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“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, I give you greeting,” intoned the Cardinal in a low, grave voice. He moved to the ivory chair and seated himself, the silk of his robe cascading around the step.
Thomas lifted his head, hope gleaming in his eyes as he beheld the man who he prayed would be his savior. The Cardinal was young, of medium height, and carried an air of slightness and delicacy despite his full and elegant form. His pale face, barely visible in the dim light, was framed by thick, curling chestnut-red hair peeking out from beneath a black skull-cap. He wore a robe of vivid pink and violet silk, adorned with costly rings on his beautiful hands, and his foot, encased in a gold slipper, peeked from under his gown.
Seated regally on the ivory chair, the Cardinal grasped its arms and fixed his intense, dark eyes on Thomas. “What matters bring you to me?” he asked.
Words failed Thomas, a choking sense of horror and blasphemy clutching at his heart. He stared at the young Cardinal, feeling madness creep upon him. “The air—the incense makes me giddy, holy father,” he murmured.
The Cardinal rang a small bell by the sand clock and motioned for Thomas to rise. A beautiful boy in a white tunic appeared in answer to the summons. “Extinguish the incense,” the Cardinal commanded, “and open the window, Gian. It is very hot, a storm gathers, does it not?”
Gian parted the painted curtains and unlatched the window. As cooler air wafted into the close chamber, Thomas breathed more freely. “The stars are all hidden, your Eminence,” Gian observed, peering into the night. “Certainly, it is a storm.”
The youth removed the brazier, extinguishing the incense, and then knelt before the Cardinal before withdrawing backward. As the door closed behind him, Luigi Caprarola turned to the man standing humbly before him. “Now can you speak?” he said gravely.
Thomas flushed. “Scarcely have I the heart...your Eminence abashes me. I have a sickening tale to relate. Hearing of you, I thought, this holy man can give me peace, and I came halfway across the world to lay my troubles at your feet. But now, sir, now—I fear to speak. Indeed, I am scarcely able. Unreal and hideous it seems in this place.”
“In brief, sir,” said the Cardinal, “you have changed your mind. I think you were ever of a changeful disposition, Thomas of Dendermonde.”
“How does your Eminence know that of me is, alas, true?”
“I see it in your face,” answered the Cardinal, “and something else I see—you are, and long have been, unhappy.”
“It is my great unhappiness that has brought me before your Eminence.”
Luigi Caprarola rested his elbow on the ivory chair arm and his cheek on his palm, the pale, dim light illuminating his face. Something powerful and intense shone in his eyes, and Thomas did not care to look at him. “Weary of sin and afraid of Heaven, you have come to seek absolution from me,” said the Cardinal.
“Yea, if it might be granted me, if by any penitence I might obtain pardon.”
Thomas, his gaze fixed on the ground, had an extraordinary vivid impression that the Cardinal was laughing. He looked up quickly, only to see Luigi Caprarola calm and grave. A peal of thunder sounded, and the echoes hovered in the chamber.
“The confession must come before the absolution,” said the Cardinal. “Tell me, my son, what troubles you.”
Thomas shuddered. “It involves others than myself...”
“The seal of the confession is sacred, and I will ask for no names. Thomas of Dendermonde, kneel here and confess,” commanded the Cardinal.
He pointed to the ivory footstool close to his raised seat, and Thomas came forward, humbly kneeling. The curtains fluttered in the hot wind, a flash of lightning slicing through the fabric and mingling with the eerie glow of the lamps.
The Cardinal picked up the gold book, laying it on his knee. His pink silk sleeve almost brushed against Thomas’s lips, exuding a strange and beautiful perfume. “Tell me of these sins of yours,” he whispered.
“I must go far back,” Thomas began, his voice trembling. “For your Eminence to understand my sins—they had small beginnings.”
