‘I won’t do that,’ he said as he sat down. ‘I’ll stay inside and make it uncomfortable for the authorities.’
Nicola told him that the authorities were uncomfortable already. He ordered a milk with honey and talked about Maria. Father Tasso admitted that she could have been corrupted by her own relatives, even if it was self-serving of Rangone to say so. Surprising numbers of children in this parish were the offspring of their official sisters. Mothers registered the births as their own to avoid scandal. Midwives connived. The family was the single most efficient unit in this state. ‘Efficient at keeping up appearances, and thus an image of the state itself – which is driven to Holy Hypocrisy because it represents heaven! Bear with me,’ said the priest; ‘sometimes I fear I’m losing my reason!’
Nicola thought this possible. There was a tremor in Tasso’s voice as he talked of sin and how we were all responsible for it. Not just the sinner. Perhaps the sinner least of all?
Nicola asked if he meant we should have more charitable institutions. Like San Rocco? But Tasso said, no, what we needed was employment. Industry. ‘That,’ he confided, ‘is why I voted for the constitution. Mazzini can’t do worse than we did.’
‘What should I do about Maria?’
‘What are you prepared to do?’
Nicola wasn’t sure. Better do nothing then, said the priest. ‘If you took her out of San Rocco and made her your mistress, then got tired of her, you know what would happen.’
Nicola said he might help the child. Stop it being put on the wheel. The priest looked doubtful.
‘It might have been me.’
‘Or Christ.’
Nicola said he would go to Rome. His confessor disadvised this. However, the idea of Rome enthralled him and he remarked that if Nicola did go – against his advice – he might see historic changes. Besides, he wasn’t Nicola’s spiritual adviser any more or anyone’s. ‘Pius IX delivered a forked message and I’m at a loss.’
‘What about obedience?’
‘To whom? Pius the Liberal or Pius the Conservative?’
*
Piedmont now denounced the armistice with Austria and was defeated by her at Novara. This alarmed the French.
Don Vigilio brought Cardinal Amandi copies of secret dispatches sent by their ambassador to his superiors in Paris. The originals had been in cypher, but here they were en clair.
‘We have copies of their seals too.’ He spoke with professional pride. ‘So we can reseal the letters.’
‘Regretfully,’ wrote the ambassador, ‘hopes of effecting a reconciliation between the Pope and his people are quite illusory. They do not want the priests’ government back and he will hold out no hope of introducing liberal institutions. The clique around him is Austrian to the core!’
‘I am not Cardinal Secretary of State. Have you shown these to Antonelli?’
The agent winked. ‘The wind is on the turn. France may end up by siding with the men now in charge in Rome.’
Amandi read his mind: if that happened, men like himself and Rosmini would be in the saddle and Antonelli – who was compromising himself with Austria – out.
‘I told the Pope,’ wrote the ambassador, ‘that our Republic would come up against grave difficulties if asked to go to Rome to destroy a sister-republic.’
There was also a copy of a note sent by the French Embassy in Gaeta to the one in Rome:
‘Speaking in strict confidence, our mission is to convince the Roman Republic that we, as Republicans, are on their side, while letting the papal court in Gaeta suppose that, as Catholics, we are on theirs. We may thus hope to prevent Austria from taking Rome before we do.’
‘In which case,’ said Don Vigilio, ‘conciliatory policies would be imposed!’ Turning up his hands to show acceptance of the divine will, he bowed and withdrew.
Bologna, April 1849
Nicola’s new confessor disagreed with the old one. Of course Nicola must go and save that innocent girl! Did he realise how dangerously he had been living? He lectured him at length. ‘Go to Republican Rome?’
‘And would you leave the girl alone in that rabid forest?’ Don Carlo was a frowning inquisitor of a man with a head like the eagle on the Austrian bearings which managed to look two ways at once. Lean in his cassock as a charred string bean, he had a blaze of white, wispy hair which flared in a halo from his shrivelled skull. He had imposed himself on Nicola, saying he was taking over Father Tasso’s penitents and implying that they must be tainted and in need of being spiritually gingered up.
