Tears welled up in Karl’s eyes. The boy’s tragic fate suddenly made everything seem pointless—their journey to Rome, the search for Greta, his futile striving for recognition, for the doctor’s love. It was as if along with this boy, his hopes were dying.
“Don’t go,” said Karl softly, stroking the boy’s pale cheek. “Stay with me. Don’t leave me alone.”
Then the boy opened his eyes again and looked straight at Karl. He smiled tiredly.
“Va bene. It’s all right,” he whispered in Italian. “She . . . she told me, back then.”
“Who told you what?” asked Karl, fearing the boy would lose consciousness again at any moment. He focused wholly on the words that came across the boy’s lips with great difficulty.
“La donna bianca,” breathed the boy. “The white woman . . . that time when I had the bad cough from the dust at the construction site. I . . . I asked her if I was dying. ‘Not yet,’ she said. But I . . . I could tell from her eyes that it would be soon. And now the time has come.”
“No one can tell when it is your time to die,” said Karl. “Only God.”
“Oh, but yes!” The boy smiled. “She knows. Everybody says so. The white woman can tell—she can see it in your hands.”
“In . . . in your hands?”
Karl’s blood ran cold.
La donna bianca . . . The white woman.
“Who are you speaking of?” Karl asked with growing excitement. “Who . . . who is this white woman?”
And the boy told him.
As Karl listened, he noticed once more how similar the boy’s face looked to that of the Savior of Michelangelo’s pietà.
Johann stood in the first row of spectators, wedged in between the crowd of dirty, stinking people, trying hard not to collapse. The shouting, the noise, and the closeness to the rabble repulsed him. Squeezed together tightly, they waited for the pope and his retinue to pass by. From the nearby Tiber, wafts of feces, urine, and rot blew through the lanes. The sky was gray with heavy rain clouds.
Johann had waited a long while for Karl before heading off on his own to find a spot in the front row. He couldn’t understand why Karl had failed to turn up. What had happened? Most likely he had simply forgotten the time, engrossed in his drawings, which had happened a lot lately. Johann had decided that he would have to look for Lahnstein by himself. After all, he had practically always done things by himself.
Someone bumped into him, and Johann came close to hitting the perpetrator with his elbow. How he hated this crowd.
“I heard Leo has grown even fatter,” sounded a voice right beside his ear. “And the ulcer on his ass pains him so greatly that he can’t ride his white horse any longer. That’s why he always looks so sour. He hardly leaves the palace anymore, just sits around like a warty toad.”
Another man laughed. “Maybe that’s why he needs so many jugglers, fools, and minstrels. Whatever the case, his processions are fantastic, just like the fireworks at Castel Sant’Angelo.”
“Yes, yes, and in the meantime, the little people starve in the streets. And after their banquets the cardinals toss their golden plates into the river.”
“I wouldn’t mind if they threw a few golden plates today,” said the other one, a burly fellow who towered over Johann by a head and reeked of garlic. “Filled with roast pigeons, too! Ah, I think it’s time.”
Cheers rang out, announcing the approach of the festive procession. Soon Johann saw the drummers and the musicians. They were followed by a hundred lance-bearing horsemen who gazed down grimly on the common people. Then followed the cardinals’ officials in their liveries, and other lower servicemen. Johann craned his neck and watched intently, hoping to spot Greta or Lahnstein. Other church dignitaries went past, carrying monstrances, smoking incense burners, and statues of saints, followed by the standard bearers carrying the coat of arms of the Medici pope: six balls on a golden background. The smell of the incense somewhat alleviated the stink of the Tiber. Johann frowned. Leo X truly was a master of showmanship. If a procession for All Saints’ Day was this spectacular, then the feast for his inauguration must have been incredible. No wonder he had financial difficulties.
Finally, accompanied by loud cheering, the pope arrived.
The Holy Father sat on a gilded throne that was carried by four Moors dressed in golden livery. A baldachin sheltered Leo from possible rain. He wore a flowing robe of white silk, and over it a red coat lined with ermine. A red cap sat slightly crooked on his head.
It was the first time Johann had seen the pope in the flesh—the same man who had searched for Johann for so long across the entire empire and beyond. It was true: Leo embodied everything the new Lutherans despised about Rome. He was incredibly fat, with a huge, spongy head; a short, fleshy neck; a red face; and bulging eyes, making him indeed look a little like a toad. His facial features were soft, like a woman’s, and his pale, ring-studded hands looked much too small for the bulky body. With those hands, the pope waved graciously to the crowd.
Striding at his sides were men juggling balls, acrobats performing cartwheels, a muscular giant leading two fully grown panthers on a leash, and a hunchbacked fool. To the delight of the crowd, the fool scaled the backrest of the throne as nimbly as a monkey, peering over the crowd from directly behind Leo. He mimicked Leo’s gracious movements as if he were the pope himself. The Holy Father went along with the jest. The two panthers hissed and pulled at their chain as if they wanted to eat the fool alive.
The people laughed and pointed at the hilarious fellow, clad in a red-and-green jerkin with a gugel and a mask with a long nose. It was shows like this one that Leo was famous for. The pope loved any kind
