He was staring too openly, he realised. He ought to mingle with the others. But he didn’t much want to talk to anyone. He wandered around the lobby, holding his cup and saucer like a shield in front of him, smiling and bowing slightly to those cardinals who approached him, but all the time keeping moving. Just around the corner, next to the door to the chapel, he spotted Benítez at the centre of a group of cardinals. They were listening intently to what he was saying. He wondered what the Filipino was telling them. Benítez glanced over their shoulders and noticed Lomeli looking in his direction. He excused himself, and came over.
‘Good evening, Your Eminence.’
‘And good evening to you.’ Lomeli put his hand on Benítez’s shoulder and gazed at him with concern. ‘How is your health bearing up?’
‘My health is excellent, thank you.’
He seemed to tense slightly at the question, and Lomeli remembered that he had only been told in confidence of his offer to resign on medical grounds. He said, ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t intended to be intrusive. I meant have you recovered from your journey?’
‘Entirely, thank you. I slept very well.’
‘That’s wonderful. It’s a privilege to have you with us.’ He patted the Filipino’s shoulder and swiftly withdrew his hand. He sipped his coffee. ‘And I noticed in the Sistine that you found someone to vote for.’
‘Indeed I did, Dean.’ Benítez smiled shyly. ‘I voted for you.’
Lomeli rattled his cup against its saucer in surprise. ‘Oh, good heavens!’
‘Forgive me. Am I not supposed to say?’
‘No, no, it’s not that. I’m honoured. But really I’m not a serious candidate.’
‘With respect, Your Eminence, isn’t that for your colleagues to decide?’
‘Of course it is. But I fear that if you knew me better, you would appreciate that I’m in no way worthy to be Pope.’
‘Any man who is truly worthy must consider himself unworthy. Isn’t that the point you were making in your homily? That without doubt there can be no faith? It resonated with my own experience. The scenes I witnessed in Africa especially would make any man sceptical of God’s mercy.’
‘My dear Vincent – may I call you Vincent? – I beg you, in the next ballot, give your vote to one of our brothers who has a realistic chance of winning. Bellini would be my choice.’
Benítez shook his head. ‘Bellini seems to me – what was the phrase the Holy Father once used to me to describe him? – “brilliant but neurotic”. I’m sorry, Dean. I shall vote for you.’
‘Even if I plead with you not to? You received a vote yourself this afternoon, didn’t you?’
‘I did. It was absurd!’
‘Then imagine how you would feel if I insisted on voting for you, and by some miracle you won.’
‘It would be a disaster for the Church.’
‘Yes, well that is how it would be if I became Pope. Will you at least think about what I’m asking?’
Benítez promised that he would.
After his conversation with Benítez, Lomeli was sufficiently troubled to try to seek out the main contenders. He found Tedesco alone in the lobby, lying back in one of the crimson armchairs, his plump and dimpled hands folded across his capacious stomach, his feet up on a coffee table. They were surprisingly dainty for a man of his girth, shod in scuffed and shapeless orthopaedic shoes. Lomeli said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m doing all in my power to withdraw my name from the second ballot.’
Tedesco regarded him through half-open eyes. ‘And why would you do that?’
‘Because I don’t wish to compromise my neutrality as dean.’
‘You rather did that this morning, didn’t you?’
‘I’m sorry if you took it that way.’
‘Ah, don’t worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, I hope you continue as a candidate. I want to see the issues aired: I thought Scavizzi answered you well enough in his meditation. Besides. . .’ he wiggled his little feet happily and closed his eyes, ‘you’re splitting the liberal vote!’
Lomeli studied him for a moment. One had to smile. He was as cunning as a peasant selling a pig at market. Forty votes, that was all the Patriarch of Venice needed: forty votes, and he would have the blocking third he needed to prevent the election of a detested ‘progressive’. He would drag the Conclave out for days if he had to. All the more urgency, then, for Lomeli to extricate himself from the embarrassing position in which he was now placed.
‘I wish you a good night’s sleep, Patriarch.’
‘Goodnight, Dean.’
Before the evening was over, he had managed to speak in turn to each of the other three leading candidates, and to each he repeated his pledge to withdraw. ‘Mention it to anyone who brings up my name, I implore you. Tell them to come and see me if they doubt my sincerity. All I wish is to serve the Conclave and to help it arrive at the right decision. I can’t do that if I’m seen as a contender myself.’
Tremblay frowned and rubbed his chin. ‘Forgive me, Dean, but if we do that, won’t we simply make you look like a paragon of modesty? If one was being Machiavellian about it, one could almost say it was a clever move to swing votes.’
It was such an insulting response, Lomeli was tempted to raise the issue of the so-called withdrawn report into the Camerlengo’s activities. But what was the point? He would only deny it. Instead he said politely, ‘Well that is the situation, Your Eminence, and I shall leave you to handle it as you see fit.’
Next he talked to Adeyemi, who was statesmanlike. ‘I consider that a principled position, Dean, exactly as I would have expected from you. I shall tell my supporters to spread the word.’
‘And you certainly have plenty of supporters, I think.’ Adeyemi looked at him blankly. Lomeli smiled. ‘Forgive me: I couldn’t help overhearing the meeting in your room earlier this evening. We’re next-door neighbours. The walls are very thin.’
‘Ah, yes!’ Adeyemi’s expression cleared. ‘There was a certain exuberance after the first ballot. Perhaps it wasn’t very seemly. It won’t happen again.’
Lomeli intercepted Bellini just as he was about to go upstairs to bed and told him what he had told the others. He added, ‘I feel very wretched that my meagre tally may have come at your expense.’
‘Don’t be. I’m relieved. There seems to be a general feeling that the chalice is slipping away from me. If that is the case – and I pray that it is – I can only hope that it passes to you.’ Bellini threaded his arm through Lomeli’s, and together the two old friends began to climb the stairs.
Lomeli said, ‘You are the only one of us with the holiness and the intellect to be Pope.’
‘No, that’s kind of you, but I fret too much, and we cannot have a Pope who frets. You will have to be careful, though, Jacopo. I’m serious: if my position weakens further, much of my support will probably switch to you.’
‘No, no, no, that would be a disaster!’
‘Think about it. Our fellow countrymen are desperate to have an Italian Pope, but at the same time most of them can’t abide the thought of Tedesco. If I fade, that leaves you as the only viable candidate for them to rally behind.’
Lomeli stopped, mid-step. ‘What an appalling thought! That must not be allowed to happen!’ When they resumed climbing he said, ‘Perhaps Adeyemi will turn out to be the answer. He certainly has the wind behind him.’
‘Adeyemi? A man who has more or less said that all homosexuals should be sent to prison in this world and to hell in the next? He is not the answer to anything!’
They reached the second floor. The candles flickering outside the Holy Father’s apartment cast a red glow across the landing. The two most senior cardinals in the electoral college stood for a moment contemplating the sealed door.