Cardinal Oppizzoni, who seemed in need of this himself, said Nicola might go to Rome. ‘Was your conscience so very troubled?’ he asked, and Nicola guessed that he should not have spoken frankly to the new confessor. Oppizzoni did not say so, but neither did he say – as he had of Tasso – that Don Carlo could be trusted not to abuse the confessional.
Gaeta, April 1849
Amandi, who was being sent to yet another mountain village to see yet another female visionary, guessed that he was being got off the scene.
‘God’s voice,’ hoped Pius, ‘may be speaking through her.’
But with the chorus of reaction now baying with full throat, it seemed unlikely that any messages, divine or otherwise, would get through. Conservatives were zestfully hunting down proponents of the tolerance which had led to Rome’s falling into radical hands and Rosmini was their prime quarry. His books were being combed for heresy and this would almost certainly be found, perhaps after he too was off the scene.
Mastai was being pressed to make a decision but could not, his friend knew, bring himself to make one while Rosmini and Amandi himself were nearby. He liked them better than Antonelli, who was not his kind of man – yet, for him, this discredited them because it was by yielding to human preferences that he had brought things to their present pass. He knew himself to be too easily moved.
He was shrewd too though and, if the sceptical Amandi was again being plunged like a demon in the holy water font, might not the papal aim be two-fold? Might he be counting on Amandi to ensure that the new visionary was not a tool forged by the forces of reaction – Antonelli and the Jesuits – to manipulate Pius himself?
We are being played off against each other, Amandi decided, and left Gaeta just as the Catholic Powers – animated by equally divergent aims – prepared to send in their troops.
Bologna
Monsignor Bedini was to be the new Legate to the northern Legations just as soon as the Austrians recaptured them for the Pope. This was a reward from Cardinal Antonelli, on whose behalf Bedini had secretly gone to France to stir up Catholic opinion in favour of His Eminence’s policies.
Cardinal Amandi’s behaviour gave Bedini pause. Was he playing a deep game? Why was he haring off after demented shepherdesses? Was his disinterest in politics a screen – and if so for what? Gossip – Gaeta was a gossip-shop – had it that he had some unassessable hold on the Pope. Might he, Bedini, be backing the wrong horse?
Reports from Bologna said that Amandi’s main connection there was a youth as green as duckweed who was in the employ of that old fox, Oppizzoni. The usual speculations had been made mat the boy could be a catamite, a spy, or the son of the Pope’s reputedly wanton sister, Isabella. Of Isabella and – whom? Rumours could make your head spin.
Bedini instructed his informant, Don Carlo, to offer the boy a suit of clothes, but neither to reveal Bedini’s expectations of being the next Legate nor premature sympathy for Austria. When Don Carlo found that his penitent wanted to go to Rome, Bedini was cock-a-hoop. Encourage him, he advised. He’ll lead us to his master. Encourage Oppizzoni to let him go. There was, wrote Don Carlo, some story about a girl. A pretext? Optime! Clearly, the boy was going there to make contact with Amandi. What else?
*
The tailor measured Nicola for the promised suit but said it could not be made ready in time if the young gentleman was leaving. Nicola, who had been puzzled by the gift, said never mind. He must leave now if he was to ca
tch up with Maria before she was confined.
‘He must think he’s clever,’ said Don Carlo irritably.
‘We’ll start building the suit anyway,’ promised the tailor. ‘You can come for your next fitting when you return.’
Thirteen
Rome, 1849
On 30 April, a French attack on Rome was repulsed. In the aftermath the city grew eloquent. Even the slow, swag-necked oxen began looking like emblems. Even the mimosa blossom which hardened like gun shot. Romans knew about gesture. Putting defiance into their nonchalant habits, they prolonged siestas until late breezes had turned laundry into pennants and curtains into parodies of gun smoke. Ordinary living became a thumbing of the Roman nose at the French camp. Spies would make known the city’s self-possession – and its contempt for fellow-republicans fighting on the wrong side. So thought the citizens who had learned showmanship from the Church, and were stimulated by their new role. Danger spiced what was already a near-sexual glee.
