‘You should have gone before the French came,’ said Martelli. ‘They’re sour now. Several were murdered on their first night.’
Martial law had been proclaimed, with a curfew at nine o clock.
Outside, the three ran into Gilmore, whom neither Martelli nor Nicola had seen since school. Despite his protests, they took him in near custody to lunch. He was on an errand for his rector and looked dazed, having been immured in the Irish College for months. Under the Republic, this, being under the protection of the British crown, had offered asylum to a number of conservative prelates. Gilmore looked as though he expected to see a citizenry with horns and hooves. He was clutching a small case which caught Martelli’s eye. What was in it, he asked, but Gilmore clutched it more tightly and wouldn’t say. Martelli made his nose quiver, which was an old trick of his and made them laugh. The conversation then turned to the menu, the recent lack of food and how, thanks to the French, supplies were now arriving.
Suddenly, while Gilmore was busy with his soup, Martelli snatched and opened his case. ‘English passports!’ he cried with delight. ‘Your prayers have been answered, Don Mauro. Your name is O’Ferrall and if there’s trouble, just grease the customsman’s palm. As for you,’ he told Gilmore, whose elbows were being held, one by Nicola and one by Don Mauro, ‘you can say you were attacked by wild Republicans who threatened to cut your throat. If you like, I’ll make a little slash in it for plausibility’s sake.’
Nicola asked for whom the passport had been intended and was told it was for a double agent named Don Vigilio who had reasons to avoid the French. By now Gilmore was almost in tears and Nicola persuaded Martelli to give back the other passports, arguing that the Irish rector, if sufficiently provoked, might give a list of the names on them to the customs. He might do this anyway, so Don Mauro had better leave at once. The priest kept shaking his head. This had all happened to him before. It was destiny. He’d have to head for Marseilles. There would be plenty of others in the same boat, they told him. Hurry. Meanwhile, Gilmore mustn’t be let out of sight until Don Mauro set off. Nicola, unable to dissociate himself from Martelli’s violence, held Gilmore firmly by one elbow until Don Mauro’s possessions were packed and they had seen him onto a diligence. Mustering his spirits, the exile thanked his rescuers and said he’d pray for them – unless they thought his prayers were no good? What an idea! they yelled. Who said God was a reactionary? That’s heresy, Don Mauro! Laughing and waving, the three – even Gilmore joined in – made a great hubbub.
‘I hope you won’t be in too much hot water,’ said Nicola as they returned the Irish boy’s briefcase.
Gilmore said he wouldn’t ever want to refuse help to a man in need. It was a tentative peace-making – like the one the city must soon make with its pope.
Walking off on his own, Nicola marvelled at the silence. After weeks of bombardment, the sound of a cobbler’s hammer or the clatter of a window startled by their ordinariness – though the ordinary was not yet to be trusted. Confident rats quivered grassily among the ruins. You had to be alert for unstable masonry and die ground was strewn with debris. When it rained, pulverized plaster made a great boil of paste and bubbled as though a new, unimaginable creation were about to emerge from the chaos left by the old one. The ‘Rome of the people’ had lasted only a few months.
From the diary of Raffaello
Lambruschini:
The banishment of Rosmini, the Liberals’ spokesman in Gaeta, showed the rest of us the uselessness of putting our heads on the same block. While we hoped to prevail, it had been our duty to give our prince candid advice, and I had done this in a series of articles in the Tuscan paper, La Patria. As late as May, I still hoped to wean Mastai from the cabal which had gained ascendancy over his conscience. Then I stopped signing my articles, but continued to put the case that it would be folly to provoke the people by answering licence with repression and so perpetuating the vicious circle in which we had for so long been caught. ‘If any hand can break this circle,’ I wrote, ‘it is that of Pius IX.’
Rereading this appeal, I see that I had lost faith in him yet longed to recover it. Half Italy was in the same plight for he had extended our moral scope – then reduced it; a grim, Procrustean trick. No need to record what he did do next: restored the Tribunal of the Inquisition, flogging in the prisons, etc., etc. Once it was clear that the French would hand Rome over to him, he lost all interest in reconciliation.
