Popes and Phantoms

by John Whitbourn

  … And then the Pope made a joke about the ‘Lion of Judah’ at which I was expected to laugh. But for imagining him naked and painted blue I do not think I could have managed it. Even so, I fear I may have been less than convincing in my deception. Therefore please speak to him on our behalf upon your return. Destroy this letter.

  Your loving brother in monotheism and melancholy,

  Rabbi Megillah.

  ‘So how goes it with the Roman Hebrews?’ asked Numa Droz. He was examining a crossbow quarrel, pondering ways to improve lethality but still sufficiently bored to show an unprecedented interest in others.

  Admiral Slovo carelessly let the letter drop from his fingers, and the night breeze bore it off the Tower, and into the moonlit, Tuscan countryside below. ‘It goes badly,’ he replied languidly, ‘but that is nothing in the least novel. As head of the community, Megillah has been skinned for the Lion money.’

  ‘Serves him right,’ smiled Droz, showing his brown peg teeth. ‘What’s the Lion money then?’

  ‘The salary and expenses of the Custos Leonis who looks after the symbolic, but nevertheless live, lion traditionally held on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Surely you must have seen it?’

  ‘No, Admiral, I haven’t. I don’t go to Rome to sight-see.’

  But to be told who to kill, thought Slovo. ‘Quite. Well, on reflection, perhaps your omission is not so surprising. The lion is tame and gentle and easily intimidated by the brutality of the Roman crowd. It therefore rarely emerges from its cage. Even so, the related cost is said to be thirty silver florins per annum and in memory of the price paid to Judas for the betrayal of the Christ-person, such a sum is yearly extracted from the Roman Hebrews. Conjoined with all the other depredations they are prey to, it presents them with no small problem.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Droz, his conversational attention span reaching its limits, ‘they should kill it.’

  ‘The lion, you mean?’ queried Slovo, somewhat puzzled.

  ‘Why not?’ replied the Swiss mercenary, enviably untouched by doubt. ‘The lion, the custodian, whoever …’

  ‘So here we are again,’ said the Admiral, idly amused. ‘Your explanation and remedy for all ills: kill it.’

  Numa Droz adopted his ‘honest peasant among sophisticates’ persona. ‘Well, it’s a maxim that always served me well,’ he sad stoutly.

  Admiral Slovo would have been hard put to dispute the point. Captain of the Ostia Citadel at twenty-one, roving problem-remover for three Popes by the age of thirty, possessor of a smooth and unstressed family life, Numa Droz occupied the high ground in any such argument.

  Silence, save for the sounds of perpetual war between owl and vole, fell as the duo on the tower resumed their vigil, peering out into the unlit night, grading shadows and evaluating the mutation of shades.

  Admiral Slovo would have been content never to speak to mankind again, but Numa Droz, for all the bloodiness of his progress from the Alps to the Apennines, retained a degree of sociability. To his mind, speech and noise were useful indicators of life – lack of them usually meaning his job was done. The corollary of this, however, was that prolonged quiet made him uneasy. He worried that he too might have crossed the great divide without realizing (another of his range of tricks).

  ‘You’re very pally with Jews, aren’t you?’ he said eventually.

  Slovo undermined his answer by hesitation. ‘… Yes – and why not?’

  Numa Droz ignored the riposte. ‘We’ve got Jews in Canton Uri,’ he said. ‘Came from Heidelberg where the people gave ’em a hard time. It turned those left into a vicious bunch of daggermen: neutral, close-grained sort of folk as far as humanity goes; bad enemies. I really like them.’

  ‘Remind me never to introduce you to my acquaintance, Rabbi Megillah,’ mused Slovo.

  ‘There’s a saying about Hebrews in Uri, Admiral,’ continued Droz unabashed. ‘If anything’s really dangerous – you know, an iffy bridge or splintery seat – “it’s like a Jew with a knife”, we say. Now, is that high praise or what?’

  ‘Dangerous?’ queried the young lady emerging through the Tower’s trap door, catching the echo of conversation and repeating it with hot interest. ‘What’s so dangerous?’

  ‘Nothing that need engage your attention,’ growled Numa Droz, turning back to scan the outer darkness. Free as she was with her favours, the Lady Callypia de Marinetti would never sleep with a barbarian such as a Swiss. Knowing this, Droz was accordingly tormented with desire.

