Vespers had begun in the ground-floor chapel. The sound of plainsong drifted across the lobby. Lomeli felt suddenly very tired. He left O’Malley to look after Benítez and took the elevator up to his room. It was infernally hot up here too. The air-conditioning controls didn’t seem to work. For a moment he forgot about the welded shutters and tried to open the window. Defeated, he looked around his cell. The lights were very bright. The whitewashed walls and the polished floor seemed to magnify the glare. He could sense the beginnings of a headache. He turned off the lamps in the bedroom, groped his way to the bathroom and found the cord to turn on the neon strip above the mirror. He half closed the door. Then he lay down on his bed in the bluish gloom, intending to pray. Within a minute he was asleep.
At one point he dreamed he was in the Sistine Chapel and that the Holy Father was praying at the altar, but that every time he tried to approach him, the old man moved away, until finally he walked to the door of the sacristy. He turned and smiled at Lomeli, opened the door to the Room of Tears and plunged from view.
Lomeli woke with a cry, which he stifled quickly by biting on his knuckle. For a few wide-eyed seconds he had no idea where he was. All the familiar objects of his life had vanished. He lay waiting for his heartbeat to steady. After a while he tried to remember what else had been in his dream. There were many, many images, he was sure. He could sense them. But the moment he tried to fix them into thoughts, they shimmered and vanished like burst bubbles. Only the terrible vision of the Holy Father plummeting remained imprinted on his mind.
He heard a pair of male voices talking in English in the corridor. They seemed to be African. There was much fiddling with a key. A door opened and closed. One of the cardinals shuffled off down the passage while the other switched on the light in the next room. The wall was so thin it might have been made of cardboard. Lomeli could hear him moving around, talking to himself – he thought it might be Adeyemi – and then the sound of coughing and hawking, followed by the lavatory flushing.
He looked at his watch. It was almost eight. He had been asleep for over an hour. And yet he felt utterly unrefreshed, as if his time unconscious had been more stressful than his time awake. He thought of all the tasks that lay ahead. Give me strength, O Lord, to face this trial. He turned over carefully, sat up, placed his feet on the floor and rocked himself forward several times, building the momentum to stand. This was old age: all these movements one had once taken for granted – the simple act of rising from a bed, for example – that now required a precise sequence of planned manoeuvres. At the third attempt he gained his feet and walked stiffly the short distance to the desk.
He sat down, switched on the reading lamp, and angled it over his brown leather folder. He slid out twelve sheets of A5: thickly woven, cream-coloured, hand-made, watermarked paper that was considered to be of a quality appropriate to the historic occasion. The typeface was large, clear, double-spaced. After he had finished with it, the document would be lodged for all eternity in the Vatican archive.
The sermon was headed Pro eligendo Romano pontifice – ‘For the election of a Roman pontiff’ – and its purpose, in accordance with tradition, was to set out the qualities that would be required of the new Pope. Within living memory, such homilies had swung papal elections. In 1958, Cardinal Antonio Bacci had delivered a liberal’s description of the perfect pontiff (May the new Vicar of Christ form a bridge between all levels of society, between all nations. . .) that was virtually a word-portrait of Cardinal Roncalli of Venice, who duly became Pope John XXIII. Five years later, the conservatives tried the same tactic in a homily by Monsignor Amleto Tondini (Doubt should be cast on the enthusiastic applause received by the ‘Pope of peace’), but it only succeeded in provoking such a backlash among the moderates, who thought it in poor taste, that it had helped secure the victory of Cardinal Montini.
Lomeli’s address, in contrast, had been carefully constructed to ensure it was neutral to the point of blandness: Our recent Popes have all been tireless promoters of peace and co-operation at the international level. Let us pray that the future Pope will continue this ceaseless work of charity and love. . . Nobody could object to that, not even Tedesco, who could sniff out relativism as fast as a trained dog could find a truffle. It was the prospect of the Mass itself that troubled him: his own spiritual capacity. He would be under such scrutiny. The television cameras would be tight on his face.
He put away his speech and went over to the prie-dieu. It was made of simple plain wood, exactly the same as the one the Holy Father had had in his room. He lowered himself to his knees, grasped either side of it, and bowed his head, and in that position he remained for nearly half an hour, until it was time to go down to dinner.
4 In pectore
THE DINING HALL was the largest room in the Casa Santa Marta. It ran the entire right-hand length of the lobby and was mostly open to it, with a white marble floor and a glassed-in atrium ceiling. The line of potted plants that had once cordoned off the section where the Holy Father took his meals had been removed. Fifteen large round tables had each been set for eight diners, with wine and water bottles in the centre of the white lace tablecloths. By the time Lomeli stepped out of the elevator, the place was full. The din of voices bouncing off the hard surfaces was convivial and anticipatory, like the first night of a business convention. Many of the cardinals had already been served with a drink by the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul.
Lomeli looked around for Benítez and saw him standing alone behind a pillar just outside the dining room. O’Malley had somehow managed to dig out a cassock with the red sash and piping of a cardinal, but it was slightly too large for its new recipient. He seemed lost in it. Lomeli went over. ‘Your Eminence, have you settled in? Did Monsignor O’Malley find you a room?’
‘Yes, Dean, thank you. On the top floor.’ He held out his hand and showed his key with a kind of wonder that he should find himself in such a place. ‘It is said to have a marvellous view over the city, but the shutters won’t open.’
‘That is to prevent your betraying our secrets, or receiving information from the outside world,’ said Lomeli; then, noticing Benítez’s puzzled expression, he added, ‘A joke, Your Eminence. It’s the same for all of us. Well, you mustn’t just stand on your own all night. This will never do. Come with me.’
‘I’m really perfectly happy here, Dean, observing.’
‘Nonsense. I’m going to introduce you.’
‘Is it necessary? Everyone is talking to someone…’
‘You are a cardinal now. A certain confidence is demanded.’
He took the Filipino by the arm and propelled him towards the middle of the dining room, nodding affably to the nuns who were waiting to begin serving the meal, squeezing between the tables until he found them a space. He took up a knife and rapped on the side of a wine glass. Quiet fell over the room, apart from the elderly Archbishop Emeritus of Caracas, who continued to talk loudly until his companion waved at him to be quiet and pointed at Lomeli. The Venezuelan peered around and fiddled with his hearing aid. A piercing howl caused those nearest him to wince and hunch their shoulders. He raised his hand in apology.
Lomeli bowed towards him. ‘Thank you, Eminence. My brothers,’ he said, ‘please be seated.’
He waited while they found their places.