“Who the hell is it?” snapped Scharley. “I know, I know, you’ll shoehorn Baldassarre Cossa, John XXIII, in here, like a foot into a tight poulaine. Yet he isn’t a pope, but an antipope, who doesn’t suit the list at all, moreover, having nothing in common with a stag or a syren. In other words, Malachy was talking nonsense there. As in many other places of that celebrated prophecy.”

“This is in poor taste, Master Scharley!” said Tomasz Alpha, growing annoyed. “You oughtn’t to treat prophecies like that! You should see what is indisputably true in it, and regard that as proof of the truth of the whole. The things you consider wrong can’t be declared falsehoods, instead one must humbly acknowledge that being but a trifling mortal, one comprehends not the word of God, for it is incomprehensible. But time will prove the truth!”

“However much time passes, nothing can turn claptrap into the truth—”

“Here, Scharley, you are wrong,” Urban Horn interrupted with a smile. “You seriously underestimate time.”

“You are profane,” said Circulos, who was listening from his pallet. “You are ignoramuses. All of you. In truth, I listen and I hear: stultus stulta loquitur.”

Tomasz Alpha gestured at him with his head and twisted a finger against his forehead. Horn snorted and Scharley waved a dismissive hand.

The rat watched the incident with its wise, black eyes. Reynevan watched the rat. Koppirnig watched Reynevan.

“And what,” Koppirnig suddenly asked, “do you say about the future of the papacy, Master Tomasz? What does Malachy say about that? Who will be the next pope, after Holy Father Martin?”

“The Stag of the syren, probably,” sneered Scharley.

“Then shall the lame man leap as an hart—”

“I said be quiet, you nutcase! And I shall respond to you, Master Nicolaus: it will be the Catalonian. After the current Holy Father Martin, called the ‘Crown of the golden veil,’ Malachy mentions Barcelona.”

“The ‘Schism of the Barcelonas,’” corrected Bonaventure, who was reassuring the weeping Isaiah. “And that would mean Gil Sanchez Munoz y Carbon, the next schismatic after Luna, calling himself Clement VIII. This part of the prophecy is by no means discussing Martin V’s successor.”

“Oh, indeed?” Scharley showed exaggerated surprise. “By no means? What a relief.”

“If only the Roman popes are taken into consideration,” Tomasz Alpha concluded, “the next one in Malachy’s writings is the ‘Celestian she-wolf.’”

“I knew we’d get there in the end,” snorted Horn. “The Curia Romana has always been famous for its wolfish laws and customs, but a she-wolf on the Chair of Saint Peter? May God have mercy on us.”

“And a female to boot,” said Scharley. “Again? Wasn’t one Joan enough? And it was said that all the candidates would be more closely examined to see if they had balls.”

“They abandoned the examinations,” Horn winked at him, “Because too many were eliminated.”