‘DO YOU KNOW,’ says Cardinal Servius, as the two of them puzzle together over a fifth-century scroll alleged to grant a far-off convent to the Bishop of Rome, ‘there are many in these halls who refer to you now as Valentine?’
She scans her mental Liber Pontificalis for the relevant detail. Valentine was pope for a bare two months thirty years ago. A noble, made Bishop of Rome before he was even a priest. She cannot grasp the comparison. The insult. To Servius she says, ‘And they refer to you as the unicorn. Such nonsense these names, no?’
Even as she says it she sees she has indicted herself for crimes unknown. Servius’s epithet is, in fact, accurate in its way; like the fabled beast, his only known weakness is the attention of a young virgin. He might be pope himself by now if it were not for the scores of noble daughters he has ruined for all but the convent.
‘Indeed,’ Servius says. ‘These men do not know you at all. Nor do they know our Holy Father.’ He smiles for a heartbeat and she sees instantly what those poor young virgins must see the moment before all is lost. ‘Any man suggesting that Brother John and Leo IV are lovers should be strangled in his sleep—for stupidity as much as blasphemy.’
The Liber Pontificalis has failed her in its scrupulous avoidance of controversy. There is no hint there that Valentine had ascended the throne from between Eugene II’s sheets.
‘Any man who truly knows how this city works and who knows you, Brother John, understands the real reason you are our Holy Father’s favourite.’
She leans closer to the document in front of her. It is terribly written; Latin assembled as if it were Gaelic, the ink fading, the parchment blotched and pin-holed. She knows they are expected to conclude the grant is inarguable. The armed party to claim the property for the Lateran is already on its way.
‘Oh, you are clever, of course,’ Servius continues. ‘But clever men are as common as whores in this city.’
She cannot resist; says, ‘We must move in different circles as I have come across neither.’
He chuckles. ‘Ah, that’s it exactly, though. You move in no circles at all. A lately Hermetic foreigner with no ties to defend, no ecclesiastical or scholarly feuds to continue or resolve. As for whores, well, no one can say you have even once consorted with such since your arrival in Rome, nor do you keep a mistress. Or master, papal or otherwise. And believe me, brother, enquiries have been made.’
‘You seem to be suggesting chastity is rare among men who are sworn to it.’
‘Oh, I do enjoy you, brother. Yes, yes, let’s all pretend half the treasury isn’t spent supporting bastards and brothels and the immaculately conceived progeny of nuns.’
‘It grows late, Your Eminence, and I would like to complete this task before Nocturnes.’
‘What does it matter? You have nowhere to go once your prayers are done. It is this that makes you Leo’s pet, Brother John. No family, no loyalties, no risk of scandal or blackmail. You can belong to him entirely.’
‘I belong to God,’ she says, and Servius smiles again, pats her on the back as though they agree.
All night his words cut through her thoughts: Believe me, brother, enquiries have been made.
She hears Randulf in her head: Rome is not Fulda. It isn’t even Mainz. It is certainly not Athens, that gentle old city, where one can be famous and adored while hiding away in a hut at the base of a mountain. She had thought it God’s will that she shine her light more brightly; did not wonder if it might be the devil or her own pride (and what, after all, is the difference?) tempting her here.
This is not Fulda, but Randulf would surely know how to play it, how to cultivate friends and allies in every pocket of the place. He would know at which table to eat plain bread and speak of God’s will and at which to suck marrow from bone and joke about whores and wine.
This is not Mainz, but her father would do well here, she’s sure. Every night he facilitated factional battles at his table, ruled and influenced without ever seeming to care very much one way or the other. The men did not love him, she understands now, but they relied on him. Needed him.
She needs him. Them. Someone.
She is a brilliant and devout monk beloved by the most powerful man in the empire.
She is a foolish child who has just noticed her piglets have grown large and tusked.
She abandons her policy of not accepting invitations from anyone but Leo himself. As Randulf would she embraces the customs of her hosts, eats goose and lamb and even pork, drinks wine (but always less than the others at table). She takes on the manner of an enthusiastic gossip while saying nothing, hearing all. Where before men would wonder what this Brother John was up to, now they say, He is my friend and his time is spent around my table, by my fire, with my bastard children on his knee.
