5 April 1643
Pope Urban VIII walked with Cardinal Pamphili towards the window and watched the red evening of the burning city of Rome spread out across the sky like a lamb surrendered for a bloody sacrifice upon an altar. His eyes wandered the half deserted streets and the screams of those attempting to escape swept against his ears as harshly as the ember-stocked breeze.
The Solemn High Mass of Easter had been celebrated within the Lateran palace earlier that day with a congregation that were mostly refugees from the fighting and looting. One might have mistaken every single one for a staunch churchman in those days. It was a fantastical experience for Urban and those Cardinals that he kept with him: to celebrate the glory of the Resurrection in the midst of an occupied city. But there didn't seem to be any shame in Urban's demeanor as he celebrated the most important feast day of the calendar. Indeed, during the entire reading of the Mass (and despite the presence of Persian guards right outside the palace), Urban had remained rigid and stone-like.
Now, as he looked out at the still half burning remains of the Eternal City, Urban began to feel his heart sink for the first time since the news of the Persian advance had reached him a week or so earlier. The old Cardinal next to him watched the Holy Father and pursed his lips consciously in thought. “This April is the cruelest month,” the old Cardinal said stiffly. Both men were already aging, and both had busied their careers with the counter-Reformation and the political delicacies of Europe. Neither expected to see the green banners of Islam walk through the streets of Rome.
“Why do you think we stayed?” Urban asked his secretary the Cardinal with a heavy, warm exhale forced through his quivering lip accented by a hint of curiosity.
Cardinal Pamphili was distracted by the swirl of smoke and intermittent sound of cannon fire going off in the far distance. Eventually he looked towards Urban and blinked his wrinkled eyes. Nonetheless, he remained as erect as a man ready to lift a weight from the ground but his arms were clasping each other behind his back.
“I know why I stayed,” Cardinal Pamphili replied carefully while looking at the moved countenance of His Holiness. “Where your court is, Holiness, I will be there as well. I suspect that is the same reason you stayed.”
“For myself?” Urban asked from some surprise at the Cardinal’s intimations.
“No, Holiness... I think you were following Christ to His crucifixion. Following Peter as he went back to Rome. Wherever Christ’s court is, you will be.”
“Encouraging words, Pamphili,” Urban replied with a sneer that both were used to. It was not that Urban was mocking the allusion: it was quite the opposite, really.
Both men were just as surprised at each other that both decided to stay. They were both men of politics and calculation. It was true that there was a calculus in staying in Rome, but there was also something else there that both men (being somewhat a critics and confidants to each other) noticed. The question Urban asked earlier encapsulated the kind of pleasant surprise and sardonic glee that both felt: for some reason, these two self-serving men had decided to have the courage of St. Peter and stand in a hostile city.
“The rest of the court is with you,” Pamphili added after a moment.
“Of course they are,” Urban replied with a more intentioned sarcasm, “the ones who disagreed had fled the city by now.”
Pamphili gave a tortured shrug that slid his crimson mantle up and down like a turtle shell shifting. “Perhaps Christ will appear to them as they flee.”
Urban smirked at the continuation of the allusion. “They’ll ask ‘quo vadis?’” Urban said.
“And Christ will tell them that he’s going to be crucified again in Rome.”
There was another short pause as both men considered the small joke they had played despite the carnage wrought upon the city they witnessed. A small brigade of Persian soldiers passed a few blocks down from the window and both men could see their triumphant march as windows and doors closed with shuddering terror in their path.
“I suppose this means we’ll probably be crucified as well,” Urban broke into the quiet between them. The tone was not particularly sad, however. It was a resigned breath as Urban squinted out onto the cityline as if he could see something in the distant horizon.
“The Persians—especially this general of theirs wouldn’t be foolish enough to touch anyone in this Palace,” Pamphili began to explain as if he was reading a catechism. “Their mission is to finish what their Caliphates before had failed to do: conquer Europe for the crescent. If they harm us here, they won’t even be able to hold this city. Terror will be replaced with a Crusade.”
---
The heavy clinks of ghulam armour rang through the streets of Rome like the sound of shattering glass. This parade of man, metal, and horse galloped and trodded down the thoroughfares of the city proper and circled the Lateran Palace like a boa constrictor coiling around its prize. Along one of the corners of the narrow streets with a building rising across the skyline like a plateau, flags carrying the crescent of Islam and the crests of generals flowed in the heated wind.