‘Italians don’t fight,’ was what the French commander had said. Then his men had been driven back!
The Roman Republic had life in it yet and, in the pollen-laden waft – of lime, acacia, horses, hay – customers at open-air cafés lingered to argue the toss. The intentions of the sister-republic were unclear. Protective or punitive? Rome was on the qui vive. The horses, so sweetly redolent of spring grass, had been commandeered and gravel strewn on the cobbles lest the cavalry skid.
*
Nicola had come straight to the Foundling Home where girls sat squinting over a froth of needlework. There were maybe a hundred, all with deferent eyes, and, though one might have looked for gloom, expectancy rippled when the door opened. Any break was welcome in their numb routine. These, said Don Mauro, were the ‘spinsters’. Left as infants on the Foundlings’ wheel, they would work here until they died, unless picked out at one of the processions when they were paraded for inspection by men who needed wives. Country lads were glad to get them – and glad of their small dowries.
Don Mauro, looking blithe and rosy, had the run of Rome’s charitable institutions. Since the Pope’s Monitorio, there had been a shortage of priests, so he had been filling in for absentees and saying mass all over town.
Mass? Had he been restored to the priesthood then? How could he have been? Nicola guessed that, in a flight of wishful thinking, he had re-ordained himself, then compounded his fault by collaborating with the Republic. If so, penalties would be implacable, but the little cleric seemed oblivious of this. He was rigged out in stole and cassock, having just heard the spinsters’ confessions, when he stepped into the hall to find Nicola badgering the doorkeeper about recently abandoned infants.
‘They have tags around their necks,’ the doorkeeper had been saying. ‘With a mark. You must describe the mark.’
But Nicola didn’t know whether Maria had even had a child, much less whether she had put a tag on it or left it here.
‘Over eight hundred a year are left,’ scolded the doorkeeper.
Don Mauro took Nicola to see the wheel on which a woman out in the street could leave her bundled infant, then ring a bell and run off without being seen. A nurse, inside the building, would then turn it so that the baby passed inside the wall. The space was designed for newborn infants but, in bad times, two-and even three-year-olds had been known to squeeze through. Times now, Don Mauro admitted, were bad. He too, it struck Nicola, was trying to smuggle himself inside an institution: the Church.
He showed Nicola around with proprietorial pride. ‘We,’ he said, referring to the Church, but also to the Republic. A reconciliation had taken place in his heart and he forgot that it did not prevail. Yet he saw himself as practical. ‘I went to see Mazzini,’ he disclosed. ‘The Republicans are not priest-haters. That’s a lie.’ And he wagged a monitory finger. ‘People gave me petitions to submit. They had high hopes. But, we have less money than the Pope. This war is an expense and we can’t borrow because international bankers won’t lend. Cardinal Antonelli made the diplomatic corps in Gaeta agree to warn them not to!’
As he and Nicola left the building, pale arms waved from a window. The zitelle were enjoying a break. If the Republic survived, something would be done for the poor creatures, assured Don Mauro. ‘By the way,’ he remembered, ‘I met a friend of yours among the wounded. A man called Martelli. He’s at the Trinità dei Pellegrini. Father Gavazzi’s in charge there. He’s having trouble with his order. The secular authorities obliged them to house him and do his laundry – can you believe that they were refusing? Now he says they piss in his soup. There was bad blood over the setting up of military hospitals. Convents had to be requisitioned. It was during the siege.’
Cassock hitched up, Don Mauro skipped over ruins left by the French bombardment. Clutching Nicola’s elbow, he asked: ‘Have you seen Prospero Stanga? His father complains that he doesn’t write.’
*
The French encampment outside the walls was close enough to wave at. Vive la fraternité! jeered ironic citizens. The French Republic was just fourteen months old. Surely its soldiers must dislike this assignment? Washing lines outside their tents looked harmlessly domestic. A number of Roman democrats had spent their exile in France.