He paused, his eyes fixed on the Cardinal’s long, fair fingers resting on the breviary’s gilt cover. “I was born in Dendermonde,” he finally said. “My father was a clerk who taught me his learning. When he died, I came to Nola. I was eighteen, ambitious, and clever beyond other scholars of my age. I wanted, more than anything, to attend one of the colleges...”
He sighed, a hot breath that seemed to recall the passionate throb of that early desire. “To make a living, I taught the arts I knew. Among other things, I gave music lessons to the daughter of a great lord in Nola. Through this, I came to know her brother, a young knight with lusty desires.”
The Cardinal listened intently, his breathing barely stirring his robe. His hand, adorned with rings, remained still on the gilt and turquoise cover. Thomas wiped his damp forehead and continued, “He was restless and impatient with Nola, like me, but unlike me, he was innocent. For I...“—he moistened his lips—“I began to practice black magic.”
The thunder rolled somberly, triumphantly, around the seven hills, and the first rain dashed against the window.
“Black magic,” repeated the Cardinal, “go on.”
“I read forbidden books I found in an old library in the house of a Jew whose son I taught. I tried to work spells, to raise spirits. I was desperate to better myself. I wanted to become like Alcuin, like Saint Jerome—nay, like Zerdusht himself. But I was not skilled enough. I could do little or nothing...”
The Cardinal moved slightly. Thomas, torn between the horror and ease of finally confessing these things, continued in a low, desperate voice, “The young knight I spoke of was in love with a mighty lady who passed through Nola. He wished to follow her to Frankfort; she had given him hope that she would find him service there. He asked me to accompany him, and I was glad to go. On the journey, he told me of his marriage to the daughter of a neighboring lord. Though it matters not here, he did not know if she was alive or dead, but he knew of the place where she had last been seen. We went there—to the old, half-deserted town of Antwerp...”
“And the young knight hoped to find she was dead,” interrupted the Cardinal. “Was she, I wonder?”
“All the world thought so. It’s a strange story, not mine to tell. We found the house, and there we met a youth who told us of the maid’s death and showed us her grave...”
Thunder, closer now, shook the palace, and Thomas hid his face in his hands. “What of this youth?” asked the Cardinal softly. “Tell me of him.”
“He ruined me. By night, he came to me and spoke of his studies—black magic! Black magic! He cast spells and raised a devil. In a mirror, he showed me visions. I swore with him faithful friendship...he ruined my soul. He sold some of the goods in the house, and we went together to Basle College.”
“You make him out to be your evil angel,” said the Cardinal. “Who was he?”
“I know not. He was high-born, I think, dainty in ways and pleasant to look upon. My faltering soul was caught by his wiles, for he spoke of great rewards. I know not who he was, man or demon...I think he loved me.”
A heavy silence settled in the chamber, broken only by the rumble of the storm outside. Then the Cardinal spoke again.
“Loved you? What makes you think he loved you?”
“Certes, he said so and acted so...we went to Basle College. Then, I also thought I loved him...he was the only one in the world I had ever spoken to about my hopes, my desires...we continued our experiments...our researches were blasphemous, horrible. He was ever more skillful than I...then one day, I met a lady, and I knew myself to be hideous. But that very night, I was drawn back into the toils again...we cast a spell over another student. We were discovered and fled the college.”
A flash of lightning pierced the gloom like a sword rending silk; Thomas winced and shuddered as the thunder crashed overhead.
“Does your tale end here?” demanded the Cardinal.
“Alas, no; I fell from worse sin to worse sin. We were poor and met a monk, robbed him of God’s money, and left him for dead...we came to Frankfort and lived in the house of an Egyptian hag. I began to loathe the youth because the lady was ever in my thoughts. He hated the lady bitterly because of this; he tempted me to do murder for gain, and I refused for her sake.”
Thomas’s voice grew hot and passionate. “Then I found that he was tempting her—my saint! But I had no fear that she would fall, and while she spurned him, I thought I could too. And I did...but she proved no stronger—she loved her steward and bid him slay his wife: ‘You staked on her virtue,’ the Devil cried to me, ‘and you’ve lost! Lost!’”
