The Judas Cloth (14 page)

There was a gentle mumble from inside the cell. The Father Prefect was no doubt in favour of behaving
perinde
ac
cadaver.

Grassi was impatient. The Jesuits, he reminded, had been founded to deal with this world and even Pope Clement, when on the point of suppressing them, had said they should not change.
Aut
sint
ut
sunt
aut
non
sint!
‘Remember,’ urged Grassi, ‘let them be as they are, capable of dealing with the world as it is.’

‘By scheming?’

‘Using our heads!’

‘Profiting by an adultery?’ Here the voices sank. ‘My sister …’ groaned the Father Prefect.

Grassi stepped into the cell and closed the door behind him. ‘She could,’ Nicola heard him say, ‘be taken to law!’

After that the argument was muffled. Then Father Grassi came out and strode off, kicking his soutane as he turned the corner.

Nicola said goodbye to the Father Prefect who was tremulous with distress. ‘Can you believe that our probable refuge,’ he said, ‘will be Protestant England?’

Martelli, who was leaving too, was waiting in the porter’s lodge. They arranged to meet. Nicola was to spend some days with Don Eugenio, and Martelli would be with his cousin.

The porter had a story about how the Pope had promised to support the Jesuits but – there was no time to finish. As Nicola’s carriage left, a glove waved. It looked like a broken hand.

News of fighting in the North now held up his plans, for Monsignor Amandi sent word that until things settled he should stay put and Don Eugenio agreed. He had just heard that the Pope had agreed to let a volunteer force from here march to the aid of Piedmont and appointed Father Gavazzi to be its Chaplain General.

‘Gavazzi’s leaving with them tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Nicola was gripped by disappointment. Supposing the chaplain were to be killed before he could question him.

‘Yes. With four of his brothers.’ Don Eugenio’s tone was mocking. ‘Five vigorous Gavazzi off to fight the Austrians! Plus a ragtag of volunteers! A crusade, they’re calling it.’ He shrugged his shoulders. His Holiness had ordered this. Could we be returning to the awful era of popes and anti-popes?

Nicola explained why he wanted a word with the abate. Was there any hope of this? Don Eugenio said Gavazzi would be at the
Circolo
this evening. It might be hard though to get his attention.

‘He’s the hero of the hour. He gave a speech in the Colosseum which I’m told would melt stone. More to the point, it stiffened our Mammas who began offering up their sons like Roman
matronae.’

Not even Nicola’s news of Gavazzi’s connection with himself could disturb Don Eugenio’s phlegm.

Martelli was at the
Circolo
and pointed out celebrities. A
greasy-haired
, heavy man with a mustache was the famous Ciceruacchio, the people’s tribune. Gavazzi was not yet here. An English clergyman, going from group to group, kept asking about the morality of Roman women and whether civil servants objected to the obligation to confess and take communion once a year.

‘The
obbligo
di
Pasqua
,’
he kept repeating. ‘Will it be abolished?’ His name was Archdeacon Manning and he pronounced the letter ‘t’ as though imitating a bird.

People told him that nobody minded the requirement since a
certificate
of compliance could be bought for a half
scudo.
No, they did not think this hypocritical. Were English civil servants not expected to show loyalty?

But now Gavazzi was said to have arrived. Nicola’s heart pounded. ‘Gavazzi,’ said unknown gentlemen to each other. His name was on every lip. Had he really persuaded the Holy Father to make war on Austria? Now that he was leaving would his influence wane? A schism? Might there … Hush.

Nicola returned to the hall. By the door stood the man whom he had been told was Ciceruacchio. He had his arm around a young boy.

‘This is my son,’ he was saying. ‘The apple of my eye. But he’s off to war. We’re sending our best!’ The boy did not seem embarrassed. ‘Mmm!’ said his father, kissing him and making eating noises. ‘I could eat him.’

In the next room the abate Gavazzi was telling how he had waylaid the Pope at the door of St Peter’s and begged a blessing for the volunteers who were in the Vatican gardens. ‘He smiled graciously and came and blessed them. They were all deeply moved. Then I asked for an audience and he told me to come back this evening. I’ve just seen him now. He was warm and open but said we must not ask for reforms which diminish his authority since he must transmit that intact to his successors.’

The abate’s listeners began exchanging anecdotes about the Pope’s warm heart. Then a gentleman with a dissenting eye said, ‘If he cannot diminish his authority, he cannot grant
any
reforms.’

