The Judas Cloth Page 6

Laughing inside his red-trimmed window, the cardinal had managed to transform the fetid lane into a drawing room – or was it a confessional? ‘Whisper here to me!’ His own hair could not have been whiter if he had powdered it. ‘Why don’t you come round for a chat? I’m a tomb, you know. Nothing you say will go further. When will you come?’

  Amandi was about to excuse himself – he had no time to visit the old man – when the cardinal’s hand drew him close. ‘Those who have something to hope for,’ said His Eminence in a lower, brisker tone, ‘are less dangerous than those who have not. His Holiness must not drive the Gregoriani to despair. Even a tamed beast fights when cornered.’

  Amandi was speechless. ‘His Holiness,’ he managed after moments, ‘is a man of peace.’

  ‘To be sure!’ The other man’s tongue flicked like a lizard’s. ‘But those he has pardoned are not. They want revenge on the men who condemned them – or the Gregoriani think they do, which is just as bad! Fear, Monsignore, can unleash the worst catastrophes!’ Amandi’s hand was released and the face in the window gave him a social smile. ‘Come and see me, Monsignore. We’ll toast your future which I’m sure is rosy! Come tomorrow,’ called the cardinal as his carriage lurched off and the dung, churned up by its wheels, released a sweet, pungent blast.

  Lifting his skirts, Amandi walked on and soon came to the meat-market, where iridescent flies hovered. Dodging a cart fresh from the shambles, he passed San Eustachio Church where stags’ heads – carved ones – displayed crucifixes in their antlers.

  The incongruity of such an emblem in a butcher’s quarter was a sample of the city’s contradictions. Who had sent the old cardinal to talk to him?

  *

  At Police headquarters rumours had preceded him. Clerks, with forearms encased in false sleeves of shiny cotton, popped from cubbyholes and desks. Their concern was to know whether laymen were to be brought into the service.

  Was it true, Monsignore? What sort of laymen? Did that mean men so blatantly lay that they wouldn’t wear a cassock? For, if it came to that, most of them were lay too and only wore it from respect for usage. Were they now to be penalised? Turned out of their jobs? No? Really, Monsignore? Could they count on that?

  Reassured, they told him that he was, of course, welcome to look at any records he liked, although finding them would take time. They, said the archivists, were not to blame for this. Speaking with respect, Monsignore, the worst complexities were the results of efforts at reform. The truth was that to change anything you would have to change everything since the system was a network of exemptions and privileges.

  Whose?

  Those of certain families, Monsignore. Of religious houses, parishes, chivalric orders, cardinals … Pleased to connive, they flung open doors and cupboards, vying with each other to show this representative of the new authority the ways of the old. Come, come and see. And up and down they led him, through smells of mice and mildew, to a vestibule where boxes of ledgers were being packed for removal.

  To where?

  Appeasing him – whom they had perhaps led here on purpose – they shrugged and laughed so that the pens stuck behind their ears trembled like antennae. ‘It’s as you say, Monsignore,’ they exclaimed, although Amandi, had said nothing. ‘To change anything one would have to change it all!’ Amused at the enormity, they tapped their papery foreheads. Here was where the indexes were, Monsignore. All in here! Tap, tap! Indexes to indexes! They held St Peter’s keys – or the keys to his keys, which was why they were hard to get at and hard to turn. They laughed and their laughter had the creak of rust.

  What were these boxes? asked Amandi. Where were they going?

  The clerks stared. Boxes? Ah, those boxes? Someone must be moving them. The former minister perhaps? Or one of the senior employees – all prelates – might be taking them into safe-keeping. The new appointees had not yet come but if Monsignore wanted these files himself, they had no authority to stop him.

  *

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ said Pius, when Amandi showed him the police file on himself. ‘You say someone was about to take it away? Just as you came? What’s that but a miracle? God must have guided you!’

  In the file which Amandi had had transported to his lodgings were boxes full of letters copied by Cardinal Lambruschini’s spies: letters to himself, notes, reports of Mastai’s movements and – Mastai picked up an envelope marked ‘Leonessa 1831’ then dropped it. His eye met, then dodged, Amandi’s.

