The Judas Cloth (25 page)

‘Oddly, I get the impression that you want something from me. Absolution?’

‘Have I lost your friendship?’

‘Were we friends?’

‘You’re sour. You don’t mean that.’

‘You want us to shake hands? Or go drinking? A conciliatory ceremony? You probably had them in your family as a child? I never had a family and don’t know how to play.’

‘Is there something I can do?’

‘A penance?’

‘If you like.’

‘Give her money. As much as you can afford. You’re far richer than I or I wouldn’t ask. It’s for her family. They’re poor.’

‘It’s not very moral,’ said Rangone. ‘Encouraging her to sell herself. All right, all right!’ He fluttered appeasing hands. ‘I’ll do it. I’m only wondering if you know …’

‘… that she had other lovers. That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it? I see it in your eye. But why should it be more moral for her
not
to get money for her family?’

‘Oh, her family …’

‘I know about them.’

‘Do you want me to stop seeing her?’

‘No. Don’t drop her! That would be cruel.’

‘I don’t think she expects much from me.’

‘But she may from
me
– and you’ll have to make it up to her.’

Rangone laughed. ‘This has been like going to confession to a quite immoral priest.’

‘Oh, there are different sorts of priests and moralities now,’ said Nicola, thinking of the dossier.

‘None I think who would say “Go and sin some more”.’

‘I just don’t want her to be lonely.’

‘Like yourself? Why don’t we go out to dinner or something? There are more fish in the sea, you know. I could get you another girl. That was more what I expected to do.’

But Nicola said he had to dine with the cardinal.

The war was now a side-show, for only the Republic of Venice was holding out. A ritual. A morality play. Nicola, unscrolling it in his mind, imagined Father Bassi, to whom Garibaldi had given a horse, riding unarmed in the front line. A man of forty-seven. A poet whose hair curled over his collar. Some of his verse turned up in the dossier. Discovering that he could have made a soldier had banished priestly humility. Intercepted letters from him showed a closed world expanding and the mind’s walls blown down.

Nicola, like a spectator at a play, would have liked to warn him that he was riding for a fall. He couldn’t, of course. It would make trouble for the cardinal. But neither could he quite bring himself to disapprove of Bassi whose excitement was infectious and whose failings brought him close – for instance, he craved praise. Writing to a friend, he exulted in his physical courage – a surprise? – and complained at not being mentioned in dispatches. More selflessly, he pleaded with the military authorities to improve the men’s conditions. Poor lodging and sanitation demoralised them, he argued, and, with practical charity, hammered at the indifference or inefficiency of GHQ.

Sanitation! Nicola used the word to punish a riot of rhetoric in his mind. It also led him to ask the cardinal whether Maria’s father could have a job sweeping the cathedral. The present sweeper was old and in need of a helper.

‘But dear boy,’ cried His Eminence, ‘that position is one whose bestowal requires at least as much politicking as the appointment of a bishop! Who is this candidate of yours? Can he handle a brush? It’s no sinecure, you know. People spit and litter and, though I’ll spare your blushes, do worse in the cathedral. Would he be prepared to do a little spying?’

‘In the cathedral?’

‘Indeed! You’d be astonished what goes on there, especially now that
there is all but a schism in the Church. I speak freely because it would be tedious to have to watch my tongue with you. I leave it to your sense of honour to let me know if I should.’

The cardinal, who had from the first enjoyed Nicola’s eagerness, noted a wistful quiver to it now and diagnosed religious doubt or some such teething trouble due to youth and a generous spirit. Not my business, though Oppizzoni comfortably. Let his confessor take care of it. He relished that quiver though. And because he did, Maria’s father became the cathedral’s second sweeper:
lo
scopatore
sostituito
.

‘Gavazzi,’ noted the cardinal, ‘is being accused of pocketing funds raised for the Army. I fancy his trouble is poor bookkeeping. I don’t suppose, do you, that he can be good at sums? Here he’s been teaching us charity and scolding shopkeepers who sack their assistants in thin times! Now, he must refute charges made, no doubt, by those same shop-keepers. He’s learning that it’s easier to preach than do.’

It was September and Rome had a new ministry whose mainstay was Count Pellegrino Rossi.

‘Perhaps he is tired of life?’ said Oppizzoni, whose own experiences coloured his outlook.

‘Perhaps,’ said a priest known for his patriotism, ‘things look more hopeful to those in the know.’

‘
We
know enough,’ said the cardinal with asperity. ‘We pay enough spies, God knows, to know. You can take it from me that the national question will be his downfall. Patriots including, I think, Your
Reverence
, are pressing for the war to go on and never asking from whence the money is to come. Rossi’s friends won’t forgive him if he doesn’t fight, and if he fights and loses, neither will they forgive that.’

