The Pop’s Rhinoceros (36 page)

“Monks!” barks Colonna. Nearby sycophants grunt their disfavor; just what they were thinking, too. Don Diego abandons his musings on the pig-gut-entangled dog and peers forward. Monks, yes. Others, too, taken in with a glance that sweeps across the nave. Two men: one big, one small. He feels a shudder run through him. It was cold in the marsh, the marsh outside Prato. He shouts, but it comes out as a kind of croak. He senses the amused attention of those around him in which his own sudden hunger is wolfish and jarring. He doesn’t care. He points, eyes fixed forward, still scarcely believing. Them. The order comes sharp and unbidden, the tone of the very command they stripped from him. “Get them!”

“Get them?” Colonna looks up, half-vexed, half-amused, at this little usurpation. “Yes, why not.” To his men, then, sweating in their much-complained-of breastplates and helmets, “Bring them here!”

“An arrest?” inquires Cardinal Serra, all elevated whimsy.

“Yes, drag them up,” says the flame-haired signora to the little conclave about Colonna. She appears flushed, though this may be another effect of the hair. “Drag them up and cut their cocks off.” Vitelli raises an eyebrow at his wife. Someone coughs uncomfortably. The soldiers have disappeared downstairs.

Presently they reappear in the cross-waving, poultry-slaughtering tumult below: communion with Christ by proxy and other mass-appropriate activities grant precedence to the minimilitia’s toe-stamping beeline through the pig-guts, cabbage leaves, ambiences of abbatoir and dairy, the whole squawking carnival of faith. … Shins get barked, the lame and the halt are shoved brusquely aside, though most step smartly sideways to let them pass. Thus the snatch-squad advances, diagonally across the floors of the Church of the Most Holy Apostles on the feast of Philip and James in the year of Our Lord fifteen hundred and fourteen, until they reach the monks.

Violence.

Light radiating through the smoke-striated air from the girandoles of the candleholders, striking the blistered plaster, blending one barely illuminated body with the next, makes the demon Tutivullus’s already difficult job no easier. These monks all look rather similar; the soldiers, too, whose status at this Mass is rather ambiguous anyway. Would they be counted as “congregation” or not? They weren’t here earlier. They’re certainly here now, toting with difficulty one monk
and two (secular) aiders and abettors back across the church, fighting a desultory rearguard action against the rest of the monks, who seem to be objecting to this. Well? He sighs, picks up his invisible pen once again, and starts scribbling:

“Oof! You little bastard!” “Grab his leg,” “Eh?” “This one, grab it!” “Aaaaagh!” “Not his balls, his leg!” “This is unnecessary.” “Shut your mouth!” “I am perfectly willing to walk.” “One more word from you and I’ll…” “Let him walk.” “Uh?” “Gnnaaarrgh!!” “Let him bloody walk and give us a hand with this big bastard!” “Ooof!” “Shit!”

First it seems that the crowded gallery is moving en masse toward the group about Colonna, Fiametta being shunted forward like the blunted prow of a ship; but then the prow splits open, becomes a disgorging mouth, as a struggling bunch of soldiers is launched forward, nine or ten of them hanging on grimly to something that thrashes energetically within, something loud, something big. A smaller bundle follows, and then, more calmly, a monk escorted by Colonna’s sergeant, the hem of his habit stained pink with the milk-and-pig-blood mixture, the whole garment spotted with mud.

“Beat them!” orders Colonna, at which the remainder of the soldiers, forcing a likewise difficult passage through the crowd, fall to punching and kicking of the normal-sized one, who responds with encouraging grunts and curses. The larger one merely roars, though in truth few blows are landed; it taking a minimum of eight soldiers to hold him still, very little of him is available for either punches or kicks. As to the monk, he stands erect and in silence, looking on with an expression of contempt. A soldier approaching with raised fist finds himself stilled by the very lack of resistance, arm up and ready but feeling oddly foolish. … The monk looks past him to the scarlet of Cardinal Serra.

“Punch him!” shouts Colonna, enraged by this hesitation.

But the monk begins to speak:
“Misere mei Deus secundum misericordiam tuam, iuxto multitudinem miserationum dele iniquitates meas”
—a pause—
“legit?”
This last is directed at Cardinal Serra, who has been avoiding his eye, rather fearing that this might be coming.

“Legit,”
Serra confirms reluctantly, then turns to Colonna. “He reads, my lord. He is a clerk of the Church. You may not touch him.” Colonna looks irritated. “Then punch the others!” he shouts at the soldier, who turns to do just that.

