Sanchez shrugged. "Much of it, I think, was done from sheer fury. The murderer probably did not expect his victim to strike back, and flew into a rage when he did." He pointed to the intestines spilling onto the floor. "Why else inflict such a wound? No torturer would, for a surety. And most of this was done to make it seem that the man was tortured."

The priest was still frowning. Whether that was because he was puzzled or simply because a frown was his way of maintaining composure in the midst of barbarity, Sanchez could not determine.

"I still don't understand why."

Neither did Sanchez-and the matter was beginning to intrigue him. Given Buckley's past activities, of course, there were a multitude of possible suspects. One of them being . . . well, Sanchez himself.

He decided it would be best to depart now, before that thought occured to the Americans also. Besides, Cardinal Bedmar needed to learn of this matter at once. So, with a flourish, he made his farewells and came as close to scampering out the door as Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz ever came to scampering.

Which was not very close at all. After he was gone, Sharon Nichols shook her head and said: "I swear, that man will swagger into his own grave." But she was smiling when she said it. The first genuine smile on her face since she'd entered that horrible room.

Chapter 33.

The funeral that took place the next day was wholly lacking in Venetian pomp, but drew a ceremonial all of its own. The arrangements had been simple enough; Gus had dealt with it. It had turned out to be easy to persuade the nearest church to let them hold the service, and a grave was to be had for ready money. Given the state of the corpse, no one even proposed employing the services of a mortician. The Marines, sharing Gus' own grim attitude, had taken care of wrapping the body. The casket, of course, was closed.

Mazzare had not even the beginnings of a notion what religion Buckley had had, if any, and Sharon hadn't known either despite their being at college together. So it was a requiem mass, by default, since there would have been complications at the very least had Jones, as the only Protestant minister in town, done the service in his own native liturgy.

He had expected a quiet affair, with just the staff and the ambassadorial party turning out.

Not a bit of it. Mazzare had stepped out of the sacristy, accompanied by a small squadron of Venetian altar boys, to see a church packed wall to wall. In the front pews, the embassy party minus the corporal's guard they'd left behind. Behind them, Mazzare recognized several Venetian dignitaries. None of them of the first rank, and the highest of them would need to puff himself out to make the second rank, but nothing happened by accident in this town. Someone-likely several someones, some number between one and Ten-was sending a message of support.

Mazzare was not really surprised. Outside, he'd been told by Gus, a small mob from the Arsenal had gathered for the funeral also. Joe Buckley's articles had been passed around the Arsenal too, in special editions printed by the Venetian Committee of Correspondence. For whatever reason-always hard to know with that mysterious body-the Council of Ten had chosen to turn a blind eye both to Buckley's activities as well as the propaganda work of the city's small and oft-derided Committee.

Heinzerling himself thought it was because the Council of Ten saw Buckley and his popularity in the Arsenal as an asset to Venice. True, the Venetian elite itself had often been the target of Buckley's muckraking. Buckley had had the touch, however unpolished he might have been, and the Venetian masses had especially enjoyed one article he'd written on the Council of Ten, which he or some wit of an editor had entitled "A Conspiracy of Harlots."

But Venice had not survived for so many centuries in Europe-a republic among monarchies for a thousand years-because its upper crust was given to fits of pique. The real danger they faced was not rebellion on the part of the city's masses, it was foreign intervention. More than once, Venice's powers had used the Arsenalotti to drive out an alien presence which, for one reason or another, the Council of Ten had not wanted to confront directly.

Mazzare wondered if such a maneuver was being undertaken again. And who would be the target?

The Spanish? Maybe . . .

But, if so, Sanchez seemed determined to be the joker in the deck. He'd turned out for the funeral also, and in full hidalgo formal attire. A message from his master, or just here because of Sharon?

Following the service, Buckley went by boat from the church to his grave, accompanied by a fleet of, not mourners exactly, but people who wanted to be seen to be mourners. It seemed a little unreal to Mazzare as he spoke the words and watched the crowd gather. He had visions of political funerals in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and stumbled over the words of committal as visions of riot crossed his mind.

But the funeral was wholly lacking in drama as well. The gravediggers stepped forward on cue as the mourners began to file out of the graveyard. Mazzare took off his stole, and looked to the gray sky that threatened rain but had not yet delivered.

"Larry?" Jones interrupted the reverie that Mazzare always fell into after funerals. "There's a message from Benjamin."

The Jewish lawyer had remained at the embassy to mind the store. "What does he say?" Mazzare asked.

"The State Inquisition is declining to investigate."

Mazzare frowned. He had, naturally, reported the matter to the appropriate authorities as a murder. "Why?" he asked.