Shyly, Nicola disclosed that a friend of his was now the count’s personal secretary.

‘Does he write to you?’

‘Not much,’ Nicola admitted. This disappointed him but the cardinal praised discretion in the employees of great men.

‘If you do hear from him,’ he added however, ‘let me know.’

Pink clouds, sphery as cherub’s limbs, were heralding a storm. It was hot and close and Count Rossi, finding the Caffe Venezia crowded, was pleased to be hailed by someone with a spare place at his table. This was Don Bibi Abbondanza, a priest whose violet legs twinkled in motion like those of a marsh bird. Just now, he was at rest and his belly, bright in the swathe of its cummerbund, had a reassuring stability. People liked Don Bibi.

‘
L’
homme
du
juste
milieu
!’ Don Bibi pulled out a chair for Rossi. ‘A dangerous thing to be. Have you ever witnessed a bullfight? The matador has nothing at his back while the men who stir up the bull stay near the fence so that they may vault over it.’

‘Yet men like me are accused of sitting on fences.’

Don Bibi bent towards him. ‘The man in the middle,’ he instructed, ‘annoys everyone. He seeks to reconcile but it is not in our nature to be reconciled. We are fruits of the Fall! Ours is a nature designed to be godlike then spoilt by Lucifer, the first revolutionary. We’re a mix, a mess, and have an itch in our arse which keeps us on the move.
You
shuttled between countries. Your agility was your defence. Beware of settling.’

‘Here?’

‘For the world. It’s a cave of shadows. A Limbo and a vestibule. I remind myself of this daily,’ said the fat man. ‘If I didn’t I’d go mad at its stupidity. I’d lay about me with an axe! Ours is a wise religion. I derive infinite comfort from it.’

‘You’re speaking to a politician, Don Bibi. We have to deal with what you call shadows.’

‘I’, said the priest, spooning into his ice-cream, ‘have only one message which I repeat. Remember Monseigneur Affre, the Archbishop of Paris. He was killed, you’ll recall, in the riots of last June. People are calling him saintly becasue he went out to mediate and was killed by a stray bullet. I say a man who can’t defend himself can’t defend his institution.

After a while the count left for Lepri’s restaurant. He decided that Don Bibi was simply advising him to throw in his lot with the Curia. The question was would it do as much for him?

Don Bibi’s last remark had been, ‘Beware of tolerance, Count!’

He meant tolerance of revolutionaries, but one must presume both sides were plotting. Arms – whose? – had been discovered in the palazzo Sciarra. Embittered volunteers were rampaging through the northern
Legations; the war was lost; the state coffers were empty and the Pope, having warred a bit and reformed a bit and chopped and changed his policies, was turning to Rossi to save him. How work with such a man?

Rossi reflected that his was not a new dilemma. Perhaps he should study Castiglione’s advice to courtiers on how to navigate the shallows around an unreliable prince?

And how deal with the mob? Firework shows were one method. Watching one last Easter, he had been struck to see a protest organised by democrats dribble away when the great Catherine wheel surged over St Peter’s followed by a huge VIVA PIO NONO! Waste, at a time of war and hunger, did not trouble the crowd. Seeing them applaud, he knew them for what they were: an ancient and unreliable rabble. They, no doubt, thought of him as chillily Swiss.

Outside the restaurant, the streets were poorly lit. It was, however, only a step to where footmen with lighted torches stood outside the palace where his friend, the Comtesse de Menou, was holding a reception. This connection was a weakness to which some might have warmed: a sign of humanity in the cold Rossi. But they would not have the chance. A Protestant wife was compromising enough without letting the town know he had a mistress.

The startling radiance of light and colour might have charmed him less if he had come by carriage. After the dark streets, the effect was
entrancing
. Prudently cool, he did not linger with his friend. Not greeting her with the intimacy he craved caused an ache which spread desolately along his nerves, then gave way to a sensation of pleasure. This sensuous metamorphosis always caught him by surprise. It was a paradox of the body which puzzled him as much as he puzzled others. Ravished for moments by narcotic bliss, he felt unable to respond to those around him with more than a gelid bow. He was considered haughty and remote.

Dutiful, he joined some ladies who were being lively with a trio of prelates. Death was their topic. A French prelate listed the heroines of Italian literature, marvelling at their poor health. Were real women here as prone, he asked, to die young as Clorinda, Laura and Beatrice? He dared hardly address those present lest they go into a decline and oblige him to write propitiating elegies to their ghosts. It was a safe parody of courtship and the Italian clerics smiled at his dexterity.

A pert, ringleted French lady intercepted Rossi. Was it true that the French Government had opposed his becoming the Pope’s minister and that he had dictated conditions to His Holiness?

The prelates melted away.