  ‘Astonishing!’ he said. ‘Do you suppose he kept files on all senior churchmen? Here’s a note from me to you.’ He read: ‘“1845. Rome is negotiating with the Prince of Worldlings! Czar …” What trivia! Why should he have kept that?’

  Because, Amandi could have told him, I was promoting you as papabile and he knew it and wanted to be pope himself.

  ‘Oremus!’ Pius dropped to his knees. ‘Let us give thanks.’

  Amandi, robbed again of gratitude, dropped willy-nilly to his knees. Pius had been known to do this even in cabinet meetings and one of the new lay ministers told how, on one occasion, pressing business had been interrupted and the whole cabinet required to prayerfully salute a comet visible from the palace window.

  *

  A letter awaiting Monsignor Amandi’s attention was marked ‘confidential’ and spotted with a number of large capital letters.

  Monsignore,

  Yesterday while waiting in Yr Lordship’s antechamber, I burned so ardently to place my life in Yr Lordship’s gracious hands that when at last my turn came to be admitted to Yr Lordship’s presence, my strength forsook me, I grew faint and, believing myself to be on the point of death, was obliged to rush away. If Yr Lordship could but read in my heart you would surely feel compassion for me.

  Do not think of me as a spy, Monsignore, but as a man whom Zeal had destroyed. Having repeatedly risked my life for what I held to be a Sacred Cause, I find, after a lifetime’s devotion to the Security of This Realm, that men like me are now vilified and our Zeal seen as a crime. Colleagues have been cast from their posts or assassinated; the police dare not take action; while the Enemies of Order, now fresh released from gaol, glory in their impiety and return rejoicing to the embrace of their families.

  I, Monsignore, have had to take leave of mine and come to Rome where I am in hiding for fear of the poniard. So fierce is the intent of the amnestied men that if Yr Lordship will not extend your protection to me soon, I fear that I shall not have another chance to request it.

  May Yr Lordship take pity on the unfortunate man who kisses your hand, etc.

  Luca Nardoni

  The letter came with a note from Father Grassi SJ informing Monsignor Amandi that the spy hoped to buy protection in return for a set of files which he had amassed over a lifetime’s police-work in the Romagna: an astonishing achievement. ‘A man like that spies from passion,’ wrote the Jesuit. He invited Amandi to do him the honour of calling at the Collegium Romanum on any day convenient to him about an hour after the Ave Maria.

  *

  Father Grassi was a sinuous man with soft, blackberry eyes. ‘It is good of you to come,’ he told Amandi. ‘We had begun to feel like pariahs.’

  Amandi assured him that he, like His Holiness, had a high esteem for the Society of Jesus.

  ‘Which,’ said the Jesuit, ‘is an epitome of society itself. We have our differences, although it suits our opponents to say we have less autonomy than a colony of polyps. I had the temerity to write His Holiness a rather bold letter and would not like penalties due to me to fall on my fellows. I wrote sincerely but – well, you see my dilemma.’

  From outside the window came the sound of boys’ voices and from further off the cry of a melon-vendor praising his pyramid of freshly cut pink-fleshed fruit. Amandi had just passed this in the square and the sweet melon-smell floated in on the breeze.

  ‘… your ward,’ Grassi had been saying. ‘The boy in whom you take an interest is fifteen now. Nicola Santi. It would mean a lot to him if you were to let
me call him here for a few minutes. He’s an orphan, as you know.’

  To be sure, thought Amandi: the boy! His mind slid back to the spy.

  ‘Your cousin sometimes gives him lunch.’

  Amandi had a slightly eccentric cousin. Poor boy, he thought. Perhaps I should see him? The thought faded. He asked: ‘Is Nardoni here?’

  ‘Of course. You came for him.’ Father Grassi was now all business. ‘I’ll bring him.’

  Left alone, Amandi glanced down at the game in the courtyard. He could distinguish two teams, each with a home zone, from which players kept running out, challenging opponents to catch them as they rescued captured members of their own side. It struck him as a typically Jesuitical game.

