The Maggot People (26 page)
The din from down below had first begun with the arrival of a rabble of laborers from the Vatican, laborers who had cleared a large area of trees, then set about laying down foundations, including large vaulted cellars and staircases. Carts drawn by oxen had brought fine cut stone, now slowly and artfully being turned into a palatial dwelling. Ducts and cisterns for water and sewerage had already been sunk into the ground, leading into underground chambers and shafts. A deep, stone-lined well had also been dug, and an eel released to live out its solitary life inside the stone drum, as was customary.
At the edge of the construction site were large tents which, in addition to the laborers, housed a group of Vatican soldiers, whose horses now also cropped the outlying fields.
At night, one smelled lamb roasting on their fires. Shepherds had been engaged, shepherds whose flocks littered the upper slopes by day.
Vatican officials had also had a substantial gate built at the base of the hill, with a low-lying but solid granite wall. Meanwhile at the far end of the valley, teams of workers were building a road in the Roman style, digging ditches and laying down beds of gravel topped by good-quality dressed granite from Norway. One day soon a horse-drawn carriage would be able to make good speed between the Vatican and the City of God, entering through the massive carved gate patrolled at night by sentinels.
The pope himself would be able to come and sleep on linen sheets in airy rooms. In the mornings he would feast on dove eggs and smoked trout, while in the outhouses vats of beer farted gently as the yeast and hops bubbled, or wine rested in oaken barrels in the cellars below.
Plans were under way for a new cathedral. Donations were flooding in from rich merchants. Bands of architects and builders had already formed themselves into mystical guilds. Without computers and hydraulics, they had returned to pencil and rule and algebra. Their craft was once again steeped in Masonic obscurity.
Giacomo had still not moved from his chair. His beard had now reached his waist, and his clothes were practically falling off his body. Seamstresses sewed patches on his tunic to keep him modest, and sometimes at night he was undressed and washed, and his linen cleaned. The bandy-legged old manâfor since his return to flesh and blood he'd aged rapidlyâwas kept alive on a diet of fish and fruit. All the weight had fallen off him; his face looked suitably emaciated, and those eyes of his, once so lively and malicious, now stared tetchily at anyone who spoke to him.
Deep down, Giacomo knew that his pride kept him where he was. He had not seen Jesus since that encounter on the mountain. The mere mention of his name brought his hands out in livid stigmata.
The humiliation of seeing how worthless his life had been, in spite of his thousand-year spell, gnawed at him.
He asked himself: What do I still have before me in this life?
And the answer was
nothing
.
But to everyone else who saw him, Giacomo seemed the very essence of holiness and as soon as the palace was ready they carried him into the grandest, most beautiful room, where he spent the rest of his life in silence.
A century later, when the cathedral was completed, his chair was placed in a glass case. And his miraculously reconstituted bones were smoothed by the doting hands of throngs of pilgrims who came to pray by St. Giacomo's Shrine.
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