Men moved in and out: the business of subjugating and policing the city became a massive undertaking and this reflected in the stream of couriers and brigades passing by the bannered building like the central cove of a massive beehive. The building itself was round and fortified to the teeth. Scarred by the recent battle, it now hosted the enemy's banners which flapped against the marble face of a holy angel standing on its superstructure.
Along the parapets, the blood of papal defenders still smeared the battlements. The man who walked the curving length around the fortress reached out his bare fingers and let his nails taste the stone and blood that decorated the fortress' fortifications. Some of the red substance jumped underneath his nails and he looked at the red and black paste clumping under his fingers. He spat violently as he wiped the material onto his richly adorned tunic.
When a minor emir with a golden cylinder in his hand came up behind the man, it was plain to see how tall the man was. He rose above the parapet like a pole, but his body was as thick a tree trunk. As the man turned around to see the messenger approaching him, one could see the shortness of the his beard: he was a younger commander.
“Qayd, we have the city securely within our control. His Excellency has brought you these orders to carry out,” the messenger reported and handed over the golden container.
“Jafar likes to stand on ceremony,” the man scoffed as he retrieved the document. His dirty hands hastily marred the precious object as he slipped the paper out.
The messenger straightened himself up as his superior gave him the container in return. It still chafed against the junior officer's sensibilities to refer to the supreme commander in such a familiar way. “I'm ready to take your orders,” the messenger added.
The tall man read the paper and snickered at seeing his name so ornately addressed to at the top:
Qayd Tariq Gul abd' Rashid... “Have you read this before you delivered this to me, Farid?”
The messenger once again straightened his body and looked at those dirty brown eyes that stared at him from above like guns pointing down at him from a tower. “N—no sir,” the man iterated.
“You should have,” the tall Qayd shot back immediately, “otherwise you would not have bothered to give this to me,” Tariq replied with some spit erupting out from the corner of his mouth as he crumpled the order into his sleeve. He immediately swung around to face the church of St. Peter and then towards the Lateran Palace. “Jafar is too austere of a man,” he said suddenly.
Guest Author Calipah Provides the next Seven Paragraphs
The messenger was stuck like another marble statue on the parapet and he dreaded to make any expression on his face. Tariq gritted his teeth – he loathed such charity, such ‘high-sounding’ gestures extended to a broken enemy, such…what would he call it? Weakness of the spirit. Jafar was an old fart and a fool to boot, there was no doubt about it.
Irritated and seething with malice, he spit on the plastered wall and followed its trail with a scowl. “Send for Van at once.” The messenger bowed and scuttled away, disappearing amidst the maze of marble. The moments lingered in the Qayd’s impatient wait, but he could soon hear the hurried footsteps of his courtier and servant, the muhabab of his heart.[1]
He fluttered for an instant, but unleashed his vitriol nonetheless “Have you heard what the Imperator-Aygostus Kaysar has decreed now?” he remarked sarcastically. The young Armenian remained quiet, he knew his master well enough to recognize a long libel in the making. “Conqueror of Roma indeed! The coward dares ask me not to touch the Papa, that wretched dog festering behind his mountains of bullion in the Lateran! Pfah!” he smirked, casting a glimpse at his intimidated slave with the corner of his eye. “I fought in the Hindustan Kush well before you were born mein habib. Do you know what was the best message one could send to the infidel?”
Van’s Adam’s apple quivered “no mein Sultanjah.”
The Qayd adjusted his belt indolently “The severed head of a Raja.” Amused by his witticism, the commander let out a roaring laugh “Vidi vici vini indeed.” He turned to Van and smiled slyly, perhaps even invitingly. “I conquered with a musket in one hand and a Quran in the other, the Khyber pass knew me by the trail of blood and tears I left in my wake. Do you understand, dear beloved Van, that this fundamental difference, the thin level as they say, between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb[2]? This land here, which God willing shall be made an eternal Muslim abode, is festered with the creed of falsehood. What better way to make the Divine will resplendent than to cut off the serpents head? Am I not right?” The Armenian remained silent, and the Qayd shot back with his much accustomed abuse “answer me pig-whore!”
No rejoinder was elicited, and no time for such trivialities “no matter…” Tariq gazed once more at St. Peter and then to St. John Lateran, a wicked grin growing across his mouth. Its not a bad idea you know? This would surely buy him the favor of Isfahan, and the dread of his enemies. Besides, Jafar could do little in the way of retribution – no one would cry over a dead, decrepit infidel.
“My beautiful ghulam, I have a task for you…”
---
Alvaro looked wearily at the green flags moving upward across the Danube and the Tiber on the massive wall map across from the dimly lit table where he sat. The golden press of Spain's imperial domains came under the mossy crosshatch of an incoming foe. “Rome, Constantinople, everything south of the Tiber has fallen. Antioch's garrison has been overtaken by starvation, Jerusalem will fall within the month, and Alexandria is being blockaded,” one of the men along the long wooden table reported to the gathering.
