Chapter 100: Religious Freedom Act |
Julius pressed the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, bracing it against his teeth. In that fleeting second, he felt an overwhelming hunger—or perhaps it wasn’t hunger, but an itch that spread from the depths of his heart to the roots of his teeth, carrying an aggressive urge akin to the desire to bite and tear at flesh. It grew fiercer, almost impossible to contain.
Rafael lowered his head at that exact moment, completely missing the brief, almost feral glint in his otherwise polite Secretary-General’s eyes.
“This is not the time to discuss such matters,” Rafael said, calmly attempting to deflect.
“Is that so?” Julius sneered. He took a few steps forward—the movement was so aggressive that Rafael, who was seated, instinctively felt uneasy and leaned back against the chair. Julius noticed his retreat, and for a split second, a wave of fury and bitter disappointment washed over him.
If it weren’t me standing here, if it weren’t me walking toward you, but Ferrante or someone else entirely, would you still shrink away? Julius thought with a touch of paranoid malice.
But before he could fully register his own anger, faster than his thoughts, the Secretary-General dropped to one knee, crouching down, and gently placed his hands on Rafael’s knees.
It was just like the countless times before when he had bent down to massage the legs of a young Rafael. They hadn’t been this physically close in a long time, but perhaps the body’s memory was far more enduring than time itself. With just this small trigger, those faded memories surged back like a tidal wave, forcing them to relive the past.
The shift in posture dissolved much of the oppressive tension. Rafael lowered his gaze, his eyes meeting those of Julius, who now knelt a head lower than him.
Two pairs of eyes—identical except for their color—gazed at each other across the narrow space between them.
If anything, it was precisely because the other person was who they were that they could unapologetically bare their sharpest, most piercing edges without a shred of restraint.
The warmth of Julius’s palms bled through his thin silk gloves and onto Rafael’s legs. The heat of another human body made Rafael uneasy; he straightened his spine, intending to stand. But before he could act, the slender hands resting on his legs firmly held him down, the strength in them clearly signaling opposition.
Pinned in place, Rafael glanced down at Julius’s hands but said nothing.
It was as though whoever spoke first would lose.
Neither of them knew where this childish and peculiar contest of wills had begun, but they both seemed to have reached a strange understanding—neither was willing to break the silence.
Julius removed his gloves with deliberate slowness—making sure to keep Rafael pinned with the heel of his palm as he took off one glove. His hands, perpetually wrapped in fabric and thus unusually pale, were revealed, the blue veins on their backs standing out clearly. He tossed the gloves aside carelessly, lowered his head, and began massaging Rafael’s legs with practiced care. Just as he had done countless times before to alleviate the strain on the young exile’s legs, his pressure was perfectly balanced—gentle yet firm.
Following his latest surgery, Dr. Polly had concluded that Rafael’s legs could never again withstand any excessive stress outside the boundaries of daily life. Given the current limits of medical science, the fact that he could undergo such a crude operation and successfully regain the ability to walk was already a miracle that left many physicians speechless. Even without their repeated warnings, Rafael could feel from the minute details of daily life a profound sense of fatigue that had never existed before.
Knees that throbbed with a faint ache after standing for mere moments; muscles that grew sore and stiff when he maintained a single posture for too long; the occasional sudden spasm or complete loss of sensation; and the agonizing pain that flared up in his legs if he lingered even a little too long in a cold, damp place… Every single detail served as a stark reminder that he was teetering precariously on the edge of a dangerous abyss.
The pressure from Julius’s hands tightened a fraction—a subtle hint, a stinging reminder.
Rafael felt a nerve in his leg suddenly jolt, and a wave of sour, aching pain shot from his calf to his brain, slamming violently into his throat and nose like gunpowder. For a moment, his vision darkened, and his spine tingled.
The young Pope bent over sharply, reaching out to push Julius’s hands away, his words tumbling out too fast to be clear: “Wait—stop—”
The older man obediently stopped, his eyes held an expression of candid confusion, as though he genuinely had no idea what was wrong with Rafael.
But his pretense wasn’t entirely genuine.
When those deep purple eyes gazed at Rafael, there was even a hint of appreciative pleasure in them, as if seeing Rafael display such vulnerability brought him immense comfort. And this fragility, of course, was entirely his own doing.
He looked as though he were appraising a crystal rose that had bloomed in the palm of his hand, yet was destined to leave him. He watched it break piece by piece under his own fingers, deriving a sick satisfaction from the crisp sound of its fracturing.
If he cannot be mine, and if he is destined to wither somewhere I cannot see, why shouldn’t I be the one to destroy him? Julius thought coldly. He looked down at Rafael, who was still bent over and trembling slightly under the influence of his nerves. He raised a hand and slowly began patting his back. The body beneath his palm was terribly thin and fragile. His movements were infinitely gentle, but his mind was fractured, thinking almost cruel thoughts.
Even someone so lowly could have him—why can’t I? —Why must it be that I am the only exception? Julius questioned himself in bitter resentment.
