The Judas Cloth Page 16

  ‘Who does she say your father is, if not her husband?’

  ‘A Russian lover of hers who went back to his country years ago. That’s how the old Russian Jesuit guessed who I was. Her brother argues that she must have been sleeping with her husband too and so my paternity is to be presumed legitimate. She says her husband never came near her. Here.’ Flavio handed Nicola the letter to Gavazzi. It was unsealed. ‘I haven’t read it. I’m not mercenary all the time. I’m practising to be a gentleman.’

  *

  They had breakfast with the Milord: beer, cheese, sweet bread and hot chocolate. The beer was for the Milord’s apparently exploding head which he kept touching as though it were an imperfectly mended vase. Milady was not awake. The Englishman drank to peace. England wanted it. Palmerston did. Sensible man. Prime Minister Russell was sensible too. Queen and Prince Consort a bit Austrophile. Less said the better. Lord Minto the other way. Balanced out. Peace! Let’s drink to it. Pax.

  *

  In the post coach Nicola read the letter to Father Gavazzi, who was said to be weaving back and forth across the country, recruiting and raising funds for the troops. He might run into him at any moment. Flavio, before bidding him goodbye, had provided an old seal with which to reclose the letter. It was obsolete and had the wrong pope’s coat of arms on it but if Nicola applied it clumsily and blurrily, nobody was likely to notice this.

  Dear Alessandro,

  News of your triumphs heartens your friends. It is good that the Romagnols respond so generously to your sermons. I pray that you may be able to continue. Do you detect a caveat? Alas, I have bad news. It is that Padre Caccia, the General of your Order, has submitted a request to the appropriate Congregation that you should be expelled. Charges against you include heresy, refusal to stay in your cloister, insubordination, etc. You have stirred up the Gregorians. For now all this is secret and, so long as His Holiness favours the war, the Barnabites will not move against his Chaplain in Chief – but for how long will he continue to favour it?

  Cover your retreat, Alessandro. Avoid seeming to intrigue and remember that the bearer of this is a source of scandal. Addio,

  Mauro

  Foligno, Gualdo, Sigillo, Cantiano, Cagli, Acqualagna, Fossombrone … They were crossing the Apennines, past chestnut scrub and monotonous villages whose wind-shy roofs were steadied by roped stones. Conversation languished then revived to wonder if they had crossed the Rubicon which the coachman thought might be today’s Uso or Fiumicino – each had claims – or a stream called the Pisciatella or ‘Little Pisser’. The lawyer, briefly roused, talked of Roman history in a way which would have startled the Father Prefect.

  At night, fireflies were so thick that the air seemed to condense in drops of gold. Fano, Rimini, Cesena, Faenza. Riveted walls bulged haphazardly. Bricked-up windows had been repierced and rebricked. Sometimes, in a blind arch, you could discern a stony eye, or a broken pilaster mimicked a nose or mouth.

  Nicola left the coach in Bologna where he was to wait to be fetched from the Albergo San Marco. The lawyer joined him for a meal nearby: boiled pigs’ trotters, capon and tongue.

  The waiter had a copy of Il Pavero and read aloud an attack on rich citizens who gave stingily to the national cause. ‘That’s Gavazzi’s paper,’ he said. ‘It sows hatred.’

  The lawyer demurred half-heartedly. He was dealing with a drumstick.

  A customer said that one of the city’s most illustrious citizens, Gioacchino Rossini, the composer, had been insulted by the mob which considered his contribution miserly. King Mob! Yet he had given two horses and 500 scudi.

  ‘The horses were on their last legs. One died.’

  There was an argument. Some said Rossini was as tight as the skin on your elbow and wouldn’t give you the sweat from his balls, speaking with respect. Shuttup. There’s a young boy listening and, anyway, here’s Father Bassi.

  A lean young priest came in. No: on second glance he might be forty. Long-haired, dressed as a Barnabite with an alert eye and a quick smile, he came up to the lawyer and grasped his hand.

