The Mongoliad: Book Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The custom, as old as the Church herself, was that the names would be announced by the most senior Cardinal. He would draw the names from the chalice, one by one, and read each aloud to the assembled host of Cardinals. He would then hand the slip to his assistant, the second-oldest Cardinal, who would repeat the name. Finally, using a needle, the slip would be strung on a red thread that had been prepared by younger priests and left in the room the night before.

Bundled together on the red threads, the first three had been inscribed with Bonaventura. This came as no surprise, although based on his unexpected standoff with Senator Orsini the day before, the collective assumption was that Castiglione would be getting most of the remaining votes.

When Cardinal Torres read the name on the fourth strip-Father Rodrigo Bendrito-Fieschi noted the reaction of several of the Cardinals. Gloating quietly, they glanced around at the others as if to say, “Ha! Take that!” There was, briefly, an air of repressed amusement in the room.

But when the fifth strip also contained Father Rodrigo’s name, the Cardinals looked startled, glancing almost guiltily at each other. Fieschi raised his hand casually to cover the smile he couldn’t quite suppress. Their expressions were only going to grow more pronounced over the next few minutes.

Fieschi had been watching the faces of the others during the election process and had kept a dutiful count. He already knew that every remaining slip of paper in that chalice had Bendrito’s name on it. The crazy wayward stranger, the common priest lost in his own world of madness, was about to be elected as the next Bishop of Rome. Fieschi settled back in gilded anticipation.

The sixth strip: Bendrito. The scores were now even. Alarm was exchanged between certain parties; astonishment from others. Colonna and Capocci, the eternal clowns, traded looks that bordered on perverse delight. They do not understand what they have done. It is all childishly unreal to them, Fieschi thought with contempt. All that matters is their petty satisfaction in watching Bonaventura lose.

“Father Rodrigo Bendrito,” Cardinal Torres read aloud. His aged face showed no expression as he handed the seventh strip to Cardinal Colonna, who repeated the name and added it to the others. Every Cardinal in the room sat up in his seat, or shifted about, some with consternation, others relief. Since there were ten Cardinals voting, Bonaventura needed seven votes to win; Father Rodrigo, by having claimed four votes, now made that impossible.

“That’s that, then,” Annibaldi ventured. “Another deadlock. Send up the black smoke.” He started to stand.

“No,” Fieschi said sharply. “We cannot say there is a deadlock until all the votes have been read.”

Every head in the room turned to look at him, all equally surprised at such a statement from Bonaventura’s most vocal supporter.

“We must do this honorably,” Fieschi said with dripping condescension. “All the votes must be counted, even though we know there will be no success in it.”

“It will be a deadlock,” said Torres in a tone of concession, clearly disliking ever having to agree with Fieschi. “Arithmetic gives us that.”

“Count the votes,” Fieschi said. “We must have a record, amongst ourselves, of where we stand.”

The eighth strip of paper: Father Rodrigo Bendrito. Again the return to darting glances.

“We should annul the votes,” said de Segni. “If we stop now-”

“And what is your precedent for breaking with this long-standing ritual?” Fieschi asked. “This is our tradition. We must remain firm of purpose and trust that God’s will be done.”

The ninth strip of paper: Father Rodrigo Bendrito.

“This is a terrible jest,” Bonaventura said nervously. “Six of you are making a mockery of this process!”

Cardinal Torres reached in for the last slip of paper, looked at it, and with a dumbfounded expression, turned to Cardinal Colonna for aid.

“Not six,” Colonna said, taking the slip from Torres. “Seven. This name is also Father Rodrigo Bendrito.” To Fieschi, Colonna seemed perversely delighted. “Fathers, we have our new Pontiff.”

Immediate chaos overtook the chamber. Nine Cardinals leaped from their seats, a rainbow of different hues of amazement, from outrage (Bonaventura) to awe (da Capua) to delight (Capocci)…

“You did this!” Bonaventura shouted over the hubbub, crossing threateningly toward Fieschi, who alone remained sitting.

“Did I?” Fieschi said archly. “I have only one vote. There are seven votes for the priest.”

“If you had not changed your vote!” Bonaventura nearly screamed.

