Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [181]
He looked at her unflinchingly. “To persuade the great families who support the union to change their allegiance from expediency to trust in God. If they will not do so willingly, then I shall, in the interest of their souls, remind them of some of the sins of which I can absolve them, before God, if not before the public—and of course of what awaits those without forgiveness.”
“A little late,” she said.
“Would you have given me such weapons earlier, when Charles of Anjou was not preparing to sail?”
“I am not sure if I will now. Perhaps I would prefer to use them myself.”
“You have power to wound, just as I have, Zoe Chrysaphes,” he said with a slight smile. “But I have power to heal, and you do not.” He named three families.
She hesitated, studying his face, then something seemed to amuse her, and she told him what he needed to know.
Seventy
PALOMBARA ARRIVED IN ROME ONLY DAYS AFTER VICENZE. The voyage had been good enough for time and seamanship, but the taste of defeat had robbed him of any pleasure at all. He had landed at Ostia, and even the briefest inquiry had told him Vicenze had beaten him by at least twenty-four hours.
The pope and the cardinals were already assembled in the anteroom to the pope’s chambers in the Vatican Palace when Palombara strode in, still travel stained, his clothes shabby with dust and sweat. At any other time he could have been barred entrance in his disheveled state, but the buzz of excitement was in the air, as in a summer lightning storm when the wind was dry, prickling on the skin like the touch of a hundred flies. People started to speak and then stopped. Eyes darted everywhere, seeing him and smiling. Did he imagine the mockery, or was it only too real?
The huge crate stood with its wood neatly opened; only the cloth covering protected the icon of the Blessed Virgin that Michael Palaeologus had carried in triumph when his people had returned home.
Vicenze stood a little to one side of it, his face burning with victory, his pale eyes glittering. Only once did he look at Palombara, then away again, as though he were insignificant, a man who had ceased to matter.
A workman stepped forward at his signal. There was no other sound in the room, no rustle of heavy robes, no shifting of feet. Even the pope seemed to be holding his breath.
The workman reached up and pulled off the protecting cloth.
The pope and the cardinals craned forward. There was utter silence.
Palombara looked, blinked, and stared. God Almighty! What met his gaze was not the exquisite features of the Virgin, but a riotous profusion of naked flesh, in exuberant, joyful detail and painted with great skill. The central figure was a smiling parody of the Virgin, but so overtly feminine that one could not look at it without a quickening of the pulse, a remembrance of the hot blood of passion. One lush breast was exposed, and her slender hand rested intimately on the groin of the man nearest to her.
One of the less abstemious cardinals exploded with laughter and instantly tried to suffocate it in a fit of coughing.
The pope’s face was scarlet, although there could have been more than one reason for that.
Other cardinals choked. Someone snorted in disgust. Another laughed quite openly.
Vicenze was white to the lips, his eyes as hectic as if he were consumed with fever on the edge of delirium.
Palombara tried for a full minute to look as if he were not laughing, and failed. It was exquisite. He too owed someone a debt he would never be able to pay.
Palombara had no choice but to go when Nicholas sent for him.
The Holy Father’s expression was unreadable. “Explain yourself, Enrico,” he said very quietly. His voice trembled, and Palombara had no idea if the emotion all but choking him was fury or laughter.
There was nothing to offer but the truth.
“Yes, Holy Father,” he said piously. “I persuaded the emperor to send the icon to Rome. It arrived at the house we had taken for our stay in the city. It was unpacked in front of us, and it was quite definitely