Just then, the wooden door was pushed open, and in walked none other than Saint Gregory.
"I told him that if he'd rather trust Rudolph than his own dear friend, then it would be best for me to return to Cluny," Gerard's Otto whispered to Eric with a smile.
"I am not so old that I've gone deaf, Otto," Gregory said.
"All for God, Holy Father." Gerard's Otto smiled and bowed to Gregory.
"All for God," Gregory repeated. He glanced out the window at Emperor Henry, prostrate on the ground. "You are moved by pity, and so you forget his sins."
"Perhaps we could speak with one of the bishops accompanying the Emperor?" Eric suggested.
"The Emperor's bishops have all been excommunicated!"
Gregory grew agitated. He could not tolerate a pack of illiterates, a mob of godless laymen, serving as Bishops. But what he found even more intolerable was that these worldly fanatics, these fiends of a secular Emperor, would dare question his authority as the successor to Saint Peter.
