APRIL 5TH, 1498
“You’ve agreed to what!” Girolamo can not remember being so angry. He takes deep breaths to calm himself, and prays to the saints once again for patience. Like St Augustine praying for chastity but not yet, Girolamo has always prayed for patience, but right now.
He stands up and takes two steps across his little studio cell and two steps back, then stops very close to Domenico. Domenico is taller than he is, but he shrinks before Girolamo’s frown. “I don’t have time for this!”
“It was Brother Mariano’s idea,” Domenico says.
“Brother Mariano is an enemy!” Girolamo says. Mariano is a Franciscan from Santa Croce, who hates Girolamo and all he does or tries to do. Because Girolamo was involved with setting it up, he won’t even help with his own monastery’s Bank of Faith. He has been attacking Girolamo from the pulpit for a long time now, and done all he can to be obstructive. The Senate refuses to let him preach, but he ignores them, saying that Girolamo had ignored Pope Alexander’s injunction, and the Senate has no right to stop him. Girolamo wouldn’t mind those attacks, he could give as good as he got if he were allowed to answer back. “Let them try to outpreach me,” he said. But now he cannot preach, and being forced to be silent while Brother Mariano says what he wants, when his sermons are full of lies and defamation (and sometimes borderline heresy), is infuriating.
Girolamo has been dealing with this by helping Domenico to write his sermons. Sometimes “helping” has spilled over into actually writing the whole thing. He isn’t good at suffering silently. He keeps praying for patience and humility, over and over. As long as it is Domenico in the pulpit delivering the words he isn’t actually breaking his vow of obedience even if he wrote them. He turns away from Domenico now and comes face-to-face with his crucifix, wooden, an arm’s length tall, in which the Saviour’s face, under his crown of thorns, expresses all suffering and all compassion. He has had a large version of it made for the chapel of San Marco. “Oh you who have suffered so much, help me to suffer fools,” he prays, silently.
He doesn’t need this kind of distraction now. This really is terrible timing. Piero came to the gates with a hired army, and the Medici supporters inside rose up in support. There weren’t enough of them to achieve anything, but some of the ones the Power-Bearer’s men caught have denounced others, and some of them are the leading men of the commonwealth. Girolamo is opposed to torture, and has written against it, but the Ballsy leaders have been tortured with the Florentine drop, where they are hoisted with rope and dropped so that their shoulders are forcibly dislocated. This is repeated again and again. People walking past the Magisterial Palace have reported hearing screams. He has protested to Valori about the torture, but obviously not strongly enough, because it goes on. He believes most people don’t want Piero back, but they also don’t want to see popular dignified old men like Bernardo Neri tortured and executed. (No one has thrown him out of the window of the Senatorial Palace, so Sister Camilla was wrong about that.) Young Lorenzo Tornabuoni has been arrested too. So many of them have said Lucrezia is involved that he has come to believe she must have been actively plotting, under the shield of his protection and the knowledge of how his prophecy works. He is surprisingly hurt at this realisation, at learning that she tricked him, but he still will not allow them to arrest her. He has spoken to Valori about Lorenzo Tornabuoni, but Valori won’t promise anything. They have set up a special commission to try them.
He turns back to Domenico. “You have accepted Brother Mariano’s challenge to walk through fire for your faith?”
“Yes.”
He paces away again. While he has his back turned, Domenico says, “You said God could strike you down where you stood if he didn’t want you to say what you were saying. You stood ready.”
“I said that in the pulpit, and I shouldn’t have said it. But even so, that’s different from tempting God this way, demanding a miracle.”
“There will be a miracle,” Domenico says, his voice filled with sincerity and certainty. “Think how many there have been already.”
“God isn’t showing me a miracle happening in the fire,” Girolamo says.
Domenico shrugs. “Then I’ll die for my faith,” he says. “The Church needs martyrs.”
“Witnessing to the Franciscans?” Girolamo asks, sarcastically.
“Brother Mariano will walk into the fire as well,” Domenico says. “He says he expects to die.”
“You know this is aimed at me?” Girolamo asks.
Domenico nods. “That’s why I couldn’t refuse,” he says.
Girolamo sighs. “I will pray for you.”
It’s all he can do. He prays all night. God does not speak to him.
The next day the trial is set to begin at noon. The brothers of San Marco, led by the Angels in their white shirts, process from the monastery to the square in front of the Senatorial Palace. The fragrance of cut boughs fills the square. Half the Senate seem to be gathered in the Loggia, and more than half the city in the square itself. A walkway has been set up and filled with brushwood, green and full of sap. When it is lit, the two monks will walk over fire through the crowd. Girolamo sneezes, and blows his nose on his sleeve. Half the brothers of San Marco have spring colds, and now he seems to have caught one too.
