The Nameless Day

But the archangel had remained silent.

Was it the whore’s fault? Thomas tried hard to forgive her, but it was difficult. All his life he’d regarded whores with contempt (although that contempt had never stopped him using them, whispered the voice of his conscience). After his humiliating penance, and the tongue-lashing by the young one, Thomas now loathed whores beyond all measure.

He prayed, but for once that did not bring peace of mind. Suddenly all he could think about was the young girl’s breasts, so firm and pointed beneath her tunic. He knew what they would feel like in his hands, and he knew how they would taste under his tongue once he had aroused the sweat of passion in her.

Saint Michael, aid me now! God help me, drive thoughts of this woman from my mind!

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut, his hands now trembling violently as he grasped them tightly together, his body rocking slowly back and forth. He struggled for control, knowing that any moment Bertrand was going to open that door and find Thomas lost in a maddened fit of anger and remembered lust.

Thomas knew he was being watched, knew that the Prior General of England wanted an excuse to throw him from the Order…and yet still he couldn’t bring himself under control…still he couldn’t forget the laughter…the breasts bared above his head…still he couldn’t forget his humiliation, and his overweening fury…

“Please…please, Saint Michael,” he whispered between clenched teeth.

Thomas.

Peace flooded Thomas’ being, and he almost wept.

Thomas, do not let the thoughts of women control you.

Thomas opened his eyes a fraction. A warm clear light illuminated the dim corridor. He lifted his head slowly.

Five or six feet from him stood a pillar of fire, the form of a man dimly discernible within it. A stern face stared at Thomas from the top of the pillar.

The fire did not sear Thomas, nor did it cause him any fear. He sank to his knees, and clasped his hands in adoration. The archangel had returned.

Women exist only for one reason, Thomas—to bear children. Otherwise they are to be used and discarded with as little thought as the daily sending of excreta on its journey into the cesspool. Use them, but do not let thoughts of them control your life. And never give your soul to one.

“Saint Michael,” Thomas whispered. “You are so good to me.”

You are a Beloved, Thomas.

“Blessed saint, I have found a name that—”

You have found the name of the man whom you must follow, in body as well as spirit.

“Wynkyn de Worde.”

Yes. He worked on behalf of God and His angels until the evil pestilence swallowed him before he could properly accomplish his task.

“And I must take up where he left off?”

You are his successor, although you will grow to be much greater than he.

Thomas’ heart swelled with pride. “What must I do?”

Learn all you can about him, learn what he did, and why. Discover what his purpose was, then take that purpose into your own hands. Follow your instincts, for they are the instincts of the angels.

“Can you not tell me what I need to know, blessed angel?”

The archangel’s anger seeped across the space towards Thomas.

“Forgive me! I did not think to—”

Learning is nothing unless it is experienced. If I tell you what you need to know then you will not have truly learned. Wynkyn de Worde died before he could train his successor personally, thus the successor, you, had to be bred and must now learn without the aid of the one gone before.

“I will learn, Saint Michael. I give you my oath on it.”

You will learn fast, Thomas. Wynkyn de Worde’s untimely death was a disaster. For thirty years the minions of Satan have mingled among God’s own. Now it is almost too late to prevent the final conflagration.

“Blessed angel, my duties keep me here at the friary. I doubt that—”

The archangel roared, and Thomas cringed in terror.

You work with God’s authority! The Church is crippled and useless! Listen only to God’s authority, Thomas, not the useless babbling of priests!

“Saint Michael—”

You are God’s Beloved, Thomas. You need no other authority than that to work what you must. Already you have allowed Prior Bertrand to deflect you from God’s purpose. Do not allow him to do so again.

Thomas began to speak, the questions bubbling to his lips, but the archangel had gone, and Thomas was once more alone in the corridor.

The door opened and there was the sound of a footstep. “Brother Thomas?”

Prior Bertrand.

Thomas unclasped his hands, then slowly rose from his knees and turned to face the prior.

As on the other times Thomas had come to his cell, Bertrand indicated that Thomas should sit on the stool. The prior stood before him, his arms folded and his hands slipped deep into his sleeves.

