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Borja took a calming breath and carried on before Sinceri could interrupt. "It is becoming clear to all who have eyes to see, Sinceri. The man's selfish interests are guiding his actions, now, and quite likely always have been. I truly fear to think what his motives might be for impeding the progress of Catholic arms in the Germanies~mdash;for permitting the outrage in the Low Countries~mdash;but no matter. The question which brought you to mind in relation to the matter I have in prospect was the Galileo affair, as I have said. I think we are agreed that there was much in His Holiness's disposition of that case which gives cause for concern, no?" [p]

Borja watched Sinceri's face. There were other lawyers who might be of service in what Borja had in mind. There were certainly plenty of inquisitors who were at the very least slighted by the pope's treatment of the Holy Office the year before. Of the men who were in both groups, Sinceri was the one best known personally to Borja; they had worked together before on Inquisition business. And, when all was said and done, Sinceri was one of the most senior and respected lawyers in the Inquisition's prosecuting arm. His opinion, publicly expressed, would carry a lot of weight. [p]

Certainly, Borja could manage without Sinceri in the scheme he was now firmly settled on. But there were definite advantages to having his support. [p]

Sinceri's nod of agreement was almost instant, and Borja felt the first moment of genuine pleasure he had felt all day. "Indeed, Your Eminence," he said. "His Holiness' actions were quite~mdash;unprecedented." [p]

A characterization, Borja reflected, that was quite spectacularly damning coming from a lawyer. He schooled his face to solemnity. From here, there was only the direct route to the destination. "The matter I have in mind," he said, "is nothing less than the impeachment of His Holiness." [p]

Sinceri's response was immediate. "Impossible." [p]

"Unprecedented, certainly," Borja replied. [p]

"Not entirely," Sinceri said. "The antipopes, in particular, are the precedent to which I refer Your Eminence~mdash;" [p]

Borja let the details wash over him without much attention. He had, of course, studied canon law himself and was familiar with the whole business. There had, more than once, been two claimants to the mantle of Saint Peter. Dozens of times, in fact. The polite fiction was that one was the true pope and the other an impostor, determined by which one had been legally elected. But the Church's firm statement on the subject was not necessarily the whole truth. Many of the thirty or so antipopes recorded in history had contrived to discharge real functions of the office and had only become antipopes after the event, so to speak. [p]

In practice, the record was frequently patchy even as to some of the clearer-cut cases. It was sound theology that the Holy Spirit worked in the world through the wager of battle, and by extension through the outcome of political maneuvering, after all. Borja privately speculated that the record had almost certainly been altered or effaced after the event to insure that the eventual loser appeared as the antipope to the eyes of history. [p]

Borja could see the way clear at every step. It was [i]simple[/i]. The sheer celerity with which the plan had come to him was an indicator of its true source. [p]

"~mdash;and so, your eminence," Sinceri was saying, as Borja returned from his private reverie, "while there has been at least one abdication of a pope from his office, not one has been dismissed whether by the college of cardinals or otherwise without his successor coming down to us in the historical record as an antipope. The precedent is clear: the pope cannot be impeached." [p]

"There is no way?" Borja asked, knowing the answer from other canon lawyers, consulted before this day. [p]

Sinceri gave a small, dry chuckle like the rustling of old parchment. "Your Eminence will recall the jest that there is precedent for nothing until it is done for the first time, perhaps?" [p]

Borja laughed politely. "Indeed," he said. "We must simply hope that His Holiness sees the error of his ways and abdicates, no?" [p]

Suddenly, and to Borja's mixed delight and alarm, Sinceri was every inch the inquisitor, the dryness antarctic rather than scholarly. "I am sure the Holy Spirit will guide him to the right conclusion, Your Eminence." [p]

A statement, Borja realized, which could be parsed in oh so many interesting ways. Sinceri would never conspire, never scheme. But if a scheme looked like succeeding, Sinceri and men like him would be there with the right formalities, the right words and above all the right documents to turn a coup into an orderly change of government. [p]

Borja clasped his hands and raised his eyes piously to heaven. "It shall be a conclusion to this matter that will never be far from my prayers," he said. "In the meantime, Father Sinceri, may I ask you to do me the estimable service of having ready a briefing on every precedent for papal abdication, and on the current legislations on the conclave of election? I should be most interested to study at length the scholarly conclusions you have kindly sketched for me today." [p]

"It is the least I can do for Your Eminence," said Sinceri with a small bow of his head. With that, and a few small pleasantries, he left. [p]

Borja passed a few moments staring out at the garden, musing on the fact that he had now taken an irrevocable step that would end in either glory or disgrace. But the possibility of disgrace was so small as not to be worth thinking about. There was a calmness in him now that he took for a sign of divine favor. Once the Holy Spirit moved, hesitation or squeamishness surely took on the character of sin. [p]

Audacity and ruthlessness would see the matter through. The only secret that truly needed to be kept would be Borja's own willingness to shape his means to fit his end, and do so without betraying his holy purpose with so much as a hint of scruple. [p]

Ferrigno entered silently. "Signor Quevedo y Villega has arrived, Your Eminence." [p]

"Send him in." Borja turned away from the window. "Have wine brought. The man is an incorrigible sot, and seems unable to speak without a cup in his hand." In any event, Borja felt that a small drink of wine would not be out of order, in toast to the enterprise he was beginning. [p]

"As Your Eminence wishes." Ferrigno bowed himself out to attend to it. [p]

There, Borja thought, was the secret to effective statecraft. A staff who got on with the matter at hand without undue frolics of their own. Francisco de Quevedo had been pressed on him by Osuna as a useful tool in the present business. He was not a tool that would have come naturally to Borja's hand. If nothing else, the dash the man had cut at court in Madrid these past few years had offended Borja's austere sensibilities. A satirist and a humorist and a man the Spanish Inquisition had had to censure for writings once already. [p]