Pope Joan_ A Novel - Donna Woolfolk Cross [125]
Now it was up to Anastasius. He must, he would vindicate his father’s faith in him by becoming Lord Pope and Bishop of Rome.
Not immediately, of course. Anastasius’s overarching ambition had not blinded him to the fact that his time had not yet come. He was only thirty-three, and his position as primicerius, though one of great power, was too secular a post from which to ascend to the Sacred Chair of St. Peter.
But his situation was soon to change. Pope Gregory lay on his deathbed. Once the formal period of mourning was over, there would be an election for a new Pope—an election whose outcome Arsenius had predetermined with a skillful blend of diplomacy, bribery, and threat. The next Pope would be Sergius, cardinal priest of the Church of St. Martin, weak and corruptible scion of a noble Roman family. Unlike Gregory, Sergius was a man who understood the way of the world; he would know how to express his gratitude to those who had helped him into office. Soon after Sergius’s election, Anastasius would be appointed Bishop of Castellum, a perfect position from which to ascend the papal throne after Sergius, in his turn, was gone.
It was a pretty picture, but for one detail—Gregory still lived. Like an aging vine, roots driven deep to suck sustenance from arid soil, the old man stubbornly clung to life. Prudent and contemplative in his personal life as in his papacy, Gregory was proceeding with infuriating slowness even in this final act of dying.
He had reigned for seventeen years, longer than any Pope since Leo III of blessed memory. A good man, modest, well intentioned, pious, Gregory was well loved by the Roman people. He had been a solicitous patron of the city’s teeming population of impoverished pilgrims, providing numerous shelters and houses of refuge, seeing that alms were distributed with a generous hand on all feast days and processions.
Anastasius regarded Gregory with a complicated mix of emotion, equal parts wonder and contempt: wonder at the genuineness of the man’s piety and faith, contempt for his simplicity and slow-wittedness, which left him constantly open to deceit and manipulation. Anastasius himself had often taken advantage of the Pope’s ingenuousness, never more successfully than on the Field of Lies, when he had arranged for the betrayal of Gregory’s peace negotiations with the Frankish Emperor Louis under his very nose. That little stratagem had paid handsomely; the benefactor, Louis’s son Lothar, had known how to render gratitude into coin, and Anastasius was now a wealthy man. Even more important, Anastasius had succeeded in winning Lothar’s trust and support. For a time, it was true, Anastasius had feared that his carefully cultivated alliance with the Frankish heir might come to naught—for Lothar’s defeat at Fontenoy had been admittedly disastrous. But Lothar had managed to come to terms with his rebellious brothers in the Treaty of Verdun, a remarkable piece of political legerdemain that permitted him to retain both his crown and his territories. Lothar was once again undisputed Emperor—a fact that should prove very valuable to Anastasius in the future.
The sound of bells jolted Anastasius from his reverie. The bells tolled once, twice, a third time. Anastasius slapped his thighs jubilantly. At last!
HE HAD already donned the robe of mourning when the expected knock came. A papal notary entered on silent feet. “The Apostolic One has been gathered to God,” he announced. “Your presence, Primicerius, is requested in the papal bedchamber.”
Side by side, without speaking, they threaded their way through the labyrinthine hallways of the Lateran Palace toward the papal quarters.
“He was a godly man.” The notary broke the silence. “A peacemaker, a saint.”
“A saint, indeed,” Anastasius responded.