window, leaning forward.

  "Tyrol is not."

  Dr. Bienner nodded again. "May your generosity be rewarded, Your Grace."

  Lucky at Cards

  Andrew Dennis

  "So, how do we play this game?" Richelieu's manner was open, inquiring, almost naive.

  Smirks passed around the table. The business of state had finished hours ago and the guests who had remained in the Louvre to drink and gamble the night away were somewhat relaxed from the formality of occasions of state.

  "Armand, you are impossible." Abel Servien, marquis de Sable, was a little more relaxed than most, laughing out loud as he spoke. Louder than most, too. It was all Mazarin could do not to wince at the way the man boomed. He actually liked the fellow, but it was a lot easier to picture him riding to hounds or spearing a boar than haggling the fine provisions of a treaty or partaking of a detailed academic correspondence. He did both of the latter, to the mild puzzlement of many, who looked at the big, hearty, beefy fellow with the loud voice and the bombastic manner and assumed he was, at best, an uncomplicated soul. The missing eye, lost in a hunting accident in his youth, did nothing to detract from the image of a simple brawler from the rural nobility.

  Which he was. Simply a highly intelligent, supremely educated one whose achievements off the hunting field had just won him election to the newly-formed Academie Francaise, an accolade that paled somewhat beside being regarded by Richelieu as a smart man. Mazarin also had a high opinion of his talents: he had thrashed out the Peace of Cherasco with Servien, what seemed now like a lifetime ago, and both of them had done well as a result. Mazarin had made a name that now saw him in good odor in Paris and Rome both, and Servien had ended up minister of war and able to place any number of his relatives in the cardinal's service. His fourth cousin, Etienne, was one of the more notorious of the special intendants who did the cardinal's more surreptitious work.

  "Impossible, Abel?" Richelieu smiled back.

  "Impossible." Servien gestured for the cardinal to be included in the deal. "If Etienne hasn't already furnished you with a complete set of rules, some other of your army of sneaks has done so, and I can't imagine it took you more than, oh, an hour or so to learn them fully and devise seventeen winning stratagems."

  Richelieu quirked an eyebrow. "Why would you think I might do such a thing? A churchman, studying so disreputable an activity as cards?"

  "Hah!" Servien barked. "It would be an improvement from all those grubby actors and playwrights you throw money at. And it's not as if we don't already have a cardinal taking us for every ecu in our pockets. Clearly it is an entirely reputable activity if we now have two princes of the church at table, although it will not be long before we have a beggar in my chair."

  "Come, Abel," Mazarin said, "you can afford it. Can I help it if you're not as good at cards as you are at diplomacy?"

  "I remain to be convinced that this 'Texas hold 'em' is quite the game of skill you claim it is." Servien grumped. "I have been dealt nothing but excrement since the evening began, and nothing seems to answer for making good the execrable luck I'm having."

  At that he was doing better than Leon Bouthillier, who was to Mazarin's left; the fortunes of the comte de Chavigny were being heavily depleted and much of it had ended up in Mazarin's gratifyingly large stack of ecus. Alas, the poor fellow had learned to play poker from Harry Lefferts, and both men did not have a tell so much as consist entirely of one; one simply had to judge how excited the fellow was. Neither was much concerned to consider the odds, and had a basic instinct for unrestrained aggression. Harry did it a good deal better than Leon, but the principle was the same in either case-audacity, audacity and more audacity. Unfortunately, Bouthillier couldn't quite manage the same level of sheer single-minded sanguinity and would occasionally back down from a truly insane bluff; against Harry one played the probabilities and over time, wore him down. Against Leon, a show of force on a moderately strong hand would occasionally see him off.

  The cards were going around again and this time Richelieu was being dealt in. "Could we have the door closed for some few moments?" he asked as he briefly examined his hole cards and arranged them neatly before him.

  "Certainly," de Sable said, and waved at a servant to attend to the matter.

  "And a moment of privacy?" Richelieu asked, prompting another wave for the assorted servants-including the fellow who was serving up the cards, at another nod and quirk of the eyebrow from the cardinal-to withdraw for the moment.

  Mazarin noted the company. Himself, de Sable, Bouthillier, and Richelieu. And, now that the last of the servants had left, Etienne Servien pulling the door closed and standing by it to ensure their privacy, he raised an eyebrow.

  "Yes, Your Eminence," Richelieu said, noting the gesture, "I am afraid I must interrupt you at cards with business. Tiresome, but necessary, and I do apologize."

  "There is no need for Your Eminence to apologize," Mazarin said, "Since I am now fully employed here, my time is Your Eminence's."

  "Can we drop the formality, please?" de Sable said. "Things were pleasantly relaxed, Jules, before you started Eminencing all over the place."

  "Please excuse me, Abel," Mazarin said, realizing that he was actually at fault and grateful to the irascible war minister for the correction, "I still have a little trouble thinking of myself as a cardinal. A habit I am working on, I assure you."

