The Judas Cloth (28 page)

In the courtyard a carriage horse lowered then jerked up its head and whinnied. The boy quivered. For moments the vibrating black lips seemed to be insulting him. Steady on, Beppino!

A bearded fellow asked, Weren’t you at Vicenza?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come,’ said the man and winked.

Beppino followed him to where a crowd of veterans were waving drawn swords and shouting. Meanwhile, a man in a dark suit got out of a carriage and began to climb the stairs. A voice yelled from above, ‘Is it him?’

The bearded felloow cupped his hands and called up, ‘No.’

‘Carogna
!’
yelled the voice. ‘The bugger mustn’t be coming. He’s too afraid.’

The politican walked carefully, not hurrying but looking deliberately from side to side. For a moment his gaze locked with Beppino’s and Beppino thought, He’s putting on a brave face. He felt elated to be part of the gang threatening this man with the gold watch chain and top hat. Belatedly, the Civic Guards started clearing a way for him.

‘Who is he?’ he asked the bearded man.

‘Nobody we need worry about. We’re waiting for the top man.’

Beppino felt it would be stupid to ask who that was. He hadn’t been following what was happening and since being discharged had been drifting miserably. He had no money to sit in wine shops or pick up the news. The officers had told him to go home. But it stood to reason: the top man was the one to blame. ‘How will we know him?’ he asked.

But the other man had gone stiff. ‘Here we are‚’ he whispered to himself with a small private grin.

Another carriage had drawn up. A servant opened its door and lowered the step and another soberly dressed gentleman got out. His smile was thin-lipped and haughty. He began to climb the stairs.

There was a hush as though the crowd had drawn breath. Then with a rush of sound, voices swelled and echoed.

‘It’s him! Kill him!
Ammazzalo
!’

A sibilant hiss rose. The Civic Guards who were trying to hold back the crowd were shoved forward and Beppino, pushed from behind, surged ahead with the rest.

‘Get him!’ he roared, then his breath failed with surprise for he had not meant to yell. Yet excitement pounded through him. Pressed back, then forward, he was almost lifted off his feet. Again he shouted, this time with more conviction, and his blood charged through his veins as though he was part of a great train and being whirled along by its sparking, blazing engine.

The haughty man walked up the first steps and Beppino saw that, unlike the one before, he was ignoring the crowd. People were still hissing and whistling but it was only when someone hit the man on his right side that he turned slightly towards his assailant and exposed the left side of his neck. As he did, another veteran stabbed him there.

‘Nice work!’ said the bearded man.

‘Who was it?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘The victim though?’

‘Pellegrino Rossi.’

Suddenly now there was so much movement that Beppino could see nothing. Several men shouldered past him and out of a door leading to the via dei Leutari. Then, for a moment, there was space around the fallen politician. There was blood on the ground.

‘Shove forward,’ said the bearded man. ‘Cover their retreat.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was stabbed in the carotid artery. That’s fatal.’

‘Have you seen this impudence?’ Father Grassi showed Amandi the piece of low journalism designed to win French support for the so-called Roman Republic.

They had met by chance. The Jesuit was here to report to his General about their scattered fellows. He looked bedraggled and sick and Amandi found it hard to argue with him. Indeed, it was no time to argue with anyone, for ranks, very naturally, had closed.

What had happened after poor Rossi’s murder was that dragoons and Carabineers had fraternised with the mob which then marched up the Quirinal Hill to ask Mastai to appoint a ministry of their choice. On his refusal, they attacked his Swiss Guard. Shots were fired and when his secretary, Monsignor Palma, put his head out the window, it was blown off.

Under protest Pius then granted the ministry and, a week later, fled to this small port in the Kingdom of Naples whose monarch – nicknamed ‘Bomba’ when he got mercenaries to bombard his own people – was such an unsavoury host that it was assumed Mastai would move on. The Catholic Powers vied in offering hospitality but he, perhaps because of the invidiousness of choosing between them, ended by staying where he was. An exiled court was then set up as prelates rushed to join him, either because he needed their services or because they feared to become targets for the turbulence in Rome.

Monsignor Amandi had had no such fear and, when great cardinals were disguising themselves as – seeing no irony! – shepherds and sneaking from the city, had gone quietly about his business as he would still be doing if Pius had not summoned him.

Conciliatingly, he told Grassi of his regret at having been unable to save the wretched Nardoni on whose account they had last met. The Jesuit shrugged.

‘I didn’t have the influence you supposed …’

‘Oh, bishop, given that which has happened since …’

‘Yes.’

They were in a cramped, stale-smelling room filled with Grassi’s baggage. Space and privacy were scarce in Gaeta, so Amandi had let himself be inveigled here to talk. The Jesuits were still wary – Pius disliked their General – yet their modesty was charged with paradox. They, after all, had been proven right. General Roothan’s flight had prefigured the Pope’s. He was a John the Baptist who would have made straight the paths – would do so even now if he but knew which path Mastai planned to take. Amandi guessed that Grassi thought
he
knew. He didn’t – and doubted mat Pius did. He suspected him of waiting for a sign.

‘Don’t advise me,’ had been Mastai’s first words to Amandi when
they met. ‘I’m getting Liberal advice from Rosmini and the opposite from Antonelli and what I need from you is to know the mind of God. Tell me about the children of La Salette.’ The wisdom issuing from the mouths of babes was what he craved and, if Amandi did not quite provide it, he did confine their conversations to things spiritual, with the result that the two were never closer.

