The Blessed (45 page)

The steward gasped. “Poison? Someone has dared to try to murder the Holy Father?”

“Abramo Amidei,” she said, wiping her hands. “Every last one of the Gifted and our company was outside your door last night, praying that God would save you. Guards arrived, narrowly keeping Amidei and Morano from entering. He has had previous access?”

“Amidei is but one of many who has neared us in the last weeks,” the pope said softly.

“You know as well as I that he is the dragon, the one prophesied to work against the Gifted, against all who live and breathe to serve God. Look at his coat of arms! Look to your very own copies of our letter!”

“Coincidence,” he dismissed with a wave of his hand. “The dragon is . . . a common enough emblem. Amidei has many . . . friends in this court.”

“Yes, friends among the most influential of your cardinals,” she said. “Great is your intelligence, and wide is your own web in gathering information. You have heard the rumors, of dark ceremonies, of sin masquerading as piety. Cardinal Boeri has told you what Amidei is capable of, and lately he has taken Cardinal Morano under his wing, forming him into the future pontiff. Morano is innocent, I'm quite sure of it, but he has allowed Amidei to use him. Only one thing stood in the way of Amidei's plans coming to fruition. You.”

She rose and paced back and forth. Piero urged her on with a silent nod. “He has given funds to many churches, as a means of securing devotion among their churchmen. He owns them, Holy Father,” she said, reaching for his hand in her urgency, “in more ways than one. You must wrest them away from his grip before it is too late.”

The pontiff stared at her for a moment and shook off her hand. “Leave us now. This conversation is at an end. We shall see you again when we begin our formal audience.”

Daria pulled back, confused.

“Grave are your charges, woman . . . against men . . . close to us.”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“It is only right . . . to allow these men . . . to defend themselves. No more whisperings in dark halls. Open, frank dialogue is what we seek. God will shine in the daylight.”

“
Post tenebras, lux
,” she whispered. She gathered up her herbs and cloth and packed them into her chest of medicinals, then looked up to the pope. “Will you not look upon the others outside your door? Give them your blessing, your praise, for calling God to enter these hallowed halls and heal the Holy Father?”

He waved her away, eyes closing in weariness.

She frowned at Piero as he took the medicinal chest from her hands. “How much has Amidei given to his own personal causes to buy him that much devotion?” she whispered. “To allow Judas to hover about?”

Piero raised a brow. “It must be considerable indeed.”

THE audience was called two days later. The pope appeared, looking considerably better than he had two days ago, and coughed only on occasion. Amidei hovered, entering and exiting the hall at odd times, mayhap a move designed to draw the cardinals' attention to him, remind them of promises made.

For the most part, the Gifted ignored him, focusing on words exchanged between the pontiff, Piero, and Josephine, who arose to be their best defense, turning every question back to Scripture, demanding again and again to show them all where the Word said they were not to be doing as they had been gifted by God to do.

The doge and Conte and Contessa Morassi sat through the entire first day, waiting to be called upon for their testimony. But the pope carefully avoided even looking in their direction, let alone allowing them to say what they had come to say.

And despite the fact they had clearly spared his life—and that the pope had called them to help him out of an apparent, desperate need—he seemed intent upon seeing his sacred duty through. To ascertain, as he put it, “whether you be renegade, heretic, or saint.”

“Is it your intention,” said the pope now, “to continue to baptize outside Church gates?”

Josephine rose. “Peter said, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and
for all who are far off
—
for all whom the Lord our God will call
.' ”

“You take that Scripture as justification for your actions?”

“All that we need, Holiness,” Piero said soberly, looking from Josephine to the pope. “But God is urging me to speak the Word more than baptize and get into disagreements with you, as Paul did with the Corinthians. ‘For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.' ”

“A simple yes or no will do,” said the pope dryly. “You presume we do not know our Scriptures, little brother and sister?”

“We beg your forgiveness, Your Holiness. My sole concern is to follow the call that Christ has placed in me, and do so with everything I have in me. This is the core of what we believe: that we are to devote ourselves, like the first believers, to studying the Word, to fellowship, and yes, even breaking bread together. Only within the Word can we find the truth we seek. We do not look to the wisdom or traditions of man, for in man, the Church becomes lost.”

The pope rose, waving a bit on his feet, flushing at the neck. “
I
am the Church. You promote heresy, madness among the commoners.”

“No, Your Holiness,” Piero said, bowing, regretting his words but unable to say anything but this. “We are the Church. We are the Body. Born to live and act in Christ's name, by the power of the Holy Spirit. To do as he bids, wherever, whenever, he bids it. If we were to ignore that call, now
that
would be heretical.”

The pope said nothing. Round and round had they gone on these facts, saying them again and again, with every different phrase possible.

“Sleep this night, ‘Gifted' of God. But be aware that we must hear far different things from you on the morrow. Our patience wanes. You are on a path toward excommunication and the Court of Apostolic Causes. And you, priest,” he said, pointing at Piero, “shall be defrocked.”

“It matters not,” Piero said steadily, “for God sees me as I am, shall use me wherever I am for the remainder of my days, whether I wear the robes of a priest or wander about in animal skins.”

The court erupted.

 
THE next morning, the pope ignored the Gifted and turned to the doge. “You and the Conte and Contessa Morassi must desire to be soon on your way. You wish to say something in public defense of these men and women?” he asked.

“I do,” the doge said. He lumbered to his feet.

“Be about it then.”

“These men and women came to my city. I can personally attest to the fact that they healed more than fifteen on our isle of lepers, citizens who now work and live among us in the Rialto again. They restored husbands and fathers, sisters and mothers, daughters and sons.”