  ‘May I sit with you a moment? I’m off then. Just time for a coffee. You’ll have been hearing ill of me?’ The priest nodded at the copy of Il Pavero. ‘The Rossini story? He left town in dudgeon, but I’m hoping to achieve a happy ending. The ultras are quick to blame the people and say they’re disorderly. And it’s not true. The people are wonderful. In Senigallia, the Pope’s home town, the offerings were beyond anything you could imagine. Women gave their ear-rings – I’ve started a fashion! The “Bassi fashion” they’re calling it. Wear one and give one to the cause. Women are among the most generous. One young girl gave her trousseau. And an old labourer took the shirt off his back. You could see him pondering what to give and feeling wretched because he had nothing. Then he thought of his shirt, which was new, and pulled it off and flung it on the pile of gifts. There was a moment of silence and for a while nobody came up with anything else.’

  The lawyer ordered coffee. ‘That’s a happier story than the other‚’ he acknowledged.

  ‘Oh there are many like it. A girl offered her long hair. Beggars gave their takings. The Cardinal Legate gave 500 scudi. Melted down, the gold and silver we collected over Easter brought six million. I sound dazzled by wealth, don’t I?’

  ‘You’re a generous man, Ugo,’ said the lawyer, ‘but you’re misleading a generous people. That labourer’s shirt has gone to a cause which will do him no good.’

  The priest shook his head, smiling. The lawyer said, ‘This goggle-eyed youth whom you’re magnetising with your dangerous charm is Nicola Santi. I’d warn him to beware of you, but what good would it do? This, Nicola, is Father Ugo Bassi, a military chaplain like the abate Gavazzi, who is only slightly less deluded.’

  Bassi gripped his hand. ‘The ultras are calling Gavazzi the Anti-Christ. I say he’s Christ in the temple. He preaches dangerously against some of the higher clergy.’

  ‘He doesn’t go far enough.’

  ‘How far would you go?’

  ‘I,’ said the lawyer, ‘would get rid of the Church and of property too. Half measures are a waste of time. And false friends worry me more than enemies: the Pope, for instance.’

  Bassi, when hurt, looked like a girl. His hair curled over the small, white collar of his black habit and his eyes grew sad.

  ‘Now you’re attacking me,’ he told the lawyer. ‘How do you think I manage to survive when I’m attacked by the oscuranti and then by you? Not by myself. How could I? I keep going, thanks to my faith, and so do the people. It’s all we’ve got. Why do you want to take it from us? God sent a Liberal pope to guide and unite us. It’s a miracle. It has given the people courage. I’m going to the front with the troops to help them fight, not for Piedmont, but for their own freedom and the freedom of the Church and for Pius IX.’

  ‘And if he lets you down?’

  ‘We’ll fight anyway and pray.’

  The lawyer shook his head. ‘A holy innocent! Bound for the slaughter!’

  Bassi grinned at Nicola, nodded at his companion and said, ‘A doctrinaire!’ Then he shook hands with both of them and left.

  At the hotel, a carriage was waiting for Nicola, so, saying goodbye to the lawyer, he climbed in. A crowd blocked the strada Maggiore and he caught sight of Father Bassi standing on a balcony.

  ‘Thanks to Signor Rossini,’ he was shouting, ‘we don’t have to listen to German music. We can play our own. Shall I write and beg him to return to our city?’

  ‘Yes,’ yelled some of the crowd.

  ‘No,’ cried others. ‘Let him stay away with his tart of a French wife!’

  ‘I’ll write then,’ said the preacher and signalled the crowd to let Nicola’s carriage through.

  Eight

  From Prospero’s diary.

  The Villa Chiara, 1848

  A guest is expected: one of our distant cousins.

  Cold last night. A hand-warmer was passed around but was, as usual, ineffective
and, anyway, causes chilblains from which I – milksop – suffer. My father, hoping to harden me, will not have a fire. The ancient Romans, he claims, were hardy. Else how could they have conquered Gaul, Germany, etc? Rome, he raved to Minghetti during M’s last visit, may again lead the world. If France and England don’t help our just cause, it is because they fear this. Our generation will see great things. ‘I mean‚’ he corrected himself, ‘yours. You must be thirty years my junior.’

  That surprised me. I had thought M nearer his age. My father makes people seem old. It is as though they stayed on guard in his presence, as one does with children and volatile substances. M talked of how he and colleagues in the new ministry yearn to change everything, but that His Holiness resists and suspects laymen.

