From out of the radio’s washes of static emerged a single, clear click. Ruy felt his wife’s hand flex quickly-and then grow still, tense, as two more, longer clicks sounded, followed by a rapid patter of them as the interference diminished to a sound more akin to bacon frying in a distant room.

“Is that them-the group in Chiavenna?”

Odo smiled. “Yes, it’s my friend Matthias.”

Ruy smiled too, half out of his own gladness, half simply to see his wife’s radiant joy and relief. “What is Matthias sending, Odo?” he asked.

“That they are still in Chiavenna. The rest of the group is on their way to the rendezvous point with the cardinal.”

Ruy raised an eyebrow. “Well, our courier apparently caught up with the cardinal while he was still traveling along the Spanish Road in the Valtelline. Meaning that the holy father’s information was accurate.”

“Accurate enough to save the cardinal’s life,” appended Sharon. “And he might be the only cardinal loyal to the pope who’ll be saved, at this rate. Unless, maybe, some of the other cardinals which Borja has ‘disappeared’ might still be alive somewhere, waiting for-”

Ruy shook his head. “Kings, like criminals, cover their misdeeds with great finality, my beauteous wife. And Borja is both a king of the church and a criminal of the basest kind. He will not leave any evidence if he can help it.”

The room was still. The threat to the lives of the incognito refugees who were with them here outside Padua-Pope Urban VIII, his nephew Cardinal Antonio Barberini, and Father Vitelleschi, the father-general of the Jesuit Order-seemed suddenly very close. Glancing at the countryside outside the room’s small window, Ruy found it distressingly easy to imagine it filled with shadowy assassins and informers. The sooner they could get His Holiness on one of the up-timers’ wondrous airplanes, the better.