The King Without a Kingdom Read Free

matter, he never forgets.
    Although I am not a great theologian as so many of my colleagues are – theologians are thick on the ground these days – I do have responsibility for ensuring order and cleanliness in the house of the good Lord upon this earth, and I refuse to reduce the trappings of my position; not even the pope, who knows only too well what he owes me, has dared to force me to do so. He can waste away on his throne, if he so wishes, that is his own business entirely. But I, his nuncio, am careful to preserve the glory of his office.
    I know there are some who scoff at my grand purple palanquin, its golden pommels and studs, and my horses upholstered with purple, and the two hundred lances of my escort, and my three lions of Périgord embroidered on my standard and on my sergeants’ livery. In this I travel at present. Because of all the noble display, when I enter a town, the people rush up to bow down before me, they come to kiss my mantle. I even make kings kneel (for Thy glory, Lord, for Thy glory).
    However, these qualities of leadership were simply not in the air we breathed at the last conclave, and I was made well aware of it. They wanted a man of the people; they wanted a simple soul, a humble being, a plain one. I was barely able to prevent their electing Jean Birel, a holy man – oh! most certainly, a holy man – but who hasn’t an ounce of a mind suited for government and who would have been another Pietro da Morrone. I had eloquence sufficient to persuade my fellow conclavists how perilous it would be, given the state Europe found itself in, to elect another Celestine V. Ah! I certainly didn’t spare the poor Birel! I spoke so highly of him, demonstrating how his admirable virtues made him unsuited to governing the Church, that he was crushed, and remained so. And I managed to have Étienne Aubert proclaimed Pope, he who was born to poverty, not far from Pompadour, and whose career lacked the lustre that would have spontaneously brought everyone around to his cause.
    We are assured that the Holy Spirit lights the way for us to designate the best amongst us; in fact, more often than not we vote to keep out the worst.
    Our Holy Father disappoints me. He moans and groans, he hesitates, he makes a decision, he takes it back. Ah! I would run the Church very differently! And furthermore, it was his idea to send the Cardinal Capocci with me, as if it were necessary to have two legates, as if I weren’t knowledgeable and experienced enough to get things done on my own! And with what result? We fell out from the start, because I showed him the foolishness of his ways; he played the injured party, my Capocci; he withdrew; and while I race everywhere from Breteuil to Montbazon, from Montbazon to Poitiers, from Poitiers to Bordeaux, from Bordeaux to Périgueux, he merely
writes
everywhere, letters from Paris that undermine my negotiations. Ah! I sincerely hope I won’t come across him in Metz before the emperor.
    Périgueux, my Périgord. My God, was I seeing them for the last time?
    My mother always assumed I would be pope. She made it clear to me on more than one occasion. It was why she made me wear the tonsure from the age of six, and arranged with Clement V, who was most fond of her, that I be enrolled as a papal scholar, and thus become apt to receive benefices. How old was I when she took me to him? ‘Lady Brunissande, may your son, whom we most specially bless, display in the place you have chosen for him those very virtues that we should expect from such noble lineage as his, and quickly rise to the highest offices of our Holy Church.’ No, no more than seven years old. He made me Canon of Saint-Front; my first cappa magna. Almost fifty years ago now … My mother saw me as pope. Was it a dream of maternal ambition, or a prophetic vision as women sometimes have? Alas! I do believe that I shall never be pope.
    And yet, and yet, in my birth chart Jupiter is closely tied to the Sun, a beautiful