  ‘How are you, my lady?’ asked Slovo with great courtesy. ‘Can you not sleep?’

  The beautiful young patrician unleashed a full volley of charm at the Admiral, and then remembered that in his case her powder was damp and useless. The charm was extinguished like a light.

  ‘I cannot sleep,’ she said, reverting to tartness, ‘because I am plagued by your Englishman following me: he even attempts to settle outside my door. I have come to complain.’

  ‘She’s plagued by something all right,’ said the soldier who now joined them on the roof. ‘Or maybe lack of something, hur hur!’

  ‘Then you still suspect there are matters afoot, Master Cromwell?’ asked Slovo gently.

  ‘Borr … she’s up to something tonight,’ said Thomas Cromwell. ‘There’s fires lit in there expecting quenching before cock crows, I reckon.’

  To the fastidious Admiral, all speech bar his native Italian sounded like angry coughing but he recognized the control and cultivation overlying the soldier’s earthy peasant tones.

  ‘How dare …!’ exclaimed de Marinetti, for probably the fiftieth time that day. No one paid attention, for the act was wearing thin.

  Cromwell dared because he was abroad and armed and fortified with the qualities expected of a Cockney Brewer’s son. ‘They may be all eyes and legs, these nobility,’ he continued, ‘but I know the spirit of the farmyard when I see it.’

  ‘Yes … yes, thank you,’ said Admiral Slovo, only his Stoicism preventing an impermissible show of embarrassment.

  ‘We go!’ hissed Numa Droz from the parapet’s edge, waving them all to silence with a compelling chop of his gauntleted hand. Cromwell permitted himself a thin-lipped smile of vindication.

  For all his sympathy concerning the dictates of passion in others, the Admiral looked sternly on de Marinetti. She had only been in his charge for a mere month: what were young people coming to?

  Seeing the game was up, Callypia shrugged her tiny shoulders, expressing the Pagan innocence of her time and class.

  Carried clearly on the still air, they heard the gentle rasp of gravel upon glass further along the priory wall.

  ‘Love craves entry,’ whispered Numa Droz, ‘(if you see what I mean). And though the bed is empty, still he must have his night to remember.’

  In an impressive blur, the Swiss rose, sighted and fired his crossbow. A howl like the end of the world livened the night.

  ‘Right in the parts!’ exulted Droz, addressing de Marinetti. ‘He’s a fine-looking youth – but not much use to you now, I fear.’

  The lady, looking wiser than her sixteen summers should permit, was already descending the stairway. Bisected by the Tower floor, she turned back to reply. ‘If the ancient writers were studied,’ she said, firing another full broadside of allure in order to taunt, ‘in the place from which you spring, then you would know there are subtler refinements of joy than plain fornication. I go now to explore them. Sleep well, gentlemen – and you too, Swiss.’

  Admiral Slovo (who knew precisely what she meant) and the soldiers who (even worse) could construct some guesses, were silenced. Prisoner though she was, de Marinetti retained the power to sow seeds that would blossom and grow, spreading their poison rest for seasons to come.

  She then departed, mistress of the field.

  Each wrapped in coils of unhealthy speculation, the three captors followed her down. The sobs and groans from the priory grounds continued a little longer before stopping abruptly and for ever.

/>   What have I become, thought Admiral Slovo, remembering the child that he must once have been, that I find cruel things funny?

  ‘As one professional to another,’ said Thomas Cromwell, to Numa Droz the following morning, ‘I would advise against your present daydreams. Would you shoot so well with your eyes removed? Would there be point in such thoughts if your manly parts were torn out?’

  Droz knew the advice was both timely and well meant. He tore his eyes from Madame de Marinetti’s retreating form for fear of the operation being performed literally.

  ‘It’s that bad, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Or that good,’ nodded Cromwell. ‘Palatine gossip says her invention is so unique, her performance so mettlesome, that she makes monogamy a viable option. That holds obvious attractions for a Pope for, after all, he has a certain position to maintain. Alas, however, the lady’s energies are … exuberant and Pope Julius is a jealous man. He thinks a spell in this forsaken hole might cool his mistress’s passions – other than for him, that is.’

