The Judas Cloth (79 page)

The abbé smiled mournfully. ‘Do you think me fanciful? Look.’ Rummaging in a drawer he took out a parcel tied with white ribbon. It contained two portraits. One was of Pius IX looking out through the bars of a prison. The other was of the Comte de Chambord. ‘My cousin says it is the duty of every loyal priest to display these, and, as you see, she has provided me with them. A test? Very likely! Our so-called Government of National Unity is menaced from the Right as well as the Left and Monsieur Thiers will have to work hard to keep a balance. Darboy is a nuisance. Thiers claims that his refusal to exchange hostages is based on principle – one must not encourage hostage-taking, etc. – but for a different archbishop more might have been done. Not that Thiers need plot, you understand. His nickname is Foutriquet or Little Squirt. Little squirts do not plan crimes. They let them happen.’

‘I mink I shall go to Versailles.’

‘Well, the nuncio is there and so are Thiers and Lagarde. I can give you a letter to help you find lodgings. Without help you won’t get a
room. There are suddenly 40,000 extra people in a town of 250,000. I, however, have a cousin …’

‘You are well supplied with them.’

‘They have their good points.’

At breakfast the abbé was glum with guilt over his lack of charity the night before.

‘In school,’ Nicola told him, ‘the Jesuits told us it was all right to spy for God – so why not gossip for Him? What you told me was useful. I think they might absolve you.’

‘We may have misjudged
them
.’ The abbé, still in an atoning mood, had heard that the Jesuits in Communard gaols were being edifyingly heroic. A man he knew had gone to the Dépôt on the night of the great arrest – 4th April – and, passing a cell door, heard the rallying words ‘“
Ibant
gaudentes
!” The martyrs went to their fate with a joy we may now hope to share!’ It was Father Olivaint, the Jesuit Superior, trying to hearten those around him.

Fastidiously the abbé removed a cooling skin from his bowl of
café
au
lait.
‘I suppose,’ he brooded, ‘that if Jesuit zeal is now for sacrificing themselves rather than others, they may indeed find joy in prison!’ With distaste, he considered then ate the dripping spoonful.

‘It could be a legend!’ said the cynical Nicola.

The abbé looked depressed. ‘Maybe,’ he wondered, ‘a spell in prison would do us all good? Not that it helped poor Lagarde!’

Nicola asked what they should think of
him
and Delisle said his task might be impossible because the Communard press was provoking Thiers so as to scupper negotiations. ‘You should see what they print! Accusations that Blanqui is being tortured and the like.’

‘But why start negotiations then undermine them?’

‘They’re divided! When Paris falls, as it must, the moderates inside it will hope to save their necks while the rest will try to force them to fight on. To do that they must make surrender unthinkable. Kill Darboy and perhaps the Jesuits too.’

There was a silence. ‘Do you suppose,’ Nicola wondered, ‘bigots make better martyrs?’

For moments, the abbé wore the look of a tempted man. Then he succumbed. ‘Who,’ he blurted, ‘can say that martyrdom does good? It rouses a revengeful spirit and what good is that unless we, like inquisitors, make war on our own people?’ He wriggled as though his
skin irked him. Peace was his ideal, and those threatening it made him bellicose. There were, he argued, better sacrifices. Had not Lacordaire argued that to become a priest was one in itself? ‘He said that any man who can see through the aching envelope which cramps us to the undying image of God contributes to the blood spilled for salvation. “
Tu
es
sacerdos
in
aeternum
”!
That’s not about blood-letting! As you and I agreed in Rome, my dear Monsignore, it is better to reconcile than to fight!’ Delisle’s smile celebrated a precarious armistice with himself.

Nicola’s experiences were leading him the other way. He remarked evasively: ‘You have it by heart!’

The abbé’s face was alight. ‘For my generation, Lacordaire was the great influence. His message was to bring France back to the faith in ways she could accept, with tact and patriotism. He was the sort of man who makes this Pope see red: a Liberal Catholic like my bishop, Monseigneur Dupanloup, thanks to whose protection I am free to speak to you as I do. For now, a bishop in his own diocese is still strong.’

‘Except for Darboy.’

The abbé sighed.