“Well, Thomas, have you learned humility?”

Thomas, who had been sitting with his own hands folded in his lap and his eyes cast down, now lifted his face.

“I have learned, Prior Bertrand, that I have a greater calling than that which places me under your discipline.”

“What?” Truly shocked, Bertrand actually forgot himself enough to rock slightly on his feet.

Thomas held the prior’s gaze. “I am Wynkyn de Worde’s successor in God’s and the angels’ eternal fight against evil.”

The prior’s face completely whitened. “By whose authority?” he whispered.

“By God’s authority, and by the authority of the blessed Saint Michael who has blessed me with his presence on several occasions.”

Bertrand jerked his eyes away from Thomas, backing up a step or two. He muttered a prayer under his breath, then shook his head frantically as Thomas rose to his feet.

“Tell me what you know of Wynkyn de Worde!” Thomas said.

Bertrand shook his head more vigorously. “No. De Worde is dead. Gone. I do not have to think of him any more.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Brother Thomas! You overstep your place! I will not—”

“You will tell me,” Thomas said in a low voice that was, nevertheless, laced with such venom that Bertrand quivered in fear.

Thomas reached out and seized one of Bertrand’s sleeves. The prior flinched, thinking he would be struck, but Thomas only pulled him about and pushed him down on the stool.

“I speak with the archangel Saint Michael’s voice,” Thomas said. “Tell me what you know of Wynkyn de Worde!”

Bertrand, staring up at Thomas, recognised the power and anger that flooded the man’s face. So Wynkyn had also looked when Bertrand had summoned him to an accounting when the prior had first taken his office.

And, as Bertrand had capitulated then, so he capitulated now.

After all, was not St Angelo’s dedicated to the archangel St Michael?

Bertrand suddenly understood that he wanted Thomas out of this friary and out of Rome as soon as possible. He was an old, old man, and he’d had enough.

The prior dropped his eyes, and sighed. St Michael’s will be done. His face was grey now, rather than pale, and the age-wrinkles in his skin had deepened until they resembled wounds.

“I came to this friary as a young man,” Bertrand began, “perhaps thirty or thirty-two—not much older than you are now—in 1345. I assumed the position of prior, although many, Brother Wynkyn among them, thought me too young for such duties.”

Thomas folded his hands and stood straight, regarding Bertrand silently.

Bertrand’s mouth twisted, remembering. “Within weeks of my arrival I realised that Brother Wynkyn was…different. As you have realised, he came and went without asking permission, and he hardly took any part in the life of the friary apart from attending prayers and meals. When he was in the friary he kept to his cell, studying an ancient book he had there.”

“Of what was it concerned?”

“I do not know.”

“But—”

“Listen, damn you, and keep your questions until I am done!”

Thomas bowed his head.

“Some three weeks after my arrival I summoned Brother Wynkyn to my cell. He sat on this stool and I stood before him. I asked him by what right he ignored his duties within the friary, and by what right he came and went as he pleased.

“He smiled, not a pleasant expression, and he drew a letter from one of his sleeves. ‘By this right,’ he said, and handed the letter to me.”

Bertrand stopped, and he crossed himself with a trembling hand. Thomas remained silent, and waited for Bertrand to continue.

“It was a letter from the holy Boniface of blessed memory—”

Thomas nodded. Boniface had been a great pope until his untimely death in 1303.

“—and it directed the reader to give Brother Wynkyn de Worde every assistance and freedom. It said…it said that Wynkyn de Worde was the hand of the archangel Saint Michael on earth, and that he worked the will of the angels. It said further that de Worde knew the face of evil, and if de Worde were not allowed his freedom then evil would roam unfettered.”

“You did not doubt it.”

“No. I could not. All know of Boniface’s piety, and of his judgement. He was a great pope, and I believed his words implicitly.”

Again Thomas understood, although he did not nod this time. Boniface had been dead some thirty years when Wynkyn had shown Bertrand the pope’s letter, but it would have carried the same degree of authority then as it had when it had been newly penned. After Boniface’s death, the French King Philip, whom many accused of Boniface’s murder (the king had tried an unsuccessful kidnap of the pope, which had prompted a fatal heart attack), had seized control of the papacy via his puppet, Pope Clement, and the popes had retired to Avignon to lead lives of corruption and sin.

Boniface had been the last of the true popes as far as much of Christendom was concerned. If Wynkyn had pulled out a letter from one of the Avignon popes, Bertrand would have been likely to throw it in the fire and laugh in the brother’s face.

“And that is all the letter said?” Thomas prompted softly.

“Yes. That was all the letter said. But, combined with the same light in Brother Wynkyn’s face that I now see shining from yours, it was enough.”

Bertrand heaved himself to his feet and paced slowly back and forth in the confined space between his bed and the door. “After that I let Wynkyn de Worde do as he willed. He was quiet enough, and nothing he did disturbed the peace of the friary. The other brothers left him well enough alone.”

“Where did he go when he left the friary?”

“He went to the friary in Nuremberg twice a year for the summer and winter solstices.”

Ah! The timing of de Worde’s departures and arrivals now made sense. The summer solstice occurred on the Vigil of St John the Baptist in late June, the winter on the night before the Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“What he did there,” Bertrand continued, “I know not, although it had something to do with the evil that was Brother Wynkyn’s purpose.”

“And the significance of the solstices?”

Bertrand merely shrugged.

Thomas lapsed into thought, pacing slowly before Bertrand hunched miserably on his stool.

“What of this ancient book that Brother Wynkyn consulted? What did it contain?”

“I do not know.”

“Does it remain in the friary?”

“No. Wynkyn took it with him on his final journey north.”

“In Advent of the first year of pestilence.”

“Yes.” Bertrand hunched even further on the stool. Why hadn’t he destroyed those records earlier?

“And Wynkyn did not return from Nuremberg?”

“No. I presume he died of the pestilence.”

“And the book?”

“Wynkyn took it with him encased in an oaken casket. I presume it lies wherever Wynkyn bubbled out his last breath. Either that or it has been stolen.”

Thomas stopped his pacing, thinking deeply. In the past hour he’d found a solidity of purpose that had before been only a vague hope and yearning. Now he knew exactly what he had to do.

All thought of whores and naked flesh had fled his mind.

“I must retrace Wynkyn de Worde’s last route north,” Thomas said, and Bertrand blinked as if he were a prisoner suddenly and most unexpectedly given his freedom.

He would rid himself of this troublesome brother once and for all!

“I must find that casket,” Thomas said, “but I will need your aid.”

“Ask what you will,” said Bertrand, silently wishing that Thomas would just leave.

“I seek an audience with the pope.”

“What!”

Thomas looked Bertrand in the eye. “Boniface obviously knew something of what Brother Wynkyn did. What if his secret had also been shared with his successors? I must ask the Holy Father, and perhaps even enlist his aid.”

Thomas was prepared to work without it, but the backing of the pope would open many doors for him.

“Sweet Jesu, brother,” Bertrand said, “an audience with Urban? But—”

“Can it be arranged?”

Bertrand played with the frayed end of his belt, trying to purchase some time. Arrange an audience with the pope? Lord Christ Saviour! It could mean the end of his career!

“Brother Prior?”

Bertrand gave up, spreading his hands helplessly. “It will take some time, Brother Thomas, and even then it might prove impossible. Urban has only sat his throne some five days…and some say he may not sit it much longer.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas had spent so much time in prayer the past week that he’d not had the time or inclination to listen to gossip.

“You have not heard? Two days after the election, thirteen of the sixteen cardinals put themselves back on the road to Avignon.”

“Why?”

“When the cardinals met in conclave they were terrified that if they voted in a non-Roman the mob would slaughter them. Well, we all know that for the truth. But there are rumours of more. They say that the cardinals decided to elect Urban as pope on the clear understanding that he would resign within a month or so when the majority of the cardinals were safely back in Avignon. Once safe, the cardinals will declare the Roman conclave void because of interference from the mob and have a new election.”

Thomas fought the urge to swear. The college of cardinals had long had a law that if a papal election came under undue interference then it could be declared null and void.

And Urban’s election had indisputably come under “undue interference”.

This rumour had the smell of truth.

“That evil walks among us cannot be questioned,” Thomas said, “when the cardinals plot such treachery against the Church of Rome!”

“Do you still seek an audience with Urban?”

Thomas nodded. “It will do no harm.”

Bertrand folded his hands in resignation. “I will do what I can.”

VII

Wednesday in Easter Week

In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III

(21st April 1378)

—i—

During the seventy years that the popes had resided in Avignon, the papal palace adjoining St Peter’s Basilica had fallen into a state of disrepair. Gregory had not done much to restore it in the year he’d spent in Rome before his death—and many said that that was a clear indication he had not meant to remain permanently in Rome at all—and had only made them habitable.

Thus Urban did not meet petitioners in the great audience hall—half demolished over the past fifty years by Romans seeking foundation stones for their homes—but in a large chapel that ran between St Peter’s and the papal palace. It had taken Prior Bertrand a great deal of time and had caused him to call in a great many favours to engineer a place at the Thursday papal audience for himself and Brother Thomas, and even then he did not know if they would get a chance to actually address the pope.

But this was the best he could do, and so, after their noon meal, he and Brother Thomas made their way into the Leonine City.

The gates in the wall by the Castel St Angelo had been restored to their hangings, but were thrown open to the petitioners and pilgrims wending their way towards St Peter’s. The rising spring meant that the pilgrimage ways were reopening after the winter hiatus, and both Bertrand and Thomas had to push their way through the crowds thronging the streets leading to the Basilica.

Their robes granted them no favours. Rome was stacked to the rafters with clerics of all shapes, sizes and degrees, and a pair of Dominican friars were inconsequential compared to the hordes of bishops and archbishops, holy hermits, frenzied prophets of doom and wild-eyed nuns in the grip of some holy possession.

Thomas’ mouth thinned as he shouldered a way through for himself and the prior. Most of these hermits, prophets and hysterical nuns were but pretenders, their palms held open for coin, their voices shrieking that doom awaited if pilgrims weren’t prepared to part with their last groat for a blessing.

“Does the pope not issue orders to rid the streets of such as these?” he muttered as he and Bertrand were momentarily pinned against a brick wall by the pressing throng.

“Rome has always been cursed with such petitioners,” Bertrand replied. “Sometimes worse. When Boniface called the great Jubilee several years before he died, Rome was awash with over a million pilgrims…as with all the charlatans, whores, relic merchants and money lenders the pilgrim trade attracts.”

Thomas stared at Bertrand, forgetting for the moment the crowds about them. “A million pilgrims? Surely not!”

“’Tis true, my son. Some say the number was even greater.”

Thomas shook his head, unable to conceive of a million people. Rome’s population was normally about thirty thousand—and that was extraordinary enough in Christendom, where few towns had more than two thousand people. But a million?

“Jesu,” he whispered, “how was Rome not destroyed amid such a conflagration of people?”

“Rome has survived many things, Thomas. The corruption and madness of Roman emperors, invasions by barbarians and infidels, and the devilish machinations of kings. A squash of pilgrims would not worry it overmuch.”

But such a crowd, thought Thomas, and the sin it must have engendered.

“Come!” Bertrand said, seizing Thomas’ sleeve. “I see a way opening before us!”

They walked as quickly as possible up the steps leading to the entrance into the vast court that lay before St Peter’s: they would have to enter the papal presence via the Basilica itself. The steps were as crowded as the streets, and Thomas was appalled to see that the court itself was packed with the stalls of moneylenders and relic merchants.

“How can the pope allow this?” he said, waving a hand at the frenetic activity. “It is like the scene before the Temple of Jerusalem!”

“Money can make even popes tolerant of many evils,” said Bertrand, and hurried Thomas forward before the man thought to emulate Christ himself and start to overturn tables. Bertrand just wanted to get this over and done with and, whatever the result of the interview, to then hurry Thomas out of Rome with as much speed as he could.

Bertrand cared not that Thomas spoke with the authority of angels. Wynkyn de Worde had as well, and Bertrand had never stopped counting his blessings that the demented man had not returned from Nuremberg.

St Peter’s was relatively quiet after the hustle of the outer court and streets. The nave of the Basilica was crowded with pilgrims and penitents, but it was quiet save for the mumble of prayers, and most knelt in orderly ranks facing the altar of St Peter, or before one of the shrines that lined the aisles.

Bertrand and Thomas genuflected towards St Peter’s shrine, then moved up the right-hand aisle towards a small door two-thirds of the way along the north wall of the Basilica. It was well guarded, but Bertrand whispered his name and that of Thomas, and the guards allowed them through.

They found themselves in a small corridor, blessedly quiet after the turbulence of street and court, and Bertrand indicated a door at its end. “Through there. We’ll find ourselves at the rear of the chapel. Bow towards the pope, although he probably won’t see you, and then come to stand with me to the side. The papal secretaries have your name, and if the pope has time then he will—”

“If he has time?”

“Thomas, you are an unimportant man within the hierarchy of the Church. There will be others, many others, and of far more important rank, before you.”

“But not of more important mission,” Thomas mumbled.

“Do you think yourself Christ?” Bertrand hissed. “Do you think yourself to be announced as the saviour of Christendom?”

“I speak with the voice of—”

“You are still a humble man,” Bertrand said. “Do not forget that!”

The chamber was packed, but with a far more richly clothed and bejewelled crowd than that which thronged the streets.

Bertrand and Thomas entered silently and bowed to the figure of Urban seated—stiff in his robes and jewels—on the papal throne set on a small dais before the altar of the chapel.

He did not notice their entrance.

The two friars whispered their names to a clerk seated just inside the door, who wrote them down and then passed the paper to a messenger boy who took it to two richly-robed secretaries seated at a table to the pope’s left. Bertrand and Thomas then stood with a group of Benedictine monks halfway up the chapel by a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. From this vantage point both men could see and hear well.

There were three cardinals seated on the pope’s right. The remaining three, Thomas realised, and wondered why they had stayed when all the others had departed for Avignon. Urban, a bear-like man in his late fifties who wore his robes of office with obvious discomfort, sat fidgeting impatiently while one of the cardinals whispered earnestly to him.

“Ah! Bah!” Urban suddenly pronounced and, leaning back in his chair, spat a gob of phlegm to one side of his chair.

“I give that for King John’s proposition!” he said, and farted.

The shock in the chapel was palpable. Bodies stiffened and faces blanched.

Grinning, Urban reached for a jewelled goblet of wine on a side table. He downed it in four loud gulps, red wine running down one side of his chin, then slammed the goblet down.

“But, Holy Father,” the cardinal said, “the French king has proposed what is only just—”

“What your partners in intrigue have told him is just,” Urban said. “I doubt the old man could tell the difference between a woman’s breast and a donkey’s teat, let alone between what is just and what is not.”

The cardinal sat back, glancing at the other two. His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, then stilled.

“No one doubts that our conclave was under undue influence,” he said.

Urban roared and leapt to his feet. “I will not resign!” he yelled.

Bertrand leaned towards Thomas and whispered in his ear: “I fear we have arrived at a most inopportune moment.”

Thomas said nothing, but his face was tight with anger. The cardinals had elected this peasant’s arse as pope?

Urban stepped down from the dais, strode over to a guard, wrenched a spear from the startled man’s grasp and stalked back to the three cardinals.

He threw the spear down at the feet of the cardinal who had been speaking to him.

The man’s face did not change expression.

“Even if the cardinals point a thousand spears at my throat I will not resign!” Urban shouted. “I am rightful pope, and I will not resign!”

“Then we have no choice,” the cardinal said, his face impassive. “The cardinals will meet in conclave in Avignon and they will declare the election held here in Rome to be null and void. They will then elect a rightful pope. You are—”