Unlike myself, Rosmini failed to foresee all this and was shocked to be greeted with the words ‘Caro Abate, we are no longer constitutional.’ This was on the 9th June and two days later the police ordered him out of Gaeta. Incredulous, he asked to hear his sentence from the Pope’s lips, but could not get an audience. No one knew his face. Doormen were stricken by oblivion and men with whom he had spent convivial evenings stared through him. It was, the poor saintly man said later, a deeply unsettling experience.
At last he shamed Cardinal Antonelli into taking him to Pius who was caught off guard. He said that, yes, Rosmini must leave and that his books were being examined for heresy by the Congregation of the Index. He was hazy about why, but promised to pray that God, who had granted Rosmini so many gifts, would grant him that of seeing how his writings displeased Him. ‘Submit to this Holy See and you will surely be enlightened,’ advised Pius.
Rosmini was bewildered. What enlightenment could God give him which Pius could not? His books had not yet been condemned, so who knew that they displeased Him? Had Mastai implied that Rosmini’s gifts – intelligence, for instance – were a liability?
‘Do not,’ I wrote to Amandi, ‘intercede for him.’ Prudence, I warned, must be our watchword, for our day would come and, when it did, we would need men of integrity who had Mastai’s trust.
*
During the siege, Miss Maria Foljambe – whose first name rhymed, as she liked to explain, with pariah – had taken to feeding the wild cats which lived in the Forum and around the Pantheon. At first she brought food in bags, then marshalled a servant with a cart. This activity was looked on askance, for since she was only twenty-six, her lapse into oddity was premature and, to the minds of her compatriots, deplorable since some ridicule devolved on them. She was well connected, which made things worse. The sight of her, her cart, her liveried servant, and the disease-ridden hordes which she had chosen to adopt was unpleasantly suggestive. Protestants were not allowed to have their church within the city walls lest it contaminate those within. Now, as if to prove that such contamination was indeed to be feared, here was this cat lady who was also a genuine English gentlewoman and distantly related to a peer.
Her servant defended the cat food with a cricket bat and had been seen waving it at children.
‘Children are fed by the charities,’ argued Miss Foljambe. ‘Nobody feeds the cats.’
One thought of Egypt. Cat deities. The creatures looked like emanations of the stone. Ancient. Savage. Wild. They seized the nasty stuff and leaped to the top of a broken pillar or some equally defensible high ground to tear at the heart or whatever other organs she had brought. There was a latent insult here, for she had found herself a flock or horde and the terms were grown explosive, having been much in official use, as the Pope, Supreme Shepherd, fulminated his anathema on his flock-turned-horde.
*
At mass, when heads were bowed for the consecration, Nicola, feeling a hand in his pocket, thought it had been picked. Instead, a note had been slipped into it. Someone had scribbled: ‘Intercepted by our agents working for mail-coach; pass on to person concerned.’ He opened it and read:
Excellency,
As Yr Excellency feared, Santi has been frequenting suspect persons, among them one whose scribblings in the French press could have done untold harm to our Sacred Cause. Happily, thanks to Providence and Yr Excellency’s endeavours, his impudent opinions are no longer printed. Why, then, is he still in Rome where he and S share a mistress? One must wonder whether all three belong to a network dedicated to
promoting the interests of a sect which all but wrecked this Realm! Of the three, she is the easiest to arrest and interrogate. Since Austrian forces would be the best agency for this, a letter should be sent telling of her father’s illness and summoning her back to Bologna where these forces are now in charge.
While awaiting Yr Excellency’s instructions, I humbly kiss Yr Excellency’s hand.
The signature was illegible. Horrified, Nicola rushed to Aubry’s lodging, only to find that he had left. And the girl? She, said the doorman, had taken up with a Garibaldino and retreated with them. She was a camp follower, said the man, looking at Nicola with pity. Returning in gloom to his cell, Nicola found a note from Cardinal Amandi who was in Rome and wanted to see him this evening.
*
‘It suits the Church’s enemies‚’ said Amandi, ‘for religion to seem incompatible with freedom, and we have fallen into their trap. If those few priests whom the people trust are shot without our lifting a finger to protect them, we shall have fallen into another.’
