But . . . Frank couldn't think of anything else to do either, except play it by ear. This supposedly well-planned scheme was about to get very unpredictable. Lyrics by Antonio Marcoli; music by Michel Ducos. What else could you expect?

"I pissed myself," Marius whined. "My legs are getting cold."

That wasn't helping Frank's nerves any, either.

"If ye've any suggestions, Augustus, ye ken richt weel this is the time for 'em," Lennox murmured to Heinzerling.

The Inquisition's public hearing-an innovation in itself-was being held in San Matteo because that was the Inquisition's "home" church. The ruse Heinzerling had devised had gotten Lennox and himself inside the church; had even gotten them some of the prized seats-but not, unfortunately, the squad of cavalrymen. Those had had to remain outside, with Lieutenant Trumble in command.

They'd gotten seats with the quality at the very head of the nave, close to the pulpit. The sanctuary was behind them, and the Stone boys and their Venetian cohorts had picked a spot to stand right at the front of the common peoples' part of the nave. A small knot of them, right by the aisle. No doubt they had meant to have an escape route clear, but the aisle was also filling up.

"I should have more ideas, mein' ich, if I knew what these knaben were planning, ja?" Heinzerling tried to match Lennox's fixed stare at the Stone boys with a constant scan around the place.

"Och, I ken that right enough."

"Ja?"

"All we've to do is dream up the stupidest thing the bampots could possibly do, and there is their plan."

The note of humor in Lennox's voice was genuine. Heinzerling realized he, too, had a sneaking regard for the Stone boys. At their age he'd been a prize little prig, and would never have dreamed of doing something so glorious, adventurous and utterly verruckt. It had taken him years to learn how to be so daft.

"Perhaps it is so easy as to go over there and insist they leave with us before the business begins?" Heinzerling couldn't think of anything else to do. Besides, simplicity was usually the right solution to a problem anyway. "In fact, we shall, yes? Stop them before they start. They will not know that we dare not try and force them for fear of diplomatic embarrassment."

"Oh, dare we not? I'll hae th'idjits oot o' here by the baw-heers and never mind their eyes watr'in nor any diplomacy, Augustus. Ye've confession an' absolution and like Romish stuff, so it strikes me we'd do better to think on forgiveness and no let frae any man, eh?" Lennox's face was turned away from Heinzerling's, but the brawler's grin was loud and clear in his voice.

"Speak so to our boys, and I think they will believe you." Heinzerling looked down at where the Stone boys, all three, and their Venetian friends had their eyes fixed on Lennox. He could see the effect Lennox's grim smile was having on them. "Shall we not go, then?" he proposed. "Before the trial begins, and while they are still nervous."

"Aye. Wi' me, then," said Lennox, rising from his seat.

At that moment a chime rang and the entire congregation rose.

"Hold," Heinzerling whispered. "It begins."

"Och, bully, we dithered too long. Maybe we should-"

Heinzerling hissed for quiet. Sitting side on to the main axis of the nave, they had to crane to look in either direction. Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Heinzerling saw Cardinal Barberini-the youngest of the three, the one his former master Monsignor Mazarini had worked for-walking down the sanctuary, accompanied by a small flotilla of deacons and altar boys. Barberini was clearly about to make some kind of speech. Behind him came another eight men in the vestments of Inquisitors. Only four of them besides Barberini himself were cardinals, which was unusual in itself.

Barberini stood at the sanctuary rail and cleared his throat.

Probably a standard speech, Heinzerling thought. As the cardinal began to address the congregation, he turned to watch the boys carefully for any signs of movement. Now that he was in a standing position he could see more of the row behind them.

There, suddenly, he saw a man whose description he recognized. All traces of humor vanished.

"Ducos. Scheisse!"

Chapter 48.

Cardinal Antonio Barberini had the rare experience of proceeding into a church without knowing exactly what would take place, and knowing he would not. Scheiner was to make the principal speech against Galileo, Grassi having finally agreed that perhaps he was a little too involved, a little too likely to attach undue personal vehemence. And, on the other side, the American priest Mazzare had been ordered to speak on Galileo's behalf.

The church was packed. The day was growing warm, and all Rome seemed to have turned out to see Galileo tried. Or, rather, not tried, but inquired into. The Inquisition had done so much of its business behind closed doors, for so long, that a public hearing raised a great deal of curiosity. Much of it morbid, the cardinal suspected.

Barberini's presence, and the presence of the other inquisitors-it would be as well to put the name to them that everyone else would, even though they were not, lawfully, of the Holy Office-brought the assembled congregation to silence.

"Brethren in Christ-" he began, and realized that off to his right, the silence was not complete.

The cardinal had little of either German or English, but he recognized the one word, a German obscenity. And then something he couldn't follow.

Another voice, in English this time, or so he thought. He glared, trying to place the grossly improper interruption. He could feel his face purpling as his ire and outrage increased-

There! He saw them. A nobleman of some kind and his attendant priest. They fell silent, staring back at him in silent apology, murmurs spreading out from them.

