Conclave

by Robert Harris

  On a whim, Lomeli turned off the road and climbed a flight of steps, past a fountain, to a lawn. He lifted the hem of his cassock to protect it from the damp. The grass was spongy beneath his feet, oozing moisture. From here he had a view across the trees to the low hills of Rome, grey in the pale November light. To think that whoever was elected Pope would never be able to wander around the city at will, could never browse in a bookstore or sit outside a café, but would remain a prisoner here! Even Ratzinger, who resigned, could not escape but ended his days cooped up in a converted convent in the gardens, a ghostly presence. Lomeli prayed yet again that he might be spared such a fate.

  Behind him a detonation of radio static disturbed his meditation. It was followed by an unintelligible electronic jabber. He muttered under his breath, ‘Oh, do go away!’

  As he turned around, the security man stepped abruptly out of sight behind a statue of Apollo. Really, it was almost comical, this clumsy attempt at invisibility. He could see, looking down to the road, that several other cardinals had followed his example and had chosen to walk. Further back, alone, was Adeyemi. Lomeli descended the steps rapidly, hoping to avoid him, but the Nigerian quickened his pace and caught him up.

  ‘Good morning, Dean.’

  ‘Good morning, Joshua.’

  They stood back to let one of the minibuses drive by, then walked on, past the western elevation of St Peter’s, towards the Apostolic Palace. Lomeli sensed that he was expected to speak first. But he had learnt long ago not to babble into a silence. He did not wish to refer to what he had seen, had no desire to be the keeper of anyone’s conscience except his own. Eventually it was Adeyemi, once they had acknowledged the salutes of the Swiss Guards at the entrance to the first courtyard, who was obliged to make the opening move. ‘There’s something I feel I have to tell you. You won’t think it improper, I hope?’

  Lomeli said guardedly, ‘That would depend on what it is.’

  Adeyemi pursed his lips and nodded, as if this confirmed something he’d already guessed. ‘I just want you to know that I very much agreed with what you said in your homily yesterday.’

  Lomeli glanced at him in surprise. ‘I wasn’t expecting that!’

  ‘I hope that perhaps I am a subtler man than you may think. We are all tested in our faith, Dean. We all lapse. But the Christian faith is above all a message of forgiveness. I believe that was the crux of what you were saying?’

  ‘Forgiveness, yes. But also tolerance.’

  ‘Exactly. Tolerance. I trust that when this election is over, your moderating voice will be heard in the very highest counsels of the Church. It certainly will be if I have anything to do with it. The very highest counsels,’ he repeated with heavy emphasis. ‘I hope you understand what I’m saying. Will you excuse me, Dean?’

  He lengthened his stride, as if eager to get away, and hurried forward to catch up with the cardinals who were walking ahead of them. He clamped his arms around the shoulders of both and hugged them to him, leaving Lomeli to trail behind, wondering if he had imagined things, or if he had just been offered, in return for his silence, his old job back as Secretary of State.

  *

  They assembled in the Sistine Chapel in the same places as before. The doors were locked. Lomeli stood in front of the altar and read out in turn the name of every cardinal. Each man answered, ‘Present.’

  ‘Let us pray.’

  The cardinals stood.

  ‘O Father, so that we may guide and watch over Your Church, give to us, Your servants, the blessings of intelligence, truth and peace, so that we may strive to know Your will, and serve You with total dedication. For Christ our Lord . . .’

  ‘Amen.’

  The cardinals sat.

  ‘My brothers, we will now proceed to the second ballot. Scrutineers, if you would take your positions, please?’

  Lukša, Mercurio and Newby rose from behind their desks and made their way to the front of the chapel.

  Lomeli returned to his seat and took out his ballot paper. When the scrutineers were ready, he uncapped his pen, shielded what he was doing, and once again wrote in capital letters: BELLINI. He folded the ballot, stood, held it up high so that the entire Conclave could see, and walked to the altar. Above him in The Last Judgement, all the hosts of heaven swarmed while the damned sank into the abyss.

  ‘I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.’

  He placed his vote on the chalice and tipped it into the urn.