“If any of us had not,” Fieschi agreed.

“A common priest is not worthy to be Pope!” dei Conti snorted derisively.

“Ah, now,” Fieschi warned with calm condescension. “The first Pope was a fisherman.”

In response to the panicked commotion within, a guard outside the chapel had cautiously unbolted the door and opened it wide enough to look in with one eye. Seeing the commotion, he ventured to open it a little more.

“Your Eminences?” he said, completely unheard beneath the squawking and arguing.

But Fieschi saw the guard enter and, rising at last, strode comfortably past his upset fellows. He smiled paternally at the young man. “You may burn the wet straw,” he said. “We want white smoke-a new Bishop of Rome has been chosen.”

The guard’s face relaxed into a smile. “At last,” he said. “Praise God.”

He closed the door behind him without bolting it. Fieschi turned back to face the hubbub of his nine fellow Cardinals. Several voices were already demanding that they throw out the vote and try again.

“Brothers,” Fieschi said calmly, raising his voice. He looked more feline than hawkish now. “Brothers, please calm yourselves. It is too late to throw out the votes. The world has been informed we have a new Pope. We must prepare to announce him.”

Nine pairs of eyes stared dumbfounded at him.

“What right had you to tell anyone?” demanded Rinaldo Conti de Segni.

“Was there not a two-thirds majority cast?” Fieschi responded. “Is that not a deciding vote? We have been secreted away for far too long-this announcement frees us! Why are you not overjoyed at being liberated from our captivity?”

“But the result…” said Annibaldi. He was seconded and thirded and fourthed by others in the room.

“The result stands,” Fieschi said. “There are no grounds for repealing it.”

“He’s not a bishop,” Gil Torres rebutted. “There has never been a man made Pope before he was a bishop.”

“I don’t think there is a law about that,” Fieschi mused. “But perhaps there should be. Let’s ask the new Pope about it.” He put his hand on the door as if he would open it.

“Wait, wait, wait!” shouted a number of voices from the circular chamber, as others demanded, “Let’s talk this through!”

Fieschi turned his back to the door, his eyes flashing cold gray light. Everyone took a step away from him and fell silent. “What is there to discuss?” he said sharply. “We have voted in a leader of the Church. If we feel he is not up to the task, then we must assist him to it. Is that not our duty as Cardinals of the Holy Church? I certainly intend to do so. I hope you will all join me, but that is your choice.” He smiled coldly, enjoying the moment of drama immensely.

The other nine regarded each other dismally, then stared down at their feet, shoulders slumping, subdued.

“Well then,” said Fieschi after a triumphal moment, and threw up his hands to God. “Habemus Papam!”

And then Father Rodrigo was back in the crypt of St. Peter, in this time and this place, this world-this universe. The vision had ravaged his mind, torn out his senses, retuned his perception of the world beyond insanity… but it was over. It had been a test, and he had survived.

The message he had been given, in that feverish dream in the farmhouse near Mohi-the images and mystic understandings he had scribbled feverishly onto a slip of paper, now lost along with his satchel-he had thought, all these long miserable months, that this prophetic vision contained a message he was meant to bring to the leader of all Christendom.

Now he saw the fallacy of that. How arrogant of me, Rodrigo thought, to suppose I could prophesy the future of the world. There were only a few people who could understand anything as vast as what he had scribbled on the piece of paper. One of them, he sensed, was the kind Englishman, but he was dead.

But understanding the vision meant very little. In the wide world’s larger scope, that vision counted for almost nothing. It was a password, or a hazing ritual, that was all: a means by which he was challenged to enter into a realm of mystical insight. The higher powers of the cosmos had asked his unconscious mind to demonstrate that it knew the secret code, and that secret code was no mere phrase of words, but a shattering prophetic vision, to live through with his entire being.

His vision was not the fruits of a mystical initiation; it was merely the invitation to be initiated.

Rodrigo was still trembling. He brought the cool metal of the communion cup to his temple and rolled it gently, side to side, across his forehead. He found the smoothness, and the rolling gesture itself, calming. The metal absorbed the fevered heat he was emitting, yet remained cool. Of course it did, he thought, of course it does. Now at last, he was purified. He was rational. He was sane. He could look back on his strange, fevered behavior since Mohi and see it for what it was, and know that he had come through it. He was challenged, and he had survived.

