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Vincent was sure he had felt the presence of the Holy Spirit during that last vote in the chapel. As the numbers were called in and the tally continued to rise in Cardinal Lawrence’s favour, he could feel a great surge of emotion come through him, a sweeping wind that passed over and through him singing sweetly.
When the vote was called and Cardinal Bellini stood and turned to Cardinal Lawrence, Vincent could have shouted aloud with joy or dropped to his knees in ecstatic prayer. Ecce homo, the words turned to triumph in the mouth. This was the man. Here is Peter, the rock on which I build my church.
Cardinal Lawrence’s face was very grave as he faced Cardinal Bellini. Vincent could only barely make out the edge of his profile but he could see very clearly the slightly pinched look on Bellini’s face caught somewhere between concern and gladness.
Acceptasne electionem de te canonice factam in Summum Pontificem?
Accepto.
Quo nomine vis vocari?
Ioannes.
Vincent was a little surprised. He had half-expected another Paul or, digging through his somewhat shoddy knowledge of papal history, a Clement, perhaps a Leo. Or something more unusual. He amused himself briefly with the prospect of Adrian VII, the second Englishman to sit the chair of St Peter.
But John was good, John was solid… and he was off, a thousand connotations streaming through his mind, the Beloved Disciple, Evangelist, and the Baptist, and Patmos and Revelations. God has indeed been gracious.
They got through the homage quickly. The Holy Father did not smile at Vincent but his expression softened a little when he stood before him. Then the new Holy Father was whisked away and the room filled with the noise of celebration and happiness, the noise of men whose fears have been assuaged, who have undergone a moving spiritual experience, and who know they will at last be free of the interminable company of all their most-loathed colleagues in a few sweet hours.
‘Could be worse,’ Vincent heard the Patriarch of Venice say to one of his erstwhile supporters. ‘Our Tommaso, he is a moderate, he understands balance.’ If he had been cowed by the loss of all his hope, it had been brief.
He was relieved and hiding his relief; he was bitter and hiding his bitterness.
Cardinal Bellini gave the Patriarch a poisonous look. ‘Have some respect,’ he hissed.
‘Mah, always so straitlaced, Bellini.’
Bellini stiffened; next to him, Cardinal Sabbadin smiled sharply and said, ‘Sour grapes, Goffredo?’ Now it was Cardinal Tedesco’s turn to stiffen, to throw his head back in offence. He said something in Italian too fast for Vincent to understand; Sabbadin laughed nastily and replied in the same tone.
Fortunately it was at that moment that Monsignor O’Malley re-emerged, signalling that they should prepare themselves for the Pope.
Things began to move very quickly then. The Holy Father reappeared in his regalia and they were rounded up and Cardinal Bellini herded the pontiff out on the balcony. Trapped at the back of the ecclesiastical crush, Vincent could only just hear the soft words of the new pope. The cheers of the crowd that greeted him, however, felt as if they should shake the room.
Vincent was not as moved as he had been by that first sermon, but he was pleased. It was a speech full of good sense and compassion. It was a speech to offend no one, and offer hope to many.
*
The papers and people took to the new pontiff immediately. He was already vaguely familiar from the build-up to the conclave, when the tabloids had taken to running explanatory briefs and who’s who. It reminded Vincent of the preparation for a horse race.
The Urbi et Orbi had been received well. Pope John was personable enough. He had a good face for solemnity though his smile was surprisingly sweet. The press even forget their annoyance at missing out on the journalistic gold that would have been a Tedesco papacy.
Photos were scattered across social media of the Pope tenderly holding a man’s hand on a visit to a homeless centre, comforting a survivor of the bombings in hospital, smiling as he received a scarf in the colours of the English rugby team, bending down to bless a little pair of twin girls after mass, laughing in surprise at a gust of wind that flipped his pellegrina into his face. The city settled down to a papacy sure to be far less turbulent than the last.
The optics could not be better, said the new Secretary of State gleefully.
Within the inner sanctum, however, things were rather less serene.
The Holy Father was permanently tired. He walked now with an increasing stoop; his vision was poor to the point that in the late afternoons Father Zanetti had to be summoned to read out documents to him; he suffered headaches and dizziness; his appetite was finicky and he was subject to bouts of intense nausea which he was loath to confess. The skin on his hands turned red, dry and peeling constantly. Father Zanetti chased after him half the day with medicated lotion and entreated him to wear gloves in the winter. Two months after his election he took a bad fall coming down the stairs at the basilica which was immediately plastered on the front page of every tabloid. The doctors said he was lucky to have only cracked his hip and not broken it properly, and it seemed likely that the cane provided for the injury would become a permanent feature. Vatican watchers began to predict a short reign.