“Stop!” commands the monk. The soldier stops, confused again. Several of the others stop, too. “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm!” says the monk.

“What!” erupts Colonna.

“These are not prophets!” shouts Cardinal Serra. “And you are not David, monk!”

“I am Father Jörg of Usedom,” retorts the other, “and I claim—”

“Very interesting. Beat them!” Beating resumes.

“And I claim the
privilegium clerici
for these my servants just as for myself,” continues the monk.

“Claim it, then,” answers Cardinal Serra, eyes fixed on the writhing mounds before him. “In the meantime, we continue with beating. Go on! Harder, you lackeys! Work up a sweat!”

“That’s it, Serra,” grumps Colonna.

“I protest my claim!”

“Not to me you don’t. Go on, kick them, too!”

“Usedom falling within the diocese of Stettin, and Stettin being both peculiar and currently
sede vacante,
I protest
omisso medio.”

“Don’t you quote the canon at me, you miserable cur!” Serra is growing vexed. “How dare you pit your learning against a cardinal’s! Besides”—he calms himself—“protests
omisso medio
were revoked by the Council of Basel three decades ago.” A soldier is trying to angle his foot through the armpit of one of his fellows to stamp on Salvestro’s face.

“In that case I would lodge a writ of
significavit,
and Stettin being
sede vacante,
as I said, I would lodge it with myself as both ordinary and metropolitan.”

This gives Serra pause for thought. Suddenly he brightens.
“Significavit,
you said?”

“And I would lodge it
doubly,”
Jörg clarifies. Serra’s face falls.

“I am judge here!” shouts Colonna, anger mounting at this presumptous quibbling.

“It is Justinian who says, If the cause be ecclesiastical, the civil judges shall take no part. Novella the one hundred and twenty-third, if memory serves,” Jörg offers coolly.

Several of the soldiers have once again slowed beating to follow this exchange. The foot-angler is hopping up and down on his free leg, the other having been trapped in some unexpected convolution of the morass on the floor. This time it is the red-haired signora who steps in—literally—planting one leather-booted foot in the exposed side of the smaller of the two,
thunk!
followed by her own excited gasp. The soldiers take the hint and set to work again.

“An excellent point,” rejoins the Cardinal. “Is the cause indeed ecclesiastical? For it seems to me that—”

“Common brawlers!” bellows Colonna. “What’s so ecclesiastical about that? The offense is brawling!”

Cardinal Serra sighs. “Brawling …”

“In church,” completes Jörg. “An ecclesiastical offense.” Serra is downcast, Colonna only confused.

“But,” Serra comes back suddenly, “are they actually clerks? Are they literate? I have yet to hear the verse you earlier recited so prettily issue from either one of them. What are they, monk?” Some great roars sound about now.

It is Jörg’s turn to pause. What are they indeed? “They came to us as vagrants
and ruffians,” he begins. A grin begins to spread over Serra’s face. “And yet they turned out to be our salvation, even if unwittingly, our church being imperiled by … by certain perils. We are very precarious on Usedom. So we have come to petition His Holiness. Being ignorant of Rome and the way by which she is reached, it was these men who aided us in our travels, travels which have ended only today.”

“They are guides!” crows Serra. “Guides are not clerks! Guides are temporal, out of bounds. …”

“Guides, yes. And protectors, too, on occasion—”

“Temporal!”

“—and foragers, and cooks, and lookouts—”

“Temporal! Temporal! Temporal!”

“—typically sitting a little way off from our camp when we would stop for the night, their function then being, as it were, regulatory, concerned principally with ingress and egress …” Serra’s grin disappears suddenly. He frowns, a dawning comprehension at what is coming next. “And thus, in that capacity, I must describe them as—”

“No!” Serra breaks in, to no avail.

“—doorkeepers. Who are commonly, I believe, counted as clerks.”

It is apparent from Serra’s dismay that something important has been reached. Colonna’s “Beat them anyway!” has a formulaic quality to it, and Serra’s invocation of the Council of Vannes to sanction this is met, predictably enough, withjörg’s of the Twenty-eighth Apostolic Canon.

“Not even God will judge the same thing twice,” he adds, quoting Nahum, and carries on with the
At si clerici
of Alexander III for good measure.

