Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [129]
A CEILING IN THE PAPAL PALACE IN VITERBO HAD CAVED in, splintering to a thousand shards of wood, plaster, and rubble, killing Pope John XXI. The news reduced Rome to stunned silence, then slowly spread to the rest of Christendom. Once again, the world had no voice for God to lead it.
Palombara heard the news in the Blachernae Palace at an audience with the emperor. Now he stood in one of the great galleries in front of a magnificent statue. It was one of a few that had survived with only the slightest chip in one arm, as if to show that it too was subject to time and chance. It was Greek, from before Christ, preserved here in this seldom used corner, beautiful and almost naked.
Anna was in the same corridor, returning from treating a patient. She saw Bishop Palombara, but he was deep in thought and as unaware of her as if he had been alone. She read in his face in the unguarded moment a vulnerability to beauty, as if it could reach inside him effortlessly past all the barriers he had built up and touch the wounds beyond.
Yet he allowed it. Some part of him hungered for the overwhelming emotion, even if it was so threaded through with pain. Yet its reality eluded him. She knew that when he turned to her, only for an instant she saw it in his eyes.
Then, as if by mutual agreement, he walked away, back toward the main gallery, and she was ashamed of having intruded, even though it had been unintentional.
She heard a noise of swift footsteps and swung around sharply, as if she had been caught somewhere she should not have been. Why should she feel so exposed? Because she had experienced a moment’s empathy with the Roman?
This was the immediate razor edge of the Schism, not arguments about the nature of God; it was the poison in the nature of man, where the lines of enormity were drawn in the ground and one was afraid to stretch out the hand across them.
Forty-four
FROM MAY TO NOVEMBER, THERE WAS ANOTHER LONG VOID in struggle between Rome and Byzantium until Pope Nicholas III was elected toward the end of November. He was Italian, passionately so. He dispossessed Charles of Anjou of his position as senator of Rome, so he could vote in no future papal elections, thus considerably reducing his power. He packed the high offices close to him with his own brothers, nephews, and cousins, gaining a stronghold on Rome.
He also required yet another affirmation of the union between Rome and Byzantium. This time it was not Michael and his son who should sign the promises of the new restrictions, it was all the bishops and senior clergy in what remained of the empire.
Anna found Constantine in despair.
“I shouldn’t have done it!” he said hoarsely. “But how could I have been wrong?” He seemed almost on the edge of tears, his eyes hot, beseeching escape from a reality he could not bear. He flung out his hands in a gesture of pleading. “Pope John forced the emperor into signing the promise to obey Rome, and a month afterward—just a month—the ceiling of his palace fell in on him. It was an act of God, it had to be.”
She did not argue.
“I told the people so,” he went on urgently. “Even the cardinals in Rome must have seen it. What more do they need as a sign? Do they not believe it was God who brought down the walls of Jericho on the sinners within?” His voice was rising in a wild plea. “I told them it was the miracle we had waited for. I had promised them that the Blessed Virgin would save us, if only we had faith.” He choked, gagging for breath. “I have betrayed them.”
She was embarrassed for him. This was the sort of crisis of faith one should have alone and afterward be able to pretend had not happened. “No one said it would be easy,” she began. “At least no one who tells the truth. Or that it wouldn’t hurt, and we would always win. The crucifixion must have looked like the end of everything.”
He breathed out heavily. “We must keep on fighting, to the death, if necessary. We must find new heart somehow. If we haven’t the truth, then we have nothing at all.” The faintest flicker of a smile touched his eyes, and he moved