Conclave

by Robert Harris

It was formidably ugly, centuries old, with big square posts at all four corners and carved panels at the head and foot. Alone of all the fine furniture to which he was entitled in the papal apartment, the Holy Father had chosen to have this ungainly object shipped to the Casa Santa Marta. Popes had slept in it for generations. To get it through the outer door must have required taking it apart and then reassembling it. Carefully, as he had on the night the Pope died, Lomeli lowered himself to his knees, clasped his hands together, closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the edge of the mattress to pray. Suddenly the terrible solitariness of the old man’s life seemed almost too unbearable to contemplate. He reached out his arms in either direction along the wooden frame of the bed, and gripped it. How long he remained in this position he could not afterwards say with certainty. It might have been two minutes; it might have been twenty. What he was quite sure of was that at some point during this time, the Holy Father entered his mind and spoke to him. Of course, it could have been a trick of the imagination: the rationalists had an explanation for everything, even for inspiration. All he knew was that before he knelt he was in despair, and afterwards, when he scrambled to his feet and stared at the bed, the dead man had told him what to do.