The Judas Cloth Read online

  Captain Melzi – no longer in uniform – now cut into the conversation. He was worried because the Pope had not formally declared war.

  ‘He will,’ assured the count. ‘He’s a patriot! An Italian – and he blessed the troops.’

  ‘If he doesn’t our army is illegal and captured men will be treated like common criminals.’ Melzi had had a letter from an old comrade in arms, a man his own age. ‘Colonel Guidotti. He joined up and they’ve made him a general. Well, he hasn’t a peg-leg.’ The captain banged a spoon on his wooden limb. No other part of him, said the set of his jaw, was false.

  ‘There was talk,’ said the count, ‘of Don Mauro being appointed a military chaplain.’

  ‘Wasn’t he defrocked?’

  Nicola asked if this was the Don Mauro he knew. It was. Old conundrums were turned over in the light of the changed times. Years ago Don Mauro had been condemned for fighting and now here was the Archbishop of Milan encouraging seminarists to fight. Here were Fathers Bassi and Gavazzi riding with the troops.

  ‘As chaplains. Unarmed. He was armed. He was taken with arms in his hand.’

  ‘A fowling piece!’

  ‘Still and all …’

  ‘But if Peter looses today what Peter bound before …’

  The two argued hammer and tongs until Captain Melzi, sodden with wine and jealousy of General Guidotti, slipped from his chair and had to be carried to his room.

  Nine

  ‘He’s the apple of my father’s eye!’

  Prospero and Nicola had spent the morning with the dog whose clever mouth would hold a shot bird as softly as an egg.

  ‘Fetch it!’

  They threw sticks, sending the creature skidding through undergrowth. Back and forth it looped, linking them to the luminous day and to each other. Pink-flowering Judas trees stained bright air; bluebells and scabius speckled grass and, in the woods, invisible creatures crackled with surprising purposefulness. The country and its codes were now less strange to Nicola who elected to wait by a gazebo near the pond while Prospero discharged some task which should, he said, take no time at all.

  Nicola, lazing on grass, gave himself up to a bemused recognition. Here, on this April morning, was that play of physical life which his education had so energetically heralded and denied. For, what had the delirium of foliate Baroque been celebrating if not these branches of copulating birds? And the Jesuit choirs? Here flew dragon-flies like slivers of stained glass and here, animating the seductive surface of things, was the urge to lose one’s separateness, as the birds were doing and, no doubt, those crackling creatures in the undergrowth. Feathered glories. Gilded couplings. Glee. All, said the Church, were metaphors for union with the godhead. Carnality – the Urge – had its mundane uses, best contained. It was heresy to quite deny it – witness the Manichees. Better to marry than to burn. Mentally, Nicola was prepared, having, over the abstract years, learned all the words – but now, immersed in nature’s unchaste dishevelment, only hoped to burn. He yearned to copulate with – oh, anything. Possibly the pond? Maybe he’d strip and jump into it? In Greek myth, Daphne became a tree, so might the bark of this one, under his fingerings, turn back to skin? Some goat droppings – sniffed, they were sweetish – suggested satyrs. He rolled the shiny ball of excrement between finger and thumb and rejected the impulse to eat it. Communion? Of a sort?

  Again, he considered a dip in the pond and was squinting at its cross-hatched sheen, when his eye was drawn by a movement under a willow tree. A girl materialised.

  ‘You should wear a hat.’

  He thought she might be a servant sent to tell him this. She was younger than he. Maybe she was a new servant and didn’t know her place? She began counting daisy petals.

  ‘One for yes, one for no – guess what I’m wondering?’

  ‘Whether I think you’re pretty?’

  ‘Oh!’ Playfully indignant. ‘Fancy yourself, don’t you?’

  ‘No, but I’d fancy you if you let me.’ Responses rose as if rote-learned. Perhaps they had slid into his ear on days when city breezes blew through the corridors of the Collegio Romano? She stood so close that he smelled the rank sap of daisy stems. Was he so bold because he thought he might be dreaming? It was easy to think this in the light of her behaviour. When he reached for her hand, she said: ‘Let’s go into that hut.’