Stolen novel; please report.
The sobs thickened his voice, and bitter tears gathered in his eyes. “I was the youth’s prey again, but now I hated him for his victory...we came back to Frankfort, and he was sweet and soft to me, while I was thinking of how I might injure him as he had injured me. I dwelt on that picture of her dishonored and undone, and I hated him, so I waited for my chance. The night we reached the city, I betrayed him for what he was, betrayed him to whom I had sworn friendship...well, half the town came howling through the snow to seize him, but we were too late. We found a flaming house...it burned to ashes, he with it. I had my revenge, but it brought me no peace. I left the West and went to the East, to India, Persia, to Greece. I avoided both God and the Devil. I dreaded Hell and dared not hope for Heaven. I tried to forget but could not. I tried to repent but could not. Good and evil strove for me until the Lord had pity...I heard of you, and I have come to Rome to cast myself at your feet, to ask your aid to help throw myself on God’s mercy.”
He rose, his hands clasped to his breast, his wild eyes fixed on the pale face of Luigi Caprarola. Thunder and lightning together were rending the hot air. Thomas’s once-gorgeous dress, now glimmering in gold and purple, clung to his flushed and exalted frame.
“God wins, I think, this time,” he said in an unsteady voice. “I have confessed my sins, I will do penance for them, and die at least in peace—God and the angels win!”
The Cardinal rose; with one hand he clutched the back of the ivory chair, with the other he clasped the golden book to his breast. The light shone on his red hair, making it gleam against the ebony and mother-of-pearl wall. His face and lips were very pale above the vivid hue of his robe, his eyes, large and dark, stared at Thomas.
Again, the lightning flashed between them, seeming to sink into the floor at the Cardinal’s feet. He lifted his head proudly, listening to the following mighty roll of thunder. When the echoes had quivered into hot stillness, he spoke.
“The Devil and his legions win, I think,” he said. “At least they have served Edward Bensouda well.”
Thomas fell back until he crouched against the gleaming wall. “Cardinal Caprarola!” he cried fearfully. “Cardinal Caprarola, speak to me! Even here, I hear the fiends jibe!”
The Cardinal stepped down from the ebony dais, his stiff robes rustling as he walked; he laughed, a cold, mirthless sound. “Have I learned a mien so holy my old comrade knows me not? Have I changed so, I who was dainty and pleasant to look upon, your friend and your bane?”
He paused in the center of the room; the open window, the dark beyond it, the waving curtains, and the fierce lightning made a terrifying backdrop for his haughty figure. But Thomas moaned and whispered in his throat.
“Look at me,” commanded the Cardinal. “Look at me well, you who betrayed me. Am I not he who gilded a devil one August afternoon in a certain town in Salem?”
Thomas drew himself up, pressing his clenched hands to his temples. “Betrayed!” he shrieked. “It is I who am betrayed. I sought God and have been delivered unto the Devil!”
The thunder crashed so that his words were lost in the great noise of it, the blue and forked lightning darted between them.
“You know me now?” asked the Cardinal.
Thomas slipped to his knees, crying like a child. “Where is God? Where is God?”
The Cardinal smiled, a cruel curve of his lips. “He is not here,” he answered, “nor in any place where I have been.”
An awful stillness fell after the crash of thunder. Thomas hid his face, cowering like a man who feels his back bared to the lash.
“Cannot you look at me?” asked the Cardinal, his voice laced with a sorrowful scorn. “After all these years, am I to meet you—thus? At my feet!”
Thomas sprang to his feet, his features twisted into an unnatural mask of despair and lifeless pallor. “You do well to taunt me,” he spat. “For I am an accursed fool. I have been seeking for what does not exist—God! Now I know there is no God and no Heaven. What matter for my soul? What matter for any of it, since the Devil owns us all!”
