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“All pressing problems.”

“I know. But sometimes the noise of their chirruping and gossip drives me close to madness.”

“So what do you want?”

“Somewhere to be quiet. Peaceful. Where I can meditate without being interrupted by the rabble, or harangued by a deacon about the love of Jesus. Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their ear. They have the great merit of disagreeing with nearly everything I say. In fact, they disagree with almost everything they say themselves. And most importantly, they don’t think that shouting strengthens their argument. They just talk loudly out of habit. I have been entertaining myself by reading the Bible with one of their priests or whatever you call them. It has been most instructive.”

“You astonish me.”

“I astonish myself. But fascinating though I find Moses, I still want a little peace and quiet. Do you have anywhere in the country I can go to?”

Manlius laughed. “My lady, you know quite well that I own nearly all the country. According to the tax collectors, I have some forty-nine villas, many of which are now unoccupied and falling into ruin for lack of labor. Not that they take this into account.”

She sighed. “Don’t you start. I would like to borrow something small, about two days from here. As isolated as possible.”

Manlius thought. “I know just the place,” he said.

A fortnight later, the repair work had been carried out, a dozen serfs transferred to provide basic services, and the lady Sophia was escorted to the villa he had in mind about four kilometers from his own principal residence. It lay among a group of hills that provided coolness in the summer and protection from the winds in the winter. It was much too grand for her, consisting of some twenty-five rooms, and she hated it on sight. But, as she was leaving, she saw the tiny dwelling on the hill—with a clear view over the countryside, a copse of trees to provide shelter—and on the instant decided this was perfect. Clean water nearby, a path for bread and other supplies to be brought from the valley. Fresh air, and the simplicity she desired. Once the family of farmers had been ejected on Manlius’s orders—for Sophia never thought that philosophy should bow its head to equity—she took it over and achieved something of the tranquillity she had long sought. When she finally decided that this was where she would stay, he gave it to her, along with the neighboring farms and about forty laborers. Within a few years all but six of the laborers had run away, and the farmland had turned back into scrub. What did he expect? That she was going to turn farmer? Fret about the wheat? Examine the olive trees for blight? The waste annoyed Manlius, he who worked so hard to keep production going on his own lands, but he said nothing. Nonetheless, she was a difficult, impossible woman, sometimes.

She lived there, on and off, for near twenty years before she died, and much to her annoyance, she became genuinely respected by the rough country folk who lived nearby and adopted the habit of coming to her with their illnesses and concerns. She even outlived Manlius himself, and on his death, the tax revenues of the land passed to a Burgundian soldier, who collected them, every quarter, in person.

They even came to have a grudging affection for each other, this representative of Greek sophistication and the rough, unlettered barbarian who was now her effective overlord. She was lucky, and she knew it; her new master—such he was, although only she, with characteristic bluntness, ever referred to him in this way—wished to be more polished, and had a crude, rough sense of fairness that made her life more fortunate than many enjoyed. Ordric—middle-aged, fat, and powerful—was one of the better men in an age with few shining examples of virtue left. It was strange to find such qualities in such an unlikely place, but the times themselves were strange. She taught him nothing, he did not wish to learn; rather, they learned only to appreciate the kindness of the other, and in the end, she left him all her remaining lands in her will, not merely the taxes of them, as she could think of no better person to take possession. In return, Ordric built the little monument to her over her grave, to remember someone to whom he had become quietly devoted. The story of his respect survived, the memory of her advice gathered miraculous overtones, and eventually a small chapel grew around her tomb as people came to pray there for help.

CARDINAL CECCANI kept Olivier’s letter about the shrine, which was constructed from the Burgundian’s respect, for it gave him an idea that nagged quietly at him in the months after he read his protégé’s words.

By 1347 Ceccani was a star in the ecclesiastical firmament, and had become so powerful that he was richly detested. He had accumulated so many offices that he was all but indispensable for the good running of Christendom. And he had absorbed so many benefices that many whispered he had an annual revenue rivaling that of Pope Clement himself. He was, consequently, a focus of real hatred for all those who either wanted more for themselves or genuinely believed that the gentle shepherd of men would have been appalled to see what he had created.

Ceccani, of course, was as aware of this as he was aware of everything that went on around him. And he was wounded by it, for he was, in his way, a man of the utmost piety and duty. He wore the richest, costliest garments made of silk and cloth of gold because it was necessary to impress men with the majesty and power of the church; underneath he wore a shirt of the coarsest hair, crawling with lice, his flesh covered in suppurating sores. He gave banquets of such cost and magnificence that they endured for days and attracted the disgust of those excluded, yet himself drank only water and disdained the roasts and sweetmeats and fine wines that he pressed so liberally on his guests. He entered church like a prince, carried on a bier and attended by at least a dozen servants, generating more condemnation from those revolted by his arrogance, yet prayed alone three hours every night, on bare knees on the stone of his private chapel, carefully locking the door so no one would see him. He was the greatest lover of learning, using men like Olivier to rescue priceless texts and his money to restore them to humanity, yet condemned all deviation from the orthodoxy of the church and, on two occasions at least, ordered the burning of heretics. Like the church of which he was a faithful servant and perfect reflection, Cardinal Ceccani was a contradictory, inexplicable creature.

He was, moreover, the embodiment of the corruption that had settled on the church like a thick fog since it had fled Rome and come to Avignon, and yet no man in the curia was more aware than he of the dangers of its presence there, nor more desirous that the pope should return to the Eternal City. But he had been too young to stand a chance in 1342 when the Frenchman Pierre Roger instead had ascended the throne as Clement VI, and Clement could live for many years yet. Other means of restoring the head of Christendom to his proper place, accordingly, began to come to his mind.

The chapel of Saint Sophia and the story of her life appealed to him greatly, not least because when he prayed to her for guidance as the papacy was being drawn into the English wars, he found her assistance valuable. He was a man of many vows, and he offered her at that time a gesture of thanks, should her intercession be efficacious. Her name meant wisdom, and wisdom, he considered, had been granted him; the chapel was in his diocese—one of his many dioceses—and it needed a reminder of his power. The area was not entirely quiescent; although the heresies of the previous centuries had not badly infected the region, it had been touched; to have a saint of such antiquity revealed to them in their very midst was a gift from heaven. That she was all but forgotten was better still, if Ceccani could restore her to proper attention.