Magnificat (65 page)

“What do you expect of those two?” Cardinal Cadini said, dismissing them. “If Tondocello weren’t in hospital, he’d be like them.”

“Did you attend the Mass for him last night?” asked Cardinal Mendosa.

“Yes. There were almost fifty of us there. All but two of the Curia joined us, including the Prioress. Not that the news has been very encouraging.” He was too experienced to ask Cardinal Mendosa where he had been, and for that reason was a little taken aback then Cardinal Mendosa told him without being asked.

“I had to attend a meeting. It was private.”

“More about Reverend Williamson?” asked Cardinal Cadini, recovering himself with the grace born of long practice.

“No. It was about Pope An’s safety.” He wished he could tell Cardinal Cadini about his quick, furtive meeting with Martin Bell. The most recent discoveries of the KGB raised his anxiety higher than it had ever been before. It created resonances with his visions that were frightening. “I took the material to Maetrich and to Interpol. It’s got me rattled, I’ll tell you that. No comment from them thus far.” He had not found this silence reassuring.

“You are afraid, aren’t you?” asked Cardinal Cadini.

“I am,” said Cardinal Mendosa. How could he explain about his visions and the dread that had come with the rain as it began falling during the night? After all these years—decades—of silence, he had lost the skill to put into words the magnitude of the things he saw. With Cardinal Hetre under psychiatric care, what could he expect if he revealed what he had been seeing for so long a time?

“What is it, Charles?” whispered Cardinal Cadini.

“A bad case of the squeams.” It was the truth, as far as it went, but his apprehension had deeper roots than hyperactive nerves.

Toward the front of the procession, the newly created Keahi, Cardinal Wailua carried the tremendous jeweled crucifix. He was flanked by a choir of singing boys who were followed by a double row of Franciscan monks, chanting the ancient texts of Resurrection.

“Here we go,” said Cardinal Mendosa as the head of the long, long line started to move.

“Show time,” agreed Cardinal Cadini.

Behind the monks, Pope An walked. In a concession to the Curia for refusing to be carried in the Sedia Gestatoria—the portable, canopied Papal Throne—she wore the Papal tiara and a cope with an extended train, all embroidered in gold thread, seed-pearls and jewels. After her, much as medieval knights in another age had paraded after their lords, came the College of Cardinals and the members of the Curia Tribunals, Congregations and Offices who were not themselves Cardinals.

Saint Peter’s oval Square was filled with people in spite of the steady, unseasonable downpour. They craned their necks under their umbrellas and tried to see around the television cameras trained on the procession.

Within the basilica itself the crush was greater but at least the people gathered were dry. Now it was possible to hear the chants more clearly and to watch the gorgeous procession as they made their way toward the Papal Altar.

“Have you seen Maetrich?” Cardinal Mendosa whispered to Cardinal Cadini.

“Not this morning. How could I, in this crowd?” He had to repeat himself twice before Cardinal Mendosa heard him clearly.

They reached the places reserved for them, and knelt before the altar as Pope An took her place for the Mass.

Even with the truncations Pope An had mandated the year before, the Easter Mass promised to last well over an hour. The choir sang the ancient chants as well as the new setting of the Mass commissioned for this Easter. Because she was not ordained, Pope An appointed Cardinal Wailua and Cardinal Llanos to perform most of the ritual, reciting the liturgy in Italian, Spanish and English. They left the lesson to Pope An.

The reaction to her as she rose to address the enormous congregation was chaotic. Screams, catcalls, hoots, whistles, shouts, bravas, and applause greeted her as she faced them. When at last the noise diminished, she spoke.

“As I addressed the question of sin at the commemoration of the birth of your Jesus, so now in memory of His deliverance from death, I address the matter of virtue.” She had to wait, not only for the translators but for the reaction of the crowd.

“She talked about this at lunch, week before last,” Cardinal Cadini whispered to Cardinal Mendosa. “I thought she might be rehearsing for today.”