As if to punctuate his words, the storm outside raged with renewed fury. Lightning illuminated the vineyards and gardens of the Janiculum Hill, casting them in an eerie blue glow beneath the black sky.
“Your soul!” cried the Cardinal, his voice cutting through the din. “Always have you thought too much and not enough of that. You served too many masters and not one faithfully. Had you been a stronger man, you would have stayed with your fallen saint, not spurned her, and then avenged her by my betrayal.”
He crossed to the window and closed it, the lightning framing him in a fierce flash. He waited until the thunder’s after-crash had subsided, his eyes never leaving Thomas’s horror-stricken face.
“Well, it is all a long while ago,” he said. “And I and you have changed.”
“How did you escape that night?” asked Thomas hoarsely, hardly able to believe this man was Edward Bensouda. Yet his straining eyes traced the familiar features in the altered, older face.
As the Cardinal moved slowly across the chamber, Thomas marked the likeness of the haughty priest to the poor student in black magic with horrible fascination. The straight dark hair was now curled and stained a deep red, eyes and brows remained the same—keen and heavy-lidded. His clear skin showed less pallor, his mouth fuller and more firmly set, the upper lip shaded with a dark down, the chin less prominent, but the jawline remained strong and clear. It was a more handsome face, a remarkable face, composed and imperious, with eyes to make one tremble.
“I thought you burned,” faltered Thomas.
“The master I serve is powerful,” smiled the Cardinal. “He saved me then and set me where I am now—the greatest man in Rome. So great that if you wished a second time to betray me, you might shout the truth in the streets and find no one to believe you.”
The lightning darted in vain at the closed window, and the thunder rolled more faintly in the distance.
“Betray you!” cried Thomas, wild-eyed. “No, I bow the knee to the greatest thing I have met, and kiss your hand, Your Eminence!”
The Cardinal turned and looked at him over his shoulder. “I never broke my vows,” he said softly, “the vows of comradeship I made to you. Just now you said you thought I loved you, back then, in the old days...” He paused, his delicate hand creeping over his heart. “Well, I... loved you... and it ruined me, as the devils promised. Last night I was warned that you would come today and that you would be my bane... well, I do not care since you have come, for, sir, I love you still.”
“Edward!” cried Thomas.
The Cardinal gazed at him with ardent eyes, the storm outside a fitting backdrop to the tempest within the room. The air seemed to thicken with the weight of unsaid words and unfulfilled desires. Thomas felt as if the walls themselves were closing in, pressing the very breath from his lungs.
“Do you suppose it matters to me that you’re weak, foolish, or that you betrayed me?” the Cardinal asked, his voice heavy with a sorrowful scorn. “You’re the one thing in all the world I care for. Love! What was your love when you left her at Sebastian’s feet? Had she been my lady, I would have stayed and laughed at all of it.”
“It ain’t the Devil who taught you to be so faithful,” said Thomas.
For the first time, a look of trouble, almost of despair, came into the Cardinal’s eyes; he turned his head away.
“You shame me,” continued Thomas. “I got no constancy in me. Thinkin’ of my own soul, I almost forgot Jacobea of Martzburg—and yet—”
“And yet you loved her,” the Cardinal said, his voice softening.
“Maybe I did—it was long ago.”
A bitter little smile curved the Cardinal’s lips. “Is that the way men care for women?” he said. “Certainly not in that manner would I have wooed and remembered, had I been a—a—lover.”
“Strange that we, meetin’ here like this, should talk of love!” cried Thomas, his heart heaving, his eyes dilating. “Strange that I, driven ‘round the world by fear of God, comin’ here to one of God’s own saints, should find myself in the Devil’s net again. Come, he’s done much for you, what will he do for me?”
The Cardinal smiled sadly. “Neither God nor Devil will do anything for you, for you’re not single-hearted, neither constant to good nor evil. But I—will risk everything to serve your desires.”
