The Contest | Working Title

When the seers of the Church forecast the impending death of the pope, the Cardinals and their secular allies and enemies begin the contest over who will succeed to the second-most powerful throne in a Europe recognizably similar to our own. In Jerusalem, the scholarly and kindly Bishop Pedro de Avila buys a slave girl who has been terribly tortured by previous owners. Soon, they are drawn into the contest over the pope's successor. Can they help the right man becomes pope and ensure the future of the Church? Can the bishop retain his faith in the process?

LR Waterbury is settled back in Brooklyn after years of study and travel. She now works as a photographer and writes when she can get her cat off her keyboard.

Latest version: I returned to my original beginning, rejiggered the timeline a little to allow for that, and did some rearranging of the order of the scenes. I also did a total rewrite of the first Fernando scene. Hopefully, I've moved towards fixing all the really major problems without creating new ones. The rest of the changes are relatively minor. Just some pruning here and there.