the grip of some holy possession.
Thomas’ mouth thinned as he shouldered a way through for himself and the prior. Most of these hermits, prophets and hysterical nuns were but pretenders, their palms held open for coin, their voices shrieking that doom awaited if pilgrims weren’t prepared to part with their last groat for a blessing.
“Does the pope not issue orders to rid the streets of such as these?” he muttered as he and Bertrand were momentarily pinned against a brick wall by the pressing throng.
“Rome has always been cursed with such petitioners,” Bertrand replied. “Sometimes worse. When Boniface called the great Jubilee several years before he died, Rome was awash with over a million pilgrims…as with all the charlatans, whores, relic merchants and money lenders the pilgrim trade attracts.”
Thomas stared at Bertrand, forgetting for the moment the crowds about them. “A million pilgrims? Surely not!”
“’Tis true, my son. Some say the number was even greater.”
Thomas shook his head, unable to conceive of a million people. Rome’s population was normally about thirty thousand—and that was extraordinary enough in Christendom, where few towns had more than two thousand people. But a million?
“Jesu,” he whispered, “how was Rome not destroyed amid such a conflagration of people?”
“Rome has survived many things, Thomas. The corruption and madness of Roman emperors, invasions by barbarians and infidels, and the devilish machinations of kings. A squash of pilgrims would not worry it overmuch.”
But such a crowd, thought Thomas, and the sin it must have engendered.
“Come!” Bertrand said, seizing Thomas’ sleeve. “I see a way opening before us!”
They walked as quickly as possible up the steps leading to the entrance into the vast court that lay before St Peter’s: they would have to enter the papal presence via the Basilica itself. The steps were as crowded as the streets, and Thomas was appalled to see that the court itself was packed with the stalls of moneylenders and relic merchants.
“How can the pope allow this?” he said, waving a hand at the frenetic activity. “It is like the scene before the Temple of Jerusalem!”
“Money can make even popes tolerant of many evils,” said Bertrand, and hurried Thomas forward before the man thought to emulate Christ himself and start to overturn tables. Bertrand just wanted to get this over and done with and, whatever the result of the interview, to then hurry Thomas out of Rome with as much speed as he could.
Bertrand cared not that Thomas spoke with the authority of angels. Wynkyn de Worde had as well, and Bertrand had never stopped counting his blessings that the demented man had not returned from Nuremberg.
St Peter’s was relatively quiet after the hustle of the outer court and streets. The nave of the Basilica was crowded with pilgrims and penitents, but it was quiet save for the mumble of prayers, and most knelt in orderly ranks facing the altar of St Peter, or before one of the shrines that lined the aisles.
Bertrand and Thomas genuflected towards St Peter’s shrine, then moved up the right-hand aisle towards a small door two-thirds of the way along the north wall of the Basilica. It was well guarded, but Bertrand whispered his name and that of Thomas, and the guards allowed them through.
They found themselves in a small corridor, blessedly quiet after the turbulence of street and court, and Bertrand indicated a door at its end. “Through there. We’ll find ourselves at the rear of the chapel. Bow towards the pope, although he probably won’t see you, and then come to stand with me to the side. The papal secretaries have your name, and if the pope has time then he will—”
“If he has time?”
“Thomas, you are an unimportant man within the hierarchy of the Church. There will be others, many others, and of far more important rank, before you.”
“But not of more important mission,” Thomas mumbled.
“Do you think yourself Christ?” Bertrand hissed. “Do you think yourself to be announced as the saviour of Christendom?”
“I speak with the voice of—”
“You are still a humble man,” Bertrand said. “Do not forget that!”
The chamber was packed, but with a far more richly clothed and bejewelled crowd than that which thronged the streets.
Bertrand and Thomas entered silently and bowed to the figure of Urban seated—stiff in his robes and jewels—on the papal throne set on a small dais before the altar of the chapel.
He did not notice their entrance.
The two friars whispered their names to a clerk seated just inside the door, who wrote them down and then passed the paper to a messenger boy who took it to two richly-robed secretaries seated at a table to the pope’s left. Bertrand and Thomas then stood with a group of Benedictine monks halfway up the chapel by a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. From this vantage point both men could see and hear well.
There were three cardinals seated on the pope’s right. The remaining three, Thomas realised, and wondered why they had stayed when all the others had departed for Avignon. Urban, a bear-like man in his late fifties who wore his robes of office with obvious discomfort, sat fidgeting impatiently while one of the cardinals whispered earnestly to him.
“Ah! Bah!” Urban suddenly pronounced and, leaning back in his chair, spat a gob of phlegm to one side of his chair.
“I give that for King John’s proposition!” he said, and farted.
The shock in the chapel was palpable. Bodies stiffened and faces blanched.
Grinning, Urban reached for a jewelled goblet of wine on a side table. He downed it in four loud gulps, red wine running down one side of his chin, then slammed the goblet down.
“But, Holy Father,” the cardinal said, “the French king has proposed what is only just—”
“What your partners in intrigue have told him is just,” Urban said. “I doubt the old man could tell the difference between a woman’s breast and a donkey’s teat, let alone between what is just and what is not.”
The cardinal sat back, glancing at the other two. His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, then stilled.
“No one doubts that our conclave was under undue influence,” he said.
Urban roared and leapt to his feet. “I will not resign!” he yelled.
Bertrand leaned towards Thomas and whispered in his ear: “I fear we have arrived at a most inopportune moment.”
Thomas said nothing, but his face was tight with anger. The cardinals had elected this peasant’s arse as pope?
Urban stepped down from the dais, strode over to a guard, wrenched a spear from the startled man’s grasp and stalked back to the three cardinals.
He threw the spear down at the feet of the cardinal who had been speaking to him.
The
