'Too many to rule,' said Berlinguer.
'There's nought else for it,' said the Pope.
'War,' said Berlinguer.
If we could only have it our way, it'd be simplicity itself. The English clobbering the bloody Frenchies, that's how it ought to go. But it can't be done. We'd have to intervene, quickly and decisively, else our authority would be weakened, and to our way of thinking that's out of the question. Ah well. Fetch us the Secretary of the War Chamber, the Captain-General, the High Admiral, the Superintendent of Aircraft and the comandantes in the Active Sphere. By the week's end, Father. Eh, it'll be a right cordial to give old Abdul a sore nose. We're afraid we don't take kindly to Mahometans. All those wives. And disputing our authority as the Almighty's vice-regent. He wouldn't much care to have Bulgaria pinched off him, wouldn't our Abdul. Not but what he won't live to thank us at last. After all, he has an excess of folk himself, or will have inside a generation. But we must admit we'd as soon there was some other way.'
This theme was resumed when, Berlinguer having departed to his own castello down the valley, the Pope and his secretary stood on the long terrace that overlooked the plain and, in the furthest distance, the Tyrrhenian Sea. Only a little nearer, it seemed from here, lay Rome, still bright in the declining sun with tints of honey, pale rose, sienna and terracotta; by comparison, the two men were no more than a step from the ruins of the Castel Gandolfo, a Papal abode from early in the seventeenth century until the fatal night in 1853 on which a certain Percy Shelley, excommunicate English runaway and minor versifier, had set fire to it before perishing by his own hand. And the vineyard of the Castel Alto ran up almost to its walls, the source of a wine highly esteemed all over Latium but altogether disregarded by its proprietor, who now clutched a pewter mug of the Yorkshire stingo he regularly imported in bottle by aircraft.
'It's a cruel shame, Greg, truly it is,' said the Pope, munching his lips together as he drank. 'All those men doomed to die. In the cause of Christ, we know. It's the wrong way on, look. The folk to go for are the females. What we mean—a hundred females and one male, suppositional limit to pregnancies in any given stretch of time, one hundred; a hundred males and one female, suppositional limit, one. Our word, if only we could put the women in the field, like in that book of Burgess's. Interesting lad, Burgess. It's a mortal pity he had to go and... Well, as we said, we do what we must do. But if we could just go about it differently...'
'Aside from artificial regulation.' Only Satterthwaite was on such terms with the Pope as to be able even to utter this phrase in his presence.
'That bugger Innocent XVII. We'd give him innocent. A Switzer, he was, and you can't whack them for contrariness. As soon as folk start to really believe-we're not talking about perishing inventors and suchlike, but sensible folk like us and you—as soon as they start to believe that the birth-rate desperately needs control, they go and put it to Innocent that he must sanction artificial regulation in some form. And what does he do? He ups and publishes a Bull declaring any such practice to be murder and its perpetrators to be subject to immediate excommunication. Do you follow us, Greg?'
'Oh yes, Your Holiness,' said the Jesuit, understating the case, in the sense that after all these years he was ahead of the Pope as well.
'Good. Now you see where that lands us and all the Supreme Pontiffs between us and Innocent. To revoke a Bull of an import like that, even to moot it, would lay any Holy Father open to a charge of heresy; at the very best, he must abdicate. Well, we say any: we mean any who's not so powerful that he hasn't a single enemy or rival in the whole Sacred College. In other words, more powerful than us, which we flatter ourselves is saying something. Yes, friend Berlinguer and his merry men would be at us like a pack of wolves and we'd have a Council on our hands before we knew where we were. We've not the slightest intention of landing up like our unfortunate predecessor and namesake in fourteen-whatever-it-was, thank you very much. That's that. And, as you may have heard us mention before, the only other design, to tacitly condone artificial regulation, to turn a blind eye, like Nelson at Lipari—that would be just as fatal. Mortal sin flourishing unrebuked by the Vicar of Christ? Don't make us laugh. See, it's already flourishing as much as we dare permit from Iceland to Cape Town.'
The Pope lifted his mug and a manservant hurried forward to pour a fresh bottle of stingo. Father Satterthwaite declined an offer of more white wine.
'Well, Greg, we and you mustn't take on. There are bright spots. One comes up tonight, when young Hubertus Incus commences in Rome. A notable occasion.'
'I'd thought that music wasn't among Your Holiness's keenest pleasures.'
'You know bloody well it isn't, but appearing in the character of the foremost of all lovers of art is. You know that too. And this time there'll be a mite added. Now and then our thoughts will turn to Abbot Thynne, once the lad's principal. He's a right gowk, is Thynne. Someone lets him know-he'd never have guessed it himself-that we require Hubertus in our city. And what does he do? He goes and petitions his Cardinal Archbishop to intercede for him with the King. We ask you! What could the King have done, a mere babe, new to the post, not yet crowned even? His father might have made a good show, but'—the Pope shook his head slowly—'no more than a show. As it is, of course, young William hears not a word of the matter, and... How does Thynne suppose a man's given Canterbury under an English Pope? As we said, he's a gowk. Well, we trust he soon settles down nicely in Madras. It's a fine city, we hear, though a touch hot in summer.'
The great bells began to sound in the tower above their heads.
'We say, is it that already? We must go and make ourselves beautiful for our guest. And you, Greg, hop to the transmitter and forewarn the Captain-General and the others of our design. No time like the present-that's our motto.'
Over fifteen years afterwards, in the first week of December, a new production of Valeriani's L'Arkcchinata was put on at the Teatro Nuovo dell' Opera. The recent alterations and additions to the building, designed to fit it for performances of of works using the largest forces, such as the present one, Wagner's Kreuz and the Butterworth trilogy, had been the occasion of an impressive architectural feat. The opera-house now dominated the southern side of the Piazza Venezia, but by far the greater part of the medieval and ancient structures at the site had been preserved: in particular, the remnants of the tomb of Publius Bibulus, a landmark dating back to the first century BC, had been skilfully incorporated into the eastern end of the ridotto. To stand at that spot was to feel the continuance of all the centuries of Roman history as a living thing; so, at least, Pope John XXIV, now in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, had declared in a public letter to the principal mason.
On a great chord, sounded by seventy voices and more than a hundred and fifty instruments, including two piano-fortes and organ, the first of the two acts ended. A couple of minutes later, Hubertus Incus was stretched on a silk-covered day-bed in his private green-room, eyes closed and body relaxed. His wig and outer costume hung near by; letters and tachygrams, flowers, fruit and confectionery covered a large marquetry table-top and overflowed on to the floor. Now and then, he sipped at the glass of still mineral water which, by invariable custom, was to be his only refreshment until after the performance. There came a tap at the door and his dresser answered it. A liveried usher handed over two name-cards, turning his head aside and raising his eyes to heaven in a way that told of much pressure or reward. The dresser gave a shrug and approached his master.