  "Work swiftly, if you would," Bouthillier said, speaking for the first time since Richelieu had entered. "The sense I have among Gaston's circle is that they would as soon not give you any time at all for that."

  "Really?" It was Richelieu's turn to raise an eyebrow. "And how do they propose to arrange the dismissal of a cardinal who has His Holiness' favor so firmly in hand?"

  Mazarin wondered too. He had successfully smoothed over the ripples that the Galileo Affair had caused, tidied up the loose ends from what h
ad been, potentially, one of the most major upsets arising from the Ring of Fire. It hadn't been easy-the Venetian Committee of Correspondence had managed to set a record for bad luck and bad management that looked unlikely to be beaten-but it had just about been possible to maneuver the thing so that everyone got something and no one was left empty-handed. Spain was unhappy about it, but they were perennially unhappy about everything, so that wasn't much of a loss. It had taken all of Mazarin's skill as a lawyer and diplomat and, there at the end when he had to sell the thing to a sceptical curia, outright bare-faced cheek. What Harry Lefferts would call 'bafflin' 'em with bullshit.' The bluff had carried the day, and with Rome's political factions baffled into immobility and the damage to France-D'Avaux, the French ambassador to Venice, had managed to outdo himself for sheer fatheaded incompetence-was neatly contained.

  Leon shrugged. "I don't think anyone has got quite so far as actual planning, although perhaps Giulio, or Jules rather-" he turned to Mazarin "-I do apologize, I've known you as Giulio for so long I keep forgetting-"

  Mazarin waved it aside. If truth be told, he'd only had the new name for a couple of months and wasn't quite used to his new signature himself. Still, it did not do to take one's naturalization by half-measures.

  "As I was saying before I put my foot so firmly in my mouth," Leon continued, "Jules will likely be seeing himself slandered in pamphlets before long."

  Richelieu's grin was disarming. "The mazarinades are starting early, then," he said.

  Mazarin couldn't help but be sarcastic. "I had so been looking forward to that," he said, "perhaps I should write a few memoirs of my time as a student in Madrid, so they can have some of the more noteworthy items to print."

  "Really?" Abel asked, grinning broadly, "not quite the serious fellow I thought, are you?"

  "Of course he is," Richelieu said, deadpan. "Would a prince of the church have spent his student years raising absolute hell in Madrid?"

  "I didn't know I was entering the church then," Mazarin said, blushing slightly. He had, in fact, taken full advantage of his time as an undergraduate to make a perfect beast of himself and honed the skills of fast talking and persuasion he had later parlayed into a career in diplomacy. Watching Harry Lefferts in action in Rome had brought back some very pleasant memories indeed. And, although wild horses would not drag the admission out of him in this company, made him wish rubber had been invented back then. Those things were a marvellous invention.

  "Be that as it may," Richelieu said, before Mazarin could wander off into pleasant remembrances, "if Gaston is minded to make trouble I think we should take him seriously. We have nothing specific as yet, but there is suggestion that he has been meeting with more Spaniards lately."

  "And His Majesty still won't have his brother executed?" Abel Servien's tone was arch and sneering in a way that would have surprised anyone who didn't know him well.

  "Please, Abel," Richelieu said, "until His Majesty is blessed with an heir, Monsieur Gaston has to remain alive."

  "I am very carefully not commenting on His Majesty's practice in that regard," Servien said, suddenly absolutely without tone or affect in his voice.

  "Her Majesty has been pregnant several times, as you know, Abel," Richelieu said, his tone chiding.

  Servien simply harrumphed.

  Richelieu waved the issue of royal issue aside. "Perhaps something might be done to warn off Monsieur Gaston?" He opened the question to general debate with his tone and a glance around the table. "While we consider it, may I ask to whom falls the honor of opening the betting?"

  The business of betting occupied everyone for a few moments; by ironclad convention there was no gossip while a hand was in play, a rule that held as well for primero and baccarat as it did for Texas hold 'em. Unfortunately, Mazarin was holding a rather nice pair of fours that turned in to three of a kind on the flop, so the preoccupation of the other three men at the table made for disappointing betting. The river gave him a full house, nines over fours, but Leon had had the other two nines, so perhaps the rather light betting had been a mercy. He would cheerfully have called Leon's bluff all the way to the hilt, and probably reversed their relative positions. As it was, Leon made a dent in the stack of ecus he'd lost to Mazarin.

  "Keep playing like that, Jules," he said, "and the dark rumors Gaston's crowd want to spread about your gaming debts will come true."

  "Rumors?" Mazarin felt the beginnings of a chill at that. If it got about that he wasn't good for his notes of hand, the sudden loss of welcome at Paris's gaming tables would only be the start of his troubles. A man who couldn't pay his card debts wasn't a gentleman, and therefore unfit to take his place in polite society. As such, he would be politically useless, practically and as a matter of correct protocol both.