‘That’s the ex-French ambassador,’ whispered Martelli who had joined Nicola. ‘Count Pellegrino Rossi.’

‘How can I get the abate’s attention?’

The abate was talking of a veiled crucifix which the Pope had given him, saying he was not to uncover it until Italy was free.

‘It’s not a good moment,’ decided Martelli.

The ex-ambassador asked: ‘Are our volunteers to cross into Austrian territory where the fighting is?’

The abate frowned. ‘His Holiness is reluctant to go so far.’

‘In that case, it will be hard for them to join the war.’

To Nicola’s dismay, a footman now whispered something to the abate who left the room. He started after him, but had trouble moving past the animated talkers. He bumped into several, then found himself hedged behind three immovable backs.

‘Excuse me,’ he begged, but the backs did not budge. Beside him was a closed door. He turned the handle, slipped through and into an alcove where Gavazzi was teasing a fellow priest.

‘But I
do
listen, Filippo,’ he was saying. ‘To prove it I’ll tell you what you’re about to say. You’ll say: Don’t rely on the good will of the Supreme Pontiff who will change his mind the minute we leave the city. Secret forces are at work. The General of our order wants me suspended. I’ll end up in prison. I mustn’t preach against Austria. Also, my hair is too long. I don’t keep my eyes lowered and my clothes smell.
See. I remember. But what can I do? The order keeps me short of money. Preaching in out-of-the-way places, I have to lodge where I can. I can’t afford sheets …’

‘Alessandro, they’re biding their …’

‘I know, Filippo, and ruining our friendship because – yes?’ The abate had seen Nicola. ‘Forgive me.’ He put a hand on his friend’s arm. ‘The youth are our special concern now. Are you planning to volunteer?’ he asked Nicola.

Nicola, blushing and stuttering, managed to explain why he was here, but as he did so the priests’ faces grew chilly. The one called Filippo whispered something to Gavazzi who said, ‘My friend asks if you were sent by the Jesuits? He thinks you’re a spy.’

Nicola started to deny this, then paused. Trying for accuracy, he repeated what Father Curci had said. The two were sizing him up. Desperate to explain his need he said, ‘You asked if I would join up, but how can I until I know who I am? I might have Austrian blood. Forgive me. I know you’re an important man.’

The abate asked, ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’

His friend said, ‘He was in the piazza Venezia. I recognise him. Who knows what his masters are up to. They’re as mad as wasps! And they think your influence devilish. They’re all spies at the Collegio Romano.’

The abate smiled. His friend’s anxiety seemed to amuse him. He turned to Nicola: ‘See what mutual suspicion breeds.’ His tone was mocking.
‘Are
there spies in the Collegio?’

‘No.’ Nicola, seeing the one called Filippo frown, added quickly, ‘Well, there’s one. I think. A man called Nardoni.’

The faces sharpened. This was serious. Nicola went cold, then hot. What had possessed him? But there was no withdrawing now. He told what he knew. He felt mesmerised, yet untrustworthy.

‘You hope,’ the abate was forthright, ‘to trade secrets. But the one you want to know isn’t mine. I deplore this, because mysteries breed scandal. Listen.’ He gripped Nicola’s arm. ‘These are times for looking forward, not back. Your generation will see the fate of Italy decided. That is more important than any individual story. ‘All of us alive now are lucky …’

‘My mother’s name. Please. You must know that. Foundlings’ fathers aren’t always known, but their mothers – who gave you the task of delivering me to the wet nurse?’

‘Monsignor Amandi.’

This was circular. Back to the bishop.

‘And my mother?’

‘The less you know …’

‘Why? Is she married? Mad? Diseased?’

‘She’s a nun. In an enclosed order.’

Now the door opened. Several people came in and Nicola was pushed aside. Other people’s business was, apparently, every bit as urgent as his own. Forgotten, he walked back to the first room where scraps of argument blew about his head. ‘Tooto!’ exclaimed the English clergyman whose eye was as wide as an owl’s. ‘Tootee!’

Nicola collapsed in a chair. Behind him Gavazzi’s voice was raised to its rhetorical pitch. ‘Christian revolution …’ it cried.