‘Rosmini …’ The name could have been choking Grassi for whom priests who advised compromise with the Roman Republic were quite simply traitors. Rosmini, an advocate of reform, who had first come here as Piedmont’s official representative, did advise this and had seemed at times to have Pius’s ear. It was repeatedly rumoured that he was to be the next Cardinal Secretary – but then this was rumoured of Amandi too. Both had been promised red hats. Meanwhile, Cardinal Antonelli, who already had one, held the office pro tem.

Grassi put a hand over his eyes and when he removed it, Amandi saw that the whites were yellow and the skin around them raw. He was waiting. For what? Abruptly, despite himself, Amandi was seized by hilarity. Here was another one who hoped for a sign! Rosmini too had come to him for enlightenment. I should, thought the bishop, set up as a seer!

It was in Gaeta that Amandi became a cardinal and that it got about that he would soon be Cardinal Secretary of State. Accordingly, he was courted and consulted, for vital decisions were being made and he, as an ex-diplomat, understood the wider web of interests and was acquainted with many who now converged on the exiled court, where emissaries were packed as tight as herrings and matters of high import discussed in cubicles and back rooms.

Four days after the Pope’s flight, France had dispatched 3,500 men in three steam frigates, allegedly to ensure His Holiness’ safety, but, in reality, to prevent Austria doing so first. Piedmont too was opposed to Austrian troops being invited into the state: a prospect so alarming to Liberals that several warned against it with an intemperance which harmed not only their cause but the hopes of their candidate, Father Rosmini, whose advice, though he had affected to be enraptured by it,
Mastai never actually took. Baffled, Rosmini turned for guidance to Amandi. What, he asked, should he think or do? Although he himself had not sought this, His Holiness had plainly said that he wanted to make him a cardinal and maybe Cardinal Secretary and so, having been lent 10,000
scudi
for this purpose by Pius himself, he had bought robes, two carriages, four horses and an appropriate amount of plate. Now, quite suddenly, Mastai was grown evasive. It looked as though Rosmini was not to be a cardinal at all and people had begun to criticise his extravagance. Bewildered, he assured Amandi that the carriages had not been expensive. They had belonged to dead cardinals. He was being maligned. As for his advice – which was to negotiate with the more moderate men in Rome – it had been a dead letter since January, when the Pope broke with those now trying to govern that city and fulminated an excommunication against all who collaborated with them. Rosmini was mystified. Had Pius gone completely over to the reactionaries? Did anyone know?

Amandi felt unable to enlighten Rosmini, a man so fallen from favour that his books were now being examined for heresy by the Congregation of the Index. This information was confidential and Rosmini, if told, could not be trusted to conceal his source.

‘Don’t fret,’ said Mastai when asked to be candid with Rosmini. ‘He’s a dear fellow!
Una
carissima
persona
!
Unworldly. Maybe even a saint. But I am obliged to yield a little to the other side. Let’s talk of something more uplifting.’

Things were thorny for priests under a government disowned by the Pope. Cardinal Oppizzoni proceeded like a man picking his way through a blackberry bush.

When the dissidents in Rome convoked a Constituent Assembly and called for state elections, a papal
Monitorio
declared all who cast their votes excommunicate.

‘That’s Bomba’s doing!’ opined the Pope’s old supporters, then, refusing to believe Pius had written the discreditable
Monitorio,
burned all copies they could lay their hands on and broke up the type in printers’ shops.

‘Even if he wrote it, we’re not bound by it. The Pope-in-Gaeta is not
the Pope-in-Rome,’ declared self-appointed tribunes, including the troublesome Father Bassi who was back in town dressed, said Oppizzoni, ‘like a buffoon!’ He was referring to the chaplain’s army uniform. The tricolour cross on Bassi’s chest especially scandalised the cardinal, who forbade him to say mass anywhere in the diocese unless he presented himself in proper attire. It was hard to discipline him further for, since being wounded at the front, he was idolized by the troops. Police reports that he had been seen drinking with officers at the Caffè dei Servi and the Leon d’Oro were tamely confided to the file which the Curia was keeping like a rod in pickle.

One of the chaplain’s more provoking habits was that of conscripting God and Pius to his cause. ‘Holy Father,’ he begged in an Open Letter, ‘by the love I bear you, I conjure you not to heed those now around you. Instead, give us our nation and our independence. Return to Rome, oh Saviour of Italy! Do not linger in the cage of Gaeta …’ Copies of this were on sale for fifteen
baiocchi
apiece. Proceeds to go to the poor.

‘He’s right!’ Rangone spoke fearlessly, being off to Imola, where the jealous
monsignore
had been obliged to sing small. Priests no longer dared antagonise the laity, and quarrels over mistresses were taboo. ‘Why should we be excommunicated?’ he demanded. ‘If we vote, we exercise our rights as citizens. We don’t touch the Pope’s spiritual power at all.’

‘So now you’re a theologian?’

‘Why should I have to be?’

‘Why should any of us?’ asked a customer of the Caffè degli Studenti where this conversation took place. ‘Theology’s what led to the Army being left in the lurch. If the Pope can’t make war, he should give up his crown. Why should we be unable to defend ourselves just because he happens to be our prince?’

‘Priests,’ said another, ‘may be eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake. The rest of us would like to keep our balls.’