The Mongoliad: Book Three

with a final scream of defiance, Egypt gave up its possession of the Jewish race.

And the people of Israel, free from captivity, turned their faces toward a barren desert, and set out on a journey that Rodrigo knew would last for forty years.

Gils Torres, the aging Spanish Cardinal, stared balefully at the slip of paper in his hand. He had hated Gregory for keeping him in Rome when both he and the Emperor Frederick had wished his presence as imperial legate.

“But you are so useful to me,” Gregory had crooned, “I must keep you here beside me; I cannot imagine how the daily life of the Papacy would function without you.”

The flattery had disgusted Cardinal Torres. He knew it wasn’t true, but he could not gainsay the Pontiff’s wishes. And so his vote had been, throughout this process, for Castiglione-not because he cared so much for Castiglione, but because he knew that Bonaventura would have been Gregory’s choice, and he had been determined to vote against Gregory’s choice, period. However, after Castiglione’s defiance of Orsini, it was obvious that all the Cardinals would vote for Castiglione-possibly even Sinibaldo Fieschi, who had been Gregory’s most devoted sycophant. Castiglione had even won Torres’s own regard. Castiglione, clearly, would be Pope. Even if Gils Torres did not vote for him.

Which was a relief, because it freed Torres to think about what kind of man he’d actually want as Bishop of Rome. Somebody as different from Gregory as possible. Somebody without any political ties or machinations. Somebody with the hardiness to survive the stress of the throne of St. Peter. He thought of the befuddled but earnest priest who had somehow-he did not know or care how-survived the scorpion attack. That man had also survived a brutal battlefield, although Torres did not know the details. He had been shaken by his experience, but his faith had not been shaken, and faith-despite the reality of necessary politics-faith was, after all, important in a Pope.

Nobody else would think to do something as radical as vote for the distraught priest, but Torres thought it would be a good slap in the face to all the cynics and politicians in the room, if they heard his name called out once as a potential candidate.

Cardinal Torres wrote Father Rodrigo Bendrito on the form, and rose to cast his ballot.

In the heat and dust and the burning sun, the children of Israel wandered without rest, and Rodrigo wandered with them, a wisp, a spirit, unseen and unsensed by them, but suffering with them.

Moses was long dead. This was some other exodus, some other journey, he did not know whither.

He watched them under the blazing, punishing brilliance of the sun, and realized they had been traveling forever, were eternally traveling, in tents, with livestock, raising children as they went, and they would never, ever have a home. They were an endless caravan, this lost tribe of Israel, destined to wander forever. The king of this tribe was far distant, and they were moving away from the kingdom, not toward it. This tribe did not ride donkeys, nor did they ride camels. Instead they rode stocky, short-legged ponies. And they were no longer wandering around the deserts to the east, but coming directly toward Rodrigo and his flock and his home, determined to overtake everything he held dear.

At the same moment he knew that, he was terrified to realize he was becoming visible to them, they were aware of his existence, some could already see him, even seemed to hear him, and these wary few approached on their short horses and raised broad brown faces and sniffed the air around him. Sniffed, then smiled like wolves, and nodded to each other.

Rodrigo writhed on the tomb, consumed in a sweating, knotting horror beyond anything induced by the other visions, for he knew that this vision was real.

“Clergy!” one of the soldiers spat in derision, and reached out to grab his collar. Rodrigo was no longer a ghost among them, a silent observer; he had become all too solid, and even as he pulled away, the man pulled him down, so that he sat kneeling upright by the man’s hip. “Beg for your life,” the soldier said in a nasty, mocking voice. Other soldiers nearby in the throng turned their attention to him and laughed with him.

“I will not,” Rodrigo retorted in a shaky voice. “I entrust my life to the Lord and His angels, and surely they will come to save me.”

As he said the words, the bright blue sky above them cracked wide open and brilliant celestial light shone through, impossible to look at directly, it was so glorious and proud. Rodrigo, with a cry of relief, held up his arms toward the light, averted his eyes, and thanked the Lord for his salvation.

A large, beautiful angel, wings the size of tomb covers, came beating down upon these dangerous, swarthy enemies. Rodrigo’s outstretched fingers reached for the angel’s powerful hands, and he took in a breath in anticipation of being lifted bodily above these dangerous enemies.

But a sound like hissing filled the air, and the angel, rattled with arrows, shuddered and fell like a beautiful statue to the ground right before Rodrigo’s feet. His body cracked and fell into pieces as if he were made of glass. The enemy screamed in delight and triumph, and Rodrigo, beyond all help mortal or holy, felt alien hands grabbing him, tugging, intent on tearing him apart.

Cardinal Goffredo da Castiglione wrote the C of his name, hesitated, then stopped. He glanced at the other Cardinals who had not yet voted. They were either writing or deep in prayer, or meditating, or pretending to do any combination of the three. While the buzzing excitement of standing up to Orsini had passed, he could still remember what the moment felt like: his heartbeat loud in his ears; his cheeks warm with the rich flush of blood; the dampness of his palms. It had been so invigorating in the moment, but this morning, he was exhausted. He knew he had impressed every man in that room-several had glanced knowingly at him as they returned to their seats after casting their votes-but he also knew he could not possibly behave like that on a regular basis without having some kind of breakdown.

He did not want the job. It was that simple. Here it was, in his hand, the time was right and he had earned it, but given the choice between the throne of St Peter or a comfortable bedroll, at this moment he would choose the bedroll.

We need somebody younger, he thought. To save and serve Christendom in this dark hour, we need somebody full of piss and vinegar, somebody for whom such staggering feats of righteousness are as natural as breathing. It would take a kind of fanaticism to wrest the Church away from the dangerous extremes Gregory had brought it to, to return it to a path of service and spirituality, from a path of power and control.

Happily, he realized, he had just recently met a fanatic, and a Rome-born one to boot.

He raised the stylus and began to write a name.

Rodrigo writhed on the tomb of St. Peter, both senseless and fully-hideously-aware of the world around him. The phantom hands still grappled with him-pulling his limbs, yanking his hair, fingers digging into his mouth. He saw other lands being burned and ravaged by strange warriors, other people driven from their homes by savage invaders. The world was full of bloodshed and cries of annihilation. The tomb vanished beneath him, and he lay on the ground in some place he could not recognize, it was so ravaged by war-perhaps a plain that had once been fertile, or a desert that had once been pristine, or a mountain valley, perhaps even a city in which all the buildings had been razed. He could not tell. He did not know if he writhed in calcined dirt or the dust of human bones.

He had lost all sense of time and place, nor did he recognize any of those who raged across his vision. He did not know who belonged to what side, who was good or who was bad, who was in power and who was not, who was a Christian and who was not, who had done evil and who had done good. There were men fighting each other, nameless, faceless, faithless, one human being determined to kill another, with whatever means they had, each set on hearing the death-throes of their fellow human beings. No other living thing was of value to them-and no doubt they would turn and kill their allies when they had finished killing their enemies.

To be alive and to be human meant to want to kill, maim, hurt, destroy. It did not matter what a man believed, or how he conducted his affairs, or where he lived. His merely being human meant he was the target of another’s wrath, another’s fury.

The most base animals do not turn on their own kind so, Rodrigo thought miserably as he watched men slaughter men, and women, and children. It hardly mattered who fought, who defended, who died-no one was to be spared the wrath of the others, and the world tumbled on with terrifying disinterest.