The pope's grip had loosened and he stared past the humiliated monk, out across the tiled rooftops of his Eternal City.
The friar continued his explanation, trying to redeem himself. “Just as the number twenty completes a full score, and the number twenty-one would begin the next score, and…”
But Nicholas was no longer listening. As the significance of this revelation fully enveloped him, he released the poor, frightened monk, slowly collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor, his eyes glazed.
At the sight of this, the friar became hysterical. He dropped his notepad and pencil and fled screaming down the staircase for assistance:
Before help could arrive, Nicholas had recovered enough to begin a lumbering, lurching retreat down from the tower. He met a flow of would-be rescuers rushing up from below, but they stopped immediately at the sight of him and stepped aside, flabbergasted, as he pressed past. At the bottom of the staircase, Nicholas confronted a bevy of flustered, well-meaning nuns and priests gathered in unfocused confusion. He did not look at them, but waved them off and staggered down the hall, moving persistently onward.
Vehemently, Nicholas threw open the main doors of the museum and exited into the night air. He trudged relentlessly forward, heading toward the Basilica, a desperate group of Vatican personnel following in halting disarray. Pushing past the astonished guards at the front gates of the cathedral, Nicholas entered the quiet sanctuary. St Peter's was still full of worshipers this Easter Sunday evening, all of whom were quickly overcome with the unexpected distinction. But for those directly in the path of the distraught pope, the exhilaration was cut short by the anguished, wild look on the pontiff's face.
The baffled faithful recoiled in disbelief as he brushed by. Oblivious to the commotion he was causing around him, Nicholas approached the gaping maw of the catacombs leading to the tomb of Peter. He staggered to a standstill in front of the railing, swaying from the exertion and emotion. Panting, his arms trembling beside him, he glared down into the silent depths, calling out in a booming voice that shook the entire basilica.
“Why? Why? Why?”
Nicholas waited for an answer, but there was none. He leaned on both hands against the railing, breathing less rapidly now. Shifting his gaze upward to the High Altar, and in a more subdued, broken voice, he moaned, “There have been worse popes! There have been popes less sincere, less conscientious, less faithful. Why! Where have I failed? Where have I earned Your disfavor?”
Still no answer.
In frustration, he blared down once more into the catacombs, “Simon Peter!” And the words resonated endlessly. “Hear me, Peter! I want no more of it!” And then in an impassioned voice of resignation,
With that, Nicholas tore the papal ring from his finger, holding it aloft where the light of the altar candles caught it in golden gleams. “I give it all back to you, Peter,” he wailed. “The burden, the agony and the mystery, I return it all to you!” Pausing for a moment, he then hurled the ring into the blackness of the catacombs below where it clanked and clinked and chimed off the stone steps in its descent.
The bewildered onlookers had drawn close in dumbfounded regard to witness this unprecedented exhibition. Nicholas, sweating profusely, spun around on them suddenly, catching them by surprise and sending them scattering. Taking no notice, the aggrieved pope stumbled off down the main aisle, through the gates of the cathedral, and out once again into St. Peter's Square.
A large gathering of Vatican population had already collected there. In short order, word of the crisis had circumnavigated the city, and Nicholas's final, labored leg through the square to his papal quarters was through a gauntlet of shocked, embarrassed but irresistibly curious onlookers. It was everything the desperate Swiss Guard could do to clear a path for him.
While the screams of ambulances drifted closer, the white, perspiring Nicholas finally entered his apartments and arrived at his chambers, sending his attendant nuns into abject panic at his sight. Inside the sanctity of his library at last, he locked his door and faltered to his desk. Dropping heavily into his chair, he laid his head down amidst his books and papers, closing his eyes to the incessant pounding at his door.
Having never had to cope with such an emergency, the distressed chamber nuns required ten minutes to locate a key to the pope's quarters. Several anxious cardinals and the resident papal doctor, a napkin still around his neck from his interrupted dinner, slowly, cautiously edged open the large wooden doors.
Nicholas never even lifted his head. “Leave me and lock the door! I command you!”
The cardinals stared at each other, and then expectantly at the doctor. The physician gave them an uncomfortable, searching look and cleared his throat. “Holy Father,” he croaked, “we are concerned that you have taken ill. You do not seem yourself.”
Nicholas bolted upright in his chair. “I am
His fury welling again, he bellowed,
Nicholas buried his face in his hands. “My God, my God!” he lamented repeatedly. His phone rang and he slashed out furiously with his arm, sending it crashing to the floor, a passel of papers fluttering down after it.
His eyes were feverish, his face red and wet. Shaking badly, his hands fumbled for his waist fob. Locating a large, golden key, he jabbed it at his desk vault, missing the lock badly several times until he penetrated the keyhole. The tumblers turned, the vault door sprang open, and Nicholas grappled the faded leather portfolio from its dark haven onto the top of his desk. He tore the securing thongs from their stitchings and threw open the heavy cover, revealing its familiar contents of faded parchments.
More deliberately now, he cleared aside the top parchments with ungainly sweeps of his hand until he arrived at the page he sought. Praying for a miracle to deliver him, with shaking index finger he followed the handwritten passages to the lines:
And…
Disastrously, Nicholas had accepted at face value Pope John Paul II's call for “a sacred Jubilee Year to begin
Despite how the world might celebrate its coming, in truth, the new millennium had not yet arrived, a point that even Nicholas, isolated though he might have been in his ecclesiastical ivory tower, had surely been aware. Yet somehow, fatefully, he had suppressed that knowledge. The dark passages of the Secret Letter reconfirmed the pope's dread convictions. It was the
Nicholas's lips contorted in a grotesque grin of disbelief and betrayed hurt. He began to laugh, tears flowing from his eyes. Leaving the yellowed page where it lay, he pushed himself up from his chair and staggered away from his desk. The vault key, still in its lock, tore free from the pontiff's fob, but Nicholas was impervious.
Collapsing on his bed, Nicholas could feel the pressure of his blood surging within his veins. He rolled over on his back and attempted to calm himself, but the sound of his chamber door closing alerted him to someone's unwelcomed presence.
