Chapter 9 Misty Rose (Part 9)

Ferrante

As the heart of the Vatican, Florence has a large number of churches. Excluding the Great Prayer Hall, the Holy Thorn Chapel and the White Crown Chapel which are exclusively for the Pope, there are also various churches of different sizes and uses. The big ones, like the Holy Thorn Chapel, occupy half of the Miracle Square, and the small ones may be only half the size of a house. They are densely scattered in Florence like stars, receiving countless believers.

Like any other city in the world, Florence also has a nearly chaotic downtown area, where poor people live like ants. All the land has been divided up, and people who cannot rely on planting to earn income and cannot find enough jobs can only steal and defraud. As a result, the density of prostitution here is extremely high. Almost two out of every ten women are currently or have been engaged in related industries.

Raphael once tried very hard to change this situation. He required Florence to provide certain jobs for women. Every registered business must recruit a female employee who is not a family member, and was allowed to employ girls under the age of seven to provide laundry services - this greatly reduced the emergence of child prostitutes, because the original doctrine believed that children were not capable of working, and employing children was a cruel act.

——But not "hiring" child laborers does not mean that businessmen will not use child laborers. They just use this excuse to pay child laborers extremely low wages.

Raphael felt that he had done a good job, but the adult men whose jobs were taken away were very unhappy about it. However, he died soon anyway and did not hear how they scolded him.

Despite being the City of Cities and the land where gods have trodden, Florence's lower town is not that "pure". Sewage flows everywhere, garbage is everywhere, animal feces is everywhere, the stench is overwhelming, and when it rains the streets turn muddy yellow. Beggars run barefoot on the streets, and all passers-by avoid them warily.

The children living here all belong to a certain force and follow criminal gangs to steal, rob or defraud. What they do specifically depends on what their guide does.

Unlike the slums in other cities, the people living in the slums of Florence are more pious. They grew up listening to hymns to the Lord and instinctively regard the hardships and disappointments in life as tests from the Lord. They struggle, hope, and walk towards death in their piety day after day.

The churches in the lower town certainly cannot be very magnificent. This Holy Grail Church stands on the main road leading to the upper town. It is an integrated building with side buildings and a small atrium. Although it is small in size, it has a chapel, a reading room, and a prayer room.

Ferrante woke up groggily, his head still aching slightly. The quilt was too thin, it rained last night, and coupled with the heavy work, he started to have a fever since early morning. Fortunately, as a young man, he had a good physique, and he felt that he could get through it.

He was awakened by a shrill ringing of a bell.

There was a rusty brass bell hanging outside the children's living room, and every morning when the cock crowed for the first time, the monk in charge of them would come and ring the bell.

Countless rustling sounds were heard in the gloomy and cold room. The sleepy and tired children got out of their small beds, threw off their worn quilts, put on their robes, and stood in a row in the open space. Ferrante consciously stood at the end.

The children's clothes were very loose, made of low-quality linen, dyed black in different shades, and were long robes with no tailoring at all. They hung from the neck to the knees, and when they walked they looked like little crows flapping their wings. ∮

Among the twenty-odd children, the youngest is only five years old and the oldest is fifteen-year-old Ferrante. They have different hair and eye colors, but they have one thing in common, that is, they all have decent looks and delicate features, and some of them can be seen to have a good foundation.

They stood in a mess, and no child made a sound from beginning to end. After they stood in place, the door of the living room was pushed open, and a tall and thin monk in a black cassock walked in. He looked around with emotionless eyes and counted the number of people. Then he pulled out a crumpled paper from his sleeve and began to call out names one by one: "Quinn, Sector, go find 'Little Foot Charlie', they are short of two sheep today. Mary, Jane, Jenny, just like yesterday, someone will come to pick you up. Be good, I don't want any complaints from the guests... Those over twelve years old, follow me."

He stuffed the paper back into his sleeve, without even looking at the group of children, and walked away on his own.

There were only four children over the age of twelve here. Ferrante and his three companions followed in silence. From the corner of their eyes, they saw that the children who had been assigned tasks had numb and pale faces, like plaster masks in the dim room.

"I don't want to go... I don't want to go..." The girl named Mary was only nine years old. She had a pair of beautiful blue eyes, as innocent as the angel in the mural. She cried softly. The other two girls who were also called stood aside with blank expressions, as if they had long lost the strength to comfort their companions.

Ferrante took a quick look and then looked away from them. Everyone living here was busy taking care of themselves, so how could they have the energy to take care of others?

The four children did not talk to each other. They followed the monk cautiously at a distance. They passed through the narrow and dark corridor and the dilapidated washroom and came to a small open-air square. It was called a square, but it was actually a small square open space with a plaster angel statue placed in the middle. It was probably an old decoration discarded by the superior church, with a broken gap on the marble base.

Ferrante stared at the gap, and the monk examined the four children with an expression that looked neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.

"You have an opportunity," the monk said slowly, "so rare that I doubt whether you deserve it."

"You can meet those big shots that you dare not even think about on weekdays, bishops, archbishops, cardinals...even..." He ground the word between his teeth twice, with a tone that was not sure whether it was awe or something, "Holy Father, yes, you may be able to meet our supreme and honorable Pope. For little bugs like you, it is simply a miracle."

There was a little commotion among the children.