Rafael’s hand scrambled blindly across the desk, trying to grasp the pipe he had cast aside. His fingers brushed against the cold, smooth ivory. But before he could clutch the slender stem, Julius snatched it out from under his hand. Standing up, Julius removed the glass lamp chimney, casually rolled a piece of paper from the desk to catch the flame, and slowly, steadily lit the pre-packed tobacco. The orange embers curled and stretched like a coiled serpent inside the pipe bowl, its scales gleaming with an eerie red light. The bitter scent of medicinal herbs rose slowly, carried by thin wisps of smoke.
Having finally recovered from that sudden wave of agony, Rafael slumped limply against the back of his chair, the rims of his eyes faintly flushed. Like a hatchling aimlessly tracking its protector, his gaze locked onto Julius. He watched the man delicately turn the rolled paper in his hand, making sure that the densely packed herbs burned evenly.
Julius kept his eyes cast down, watching the embers consume the shrinking paper. Quietly, he said, “Your dependency on the medicine has grown. Did Polly say nothing about this?”
Rafael remained silent.
“You know you cannot rely on it,” Julius repeated.
This time, Rafael finally offered a faint reaction. “…I know my limits. That’s enough.”
The latter half of his sentence was directed at the pipe in Julius’s hand.
Julius seemed to let out a faint laugh. He tossed the nearly burnt paper into the crystal glass still half-filled with red wine, watching the spark die instantly. Then, instead of handing the delicate artifact to Rafael as he wished, he raised it to his own lips and took a deep drag.
Rafael blinked in confusion, about to speak, but before he could utter a sound, a heavy shadow loomed over him. All of his words were swallowed by a dry kiss. The bitter scent of the drug filled his mouth, carried by the press of lips and teeth—a flavor he knew intimately, now mingled with the cedarwood and oud scent unique to the man overwhelming him.
A hand covered his eyes, blocking his vision, while something cool and silky slid down against his cheek. With his sight stripped away, his other senses magnified exponentially. Rafael instinctively reached out to grab something, his fingers grabbing a handful of something smooth.
His chaotic thoughts churned for a couple of seconds before he realized that it was Julius’s hair.
The medicine, specially prepared by Polly, took effect rapidly. The aching soreness threading through his nerves began to recede, entirely replaced by the overwhelming reality of this sudden kiss.
Unlike Ferrante, who always touched him with cautious care, Julius aggression was the absolute opposite to his reserved, dignified appearance. He controlled Rafael’s breathing with precision, pinning him ruthlessly against the wheelchair with an unyielding force that brooked no resistance. Only when Rafael was on the verge of suffocation did he mercifully pull back slightly, pinching the young Pope’s chin between two fingers and ordering softly, “Breathe.”
As Rafael drew in oxygen, his eyes glazed over with a thin sheen of moisture, the composed man tilted his head, took another long drag of the smoke, and leaned down upon him once more.
The sedative herbs rushed into his lungs with each breath. Rafael frowned, his fingers tangled in Julius’s hair as they slid up the man’s neck and forcefully yanked at the roots of his hair, pulling him away roughly. Wincing in pain, Julius had to retreat slightly. Yet, weakened by his physical exhaustion, the force Rafael exerted was nowhere near as strong as he imagined. Julius stared at Rafael for a few long seconds across that suffocatingly narrow gap. They were still close enough to see every subtle expression on each other’s faces, to hear each other’s ragged, hurried breaths.
“…You’re mad, sir,” Rafael said, his tone cold as ice.
Julius’s dark red lips glistened faintly. He smiled at those words. “Is that the harshest reproach you have for me, Holy Father? —As if you have truly been entirely ignorant all this time?”
He saw Rafael’s pale violet pupils contract sharply, caught utterly off guard by his sudden candor.
“Did you think I would offer some grand speech to absolve myself? And then you, in your infinite grace and mercy, would forgive me and we’d go back to how we were before?” As Julius spoke, Rafael’s expression gradually hardened into a stiff mask. Admittedly, that had been exactly his thought. He was weary of these unnecessary and burdensome emotional entanglements, and he understood even less where things had gone wrong. After all, the Julius of the past had never once shown him such feelings.
“Evasion, pretense, covering over the cracks to maintain a false peace,” Julius murmured, softly dripping the words into Rafael’s ear. “When did you pick up such bad habits?”
Rafael flinched at his bluntness, his gaze piercing Julius’s eyes. “Even so, it is far more moral than a wicked act that flagrantly defies all ethics.”
The reserved and calm Portia Patriarch let out a muffled laugh.
“As if anyone gives a damn.”
The tail end of his sentence was crushed and swallowed between their colliding lips. To a man who concealed a rapier inside his walking stick, overpowering a physically frail Pope was an effortless endeavor.
Outside the window, the clear sky had unknowingly been swallowed by bruised, heavy clouds. A torrential rain poured down, lashing mercilessly against every monument and building. The Florence Grand Theatre was still performing The Birth of Bacchus; the actor’s bright, soaring operatic vocals climbed higher and higher, bleeding into the downpour like a tempest, echoing and resonating across the entire city.
