“Stop howling,” said the Axe. “You’ll wake up the whole neighborhood.”
“He already has,” Aberlott grumbled sleepily from the next room. Crumily was swearing and pounding his pillow. Jæsis had never stopped snoring and moaning.
When the others had subsided into sleep again, Blacktooth felt under his hard pillow for the rosary. He fingered the crucifix and began whispering the creed, but stopped. Cleaned and polished or not, it felt desecrated. In confession, he had tried to blame Ædrea for stealing it, but Father Specklebird had forced him to admit that he had nottaxed her again for the beads after a bout of pleasant but certainly sinful sex in the hay.
“Don’t mince words. You traded your rosary for a blow job,” the old man had said sourly, “and broke your vow of chastity. Now go on. What else have you done?”
Blacktooth was still doing the penance which Father Specklebird had assigned him. (“You shall make a list, an inventory of all your wealth, my son.”) At first he thought it a trivial penance, and that the list would be quite short. But the more he worked at it the more clearly he recognized that his riches were coextensive with, and not different from, his sins. There was more (or less) to spiritual poverty than owning nothing.
The city had not been well since the visitors had come. Down from the mountains perhaps, a fetid chinook or chill miasma had breathed upon it, sickening many of the young, the old, the frail. Food Was scarce. Wheat especially was in short supply, and rye of poor quality was imported at high prices. The inns were full to bulging, and inadequate sewers overflowed to the streets in lower elevations. A quorum of cardinals had not yet arrived, but among those already in town, several had fallen sick. The water was blamed at first. It happens every time, the visitors said; none but the locals could safely drink it. But this time was worse than before. There was sickness among the local population as well. The symptoms were various, and not always the same. There was vomiting and fever, as in the case of the student Jæsis. Others experienced dizziness, headache, depression, mania, delirium, or panic. One physician claimed there were two diseases at work and spreading. Only wealthy Valanans seemed immune, but the immunity was not due to wealth itself; visiting cardinals were not notably poor, but a number of them showed symptoms. There was an urgency to get the conclave started, and if possible, done with. Local people blamed the sickness on crowded conditions caused by visitors. Others cited the wrath of God, which would be appeased only by a swift election.
Because of the sickness and of impatience at lengthy conclaves, there were demonstrations and unrest in Valana that month. On Palm Sunday, what seemed to be a religious procession had moved toward the former fortress hilltop from the college of Saint Ston’s. As it neared Saint John-in-Exile, its character changed. New banners were unfurled, and the procession became a political parade, whose half-serious purpose was to proclaim popular support of the students of Saint Ston’s Seminary for Amen Specklebird as a candidate for the triple crown and the throne of Peter. Hearing about it, Father Specklebird did not wait to be summoned by the current Bishop of Denver, but came limping hastily into town to denounce the enterprise and scold the students. Leaders of the movement were arrested by the secular police—an action which Specklebird felt forced to condemn.
On the following day, students from the secular college staged a parody of the incident by demonstrating in favor of the candidacy of the trigamous Cardinal Ri of Hong, much to the delight of the Axe, who had made friends with Ri’s six-man bodyguard, and had learned as much as he could from them about life beyond the western ocean. Again, leaders were arrested, but the jail was already full of drunken farmers, Nomads, and pickpockets who had come to exploit the presence of the growing crowds of petitioners and lobbyists who always converged on conclaves. The student leaders were lightly flogged, the others given probation. There were also ecclesiastical penalties for attempting to influence the election.
On Tuesday of Holy Week, the Dean of the Sacred College appeared on the balcony of Saint John-in-Exile and promised a turbulent mob of jeering people that the conclave would begin as soon as 398 cardinals were present. “Probably within ten days,” he added. Since the death of Pope Linus VI, twenty-two cardinals had followed him to the grave, and the three subsequent popes had observed a moratorium on the bestowal of red hats; but still under present law two-thirds plus one of all eligible electors, excluding those who were certifiably infirm, were necessary to elect. And when no more than the necessary 398 had arrived, they would have to vote unanimously in order to elect a pope, so the Dean’s promise was an empty one and the crowd knew it. No serious voting could begin until all but the senile, the sick, and the lame had arrived in Valana.
Votes were being counted in advance, and the bookmakers of Valana were already taking bets, an excommunicating offense. There was no odds-on favorite, but one might bet two alabasters on Golopez Cardinal Onyo from Old Mexico in hopes of winning three, while fans of Urion Benefez could bet one to win three. There were somewhat similar odds on Urion’s talk-alike, Otto Cardinal e’Notto from the Great River Delta, and Chuntar Hadala, a greatly respected missionary bishop to the Valley of the Misborn, now the Watchitah Nation. Sorely Nauwhat from Oregon was given at ten-to-one, because of the persistent doctrinal problems in his territory. Abbot Jarad Kendemin was rated fifteen-to-one, because of his reluctance. Only by betting on such improbables as Elia Cardinal Brownpony or Amen Specklebird could a poor porter or housewife hope to become rich.
Holy Week was celebrated with all the pomp possible in the absence of a reigning pontiff. Masses were concelebrated with all able cardinals present, and many of the religious processions were real. But the pageantry was not a distraction to a single-minded population who wanted a pope, a western pope, and wanted him soon. Much anger was directed at the absent Cardinal Archbishop of Texark for his deliberate delay, but his advance party of legists, servants, and conclavists were already busy preparing for what would no doubt be his grand entrance upon the scene at the appropriate moment.
A preliminary meeting of electors, their assistants and conclavists, legists, other prelates, diplomats, leaders of religious orders, and eminent scholars, among them theologians, historians, and political theorists, was scheduled for the afternoon of Maundy Thursday. The announced topic was to be the changing relationship between the Church and the Secular Power in the first half of the thirty-third century. The informal and nonsacred nature of this convention was emphasized by holding it in the Great Hall of Saint Ston at the seminary, and by admitting certain categories of nonparticipants as observers.
“Are you going to this fistfight, Blacktooth?” asked Aberlott, who had put on his student’s uniform.
“Who’s doing the fighting?” asked the monk.
“Well, it’s Benefez against any challenger. Who knows, your own master might pick up the gauntlet for the west.”
Jæsis rolled over on his cot and groaned.
“Cardinal Brownpony doesn’t get into fights, and the Archbishop of Texark isn’t even in town yet.”
“Oh, but his whole staff is here. And thirteen cardinals from the Imperium. He’s going to make his move, all right.”
Jæsis yelped in his sleep, and muttered profanity.
“Mention Benefez, and Jæsis gets mad.” Aberlott nodded toward the feverish sleeper. “Or maybe it’s the Hannegan he hates.”
“You think there’ll be a squabble?”
“I know it. Father General Corvany of the Order of Saint Ignatz will be there, for one.” This woke Jæsis up, and he began swearing more coherently.