  "That you've gambled away every benefice you've had, and our patron here has hold of your 'leash' because he's settling your debts for you, or so they say. And His Eminence knows he will have you under control forever because you keep getting in trouble no matter how many times you are dragged out of the hole. I wish you'd stop it, Jules," Leon said, grinning broadly, "as the constant calls of debt-collectors grow most tiresome."

  Mazarin grinned back. "What can I do? I keep losing so badly, but one day my luck will change, I am sure of it. I have a foolproof system." In fact, the only callers on Mazarin's lodgings at the Maison Chavigny were those delivering his winnings, usually with rueful notes from the assorted notables who hadn't had the sense to stop playing against him when they exhausted what they had at table and had to resort to notes of hand. He'd lost more than he sat down with exactly once in the last two months, when he'd written a note to cover the last call of the night, for the princely sum of five hundred ecus-slightly less than a week's income from the larger of his two benefices. The only delay in redeeming his note had been because he'd slept in the next day. His foolproof system was simply that he was very, very good at any game that depended on bluff; primero and, lately, poker. He would play basset, faro and baccarat to be sociable, but he had grown out of pure gambling long ago.

  Everyone around the table knew it, and his remark raised a round of chuckles. "I could take it very amiss, you know, that Monsieur Gaston thinks me stupid enough to keep playing when I'm losing."

  "Now, now, Jules," Richelieu said, wagging a finger, "Cardinals aren't allowed affairs of honor. And if you think you are embarrassed to learn that Gaston's crowd thinks little of you, imagine how embarrassed I should be to have you imprisoned for duelling and for killing the king's brother."

  "Shame," Abel said, into the thoughtful silence that followed that. "He's given me cause a couple of times."

  "Perhaps some other kind of contest," Leon added, suddenly with a 'butter wouldn't melt' expression on his face.

  Servien erupted. "Arm-wrestling!" he choked out between guffaws, "Bowling! Duels will be transformed! A new fashion!"

  Leon grinned. "I was thinking of, perhaps, something a little more in keeping with the spirit of the slander. Jules, Gaston has taken to playing primero rather a lot."

  "Really? I had thought him a basset man, and baccarat when he feels like an intellectual challenge." Mazarin had been at Monsieur Gaston's table a couple of times, but had never found the company truly congenial. The man was perennially unhappy at not being his elder brother, and tended to attract the like-minded to his circle. They were not marked so much by a lack of talent as an inability to use it because they flatly refused to believe the world was as it was, insisting that it was as they would like it to be.

  "Until recently, yes," Leon said, "but the new fashion for poker affronts him, and thus his entire circle. Apparently it is a foreign game that no true Frenchman would be seen playing."

  "What patriotism." Richelieu's drawl was dry and deadpan. The regularity with which Gaston took foreign support for his schemes was notorious. Had he not been the king's brother he would have gone to the headsman along with his conspirators. "Perhaps you can show him how a foreigner plays
the game, Jules? If that is what Leon is driving at?"

  "How could a naturalized Frenchman teach so senior a Frenchman as Monsieur Gaston how to play a game that was invented in Italy?" It was too good to resist, Mazarin thought. Gaston, a serial traitor who frequently colluded with foreign powers was flouting his Frenchness by playing an Italian game? If that was the defining standard, Jules could prove himself easily. He'd been beating his relatives at it when he was twelve.

  "The idea has merit," Richelieu said. "He will think himself presented with an opportunity to ruin you financially-what little I know tells me that over time the player with deepest pockets can win. And-forgive me Jules, but it was necessary to know-I understand that you rarely lose over the long term. The worst that will happen is that you will rise from the table with some trifling loss, and we might well see Monsieur Gaston subsidizing your new estate."

  "I cannot simply walk in to his circle," Mazarin observed, "unless you want the gesture to be theatrical in the extreme."

  "No, no," Richelieu said, "an outright challenge would be counterproductive for the moment. If Leon would procure you an entree, you should work your way toward playing cards with the fellow for high stakes, somewhere very public. And then, Jules, forget the rules of protocol. You rank before him as a prince of the church. You are entirely permitted, encouraged even, to take him for everything you can."

  The opportunity came shortly after Christmas, at the kind of levee that Mazarin had come to look forward to immensely. Her Majesty, whatever the king thought of her, was a thoroughly charming lady and one whose company he could not get enough of. She, too, liked him. He could see Richelieu's purpose in bringing them together as much as was possible-Anne of Austria, despite the name, was quite thoroughly Spanish, despite the best efforts of her court ladies. She also corresponded frequently with her brother, Philip of Spain, and while the correspondence could not be practically intercepted, Richelieu had deep suspicions that it went beyond simple matters of family gossip. Although, for the Habsburgs, politics, statecraft and warfare were simple matters of family gossip. And Philip of Spain, faced with separations between his own throne and those of Austria and the Netherlands-the United States of Europe had not just messed things up in the Germanies-would be scrabbling for any connection he could get his hands on. And it was only a matter of time before she got drawn into the machinations of another de Chalais-Richelieu had had that one executed but there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of traitors.