The pope sat back in his chair. “Our court has heard whisperings. These healings have been authenticated?”

“By Cardinal Boeri himself. He was in Venezia when the Gifted came to us.”

The pope's eyes flitted over Boeri and back to the doge.

“They healed a madman, long stationed on a corner of the Dusodoro district,” he said. “This was a man who screamed through the night, keeping neighbors awake for hours, for years. No one remembers him with sound mind. He now is clean and well and works with the sisters in the Hospital of the Saints.”

The pope looked over to Daria. “Your ‘madman' must have had some physical ailment. She is a healer. I take no issue with using her gifts as a physician.”

“I do not wish to be a physician,” Daria said, standing. “I only wish to heal as God bids.”

The pope frowned. “What is the difference?”

“The difference is that I go where God, not man, calls me. To those he calls me to heal. I can administer medicines, but only God can heal.”

“Did you not come to us, in our chamber, to heal us, when our own physicians could not?”

The court erupted in gasps. Apparently, many had not yet learned of this. Daria studied the pontiff. Was he allowing her an opening? Using his own healing as a means of defense?

“I did, three nights past.”

“And the next morning we were remarkably better,” he said.

“Because God laid his hand upon you,” she said. “I treated you. But God healed you.”

“But we had sent for you,” he said.

“We were called by God to go to you even before your steward even arrived at our door. We were making our way to the papal chambers—”

The pope laughed. “How did you intend to gain entrance?”

“If we could not gain entrance, we planned to pray for you, as close as we could get to you. And we intended to stop your assassin, even if we had to forfeit our own lives to do so.”

A lady screamed and fainted at the mention of an assassin in the house of the pope. Men shouted, and the audience dissolved in private conversation.

“You shall be quiet!” the pope said, rising. He turned to Piero. “How do we know that
you
are not the papal assassin? And if it wasn't you, how did you come to know of this intrigue?”

“Hasani was granted a vision,” he said, lifting his hand for the sheets. Hasani rose, handed them to him, and then sat back down.

A steward took them from him and passed them along to the pope. He studied them for a long moment and allowed his eyes to move to where Amidei stood. To his credit, Amidei did not waver under his gaze.

The pope's red-rimmed eyes moved back to Hasani, standing behind Piero. “He is your seer? A slave?”

“Freed man, long a member of the d'Angelo household.”

“And how often do his visions hold true?”

“We have yet to see one not come to fruition,” Piero said, knowing the pope was seeing Hasani's drawing become reality—the conical hat of the pope being placed on Cardinal Morano's head. “Although at times, the outcome is different than we expect.”

The pope rested his elbow on the throne chair and rubbed his temples. “How many of these drawings has he done?”

Piero glanced over his shoulder. Hasani stared downward. “I am uncertain, but I have seen stacks and stacks of them in rooms we have had to leave behind.”

“So you have no others here, now?”

“Nay,” Piero said, relieved to be able to answer in honesty and not relinquish anything Hasani was not ready to share.

“Are there others in the manor in Villeneuve-des-Avignon?”

Piero's eyes widened, and slowly he turned to Hasani, hoping the man had not left more there, that he had hidden them, somewhere along the way.

Compelled to honesty, the regal, tall man nodded once.

“Go and fetch those drawings from the manor,” the pope muttered to a clerk. The man set off at once.

The pope sat in silence for a time, then looked again to Piero. “Your letter speaks of seven in your number. We know Lady de Capezzana is your healer, you a man of wisdom—although we confess we believe that to be a matter of debate—the black man is your seer, one who receives visions. By her tone, Josephine is your prophetess. Sir de Capezzana is your man of faith.” His eyes went to the knight, taking in the stance of his shoulders, chin. “Who is your discerner? The one who can determine light from dark?”

“I am,” said Tessa, standing on shaking legs. But her arms were at her sides, her hands in fists of defiance.

The pope stared hard at her. After a long moment, he asked, “And your man of miracles?”

Gaspare rose beside Tessa.

THE pope continued to question the Gifted, the Morassis, and the doge for days, at first seeming to wish to guide them onto a safer path, persuade them to relinquish those things the papacy could not condone—baptism, communion, and other sacraments outside of the Church and not on Church-sanctioned days—and find the means to bless their gifting, utilize it for, as he put it, “the glory of God.”

But as the third day edged into the fourth, the pope became visibly wearied and agitated. Daria feared that he had taxed his weakened health, the task too much as he tried to heal. “His color is poor,” she whispered to Gianni, but her husband's attention was upon Josephine as she moved forward to once again respond to the pope's questions.

After a time, the pope stared at Josephine with deadened eyes for a long moment, then moved on to look at Piero. Lastly, he looked upon Daria. “It deeply saddens us that it has come to this. However, we see no other recourse. We hereby send you to the Court of Apostolic Causes. We command the court to begin proceedings by defrocking Father Piero. We send any of you”—he paused to look at each of the Gifted and their supporters, including the Conte and Contessa Morassi and the doge—“with the recommendation that anyone who refuses to denounce their previous involvement with these people, recant their intentions to proceed in holy matters when we have specifically asked you to refrain, must be excommunicated.”

Piero absorbed his words, closing his eyes at the last. Excommunication—damned to eternal hell, with no method to return. And yet he no longer believed the pope held such power; only his Savior could save or condemn. There was simply no scriptural basis for it. He was more concerned for the people . . . that anyone in papal territory would be sure to avoid them, going as far as to refuse them food, water, lodging, or they would risk excommunication themselves. What would that do to their ministry? Their desire to reach the people with the Good News? But God was not surprised at this; he knew they would face this day. A warm assurance washed over his heart.