The Adventures of Enea, Part 6 of 13

Enea is Pope! (1) It doesn’t look good. There is restiveness around the ‘hood. Naples is in turmoil, a bastard claiming the throne – but is he even a bastard? And isn’t he owned by the French? Cardinal d’Estouteville is treating the Tiara as a done deal. Has he really as good as won? Then the Papacy’s off (again) to Avignon. At the gates of the Papal States is a general with an army. He’s irrupting through, and proceeding to slice the land up, like salami. Piccinino knows this is how it goes: there’s no spine to the Holy See, see? Let him take terrain on the Umbrian plain – but must we lose Assisi? Worse incursions are happening than these. Hordes of Persians and Medes and Pharsees (the irrepressible Turk) are making short work of humanity’s treasury – Europe. They’re going to sack Italy soon. The Muslims took Athens in June. (When you need it, where’s NATO?) For the city of Plato, the game is decidedly up. When some prince claims a “national church”, for his motive it’s not hard to search: they’re stashing the cash for themselves that once weighed-down the Vatican shelves, thereby leaving the pope in the lurch. North Europe views Rome with disdain, and for reasons not pure, but profane. Their domestic corruption brooks no interruption – they just hate being Ultramontane.