“I have given the matter close attention, and I fear that you have been suborned by those in authority to accept meanings of virtue that have no proper place in your understanding.” She looked over the College of Cardinals, her eyes pausing from time to time as she recognized her friends and enemies. “As you interpret sin as error, so you interpret virtue as rectitude, which does not seem accurate to me. As there are seven sins, so there are supposed to be seven virtues. Whatever their number may truly be, or how they are expressed, I am certain that many have lost sight of the truth of what virtue is.”

“Lord God deliver us,” murmured Cardinal Cadini.

Cardinal Mendosa could not say anything: he had heard her speak these words before, in many dreams.

“Your Jesus gave you a commandment—to love each other. This is not easily grasped by Chinese people, who assign a higher value to respect than to love. Yet your Jesus placed love above the rest and so it is my task to try to understand the reasons. Christians always speak a great deal about love, and extol it. But I have come to think that love which has no respect is not love at all, but another, less worthy emotion that serves to distort everything in life.”

There was a great deal of noise in reaction to this.

“You can’t say she hasn’t got their attention,” said Cardinal Cadini, knowing he would not be overheard in the wash of thousands of voices.

“No, you can’t,” said Cardinal Mendosa, his bones turning cold.

“In order to present how I reached this comprehension, I will speak of your seven virtues, and tell you how my reflections have revealed other aspects of these virtues.” She waited again while the noise died down.

“Here we go,” said Cardinal Mendosa. He would have felt better if his heart had been heavy. But he had seen this so often now that it was too familiar. It froze him in his place, as he had been frozen in his vision.

“Where you have been admonished to have courage,” said Pope An when the outcry abated, “I would want you to be steadfast, for courage is the province of those who do battle, and few of us undertake such fighting. What is needed of you to fulfill what your Jesus sought are reliability and the commitment to strive, not the willingness to fight. Where you have been admonished to chastity, I would want you to hold yourselves worthy of high regard, so that the blandishments and subtle threats of others cannot assail you, or confound you, and you will know where and how you may give yourself without compromise to yourself or another. Where you have been admonished to humility, I would ask you to have prudence. You have come to see humility as a willingness to be in the control of others. You mistake subservience for humility, and subservience is without judgment. Chinese people, when they speak of modesty, speak of one who places the need for action as neither less nor greater than the need for non-action. The modest person neither condescends nor deprecates, or trivializes. Therefore, take prudence as your model, and learn to be still in your hearts. Where you have been exhorted to honesty, I would ask you to maintain your integrity. Honesty is often the weapon of anger and the tool of the unprincipled person. If you maintain your integrity you will not deceive others, and will not be deceived yourselves. Where you have been required to be diligent, I would rather you persevere. Diligence is the mark of a sentry, not of a sensible person. A diligent person often justifies greed and anger through his diligence. Those who are diligent may not do much but remain perpetually guarded and distrustful. Learn instead to act in earnest, to persevere. Where you have been required to provide charity, I would request that you offer true comfort to those suffering. You Catholics speak of the coldness of charity, although it was intended by your Jesus as the manifestation of love. Therefore you must come to know love as what it is; provide comfort to those who are in need and you will set yourselves on the way to discovering the means to love. Where fidelity has been demanded of you, I would like to persuade you now to trust and loyalty instead. Fidelity binds you, but loyalty, if it is genuine, is the gift of the heart. And the trust of others is the highest honor the sensible person can aspire to gain. Learn if you can to give loyalty that comes of love instead of confining yourselves and one another in fidelity.”

The derisive shouts were louder, and so were the cheers. Around the edge of the nave, Vatican security men stood at the ready.

Pope An faced the cacophony tranquilly, her eyes bright with inner satisfaction and amusement.

Watching her, Cardinal Mendosa felt almost numb. Carefully he looked around, trying in vain to achieve now what he had been unable to accomplish in his visions. Very softly he began to pray, and could not make himself stop, although he knew his dream-self had done the same thing every night, and to no avail.

“Each of us has a duty to the rest, but the duty need not be an intrusion. If you truly embrace one another, as your Jesus asked that you should, it is not a burden to assist others, to take up your duty to humanity, it is a prerogative, for therein lies what you seek—your salvation.” She raised her hands and began to make the sign of the cross in blessing.

The shot came from the vicinity of the elaborate tomb of Pope Innocent VIII.

