to elect another Frenchman to the papal throne; on the other, he was appalled that God’s cause should be championed by this pig.
“A parody, my lord cardinal. How many of the princes of Europe will believe me a parody? How many would support another puppet of the French king taking the papal throne?”
All about the chapel men were turning to their neighbors and whispering furiously.
“Lord Christ Savior!” Bertrand said softly. “If neither backs down, then both Urban and the rogue cardinals are going to turn this into a European war!”
The impassive cardinal suddenly lost all control. He stood up and made a foul gesture toward Urban.
“There!” he shouted, his face now red. ” That’s the only kind of language you understand, isn’t it, you Italian rustic. Let me go or imprison me, I don’t care, but your day is over!”
He stared one breath longer in the pope’s face, then stalked away.
His two colleagues joined him, their faces stiff with affront.
Urban let them go.
He sat back on his throne and regarded the audience. “Those traitors will tear Europe apart,” he said, “and damn their own souls in the doing. I am the true elected pope. A Roman pope. If they go ahead with their devil-inspired election, then few but the French will support them.”
His face worked, and his hands clenched and unclenched about the armrests of his throne. “Christendom will have two popes,” he said, his voice now a near whisper.
“What have we done to so earn God’s displeasure? What evil stalks among us?”
Thomas stared at the pope, trying to reconcile his disgust at the man’s revolting habits with the thought that he might be a true ally he could rely upon. Any pope elected in Avignon would be a tool of the French king … and that left only Urban who might swing the forces of the Church behind the effort to battle the forces of evil which were even now—
“Ah! Enough of them,” Urban said. “What do we have next?”
One of his secretaries handed him a piece of paper.
“What?” Urban yelled as he read. “Some half-crazed friar thinks he speaks for archangel Saint Michael? Heaven aid us all from such dimwitted asses! Where is he?
Where? Lord God above, why must I be pestered with suchfoolsl If I were to believe every man, woman and child who solemnly swears they’ve been granted an audience with this saint, or that angel, I’d have to believe half of Christendom sits down to dinner with the Virgin herself!”
Urban crumpled the paper and threw it to one side. “Lord Christ, save me from the addled,” he said. “I’ve too much to do without being bothered with the deranged as well.”
THOMAS AND Bertrand backed unobtrusively away,Thomas cold with anger, Bertrand with shock.
“I had no thought the man would be so… so… so…” Bertrand said as they finally
gained the bustling court outside St. Peter’s.
“So repellent,” Thomas finished for him. “He is unworthy to replace the meanest parish priest, let alone act as God’s mouthpiece on earth! And yet he is the rightfully elected pope.”
“That’s your English blood talking,” Bertrand said. “All the Frenchmen, Spaniards and Scots in this crowd would agree with the cardinals. Now, let us see if we can return to the friary in one piece.”
“No.” Thomas pulled away from him. “I shall not return yet I need to consider what to do.”
“Thomas—”
But Thomas was gone, and Bertrand was left to seethe in solitude.
Lord Christ Savior, but he would be gladdened when he could rid himself of this arrogant priest!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wednesday in Easter Week
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(21st April 1378)
— II —
THOMAS WANDERED AIMLESSLY through the crowds, pushed this way and that, trying to sort out his thoughts.
He had taken holy orders because he had wanted to be part of the Church, part of the great institution which spoke with Christ’s voice and guided man’s footsteps toward salvation.
In doing so, Thomas had hoped to atone for the sins of his past and achieve his own salvation.
But what he’d just witnessed dismayed him, although it confirmed what St.
Michael had said regarding the Church. How could the Church, as represented by Urban, rally to ward off the evil which the archangel told him walked freely among mankind? And what if the cardinals in Avignon went ahead and elected a new pope?
Would Urban resign? No, of course not. He was too ambitious to do that.
That would leave Christendom headed by two popes. Thomas shuddered as he thought through the consequences. Two rival popes, two rival Church organizations, two sets of Church courts, two hierarchies of clerics … Sweet Jesu! The Church would be torn in two!
Christendom would be torn in two, and faith and loyalties fractured at a time when St. Michael had told him Satan’s imps already walked freely across the land. Lord God, what opportunities would the minions of hell take with this disaster tearing the
Church apart? A Church divided within itself could not minister to its flock and could not possibly keep it safe against the further predations of evil incarnate.
If evil walked the world, then, by all the saints, it had surely taken a stroll through the papal palace in the past few weeks.
Well, there was nothing for it but to proceed without the papal blessing, and without the papal aid and information that he had sought.
“Saint Michael,” Thomas whispered into the crowd, “guide my steps, I pray you!”
A hand grabbed his sleeve, and Thomas almost fell over.
He swore—instantly regretting the lapse—and twisted around amid the throng of close-pressed bodies to stare at the man who still had his sleeve in a tight clasp.
“Sweet Jesu, Tom, is that you?”
A man of about thirty-five or -six stared at Thomas. He had a deeply lined and tanned face, a knife-scarred chin, bright blue eyes crowded by sun-wrinkles, and fine sandy hair that fell over his forehead.
“Tom? I can hardly tell your face without its black beard.”
Thomas gaped at the man, momentarily stunned and disorientated by a face from a past he was trying so hard to put behind him.
“Tom, speak to me… or are you too proud to pass the time of day with your old friends now?”
“Wat,” Thomas finally said. “Wat Tyler.” Wat Tyler, who had once been such a mentor, almost a father, to Thomas during his youth. A surge of conflicting emotions washed through Thomas: anger, that Tyler should so precipitously rise up from his past when all Thomas wanted to do was to forget that past; a sense of warm, enveloping comradeship, when all Thomas wanted was to feel comradeship with no one but God; and sheer, unadulterated joy at the sight of Wat once again after so many long, despairing years.
That last sense, that joy, Thomas dampened almost as soon as he identified it. He could not afford it. Not now, not when God needed him so badly. Damn Wat for this precipitous appearance!
“Aye, Wat Tyler it is. Lord Jesus, this is no place to talk—a man couldn’t even piss in a crowd this thick! Come … there’s a place that I’ve found …”
And Thomas found himself being dragged through the crowd and into a side street close to the market—Jesu! Had he wandered out of the Leonine City and back into the heart of Rome without knowing it?
Wat pulled Thomas into a small oneroomed tavern, ill-lit and kept, and almost as crowded as the outside streets. A heavily pregnant and slatternly woman carrying several mugs of ale squeezed her way through the trestle tables and benches, ignoring the obscene remarks and leers that followed her.
“Wat—” Thomas began, desperate to escape.
“It’s no cathedral, I grant you,” Wat said, and pushed Thomas down onto the end of a bench at a crowded table, “but it’s the best we can do for the present… unless you want to invite me back to dine at your friary.”
The men about the table gave the priest and his companion only a cursory glance before returning to their drinking and arguing.
Wat squeezed down on to the very end of the bench, forcing Thomas to shuffle along until he was, in turn, squeezed against a sweaty and fat laborer who shot Thomas a sour look before turning back to his companions.
“I am not going to talk to you here” Thomas said.
“Nowhere else,” Wat said. “Christ above, Tom. How many years is it since we’ve seen each other? And,” he lowered his voice slightly, “from what I remember, there was a time you’d have felt at home in a drinking den like this, eh?”
Thomas’ mouth tightened, but Wat ignored it, and called to the woman for a couple of ales. She grunted, and disappeared toward a back room.