  So he followed her into the musty gazebo, where her manner changed. ‘Signor Prospero. I have a message …’

  ‘I’m not Prospero.’

  But was, he remembered, wearing Prospero’s clothes. Anxiously, she went back to her coquettish mode, as if to snare an admission that he was, indeed, Prospero.

  ‘I’m his guest.’

  Taking this for some gentleman’s joke, she looked sulky and her lip began to quiver. ‘Only you, you see, can help …’

  Now was his chance to kiss her. He knew it with a sporting instinct, but was held back by something alien to sport: sympathy.

  ‘Only who?’

  ‘Please.’

  He let her speak, though what she said made no sense to him. It had to do with her father who was not what, from malice, people said, but was in fear for his life. Prospero’s father too came into the thing and a Donna Anna who did not know the girl was here.

  ‘Listen,’ Nicola spoke sadly. ‘You’re telling secrets to the wrong person. I’m Prospero’s cousin and I’m wearing his clothes.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was as if air had gone out of her. She wasn’t angry. Thriftily, wasting no feelings, she handed him a letter. ‘For him.’

  *

  Captain Melzi was out of puff. Walking with a peg-leg was no joke. The day was gorgeous, but the two boys struck him as glum. Glum as mummies. What was on their minds?

  The war was on his. Would the Austrians make mincemeat of our raw troops? In Milan last month the whitecoats had been taken unawares – but then rioting civilians always had soldiers at a disadvantage. The captain’s sympathies wavered as he thought of men under discipline being jeered at by hordes, and depression deepened as he thought of Guidotti. A general! At times like this anyone could be promoted, providing he had two good legs.

  ‘This part of the country,’ he said, ‘always bred soldiers. Your mother’s family,’ he told Prospero, ‘claims that the blood of the Malatesta runs in their veins, and they claimed that of Scipio Africanus.’ He stopped, remembering that the count had asked him not to keep taunting Prospero. It could drive him to put on a cassock for good. Then their line would die out and the priests have the last laugh. The skirted capons would savour that! Melzi groaned, having reminded himself of an outrageous rumour that the Pope had disowned his own troops.

  *

  Leaving the captain by the pond, Nicola and Prospero strolled into the village. ‘His youth dazzled him,’ said Prospero. ‘He’s forever looking back to the Battle of Borodino. Oh, I shouldn’t be so disobliging. I’m sure he proved his courage which is more than most of us can say.’ He frowned.

  It was hot; dogs lay under carts; the shade was minimal and the sun high in the sky. Crossing the small square, they had the glare in their eyes and almost collided with a man and woman. Nicola gripped Prospero’s arm to move him aside but, as the other pair moved too, they nearly collided a second time. The man looked agitated, but the girl threw them a baleful glance and steered him past. Nobody proffered the customary greeting.

  ‘That girl,’ said Nicola, ‘is – do you know who she is?’

  ‘No.’ But Prospero looked forebodingly over his shoulder. The man was one of the two who had been ‘horsed’.

  ‘She came looking for you about an hour ago,’ Nicola told him. ‘She left a letter.’

  ‘Girls like that can’t write letters.’

  ‘Here it is. Maybe someone gave it to her?’

  Nicola fished it from his pocket and the two stared at the neatly pasted characters cut from a newspaper. It was addressed to the Contino Prospero Stanga. There
was no envelope but it had been folded and sealed with a blob of wax. Prospero opened it. ‘It must be a threat.’ He smoothed it and read:

  Signor Contino,

  It would be wise to remember that (1) those who persecute Centurioni seek trouble; (2) the new pope’s friends need to avoid it; (3) Christ said ‘Love your enemies’.

  To show you understand you should provide the ‘horsed’ men with compensation and a safe-conduct to leave the province.

  Prospero swore. ‘I wonder who composed it? Not her and not her father! I’d rather my father didn’t know about this.’

  Swearing Nicola to secrecy, he told him what had happened and, after the two had pondered the matter in all its aspects, they took a boat onto the pond and spent the last of the twilight silently casting for fish. At first the water’s enamelled surface showed up the faintest movement, but later they could see nothing at all.

