in Rome, the cardinals spent hours carefully watching the pope. Was his face tinged just with the merest touch of grey at yesterday’s mass? Did his fingers tremble, just slightly, when he carved his meat at the banquet held in honour of the Holy Roman Emperor’s son? And how much of his food did he eat, anyway? They bribed the papal physician to learn details of the papal bowel movements and the particular stink of his urine. They frightened the papal chamberlain with threats of eternal damnation to learn if the pope’s sheets were stained with effluent in the mornings and, if so, what kind of effluent?
They spent their hours watching the pope’s health most carefully…and most carefully plotting. When the pope succumbed to his inevitable mortality (and, praise be to God, let it be soon!), the cardinals would elect his successor from among their number.
And when that came to pass, they swore on Christ’s holy foreskin, they would elect a man who would return them to Avignon and the comforts of glorious French civilisation.
Thomas spent most of his time—when not at prayers—within the library of St Angelo’s, as St Michael had instructed. The library was a large stone-vaulted chamber under the chapel; it was cold every day of the year, even during the hot humid Roman summers, but its position and construction meant it was safe from both intruders and fire, and in volatile Rome that was a precious luxury.
Here the records were kept of the Dominican friary stretching back over one hundred years, and before that the records of the Benedictine order that had inhabited the building. The records were kept on great vellum rolls stacked in neat order on racks lining many of the walls.
Desks and shelves stood against the other walls, and in rows across the floor of the chamber. Here sat the several hundred precious books the friary owned: laboriously copied out by hand, the books were wonders of art and of the intellect. Some dated back five hundred years, others were only freshly copied, all were priceless and beloved. They were heavy volumes, an arm’s length in height, and half that across and in depth, and not one of them ever left the chest-level shelf or desk that was its particular home. Instead, the reader travelled to each book in turn, moving slowly around the library over the months and years, from desk to desk, and shelf to shelf, carrying with him his own stool, candle (encased in a brass and glass case, lest the dripping wax should fall on the delicate pages being studied) and parchment and pen and ink for when he wished to copy down some particularly illuminating phrase.
Not all brothers were there to read and study. Some three or four were permanently engaged in recopying particularly fragile volumes, or volumes on loan from other friaries and monasteries within Rome or sometimes from further afield within northern Italy. They worked under the one large window in the library, their ink- and paint-stained hands carefully scratching across the ivory blankness of pages, creating works of art with their capital letters and the illustrations of daily life and devotion they placed in the margins of the pages.
Despite the coldness of the stone vault, and despite the presence of a fireplace, no fire ever burned there. The fear of a conflagration, combined with the lesser fear of the daily damage wrought by an overly smoky fire, meant the grate was never laid, and the fire never lit.
Brothers worked wrapped in blankets and their desire to learn.
The activities of the brothers who worked within the library, whether studying or copying, were supervised by an aged brother librarian who had, nonetheless, a keen vision that could spot the dripping pen or candle, or the careless elbow left to rub across a page, from a distance of twenty paces. His hiss of retribution could carry thirty paces, and brothers were known to have fallen off their stools in fright if they believed they’d earned the librarian’s displeasure.
Not so Thomas.
Thomas worked alone in every sense of that word. He did not speak to any of the other brothers, and he did not appear to notice the constant oppressive presence of the brother librarian.
On the other hand, the librarian had no need to bother Thomas. The man was as rigidly particular about his treatment of the books and records he studied as he was about the attending of his prayers.
Thomas existed within his own shell of piety and obsessiveness, and few people within the friary, or without it for that matter, could penetrate that shell.
Most left him well enough alone.
On the afternoon of the Saturday following the Annunciation, Thomas was, for once, working alone in the library. Most of the other brothers—wide-eyed with curiosity—had accepted an invitation from a neighbouring monastery to view their new statue of St Uncumber, a saint widely worshipped as one who could rid women of their obnoxious husbands. Thomas had not gone. He considered St Uncumber a saint of dubious merits, and believed that marriage was a sanctified union that no woman should seek to dissolve…by whatever saintly intervention. So Thomas, wrapped in righteousness, stayed behind to continue his studies.
Even the brother librarian had gone. Thomas was, after all, utterly trustworthy when it came to the safety of the manuscripts and records.
In the past weeks Thomas had begun a detailed study of the records of St Angelo’s friary. He had been turning over in his mind the archangel’s warning that evil walked unhindered among mankind, and he wondered if perhaps evil had infected some of the brothers within the friary. If so, Thomas hoped that the friary records would cast light on how and when evil had penetrated his fellow brothers. Already Thomas suspected several of his fellows: they were too jovial in refectory, perhaps, or skipped too many prayers, or spoke too wantonly at St Angelo’s weekly debates.
Thomas had just unrolled the records for the year 1334 when Daniel, the friary’s only novice, burst in the door.
The boy cast his eyes about, obviously looking for someone, but when he realised that the someone consisted only of Thomas, he edged back towards the door.
Too late. The commotion of his entrance had attracted Thomas’ attention.
“Daniel! What mean you, creating such noise and distraction within the walls of God’s house?”
Daniel’s mouth opened and closed uselessly, and he looked frantically for rescue.
There was none.
Thomas left his desk and advanced close enough to grab the boy by the arm. “Well?”
Daniel’s eyes were full of tears, but they had been there long before he had burst into the library.
“Brother Thomas…Brother Thomas…”
“Well?”
Daniel swallowed again. “Brother Thomas. The Holy Father…the Holy Father…”
“What is it, boy?”
“The Holy Father is dead!”
Thomas’ face blanched, but, even though Daniel struggled a little, he did not let the boy go.
“Dead?” Thomas whispered, then he stared narrow-eyed at Daniel. “How do you know this? How can you be sure?”
“The Brother Prior had sent me with messages to the Secretary of the Curia within the Leonine City, Brother. While I was with him, a Benedictine burst into the chamber and blurted out the news. Then both the secretary and the Benedictine rushed out, forgetting about me. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran down to the gates to tell Prior Bertrand. Where is he?”
Thomas