  My father grew miffy at this. The Pope’s liberalism is his contribution to history. ‘You’re getting changes now,’ he says.

  ‘Small changes and small change is all we get,’ said M. Arms and money, he said, are the crying need.

  Shortly after this he resigned from the cabinet and went north to join the Army. Before leaving, he recommended me to a man likely to be called to head the government: Count Pellegrino Rossi, who, it seems, needs a secretary. I haven’t told my father.

  *

  The Villa Chiara, mottled in tints of peach and plum, was set, as though for its own good, among symmetries of box. Further containing it, old, over-arching trees tied it to the sky, so that this too came to seem part of a dogged regulatory plan.

  Nicola’s first impression was of a convulsion in the foreground.

  ‘That,’ said the coachman, ‘is the Contino Prospero.’

  A cassocked youth was doing somersaults on a trampolene.

  ‘He’s delicate. That’s why his father got him that thing to bounce on.’

  The last black somersault formed a circle and, in the quiver of noon, could have been mistaken for a bee swarm. Uncoiling, the young man came to help Nicola out of the gig.

  ‘You’re Santi? I’m Prospero Stanga, a disgraceful show-off. No modesty! I thought it best to let you know.’

  In a small procession – two footmen carried Nicola’s bits of baggage – they moved through spaces where cracks of light lit galaxies of dust. There was a smell of mildew and their shoes rang on tile.

  ‘Look!’

  Beyond a flight of rooms, light eddied in a mirror: a sword was being agitated by a gentleman whose paunch had burst the buttons of an ancient dress uniform. He had a peg-leg.

  ‘Captain Melzi!’ whispered Prospero. ‘He fought with Murat during the Hundred Days. Thirty years ago! Imagine! He just tried to join up!’

  The two laughed.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘I’m eighteen. Old enough to fight. My father wants me to. Here’s your room.’

  It had a window painted in trompe l’oeil. The real one looked onto a prospect of distant hills.

  Prospero left Nicola to wash in a tub filled from jugs carried in by the footmen. Assorted clothes lay on a chest. They had, said Prospero, been his. ‘My uncle wrote to say you’d need some.’

  His uncle was Monsignor Amandi which might mean, might it not, that Nicola and he were connected too? Nicola was eager for relatives.

  The clothes were adult and secular and, having put some on, he stared in surprise at the grave young man in the mirror. He ran downstairs.

  At the turn of a landing, something prodded him in the stomach. A voice cried, ‘On guard, Prospero! You need to stay alert!’ Then: ‘Bugger, it’s not Prospero.’

  Nicola saw a blade shiver between himself and the officer with the wooden leg.

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled the old man.

  Nicola continued cautiously down.

  *

  ‘It’s his last campaign,’ Prospero explained. ‘Getting me to join the Army. He may kill me to prove I’d be safer at the front.’

  He had taken off his cassock, to which, he admitted, he had no right. ‘I may even be breaking some law. Maybe I’ll get caught by it? Like Hercules by the shirt of Nessus.’ His father, Nicola’s host, would be here this evening. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll show you round.’

  They began at the stables where they cradled horses’ velvety muzzles in their palms. These smelled like freshly baked bread.

  ‘You will witness a row or two while you’re here.’ Prospero pressed his face into a horse’s. ‘They happen at dinner. I thought it best to warn you.’

  Nicola, who had no idea how relatives behaved, thought a row would be instructive.

  Prospero showed him a secret apartment – the door was in a fireplace – in which conspirators had met during the late pope’s reign. It smelled of mice and damp.

  ‘Organising the future,’ mocked Prospero. ‘Think how heady it must have been! Shall we go for a ride? The old mare won’t throw you. She’s as stately as a nun.’

  Returning from this – Nicola was elated at having roused the mare to a ponderous gallop – they passed a shrubbery where, said Prospero, his mother had been shot.

  ‘Your mother?’

  Nicola had a moment of panic. Was he being mocked? Or somehow tested? Prospero made his horse caracole.

  ‘She died of my father’s plots.’

  Could that be true?