  *

  Back at the villa the count was waiting for them in some agitation. Had they got his dog? It hadn’t been seen for hours. But they said they hadn’t seen it since lunch.

  *

  Early next day the dog was found with its legs stretched stiffly out and a gummy substance on its eyes. It had been poisoned. The count took the thing badly and servants magnified his grief, exclaiming and commenting in voices which at times sank into inaudibility and at others floated in through Nicola’s bedroom window.

  ‘The two Signorini took him for a walk yesterday. He could have eaten something in the woods.’

  ‘They should have been more careful!’

  ‘The Signor Conte is half out of his mind!’

  ‘… loved him like a Christian. Could be a Christian next time. A nod is as good as a wink.’ ‘You don’t …?’

  ‘I do!’

  *

  At dinner the row which Prospero had prophesied finally broke. It had been on the horizon all day and when it started, Nicola tried to leave, but the count said, ‘Stay.’

  He spoke carefully, biting off his words as though forbidding himself to shout. This household, he said, like it or not, was involved in his affairs. The poisoning of his dog meant something and he wanted to know what. Also: he had had an anonymous letter. Well? Nicola and the captain looked at their plates while Prospero told what he knew.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘I thought it was over. That no more would come of it.’

  Exasperation sparked from father to son, and Nicola, eyes flicking between them, thought: it’s as if one could see through to the hurt in their organs. It’s as if they shared an organ.

  Prospero looked swollen and ready to bruise. ‘I was there by chance – caught by surprise.’

  ‘Chance, my arse,’ shouted his father. ‘They laid a trap and you fell into it. I’m a target for both factions: the old Zelanti because they’ve always hated me, and the extremists of my own side because I want to give the Pope a chance! You’re my Achilles heel and they know it!’

  ‘I’m sorry I failed you, father.’ Pause. ‘What more can I say?’

  ‘Oh, if your blood’s milk and water, then not much!’

  ‘Father, we’re talking about a dog …’

  The count closed then opened his eyes. ‘We are not talking about a dog!’ He lectured them furiously and Nicola, having been raised by priests, saw that, for this man, outward signs portended enormities and actuality meant little until invested with expectation. Having established the significance of the dog’s death, the count, as though adjusting his vision, added that the dog as dog mattered too: ‘I valued him. He was a courageous beast with red blood in his veins.’

  Prospero stood up.

  ‘Stay.’

  ‘We may both regret it.’

  ‘Your impulse is always flight, isn’t it?’

  Prospero had moved from the lit area. His voice trembled out of the dark. ‘It’s because I’m sick of …’

  ‘Shut up, Prospero!’ The captain was worried by that tremor.

  ‘No. Speak. What are you sick of?’

  ‘Words,’ whispered Prospero. ‘That’s all your action ever amounted to. Except for my mother’s death. You gave her life for your cause, all right, and I had to face that because I was there and you weren’t. You didn’t see her until they’d laid her out with flowers all over her. Narcissi. Lilac. You were away. Conspiring, I suppose? When you got back she was in her bridal dress. Did you even know that she’d been shot in the stomach and that they had to stuff her guts back in and bind her up? I saw them do that on my tenth birthday. I wouldn’t leave. They couldn’t make me. So I saw it.’

  ‘Stop, now!’ The captain tried to push Prospero out of the door, but Prospero clung to the jamb.

  ‘We’ve never talked, have we?’ His voice was implacable. Energy had shifted to the shadows.

  The count was crying.

  ‘That’s enough.’ Melzi, unsteady on his good leg, wrestled with Prospero who held to the door post, letting himself be spun this way and that. In the end the captain limped back to the table.

  The count stared at the candelabra. His tears fractured the light like prisms.

  ‘I’ll tell you my reasoning,’ said Prospero. ‘Rightly or wrongly, I guessed that Storto, to compromise you, must have picked men whom the other side would recognise as their own and that if I tried to release them, he would shoot them. That would be his back-up strategy. I, which means you, would get the blame.’