  *

  In 1978, Karol Wojtyła brought a Marxist journal into the Conclave that elected him Pope, and sat reading it calmly during the long hours it took for a total of eight ballots to be cast. However, as Pope John Paul II, he did not accord the same distraction to his successors. All electors were forbidden by his revised rules of 1996 to bring any reading material into the Sistine Chapel. A Bible was placed on the desk in front of every cardinal so that they could consult the Scriptures for inspiration. Their sole task was to meditate on the choice before them.

  Lomeli studied the frescos and the ceiling, flicked through the New Testament, observed the candidates as they paraded past him to vote, closed his eyes, prayed. In the end, according to his wristwatch, it took sixty-eight minutes for all the votes to be cast. Shortly before 10.45 a.m., Cardinal Rudgard, the last man to vote, returned to his seat at the back of the chapel and Cardinal Lukša lifted the filled urn of ballots and showed it to the Conclave. Then the scrutineers followed the same ritual as before. Cardinal Newby transferred the folded ballot papers to the second urn, counting each one out loud until he reached 118. After that, he and Cardinal Mercurio set up the table and three chairs in front of the altar. Lukša covered it in a cloth and placed upon it the urn. The three men sat. Lukša thrust his hand into the ornate silver vessel, as if drawing a raffle ticket for some diocesan fund-raiser, and pulled out the first ballot paper. He unfolded it, read it, made a note, and handed it on to Mercurio.

  Lomeli took up his pen. Newby pierced the ballot with his needle and thread and ducked his head to the microphone. His atrocious Italian filled the Sistine: ‘The first vote cast in the second ballot is for Cardinal Lomeli.’

  For an appalling few seconds Lomeli had a vision of his colleagues secretly colluding behind his back overnight to draft him, and of his being borne to the papacy on a tide of compromise votes before he had time to gather his wits to prevent it. But the next name read out was Adeyemi’s, then Tedesco’s, then Adeyemi’s again, and there followed a blessedly long period when Lomeli wasn’t mentioned at all. His hand moved up and down the list of cardinals, adding a tick each time a vote was declared, and soon he could see that he was trailing in fifth place. By the time Newby read out the final name – ‘Cardinal Tremblay’ – Lomeli had gathered a total of nine votes, almost double what he had received in the first ballot, which was not at all what he had hoped for but was still enough to keep him safe. It was Adeyemi who had come storming through to take first place:

  Adeyemi 35

  Tedesco 29

  Bellini 19

  Tremblay 18

  Lomeli 9

  Others 8

  Thus, out of the fog of human ambition, did the will of God begin to emerge. As always in the second ballot, the no-hopers had fallen away, and the Nigerian had picked up sixteen of their votes: a phenomenal endorsement. And Tedesco would be pleased, Lomeli thought, to have added a further seven to his first-ballot total. Meanwhile Bellini and Tremblay had hardly moved: not a bad result for the Canadian, perhaps, but a disaster surely for the former Secretary of State, who probably would have needed to poll in the high twenties to keep his candidacy alive.

  It was only as he checked his calculations for a second time that Lomeli noticed another small surprise – a footnote, as it were – that he had missed in his concentration on the main story. Benítez had also increased his support, from one vote to two.

  10

 
; The Third Ballot

  AFTER NEWBY HAD read out the results, and the three cardinal-revisers had checked them, Lomeli rose and approached the altar. He took the microphone from Newby. The Sistine seemed to be emitting a low-level hum. Along all four rows of desks the cardinals were comparing lists and whispering to their neighbours.

  From the altar step he could see the four main contenders. Bellini, as a cardinal-bishop, was closest to him, on the right-hand side of the chapel as Lomeli looked at it: he was studying the figures and tapping his forefinger against his lips, an isolated figure. A little further down, on the other side of the aisle, Tedesco was tilting back in his chair to listen to the Archbishop Emeritus of Palermo, Scozzazi, who was in the row behind him and was leaning over his desk to tell him something. A few places further on from Tedesco, Tremblay was twisting his torso from side to side to stretch his muscles, like a sportsman between rounds. Opposite him, Adeyemi was staring straight ahead, so utterly immobile he might have been a figure carved in ebony, oblivious to the glances he was attracting from all sides of the Sistine.

