the supplier, instead of dragging them off beyond each town’s outskirts and then loading them.”
“I thought you said that they didn’t have wagons,” Odoardo muttered, half annoyed, half confused.
“I was just trying to make a point-but you’re right: we’ve not found much in the way of wheel ruts and the other spoor we’d expect if the group had any heavy wagons. So the reason they traveled so quickly is that they traveled light. And they took precautions so that no townspeople ever saw but a few of them, and usually not the same ones, from what we can tell.”
“I thought the English-speakers always went to town.”
“Odoardo, my boy,” Valentino patronized, enjoying the rare opportunity to torture the insolent behemoth, “you really must pay more attention to the details. Yes, an English speaker-or several-were always in the group that went to town. But that might simply be because most of the party are English-speakers. Which would be exactly what we’d expect from a group of up-timers, don’t you think?”
What Odoardo lacked in perspicacity, he made up for in stubbornness. “If this group is our target, then they’d have servants-from their Roman embassy. They could’ve sent them to do the ‘victualing.’ Then no one would have known there were so many people who could speak English. If they were trying to travel without being detected, that’s what they’d have done.”
“Yes. Of course they would. They’d send their servants. Servants who probably can’t keep from inadvertently revealing their secrets any more than you can resist blabbing your own to anyone who’ll listen. Not exactly the team I would send to buy provisions if I wanted to maintain a low, largely undetected, profile. And besides, although each provisioning group always contained English speakers, the shop keepers have reported very different accents: a few were genuine English, a lot used this Amideutsch that you hear Germans speaking these days, some say they heard genuine up-time dialect, and a few report strange accents, maybe from Ireland or Scotland. Which, when you consider the group we’re looking for, matches the mix of expected nationalities.”
“Merchants might be that mixed.” Odoardo tried to sound confident.
It was Linguanti who answered. “If they’re merchants, then where are their wagons?”
Odoardo’s head went forward in a silent sulk.
Valentino had already forgotten him, looking at the northern panorama of mountains; far to the left, the Little Dolomites were leaning north, in the direction of the true Dolomites, whose distant peaks were painted bright pink and silver by the setting sun. “No,” declared Valentino, “every other lead we found north of the Po checked out, made sense. But this one, this group-no. And what the devil would merchants be doing heading up into this country, anyway? If they wanted to traverse the alps from western Veneto, they would have gone via Lake Garda and then Trent, up toward Bolzano.”
Odoardo’s voice rumbled up from where his chin was tucked into his chest. “Maybe they’re trading to the valley folk.”
Valentino laughed heartily. “Oh, yes. Of course. How foolish that I didn’t see it earlier. But I see it clearly now-thanks to you, Odoardo. In fact, we are actually tracking a multinational rabble of merchants who have journeyed all the way from the British Isles and Germany. For here, in PreAlpine Italy, they mean to set up a thriving trade going from one unpopulated valley to another, selling their big city baubles to the local troglodytes in exchange for riches such as smelly cheese, old goatskins, and the dubious favors of their cross-eyed daughters.”
Odoardo was silent, except for the steady grinding of his teeth.
Valentino ignored him. He looked up at the failing light that was plunging the strange mix of both naked and pine-forested peaks into a rosy pre-dusk gloom. “No,” breathed Valentino to no one in particular, “we’ve finally got the scent of these damned up-timers and their renegade pope. They’re up here. Somewhere.”
PART FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY
Harry Lefferts sat in the stern of the boat. He was well-cloaked and, thinking back, reflected that the monk’s habit that had been his disguise from Palestrina to Rome hadn’t been so bad by comparison. The Piombinese fisherman-turned-sailor manning the tiller glanced sympathetically at him and offered a water skin that Harry waved away regretfully. All he needed to complete his collection of discomforts was an urgent need to relieve his bladder- because there was no way to do so without getting up. And getting up would mean having the cloak fall away. And that would be disastrous.
Because, against all odds, the three Mallorcan fishermen in the little ketch that they had spotted working only two miles off the Cap des Pins, were now engaged in animated discussion with Miro, who sat in the bows of the scialuppa.
The three fishermen had been leery of the close approach of the unfamiliar and bigger ship, and put hands to oars for a while before it became obvious that, with the newcomer approaching from windward, flight was useless. They had been pleasantly surprised to be hailed in the colloquial-and unintelligible-Mallorquin of a native speaker. Their attitudes had quickly changed from suspicion to welcome as Miro leisurely plied them-from a distance of about ten yards-for the latest news of pirates, trade, fishing, and coastal watches.
At least, that’s what Harry was told by the fellow in front of him, a half-Corsican Piombinese who had sailed to the Balearics once or twice in the journeys of his youth. Harry could not make out any of the exchange, other than a few common nouns and verbs, here and there. Which annoyed him considerably. He’d taken high school Spanish, and had passed it, largely due to his innate facility for languages rather than any scholastic diligence. And so he had felt-with some pride-that his old familiarity with Spanish would prove to be a profoundly useful skill on this operation.
But here he was, sitting on a bobbing boat off the east coast of Mallorca, baking in the sun, straining his ears and hearing only indecipherable chatter. Catalan was not merely a “different form” of Spanish as one of the temporary teachers in Grantville High School had airily assured him years ago; it was a god-damned different language. Oh sure, you could hear the Spanish roots in it, but it was more like Spanish that had been hijacked by French, but also with some of those sloppy Portuguese vowel sounds blended in for good measure. And to make matters worse, the specific dialect used here was punctuated with buzzing z’s and choppy x’s and those hard, choked ch’s he associated with German and Yiddish.
Although here, those phlegm-rolling ch-sounds were inheritances from Arabic. Mallorca had been in Moorish hands for many centuries, and afterward remained a prime hunting ground for North African pirates. The worst of the depredations had been carried out by the two Barbarossa brothers just a century earlier. Which was why Estuban had been so careful making his approach: the island was ringed by pirate watchtowers, and, although the last eighty years had seen a marked decrease in the size and frequency of the raids, they were still frequent enough to be a source of worry, particularly out here on the comparatively wild and sparsely populated eastern coast.
And now, yes, to make matters even worse, Harry Lefferts felt uncomfortable pressure beginning to mount in his bladder: he’d sipped too much water when the sun started getting truly intense at about ten AM. And now he was going to pay for it. So Harry gritted his teeth, tucked his knees tightly together and hissed a question at the half-Corsican in front of him. “What are they talking about now?”
“Signor Miro is asking harmless questions about the garrison at the tower just inland here.” He jutted his stubbled chin toward the end of the rocky coastline hanging over them to the north like a pine-strewn shelf. “Then he asks about fishing. Then about the olives near Manacor. Then about the Torre de Canyamel.”
“That’s the big tower protecting the next bay to the north, right?”
“ Si, although the tower is somewhat inland. It seems the garrison there is not large, and they do not mount many coast patrols. Which is good, because if they did, we would not be able to make use of the Caves of