  The count’s head was in his hands. ‘I see,’ he acquiesced. ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause. Then the father, prompted by some sudden buzz in his brain, broke into a tantrum. ‘I didn’t die for our cause,’ he raged, ‘but I lived for it! We conspired – what else could we do? What other means were there? Melzi here went to war – but how often did you fight, Melzi, for our cause? Eh? How often did you get the chance? Mostly you were being lied to. Used. First by Napoleon who promised us freedom if we would fight for him, then by the English who promised it if we fought against him! “Warriors of Italy,” said Lord Bentinck, “we don’t ask you to come to us; we ask you to defend your own rights and freedoms. Call us and we’ll fly to your aid.” Honeyed words. Then they sold us to the Austrians. No wonder we turned to conspiracy. Now new generations revile us. My own son …’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘You just did!’ The count was on his feet and pacing.

  Up and down he walked, in and out of the light, while Nicola picked furtively at his congealing meal and smuggled morsels into his mouth, ashamed to satisfy his belly when the count’s need was of the heart.

  It was awkward. Yet should he not stay in case things got out of control? And if he stayed, should he not behave as if it were normal for his hosts to be pacing like jaguars through the embattled dark?

  ‘My Elena,’ said the father, ‘your mother, didn’t suffer. The doctor gave me his word. Was he lying? I’ll never know for sure. You’ve poisoned the past. Bravo! It’s not an easy thing to do.’

  Prospero protested. His father rebutted his protests and Prospero rushed off into the night. His father ran after him. Doors opened. The candle flames fell flat, then wobbled back to life. After some minutes, the captain stole quietly out.

  He returned with a finger on his lips. ‘It’s all right,’ he told Nicola. ‘They’re sobbing in each other’s arms. Will you have another portion of this while it’s half-way edible?’

  *

  Next morning, Nicola was staring idly out the breakfast-room window when he saw the girl – yesterday’s girl – approach the back of the villa in an unstraightforward way. Skirting the path, she dodged through raspberry canes, then into the stables. A little later, he saw her retreat equally furtively. Mentioning this to Captain Melzi, who now joined him, elicited no interest.

  ‘Maybe she’s a friend of one of the grooms?’ suggested Melzi.

  Just then the count rode out of the stables and into the woods. He had not returned when Prospero and Nicola went for their usual ride.

/>   ‘My uncle’s expected in the next day or so,’ said Prospero. ‘Monsignor Amandi. Race you!’

  The two took off at a gallop. Nicola’s horsemanship had improved, for they rode out almost daily to explore the countryside which was in full metamorphosis. Vines, which had been as bare as basketwork, now had a dancing softness, and the fish-bone poplar trees were feathered with green. Today they were fairly far afield when one of the horses caught its foot in a rabbit hole and lamed itself. Prospero, anxious to spare it the walk home, began casting around for somewhere to leave it. This was how he came to remember a villa belonging to a distant cousin which should be somewhere near here. A man, who came by driving two oxen, confirmed this. The Villa Tartaruga? Just pass that hill. So off they went and had soon turned in a driveway leading to a flight of granite steps. Nicola, leaving Prospero to hold the horses, ran up these and pulled the bell. Yesterday’s girl opened the door and behind her was the count. He and Nicola stared at each other. Nicola said, ‘We had an accident.’

  ‘Prospero?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s all right. He’s here.’

  The count mumbled something and descended the steps to look at the lamed horse. Then he and Prospero took it round to the back.

  Nicola turned to the girl. For moments his voice failed him, then it volleyed out questions. Who was she? Did she live here? She worked here, she told him. Her name was Maria. And the letter? Who had …? She shrank. Please, she begged, he mustn’t mention it. Not here. It was nothing to do with here. She seemed frightened and he saw that, in his excitement, he had been hectoring her.

  ‘Maria,’ called a woman’s voice, and a manservant appeared to say that the padrona wanted her.

  He asked if he could do anything for Nicola, who said he’d join his friends at the stables. Glancing back as he descended the steps, he felt himself observed from a window and recognised the lady whose carriage had splashed him outside the osteria. She had a child in her arms.