“Reversed by Innocent the Third,” counters Serra, still rather reeling from the “doorkeeper” setback. “In the decretal
Novimus,
I believe. And in fact”—rallying somewhat—” I believe the first Pius provided that disobedient clerics might be handed over to the temporal courts. Yes, I’m sure of it,
curiae tradantur,
that’s the phrase. …”

“Suo episcopo inobediens
. If, and only if, disobeying his Bishop.
That’s
the phrase,” Jörg rejoins. “And even then only
cum consensu episcopi sui,
which is to say only with the consent of his bishop—this is according to Fabianus—which is to say,
sede vacante,
as we have established, said Bishop being for want of another represented by myself, only if I give my consent. And I do not.”

“No, of course you do not,” Serra answers calmly, “and why should you, indeed? For unless you were acquainted with Innocent the Third’s decretal, how would such an act be sanctioned? Then again, if you were to be acquainted—”

“Come to the point, priest,” barks Colonna, losing patience.

“The point is that my monkish friend does possess jurisdiction in this case, and is bound to exercise it, too. Immediately, let me add. And then these scum are yours.
Saecula potestati tradantur,
which I construe to mean, ‘They are to be handed
over to the temporal court.’ Eh? Ha!” Serra’s jaw juts as he turns from Jörg to Colonna. “They’re as good as yours, m’lord.” Colonna nods, mollified. Vitelli nods. His wife grins. Jörg grins, too, though inwardly.

“Saecula potestati tradantur?
Is that what you said? Innocent the Third? Now let me see … We have established that they cannot read, have we not?”

“No backtracking, monk.”

“Of course, of course. This decretal of Innocent’s, now. I seem to remember it from the
Tertia Compilatio
. It would be the seventh canon of that collection? The tenth distinction of that canon?”

Serra is blasé on the point.

“I thought as much. Cardinal, that decretal certainly allows for the handing-over of clerics. But only for the offense of forging papal letters, and if they cannot read, it would seem unlikely that they can write, and more unlikely still that they should forge the words of His Holiness—”

“Quibbles and quarrels!” shouts Colonna. “I’ll do with them as I wish,” picking up his staff and jabbing at the nearest of the the two. “There!” He jabs. “And there!” The soldiers shrug off their fatigue at these encouragements and set to. Soon the gallery is loud once more with curses, groans, and effortful grunts. Vitelli watches impassively. His wife twitches beside him, echoing and egging on the punching militiamen. Beside her stands Don Diego, who says nothing and whose face betrays no sign.

“Unhand them.” It is the voice that is unexpected, issuing as it does from the Cardinal.

“I am the master here, priest,” Colonna dismisses him.

“The monk has proved his case. You will unhand them.”

Serra is different somehow, more robe than man. He looks glassy, oddly mechanical. “They are of the Church. Strike them, and you strike at Christendom!” His voice is different, too, disembodied, strengthened with new authority. Colonna stares up, amazed, then aghast at the betrayal. “It is not I who command you, Lord Colonna,” Serra continues implacably, “it is the Church herself, every stone, every saint, every Pope. You shall lay no hand on her servants, nor touch her anointed. No hand, do you hear! No hand!”

Colonna is muttering, “Church be damned, damn you, damn you all,” under his breath, rocking back and forth in his chair.

“Father!” It is Vittoria, who has forced her way through the crush of the gallery, through the now silenced audience, and stands now before him, accusing, furious, flushed with anger. Vitelli’s wife eyes her coolly. “Father, how could you!” His men look to him.

The gallery is silenced. The whole church is quieter, less populous, people drifting out in ones and twos. The postcommunion is always rather boring. A few men and women are sitting against the walls. The flagstones are smeared with scraps and scrapings, cabbage leaves, chicken feathers, milk, blood. The dog is gone and the pig-guts, too: eaten. Behind the rood-screen, Father Tommaso murmurs,
“Per Christum Dominum Nostrum,”
and Fulvio and Bruno supply a final, “Amen.” The monks too are silent, gazing up at the wordless scene above. Two battered men are being lifted to their feet. One, the greater, shakes off his would-be helpers impatiently. The other leans heavily on a proffered arm, clutches his ribs, winces rather theatrically. His face is swollen with bruises. One eye is closed. Through the other he sees an old man wearing a strange conical hat seated in an ornate chair, the red robes of the Cardinal, the gray of Father Jörg, faces behind these blurring in the gloom, a red-haired woman, her elderly escort. And then a face somewhat darker than the others, a face that since its first outburst has remained unmoved throughout all this, waiting patiently for this moment, certain that it will come, whose eyes fix themselves on his and will not let him look away. It is a face he knows.