Having proven he could survive a loss of sanity, at last sanity was restored to him.

First, I must find Ferenc, he thought. The poor boy must be bewildered here without me-he doesn’t have the language, and no experience surviving in a city. And I will need him in what lies ahead. For there is to be no rest for the weary.

He had a responsibility now, a calling; he understood that, just as he understood that until today, he could not have guessed why he was really summoned to Rome. To give a message to the Pope? Ha! What good would that do? One mortal sharing words with another mortal; a transfer of information, nothing more. The spirit of the Christ was far more dynamic than mere words and information.

He looked around the tomb, stood up, tested his balance. He was fine. He felt light on his feet, in fact; his wound was entirely healed, he could not even remember which hip had been wounded. Somebody had changed his clothes since the previous day, and what he wore now was clean and softer than anything he could remember. He had even been accoutred with sandals, a rosary, and a new satchel. Sanity is such a blessing, when your setting is serene, he thought. No wonder he had taken leave of his senses outside Mohi; how else would he have survived?

“Very well, then,” he said to the tomb, quietly. His hand was still clenched around the cool metal, the ever-cool metal, of the communion cup. He tucked that hand into his satchel and smiled benignly around the little tomb. “Thank you, Father,” he said to the coffin of St. Peter. “You are far wiser than the rest of us, and upon this rock, let the new Church, when the time shall come, be built again.”

He turned his back on the tomb, crossed the candlelit room, and strode up the steps with a slow, comfortable assurance he had not known possible.

At the top of the stairs he met a fresh-faced young priest whom he thought he recognized, but he could not figure out why.

“You were down there quite a while, Father,” said the priest. “I was getting worried. I almost came down after you to see if you had hurt yourself.”

“On the contrary, my son,” said Rodrigo with smiling beneficence, “I have never been so well.”

The Cardinals sat around a highly polished wooden table, eating fruit and arguing. They grudgingly acknowledged that the vote was final, now that it had been announced, and that they had, in fact, elected a raving madman to be the next Bishop of Rome. What they could not agree upon was what to do about it.

There were three schools of thought.

First was Bonaventura and the de Segni cousins-Rinaldo and Stefano. They were bound and determined that the vote be somehow invalidated, and had sent junior clergy off to ferret out moldering codices of canon law in the bowels and attics of the church, seeking some justification to excuse them doing just that. They did most of the shouting, because-as far as Fieschi could make out-they wanted to make sure nobody else had a chance to even think straight until they had shaped events to their own liking.

If nothing else, they would probably turn to Orsini for help and ask him to arrange for the Pontiff-elect to be assassinated. This group, in short, was in a dither.

Then there was the group led by Castiglione, who were shocked but not panicked by what had happened. They believed that the vote should hold on legal principles, but that the madman should then be gently induced to decline the honor. This would send all the Cardinals back into seclusion for another vote, but now within the sanctity of the Vatican compound, and not as victims of Orsini’s oppression.

And then there was the unlikely triumvirate of Colonna, Capocci, and Fieschi. For different reasons, these men felt that the vote should hold, and Rodrigo should be enthroned. It was uncommon (but not impossible) to raise as Pope a man who was not a bishop; this was an easy technicality to fix: he could be made bishop, and then anointed Pontiff.

“I am curious. Why do you support the outcome of the election?” Fieschi asked the other two. Obviously the two clowns could not be trusted, but perhaps they would let slip some useful observation that could sway some of the other prelates.

Colonna shrugged. “I’m an old man, and I’m tired of being here,” he said. “If this fellow is accepted, then I can finally go home and change my clothes and start acting like a Cardinal again.”

“So sloth is a primary motivator,” Fieschi said, attempting dry humor but sounding instead as accusatory as he felt.

“Absolutely,” said Colonna. He clapped his right hand down on his friend’s knee. “Capocci, my dear fellow, tell the nice villain why you are taking such a perverse position on this topic.”