The policy instituted by his inner circle, such as it was, was to change as little as possible of his surroundings and to give him the comfort of the same familiar faces around him. Father Zanetti had been attached to the household as a chaplain though he was extremely young for such a responsibility. Cardinal Bellini categorically refused the post of Secretary of State and proffered Cardinal Sabbadin in his stead, but he took on teaching at the Gregorian, retained his Vatican apartment and was very often to be found in the Holy Father’s rooms. Monsignor O’Malley remained in post as Secretary to the College of Cardinals, pending his own elevation to the cardinalate. After intense discussion, the election as Dean of Weiss, Cardinal-Archbishop of Cologne, was procured – a good thing, said O’Malley brightly, since he was easy to work with and the Holy Father enjoyed his company.
Vincent himself had no post. He was not suited for politicking. Up until the inaugural mass (delayed an unheard of month by a lethal combination of extreme weather and further bomb scares) he had simply assumed he would return to Afghanistan and have done with the whole sordid world of the Roman Curia. It had been an exciting trip, even for a man fairly used to being held at gunpoint, at times even exhilarating, but he would be glad to have it over and done with: glad to be home. He had helped to elect a pope and found it more spiritually rewarding than expected. The man so chosen had been his own instinctive choice from the very start – what could be more spiritually rewarding than that? God saying aloud, Well done my son, you picked a winner! Which made him laugh to think of. I have rewarded you for your faith.
Whatever his earthly disappointments he was not sorry he had come. It had been right and his instinct, against which he had prayed, proved correct.
It was self-indulgent to stay for the inaugural mass but Vincent badly wanted to see the new Holy Father safely installed. And he was a little curious after the ceremony of it. The luxury and decadence of the Vatican appalled him in all its forms but it was undeniably powerful. He could see how easy it would be to let it draw one in. Yes, curiosity and investment. Whatever fate awaited him in Afghanistan would not change for staying longer or shorter.
Vincent dutifully turned in his intentions to the Holy Father’s office and settled down to enjoy his last days in Rome.
Instead he was summoned first by Sabbadin, Secretary of State, who asked him if he desired martyrdom so badly as to stain the beginning of this papacy forever, and secondly by the Holy Father himself, who walked with him slowly by the turtle pond and did not refer to Vincent’s request except once, to say quietly that he would miss him.
The sadness was palpable on his face. Vincent felt a pang but also an irresistible pull towards Kabul, a sign he knew meant he was right to seek his return to the place where his real life awaited him, for good or for ill.
But it was not to be. There had come another of those little conversations in corners Vincent so despised, the day before the investiture. Cardinal Bellini had pulled Vincent aside and talked to him very seriously. If you go I think it will kill him. He would never in a million years tell you this but the night he got your request to return to Kabul, he cried hysterically. Inconsolably. I’ve never seen him like that, he didn’t even cry in front of me when his mother died. It’s all getting to him, it’s all too much. Please stay and help him bear it.
Vincent had been shocked. First by the idea of the Pope’s tears – there was nothing wrong with an elderly man weeping, of course, but it seemed so improbable with such a man and for such a cause – and then by the idea that his staying or going could have such a powerful effect.
He was not so humble that he was not aware that the Holy Father had become very fond of him. He knew that he and then-Cardinal Lawrence had taken to each other in a powerful and natural manner almost straight away, and in other circumstances he would certainly have sought to further their intimacy. If he could not quite see Cardinal Lawrence in Kabul alongside him, he could certainly cast his mind back to those far-off days in seminary, long conversations, affectionate gestures, the joy and glory of true companionship in Christ.
But to this degree?
Aldo – he could only think of him as such when the Holy Father referred constantly to ‘Aldo’ – could not be argued with. To every line of reasoning, he returned an unimpressed expression and a perfunctory rebuttal. Vincent could dig his heels in all he liked; he knew he could not out-argue Cardinal Bellini, only become a stubborn stone wall and refuse to engage. This could only work for so long. Sabbadin had become annoyed when Vincent did not shout back. Aldo did not care what response he gave or how he gave it.