As the English Priest would, she takes what she hears and sprinkles it about like holy water. She changes people’s minds while they believe they have changed hers, and when a man’s case is right she takes it to the Holy Father and pleads on the man’s behalf. Where once men said, He is Leo’s pet, they now say, It is good to have a friend so close to the Holy Father’s ear.
As Agnes of Mainz would, she longs for the quiet paradise of a monastery library, prays that God will lead her out of this place, let her live the rest of her days as a drop in a vast ocean, another anonymous monk, chanting the offices and copying psalters.
But oh, this tiresome body! Once reacquainted with wine and meat it howls in protest when given broth and water, growls and spasms and refuses to let her rest unless fed and fed and fed.
Oh, tiresome, greedy, needful body! She dines, one evening, with a Roman noble so corrupt, avaricious, immodest and cruel it is all she can do not to overturn his table and set his tapestries ablaze, and yet when this man bids her farewell by holding her shoulders and kissing her cheeks tears flood her eyes and she must turn quickly before he sees how she is affected.
It is a human thing, is it not, she asks God as she walks through the night-calm streets, to crave the touch of another? Jesus hugged the little children, kissed his friends, laid his hands on lepers and invalids. Was it the God in him or the man that used his flesh to comfort and be comforted so?
Never mind the answer. She can no more greet her fellow notaries with a warm embrace than she can climb onto the Pope’s lap and ask him to cradle her awhile.
Michaelmas, and the day is filled with processionals and masses spanning the length and breadth of Rome. When at last the obligations are complete and she is in her room about to dress for bed, a messenger arrives summoning her to Leo’s apartments. Her eyes itch and her head aches but he is the Holy Father and so what else can she do?
She is admitted to his office, where Leo sits alone on a low couch, without his outer robe and hat, his slippered feet flat on the floor.
‘Come, come, sit with me here, Brother John,’ he says, and for a terrible moment as she moves to the chair he indicates she is looking down at the white hair wisping over his bald pate. He is an old man and terribly small. Old and small and left alone with a treacherous imposter. Who is looking out for him, this helpless innocent alone and tiny in a palace of fat and canny vipers?
Seated across from him it is better. They are the same height and his eyes front on are clearer and sharper than when she is seated below as usual. Still, his skin, now she is very close, is like the pith on the wild oranges of Aventine Hill. A scrape of her nail would tear it open.
‘I have come to notice something curious about you, John.’
‘Your Holiness?’
Perhaps his guards are behind the gold-brocade curtains. Perhaps they listen on the other side of the hidden door. She could outrun them, perhaps, but there are others at the end of the corridor, inside the palace entrance, and more outside. She could run but to where and for how long? For what?
‘You often beg my favour. More than any other man in my office, I would say. Yet it is always on behalf of others, never yourself.’
Her blood pulses, ready to take flight. She wills it to slow, says, ‘Holy Father, I live and work in your presence, in service to Christ our Lord. What is it I would ask for?’
He inhales deeply, gazes hard and fierce into her face. ‘With your intercession I have appointed four new abbots and two prelates, moved three bishops to more preferable sees and approved the translation of significant relics from Ravenna and Monte Cassino to the Borgo. I have dissolved an oblate’s vows and several prison sentences, granted building contracts and apprenticeships and funded an orphanage and two grammar schools. All this, I have done at your urging.’
‘Your wisdom is—’
He raises a hand, continues. ‘My agents have made enquiries. We have considered all this at length. Searched for connections and hidden beneficiaries.’
‘Holy Father, I—’
‘We have found none. It appears you advocate and arrange without personal reward.’
‘My reward is in serving the church, serving Your Holiness. Serving Christ. What else could I need?’
‘What you need, my dearest child, is to understand that your presence here creates gossip of a most unsavoury kind. A mere Benedictine monk at the right hand of the Pope? It is suspicious, you see.’ He smiles and it is the first she has seen from him. It is better that he doesn’t. His teeth are jagged and wine-stained, his gums those of a corpse. ‘No, you don’t see, which is why I must see for you. Foresee, for you!’
Her blood quickens but this time in joy. She is to be dismissed. Sent back to her beloved schola. Praise to you, my Lord, for answering your humble servant’s prayers and allowing me to—
‘Tomorrow you cease to be Brother John. You will become Cardinal Johannes Anglicus, inarguably worthy of a place in the inner sanctum of the Bishop of Rome.’
Ah, my daughter, she imagines God saying—laughing! You may be the greatest trickster in Rome but you have nothing on me.