The Abbé Lagarde was a youngish man with a surge of black hair. Painted by Murillo, his might have been the features of a saint – or have had, in a livelier mood, the appeal of those youths in Baroque paintings who hold a piece of fruit between their lips. Today they looked pent and guarded, as though the Vicar-General were censoring his breath, and a grey smudging of the skin – poor health? Blunt razor? – had the dimming effect of a mask.

Nicola asked what hope he had of obtaining Giraud’s retraction. It was a neutral question unlikely to catch the abbé on the raw.

Lagarde told him that the archbishop’s papers had been seized by the Communards. ‘Who knows why? Perhaps they are constructing a gospel acccording to themselves? That could be, for the last letter I received from Monseigneur was in duplicate. Odd, don’t you think, that they should make him write two? My guess’ said the abbé, ‘is that one copy had been intended for the press which propagates a gospel in which I am publicly dishonoured. Even Monseigneur must believe this version since, as my letters to him are intercepted, I dare not give him my reasons for lingering here. Forgive me. This is a long answer to your question.’

Nicola bowed and left. What else was there to say? As he went out, he saw a young woman waiting, and wondered whether she was the courier, come again to beg the abbé to stop being Judas.

His next call was on the nuncio, Monsignor Chigi.

‘Welcome back!’ cried His Excellency festively, but meant to the fold rather than to France. He had a copy of the latest
Osservatore
Romano
containing a notice of Nicola’s assent to the dogma. The bishop was the very last Italian to submit, said the nuncio, and to celebrate invited him to dinner this evening. We could talk then. Unfortunately, just now … Smiling with affable regret, Chigi sighed at the press of business with which he had to cope. Nicola left.

Had Pius made an appeal for Darboy? By the terms of Nicola’s agreement with Prospero, the news in the
Osservatore
meant that the Pope must have done so. Else Prospero would surely not have submitted Nicola’s letter of consent. Hoping to hearten the unfortunate Lagarde, Nicola returned to tell him this.

To his surprise, the abbé seemed already heartened. The bishop must have brought him luck. He had had news from Paris and, without wishing to divulge too much, could reveal that a plan – not the one involving Monsieur Thiers, but a parallel backstairs effort – was on the point of success. ‘We must pray, Monsignore! We must knock on all doors.’

Nicola told his own news then, and the two celebrated modestly, as a footman brought in a decanter and a plate of
petits
fours
with the compliments of the abbé’s host, a Monsieur Perrot, who was, said the abbé, the deputy for l’Oise.

They discovered that they had mutual acquaintances and this so disarmed Lagarde that he began to tell of the obstacles encountered here in Versailles, where the Government was as distrustful of the hostages as of their captors. ‘Monsieur Thiers,’ he revealed, ‘says that Monseigneur is now a blind instrument of the Commune!’

‘Because he asked to be exchanged?’

‘Because he acknowledges in his letters that the Communards have grievances. Unfortunately, he mentioned “barbaric acts” committed by our troops. Monsieur Thiers was indignant. Monseigneur could not have foreseen that passions here would be so inflamed and his charity seen as, well, frankly, cowardice. His old reputation as a friend of
free-thinkers
counts against him too. Indeed, I am as worried for his honour
as his life …’ Wearily, the abbé batted a hand across his eyes. ‘You find me,’ he confessed, ‘in a weak moment. Hope softens me. Warmth after cold is treacherous. I must not burden you with dangerous knowledge.’

That evening at the nuncio’s residence the first person Nicola saw was Amandi’s old major-domo, Gianni, who was wearing Monsignor Chigi’s livery and wept at the sight of him. Seeing Nicola also begin to give way, he drew him into a small room. Gianni was motherly. Have a little cry, he recommended. We can stay here a while – unless Monsignore would rather be alone?

‘No, no!’ Nicola felt overcome.
Famulus
was a servant, after all, and it was painful to remember how Cardinal Amandi’s
familia
had broken up.

Gianni produced a glass of something consoling.

‘Do you want me greeting His Excellency with brandy on my breath?’

‘Thought of that, didn’t I?’ Proffering a peppermint fondant, Gianni dropped his voice. ‘I have information which will interest your lordship.’

Nicola was amused. ‘So you keep up your old ways! Isn’t it harder to keep informed here, Gianni?’

