His eyes, set deep in a head like a mason’s block, stare mirthlessly at things no other man can see. His shoulders rise like sea-cliffs from the mass of soldiery around him. At the head of the swarm, trailed by lovesick courtiers like tick-birds behind a bull mastodon, a titan walks. The wasteland of ash and bones beneath their boots was called France, once. And he weeps, for he will soon meet his God.Įight hundred miles away, beneath a sky made black by burning vineyards, an army of one hundred thousand men marches east.
These are the tears of Pope Leo XXXVI, who has drawn the black token. But after the prayers subside, a lone sob continues to echo in the chamber. Most of these men will live another year. When the sack is empty, the cardinals open their fists, and the chapel fills with murmured prayers of relief. Without a word, each of the defeated clerics step forwards to rummage in a velvet sack. Now, it is a ritual of pure misery, attended by yokels who have barely even heard of Christ. Once, this would have been a gathering seething with the ambitions of powerful men. It is time, once again, to choose a new Pope.
As the doors of the conclave chamber are sealed, a ring of hangdog cardinals stare miserably at each other in the sudden gloom. The Vatican City, 1146 AD, and 90 years into a game of Crusader Kings III.