‘If I were younger,’ said Rossi to the bubbling lady, ‘I would hope you had frightened them off so as to be alone with me.’ He felt like an old horse taken out to canter over low obstacles. Still bubbling, she offered her fortune-teller’s advice.

‘Your fortune-teller is probably a spy.’

‘They say that here of every second person.’

‘It is true of every second person.’

‘Then which of us two is one?’

‘Surely the one asking questions!’

‘Well, to disarm suspicion I’ll tell some gossip about a person with influence in High Places, a rival to your learned self.’

‘A lady, naturally?’

‘A nun.’ The ringlets shook. ‘They say she prophesies. In exchange, will you tell me some stale old gossip? Is it true the Countess Spaur used to have some influence?’

‘Oh, I imagine she still has. She has for a long time been a friend in what you call High Places. Shall we say HP? We should have a code. Masons have a glossary of words which mean one thing to the initiate and another to the generality. “Money” for instance means “weapons”, “charity” freedom and “secrecy” revolution!’

‘Gossip has it you were a Mason yourself.’

‘Gossip is wrong. If I had been I would not have been accepted as ambassador here nor now as minister. My enemies would have ferreted it out. As it is, they merely spread it about.’

‘How interesting to be a man! Here, as they were saying when you came in, there are only two roles for a woman: to die and become a Beatrice or to give birth and be a Mamma.’

‘Or a nun.’

She made a face.

‘Or, like Lord Byron’s friend, Teresa Guiccioli, dilute your
respectability
. Become either more holy or less respectable,’ he teased. ‘That’s all I can suggest.’

‘Yours is a dangerous influence. I shall pray for the Pope.’

She left him, laughing, and now, at last, he talked to his hostess, a lady who had come to Rome for his sake and gave receptions like this to help his career.

‘I have a bad feeling,’ she said. ‘Details are coming out about the troubles faced by the last ministry. Whoever takes over risks being a scapegoat. For the Pope, reform is bitter physic. He knows he needs it yet cannot swallow it.’

‘You’ve been listening to gossip.’

‘Of course. What would you have me do? Read the papers which contain nothing but accounts of who kissed his slipper? Gossip comes hot from my footmen, who use the same sources as the police – other footmen.’

‘Do they spy on as well as for us?’

‘If they do they must be bored.’

Resentful! His discretion mortified her. But what could he do?

‘My dear, I’m obliged to ask you to rise to new heights of discretion.’

She was ahead of him. ‘Whom do you want me to seduce?’ Brisk. Game?

Plodding, yet tempted to pretend it was a joke, he suggested she feign interest in an agreeable young man. ‘If your footmen think he has been made happy, it will distract their attention from me.’

‘You haven’t much shame.’

‘We agreed to have none.’

‘And is this … puppet to be privy to our secret?’

‘No. He’s nineteen and, I’m told, amiable. I haven’t met him yet but Minghetti vouches for him and his father used to be a friend of the Pope’s. Officially, he is to be my secretary. The idea only just came to me of using him as a
chandelier
– you remember Musset’s play? Cover! A fig leaf.’

‘In the play the lady and the
chandelier
fall in love. Will you risk that?’

‘What choice have I?’

‘You could give up your ambitions.’

‘If you ask me to, I will.’

‘I am asking. Will you?’

She doesn’t mean it, he thought. The hope of power is what draws her to me. Without it, what am I? An old man with a face like a paper bag. But might she enjoy the power of refusing power? Maybe she too gets that thrill which I find in tormenting myself?

‘If you ask, I cannot refuse you.’

But what about my sons and Charlotte? he thought. I need a position. Paris is closed to me. All my protectors have fled. My teaching posts are forfeit. Switzerland would be difficult. I am sixty-one and too well known. And – I have no money. Not enough. Aloud, he said, ‘All right! I’ll give it up.’

‘Will you hate me?’

‘How can I say?’

Eye stared at eye. They knew each other too well. This was the
braccio
di ferro
where each tried to force down the other’s arm. There was no gender here but a clash of wills and a testing.

‘So. Put me out of pain.’

‘You’re in pain?’ She smiled.

‘Well?’

‘I want you to take power.’

It was almost a let-down. He had been so taut. Fluids in his body made themselves felt as they boiled or curdled or flowed back to where they should have been. He might have been about to have an attack.

‘You mustn’t do this to me again.’

Her hand brushed his sleeve, delicately, imperceptibly. A feather touch. The footmen would have nothing to report. ‘No. It was because of what you just asked.’

‘I am still asking it.’ It was his turn to be hard.

‘I understand.’

‘His name is Prospero Stanga. I shall bring him tomorrow.’

‘Very well.’

They walked in different directions. He talked to various people. The originality of this drawing room was that it was one of the few open to people of different persuasions. Prelates met Liberals. Democrats met great noblemen. The stiff conservatives were curious and came. Political men came for Rossi.