Of course it was, whispered Gianni. Of course! Servants were worked harder, so how could they find time to swop information? It was astonishing how hard the French worked, though, lately, you could see the need for it, what with having to clean up after the Prussian pigs, if calling them that wasn’t an insult to the pig, which was one of God’s creatures and clean when you gave him a chance to be – unlike Prussians.
They
were dirty animals and so was their King Emperor who – Gianni had this from the footman who’d had to deal with the outcome

– had shat in a window bay,
si proprio
cacato
!, when he’d billeted himself on the Archbishop of Rheims, then wiped his bum on the curtains! So the French had been kept busy cleaning the stain on their honour, not to speak of their furnishings. They’d even cleaned the Paris streets after the Prussian victory march. With lye! Not but that they’d have to be washed in blood one day too. Redeemed, said Gianni, lapsing into a vocabulary redolent of his employers’ calling. But to come back to French servants. Gianni was training a few likely fellows to pick up information. That was how he knew that Monsignore had visited the Abbé Lagarde twice today – ‘Eh, Monsignore! Am I well informed?’ –
which meant that Gianni’s tidbit must be of interest It came from the Préfecture where Monsieur l’Abbé and Monsieur Thiers used to hold talks. No more, though! Monsieur Thiers had
broken
them
off
a
week
ago.
Lowering his voice further, Gianni whispered that since then the abbé had stayed here for one reason only: to fool the Communards who, if they knew the talks were stopped and they weren’t going to get their man Blanko, would shoot the archbishop!
Pan
! Gianni laid a finger next to his nose and tapped it. ‘You’d better go into the drawing room, now, Monsignore.’

Nicola was dismayed to find Louis Veuillot among the nuncio’s guests. The journalist, however, behaved as though they were fast friends and drew him into an exchange with an Englishman who, having come to distribute food donated by the population of London, was one of the few people able to go freely in and out of Paris. ‘Mr Blount is on good terms with the
Communenx
!’ sneered Veuillot.

The Englishman retorted that, whatever their practice, some of the Communards’ principles were admirable. Veuillot asked if it was true that Cluseret, their War Minister, had been General in Chief of the Fenians in England. Blount hadn’t heard this.

‘Scum!’ said Veuillot.

At dinner, Nicola sat next to a frilly Polish lady who confided that there was a crusade among her countrymen to save the archbishop. ‘Our gentlemen fight on both sides, so we have access to General Cluseret through Jaroslaw Dombrowski, the Commandant of Paris. Cluseret,’ she lowered her voice, ‘likes money!’

‘Surely, Madame, we should not talk of such things?’

The lady looked surprised. ‘But we are among ourselves!’

He remarked that there were servants in the room.

‘Servants!’ Her imagination leapfrogged past his. ‘French Jacobins? In the pay of the Commune? Are we safe?’

He assured her that servants were rarely revolutionaries. But the lady kept looking over her shoulder and when a decanter slid past it, so forgot her breeding as to knock it away. The wine made a stain in the damask and the subsequent mopping brought a lull in which Veuillot could be heard defending his decision to reprint attacks made by Communard papers on the Abbé Lagarde.

These, objected the Englishman, must be painful to the abbé.

‘That,’ said Veuillot, ‘is our hope!’

Observing the polemicist with interest, Nicola saw that his appearance was at odds with his bellicosity. His flesh was slack and his snub features had an air of
bonhomie
. The Englishman must have spoken in Lagarde’s defence, for Veuillot cried that to show mercy to the sinful was to encourage sin.

‘This cannot be sound doctrine?’ Blount appealed to Chigi who admitted that zeal sometimes carried Monsieur Veuillot too far.

‘Which,’ the nuncio smiled drolly, ‘allows
us
to intervene on the side of clemency and win hearts. Some say it’s a Romish plot.’

Nicola asked whether Lagarde might not be keeping his own counsel for tactical reasons.

Veuillot fixed him with an eye untroubled by nuance. It was like a dog’s eye. Did the bishop think, he asked, that the abbé was following up some clandestine intrigue? Nicola said he didn’t know and wouldn’t speak if he did. It was a time for prudence.

Veuillot pretended to flinch. ‘An episcopal rebuke! What about freedom of speech? Our English friend will be scandalised to hear a Liberal bishop – sorry, sorry, Monsignore, the word slipped out!’

‘The word doesn’t frighten me,’ Nicola told him.

‘And it didn’t frighten Darboy! Indeed, gentlemen, what we have here is a priest physically captured by forces which held him mentally captive all his life! What now are the odds?’ asked Veuillot. ‘Will he die well or will he cringe and …’