Sabbadin’s arguments were dismissed forthwith – It would be extremely unhelpful of you, Bellini said dryly, but I am frankly more concerned with the impact of your sad and untimely death on the Holy Father, and not for once the politics of such a tragedy.
‘If you want to be a martyr, go and do it. I will lament your death as I would of any Christian in such circumstances, but I can’t say I would be sorry for it beyond that. But only think what it would do to Thomas! He’d blame himself of course.’
‘Why on earth would he? My dear Cardinal Bellini, my return to Kabul is my choice; no blame could be cast on the Holy Father.’
‘Well you don’t know him so well as all that,’ Bellini said slyly. ‘Do you want to put your blood on his head?’
‘You think this naïve.’
‘I think it self-aggrandising.’
Vincent came very close to losing his temper.
‘I owe these people. They are my parish. I have a duty to them.’
‘You owe Thomas,’ Aldo retorted.
‘What, my obedience to the Pope?’
‘YES,’ said Aldo. ‘There we go, see now you’re getting it. This papacy will be a success if it kills us all so help me God. For it to be a success, Thomas will need all of the support and comfort I can get him. I can’t say I share his partiality for you, God knows, but he has clearly come to feel very attached to you. Don’t spite him.
‘You are being selfish. You’re old now, how much help are you there?’
Cardinal Bellini followed this by a serious suggestion to Vincent to discuss with his confessor his apparent propensity for spiritual arrogance.
‘Not that I know who usually confesses you,’ he added nastily.
‘I am unsure why you believe this to be a matter for your commentary, Your Eminence,’ Vincent managed steadily. He had been rocked by that word ‘selfish’. Was he? Was it arrogant to imagine he was of help back at home? Was he a burden to the flock he ought to care for? Was he placing himself in danger – single, solitary him – or dragging those others who trusted him along with him?
When the outright emotional blackmail and the velvet glove did not work Bellini turned resolutely to other tactics.
‘The better man won,’ Bellini said briskly. ‘You voted for him from the beginning. Didn’t you. Well, this is your handiwork and if you leave it half unfinished, God forgive you.’
‘Then order me to stay.’
Bellini raised an eyebrow.
‘You know I cannot.’
‘The Holy Father could.’
‘Of course he could order you not to go! But he won’t because Thomas in his way is as much of the stuff of martyrs as you are. I often think he’d have done very nicely under Nero. You on the other hand’ – with a look of serious dislike – ‘you would have fit in with the early modern lot. Say, Edo Japan or Edward VI’s England. I can just see you tied to the stake now,’ he added, rather wistfully.
Vincent kept his lips compressed. This was all fascinating in its way, Bellini had known the Holy Father for so long and so intimately, and to be privy to this sort of private detail was, alas, extremely exciting. But it was self-indulgent to court that enjoyment.
Bellini could see he was not wavering, but that the point was coming across. His briskness increased. He came very close to Vincent, so close his breath puffed over his face, and put his hands on his shoulder. in another man this would have been a fraternally affectionate gesture. Vinent could imagine Bellini doing so to the Pope, in fact. When Vincent tried to back up, the iron-grip would not let him move an inch. Bellini’s eyes locked onto his, until Vincent, for the first time he could recall, dropped his own.
‘If you can’t give your obedience to the Holy Father, can you at least give your compassion to your friend?’
That sufficed.
Aldo had finished him. He quietly handed in a request to remain; equally quietly it was granted.
*
Tedesco had retired back to Venice in high dudgeon; Adeyemi, somewhat subdued, was undertaking a ministry in, of all places, Asia; in very nearly the first action of the new papacy, Tremblay had been deprived of all ecclesiastical offices. It had caused great consternation that Vincent did not entirely comprehend. But then his was not a political role, but instead that of companion, of friend. Or perhaps of the lions in the menagerie the popes of old had kept. An exotic pet, kept in comfort, but in captivity – but on display. All to attend to the ease of one single man.
One sad and sorry old man in the lap of luxury. He would die at worst in a hospital bed. The next moment Vincent repented. This was the pope, the supreme pontiff, the huge burden of it, the holiness. And Aldo’s voice sharply niggling: this is your friend. Don’t be cruel to him even in your head.
You VOTED for me, you voted FOR me, bellowed Thomas one night. How can you blame me for this.
He was a man thoroughly at the end of his tether. Cardinal Bellini was so taken aback he dropped the point he was arguing, and for one moment stood gaping. Then he pulled himself up and said coldly, ‘Yes, we did. Perhaps you should act like it.’