  Numa Droz laughed: an unnatural and unpractised sound. ‘What? With all these novices and us here? Not to mention half the gentlemen of the region now wearing crossbow bolts in their codpieces.’

  ‘Leave the “us” out of it,’ said Cromwell, an edge of iron in his voice. ‘I saw what was done to the Scribbiacci brothers in Rome for essaying what you have in mind. Blood waterfalled freely from the scaffold and the hangman had to be paid extra. It was most educational and accordingly, for my part, I look at her as I would my mother.’

  Numa Droz acknowledged the wisdom of this. ‘And, of course, the Admiral is her appointed custodian,’ he said. ‘Beware him, Englishman: he reads minds and is married to the stiletto.’

  ‘He has commendable self-control,’ concluded Cromwell. ‘And I intend to emulate him in this respect. You should do the same. It might,’ he went on, wrinkling his nose, ‘enable us to transcend the present overpowering stench.’

  ‘I know,’ agreed Droz. ‘Ghastly, isn’t it? I hate flowers.’

  Admiral Slovo, who had listened in to all this, decided there was nothing of import brewing between his two mercenaries. There was, of course, a contingency plan for the disposal of either or both but, for the present, it could lie, chill but ready, in the ice-house of his subtle calculations. He walked on.

  ‘Must those two follow me everywhere?’ snarled de Marinetti. ‘Can’t I even walk in a garden without—’

  ‘Patience,’ said the Prioress, ‘is the open secret of happiness: lack of this quality is, I think, the seat of your troubles.’

  ‘The seat of her troubles,’ whispered Droz to Cromwell, ‘is her seat.’

  Callypia glowered at the blameless grass but deferred to superior spirit when she heard it. Admiral Slovo was happy merely to observe the fray, holding his own decisive forces in reserve.

  ‘For instance.’ the Prioress continued gently, ‘it required patience to create this garden but, within a few decades, my restraint has borne a beautiful harvest. Look about you, child.’

  For safety’s sake, de Marinetti glanced briefly up at the great coloured ramparts of flowers that bordered the narrow paths. Right up to where the walls of the garden met the sky, an anarchy of starbursts and tendrils was all that met her eye. ‘It is too much,’ she announced. ‘You have incited nature to excess.’

  Admiral Slovo’s judgement was not so harsh. Although (also for safety’s sake) self-trained to aesthetic indifference, he quite liked the riotous garden. The unusual degree of concealment offered rendered it an assassin’s dream.

  ‘As you may already suspect,’ continued the serene old lady, ‘this garden is my pride and joy. It has blossomed and flourished in direct proportion to the joy and detachment I increasingly feel and, as such, may be a divinely permitted metaphor.’

  ‘But what if,’ Master Cromwell said confidently, ‘man is master of his own destiny? I heard it proposed in Antwerp that the Almighty set the universal mechanism in motion and then stepped back. Opinions vary, but perhaps he has withdrawn until the Day of Judgement – or even for ever. If so, we are alone: and these are just riotous blooms and no more. What then?’

  The Prioress looked quizzically at the Admiral.

  ‘it is a foible of mine’ he said, ‘to permit liberality of speech in my servitors. It amuses me because of the occasional gem of perspective that, from time to time, emerges. However, if he is being offensive …’

  ‘No,’ said the Prioress in a kindly voice. ‘He may be English but his mind shows tolerable discernment.’

  Cromwell frowned again and the observant Admiral saw the face of murder briefly surge up from its place of confinement.

  ‘Well,’ said Numa Droz, ‘if we’re all to be permitted to put our pike in, what I’d like to say is that this place would make a fine defensive point for the Priory. Hack them plant-things away, platform and crenellate the walls and you could hold this for days against pirates and free-companies.’

  ‘Or lovers of the inmates,’ said Cromwell, with cold anger.

  The Prioress spoke up at once. ‘The blooms,’ she said, impelling Droz to silence, ‘will not be cut. I forbid it absolutely.’

  The spirit in her voice caused the little party to wake anew. De Marinetti looked at the Prioress, perhaps scenting some weak point on which to play. Admiral Slovo was obliged to suppress a flicker of surprise. The soldiers, reflexes triggered by raised voices, were instantly on duty.

