The Devil Will Come

Micaela had never been accused of discretion, Elisabetta thought, but she nodded. ‘I will speak to them. I’m sure they will agree. But what about Krek? And the other man Micaela had to kill? Krek was a very wealthy man. The police were there. Surely this will come out!’

‘I think not,’ Diaz said. ‘The Slovenian Ambassador to the Vatican has had a busy night. The Slovenian government has no desire for the facts ever to be known about Damjan Krek. He was quite far to the right, certainly no friend of the country’s political leaders. They’ve already begun circulating the word that Krek and Mulej died in a murder-suicide. It seems that they were having a homosexual affair. Their bodies will be cremated.’

Elisabetta held her tongue. ‘And the skeletons of St Callixtus? What will become of them?’

‘They’re already on their way back to Italy. They’ll go into storage. The new Pope will choose the next President of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology. Decisions will be made in good time.’

Elisabetta had only one more question. ‘And what of me?’ she asked.

Diaz rubbed his face. ‘I have to tell you, Sister, that you could be of great service to us here in the Vatican. I, for one, would like to see you pick up the staff that fell from Father Tremblay’s hand and continue his important work. No one is in a better position to fight these Lemures than you.’

Elisabetta’s lower lip quivered uncontrollably. ‘Please, Your Excellency. I will do whatever the Church demands of me but I beg you, please let me go back to my school.’

Aspromonte smiled. ‘Of course you can, my dear, of course you can. Go in Christ.’

After Elisabetta had left them, the two cardinals faced each other, their expressions grim. ‘It’s a pity,’ Diaz said. ‘She’s young with an agile mind. It seems it’s left to old men like you and me to carry on this struggle.’

It was five o’clock in the afternoon.

They had been meeting for just three hours but the Cardinal Electors looked weary and shell-shocked.

They sat in the Sacristy of St Peter’s in a chamber that had never been intended for this purpose. Tables and an altar unused since the last Papal Synod had been brought in from the adjacent Paul VI Audience Hall.

A new batch of ballots had been hastily printed, each beginning with the words: Eligo in Summum Pontificem – I elect as Supreme Pontiff.

When they had put their pens down, Cardinal Franconi summoned the Electors one by one, in order of their precedence, to the altar where each man presented the ballot to one of the Cardinal Scrutineers and swore in Latin, ‘I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.’

When all the ballots had been cast, one Scrutineer shook the container and another removed a ballot and read the name aloud.

As the balloting progressed there was a growing chorus of whispers but when the senior Scrutineer read the results the whispers were replaced by silence.

Cardinal Diaz rose and stretched himself to his full height.

He strode to the row of tables on his right, stood in front of one man and looked down.

‘Acceptasne electionem de te canonice factam in Summum Pontificem?’ Diaz asked. Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff?

Cardinal Aspromonte had been looking down at his clasped hands.

He turned his eyes upwards, met his old friend’s gaze and hesitated for a very long time before nodding. ‘Accepto, in nomine Domini.’

‘Quo nomine vis vocari?’ Diaz asked. By what name will you be called?

Aspromonte raised his voice for all to hear. ‘Celestine VI.’

The old oven and chimney of the Sistine Chapel were gone so the fireplace in the Papal residence was used in its place. It was an eerie sight. St Peter’s Square was still cordoned off and empty except for a smattering of Vatican workers. But there were crowds outside the gates craning their necks and at the sight of plumes of white smoke against a pale evening sky a roar went up that echoed throughout Rome.

Elisabetta kicked off her shoes and lay fully dressed on her old bed, in her old room, in her old school.

It felt unimaginably good to be back with the nuns of the convent. After communal dinner, Sister Marilena had made a little speech about the two joyous events she urged them to dwell on – the election of a new pope and the return of their Elisabetta – rather than the horrific ones of the previous day.

She was scared to close her eyes lest she see Krek’s raging face and flipping tail so she prayed with her eyes wide open. And when she felt the courage to test the darkness behind closed lids, she was relieved to see not Krek but the young, sweet face of Marco, just as she remembered him.

There was a light tap on her door.

It was Sister Marilena. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, Elisabetta, but there’s someone to see you, here, in the chapel.’

Monsignor Achille, Aspromonte’s secretary, was waiting patiently. He held a snow-white envelope in his hands. ‘The Holy Father wanted me to deliver this in person,’ he said.

With trembling hands Elisabetta opened the envelope and pulled out a handwritten letter.

Sister Elisabetta,

There were two reasons why I chose the name Celestine VI.

The first is, like Celestine V, who was a famously reluctant Pope, I too was reluctant to accept the Papacy.

The second, dear Elisabetta, was you, Celestine VI

Elisabetta reached into the pocket of her habit and pulled out the silver chi-rho pendant.

‘Please give this to the Holy Father,’ she said. ‘Tell him it’s from the columbarium of St Callixtus. Tell him it was the one small ray of goodness in a place of great darkness and evil.’

THIRTY-FOUR

TWO WEEKS PASSED and the rhythms of the Vatican began to return to a semblance of normality – with the jarring exception of the cranes, construction vehicles and workmen attending to the orderly demolition and cleanup of the smoldering remains of the Sistine Chapel.

Few artistic treasures were salvageable but a small army of art-restoration experts from the major Italian museums were fussing over the blast damage to the Sala Regia and planning a restorative campaign.

Pope Celestine VI seized on the symbolic importance of rebuilding the Sistine Chapel. He established a special Pontifical Commission to supervise the project and conduct an international contest to select an artist to paint a fresh ceiling fresco that would capture, in a new way, Michelangelo’s grandeur and would endure for centuries to come.

And on a sunny Saturday afternoon a small ceremony was taking place in the auditorium of the Scuola Teresa Spinelli on the Piazza Mastai.

In the audience were nuns, teachers, students and parents.

On the stage, Sister Marilena and Sister Elisabetta sat beside Evan Harris and Stephanie Meyer and the Mother General of the Augustinian Sisters, Servants of Jesus and Mary, who had flown in from Malta.

Sister Marilena took the podium and announced, ‘Today is a happy one for our dear school and our dear order. Nothing is more important to us than our mission of educating our children for good, productive and faithful lives. Our chronic lack of funds has forced us to make difficult choices in the past but thanks to Sister Elisabetta and our new friends here with us today we see bright days ahead. Please, let us welcome Professor Evan Harris and Miss Stephanie Meyer.’

Both of them rose and stood at the podium. Harris took the microphone. ‘I apologize for my lack of Italian but, since this is such an excellent school, I have been assured that English will work just fine. Nothing is more satisfying than a win-win situation. Cambridge University has educated many prominent men and women in its long and storied history but perhaps none more illustrious than the playwright Christopher Marlowe.’

Elisabetta winced at the name.

‘Marlowe’s most famous play,’ he continued, ‘was Dr Faustus and, as a Marlowe scholar, it has always pained me that Cambridge did not own an original early text of the play. That is now