  Lomeli tapped the microphone. It echoed off the frescos like a drumbeat. At once the murmuring ceased. ‘My brothers, in accordance with the Apostolic Constitution, we will not stop to burn the ballot papers at this point, but instead proceed immediately to the next vote. Let us pray.’

  *

  For the third time, Lomeli voted for Bellini. He was settled in his own mind that he would not desert him, even though one could see – almost literally physically see – the authority draining from the former favourite as he walked stiffly up to the altar, recited the oath in a flat voice and cast his ballot. He turned to go back to his seat, a husk. It was one thing to dread becoming Pope; it was another altogether to confront the sudden reality that it was never going to happen – that after years of being regarded as the heir apparent, your peers had looked you over and God had guided their choice elsewhere. Lomeli wondered if he would ever recover. As Bellini passed behind him to get to his seat, he gave him a consoling pat on the back, but the former Secretary of State seemed not to notice.

  While the cardinals voted, Lomeli passed his time in contemplation of the ceiling panels nearest to him. The prophet Jeremiah lost in misery. The anti-Semite Haman denounced and slain. The prophet Jonah about to be swallowed by a giant eel. The turmoil of it struck him for the first time; the violence; the force. He craned his neck to examine God separating light and darkness. The creation of the sun and planets. God dividing water from the earth. Without noticing, he allowed himself to become lost in the painting. And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in great perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken . . . He felt a sudden intimation of disaster, so profound that he shuddered, and when he looked around he realised that an hour had passed and the scrutineers were preparing to count the ballots.

  *

  ‘Adeyemi . . . Adeyemi . . . Adeyemi . . .’

  Every second vote seemed to be for the cardinal from Nigeria, and as the last few ballots were read out, Lomeli said a prayer for him.

  ‘Adeyemi . . .’ Newby threaded the paper on to his scarlet ribbon. ‘My brothers, that concludes the voting in the third ballot.’

  There was a collective exhalation around the chapel. Quickly Lomeli counted the forest of ticks he had placed against Adeyemi’s name. He made it fifty-seven. Fifty-seven! He couldn’t resist leaning forward and peering down the row of desks to where Adeyemi was sitting. Almost half the Conclave was doing the same. Another three votes and he would have a straight majority; another twenty-one and he would be Pope.

  The first black Pope.

  Adeyemi’s massive head was bent forward on to his chest. In his right hand he was grasping his pectoral cross. He was praying.

  In the first ballot, thirty-four cardinals had received at least one vote. Now there were only six who registered support:

  Adeyemi 57

  Tedesco 32

  Tremblay 12

  Bellini 10

  Lomeli 5

  Benítez 2

  Adeyemi would be elected pontiff before the day was out. Lomeli was sure of it. The prophecy was written in the numbers. Even if Tedesco somehow managed to reach forty on the next ballot and deny him a two-thirds majority, the blocking minority would crumble quickly in the following round. Few cardinals would wish to risk a schism in the Church by obstructing such a dramatic manifestation of the Divine Will. Nor, to be practical about it, would they wish to make an enemy of the incoming Pope, especially one with as powerful a personality as Joshua Adeyemi.

  Once the voting papers had been checked by the revisers, Lomeli returned to the altar step and addressed the Conclave. ‘My brothers, that concludes the third ballot. We shall now adjourn for luncheon. Voting will resume at two thirty. Kindly remain in your places while the officials are readmitted, and remember not to discuss our proceedings until you are back inside the Casa Santa Marta. Would the Junior Cardinal-Deacon please ask for the doors to be unlocked?’

  *

  The members of the Conclave surrendered their voting papers to the masters of ceremonies. Afterwards, making animated conversation, they filed across the vestibule of the Sistine, out into the marbled grandeur of the Sala Regia and down the staircase to the buses. Already it was noticeable how they deferred to Adeyemi, who seemed to have developed an invisible protective shield around him. Even his closest supporters kept their distance. He walked alone.