‘Few?’ The languid syllable came from the lips of a layman who had been reticently introduced as His Excellency. ‘Are few priests trusted?’ His Excellency had an Austrian accent and a mocking tone.
They were dining in a room which had been whitewashed to cover slogans with which its recent Republican occupants had defaced its walls. Lettering leaked through the paint and Nicola thought he could make out the words: ‘Down’ – or dawn? – ‘… religion’.
Amandi had come from Gaeta with a party of prelates; a trickling prelude to the return of the exiled court.
‘Trust,’ he said, ‘needs to be restored.’
‘As’ – the Austrian sipped his wine – ‘spilt milk to a jug?’
The cardinal ignored this. Could not Nicola, he urged, take a message to Cardinal Oppizzoni? Sub rosa. Viva voce. Fast. Since the roads between here and Bologna were infested by every sort of enemy, he must carry no paper but memorise the following: General Grozkowski, the Austrian governor of occupied Bologna, would be replaced by a more humane officer if Oppizzoni fulfilled a certain requirement. This would save lives. ‘If Your Excellency agrees.’
His Excellency jibbed. Our men, he said, as devoted sons of the Holy Father, were hurt in their filial feelings. Our flag had been insulted. ‘Grozkowski’s a soldier. What can you expect?’
His own affectation of civilian nonchalance was belied by his bearing. Stiffening at the word ‘flag’, his lean frame achieved heraldic abstraction. Excesses, he admitted, were being committed. Shootings. Court martials. Lack of court martials. Well; war was war! Still, though the Imperial High Command was under no obligation to do so, some of us – here His Excellency’s stance softened – felt that to appoint a more lenient governor could heal wounds. We must not, be it understood, seem weak. There must be a quid pro quo. Being the policeman of Catholic Europe was proving thankless and what faith could one have in a population which had resisted our efforts to liberate it? Not to speak of what had gone on under the Republic. ‘I believe that in the hinterland Republicans crowned a man with thorns.’
The cardinal said, no, those had been papal supporters and the victim a Republican. Yes, he was sure. Smiling: ‘The Republican imagination is less traditional.’
The Austrian produced a copy of an apology sent by Cardinal Oppizzoni to Gaeta and read mockingly: ‘“While upheavals were afflicting this unhappy province, the sharpest thorn in our heart was our inability to deliver the gullible from the snares of those whose impudence was compounded by their being in Holy Orders …”’ Speeding his delivery, he began to skip: ‘“They corrupted consciences … zzzz … brought legitimate authority into disrepute … In the words of St Jude …”’ He flicked the paper with his nail. ‘The cardinal’s excuse for his culpable tolerance is that he was biding his time. He writes: “Sapiens, tacebit usque ad tempus!” Our belief is that even now the true purpose of this furtive apology is to save the black sheep in his flock. Am I right?’ he asked Nicola who – sapiens tacebit – said he didn’t know. ‘I am,’ said his Excellency. ‘He hopes to save the black sheep and the corrupt shepherds.’
‘Opinion in Gaeta,’ said Amandi, ‘is that the punishment of priests pertains to the spiritual authority. But Grozkowski…’
The Austrian told Nicola, ‘Learn this: the cardinal must make his apology public. He must publish this letter in the Gazzetta di Bologna and condemn the priests who used the gospel to preach socialism and revolution. Only then will Grozkowski be replaced.’
When the Austrian left, the cardinal gave Nicola passports and a dispatch with a papal seal. These would get him past any French or Austrians troops he might encounter. The roads were filled with them, for the hunt for escaping Garibaldini was widespread. The dispatch merely named Nicola as an accredited envoy. The message would be in his head.
‘The truth is,’ confided the cardinal, ‘that opinion in Gaeta is less sympathetic to this move than I wanted our Austrian friend to guess. My influence is on the wane and I think it fair to tell you that if you are planning an ecclesiastical career you may find our connection more of a hindrance than a help. If you want to refuse this errand, do.’
Nicola said he wanted to do it. The cardinal looked older, yet the gap between them had diminished. It was as if Nicola’s acceptance had given him something like a battlefield commission.