The women following their procession and the Angels are stopped at the entrance to the square by the Power-Bearer’s guards. “Men only,” one of them says. They are afraid of a riot, and if there is one he will be glad the women and children are safe. He blesses the Angels and sends them away. As they go into the square, he sees that all the windows of the buildings above them are full of spectators, many of them women. A trial by fire is an odd kind of spectacle. He sighs.
He hopes that Brother Mariano will not come, but the monks of Santa Croce arrive, in their donkey-coloured robes, belted with lengths of rope. They are carrying an elaborate carved crucifix, said to be one that works miracles. Domenico has a simple wooden cross. Domenico is also carrying the green stone Girolamo found in the copy of Pliny years before. He has never really understood what it is for, or why it came to him. Lorenzo said it was for him, but he doesn’t seem to need it, or know what to do with it. He usually keeps it with him, or locked in his desk in San Marco, for fear it will attract demons again. It occurred to him in the deep of the night that Domenico was with him that night in Santa Lucia, and that this might be the stone’s purpose, to protect his brother in the fire. Domenico will use the stone, which is about the size of his palm, and slightly hollowed, to carry one blessed and sacred Host, the Body of Christ. So protected, Girolamo hopes and prays that God will help. He did send the storm to destroy the Emperor’s fleet. But Girolamo keeps thinking of the Devil in the wilderness, the temptations of Our Lord. Domenico has been tempted and at the first of the devil’s suggestions agreed cheerfully to step off the rock in the confident hope that angels will bear him up.
“He is guilty of nothing but naïvety, Lord,” he prays silently. “Domenico is a good man and truly loves you. Brother Mariano is attacking me through him, hoping to shake my moral authority, to make it harder to make this your city, your Ark, your New Jerusalem. Have mercy upon Domenico. Bear him up in this trial.” At least he can be sure demons will not be involved. He blows his nose again, loudly. Brother Mariano scowls at him.
There is no answer from God, no prophetic knowledge of what is coming, nothing at all but the gathering of phlegm in his head.
All the prayers are done. The two monks, Mariano in grey-brown and Domenico in black and white, are ready to begin. The fire is set. There is a hush throughout the square. Even the Furious and Ballsy among the crowd are silent. Domenico looks exalted. He begins to move forward.
“Wait,” says Mariano.
“What now?” Girolamo asks.
“Domenico is wearing magical robes, robes filled with demonic power. He shouldn’t wear them into the fire, they will protect him.”
“Nonsense!” he protests, but the Franciscans insist, and the senators present seem to be worried about it. After a moment Domenico laughs.
“You can’t shake my faith this way,” he says. “I’ll exchange with my brother.” He goes to the back of the Loggia and changes clothes with Brother Ambrogio, who is closest to his size. While he is changing, Girolamo challenges the Franciscan miracle-working crucifix, and Brother Mariano agrees to leave it behind. Domenico comes back, ready again, if less neat. The tip of Ambrogio’s nose is red. The prayers are repeated.
“All right now?” Domenico asks Mariano, as another ripple of expectation runs through the vast crowd. People are leaning out of windows all around the square, even from the Senatorial Palace. Everyone wants to see what happens.
“No. It’s blasphemy for him to carry the Host into the fire. It’s tempting God.”
“This whole exercise, which was your idea, is tempting God,” Girolamo flashes, angrily. “Either do it or do not.”
There is a clap of thunder.
“I’ll go without the Host,” Domenico says. “My faith is armour enough.” He hands the green stone and the Host carefully to Girolamo. “Are you ready now?”
“One more prayer,” says Brother Mariano. Domenico waits politely.
The fire is burning brightly. But as the long Franciscan prayer drags out, the heavens open. Rain drenches the crowd and the square, running down from the lion-spout gutters on the palace, a heavy sudden spring downpour. Girolamo scowls. The rain dowses the fire, sending up clouds of fragrant steam. If Domenico had been walking through the fire when this happened, they would have called it a miracle, and probably made him a saint on the spot. As it is, the event has clearly fizzled. Girolamo feels they have lost prestige. Brother Mariano has a sardonic smile as he leads the other Franciscans back to Santa Croce. Girolamo squelches back towards San Marco, sneezing.
As he passes the Medici Palace, where King Charles stayed when he was in Florence, he suddenly knows, in the way that God abruptly gives him knowledge, that at the moment the rain began, Charles died. He will never be coming back to Italy, to cleanse it. Girolamo has lost another valuable ally.