The Judas Cloth Read online

  Passing a café, he nodded an acknowledgment to risen hats. A hen scuttled under his feet and a woman darted out to collect it, then withdrew with a movement not unlike the hen’s. In a garden another woman was throwing water to keep down the dust. Shutters slapped open. The siesta hour had passed and, up in the Rocca, a bugle announced some changeover in the prisoners’ routine.

  The archbishop’s stroll had brought him to a palace which he should have remembered to avoid. Here too shutters had opened and a liveried servant was hanging out a bird cage. Now the sensitive, tapir’s nose of the old marchesa slid into sight and her eye caught his.

  ‘Afternoon, Monsignore.’

  ‘Afternoon, Donna Maria.’

  He walked unhappily on. They had been friends, but not since Easter.

  Trying not to speed his step, he remembered, with residual pique, how a mutiny at the Rocca had been used by local notables to worm permission from him to recruit a Civic Guard. The marchesa’s son had led the delegation. After all, said Don Gabriele, His Eminence the Legate was known to favour mobilising the citizens.

  ‘Arm the people against the people?’ The archbishop could not openly criticise the legate’s judgment.

  It was Ash Wednesday and there was a smudge of penitential ash on the delegates’ foreheads.

  ‘General Sercognani’s force is approaching,’ Don Gabriele argued.

  ‘General Sercognani?’

  ‘He’s been promoted.’

  ‘By?’

  Don Gabriele had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘The people,’ he said. ‘The Provisional Government in Bologna.’

  In recent weeks town after town had been appointing such governments and the one in Bologna had declared the popes’ temporal dominion to have ceased ‘de facto et de jure’. Posters, blossoming in the night, announced plans to march on the capital and ‘separate the sceptre from the tiara’. More worryingly, the rebels were opening prisons to recruit the riffraff inside.

  ‘There are six hundred prisoners at the Rocca.’ On Don Gabriele’s forehead, sweat made runnels in the Ash-Wednesday smudge. ‘If they’re let out, who’s to guard the citizens’ property?’

  ‘And who’s to know,’ mused the archbishop, ‘that a Civic Guard, if I let you raise one, will not turn its arms against the Church?’

  ‘Are we to take it,’ challenged Don Gabriele, ‘that His Holiness’s government is unwilling to permit its subjects to defend their homes?’

  Cornered, the archbishop had given in. ‘Form your Civic Guard,’ he yielded. It was putting foxes in charge of the hen run – but what choice had he? ‘I’ll review them,’ he decided shrewdly. ‘I’ll be their chaplain and say a few words.’

  Don Gabriele could not object. However, when the archbishop came to review the recruits, he could feel their hostility. Allegiances had grown volatile and indeed it was later to turn out that, elsewhere in the province, relatives of his own had been compromised. Later still – now – this made it difficult to be hard on men like Don Gabriele. Yet, if the archbishop let bygones by bygones, loyal citizens would take it amiss. His social life was in ruins.

  Plucking a verbena leaf from a garden, he inhaled its fragrance and set off on a detour so as to avoid returning by Don Gabriele’s palace.

  ‘Monsignore!’

  Two peasants had moved their cart aside to let him pass. Whittled faces. Deferent eyes. Few of their sort had joined the rebels and the few who had, had been armed with halbards stolen from museums. Friends in Rome, tittering over this, failed to appreciate the danger which had been averted.

  ‘Beloved sons!’

  Those were his words to the guards when exhorting them to take an oath of loyalty to the freshly elected pope.

  ‘Will you do this, diletti figliuoli?’

  The silence was sullen. Suddenly – if there was a signal he missed it – they whipped tricolour cockades from inside their coats and shouted as one man, ‘Viva l’Italia!’ Viva – this was rebellion, a repudiation of papal rule. Italy though! Italia mia …

  The archbishop kicked a stone. He disliked remembering what he had done next which was to burst into tears. The stone hit a dog which limped reproachfully away. To his surprise, the tears had been triggered less by the guardsmen’s treachery than by an urge to shout ‘Viva l’Italia!’ himself. Treachery had got inside his head, which went to show how hard this new nationalism would be to check. It was, as he had since argued with Monsignor Amandi, quite unlike the godless anticlericalism of the last century. Sercognani’s manifestos declared that he respected the pope as pope, but not as king: papa si, re no!

