The Sheen of the Silk Page 0,76

There was none of the fire he had shared with Tiepolo.

Giuliano took his leave and went out into the sun in the piazza. The light off the water was as clean and bright as always, but it was cold.

Chapter 25-26

Twenty-five

PALOMBARA AND VICENZE ARRIVED BACK IN ROME IN January 1276. They had been at sea for nineteen days and were both glad to make landfall at last, even though they knew that it was a race to report to the pope, which of course they would do separately, neither knowing what the other would say.

Two days later, when the messenger finally came to conduct Palombara to the pope's presence, they walked together along the street and across the windy square, robes swirling. Palombara tried to think of anything he could ask the man that would tell him if Vicenze had already been or not, but every question sounded ridiculously transparent. He ended by walking the entire distance in silence.

His Holiness Gregory X looked tired, even in the quiet sunlight of his room and the magnificence of his robes. He had an irritating cough, which he tried to mask. After the usual ritual of greeting he went straight to the subject, as if short of time. Or perhaps he had already seen Vicenze, and this was merely a courtesy to Palombara and of no more meaning than that.

"You have done well, Enrico," he said gravely. "We did not expect that such a great undertaking as the unity of all Christendom could be achieved without difficulty, and some loss of life among the most obdurate."

Palombara knew instantly that Vicenze had already been here and reported a greater success than in fact they had had.

He had a sudden acute sense that the man opposite him was weighed down beyond his ability to bear. There were heavy shadows in his face. Was that repetitive cough more than a cold come with the beginning of winter?

"There are too many people whose reputation, and all the honor or power they have, lies in their allegiance to the Orthodox Church," Palombara replied. "One cannot claim divine guidance and then change one's mind." He wished to smile at the irony of it, but he saw no glimpse of humor in Gregory's eyes, only indecision and a coming darkness. It frightened him, because it was one more piece of evidence that even the pope did not have that bright certainty of God that surely came with true sanctity. Palombara saw only a tired man searching for the best of many resolutions, none of them complete.

"The resistance is mostly among the monks," Palombara continued. "And high clergy whose offices will no longer exist once the center of power has moved here to Rome. And there are the eunuchs. There is no place for them in the Roman Church. They have much to lose, and as they see it, nothing to gain."

Gregory frowned. "Can they cause us trouble? Palace servants? Churchmen without..." He shrugged slightly and coughed again. "Without temptation of the flesh, and therefore without the possibility of true holiness. Is it not better for all that their species die out?"

Intellectually, Palombara agreed with him. The mutilation repelled him, and if he thought about it in detail, it frightened him. Yet when he had said the word eunuch, he had been thinking of Nicephoras, the wisest and most cultured man he had encountered at Michael's court. And of Anastasius, who was even more effeminate; there was nothing manly about him at all. Anastasius's intelligence, and even more the fire of his emotions, had caught Palombara in a way he could not dismiss. In spite of his loss of manhood, the healer had a passion for life that Palombara had never felt. He both pitied and envied him, and the contradiction of it was disturbing.

"It is an offense, a denial, Holy Father," he agreed. "And yet they have merit, even if their abstinence is enforced. I doubt it is of their own choosing in most cases, so there can be no blame..."

Gregory's expression hardened in the pale winter sun slanting in through the windows. "If a child is not baptized, it is not the child's choosing, Enrico, yet it is still lost to Paradise. Be careful when you make such sweeping statements. You tread on delicate ground where doctrine is concerned. We do not question the judgments of God."

Palombara felt a chill. It was not the warning or the chastisement, it was far deeper than that. It was the denial of

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