The other men along the table were silent and awaited the report to process in the ears of the master of the table. “What is their strength?” Alvaro asked down the shaded length of the table.
“Fifty thousand are moving through the Balkans: mostly infantry that they ferried across a land bridge they created with their old obsolete vessels across the strait,” the man reporting quickly replied. The significance of the move (reminiscent of the method used to conquer the city of Constantine the first time) was not lost on the men gathered there. “There are almost eighty thousand roaming across Italy with half of that concentrated in Rome and pushing upward towards Florence. Ten thousand to twenty thousand—mostly cavalry—are moving along North Africa raising armies of Morisco and Berber rebels to their cause and racing towards Tunis as we speak.”
There was silence again as deliberation receded into the minds of each of the attendants. “And what of our deployment?” Alvaro asked after a minute.
“General Weirs and the main corps are still engaged in Britain. De Melo is holding the Dutch at Artois to a stalemate. Von Mercy has fifty thousand men in Germany and a few more scattered across the border with Lithuania. More importantly, The Duke of Modena has garrisoned a small force of twenty thousand on the Po—everything we could muster in the surrounding area and our men in the Balkans have all but evaporated—we have not heard anything from General Hernandez and assume he's either fled north or captured by the Persians.”
“Who's ready here at home?” Alvaro asked quickly.
“General Hidalgo is mustering the reserve men here and in Avila, but he won't be ready for another month—I'm afraid they'll mostly be volunteers and mercenaries. With our expedition still stuck in Scandinavia, we literally have no manpower left now that we've pushed our last bit of resources into reconquering Britain.”
Another pause of silence. Alvaro looked over to his right and saw the Cardinal sitting in his seat with a deflated posture. Nonetheless, the prince of the church was obviously calculating something in his mind.
“Send word to the Duke of Modena to move his men to Piemont. We will hold off the Persians along the Rhone. Have Von Mercy head south to Vienna. Vienna is the corridor between the Carpathians and the Alps... we must hold it.”
One of the couriers immediately began running out of the chamber. “This may or may not be enough, but even if we were able to hold them--” one of the men began asking.
“We'll worry about that when it happens. If necessary we can abandon all of Italy and Germany and have the Persians overextend themselves. What I'm more worried about... is that Persian fleet.”
“Half the Armada is attempting to get supplies to Norway before our troops mutiny,” one of the men reminded Alvaro.
“And that is just as important—in that case we'll need to trust in the strength of our seamen. Have Admiral Antonio de Oquendo prepare the Armada at Cadiz for action. The Persian fleet is our first priority.”
“What of His Holiness?” one of the men asked on the table. There was a hushed silence that accompanied his query.
The red figure at the right end of the table shifted. “Since this was my miscalculation, I will lead the recovery team myself to secure the Pope and bring him here,” the Italian said.
“It was my miscalculation,” Cardinal Rimini admitted sourly into the small communications device. “I will personally bring him--”
“That won't be necessary, Eminence,” the voice on the other side of the device, “we're handling the situation now.”
The Italian Cardinal sighed heavily and rested backwards into his chair. He had shot up when he heard the news about Trey, but now he held firmly onto his seat. He took a moment to calm himself. “What about the dead boy we found in that house? The Romanian. Have you figured out the connection yet?”
“The one that was killed by one of the Belmonts?” there was a short pause from the other side of the device. “I suspect you know more about the Belmonts than I do.”
Cardinal Rimini pondered the statement for a moment. “A family feud perhaps—that's all I can say about that.”
“I also get the feeling I'm not the only one looking into all of this,” the voice asked almost immediately after the Cardinal spoke.
There was another short pause. “We're using all of our resources for this matter,” the Cardinal said with some reluctance.
“'They should never be known to anybody, nor should they know one another,'” the voice on the other side recited.
The Cardinal recognized the commentary and replied quietly, “Just one of the dangers of being a spy, as I'm sure you know.”
Chapter CXXXV: Spies (coming soon)
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[1] I am told by Calipah that this expression and the subsequent expressions of “beloved” etc are used in a condescending manner and, when understood from the cultural perspective of the Middle Eastern and Persian tradition, does not constitute anything romantic but rather are done to emphasize domination in this context.
[2] Translated as “House of Islam” and “House of War.” Tariq is explaining his philosophy of the warlike necessity in Islam.