  Back in his palace, the archbishop had summoned the captain of the papal garrison and advised that, to avoid trouble with the new Civic Guards, he should disband his troop.

  As a result, Sercognani’s men passed through without incident while his Grace lay low and meditated on the notion of change which a mentor of his had called the essence of temptation. Monsignor Marchetti had lived through the years of the French Revolution.

  ‘What is temptation,’ he used to ask, ‘but an overweening appetite? Its ultimate lure is the hope of becoming God!’

  All through Lent, the archbishop prayed on his knees before faceless statues bundled in purple cloth, and felt his mind rave as he tried to distinguish between prudence – avoiding bloodshed – and sympathy with the rebels. From outside the church windows came smells of spring blossoms and the lilt of young men singing late into the night. In his youth he had hoped to wield a marshal’s baton rather than a crozier and, but for his epilepsy, would have joined the Noble Guard. He had written Latin odes too: some on liberty, a classic theme.

  ‘Fool!’ would have been Marchetti’s comment. ‘Every skirmish is part of the long war between God and Satan!’

  ‘Could we not,’ the archbishop argued in his mind, ‘win them by paternal persuasion?’

  The line of his mentor’s clamped lips cancelled half measures. No! Austrian troops must be called in to restore order. This state was God’s.

  ‘But men like my brother and Don Gabriele only want a few reforms: lower toll charges and the like. They’re not Jacobins!’

  ‘Toll charges are the thin end of the wedge!’

  The argument had the monotony of a wheel and the archbishop’s stroll too had come full circle. He was back at the café. A man approached: Count Bernardo Montani, the former Gonfalonier who had not been reappointed after the Easter troubles.

  ‘Monsignore, if I might have a word?’

  The archbishop’s hands rose in an exasperated flutter. ‘My dear count, I sent a most reassuring report of your conduct to Rome. It is uncharitable to remind me of my lack of influence!’

  The count did not believe him. The archbishop saw it in his face. Together they walked past the old proclamation, put up when contact with Rome was lost and Spoleto was on its own: a brief interval. Within days Austrian ‘liberators’ would be overawing the townsfolk with the glory of their white uniforms, rebel leaders fleeing to Paris or Corfu, and Rome reneging on promises made by men on the spot.

  ‘It is true,’ Mastai had since written to friends at court, ‘that I granted a safe-conduct to the defeated rank and file and paid their back pay. If I had not they might not have laid down their arms.’ He wondered if he had fatally jeopardised his career.

  ‘Even my letters in support of my brother,’ he thought of telling Montani, ‘are getting short shrift.’

  ‘It’s Donna Maria’s name day.’

  ‘Ah, so it is!’

  This evening her palazzo would be lit up and cake and sorbets served. Another year he would have been the guest of honour.

  The ex-Gonfalonier smiled. ‘You know you would be more than welcome.’

  The archbishop looked him in the eye. ‘Giovanni Mastai would enjoy being with you. The archbishop cannot.’

  ‘Has the Church cast us out then?’

  ‘If you’ll remember, count, it was your party which tried to cast out the Church.’ Then, smi
ling, with a hand on Montani’s shoulder: ‘Why are we arguing? I’m the one who’ll miss a pleasant evening.’

  The ex-Gonfalonier went back to the café.

  ‘Well?’ he was asked as he sat down.

  ‘Monsignore plays his cards close to his chest.’

  *

  The archbishop circled back towards the cathedral. He was thinking of a letter he had received from Monsignor Amandi.

  My lack of charity is grown notorious. A certain bishop having lately ruled that all members of his flock must carry lanterns after dark, I remarked, while watching a play in which an actress was carrying one: ‘Fiat lux!’ She must be one of Mgr X’s sheep!’ Can you believe that I received a reproof within days? His lordship is to be congratulated on his spies! Blessed are those tormented by trivia. Clearly our fright of last spring is quite forgotten. I have two items to impart: (1) your conduct then has at last been recognised as judicious, and (2) there has been gossip about the three days you spent in the mountains. Odd things are being said. Fiat lux?