Thomas laughed, a bitter sound that echoed through the dark room. “Heaven has cast the world away and we are mad! You, famous as a holy man—did you murder the young Blaise? I will go back to India, to the East, and die an idol-worshipper. See yonder crucifix, it hangs upon your walls, but the Christ does not rise to smite you; you handle the Holy Mysteries in the Church and no angel slays you on the altar steps—let me away from Rome!”
He turned to the gilt door, but the Cardinal caught his sleeve.
“Stay,” he said, his voice urgent. “Stay, and all I promised you in the old days shall come true—do you doubt me? Look about you, see what I have won for myself...”
Thomas’s beautiful face was flushed and wild. “Nay, let me go...”
The last rumble of the thunder crossed their speech.
“Stay, and I will make you Emperor.”
“Oh devil!” cried Thomas. “Can you do that?”
“We will rule the world between us; yes, I will make you Emperor, if you stay in Rome and serve me. I will snatch the diadem from Balthasar’s head and cast his Empress out as I ever meant to do, and you shall bear the scepter of the Cæsars, oh, my friend, my friend!”
He held out his right hand as he spoke; Thomas caught it, crushed the fingers in his hot grasp, and kissed the brilliant rings; the Cardinal flushed and dropped his lids over sparkling eyes.
“You will stay?” he breathed.
“Yea, my sweet fiend, I am yours, wholly yours,” Thomas declared, his voice thick with despair and defiance. “Weren’t these rewards better worth crossing the world for than a pardon from God?” He laughed, a hollow, bitter sound, and staggered back against the wall, his eyes wild and reckless. The Cardinal withdrew his hand and moved to the ivory seat, his every step echoing in the dim room.
“Now, farewell,” he said, his voice soft but commanding. “This audience has been overlong. I know where to find you, and soon I shall send for you. Farewell, oh Thomas of Dendermonde.” He spoke the name with great tenderness, his eyes growing misty with old memories.
Thomas gathered himself, a tremor of madness flickering in his gaze. “Farewell, oh disciple of Satan! I, your humble follower, shall look for the fulfillment of your promises.”
The Cardinal touched a small bell, and a fair youth appeared, his presence barely disturbing the oppressive air of the room. The Cardinal bade him see Thomas from the palace, and without another word, they parted, Thomas bearing the look of a man on the edge of madness.
When Luigi Caprarola was alone, he put a trembling hand over his eyes, swaying as if about to collapse. His breath came in ragged, tearing pants. With great effort, he steadied himself, clenching his hands over his heart, and began to pace the room, his Cardinal’s robe trailing behind him, the golden rosary glinting against his knee.
As he struggled for control, the gilt door opened, and Paolo Orsini bowed himself into the Cardinal’s presence.
“Your Eminence will forgive me,” Orsini began.
The Cardinal pressed a handkerchief to his lips, trying to regain his composure. “Well, Orsini?”
“A messenger has just come from the Vatican, my lord—”
“Ah! His Holiness?” The Cardinal’s voice was a fragile thread.
“Was found dead in his sleep an hour ago, Your Eminence.”
The Cardinal paled, his burning eyes fixing on the secretary. “Thank you, Orsini. I thought he would not last the spring. Well, we must watch the Conclave.” He moved the handkerchief from his mouth and twisted it in his fingers.
The secretary turned to leave, but the Cardinal called him back. “Orsini, it is desirable we should have an audience with the Empress. She has many creatures in the Church who must be brought to heel. Write to her, Orsini.”
“I will, my lord.” The young man withdrew, leaving Luigi Caprarola alone with his thoughts.
The Cardinal stood very still, staring at the gleaming walls of his opulent chamber. The flickering candlelight threw long, wavering shadows, transforming the room into a hall of dark phantoms. His mind drifted to the past, to the paths that had led him here, to the choices that had bound him to this moment.