"They think it's the Spanish or the French, and they can't arrest any of the diplomats."

"What?" Sanchez had heard.

Jones colored. "Senor Sanchez," he said, "I'm only repeating what was told to me."

Sanchez blew through his mustaches. "Did they have the courage to make this accusation to my face, I should be much tempted to take advantage of my diplomat status." He smiled in a way that was all the more unnerving coming from a man of almost sixty.

Mazzare decided to try conciliation. "Now, senor, I feel sure the accusation was not meant for you personally-"

Sanchez threw back his head and laughed. "Your Excellency forgets that I was here for the conspiracy. Took part in it, in fact. The Venetians would believe anything of me."

A cold wind was idly toying with the clothes of the few mourners who yet remained in the graveyard, but that was not all that made Mazzare shiver. The sheer Latin ferality of the man, when he chose to show it, was quite intimidating. In that moment Mazzare realized he himself could well believe anything of the stocky Spaniard, whom Sharon had once described to him as "Don Quixote on steroids." It was easy to see him smiling in badly feigned innocence while a windmill was blown to smithereens by stealthily planted charges. Tilting he would regard as pointlessly ineffective.

"Behave, Ruy," Sharon said.

"Forgive me, Dona Sharon." Then, turning back to Mazzare: "And forgive my manner, Excellency. The plain fact of the matter is that our nations are in arms against one another. But neither I nor His Eminence the cardinal would resort to such as this. If nothing else, I am pricked by the suggestion that we should do something so foolish. The man Buckley was an annoyance to us, as I understand he was to you-"

Sharon had the good grace to look a little embarrassed at having apparently released a little diplomatic communique of her own. Mazzare decided he would do no more than issue a word to the wise-later.

"-but there are other means to deal with annoyances of his kind."

"Quite," Mazzare said. He'd heard rumors of prosecutions for libel and slander, challenges to duels and so forth. It had been only a matter of time before something had descended on Buckley; it was just that the murderer got to him first.

"Please accept my assurance and my word," Sanchez continued, speaking very formally now, "Your Excellency, that to my knowledge this matter was not conceived of at the embassy of His Most Catholic Majesty."

"Thank you, Sanchez," Mazzare said.

Sanchez bid them all good day, and left immediately. That made sense. If the Venetians were casting aspersions of that character, his master the cardinal Bedmar and the Spanish embassy in general needed to know so as to start protesting immediately. Loudly and in strong terms; Mazzare wondered how Bedmar kept a straight face. The old cardinal was one of the sharpest operators in Venice, for all he played the role of feeble old man in over his head.

And, at that, he might well have to keep a straight face through all those protests. Sanchez was himself a competent operator, and had not gone so far as to pledge his word absolutely for the clean hands of the whole Spanish presence in Venice. There were, in effect, two missions from His Most Catholic Majesty in town right now, and no firm guarantee that the left hand knew what the right was doing. Mazzare had met Bedmar several times, and the other Spaniards likewise. Never in the same place, and always on neutral ground. The regular mission-the one from Madrid-was polite, reserved and distant, saying nothing and giving away less. Bedmar, on the other hand, seemed to be hinting at a second agenda, a possibility that there was more to discuss than just how little personal rancor there was arising from the fact that their mutual nations were at war. There was, however, nothing of substance in that as yet. It was, at best, frustrating.

Jones interrupted this rather gloomy train of thought. "Penny for 'em," he said.

Mazzare looked around and saw that he and Jones were the last to leave, apart from the gravediggers, who were settled into a steady rhythm as they buried poor Buckley in Venice's soggy silt.

"Poor value for money," he grunted.

"Stuck for ideas?" Jones said. "Me too."

They began to walk away from the grave, toward the gate, threading through the ornate monuments under which the Venetians buried their dead. "The Venetians say it's the French or the Spaniards," Mazzare said, "and Sanchez denies it. The Spanish part."

"You believe him?" Jones asked, pulling his coat tighter about him against the chill breeze of early spring.

"I'd like to."

"Larry, don't get all gloomy on me again. Last time I turned out for one of your funerals, you went all serious on me. Did everything but start another Reformation."

Mazzare, suddenly reminded of old Mrs. Flannery's funeral, bit off the smart answer he'd been assembling practically from the moment Jones had opened his mouth. Irene Flannery, retired schoolteacher, dragon and stalwart of St. Mary's back in Grantville, had died in a cavalry raid on the town, too stubborn to leave her home for the safety of the downtown buildings where Grantville's heavily armed population had ambushed and defeated a horde of Wallenstein's raiders.