Pandora's Ark

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Standing before an open window in the Domus Sanctæ Marthæ, Cardinal Angullo stood looking out at the Basilica, musing over the fact that the conclave was just under two weeks away and that he, along with three others including Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci, were part of the Preferiti, those who were the most preferred to succeed the papal throne by the College of the Cardinals.

Politicking was a way to promote and nothing more. But it was the individual’s choosing as to who would actually succeed that was kept close to the vest. Those who divulged their candidate while entering the conclave stood the chance of excommunication. Therefore, to build camps and alliances, and to share with them the strengths and ideologies of a Preferiti brought to the table beforehand, was paramount.

But Angullo’s camp had weakened over the past six months, his ideologies not coinciding with the pontiff’s, and therefore enacted unwarranted challenges toward the pope with subsequent discussions that often became heated between them. By exhibiting more power than was granted, with his personal management sometimes uncontrollable by the way he acted before the pope, caused his members to disassociate from his camp, the one-time respect for the cardinal now lost.

And this did not go unnoticed before his eyes.

By the inches he was losing his foothold to be the next in line for the papal throne, yet his camp remained strong. But as time moved forward his power diminished. And so was the opportunity to sit upon the papal throne and rule a constituency of more than a billion people.

So he acted accordingly and provided his opportunity.

On the eve of the pontiff’s death, he spiced Gregory’s meal with a poison that made him sick and feverish and somewhat disoriented. As the hours passed, as the blue shadows traipsed slowly across Vatican grounds’ with the trajectory of the moon, he waited in the shadows of the pontiff’s chamber with saintly patience.

When the pope exited from the bed with the poison coursing through his veins like magma, and then making his way to the balcony, Angullo could not believe his luck and chalked it up to God’s will. His original intent was to place a pillow over the pontiff's face and snuff the life out of him. And with the aged man dying in his sleep, a way of life in which the world would view as God's will, no questions would be asked. But when the large man stood at the rail of the balcony overlooking Vatican City, it was as if God was allowing him a lasting panoramic view of St. Peter’s Square, a final good-bye with the Basilica, the obelisk, and the Colonnades clearly defined within his mind.

But Gregory’s mind was clearer than he thought, the pontiff calling out in the darkness of his suite, somehow knowing that he was not alone, which caught the cardinal off guard.

Like a wraith that appeared to glide inches above the floor rather than walk across it, he quietly made his way to the balcony with a hand raised, and with a mighty shove sent the pontiff airborne, the big man clearing the railing and falling to the cobblestones below.

From his vantage point he watched the life bleed quickly out of the man and across the stones, the old man raising a clawed hand skyward, towards him, accusing him one last time before it fell the moment he took his last breath.

Angullo closed his eyes at the memory of what he had done so clear in his mind’s eye. But the images of what he did that night never haunted him, his conscience remaining clear and undisturbed. And at that very moment he had come to terms believing that what he had done was truly justifiable — and that upon his succession to the throne he would rule the Church the way Gregory should have.

And then he opened his eyes and raised his hand before him — the murdering hand, he considered, the one willed by God to shove Pope Gregory to his death for the good of the Church.

And since it was against Vatican law to perform an autopsy on the pope, the poison would never be discovered. And the cardinal was convinced that this was all due to the Lord’s wishes. Lowering his hand, his eyes once again returning to the Basilica, Cardinal Angullo realized that another within the Preferiti stood in his way. And should Cardinal Vessucci garner enough steam before the conclave, then God may see fit that Cardinal Vessucci follow the same fate as the late pontiff.

After all, he told himself, it was God’s will.