‘This is the Ark,’ said Amandi. ‘But who knows whether we have weathered our last Flood.’ He had seen His Holiness before leaving Gaeta and predicted: ‘He will put off his return here to avoid the French. They want him to grant reforms or at least to promise not to repeal those he granted last year. He hates saying “No” to people’s faces.’ Amandi, now in his forties, had deep-set eyes and the leashed, stealthy energy of his caste. Nicola, he said, would find a coach and horses ready in the morning. ‘You’ll have to sleep while you travel. I’ve kept you awake.’
The groom, an ex-soldier, would be armed.
*
Next day Nicola did indeed sleep through much of his journey, only waking when the coach drew up in dim, fly-blown places to change horses. Soon they had left the French troops behind and entered Austrian-controlled territory. Nicola, getting out to spare the horses as they toiled up a slope, was joined by the groom, Enzo, who had heard reports of Austrian atrocities. Villas had been broken into, mirrors shot at and wine cellars looted. Did the villas belong to Liberals? Enzo closed an eye. The white-coats didn’t look too carefully into that.
Meanwhile their coach had been stopped. An officer with an oak-leaf badge leaned so close that Nicola caught the smell of his waxed moustache. On seeing the papal seal, he saluted with what could have been irony for he spat as the coach moved off.
One of Enzo’s stories was about a young girl, a glove-maker who had been denounced to the Austrians for saying she hoped her town would not fall back into the bigots’ claws. Well, what the soldiers had done was strip and whip her. A girl! Just think of it! Eyes fixed on a birch tree which had caught the sun, Enzo wondered what it must have done to her feelings about men. Could she ever now make someone a proper wife? They passed trees wreathed lacily in Old Man’s Beard and heard owls hooting and saw a hare. But Enzo’s mind stayed unwaveringly on glove-making and slim fingers easing supple fabrics over their own pallor. After he and Nicola had gone back to their places, he must have nodded off, for Nicola heard him wake up and yell ‘God-damn Croats!’
They were stopped again by Austrians looking for Garibaldini and advised to take a side route. There was an ambush ahead with orders to shoot anything that moved. The coachman nodded and took off at as fast a pace as was safe on a side road. ‘Poor bleeding misfortunates!’ he said of the Garibaldini, as they drew up in the yard of an inn.
This was the usual mouldering warren but the innkeeper said they couldn’t stay. It had been requisitioned by a joint unit of pontifical and Austrian troops. Enzo threatened him with trouble. The young gentleman, he said, indicating Nicola, was journeying on the Pope
’s business. He had urgent dispatches. See. And was in the service of Cardinal Oppizzoni. Know who he was? Well then. The innkeeper swore and gave in and Enzo went into the kitchen to order dinner. Nicola was stung by the way he had taken charge. Had Amandi told him to? Was he a sort of nurse? These doubts were only increased by Enzo’s return with an inn servant and their dinner.
‘Best grab what we can,’ he advised Nicola and the coachman. ‘When the soldiers come they’ll eat like locusts.’
And indeed the three had hardly finished their boiled fowl when hooves clattered outside. A detachment of papal troops were yelling for the landlord. They had a prisoner who needed locking up. Was there a room with a key?
‘Who’s the prisoner?’ Enzo asked a soldier.
‘A girl. A Garibaldino camp follower. They shot the men with her. They were … trying to escape.’ The soldier’s cockiness faltered and it was clear the Garibaldini had been gunned down in cold blood. As for the girl, he said, the Austrian officer seemed to have his own plans for her. ‘He’s gone after some fugitives, but he’ll be back.’ The man added, as though arguing with himself, ‘Well, anyway, she’s a whore.’
Nicola didn’t have to see her. The rush of his pulse told him: it was Maria. When she was bundled through the room it was no surprise. She was dishevelled, but it was her limpness which struck him, in the presence of those stiff, armed men. She drooped, boneless as a shot bird or an empty glove. She was prey: wide-eyed, confused and horrifyingly vulnerable. Miserere! he prayed and, after she had been locked up, wondered briefly if he had imagined her. She hadn’t noticed him.
The Judas Cloth Page 30