What to do? Any response would carry the whole proceeding into farce, he decided. Today was not a day to stand on dignity at the price of solemnity. He kept silence for a beat or two, and carried on.

"Brethren in Christ, today's proceedings are novel, an innovation before you all. What falls to be decided today is the terms of advice to be given to His Holiness the Pope by the Holy Office and the other learned fathers you see behind me. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit is upon us all-"

He said a simple blessing. The amen that followed it was a quiet thing, but from a thousand or more throats almost thunderously loud.

A few more preliminary remarks, upon the great weight of theological questions, the mortal peril to men's souls of error, and then Galileo was brought in. Another murmur. This was the man about whom the Holy Office had ordered sermons preached. The man whose ideas they had all been told were dangerous. What would they think to see him given an open hearing?

He told the congregation that Scheiner would deliver the first address and sat down.

Mazzare nodded to Scheiner as the man rose in response to hearing his name. A small area in the transept had been screened off for them to remain in, to take notes toward the addresses they must give if they so chose. Scheiner went to the pulpit to begin the process of damning Galileo, who even now was being seated in the sanctuary, a chair having been brought in for the old man. Mazzare could just see where Galileo sat, facing the congregation, slumped in the chair, head bowed and hands in his lap.

It was hard to square the meek, frightened old man with the fiery disputant who had delivered so many kicks to the backside of Europe's scientific establishment over the last thirty years. And, being honest, more than a few to the crotch. Galileo had often been wrong, too, especially when he delved into astronomical matters, a field in which he really accomplished nothing as a theoretician; his great contribution there was his invention of the telescope and his observational data. He'd been wrong about the nature of comets, when he opposed Tycho Brahe; wrong again when he opposed Kepler on the cause of the tides. Ironically, the popular image of the man as a great astronomer that would emerge over the centuries was due almost entirely to his trial.

Galileo's real contribution to science had been in the field of mechanics, not astronomy. But no matter where Galileo's interests took him, one thing had remained constant through the years: his arrogance, and his abusive conduct toward any who opposed him. Galileo had rarely hesitated to pile personal insult onto scholarly sarcasm. Nor was he given to any great scruples when it came to grabbing credit for himself or denying it to others. He paid no attention to his great contemporary Johannes Kepler, the first two of whose famous three laws of planetary motion had been published as far back as 1609, and the third law ten years later. Newton's three laws would derive from Kepler, not from Galileo.

Galileo had fumbled the defense of the Copernican theory, too. Because he refused to pay attention to what Kepler was doing, Galileo had been unable to solve the apparent contradictions of the Copernican theory-and it was that, as much as anything, that had ultimately led to his trial for heresy. The fact would become obscured in the historical record because of the glamour surrounding Galileo's "martyrdom," but the simple truth was that in the early seventeenth century Ptolemaic theory predicted the movements of the heavenly bodies better than Copernican theory did-with the exception of Kepler, who finally discovered that the planetary orbits were ellipses rather than circles.

Anyone who knew Galileo Galilei, and Mazarre had spoken to several of them, knew that he was abrasive and obnoxiously self-righteous if he was not impressed with the need to be mannerly. His months under the orders of the Inquisition had agreed with him to that extent, at least. The reports that he was by nature a bully had been made false at last, in the way most such reports were made false: the man had encountered a bigger bully.

Out in the main body of the church, Scheiner had ascended to the pulpit and was beginning his oration. In traditional style, in Latin. How much of it the congregation was following was anyone's guess, but the important part of the audience was all fluent in the language. Latin in this day and age was the primary language of science as well as religion.

And there was another of the historical ironies of Galileo's trial, Mazzare thought wryly. The world would come to remember it as a clash between science and religion, the latter embodied in the Catholic Church. Which, to a degree, it certainly was. But the world would forget that most of the great scientists of the day were also Catholic clerics, including Copernicus himself-and that the early track record of the Protestants on the subject of science was considerably more dismal than the Catholics. It was Protestant theologians who first denounced the Copernican theory for being contrary to Scripture. Both Luther and Melanchthon had inveighed against Copernicus, where Popes Leo X and Paul III had provided him with support.

Mazzare had scripted his own speech, and was confident enough in the language to be taking notes. Not at the moment, though, as Scheiner was beginning with a rehearsal of the facts of the matter that, Galileo had agreed, was pretty much accurate.

"Stage fright, Larry?" The Reverend Jones put a hand on his shoulder.

"Yes, Simon," Mazzare murmured, one ear on the dry, German-accented Latin coming from the pulpit. "It'd be easier if what I'd had from Galileo wasn't just a lot of wheedling about being misunderstood."

"Sure. How did the stuff on the space program go down with him? I meant to ask, but you know how it is." Jones waved his hand in a small motion that took in the church, the congregation they could see through the fretwork screen, the inquisitors sitting across the sanctuary like a jury of vestmented vultures.