Over the next few weeks, if he was to retain any power, he would need more than skill, he would need luck. He should have been better prepared for Gregory’s death. The signs of it had been there in the hollows around his eyes, the constant cough, the pain and weariness in him.
Palombara stopped at the window and stared out at the rain. The new crusade had been a passion with Gregory, but what about his successor?
He was surprised how much Constantinople dominated his thoughts. Would the new pope care about the Eastern Church, try to bridge the differences between them and treat them with respect as fellow Christians? Would he begin a real healing of the schism?
During the following days, tension mounted, speculation was rampant, but for the most part concealed by the decencies of mourning and of Gregory’s burial in Arezzo. Above all, of course, was expediency. No one wished to wear his ambition naked. People said one thing and meant another.
Palombara listened and considered which faction he should be seen to back. This was much on his mind when a Neapolitan priest named Masari fell into step with him, crossing the square toward the Vatican Palace in the feeble light of the January sun only a week after Gregory’s death.
“A dangerous time,” Masari observed conversationally, avoiding the puddles with his exquisite boots.
Palombara smiled. “You fear the cardinals will choose other than by the will of God?” he said with only the barest suggestion of humor in his voice. He knew Masari, but not well enough to trust him.
“I fear that without a little help they may be fallible, like all men,” Masari replied, an answering gleam in his eyes. “It is a fine thing to be pope, and great power is destructive of all manner of qualities, regrettably, sometimes most of all of wisdom.”
“But far from ending with it,” Palombara said dryly. “Give me the benefit of your knowledge, brother. What, in your opinion, would wisdom dictate?”
Masari appeared to consider. “Intelligence rather than passion,” he replied at length as they continued up a flight of steps. It was starting to rain harder. “A gift for diplomacy rather than a tangle of family connections,” he went on. “It is most awkward to owe one’s relations for the favor of their support. Debts have a way of requiring payment at most inconvenient times.”
Palombara was amused and interested in spite of himself. He felt the quickening of his pulse. “But how is one to gain any level of support without obligation, probably of several kinds? Cardinals do not cast their ballots without a reason.” He did not say “unless they are bought,” but Masari knew the sense behind his words.
“Regrettably not.” Masari bent forward, shielding his dark face from a spout of water off a high roof guttering. “But there are many sorts of reasons. One of the best might be the belief that the new pope, whoever he is, would succeed in unifying the whole Christian faith, while not yielding any holy doctrine to the false teaching of the Greek Church. That would surely be most displeasing to God.”
“I do not know the mind of God,” Palombara said acerbically.
“Of course,” Masari agreed. “Only the Holy Father himself knows that beyond doubt. We must pray, and hope, and seek after wisdom.”
Palombara had a fleeting memory of standing in the Hagia Sophia and the beginning of his understanding of how much subtler a thing the wisdom of Byzantium was than that of Rome. For a start, it incorporated the feminine element: gentler, more elusive, harder to define. Perhaps it was also more open to variance and alteration, more nurturing to the infinite spirit of humanity.
“I hope we don’t have to wait until we find it,” he said aloud. “Or we might not elect a new pope in our lifetime.”
“You jest, Your Grace,” Masari said softly, his black eyes steady on Palombara’s face for a moment, then moving swiftly away again. “But I think perhaps you understand wisdom more than most men.”
Again the stab of surprise jolted Palombara, and the racing of his heart. Masari was testing him, even courting him?
“I value it more than wealth or favors,” he answered with total solemnity. “But I think it does not come cheaply.”
“Little that is good comes cheaply, Your Grace,” Masari agreed. “We look toward a pope who is uniquely fitted to be leader of the Christian world.”
“We?” Palombara kept walking, but now unmindful of the wind, the puddles gathering in the stones, or the passersby.
“Such men as His Majesty of the Two Sicilies and lord of Anjou,” Masari answered. “But of more import to this issue, of course, he is also senator of Rome.”
Palombara knew precisely what he meant-someone with a powerful influence over who would become pope. The implication and the offer were both plain. Temptation roared through his mind like a great wind, scattering everything else. Already? A serious chance to become pope! He was young for it, not yet fifty, but there had been far younger. In 955, John XII had been eighteen, ordained, made bishop, and crowned pope all in a day, so it was said. His reign had been short and disastrous.
Masari was waiting, watching not only for the words, but for all the unspoken patterns and betrayals in his face.
Palombara said what he believed was probably true, but also what he knew Charles would want to hear. “I doubt Christendom will be wholly united by anything except conquest of the old Orthodox patriarchies,” he said, hearing his own voice as if it were someone else’s. “I have recently returned from Constantinople, and the resistance there, and in the surrounding countryside especially, is still strong. A man who has given his career to one faith does not easily sacrifice his identity. If he loses that, what else has he?”
“His life?” Masari suggested, but there was no seriousness in his voice, only satisfaction and a passing regret, as for the inevitable.
“That is the stuff martyrs are made of,” Palombara retorted a trifle sharply. The triple crown was closer to his grasp than it had ever been, perhaps than he had ever seriously believed possible. But what would he have to pay for such a favor from Charles of Anjou and whoever else was in his debt?
If he hesitated now, Charles would never back him. A man fit to be pope did not need time to weigh his courage. Did he have that clarity of mind so that he would understand the voice of God telling him how to lead the world, or what was true and what was false? Did he have the fire of soul that could bear it? Did such a thing even exist?
He thought again of the strange, effeminate eunuch Anastasius and his plea for gentleness and the humility to learn, to crush the appetite for exclusivity, and to tolerate the different.
“You hesitate,” Masari observed. The withdrawal was already in his voice.
Palombara was angry with himself for his equivocation, his cowardice. A year ago, he would have accepted and considered the cost, even the morality, afterward.
“No,” Palombara denied it. “I have not the stomach to rule a Rome that starts another war with Byzantium. We will lose more than we gain.”
“Is that what God tells you?” Masari asked with a smile.
“It is what my common sense tells me,” Palombara answered him. “God speaks only to the pope.”