The Vatican Knights

CHAPTER FOUR

Normally, VIP dignitaries stayed at Blair House, which is the official state guest quarters of the president of the United States. But since the residence was occupied by top Chinese officials on a mission to improve trade relations with the United States, the pope was housed at the Governor‘s Mansion in Annapolis, not far from the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory.

When it became apparent that Blair House would be unavailable during the weeks of the pope’s visit, Maryland’s governor offered to host the pontiff at the Mansion, with provisional security provided by the president. It was not a gesture of good will. It was an opportunity for Governor Steele to promote his bid for a seat in the Senate in the upcoming election. With the pope’s visitation cementing the governor’s image as a conservative Christian, it would serve well as the basis of his platform in the months to come.

Campaigning alongside him would be his wife of eleven years, Darlene Steele. With azure blue eyes, pale porcelain skin, and a graceful elegance to her movements, she embodied the image of Victorian innocence. But beneath her gracious persona she had all the quintessence of a remora clinging to the underside of her husband’s political belly, feeding off whatever remnants floated her way. Money, power and status were the lures that kept her in a loveless marriage with the governor.

Inside the dining area of the mansion, Governor Jonathan Steele headed a stately ceremonial dinner with political luminaries including the lieutenant governor, two state senators and a representative from the House Committee. With the pope and the bishops of the Holy See in attendance, the dining room was filled to capacity.

For three hours they sat at a table that dominated the room’s center, drinking wine or liqueur or both, and eating from a rich and varied menu that gratified the palate of everyone.

Bearing witness to this cheerful gathering were oil paintings of past governors, arranged along the rich cherry paneling of the East Wall. Their faces, unmoving for all time, appeared studious and judgmental as they stared from mercury-hued eyes. From the coffered ceiling suspended a magnificent Bohemian chandelier, its multiple teardrop-shaped crystals glittering with iridescent pinpricks of light. And opposite the Governors’ Gallery, floor-to-ceiling panes of tempered glass made up the entire West Wall, providing a panoramic view of the horizon as soft hues of fading light traversed the color spectrum throughout the course of the meal.

Nothing was more perfect than the moment.

As the night grew late, the time difference between Rome and Washington proving too great for the pope, Pius proposed an end to the evening by bestowing blessings all around before retiring to his room.

Everyone, including those who never subscribed to a certain denomination or faith or followed any specific religious path, found themselves in awe of this king who ruled an empire of more than a billion people.

With the dignitaries vacating soon after the conclusion of the meal, the dining hall became eerily silent as the faces of the Governors’ Gallery alone watched over the room.

In time, they would watch a scene play itself out in grisly fashion with the same unflinching pose, and their eyes as dead and pale as marbles would betray nothing of what they were about to become witness to.

After dinner, Bishop Angelo aided the pope to his bedroom and hung his vestments in the walk-in closet while Pius prepared himself for bed by putting on his sacred undergarment, a cotton pullover that covered the man from neck to ankle.

After the pope labored to the edge of his mattress, Bishop Angelo assisted the elderly man beneath the sheets, then pulled the blankets tight around him.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.

The pope moved as if trying to settle contentedly into the mattress, his back and shoulders digging. “Well, it’s not home,” he answered, his movement slowing after finding a relaxing spot. “But it’ll do.”

Angelo laid a hand upon the pontiff’s shoulder and felt the pointed bonelike protrusion of a man having wasted away by the progression of age. “Perhaps you would like to read before you retire.”

The pope nodded. “Not tonight, Gennaro. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for all of us and we‘ll need to be at our best.”

“Then have a good night.”

On his way out Bishop Angelo took time to straighten out the pope’s pearl-white miter sitting on top of the dresser, a king’s crown, then closed the door softly behind him until the snicker of the bolt locked in place.

On most evenings Pope Pius XIII either read from the Bible or gazed through the passages of Paradise Lost from John Milton, finding the language and meter of the poem masterful, and looked upon the work as a liberal effort affirming that the Church would always be seen through the critical eyes of its followers.

But tonight he was too tired to even flip back the cover of the leather-bound volume and switched off the table lamp, the darkness sweeping across the room in a blink of an eye.

In an attitude of prayer, Pope Pius placed his hands together and worshiped his Lord, thanking Him for raising him from the ranks of obscurity to that of prominence.

He had come from a family of eleven, all poor, some sickly, but none without faith or hope. Never in his life had he witnessed war or famine or the plagues of man due to living in a small village sixty kilometers west of Florence, Italy. Nor did he have an epiphany to follow the Lord’s path. Amerigo was simply enamored as a boy who loved God and everything He stood for: The Good, the Caring, and the ability to hold dominion over others and lead them toward the world of Light and Loving Spirits.

He also dreamed of sermonizing, of passing The Word.

But his father would have none of it and obligated his son to work the fields of the homestead alongside his brothers knowing that the true measurement of a man was calculated by the crops he yielded rather than the knowledge of academia, which in this village took a man nowhere.

So having been taught by his mother at home, having read and memorized all the passages of the Bible, having learned the basics in rudimentary math, and having tilled the fields with his siblings for nearly a decade, Amerigo Giovanni Anzalone had become a learned man with calloused hands from driving the yolk, and came to realize that tilling the soils was not his calling in life.

Every Sunday he went to church with his mother and siblings. And for every day thereafter, as he worked the soil beneath a relentless sun, he dreamed of wearing the vestments of a priest and giving sermon. What Amerigo wanted, what he needed, was to be empowered by the Church to give direction.

Upon his eighteenth birthday, and against his father’s wishes — but with the aid of the village priest, which his father was unwilling to contest — Amerigo gave up the yoke and headed to the Divinity School in Florence, his first stepping stone toward Rome.

In the years to follow, Amerigo was recognized as a cardinal and became a respected member within the Curia, which ultimately led the College of Cardinals to choose him as the successor to John Paul the Second. Upon his acceptance, Amerigo took the name of Pope Pius the XIII.

And like his predecessor, Amerigo would offer a hand to every race and religion, leaving nobody out, nobody alone. He would simply embrace the world with love and tolerance, beginning with the United States.

With that thought on his mind, Pope Pius XIII fell asleep with his hands slowly drifting apart, and then falling idly to his sides.