  What was being said? Oh God! thought the archbishop and rushed into the dusk of the cathedral where a sacristan was removing wilted flowers from the altar. Kneeling down, he began to bargain with God.

  *

  Back in the café, Count Montani and his friends were discussing the archbishop. A level-headed prelate like that, said a lawyer, was a boon.

  ‘If he hadn’t conciliated the retreating rebels, they’d have sacked the town, and if he hadn’t made himself scarce earlier by running off to Leonessa, they might have taken him hostage. Then, when the Austrians got here, they’d have wreaked havoc.’

  ‘So you think he was trying to preserve the peace?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘His own skin.’

  The lawyer grinned. ‘There are other versions of the thing.’

  *

  The sacristan had left vases of stale water in the track of a draught and the smell reminded the archbishop of hung meat. Looking at a statue of the Virgin, he said: ‘It’s a message, isn’t it? All flesh is meat and prone to rot? Well,’ he harried, ‘is that it?’

  The statue looked like the girl they had brought to Leonessa. Plaster-pale at first, the visible bits of her skin had later broken out in a raw rash.

  The archbishop had known her name from the diocesan records. There had been some awkwardness there a year or so earlier.

  Orphaned by cholera, she had been adopted by an uncle, a parish priest who unwisely kept her by him until she was thirteen and nubile. The case came to notice during one of Mastai-Ferretti’s campaigns to moralise his mountain parishes. What he had been after were priests who were cohabiting with their housekeepers, but, once the girl’s uncle had been denounced by some tattletale, she had had to be put in the care of a community of nuns living at a prudent distance.

  Monsignor Amandi’s letter nudged back into the archbishop’s train of thought. ‘Your policies have at last been recognised as judicious.’

  Christ’s kingdom might not be of this world, but the pope-king’s was, and archbishops could find themselves dealing with things temporal. Last February, when the apostolic delegate, who should have seen to these, have fled from Spoleto, Mastai-Ferretti had been confronted by some thorny choices. The Bonaparte brothers, for instance, neither of whom was much more than a schoolboy, had fallen into his grasp like a pair of snared ferrets. What was he to do with them? They had well-connected relatives all over Europe but had fought with the rebels. Arrest them? How? The Civic Guard was not reliable and the Austrian Army not yet here. Meanwhile, here were these two who had possibly raped the girl.

  Again her face slid into the archbishop’s memory. Root-pale and taut as a muscle, it was not the sort of face which had appealed to him in his secular years. Gracious, no! Impossible to imagine her in Donna Clara’s salon.

  She was a wincing little thing: touching in an odd way and had, in her innocence, stumbled into the very thick of trouble.

  On hearing of the disturbances, she had slipped from her convent and arrived at her uncle’s to find him dying of a heart attack and Bonaparte bravos living in his presbytery. They were a scratch collection who, having billeted themselves here, were nervous about being blamed if he died.

  Ironically, she arrived on a mule supplied by Napoleon Louis, the elder brother, who, on finding her limping along a mountain trail, offered help. He had been foraging. Two hams swelled the mule’s panniers and he promptly cut her a piece. It was that sweet ham which peasants hang from their rafters in good times and bury in bad. This time they hadn’t moved fast enough.

  The archbishop imagined the young pair – Napoleon Louis was twenty and she fifteen – picnicking in the pale spring sun. Later, she denied having met him at all. Why? What had happened? Did Napoleon Louis tell her what he and his brother were after? Of course he did. All Bonapartes were obsessed with their destiny. What they were after were hostages: apostolic delegates, bishops, legates, any stray prelates who might have fled their palaces and be masquerading as country priests. If the Bonapartes could take even one such hostage, General Sercognani would surely have them back. He had earlier let them enlist, then, on reflection, asked them to leave lest a Bonaparte connection be misconstrued by France in whose help the rebels put their trust.