It was harder to forgive the Neapolitans. Those Austrian puppets – Bomba was allied with Austria – were to blame for the Pope’s harshness to his own city. Even now, Garibaldi’s troops were fighting off their incursions to the south and jeering verses were being bandied about:
Pulcinella, discontent
At serving in the regiment,
Sends his Mama this lament:
‘Bad conditions, lousy pay,
So in the pinch I ran away.
Now I’m caught I rue the day!
Mama darling, Mama bella,
Pray to God for Pulcinella!
Pulcinella, the Neapolitan puppet – a relative of the English braggart, Punch – would not soon set eyes on Rome; nor would any other puppets of Austria unless they chanced to see it on a map!
Meanwhile, there was a ceasefire and the empty days were suddenly intolerable. Young men and those who were not so young felt an urge to be doing something significant.
Nicola and Prospero were self-absorbed, but then this was one of those times when the self absorbs the world. Dressed in tight-waisted jackets and soft hats, they took garrulous walks or went to play bowls, but were apt to pause in mid-play, holding the wooden globes forgotten in their fingers. Each carried a silver-topped cane which Prospero had bought in a mixed lot from a junkman.
‘Looted property?’ he guessed. ‘I’ll give them back if I discover whose they were.’
He hinted at private misadventures but, when pressed to confide, was apt to turn the talk to public ones. News from Bologna was bad. Austrian troops had it surrounded and Prospero, who got long letters from his father, discounted the old man’s optimism.
‘Count Rossi,’ he told Nicola, ‘had proof that the Bolognese resistance of last August was not the miracle it seemed. The Austrians had orders to retreat before the fight began.’
He hated heroics. It was as though his father’s animating spark risked setting the world on fire. Scepticism had not saved Rossi but was at least adult, and it pleased Prospero that the French, on their march here, had found their route lined with large notices bearing exerpts from their own constitution: ‘France respects foreign nationalities … She does not … take arms against the freedom of other peoples.’ Etc. Lies deserved to be shown up!
His mouth squirmed. ‘They didn’t expect to have to fight at all. Read this.’ He handed Nicola a copy of La Solidarité Républicaine, printed in Paris some days before.
Nicola read:
*
INTERVIEW RECORDED OUTSIDE ROME WITH RELEASED FRENCH PRISONER
The man, who asks to remain anonymous, said: ‘Our Roman captors were amazed at fellow-Republicans coming to fight a people who are seeking nothing but freedom. Our ministers in Paris are in the hands of the clerical fac
tion. They told us a pack of lies and that we would be liberating Rome from criminals. Well, we saw no criminals, only decent folk who cheered when we were released. There were tricolours at every window, ours and theirs. We’re back in camp now and afraid we’ll be sent out again to fight our brothers!
Prospero took back the paper. ‘They will be,’ he said. ‘Whoever killed Count Rossi threw away the last chance of a compromise. The diplomatists are wasting their time.’
Nicola found his friend’s cold-eyed disillusion impressive. Might their generation achieve wisdom without the drudgery of ageing? At the same time, he felt rather attracted by the ideals of La Solidarité Républicaine which must be the same ones as animated Father Bassi who was here with the troops winning new praise for his bravery. Nicola, glancing shyly at other young men in the ornate, churchy café, wondered which way they inclined.
Prospero’s eye followed his. ‘They’re spending their paper money,’ he observed. ‘The Republic simply printed money!’ After his apprenticeship with Rossi this shocked him.
‘Which side are you on, Prospero?’
Prospero didn’t believe in sides. People deluded themselves – and so had he. Abruptly confidences began to flow. They concerned Madame de Menou with whom all was now over.
‘But,’ Nicola put his question with the care of a man handling a divining rod, ‘you’re still in love with her?’
‘Perhaps.’ Prospero looked gloomy. Love was, apparantly, as unwelcome in its recurrences as a case of malaria. It had started, he explained, on the day of Count Rossi’s death when he went to her palace in shame, wondering how to tell her that he had not been with the count when he died. True, he had seen him later but, by then, Rossi’s son had taken charge and Prospero found that he had no claim. Belatedly, it struck him as odd that he should have lived for months in daily intimacy with his employer without meeting a single member of his family.
The Judas Cloth Page 27
