“And you feel that we are not, Brother Prospero?” probed Abdul, in the same mild, sad tone.
“Let us not fence, your holiness,” said Sicola bluntly. “I know and your holiness knows that that election which saw your holiness elevated was fraudulent; it flew in the very face of every written and oral agreement that has held the various feuding, infighting factions of the College of Cardinals together for above two hundred years.
“It was the sainted Khali 1 1, your holiness will recall, who personally hammered out that very wise and far-seeing policy: that the Papacy would alternate between the Moorish-Spanish faction and the Italian-Northern European faction, each faction also to have equal numbers of cardinals and bishops. Khalil di Granada knew human nature, your holiness, he knew the power of not only the Church, but of Rome, the State. Rome’s power is great, but power is based upon wealth and influence on other states, as well as upon internal cohesion and the willingness of all within to work for and toward the state’s good without.
“Because of what was illegally done in electing your holiness, a millennium and a half of painfully garnered wealth and power is being at best risked and at worst frittered away on causes of a most questionable nature. Because of your managed election, your holiness, the College of Cardinals has today lost every scintilla of proper cohesion; it is rather splintered into a dozen or more fractious factions all spending their every waking hour in plots, counterplots, amassing private armies and planning assassinations of personal and political enemies, rather than working—as they should—together for Rome.
“Rome, the city, may well be eternal, as is claimed, your holiness; but the power of the Church and the State of Rome is definitely not, nor should we delude ourselves with claims to the contrary. Recall what happened three centuries ago to the Papacy of Alexandria; that could easily happen to Rome, like it or not. Til not besmirch the dead, but the treatment of the Kingdom of England and Wales and of King Arthur III Tudor and his family by your holiness’s predecessor and your holiness himself was most imprudent and unwise, to put the matter in the most charitable of terms. At best, Crusades are very risky business, as should have been learned from the sad example of Galerian IV, the last Pontiff of Alexandria.”
The Pope snorted derisively, “Oh, surely this silly business abrew in York doesn’t frighten a man like you, Brother? Rome has weathered more and worse, over the centuries— Arianism, Manichaeism, Maximianism, Rogatism, Circon-cillianism, Donatism, Catharism, Monophysitism, Baldarism, and at least a score more—this Yorkism, too, will burn itself out, die, eventually be stamped out.”
Sicola shook his balding head. “I think not, your holiness, not in this particular case. Roman agents report that far more than just England and Wales are herein involved. All save a few of the Scottish bishops favor York over Rome, and over half of the Irish bishops do. Moreover, there is firm support from many of the Burgundian bishops, both lay and ecclesiastical authorities of the Empire and its allies, as well as interested observers from a number of other as yet uncommitted states. Even Prince Sidonio of Portugal has commented before his court that a Papacy located somewhere to the west
and north of Rome would surely breathe new life into a patently moribund church-state.*’
Abdul shook his head slowly. “So much does he then hate the other Spanish kingdoms and principalities. He could have no other reason for making so false a statement in public, you know, my brother.”
“Of course his inherited hatreds have something to do with it, your holiness,” Sicola agreed. “And there also is the fact that the Princes of Portugal have always been on better terms with the English than have most of the other kings and princes and caliphs on that peninsula. But your holiness must also recognize that regionalism, nationalism, these are but parts of a whole, small parts, really. The bigger, more important parts of that dangerous whole are widespread distaste for the way in which Rome attempted to make a virtual satrapy of England and Wales, coupled with a recognition of the fact that Rome is become, in the wake of the utter rout of the Crusaders in England and our proven inability to even resupply our folk besieged in London, far weaker, poorer, and less influential than at any time in the last five centuries.
“We can expect more defections, your holiness, unless we can quickly regroup and present to the world a strong, united front, something that we cannot do, cannot show, cannot achieve or give any aspect of achieving so long as we leaders remain riven and thus keep our Roman State riven.”
“We suppose that our brother has a plan of some sort to achieve these ends?” was Abdul’s response, delivered with raised eyebrows.
Sicola nodded. “One formulated not solely by me, your holiness, but by a sizable body of the College now in Rome and participated in by letter by certain cardinals who are elsewhere.”
“And just what are the salient points of this plan, Brother Prospero? For instance, what are its provisions for us?”
“It is felt in consensus, your holiness, that the first order of affairs must be a lifting of the excommunication of Arthur and of the interdiction of England and Wales, these to be
coupled with immediate reestablishment of normal relations betwixt Rome and the Kingdom of England.”
“Impossible of accomplishment, Brother,” snapped Abdul. “In order to do that it were necessary to wash our hands, withdraw all our support and protection of the rightful king and his mother, the regent, leave them and their few remaining faithful supporters to the mercy of a ruthless usurper. No, we’ll not see such done!”
Sicola sighed. “Yes, your holiness’s unflagging hatred for King Arthur of England and Wales is known far and wide, and that is one of the reasons that it is felt that overtures of friendship, of a reconciliatory nature, would be more believable were they to emanate from a Papacy other than that of Abdul. But more on that subject anon.
“As regards the abandonment of the so-called regent and the boy who may or may not be the actual son of Richard IV Tudor, they should never have been supported in the first place, not to the ridiculous extremes that they were. It is a precedent that has earned Rome no friends and a plentitude of enemies.”
“But,” protested Abdul vociferously, she is the niece of— ”
“Your holiness’s pardon if I interrupt. That your holiness’s predecessor chose to have the daughter he always called a niece wed to him who then was Crown Prince of England and Wales was not a new or a novel idea. Many of his predecessors had arranged good, sometimes royal, marriages for their offspring and relatives. But when King Richard IV died, Rome should have accepted the choice of his brother to succeed him, not tried to force a foreign-born widow and an heir that many believe to be a non-Tudor bastard on the kingdom. Some pity can be felt for the transgressions of the predecessor of your holiness, of course, because he was after all the father of the widow and grandfather of the possible bastard in question.
“But your holiness himself has no such extenuating circumstances to excuse his intemperate actions. Your holiness had been most well reded—as many attempted at that time, myself included—to rescind the excommunication of King Arthur, send congratulations and Papal blessings, invite him to Rome and arrange to have him meet with a fatal accident somewhere along the way. But no, your holiness felt compelled to compound matters by first placing England and Wales under interdict, then by preaching a Crusade against them.
“And that Crusade of your holiness’s concoction … 1 think that never before in all history has a military operation been so ill coordinated and generally mismanaged. Granted, the English and Welsh were fighting on their own land and for it and the king they had chosen, but the combined strengths of the crusading forces should have been overpowering, had there been any sort of timing and coordination of the attack, the invasions of England. But no, the forces were allowed to invade when and where and as they saw fit in no less than five integuments, which Arthur and his army easily defeated. Now, so many gallons of Crusaders’ blood have been absorbed by English fields that few bishops from Riga to Garama but are loath to continue to preach this Crusade, and it is become exceeding difficult for Rome to hire mercenaries without signing agreements beforehand that service contracted will not include any possibility of fighting on English soil.
“Nor can your holiness apparently learn from his mistakes. I herein refer to the Irish business. Could your holiness not realize that such harsh measures over so petty a matter could do nothing, would do nothing save drive the high king and most of the petty kings into, directly into, the English camp?”