He had no recollection at all of the remainder of the voting process. Exhausted by the events of the night, he fell asleep almost as soon as he sat down, only waking an hour later when something fluttered on to the desk in front of him. His chin was resting on his chest. He opened his eyes to find a folded note: And behold there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. Matthew 8:24. He looked around to see Bellini leaning forward, looking at him. He was embarrassed to have shown such weakness in public, but no one else seemed to be paying him any attention. The cardinals opposite were either reading or staring into space. In front of the altar, the scrutineers were setting up their table. The balloting must have ended. He picked up his pen and scribbled beneath the quotation: I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. Psalm 3. Then he tossed the note back. Bellini read it and nodded judiciously, as if Lomeli was one of his old students at the Gregorian who had returned a correct answer.
Newby said into the microphone, ‘My brothers, we shall now proceed to count the sixth ballot.’
The familiar laborious routine resumed. Lukša extracted a ballot paper from the urn, opened it and wrote down the name. Mercurio checked it, and then he too wrote it down. Finally, Newby pierced it with the scarlet thread and then announced the vote.
‘Cardinal Tedesco.’
Lomeli placed a tick against Tedesco’s name and waited for the next ballot to be counted.
‘Cardinal Tedesco.’
And then again, fifteen seconds later: ‘Cardinal Tedesco.’
When Tedesco’s name was read out for the fifth time in a row, Lomeli had a dreadful intuition – that the effect of all his efforts had been to convince the Conclave that it needed strong leadership, and that the Patriarch of Venice was about to be elected outright. The wait for the sixth vote to be announced, which was prolonged by a whispered consultation between Lukša and Mercurio, was torture. And then it came.
‘Cardinal Lomeli.’
The next three votes were all for Lomeli, and then came two for Benítez, followed by one for Bellini and another two for Tedesco. Lomeli’s hand moved up and down the list of cardinals, and he did not know which alarmed him most: the line of marks accumulating beside Tedesco’s name, or the threatening number that had started to cluster next to his own. Tremblay – amazingly – took a couple of votes towards the end, as did Adeyemi, and then it was over and the scrutineers began checking their tallies. Lomeli’s hand was shaking as he tried to add up Tedesco’s vote, which was all that mattered. Would the Patriarch of Venice reach the forty he needed to deadlock the Conclave? He had to count them twice before he arrived at the result:
Tedesco 45
Lomeli 40
Benítez 19
Bellini 9
Tremblay 3
Adeyemi 2
From the other side of the Sistine Chapel came an unmistakable murmur of triumph, and Lomeli looked over just in time to catch Tedesco quickly putting his hand to his mouth to conceal his smile. His supporters leaned down and across the double row of desks to touch him on the back and whisper their congratulations. Tedesco ignored them as if they were so many flies. Instead he glanced across the aisle at Lomeli and raised his bushy eyebrows in amused complicity. It was between the two of them now.
16 The Seventh Ballot
THE HISS OF a hundred cardinals conferring sotto voce with their neighbours, amplified by the echo from the frescoed walls of the Sistine, evoked in Lomeli a memory that at first he could not place but then realised was of the sea at Genoa – to be exact, of a long withdrawing tide over shingle on a beach he used to swim off as a child with his mother. It persisted for several minutes until at last, after conferring with the three cardinal-revisers, Newby stood to read the official result. At that point the electoral college briefly fell quiet. But the Archbishop of Westminster only confirmed what they already knew, and after he had finished, while the scrutineers’ table and chairs were being cleared away and the counted ballots placed in the sacristy, the calculating hiss resumed.
Throughout all this, Lomeli sat, outwardly impassive. He spoke to no one, although both Bellini and the Patriarch of Alexandria tried to catch his eye. When the urn and chalice had been replaced on the altar and the scrutineers were in position, he walked to the microphone.
‘My brothers, no candidate having achieved the necessary two-thirds majority, we shall now proceed immediately to a seventh ballot.’
Beneath the flat surface of his manner, his mind was looping endlessly around and around the same circuit. Who? Who? In barely a minute he would have to cast his ballot – but who? Even as he returned to his seat, he was still trying to decide what he should do.
He did not wish to be Pope – of that much he was certain. He prayed with all his heart to be spared that Calvary. My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. And should his prayer go unheeded and the cup be offered? In that event he was resolved to refuse it, just as poor Luciani had tried to do at the end of the first Conclave of ’78. Refusal to take one’s place upon the cross was regarded as a grievous sin of selfishness and cowardice, which was why Luciani had yielded in the end to the pleading of his colleagues. But Lomeli was determined to stand firm. If God had granted one the gift of self-knowledge, then surely one had an obligation to use it? The loneliness, the isolation, the agony of the papacy he was willing to endure. What was unconscionable was to have a Pope who was insufficiently holy. That would be the sin.
Equally, though, he had to accept responsibility for the fact that Tedesco had taken command of the Conclave. It was he, as dean, who had connived in the destruction of one front-runner and brought about the ruin of the other. He had removed the impediments to the Patriarch of Venice’s advance, even though he was unwavering in his belief that Tedesco had to be stopped. Clearly Bellini couldn’t do it: to continue voting for him would be an act of pure self-indulgence.
He sat at his desk, opened his folder and took out his ballot paper.
Benítez, then? The man undoubtedly possessed some quality of spirituality and empathy that marked him out from the rest of the College. His election would have a galvanising effect on the Church’s ministry in Asia, and probably in Africa, too. The media would adore him. His appearance on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square would be a sensation. But who was he? What were his doctrinal beliefs? He looked so slight. Did he even have the physical stamina to be Pope?
Lomeli’s bureaucratic mind was nothing if not logical. Once one eliminated Bellini and Benítez as contenders, only one candidate was left who could prevent what otherwise might become a stampede towards Tedesco – and that candidate was himself. He needed to hang on to his forty votes and prolong the Conclave until such time as the Holy Spirit guided them to a worthy heir to the Throne of St Peter. No one else could do it.
It was inescapable.
He took up his pen. Briefly he closed his eyes. And then on his ballot paper he wrote: LOMELI.
Very slowly he got to his feet. He folded the ballot paper and raised it for all to see.
‘I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.’
The full extent of his perjury did not strike him until he stood before the altar to place his ballot paper on the chalice. At that instant he found himself eye to eye with Michelangelo’s depiction of the damned being turfed out of their barque and dragged down to hell. Dear Lord, forgive my sin. But he could not stop now.