Then they were shouting each other, inches from each other’s faces, Bellini’s hands on the Holy Father’s shoulders – a shock in of itself – as if he would shake him – the thought was impossible.
Vincent had physically moved them apart, then taken Thomas’s arm and moved him to the sofa where he sat hunched and unmoving.
Then he threw Aldo out of the papal apartments, something which he found so hugely satisfying that he would really have to confess it as soon as possible. There was not much drama to the throwing out. Aldo allowed himself to be thrown with minimal resistance, perhaps wishing to lick his wounds in peace or – no, that was uncharitable, perhaps shocked by his friend’s outburst and his own, and understanding they needed space from each other.
Nonetheless, Vincent threw him out with a thoroughly unchristian enjoyment, and would have gone about whistling, or at least quite cheerfully, if he had not come up short against the sight of the pope still on the sofa, but now with his face buried in his hands.
For a long moment, Vincent was entirely at a loss. Then he pulled himself together. What would he have done for any of his parishioners he had found in such a state? To any of those to whom he had ministered? He sat down next to Thomas and put his arm around him. The Holy Father raised his head, fixed his unsettling blue eyes on Vincent’s face, and burst into a storm of tears.
‘Vincent, I can’t do this. I can’t.’
Vincent thought of Aldo mentioning the tears, the suddenly frequent tears to which he had been witness. For a man who had officially resigned his governmental offices, Aldo was omnipresent in the new administration, and, unfortunately, in Vincent’s head. Aldo, impeccably resentful and helpful, quashing whatever feelings he had about it to help his friend.
Crisis was something Vincent was at home with. He was by nature phlegmatic and his vocation was to help. Where others lost their heads and panicked, made things infinitely worse with their flapping and foolishness, Vincent kept calm, kept steady and did whatever was needed.
Was I vain of this ability, he wondered. Do I find myself without it in punishment of that vanity? He didn’t think so but it was horribly disconcerting, to find himself in this situation, such a minor situation, and be utterly unable to deal with it. The Supreme Pontiff, heir to the throne of Peter, was breaking into what in anyone else Vincent would have called hysteria, and what, exactly, was Vincent to do with that?
Treat him like a human being, he told himself.
Cautiously, he extended his free arm and brought the Holy Father fully into his embrace. The Holy Father stiffened immediately; Vincent prepared to hastily withdraw; then Thomas (and it was definitely Thomas just then) buried his head in Vincent’s shoulder and burst into fresh tears.
A touchingly sentimental scene. Vincent felt a helpless mix of sorrowful affection, genuine concern and a sinfully considerable degree of exasperation.
Quash now my own resentment, he thought, and quirked his lips. He tightened his arm and began to make vague soothing noises at Thomas.
The storm ended eventually. When Thomas’s breathing had steadied, Vincent smiled and patted his shoulder.
‘It will be all right. We will manage.’
Thomas grimaced.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered. As if he had only just awoken to the act that they were embracing, a blush was spreading across his face and he was withdrawing into himself.
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s a great burden.’
‘Yes.’
Vincent, not deceived by the meek tone, said, ‘And one that we gave to you.’
Thomas sighed. Quietly, he said, ‘You would have carried it better. I thought it was meant for you. In the last ballot, I cast my vote for you.’
It should not have stunned him. Vincent hesitated, then said, ‘I thank you for the vote of confidence.’ He laughed, and after a moment Thomas followed.
Carefully he untangled himself. Stood and offered his hand to Thomas – Thomas, who in perhaps ten minutes would once more be the Holy Father, trying his best to forget that he had wept like a child in Vincent’s arms.
It did not embarrass Vincent, but Thomas’s embarrassment (already visible in his eyes, creeping on) embarrassed him. It worried him, too. The storm had passed, but it was not, according to Aldo, the first, and (God forbid) might not be the last. Perhaps they were right, those reporters, who shook their heads and forecast a short papacy.
Nothing to be done but outlast. Nothing to be done but remain in a cage built up of service and duty and affection.
The day after the election, Vincent had awoken very early. What followed was rather like the aftermath of a raucous party, everybody a little deflated, tidying things up and re-arranging everything, but with a burgeoning sense of excitement, too, at the acquisition of a new pope, increasingly filled with excitement and speculation. Vincent, by contrast, had been visited by an overwhelming impulse that morning just to walk out quietly and go back to Kabul.
He should have followed it.