  *

  Nardoni too could hear the boys whose game struck him as mirroring his plight – except that he had no rescuers.

  He had left the Romagna in a cartload of pigs which had pissed all over him while the cart jolted over rutted roads, rattling his bones until he felt as if he had been soundly beaten – as he would be, the carter assured, if Liberals were to catch him. Nardoni, an ex-policeman, had helped convict some of the amnestied prisoners, hadn’t he? Testified against them? Rigged evidence? Well, said the carter’s grin, what could he expect? A beating would be the least of it.

  He didn’t know what to expect. He had trouble marshalling his thoughts. Mastai-Ferretti was wearing the triple tiara. His mandate ran in heaven and earth – so where could Nardoni go? He understood as little of what had happened as the pigs did when they shat on him because they had nowhere else to shit. How long would he be on the receiving end of shit?

  A long time, said those who claimed to know.

  He couldn’t see where he’d gone wrong. A man chose his side and stuck to it. That was what loyalty meant. But now the side itself had dissolved. Even his friends were turning coat – or dead. Theirs had been the party of property and order – and now all the men of property were joining the gaolbirds!

  ‘Possibly not all,’ the Jesuit had said. ‘Possibly not for long. Monsignor Amandi is a man of influence: clever and moderate. I’ll talk to him first. You needn’t say much at all.’

  Nardoni’s plans kept unravelling in his mind. ‘Are we against the pope?’ he had asked the Jesuit during one of their elusive and, to him, deeply opaque exchanges.

  ‘We hope to enlighten him,’ said the priest and left before he could be asked to enlighten Nardoni.

  He had got the Jesuits’ address from a friend. ‘They’re not happy either,’ said the friend. ‘They’re your best hope.’

  But he was too dispirited to hope. Being cooped up here could turn a man’s wits! He needed movement – exercise to bring the blood to his brain. Why not try a handstand?

  When Father Grassi opened the door, the spy’s face confronted him at foot-level, while his feet waved like those in a fresco showing the damned with their heads thrust downward into pots of boiling oil.

  *

  Nardoni thrust a paper at Monsignor Amandi. It was a summary of the advice reaching Roman Liberals from London. The Monsignore ran his eyes over it and Nardoni, watching their movement, remembered what he’d written: ‘(1) seize all pretexts – cheering the pope, etc. – for assembling the people; (2) let them see our strength; (3) let sympathetic priests and nobles think each move will be the last; never reveal the revolution’s final aims; (4) repeat the words “freedom, rights, progress, brotherhood, equality”, also: “despotism, privilege”; (5) encourage all those who will come some way with you; later, if they try to retreat, they will be isolated.’

  The Monsignore looked upset. Good, thought Nardoni: sweat a bit in your turn.

  ‘Who prepared this?’

  ‘We did, Monsignore. Ex-policemen.’

  ‘But this is new material – written since the amnesty.’

  ‘We continue to work. From loyalty.’

  Amandi crumpled the paper. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To serve the state, Monsignore, and save us all. Dangerous information could reach the wrong hands.’

  He watched that register. Message received, he saw and went limp with relief which grew as talk turned to the Romagna. A maligned province. A place you could come to love, with its high skies and hardworking people. Nardoni, seeing that he was being soothed, joined in reminiscing about cafés and great players of bowls and billiards and it was in these coded terms that the two made their pact, agreeing that to reach an understanding could never be difficult for those who had the Holy Father’s interests at heart.

  *

  An after-image caught up with Amandi as he left the Collegio. At an upstairs window, a cluster of pale, young faces gleamed, as though blanched in the dim enclosures where the Jesuits kept their charges. Too late now to see the boy. Besides, he was not in the mood. Diplomatic politeness had given him a cramp in the mouth.

  Reaching the Caffè Venezia, he sat down to read the other paper in his pocket: a copy of Father Grassi’s letter to the pope. The date was old. Hence Grassi’s anxiety. The wind, he must feel, had changed and it was time to trim sail.

  Most Holy Father,

  I pray that Yr Holiness will disdain neither this humble expression of joy at Yr Holiness’s elevation …

  Amandi’s practised eye, skipping some pious courtesies, landed on the word ‘reforms’ and Grassi’s plea that Pius resist those pressing for them.

