In Times Past

 

Disclaimer: Saiyuki belongs to Kazuya Minekura and associates.

 

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There is a café, just outside the limits of the Vatican City itself, in the district of Ponte proper, that is often frequented by a certain type of visitor to the City itself.  Whether they come here to simply enjoy the change of atmosphere or to politely escape the necessity of their duties within those stone walls, the proprietor does not like to speculate.  If other visitors to Rome ask him about the ever-present collection of clergy that occupy several of the tables along his terrace, he will be quick to point out that it is doubly a blessing that such holy men should grace his humble establishment.  And if he is asked what he means by it being a dual blessing when he has only mentioned but one advantage, he will smile knowingly and suggest that he shouldn’t like to talk about the mundane details of commerce in such learned presence.

Suffice to say, the princes of the Church are never without means and if they wish to sit and discuss such great matters of spiritual import over an endless supply of good Roman coffee, so much the better.

 

 

Today there is only a small circle of clergy around one table at the far end of the terrace.  They are a little more relaxed than some of the larger groups often are and can be seen to laugh and tease each other about such small details as young men are often want to do.  From their lilting voices and subtle accents it can be guessed that they are not native to Rome at all but rather of a more northerly extraction.  Venetian speech is of a distinct difference to Roman, though it would take perhaps a native of one city to notice the difference of the other.

That they come from the great merchant city makes little difference to their status among the nobility of the Church.  But among their number only one seems to reflect on that fact today.

The way that he has always seen it, or so Hazel maintains, the Church is something akin to a member’s only club.  Exclusive, renowned and painfully difficult to leave.

 

 

It is the difficulty of leaving one’s vocation that they are discussing at present because, so gossip has it, one of the many great Cardinals is in disgrace.  They say, those who are inclined to engage in such base rumours, that he has forsaken his holy vows and wishes to cast off the divine order of the Papacy.

 

“Such nonsense.” Hazel interjects into the chattering and sips his coffee, waiting for the inevitable reaction.

“It’s not nonsense.  I heard that-“

“You’ve already told us, Angello.  Unless you’ve got something new to add?”

“No but-“

“I heard that he’s taken a lover!”

“No!  Really?”

“Do you think he intends to be married?”

“Not likely.  He’s never been much for female company, or so I’ve heard.”  Hazel once more falls silent and calmly reaches to refill his cup.

 

Sitting back in his chair, he watches the few specks of cinnamon powder that he’s flavoured his coffee with disperse across the surface of the liquid.  Hazel then looks up at his companions wearing his most unconcerned expression.

“What?”

“What?  He announces that His Eminence has been fiddling with altar boys and then say ‘what’ as if this isn’t interesting at all.”

“My goodness, he’s not being doing that, has he?”

“How on earth did you find that out?”

“It can’t be true!”

“I didn’t say that His Eminence has been ‘fiddling with altar boys’ as you put it, Marcus.  Really, I don’t know where you get these ideas from.”

“But you did say that he’s not interested in being married.”

“How does one equal the other, pray tell?”

“Come now, Hazel.  No need to be so defensive about it.  Who did you hear it off?  Is it likely to be true?”

“I can’t say.  It’s just something I heard.”

“But from whom?  It might make all the difference!”

“It won’t.”  And Hazel falls silent again.

“Well, I heard-“

“Go on, Angello.  Tell us what you heard then.”

 

 

Later that night Hazel walks along the slumbering streets of the Vatican City, along the pavement that runs the length of the great library.  It’s dark and silent within these walls now, if you know where to go to hide yourself from the rest of the world.  The windows of the great library reflect the brightness of over a thousand candles.  Their glow is inviting, warm and welcoming in oppose to the streets painted in shades of darkest shadow.  Looking upwards, past the artificial light from the windows, past the limit of human architecture, Hazel stares up at the clear cloudless sky.

The stars are like precious stones set in the velvet filament of Heaven.  It is disorientating and he quickly looks away to focus on the more mundane purchase of stone and mortar.

 

 

The gossip has been of the Cardinal’s disgrace of late and it makes Hazel uneasy in ways that he can not yet define.  Even today, among his own Venetian comrades, he had found himself less inclined to mock at the misfortune of a man who perhaps should never have been ordained.  He doesn’t even know what it means, this ill-fitting unease.

 

What would it be like to find one’s self alone, without friend or confidant, adrift on a foreign shore?  The thought fills him with a terrible apprehension and sense of some ominous foreboding of things that might be yet to come and that alone is enough to draw the recollection of why he is here, walking empty streets so late at night.  Because how could he explain to the others the source of his information, how could he make them understand that he had seen with his own eyes the tenderness and affection between His Eminence and a favoured companion?  Fiddling with altar boys, indeed.  Such nonsense.  The Cardinal and the Abbot were both much older men, well on their way into venerable old age and they had been such dear friends for so very long that it had seemed incomprehensible when the scandal broke.  That the both of them had fled to France, to Normandy to be exact, seemed to suddenly make things so contrary because they had always been together, as far as Hazel had known.  So why then this sudden judgement visited upon them by chattering fellows who had scarcely been boys not so many summers ago?  It was terrible and unjust and wrong on all accounts.

 

The very thought makes him shiver.  To do wrong in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of the Church condemned one to eternal damnation and yet it didn’t seem that they had been harming anyone.  But it wasn’t his place to judge.  He was only young and inexperienced in the business of separating the wheat from the chaff and thus there was much for him to learn.  It was not his place to judge or to understand and Hazel could not help but fear, with a returning sense of foreboding, that for him such a time might never come.

 

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Hazel is quoting Mathew 3:12 with the business of separating the wheat from the chaff.

 

The district of Ponte in Rome is just outside the Vatican City, across the river.  Its territory was once part of the larger Circus Flaminius region of Ancient Rome.