  Prospero touched Nicola’s knee. ‘You have to be told so you’ll understand when we get carried away. You see, all through my childhood there were plots. Strangers slipping about. Mysterious comings and goings.’ It was not, he said, that any of them came to much. ‘What they did do was attract the attention of the Centurioni who, unknown to us, were patrolling our grounds. Then, one evening – it was my birthday and I had been allowed to stay up late – she and I came out here with my dog, Renzo. It was drizzling and she wore a cloak with a hood, so the Centurioni may have taken her for a man. Anyway, when she stepped into a clearing to whistle for Renzo, who had taken off after a rabbit, they shouted Alt! She ran towards me and they shot her.’

  Nicola was stunned by the fragility of this briefly evoked mother.

  ‘My father can’t get over it. Which‚’ said Prospero, ‘is why this house is such a shambles.’ Aunts, he said, had offered to come and housekeepers been recommended, but the count would have no woman here who could seem to take her place. ‘It goes to show I’m unfair to bear him a grudge. We upset each other horribly.’

  Nicola envied them. A mother to be mourned was better than a blank: a mental quicksand which drew you in.

  ‘Our trouble is that he wants to be an atheist.’

  ‘Wants to be?’

  ‘So as to be a man of the Enlightenment. But it means he cannot hope to see her again, so I am his only future.’

  They were back at the stables. Prospero said, ‘Her bedroom is kept as though she were still living in it. A shrine! It’s as if his sorrow crowded mine out. Oh, I know I’m ungenerous.’

  ‘Where did you get your cassock?’

  ‘It belonged to a tutor I had.’ Prospero unbuckled his horse’s bellyband and handed Nicola the saddle. ‘Can you hold this? Under the last pope,’ he explained, ‘it was prudent for a Liberal like my father to engage a clerical zealot to teach his son principles opposed to his own. It was a sporting compromise and gave the authorities a chance to win the child’s mind – as my tutor might have if he had been astute. Instead, poor man, zeal undid him. He was a glutton, you see, and had qualms about enjoying our table and allowing his sins to blind him to ours. From sheer scruple, he threatened to report my father for reading English newspapers obtained from smugglers. He had a list of “disadvised” periodicals issued by the Office of the Cardinal Secretary of State.

  ‘Since the smugglers had worse to hide, my father agreed to abide by the list which turned out to disadvise everything he wanted to read. All he could have were The Freeman, The Dublin Evening Post and The Catholic Herald. As it happened, he didn’t have to put in orders for any of these because I got into a fist-fight with my tutor and broke his nose. Monsigno
r Mastai had to smooth things out with Rome.’

  ‘And the tutor left without his cassock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Their laughter stirred Nicola, who was often unsure what to feel. Purposeful people amazed him. Prospero clearly felt things. Nicola would have liked to be recruited by him as Martelli had recruited him.

  While further exploring the villa grounds, he brought the conversation back to Prospero’s mother who had, it seemed, been Piedmontese and spoken French.

  ‘English too. Her father was an ambassador.’

  What about my mother? Nicola wondered. Why did these polyglot relatives neglect her? But as Prospero spoke, the mothers fused in his mind.

  ‘In summer we went for walks. I had a sailboat which I would sail on our pond and she would sing “Y avait un petit navire / Qui n’avait ja- ja-ja- / Qui n’avait ja- ja- ja / Qui n’avait ja- ja-jamais navigué / Ohé, Ohé!”’

  Nicola clapped. ‘I think I prefer not understanding. The meaning – expands.’

  ‘That’s a romantical notion.’

  ‘What’s that? A new heresy?’

  ‘Yes. Its followers look for the infinite in the finite. As you might expect, they’re disappointed.’

  *

  Idleness twitched in Count Pellegrino Rossi and the city too was twitchy: inactive, yet animate like a dog growling in its sleep. To his left, in café windows, he could see his pale, circumspect face; on the right, wheel spokes spun and churned. He was back on the Corso where people in carriages smiled greetings. It was the hour of the promenade and he was only half here, for he was roughing out an essay in his head. It would take the form of an open letter to Teresa Guiccioli, Lord Byron’s last love. Rossi had known Byron, translated a volume of his verse, and heard him describe the Italian struggle as ‘the very poetry of polities’.