  ‘And that is my one permitted selfishness,’ she continued, by way of explanation. ‘Outside this garden I have surrendered my will to God but here; here is where I come to regroup. I trust you will appreciate the military metaphor there, gentlemen – and note it.’

  They nodded.

  ‘Beauty hoarded,’ said de Marinetti, ‘is beauty wasted.’

  ‘Without restraint,’ countered the Prioress, ‘beauty is guzzled and debauched. The senses must be tamed and fed moderately – like a lion in a pleasure garden.’

  The Admiral signalled his wholehearted agreement and cast his own mind cheerily back to when he himself was a mere slave of feeling: before tragedy and experience, before Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism.

  Only Cromwell seemed to remain resentful of the Prioress prevailing, ‘I have heard it said that the Hebrew scriptures say that before the throne of judgement, every soul must one day account for every pleasure missed.’

  ‘Every legitimate pleasure,’ said the Prioress. ‘You really must quote accurately, mercenary.’

  ‘Whatever,’ replied Cromwell blithely. ‘Legitimacy varies from sect to sect.’

  A gulf of years and sadness separated the Prioress from the dangerous energies of the Englishman and she could not find it in herself to blame him for his zest. Christ, she recalled, is in every man – but sometimes in heavy disguise. ‘I am pleased,’ she said, ‘to hear your familiarity with any scripture. Why, to think my previous impression was that the Almighty did not play an overlarge part in your life …’

  ‘Whilst not, of course,’ Cromwell replied, ‘denying God’ (and all the others nodded, observing the formalities of the age) ‘it is at least arguable to consider him remote. One can regard him as the foundation of proper social order but still not require the sight of his hand at work amongst men. I suspect we are effectively orphans and alone in the world – that being so, we must surely make our own way.’

  The Prioress was merely amused and this only infuriated Cromwell the more.

  ‘If I did not know,’ she replied, ‘that my Redeemer liveth and will one day walk the Earth, life would be … insupportable. It would have no point.’

  ‘And why should it have?’ cried Cromwell, warming to his subject. ‘From our puny perspective, why should we perceive any meaning? I see no need for heaven or hell or meaning. It is a mighty universe we inhabit, Prioress, and more than enough to get on with, in fact.’

  Admiral Slovo had long ago ceased to care, and the Prioress held her peace. Meanwhile, way above (or below) a
ll this philosophy, Callypia de Marinetti winked at Numa Droz and shifted her endless legs. Ignoring visions of red-hot pincers and the executioner’s knife, and like all tiny creatures seizing at the fleeting moments life offered before the final dark, Droz winked back.

  ‘So they are all gone?’ asked Admiral Slovo calmly.

  ‘Every one, sir,’ replied the nervous novice. ‘And she has not risen at her customary time. We are all most concerned.’

  De Marinetti placed a (possibly) consoling arm around the young nun’s shoulders and stroked her hand. ‘No one is holding you responsible, my lovely,’ she said. ‘Our suspicions are drifting elsewhere.’

  ‘Not I!’ protested Cromwell. ‘I am capable of many things—’

  ‘Of anything, surely,’ corrected Numa Droz, expressing his professional opinion.

  ‘—but not pettiness,’ Cromwell pressed on.

  Admiral Slovo looked at the mercenary, pinning him with his grey eyes. A tense moment elapsed until, his mental trespass complete, Slovo was satisfied.

  ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘However, given your continual debate with the Prioress these last two weeks, and your obvious ill-will upon being worsted, our initial surmise is surely forgivable.’

  ‘I would not harm the Prioress,’ Master Cromwell maintained stoutly, just the lightest sheen adorning his brow by virtue of Slovo’s scrutiny, ‘or any other old lady.’

  ‘Unless it was necessary or business,’ expanded Numa Droz again.

  ‘Naturally,’ conceded Cromwell.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Slovo. ‘The noose remains untenanted – for the time being. Let us go and examine the evidence first-hand.’

  ‘There may be no case to answer,’ commented Numa Droz reasonably. ‘Old ladies do sleep late sometimes. My great-grandmother …’

  ‘No,’ said the Admiral confidently. ‘This place is diminished: I can sense it. She has gone on.’

  That was enough to decide things and the little party roused themselves from the breakfast table.