“The garden of the gods is filled with fragrance, Why long for this mortal love?”
“It shall send you to eternal ruin, Strip you of the reason you pride yourself on, Plunge you into an unknowable abyss, And shroud your radiance in darkness!”
A lilac-white lightning bolt tore across the gloomy sky like a serpent. For an instant, the light illuminated the windowpanes of the Papal Palace, cutting through the dimness and revealing the overlapping shadows on the carpet. A thunderclap exploded, drowning out the distant singing.
“The sovereign of all creation, The supreme Reason and Order! All things in the world must rise up, Mourning your fall! What shall be born from the ashes of your soul? A new god, The champion of madness and joy! The pursuer of life’s pleasures! O gods, We have witnessed the birth of Bacchus!”
When the knock finally came at the door, iron-grey and pale-gold hair were still intricately tangled together upon the carpet. Fingers once cold grew warm in the rising heat, strands of hair clinging to sweat-dampened cheeks. Rafael narrowed his eyes as he looked at Julius, who was still half-covering him. Though their clothes were in complete disarray, they were still properly on their bodies—not that this lent them even a shred of innocence.
The pipe, rolled away by someone’s stray hand, had come to a stop against the leg of the desk, stubbornly persisting in releasing its winding curls of smoke. Rafael coldly pushed Julius away, sat up, and began buttoning his shirt. At the same time, he snatched the calfskin sleeve garter that had somehow ended up on his leg and flung it at Julius’s chest.
Freed from its restraint, the loose sleeve fell, covering the man’s hand. Julius picked up the fallen garter; the fine leather product had been warmed by their body heat, and he held it, turning it over lazily between his fingers with downcast eyes. He bent one knee, his equally loose trousers pooling over his calf. Though disheveled and sitting flat on the carpet, he exuded an indescribable, alluring charm.
Unable to bear the sight a moment longer, Rafael averted his eyes. With a grim, darkened face, he seated himself back in the wheelchair, picked up the woolen blanket that had slumped into a crumpled heap on the floor, and draped it back over his legs. Passing his fingers through his hair a few times to smooth it, he pushed his wheelchair toward the door on his own, his retreating figure radiating a sullen, brooding aura.
Muffled whispers of conversation drifted from the threshold. The Pope’s wheelchair was quickly taken over by an attendant and guided away from the doorway. The door, intricately carved with irises and lilies, swung shut. No one was impudent enough to peer inside. Julius, who had remained sitting out of the direct line of sight, listened to the fading sounds until the entire room was swallowed once more by the ambient roar of the torrential rain.
He turned his face, staring intently at the lamp where the firelight danced. The crystal lampshades, sculpted into the shape of flower buds, resembled clusters of roses that gradually blurred in his field of vision.
Far away in Calais, the Emperor received a secret report from his spies in Florence. His Holiness the Pope was set to depart for Assyria to personally oversee the military campaign. The exact date remained undecided, but the Pope’s resolve was firm, so much so that it had reportedly caused a severe rift between him and the Secretary-General of the Papal Palace.
Furthermore, the second wave of expeditionary forces conscripted by Florence had already crossed the Black Sea; once the two legions converged, they would launch a northwards offensive from the south. Additionally, the College of Cardinals in Florence had convened three times in rapid succession within a short span, where the Pope had supposedly decreed a highly controversial decree that had thrown the Cardinals into bitter factional disputes.
François IV cared little for the second piece of news; the only matters capable of piquing his interest were those concerning Rafael. Yet the intelligence report was frustratingly vague and ambiguous—it had to be conceded that the dog serving at the Pope’s feet had most of Florence’s information channels firmly muzzled. Even when spies managed to leak something, it was utterly impossible to discern the core of the matter.
However, he would not have to scratch his head in curious frustration for much longer.
Following the arrival of the second expeditionary legion in Assyria and its merger with the first, the chaotic, small-scale rebel factions stood absolutely no chance against a fully structured, organized military offensive. Before long, the banner of the Papal States fluttered proudly across vast swaths of land in southern Assyria.
Yet the eradication of the rebels did not signify absolute stability. As waves of priests and scribes dispatched from Florence arrived one after another, the native Assyrians began to grow restless. They instinctively rejected this religion, which was practically their ancestral enemy, glaring with hostile eyes at anyone clad in the vestments of the Holy See. After several civilian assaults on the clergy occurred, a cohort of secretaries from the Papal Chancellery arrived in Assyria, bearing with them a warrant signed personally by the Pope.
This warrant would be known to later generations as the Religious Freedom Act. It proclaimed that all Assyrian people were free to choose their own faith, and were even free to decide whether to hold any faith at all. As the secular monarch of Assyria, Pope Sistine I would protect every one of their choices with justice and equality.
This decree from the Pope left the Assyrian people incredulous yet overjoyed; they had lost their very last reason to resist. But while the situation in Assyria took a dramatic turn for the better, the Holy See, spearheaded by the Papal States, and the devout faithful were completely pushed over the edge.
“The Pope has betrayed us!”
This slogan began to echo fiercely among the believers.
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