  … since reforms, oh most Holy Father, would open the way to a pluralism incompatible with the States of the Church. No compromise is possible with modernised forms of government since these take their mandate from the people’s will which is no substitute for truth, because:

  men do not understand their own needs;

  universal suffrage delivers them up to the frauds of demagogues;

  the sole safeguard for human happiness is order;

  order depends on institutions and especially on the one now in Yr Holiness’s keeping.

  Since dynasties incarnate the unity and continuity of creation, princes are symbols of the Supreme Being and, since it is on this mystic harmony, not on changeable constitutions, that human society is based, it follows that it is the duty of all princes to preserve the powers they inherit and pass them on intact …

  And so forth. Several more pages warned against introducing such ‘instruments of communication and conspiracy’ as the electric telegraph, and climaxed in a request for indulgence for Grassi’s forthrightness. Then the writer prostrated himself with veneration to kiss His Holiness’s feet.

  Amandi folded the letter. He marvelled that Mastai – whom he knew to be easily swayed – had resisted the warning. It was true that others were pushing him the other way.

  *

  Sister Paola had not burned His Holiness’s letters and was glad because, now that he had been translated to a higher sphere, they were all she had of him. He had sent a last note to say he would not write again and she must choose a new confessor. His tone was cool. ‘I am making time to write,’ said the note, ‘so as to encourage you to detach yourself from creatures and fling yourself with greater resignation into the arms of Divine Bounty.’ That phrase cropped up as often in his letters as the ones professional writers copied from the manual. As a small girl, in her uncle’s parish, she had enjoyed hanging round their tables on market days when they were one of the chief attractions.

  ‘Tell her the cow calved,’ a client might say, ‘and that we’ve planted the tobacco and my leg is better.’

  ‘Put in something fancy,’ a listener was sure to suggest. ‘Something from the manual.’

  ‘It’s to my daughter,’ the client would argue. ‘She’s in service in Forlì. She’ll want the news.’

  This was always a disappointment. Letters to daughters were rarely interesting. ‘My daughter,’ began the ex-confessor’s letters because we were all part of God’s family and must love and see God in each other – which meant, did it not, that to fling yourself into the arms of God was also to fling yourself into his? But he di
dn’t like that sort of thinking.

  ‘Your last letter,’ ran one of his old ones, ‘is hard to understand, but I warn you that the mind’s dwelling on certain sorts of temptation comes from our nature’s having been corrupted by Eve’s sin and weakened by our own. Close your mind to such fantasies … Don’t yield to anxiety. That makes things worse. Say humbly to Jesus Christ: see how abased and vile your bride is now! Despise these temptations. No matter what happens in them or what shapes they assume, victory will be yours so long as your will refuses its consent …’

  But her will did not refuse and – could he even imagine what happened in what he called her ‘temptations’? She blushed to think he might. Some seemed as real as memories, and sometimes she was ready to think that that was what they were. Mad, she scolded herself, you’re mad.

  ‘Pray to St Gregory,’ instructed another of his old letters, ‘that he may defend the Church and assist our own Pope Gregory who is governing it among tribulations …’

  Now he was governing it himself. Yet he had thought of her one last time. She wondered whether he had a picture of her in his mind: Sister Paola, the one who needed rallying. ‘Calma’ was his great word when writing to her. It was one her uncle had used when running his hand down the necks of carriage horses which had not yet learned to be staid. ‘Calma, buano!’ Picturing the hand on a horse’s coat, she felt her skin shiver in sympathy.

  The abbess did not inspect cells. If she had, Sister Paola could not have hidden the letters. You were supposed to keep nothing personal. Everything belonged to the community and even the property her uncle left had become her spiritual dowry without which she would have had to become a lay sister and do menial work. Hearing that her uncle’s housekeeper was without provision, she had asked whether it would not be right to give her the money and for her, Sister Paola, to become a lay sister.

  ‘No,’ said Monsignor Mastai, adding that excessive humility was a form of pride.