At the first, barely audible crack of fire, Cardinal Mendosa was released from the paralysis that held him. He stumbled out of his place and shoved Cardinal Cadini back as he—too late! too late!—tried to reach the altar. As he moved, he seemed to be slowed to nothing. He watched as the first bullet struck, tearing away half her jaw, her ear and most of her neck; blood pumped from the wound, the spray reaching the great pillars and the robed di Cambio statue of Saint Peter. He tried to yell but the sound took forever to come out of him.

The second bullet struck lower, spinning her around and flinging blood and shards of rib over the grandeur she wore. Delicately as a flower folding in on itself at twilight, she began to collapse.

Cardinal Mendosa was almost at the altar now, trying to put himself between her and the assassin. “Worthy Magistrate!” he shouted, unheard. “Zhuang Renxin!” He had seen it before, too many times, but he strove to make it untrue. As he ran, a great weight struck his back, lifted him and sent him sprawling to land, face down, in the first spread of her blood. He started to reach out to her and the pain struck.

Cardinal Llanos, more used to uprising and gunfire than Cardinal Wailua, reacted first. He started toward Pope An as she swayed, still upright; he was staring at the red spangles of blood on his vestments as if he could not recognize what it was. He saw Cardinal Mendosa knocked off his feet by the third shot, and this spurred him to action.

Then the enormous congregation, nearly ten thousand strong, immobilized by disbelief, began to panic, to react to the unimaginable thing they had witnessed. Screams and wailing filled the enormous building, the lamentation and baying triumph enlarged by the vault with echoes. A hurricane demolishing a coast sounded much the same as the interior of Saint Peter’s did.

The choirboy nearest the murdered Pope was sick.

A dozen Vatican security men, suddenly goaded by realization of what they had seen, rushed toward the tomb of Innocent VIII but were stopped by the crush of the people there, all of them trying to reach the man who clung to the figures on the tomb. His rifle was nowhere in sight.

Cardinal Cadini sat very still as he watched Cardinal Llanos kneel beside Pope An, not daring to touch her, knowing it was useless. He stared at his Texan friend, lying still with a bloody wound high in his back. Someone ought to stop the bleeding, he thought distantly, and rocked as Cardinal Bakony stumbled past him. He began to pray, then faltered as he realized he had been saying the same three words over and over.

Between a quarter and a third of the people gathered in the basilica had knelt to pray, most of them pale with shock. A few looked as if they had fainted. The rest were either trying to reach the Papal Altar for a closer, more horrifying look, or attempting to bolt from the building. Outside in Saint Peter’s Square a keening had begun.

From his place at the Papal Altar, Cardinal Wailua shouted and gestured to the Swiss Guards standing in the right transept. “Ambulance!” he bellowed, and moved nearer the altar steps, hoping to keep them from being over-run.

Nine Vatican security officers, with Axel Maetrich at their head, pushed and battered their way toward the altar, reaching their goal in time to stop all but two people from taking bits of bloodstained cloth from the clothes of the fallen Pope. Others were holding out handkerchiefs, trying to obtain a few of the precious drops for themselves.

In the turmoil, no one heard the pistol-shot; only the sudden uproar as the assassin fell from his perch.

“For God’s sake, cover her up,” whispered Maetrich as he stared down at Pope An’s body.

“And the Cardinal? I checked his pulse, he’s still alive,” said Ludovico Raccolto, who had shoved his way through the confusion to assist him. “Just barely, but alive.”

“Get him out of here. Use one of the side-entrances. Now.” He motioned to the Swiss Guards who had reluctantly climbed the steps of the Papal Altar. “Help him.”

“Right away,” said the tallest of the Swiss Guards, grateful to have a reason to move away from the carnage.

Raccolto tapped Maetrich on the shoulder. “The assassin shot himself. At least that’s what they’re saying. He’s dead.”

Maetrich’s expletive was in German and utterly condemning. “Better get the body before they tear it to pieces,” he said, watching as the Swiss Guards did their best to lift the unconscious Cardinal Mendosa from the steps. “I want a full autopsy on the assassin.” His tone grew harsher. “And I want a thorough investigation to begin immediately. Track down everyone and anyone associated with the assassin. I want names by midnight. No press.”