“My position is the most honorable one in this room!” protested Capocci, waving his bandaged hand dismissively at everyone else. “We’ve made our bed and now we must lie in it, simple as that. Those of us responsible for leading the masses of Christendom, we have fallen to such a state that we would allow such a man to be elected, and having done so, we have to live with the circumstances. We have only ourselves to blame.”

“That’s a much better response than mine,” said Colonna. He turned to Fieschi. “I want to change my answer to make it more like his.”

Fieschi rolled his eyes. When he returned his attention to the other two Cardinals, he found them staring at him with accusing malice. “And may we dare ask why the great and honorable Fieschi has betrayed his preferred candidate?” asked Colonna.

“You may ask,” Fieschi said. “I am not bound to answer you.”

The other two looked at each other. “Well, that proves it, then,” said Capocci.

“Indeed,” said Colonna, and the two turned to face him together. “You’re definitely up to something nefarious,” he informed Fieschi pleasantly. “Which means we’re going to have to stop you.”

“And hold you accountable,” Capocci added ominously.

Fieschi turned his head away from them, refusing to be baited. Capocci could prove nothing. And Rodrigo would be his man, his puppet, he had no fear of that at all-but it was annoying that he would have to brush off these two gadflies along the way. I will make sure the new Pope excommunicates them, he decided. That will get rid of them nicely.

Rodrigo had tried to excuse himself and break away from the young priest, but the young man was strangely reluctant to be dismissed. He begged Rodrigo’s pardon and followed him through the great church, toward the door, politely asking Rodrigo where he was planning to go, suggesting that perhaps he would be more comfortable resting in the deacon’s office.

“Have you been assigned to keep an eye on me?” Rodrigo asked with a knowing smile. They had stopped at the grand western entrance to the basilica. Rodrigo was eager to be gone from these staid halls of ancient power. The days when such magnificence signified sanctified holiness had long since passed; he understood what must come next, and nobody else in the Vatican compound did.

The young priest blushed. “Yes, Father,” he said, glancing down.

“There is no shame in your task,” Rodrigo said. “When I first arrived in Rome, I was a raving madman. I was mistakenly placed in seclusion with the Cardinals. When we were all brought here, the Cardinals-very good men-were concerned that I might harm myself if left to my own devices. I understand. Previously, there was just cause for such concern. But my son,” he said, with a reassuring smile, “I am now a changed man.”

The younger priest frowned in polite confusion. “Father…?” he murmured.

“I cannot explain what happened in Saint Peter’s tomb, but it was a gift, a blessing-a blessed event,” Rodrigo said, and rested his hand paternally on the youth’s shoulder. “My madness was taken from me-and so were my physical wounds! I am well again, and in no need of chaperoning.”

The young man looked at him, troubled, and blinked several times. “The Holy Sepulchre is known to have miraculous healing properties,” he said at last. “And I am very glad to hear of their effect on you. However, Father, I must stand by my oath, and that is to keep you in my sight at all times until I turn that responsibility over to one of my fellows.”

Rodrigo sighed patiently. “So be it. I commend you for your dedication to your office. Will you, in that case, accompany me on a constitutional? I am a native of this city, and it has been a very long time since I have freely walked its streets. I have a yearning for that, and I hope your duty does not prevent me from it.”

The younger priest considered this. “Father, perhaps we can make an arrangement that is to your liking, but allows me to fulfill my obligation.” He glanced down again, unwilling to gaze upon Rodrigo as he continued. “As it happens, I… have other duties to which I will be called. I would have to turn your care over to another anyhow. Let me see if I may do that now.”

Rodrigo smiled benignly. “You are thinking that a new chaperone, meeting me as I am now, clearly rational and well recovered, would not feel the burden of sticking to me like a burr, as you perhaps do because you saw me before I was healed.”

The young man reddened. “Really, Father, I simply have other duties. I am scheduled to receive confessions until dinner.”

“Very well,” said Rodrigo, gesturing back into the church. “Lead me to my next keeper. Rome is not going anywhere.”

The junior priest looked relieved. “Very well, Father. Just this way, if you please.” He turned and began to cross through the nave of the church, trusting Rodrigo to follow.

Which Rodrigo did. The communion cup within his satchel bumped against his hip as he walked.