Chapter Text
Thomas Cardinal Lawrence, Dean of the College of Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, stands at the window, staring out into the night, and quarrels with his God.
Talk to me, he challenges the Heavenly Father. Say something. Give me a sign. A hint. A mere blink of your all-seeing eye, a tiny stirring of the air from the wings of the Holy Spirit. Anything.
Anything but this ominous, leaden silence, so odious, so familiar, his companion for months now, if not years, and heavier tonight than ever. It hadn't been the late Pope's death that had cut communications between the Lord and His faithful servant, nor Thomas's illness, nor any other momentous event in his life. God hadn't shut him out suddenly, with the bang of a door. Instead He had gradually tiptoed out when Thomas had had his back turned, busy with the million day-to-day tasks, requests and decisions that came with holding a high office in the hierarchy of the Church. And when Thomas had finally turned to look, He had been gone. And stayed gone. And he's certainly not here now.
Where are you? What kind of a father are you, to ignore your child in distress? Explain yourself, dammit.
No, Thomas tells himself sternly the next moment, blasphemy isn't the answer, it never is. His distress is making him blind to the mercies that he has already received, in spite of the radio silence he encounters when he tries to pray with words. Who is to say that it wasn't a breath of air from the wings of the Holy Spirit that blew his carefully worded homily out of his hands during the solemn Missa Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice only three days ago, and replaced it with something a lot more useful? And besides, God had had a lot more to say to him throughout the Conclave, too, especially about who should not be Pope. Why else had the lot assigned Thomas a room in the Casa Santa Marta right next door to Joshua Adeyemi? And what strange power, if not God's, had compelled Thomas to do the unthinkable and break the seals of the late Pope's rooms? And then when Goffredo Tedesco had started foaming at the mouth like some demented knight crusader, who if not God had made the least and the newest of the Cardinal Electors get to his feet and put him in his place?
But by that very same logic, Thomas realises, he already has his answer now. God has spoken again tonight, louder than words, and who does Thomas think he is, to refuse to listen just because he doesn't like the answer?
He turns his eyes away from the sky outside the window, never entirely dark above the huge, restless, well-lit city of Rome even during the quietest hours of the night, and lowers his gaze to the soft, crumpled little object that he's clutching in his folded hands. He hasn't let go of it since he rescued it from the ruins.
Thy will be done, his tired brain grinds out the formulaic submission as if through clenched teeth. But I can't guarantee, Lord, that I will ever forgive you for letting me hope first.
Thomas had not been the only one walking on clouds of hope and optimism, back in the afternoon.
The crowds outside St. Peter's Basilica and in the adjoining streets, estimated by the airborne news crews at two hundred and fifty thousand in spite of the extreme danger of further terrorist attacks, had made the heavens ring with joy at the white smoke signalling a new dawn. Thomas had witnessed that particular moment only from afar, too busy sorting out the tangles in his own mind, until God had sent him a stray turtle to turn the white noise inside his head into piercing clarity. But it was a different matter to see those masses up close, and how they went absolutely wild when the Cardinal Protodeacon announced who exactly it was that the Holy Spirit had inspired the Conclave to choose. The city had been aching for some kind of release, after the horrific news of the morning, and had been more than ready to greet their newly elected shepherd with an outpour of applause and affection no matter who it would be. But even under these special circumstances, nobody could have foretold the tsunami of emotion that rose from the depths of St Peter's Square when the slight figure and the youthful, sharp-featured face of Vincent Benítez had come into view, his white Papal cassock puffing out at the back where the tailor had hastily taken it in to reduce its bulk, his white zucchetto perched precariously on his shock of jet black hair. The ecstasy of the faithful seemed to be infecting even the merely curious. Thomas could spot no one who seemed unmoved. And how could anyone be. This new Pope was the embodiment of all that the world could have wished for. A fairly young man, and visibly young at heart, when all the Vatican had offered for decades were cranky and infirm old codgers like Thomas himself. Not a white man, either, unlike virtually all that had come before him in the office, ending two thousand years of Western hegemony, arrogance and superiority. And in a way, not even a man in the strict sense of the word at all, in a church where women had born and always would bear the heaviest weight of the Lord's work and never received even a fraction of the recognition they deserved.
