“I am here,” Monferrato offered, eyes wide as always. “I was sent to break the tie.”
“We cannot vote for another Pope while we currently have a living one,” Fieschi argued, with less vehemence than he was feeling. While he had doubts about his ability to control Father Rodrigo—even if they could find the fellow—Fieschi was also doubtful he could control the outcome of a new vote. At best, Father Rodrigo was still his best chance of keeping the Church on the right path. The confusion of the election, the fire in the Septizodium, what he had done for God in those subterranean halls: all of these things were feeding a growing insecurity, a bleakness born of all these doubts. A bleakness he could not afford to let control him.
“We don’t know that he is living,” Colonna said. “There is no way to prove that.”
“We also don’t know that he is dead,” Fieschi retorted. “Nor is there any way to prove that.”
Capocci’s eyes shifted back and forth a moment, and Fieschi found himself dreading what crazy idea was about to sprout from that man’s head. “Yes there is!” Capocci suddenly shouted. The various muttered arguments and conversations in the room hushed, and his ten fellows turned to him.
“Listen to me,” he said. “We can engineer a solution. That there is a new Pope is known by all of Rome—we have burned the straw, they have seen the white smoke, and news travels fast. Every baron in Christendom has some spy or messenger in the city, waiting to hear the news so that they may return home. We cannot pretend we do not have a Pope. However, nobody has any idea what he looks like. Nobody outside the Vatican compound even knows his name. Now, couple that with the following observation: if we disregard Father Rodrigo’s existence, and take another vote right now, we’ll have a stalemate, even with our eminent new brother joining us”—and here he gestured toward Monferrato–“we would have a stalemate now, and a week from now, and probably a month from now. And during that day or week or month, the whole world thinks we have a Pope, and wants to hear from him. So we must give them a Pope—immediately.” He looked around the room with anticipation, as if he were seeking somebody who could guess what his next words would be and shout them out like an eager student. Nobody did. Not even Colonna. “Therefore,” he prompted. “We present them with a Pope, so that we do not look like a group of incompetent idiots, we anoint this Pope as if he were the one we voted in, we enthrone him—and then, right away, we kill him.”
With a flourishing gesture, he leaned back on his heels and smiled at them all.
“What?” Bonaventura demanded, horrified, into the stunned silence that followed.
Capocci stared at them as if he could not imagine why they were all so shocked. Then his face lit up. “Ah!” he said, still buoyant. “My mind was working faster than my mouth. What I mean is: we pretend that somebody in this room has been elected Pope. We go through all the motions of crowning that man, with the understanding—shared by all of us, but not to be told to another living soul, not even our most faithful servants—that within a fortnight, the pseudo-Pope disappears forever, and we claim that he has died.”
The shocked silence remained, but now the Cardinals were all exchanging glances rather than staring slack-jawed at Capocci. Even Fieschi held his tongue, waiting to see how his peers would react. The idea was ludicrous, but in its insanity was a very narrow path out of the current disaster.
“We’d need to have a body,” Colonna said at length, an implicit acknowledgment that he was willing to entertain the plan.
“There are bodies enough in Roman morgues,” Capocci said.
“What happens to the man who volunteers to do this thing?” da Capua asked. He too seemed cautiously interested now.
“I think that’s up to him,” Capocci said. “It is an enormous service he will be performing, saving the appearance of our integrity. We have no actual integrity—I think we have demonstrated that quite thoroughly by now—but the appearance of it will be deeply comforting to our flocks. It is almost a kind of martyrdom. If I were such a man, I would ask for a bucket of gold and a nice quiet hermitage in which to spend my days in happy anonymity.”
“Nobody in this room would consider such an absurdity,” de Segni snorted. “Every man here is brimful of ambition or he would not have become a Cardinal.”
“That’s true enough,” said Gil Torres. “But as the senior-most Cardinal alive, I can tell you that ambition wanes as surely as it waxes. I would not put myself forward for the sacrifice, but I can imagine it might be attractive—to the right man.”