Nicola burned with fury against everything Christian. An enclosed nun! Shame upon shame! His Maker had botched His job. He wished he could disbelieve in Him. As of course he could. He had been warned often enough how easily faith is lost and now he was drawn to that magnetic nullity. In his mind, even as he sat here, he could begin the process and, slowly, God would cease to exist for him, just as Nicola had ceased to exist for his parents. A nun! Oh Christ, who could the father be? Some convent handyman? They were usually semi-morons, chosen on that account.

The egoism of his reaction began to shame him. It was, surely, a contagion of this loud prideful place – the Englishman was still twittering and Gavazzi declaiming. Painfully, Nicola began to contrast the abate’s self-concern with the kindness of the Jesuits. Guileless men in
chalk-stained
cassocks, they had not, it seemed to him now, produced in all the years he had known them one fourth of the rhetoric he had heard tonight.

The footman, who was carrying their lantern, said there was some disturbance near the Collegio Romano. Ah, said Don Eugenio. One of the mob’s little tantrums? No, said the man, from what he’d heard it was serious this time. There might even have been a murder. The city was excitable, as was to be expected, with all the volunteers getting ready to leave for the front.

‘Well,’ said Don Eugenio, ‘we’d best walk home another way.’

Nicola couldn’t sleep and was up so early that only Don Eugenio’s factotum was about. This old fellow’s mind was tottery and his head
permanently bent sideways. He was cleaning the hearth when Nicola came on him and had stirred up a cloud of dust. The room was cavernous. Claw-footed furniture gripped the floor and the man’s shoes, which were too big for him, looked as though they too might be concealing claws. His stockings were stuffed with false calves which had swung round to the wrong part of his leg.

‘You’re wondering how I got my crooked neck.’

‘No.’

‘I was half-hanged is how.’

Nicola had heard this story several times. The reason why Cencio – that was the factotum’s name – had been condemned varied but the rescue was always the same.

It had happened long ago, before the French brought in the guillotine: a novelty which would have done for him if they’d had it here then. ‘You can’t be half-guillotined!’ Cencio’s eyes popped at the thought. Then he described his great moment in the public square and how, just as the rope was tightening around his neck, he’d heard the crowd cry
‘grazia,
grazia’
and then
‘Viva
San
Marco’
and thought he was dead and in heaven. Only he wasn’t. He’d been saved by the Venetian Ambassador who had happened to pass at the right moment and made a sign to the hangman who, instead of climbing on Cencio’s shoulders, cut the rope. Ambassadors had that privilege. But Cencio, being blindfold, understood nothing except that St Mark was being praised. So for all he knew the Venetians had taken over heaven – or hell, because that could just as well have been his destination.

‘So the crowd begged him to save you.’

Cencio spat. The crowd, he said, liked a surprise. ‘They’d have been as pleased to see me swing. Or topped. Did you know that the guillotine was made famous by a Jesuit? Well, it was. A man called Guillotin. They say the crowd here in Rome killed a Jesuit last night. A message came for you. You’re to go round to the Collegio. They’re leaving today, so you’d best hurry.’

He handed Nicola an envelope.

‘Did you come to gloat?’

Nicola had been seen at the
Circolo
talking to that rabble-rouser, Gavazzi. Father Curci, dressed in layman’s clothes, stood on the Collegio steps waiting for a carriage.

‘It didn’t take you long to turn coat!’ The priest was beside himself.
He showed Nicola a letter, saying that he must recognise it, as indeed he did. It was the one Martelli had asked Gilmore to post and then, somehow, himself conveyed to the police. Father Curci, it seemed, had a penitent who worked for them and – but never mind the circumstances. Here it was. Black on white.

‘But Father …’

‘Don’t call me that! This,’ waving the letter, ‘is clearly the source for the lunatic lies told about us last July. Who put you up to it? Martelli’s cousin, I suppose. We wondered why his family left him here. Now we know. But you! My own penitent! And your lies have led to a murder! Take a look at your handiwork!’

The priest drew Nicola to where a pinkish mess was smeared onto the side of the wall.

‘Those are the victim’s brains!’ he said. ‘The work of the crowd. Your work. They smashed his head there and the Civic Guard either couldn’t or wouldn’t protect him. I don’t understand. For six years you’ve been my penitent and I couldn’t see this venom in you. Well, I can only suppose that God wishes me to see the vanity of human affections. I thank Him for the lesson.’ Father Curd’s face was alarmingly red. ‘Do you hate us?’