If you knew, Thomas thought, his eyes travelling from the habited nuns in the crowd to the fashionable secular ladies of Rome, sunglasses pushed into their hair, and from them to the mothers holding up their children, to the young tourist girls, phones aloft and screeching with excitement, and to the elderly matrons waving laced white handkerchiefs and wiping tears. If you knew the truth, my daughters.
They never would, of course. They might sense it though, the same way Thomas and his brother cardinals had sensed it, that here was someone who would not reign supreme over the Lord's people, but who would care for and guide and cherish and empower it, the way a good mother cared for her children. Innocent XIV had better ride that wave of confidence and trust for as long as it lasted, and the whole Church with him. And anything that might stand in its way, that might make the wave lose this precious momentum, that could sow doubt and confusion, had better be pushed far, far below the surface, ideally never to emerge again. As soon as they stepped back from the balcony of St Peter's after the Urbi et Orbi blessing, the whole of the Vatican machinery would ponderously heave back into action after weeks of virtual standstill. And Thomas's first concern would be to instruct Monsignor O'Malley to delete the visa application to Switzerland from all the computers, once and for all. It would cause a scandal the like of which the Church had never seen, if it fell into the wrong hands and someone started Googling the clinic, as someone surely would.
A microphone had been discreetly placed in front of the Holy Father, but he still stood there at the edge of the balcony as if transfixed, overwhelmed, searching for the right words. Archbishop Mandorff, back in the Pauline chapel, had offered to draft his first address to the faithful with him or for him, fully aware that the newly elected Pontiff's hands might be shaking too hard with emotion to hold a pen steady, but Innocent had politely declined both the pen and paper and any assistance. Thomas, observing that scene from the corner of his eye, had registered the decision with some trepidation. He ought to know by now, after the impact of his own homily during the solemn mass that opened the Conclave, that good things might happen if you went off script and spoke from the heart as the Holy Spirit inspired you. But he was an anxious man and always would be, and besides, the urge to take this strange, wonderful, fragile creature that they had just dressed in white and put on a throne into his hands to shield him from the world and all its evils had become almost impossible to control. The same compulsion was, of course, at the root of his decision to get rid of the treacherous visa document, too. Thomas was not a little shocked at how naturally it had come to him, and with how little compunction. But if God had it in Himself to forgive all the shady things Thomas had done during the Conclave, as was evident from this marvellous result, then wouldn't God forgive him a little lapse in accurate bookkeeping as well?
From his insignificant place on the balcony somewhere in the third row behind the Holy Father, now that his official duties in the Conclave had ended, Thomas didn't see when Innocent finally began to speak, but there was something of a lull in the noise from the crowd, and the gentle voice was unmistakable. To Thomas's surprise and relief it did not shake in the least. "Fratelli e sorelle," the Holy Father adressed the crowd in his usual soft-spoken tone, "la pace e l'amore di Dio nostro padre siano con voi."
Another wave of cheering and chanting. What was it, Thomas wondered, that made even the simplest and plainest words sound special when spoken by this man? He truly meant them, from the bottom of his heart, and by some strange but fascinating instinct, everyone who listened knew that he did.
Thomas also realised that Innocent had not been at a loss for words at all. He had simply allowed the people in the square to set the pace, given them all the room they needed to air their elation, and adjusted to them, rather than forcing them to adjust to him. Now there was a slight commotion among the clerics closest to Innocent, and Thomas realised belatedly that the Holy Father had just switched to his native Spanish without warning, momentarily throwing all the translators in the news crews into confusion and causing an uneasy stir among the masters of ceremony around him. But then in a swift movement, Cardinal Villanueva of Toledo took a couple of steps forward to Innocent's side, and started rendering Innocent's words into polished Italian, line by line.
