“Good,” said Gunther, “for though I wish his death, I take my oath before God that I wish Pope Nicholas no harm.”
The group looked at him with faint signs of scepticism. All knew that only ten years before Pope Nicholas had deposed Gunther and deprived him of his see as a penalty for disobedience. As he had done also to Theutgard of Trier, while he had further rebuked and overruled even the pious Hincmar over a dispute with a mere bishop.
“He was a great man, who did his duty as he saw it. I do not blame him even for launching King Charles on his ill-fated Crusade. No, there is no harm in Crusades. But he made a mistake. Tell them, Arno,” he added to his confessor. “Tell them our appreciation of the situation.” He sank back, lifting the gold goblet of Rhenish wine on which so much of his archbishopric’s revenue depended.
The younger man pulled his stool forward to the table, his sharp face gleaming with enthusiasm beneath close-cropped blond stubble. “Here in Cologne,” he began, “we have made careful study of the arts of war. Not merely on the field of battle itself, but also in its wider context. We try to think not merely like a tacticus”—he used the Latin word, though up till then all had spoken the Low German of Saxony and the North—”but like a strategos of the old Greeks. And if we think strategics”—Hincmar at least winced at the strange medley of Greek and Latin—”we see that Pope Nicholas made a critical error.
“He failed to see what we here call the punctum gravissimum, that is, the heavy point, the point of main weight, of an enemy’s attack. He did not see at once that the real danger, the real danger to the whole Church, lay not in the schisms of the East, or in the struggles of Pope against Emperor, or in the naval raids of the followers of Mahound, but in the little-known kingdoms of the poor province of Britannia. Because only in Britannia did the Church find more than an enemy: a rival, a supplanter.”
“He is an Easterner,” said Meinhard contemptuously.
“Just so. He thinks that what happens here in the West, here in the North-West of Europe, in Germany and Frankland and the Low Countries, is of minor importance. But we know that here lies destiny. The destiny of the Church. The destiny of the world. I dare to say it, if Pope Nicholas does not: the new chosen people, the only true bulwark against the barbarians.”
He ceased, his fair face already flushing with pride.
“You will find no arguments on that score here, Arno,” Gunther remarked. “So, once Nicholas is dead, he must be replaced. I know”—he raised a hand—”the Cardinals will not elect anyone to Pope who has any more sensible opinion, and we cannot expect to sway the Italians to sense. But we can sway them to nonsense. I think we are all agreed that we will use our revenues and our influence to ensure the election of someone we can count on to be popular with the Romans, well-born among the Italians, and a complete nonentity. I believe he has already chosen his papal name: Adrian II, they tell me.
“More serious is what must be done closer to home. Not only Nicholas must go. King Charles too. He also has been defeated, and by a rabble of peasants.”
“Gone already,” said Hincmar decisively. “His barons will not forgive humiliation. Those who did not share it with him cannot believe that Frankish lancers could be defeated by slingers and bowmen. Those who did are anxious not to share his disgrace. There will be a rope round his neck or a knife in his ribs without us stirring a hand. But who is to replace him?”
“Your pardon,” said Erkenbert quietly. He had been listening with the greatest care, and slowly the conviction had come to him that these men, unlike the pompous and inefficient clerics of the English Church he had served all his life, actually respected intelligence more than rank. Juniors spoke without rebuke. They put forward their own ideas, and had them accepted. Or if they were rejected, it was with reason given, and after careful thought. Among these men, the only sin was to fail in logic, or in imagination. The excitement of abstract thought worked on Erkenbert more than the fumes of the wine in his goblet. He felt that at last he was among equals. Above all, he wished to have them accept him too as an equal: