Conclave

9 The Second Ballot

AT 6.30 A.M., the bell rang for morning Mass.

Lomeli woke with an impending sense of doom somewhere at the back of his mind, as if his anxieties were all coiled together ready to spring out at him the moment he was fully awake. He went into the bathroom and tried to banish them with another scalding shower. But when he stood at the mirror to shave, they were still there, lurking behind him.

He dried himself and put on his robe, knelt at the prie-dieu and recited his rosary, then prayed for Christ’s wisdom and guidance throughout the trials that the day would bring. As he dressed, his fingers shook. He paused and told himself to be calm. There was a set prayer for every garment – cassock, cincture, rochet, mozzetta, zuchetta – and he recited them as he put on each item. ‘Protect me, O Lord, with the girdle of faith,’ he whispered as he knotted the cincture around his waist, ‘and extinguish the fire of lust so that chastity may abide in me, year after year.’ But he did so mechanically, with no more feeling than if he were giving out a telephone number.

Just before he left the room, he caught sight of himself in the mirror wearing his choir dress. The chasm between the figure he appeared to be and the man he knew he was had never seemed so wide.

He walked with a group of other cardinals down the stairs to the ground-floor chapel. It was housed in an annexe attached to the main building: an antiseptic modernist design with a vaulted ceiling of white wooden beams and glass, suspended above a cream and gold polished marble floor. The effect was too much like an airport lounge for Lomeli’s taste, yet the Holy Father, amazingly, had preferred it to the Pauline. One entire side consisted of thick plate glass, behind which ran the old Vatican wall, spotlit with potted shrubs at its base. It was impossible to see the sky from this angle, or even to tell whether it was yet dawn.

Two weeks earlier, Tremblay had come to see Lomeli and offered to take charge of celebrating the morning Masses in the Casa Santa Marta, and Lomeli, burdened with the prospect of the Missa pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, had been grateful to accept. Now he rather regretted it. He saw that he had given the Canadian the perfect opportunity to remind the Conclave of his skill at performing the liturgy. He sang well. He looked like a cleric in some Hollywood romantic movie: Spencer Tracy came to mind. His gestures were dramatic enough to suggest he was infused with the divine spirit, yet not so theatrical that they seemed false or egocentric. When Lomeli queued to receive Communion and knelt before the cardinal, the sacrilegious thought occurred to him that just this one service might have been worth three or four votes to the Canadian.

Adeyemi was the last to receive the host. He very carefully did not glance at Lomeli or anyone else as he returned to his seat. He seemed entirely self-possessed, grave, remote, aware. By lunchtime he would probably know whether he was likely to be Pope.

After the blessing, a few of the cardinals remained behind to pray, but most headed straight to the dining hall for breakfast. Adeyemi joined his usual table of African cardinals. Lomeli took a place between the archbishops of Hong Kong and Cebu. They tried to make polite conversation, but the silences soon became longer and more frequent, and when the others went up to collect their food from the buffet, Lomeli stayed where he was.

He watched the nuns as they moved between the tables serving coffee. To his shame, he realised he had never bothered to take any notice of them until now. Their average age, he guessed, was around fifty. They were of all races, but without exception short of stature, as if Sister Agnes had been determined not to recruit anyone taller than herself. Most wore spectacles. Everything about them – their blue habits and headdresses, their modest demeanour, their downcast eyes, their silence – might have been designed to efface them from notice, let alone prevent them becoming objects of desire. He presumed they were under orders not to speak: when one nun poured coffee for Adeyemi, he did not even turn to look at her. Yet the late Holy Father used to make a point of eating with a group of these sisters at least once a week – another manifestation of his humility that made the Curia mutter with disapproval.

Just before nine o’clock, Lomeli pushed away his untouched plate, rose and announced to the table that it was time to return to the Sistine Chapel. His move began a general exodus towards the lobby. O’Malley was already in position by the reception desk, clipboard in hand.

‘Good morning, Your Eminence.’

‘Good morning, Ray.’

‘Did Your Eminence sleep well?’

‘Perfectly, thank you. If it isn’t raining, I think I’ll walk.’

He waited while one of the Swiss Guards unlocked the door, and then stepped out into the daylight. The air was cool and damp. After the heat of the Casa Santa Marta, the slight breeze on his face was a tonic. A line of minibuses with their engines running coiled around the edge of the piazza, each watched by an individual plain-clothes security man. Lomeli’s departure on foot provoked a flurry of whispering into sleeves, and as he set off in the direction of the Vatican Gardens, he was aware of being followed by a bodyguard of his own.

Normally this part of the Vatican would have been busy with officials from the Curia arriving for work or moving between appointments; cars with their ‘SCV’ licence plates would be thrumming over the cobbles. But the area had been cleared for the duration of the Conclave. Even the Palazzo San Carlo, where the foolish Cardinal Tutino had created his vast apartment, looked abandoned. It was as if some terrible calamity had befallen the Church, wiping out all the religious and leaving no one alive except security men, swarming over the deserted city like black dung beetles. In the gardens they stood grouped behind the trees and scrutinised Lomeli as he passed. One patrolled the path with an Alsatian on a short leash, checking the flower beds for bombs.

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.