"Forgive a stranger," Innocent was saying, echoed by Villanueva, "for doing what strangers do. They stand out, so we laugh. They fumble, so we cringe. They are ignorant of the rules, so we roll our eyes and sigh. It is only through the grace of God, and through our patience and goodwill, that they cease to be the fools we take them for, and reveal themselves to us as who they truly are - children of the same father, no matter their looks, their language, their beliefs or how they prefer to take their coffee. Black, by the way, with cinnamon and lots of sugar, is how we like it in Veracruz."
Brilliant, he's brilliant, Thomas thought, elated. He had made his audience laugh, then held up a mirror to them and made them examine their prejudices, and then had made them laugh again, in the space of less than a minute. Accordingly, a roar of approval and merriment had arisen from the square, particularly loud in one specific corner. There was a pillar in the way, but Thomas thought he spotted the colours of a Mexican flag being waved enthusiastically
"Patience and goodwill and the grace of God," Innocent repeated, and Thomas could tell from the way the crowd calmed down again expectantly that the smile had left the Holy Father's face. "Of the latter, we can always be sure. But the former is up to us. And this very morning, right here in this beautiful city, we have seen and heard what can happen when patience is replaced with ambition and fanaticism, and goodwill with hatred."
For a terrifying moment, Thomas thought Innocent was talking publicly about the deep divisions within the Conclave, but then he realised he was referring to something far more important.
"The people of Rome, and many who they welcomed as visitors to their city, lie dead by the dozens," Innocent continued soberly. "Many more are suffering, their lives changed forever by wounds to their bodies and their souls. Let us pray for all of them with whatever words we have, or with none."
His voice had started shaking a little then, dropping to an even lower register, as a hush descended on St. Peter's Square, sudden and eerie, broken only by Cardinal Villanueva's Italian translation.
"And let us pray also for every man, every woman and every child who is suffering right now anywhere in the world." He was speeding up, agitation creeping into his voice, and no longer waiting for Cardinal Villanueva to catch up. "We pray for all who have their lives taken… their rights denied and violated… their future stolen, and their dreams destroyed. God of mercy, keep - " Thomas saw him raise his arm to his face in a sudden, almost angry gesture that had no place in the liturgy. He took another deep breath, but no more words would come. The silence from the crowd was so complete that Thomas could hear the discreet humming of the camera that one of the Vatican press office staffers was operating from his corner at the end of the balcony. It was recording for posterity, et in saecula saeculorum, the completely unheard-of, unbelievable, shocking fact that the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church was allowing the world at large to watch him cry.
It can't be, Thomas requests, pleads, begs, demands, screams silently at the ceiling. It can't happen. We can't go from a Pope who cries with his people to a people who cries for its Pope within less than a day.
Back on the balcony of St. Peter's, Thomas's vision had become a little blurry, too, and so had his recollection of the exact details that followed. In the profound silence Innocent's shoulders under the white mozzetta rose and sank, rose and sank, until at some point Cardinal Villanueva, unprompted this time, intoned the Subvenite Sancti Dei prayer. It was quickly taken up by his fellow cardinals, or at least by those whose throats were not too tight to speak, as Thomas's certainly was. Soon the whole of St. Peter's Square was reverberating with the ancient prayer for the dead, Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Not again, God, not again. There is a limit to how many times in a row Thomas will be able to bear kneeling by a dead Pontiff's bedside, racked with remorse and regret at a too-early passing, at the missed opportunities to do good and change things for the better, and at his own failure to give the shepherd of shepherds more support before it was too late.
He turns the white zucchetto in his hands, and realises that he's clinging to it like a heathen to a talisman. Will they let him keep it, the way they let Aldo Bellini keep the late Holy Father's chess set? For what purpose, though? The chess set is a reminder of all the things that were good, of the many evenings spent in fruitful conversation or companionable silence, and of the sharpness of its previous owner's mind, always eight moves ahead. What does this squashed little piece of silk signify, other than loss and failure? Isn't it just an empty shell, and its preservation a pointless exercise?
All the same, by the time Thomas finally puts it away safely inside his cassock, close to his heart, he is crying, too.