a certain hush in the gray winter air, like a presage of rain. It was late afternoon, and it looked as if darkness were going to come early.
He saw a cardinal he was acquainted with walking toward him with a heavy tread, his face pinched.
"Good evening, Your Eminence," Palombara said courteously.
The cardinal stopped, shaking his head from side to side. "Too soon," he said sadly. "Too soon. We don't need change at the moment."
Palombara was seized with a presentiment of loss. "The Holy Father?"
"Just today," the cardinal replied, looking Palombara up and down, seeing the marks of travel on his clothes. "You're too late."
Palombara should not have been surprised. Gregory had looked exhausted both in body and in spirit when he had last seen him. Palombara was touched with a grief greater than his disappointment at his own loss of office or the confusion of the future, everything plunged into uncertainty again. There was an emptiness where he had had a friend, a mentor, someone whose judgments he understood.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "I did not know." He crossed himself. "May he rest in peace."
It rained all day, and he stayed at home, supposedly writing a report on his work in Tuscany to give to the new pope, should he want it. Actually he paced the floor, deep in thought, turning over all the decisions he would have to make. There was everything to win... or lose.
He had been in high office several years now and earned both friends and enemies. Most important, perhaps, he had earned favors, and chief among his many enemies was Niccolo Vicenze.
Over the next few weeks, if he was to retain any power, he would need more than skill, he would need luck. He should have been better prepared for Gregory's death. The signs of it had been there in the hollows around his eyes, the constant cough, the pain and weariness in him.
Palombara stopped at the window and stared out at the rain. The new crusade had been a passion with Gregory, but what about his successor?
He was surprised how much Constantinople dominated his thoughts. Would the new pope care about the Eastern Church, try to bridge the differences between them and treat them with respect as fellow Christians? Would he begin a real healing of the schism?
During the following days, tension mounted, speculation was rampant, but for the most part concealed by the decencies of mourning and of Gregory's burial in Arezzo. Above all, of course, was expediency. No one wished to wear his ambition naked. People said one thing and meant another.
Palombara listened and considered which faction he should be seen to back. This was much on his mind when a Neapolitan priest named Masari fell into step with him, crossing the square toward the Vatican Palace in the feeble light of the January sun only a week after Gregory's death.
"A dangerous time," Masari observed conversationally, avoiding the puddles with his exquisite boots.
Palombara smiled. "You fear the cardinals will choose other than by the will of God?" he said with only the barest suggestion of humor in his voice. He knew Masari, but not well enough to trust him.
"I fear that without a little help they may be fallible, like all men," Masari replied, an answering gleam in his eyes. "It is a fine thing to be pope, and great power is destructive of all manner of qualities, regrettably, sometimes most of all of wisdom."
"But far from ending with it," Palombara said dryly. "Give me the benefit of your knowledge, brother. What, in your opinion, would wisdom dictate?"
Masari appeared to consider. "Intelligence rather than passion," he replied at length as they continued up a flight of steps. It was starting to rain harder. "A gift for diplomacy rather than a tangle of family connections," he went on. "It is most awkward to owe one's relations for the favor of their support. Debts have a way of requiring payment at most inconvenient times."
Palombara was amused and interested in spite of himself. He felt the quickening of his pulse. "But how is one to gain any level of support without obligation, probably of several kinds? Cardinals do not cast their ballots without a reason." He did not say "unless they are bought," but Masari knew the sense behind his words.
"Regrettably not." Masari bent forward, shielding his dark face from a spout of water off a high roof guttering. "But there are many sorts of reasons. One of the best might be the belief that