  Desperate to be let fight, Napoleon Louis and Louis Napoleon had recruited a band of men and set off to scour mountain presbyteries for fugitive prelates. They had imagined – Napoleon Louis later admitted this – that the girl’s uncle could be the archbishop in disguise. There was, it seemed, a resemblance. Besides, his Grace had been seen making his way with some stealth from Spoleto towards these very hills.

  ‘Forgive us, Monsignore. It was a sort of carnival: a great masquerade.’

  ‘And you,’ reproached the archbishop, ‘threw in your lot with the ragtag! What would your uncle, Cardinal Fesch, have to say about that?’

  The young man was already feverish with the nursery malady which was to carry him off: chickenpox. ‘My late uncle, the Emperor, would have approved! General Sercognani was echoing his words when he spoke of abolishing the popes’ temporal power.’

  ‘You’ll have no luck,’ said Mastai-Ferretti who knew that Bonapartes needed luck. ‘You believe in nothing,’ he reproached.

  ‘On the contrary, Monsignore,’ said Louis Napoleon, the younger brother, ‘we believe in the cause of Italy.’

  ‘Children! Children!’ admonished the archbishop, but gave them passports to get them past the Austrian lines.

  Calling them that exonerated him. It was the excuse he had ready in case of trouble with the troops of H.R.I.H., the Emperor of Austria, which were even then marching to defend us and as apt as not to be a band of right royal imperial ruffians.

  ‘I’m doing this,’ he told the brothers, ‘in the name of peace. Remember that when next you’re tempted to oppose the Church.’

  As it happened, he saved only one brother. The elder had already contracted the chickenpox which was to lead to such scandalous conjecture. Rape? Stuprum? The girl’s visible slivers of skin – face, neck, wrists – had erupted in pustules budding with the same disease.

  The archbishop looked at the Virgin’s plaster face and thought it mulish: like hers when he tried to question her.

  ‘Can’t you remember?’ he had kept asking.

  She had looked at her shoes which were furred with dust from the mountain roads. The cracks in the leather were white.

  ‘When you met on the mountain, did you know who he was?’

  Her foot jigged.

  ‘Did he tell you his name?’

  They were in the Capuchin monastery parlour at Leonessa: a grimy place. Capuchins were the Church’s rabble.

  More silence. Out on the mountains the last rebels were burying their weapons. Some, hardly older than this girl, had been seen sitting by the roadside sobbing and wiping their eyes with their sleeves.

  The archbishop summoned patience. He needed to know just what accusation
s might be forthcoming against the Bonapartes whom he had let escape. The horse of history, he reflected, passes this way every fifteen years and men leap on its back. Last time was when Giacomo Murat proclaimed himself King of Italy and nationalists marched with him to Rome. People were always marching on Rome. It had started when Napoleon, avatar of a secular religion, took over the Holy City. Now, again, the Bonaparte seed was active.

  The word recalled him to the matter in hand. He tapped the girl’s knee.

  ‘Look at me.’

  She didn’t.

  ‘You told the nuns you were pregnant. Why?’

  Silence.

  ‘You do know, that … you wouldn’t know yet, even if …’ Foundering, he changed tactics.

  ‘What happened?’ he barked.

  Abruptly words spurted: ‘He was dying when I got there. He’d had the last sacraments … He was trying to tell me something, only she pulled me away.’

  Who? Ah! Her uncle. He hadn’t been asking about him.

  She wailed: ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘But surely you knew? I was told you’d seen his body.’

  The girl reddened. ‘You mean naked? She said that, didn’t she?’

  The interrogation was booby-trapped.

  ‘If he’s dead he was killed!’

  ‘By the Bonapartes?’ What if it were to come out that he had given passports to men guilty of the death of one of his own priests? ‘He died in his bed. The housekeeper …’

  ‘She’s a liar!’

  Ah, so that was it. Two years ago, then, it must have been the housekeeper who anonymously denounced the priest for keeping his niece in the house. Whereas the real intrigue … The archbiship marvelled at his own slowness. These mountain presbyteries!

  Let sleeping dogs lie had been his predecessor’s maxim. It wasn’t his. ‘She said it was his heart.’

  ‘Is that what she calls it?’ Her mouth twisted with contempt.

  ‘So you think it was not the rebels who killed him, but …’