All the whores about him were now screaming and shouting, but the young woman on the ground motioned the other women back with a quick, vicious action, then got to her knees and then to her feet, stumbling a little on her twisted leg.
“I will beg forgiveness from none of your sort, dog!” She spat at him, and Thomas flinched, but made no move to whip the spittle away from his cheek. He was still enraged, and barely holding himself back from taking her neck between his hands and throttling her.
He knew that if he’d had a sword he would have killed her.
“Dog!” she said again, wrenching the top of her tunic closed. “I curse you, Friar Thomas. One day one of my sisters will seize your soul and condemn you to hell for eternity! I damn you with the curse of the whore, Thomas!”
She stepped forward, and struck him with a surprisingly light tap against his cheek.
He raised a hand to strike her back, but stopped, stunned by the lightness of her blow.
“One day,” she whispered, her eyes staring into his, “and soon, I pray to the Virgin Mary, a whore will steal your soul…Nay! You will offer it to her on a platter! You will offer her your eternal damnation in return for her love!”
Now it was Thomas’ turn to stand silent, as stunned by the whore as the group had previously been by him.
There had been something in her face and in her voice, in her very bearing, that had rung not only with truth, but with an extraordinary nobility.
The women, still mumbling, started to turn away, two helping their younger companion to hobble down the street.
Thomas watched them go, then shook himself.
Cursed woman!
He grabbed at his pail, lying on its side on the cobbles, and looked back down the street.
Several of the whores, still lingering nearby, turned their backs to him.
Thomas sighed, and rubbed his eyes. What had he been thinking of to let go his self-control so easily? Why had he let his past intrude into his present?
What had he done?
The curse could be disregarded—the simple prating of a wretched woman—but Thomas could not disregard his own actions and words.
He had been a fool. Worse, he had been an arrogant fool. That woman had never wronged him, and her words had only been those of God, testing him.
And Thomas had failed, as he had failed so many times.
Refusing to weep, or show any outward sign of his distress, Thomas collected his rags, hefted the pail, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the almshouse washing the inmates’ feet, and speaking to them the words of kindness he should have spoken to the prostitute.
Thursday in Passion Week
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(8th April 1378)
On the afternoon of 8th April 1378, the feast day of the blessed Callistus, a former pope, and the Thursday within Passion Week, the cardinals met in conclave to elect their new Holy Father before the celebrations of the coming Holy Week.
It was neither a relaxed nor a certain affair.
The cardinals had been appointed by popes who’d lived in Avignon, and all were either Frenchmen themselves—the vast majority—or men closely allied with the French monarchy.
Most, as much as they may have denied it publicly, owed allegiance to the French king before the office of the pope.
What the cardinals wanted to do was to elect a man who would remove them from the swamp-ridden and disease-infested ruinous city of Rome back to the culture and civilisation of Avignon.
What they felt compelled to do was elect what the murderous Roman mob wanted: a good Italian who would keep the papacy in Rome.
Threats did not sit well with the cardinals. On the other hand, they doubted they could get out of Rome alive if they didn’t do what the mob wanted.
It was left to Jean de la Grange, bishop of Amiens, in Rome for the conclave, to suggest a possible way out of the situation. In the days before the conclave, Bishop Grange moved smoothly from chamber to chamber, dropping time after time to his knee to kiss the cardinal’s ring held out to his lips, then raising his face to talk earnestly to the man before him.
The cardinals liked what they heard.
Thursday in Passion Week dawned cool and fine, although a yellow fog rising from the swamps beyond Rome’s walls lasted until almost Nones when the cardinals were due to meet. Murmuring crowds had thronged the Leonine City since the previous night, sure that if they didn’t stake their place well before the election the cardinals would find some way to shut them out. It seemed to the cardinals, peering nervously from their apartments in the palace adjoining St Peter’s, that the entire population of Rome was crowded into the streets and the courts surrounding the Basilica.
Their mood was not festive.
The election was to be held in the Hall of Conclave, a great stone hall to the north of St Peter’s and adjoining the papal palace. In the hour before Nones, the cardinals moved cautiously through the corridors of the palace towards the hall. They were well guarded with militia, and they wrapped their cardinals’ robes tight about themselves and stalked down the corridors, their faces set resolutely to the front, their eyes darting left and right.
The distant murmur of the crowd seemed to swell through the floor beneath their jewelled slippers as much as it did through the window glass.
The cardinals, sixteen in all, filtered into the Hall of Conclave. With luck, the election would not take long. After all, the conclusion had been hammered out in previous days.
Each cardinal moved silently into a curtained-off partition; the voting would take place in seclusion to give the election the aura of secrecy. Within each partition was a chair and a desk. On each desk lay a single sheet of paper and a pen and inkwell.
Each cardinal took his place and, once all were in place and the curtains across each partition closed, a bell tolled from high in the hall’s tower.
The election was underway.
Pandemonium broke out.
The crowds outside surged against the stone walls of the hall, beating the walls with their fists, with pikes, clubs, axes, pots and pans, and any other instrument they had found within their homes that they thought might prove to be useful to aid the smooth progression of the election of an Italian to the papal throne.
“Give us an Italian or we’ll stick pikes into your well-fed bellies!”
“Give us an Italian or we’ll burn the hall down about your ears!”
The cardinals, isolated from each other, as one picked up their pens with shaking hands, dipped them into their inkwells, then hesitated over the sheet of paper.
“Give us an Italian…”
Scowls twisted the faces of the cardinals. Damn the unruly mobs! Damn Rome to hell! They’d manage their revenge on this city if it was the last thing they did.
Scowls slowly contorted into thin-lipped grins.
The revenge, as the result of the election, was already planned.
“Give us an Italian!”
Yet still the cardinals hesitated.
Outside, a locksmith, who had been working on the doors leading to the vaults