  The cardinals were eager to get back to the Casa Santa Marta. Few now lingered to watch the burning of the ballots. O’Malley stuffed the paper sacks into one furnace and released the chemicals from the other. The fumes mingled and rose up the copper flue. At 12.37 p.m., black smoke began to issue from the Sistine Chapel chimney. Observing it, the Vatican experts on the main television news channels continued confidently to predict a victory for Bellini.

  *

  Lomeli left the Sistine soon after the smoke was released, at roughly a quarter to one. In the courtyard, the security men were holding the last minibus for him. He declined the offer of help and climbed up on to it unaided to find Bellini among the passengers, sitting near the front with his usual squad of supporters – Sabbadin, Landolfi, Dell’Acqua, Santini, Panzavecchia. He had done himself no favours, Lomeli thought, by trying to win over a worldwide electorate with a clique of Italians. As the rear seats were occupied, Lomeli was obliged to sit with them. The bus pulled away. Conscious of the driver’s eyes examining them in the rear-view mirror, the cardinals didn’t speak at first. But then Sabbadin, turning round in his place, said to Lomeli, with deceptive pleasantness, ‘I noticed, Dean, that you spent nearly an hour this morning examining Michelangelo’s ceiling.’

  ‘I did – and what a ferocious work it is, when one has time to study it. So much disaster bearing down upon us – executions, killings, the Flood. One detail I hadn’t noticed before is God’s expression when He separates light from darkness: it is pure murder.’

  ‘Of course, the most appropriate episode for us to have contemplated this morning would have been the story of the Gadarene swine. What a pity the master never got around to painting that.’

  ‘Now, now, Giulio,’ warned Bellini, glancing at the driver. ‘Remember where we are.’

  But Sabbadin could not contain his bitterness. His only concession was to drop his voice to a hiss, so that they all had to lean in to hear him. ‘Seriously, have we taken leave of our senses? Can’t we see we’re stampeding over a cliff? What am I to tell them in Milan when they start to discover our new Pope’s social views?’

  Lomeli whispered, ‘Don’t forget there will also be great excitement at the prospect of the first African pontiff.’

  ‘Oh yes! Very good! A Pope who will permit tribal dancing in the middle of the Mass but will not countenance Communion for the divorced!’

  ‘En
ough!’ Bellini made a cutting gesture with his hand to signal that the conversation was over. Lomeli had never seen him so angry. ‘We must all accept the collective wisdom of the Conclave. This isn’t one of your father’s political caucuses, Giulio – God doesn’t do re-counts.’ He stared out of the window and didn’t speak again for the remainder of the short journey. Sabbadin sat back, arms folded, furious in his frustration and disappointment. In the rear-view mirror, the driver’s eyes were wide with curiosity.

  It took less than five minutes to drive from the Sistine Chapel to the Casa Santa Marta. Lomeli calculated later therefore that it must have been roughly 12.50 p.m. when they disembarked outside the hostel. They were the last to arrive. Perhaps half the cardinals were already seated, and another thirty were queuing with their trays; the remainder must have gone up to their rooms. The nuns were moving between the tables, serving wine. There was an atmosphere of unsuppressed excitement: permitted to talk openly, the cardinals swapped their opinions of the extraordinary result. As he joined the end of the line, Lomeli was surprised to see Adeyemi sitting at the same table he had occupied at breakfast, with the same contingent of African cardinals: if he had been in the Nigerian’s position, he would have been in the chapel, away from this hubbub, deep in prayer.

  He had reached the counter and was helping himself to a little riso tonnato when he heard the sound of raised voices behind him, followed by the crash of a tray hitting the marble floor, glass shattering, and then a woman’s scream. (Or was scream the right word? Perhaps cry would be better: a woman’s cry.) He swivelled round to see what was happening. Other cardinals were rising from their seats to do the same; they obscured his view. A nun, her hands clasped to her head, ran across the dining room and into the kitchen. Two sisters hurried after her. Lomeli turned to the cardinal nearest him – it was the young Spaniard, Villanueva. ‘What happened? Did you see?’