A little light appeared in their dead eyes, but because the monk's words were too bizarre, the light soon turned into doubt.

"I never lie," the monk said arrogantly. "The Papal Palace has issued an order that all churches in Florence must select devout children of appropriate age to receive training. If they pass the training, they can become a member of the Pope's Guard... What a great honor! And in the Holy Grail Church, only the four of you are of the right age."

He was satisfied to see that the children's expressions were fixed on expectation, except for the tallest black-haired boy... He frowned in his heart. That boy with the most eccentric personality would have been sold long ago, if he was not smart and flexible, and could often bring a lot of unexpected income to the church. Many nobles liked him just for the sake of that face!

What was his name... Oh, yes, Ferrante, the lowly, nameless pauper, who didn't seem to care at all about this miraculous thing that happened to him, and just stared at the ground.

...a neurotic little pervert.

The monk ignored him and looked

To the other three excited children, he said slowly, "I can report your names, but you have to understand that the church has raised you for so many years, and your return is far from enough. You will never come back after you leave this time, so in order not to damage the Lord's gift... This is also for your own future blessings. You need to give me two florins in exchange for this letter of recommendation."

Two gold florins!

Several children were stunned.

They have never seen what a gold florin looks like in their entire lives!

One gold florin was enough for a person in the slums to live on for a year. They had to work day and night to get bread from the church to barely fill their stomachs. Let alone saving two gold florins, it was a great thing to have any savings.

The monk didn't care that the children showed expressions of despair, and continued, "I will give you a month. After a month, the Pope's Palace will no longer accept recommendations. If you can't go..."

He raised his lips and showed a fake smile: "I'm sorry, only the Holy Grail Church can accommodate a group of lazy children like you."

The monk left. The three children stood there looking at each other for a while, then slowly walked away with their heads down. Ferrante, who stayed there without moving, finally raised his head. He pulled his mind out of his drowsiness and watched the edge of the monk's black robe roll like a rolling black wave, close to the ground, around the corner of the corridor, and then disappear there.

Holy Father?

Ferrante repeated the word in his mind.

He thought again of the carriage that passed by here when the Pope was crowned a few days ago. He had never seen such a magnificent and dazzling carriage in his life. The carriage inlaid with pearls, gold and gems seemed to have come down from the sky. Although the carriage only cruised around the edge of the lower city, Ferrante squeezed into the position with the best view early.

Then he also saw the person sitting in the car, the new Pope with the title of Sistine I. He was so handsome wearing a luxurious crown that he could not help but hold his breath. The Holy Father looked very similar to the oil painting hanging on the wall, pure white, bright, holy, and so clean that he seemed to be glowing. Ferrante looked at him infatuatedly, and felt that the words in the scriptures that proclaimed the greatness of God's light suddenly had an object.

——God came to the world to cleanse the sins of the world. He said to people, give all your sins to me, I will carry them, and then you can walk upward.

——So people handed their sins and filth to Him, and God's snow-white wings became dark as a result. God then gave birth to Saint Leah, who carried the evil thoughts of the world. People carried the saint forward and cheered for the birth of the saint.

Ferrante gazed at the people in the carriage across the countless cheering crowds. They were cheering the birth of the new Pope just as they had cheered the birth of a saint a thousand years ago.

If it were him... would he be the saint who carries evil thoughts and saves the fallen from sin? Will he become the savior, the protector, the one who always reaches out to them as he says?

Could he be... the pure white saint he had been waiting for?

Ferrante licked his sharp canine teeth, and a hint of anticipation flashed in his deep blue eyes. As long as he seized this opportunity, he could leave here and get closer to that person.

He looked around and walked to the angel statue, where there was a pool of dirty water. Ferrante didn't mind. He squatted down, scooped up the water and splashed it on his face. He rubbed it hard a few times, making his skin red. He wiped off the water droplets with his sleeve and pushed aside his wet and messy black hair, completely revealing his beautiful and almost feminine face.

Like his prostitute mother, he had a face that would have looked terrible in the slums, if he hadn't been thrown into the church...

Ferrante curled his lips, as if things here were not much better.

But years of struggling have left this young man with a very low moral bottom line and overly flexible means. He is unwilling to trade his face for money because this is not a long-term solution and he may be dragged into a worse situation from which he cannot escape. It's not that there are no male prostitutes in Florence, they are just hidden in darker places. Ferrante has seen them and he is terrified by them from the bottom of his heart.

However, if you want to make a quick buck in a short period of time, this is the safest method besides killing someone.

Anyway, as long as he gets the money, he can leave here and go to the Papal Palace... No one there will know what he has done, everyone is equal, and he can also meet the saint who saved him.

There was a hint of genuine yearning in Ferrante's eyes.

The author has something to say:

Ferrante is a little pervert with a slightly distorted outlook on life, a real pervert, and also an important supporting character.

The title of the article does not comply with the regulations, and a new name is requested. I read the comments and integrated them, and there are probably these: "The Death of the Pope", "The Pope is Not a Good Man Anymore", "The Coronation of a Saint", "The Pope Rejects Shura Field", and "The Crown of Thorns". Well... you can tell that my naming skills are really not good. I racked my brains to come up with this name, but it violates the regulations. The word "murder" cannot be used. [Cat Crying] If you have any preferences or suggestions, please continue to put them forward in the comment section, and I will read them.