The Judas Cloth (56 page)

And in the end, Langrand, while refusing to put up any money of his own – he said the statutes of his companies forbade it – had agreed to handle the loan. Then Monsignor Ferrari asked for an advance. One and a half million francs per month for six months. The financier didn’t think he could raise it, but Flavio hoped the Apostolic Blessing would do the trick.

‘I took him to the mountain and showed him empires waiting to be won – convent and diocesan funds, parish priests’ and pious peasants’ savings. All these, I assured him, will now flow into his companies.’

He then pressed into service a young man called Moeller who had fought at Castelfidardo, and the two worked on the financier, describing the perils threatening the greatest historic institution of the West, and the loyalty and courage of those struggling to save it. Most were noblemen, said Moeller. Why, at Castelfidardo, his own commanding officer, the Baron de la Charrette, had been a cousin of the Comte de Chambord, pretender to the throne of France. The very survival of Old Europe hung, said Flavio, in the balance, and Moeller dwelled on the gaiety of the mess and the gallantry of the young men even now pouring
in from all over Catholic Europe to defend the besieged city. The scions of all the great noble houses would, he assured, be there. And Langrand, whose own boards of directors bristled with coats of arms, became in spirit a recruit. A buccaneer in business, he was enough of a gambler to be romantic, and it was during a dinner genial with military exaltation and the glow of fine Burgundy that Flavio raised the idea of a title. Arise Sir Langrand. A battlefield commission.

So, as an advance on this promise, Langrand received his Apostolic Blessing though, for a while, there had been trouble with Monsignor Ferrari, who wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with the Belgian at all. But Flavio spent money like water, bribing his way through the Curia, paying newspapers to promote the alliance, then, as the Belgian hesitated over the advance, dangling the title.

‘Between ourselves,’ he confided to Nicola on their way to Brussels with the papal Brief of blessing, ‘he himself is having to borrow money from the Jews, Bischoffsheim and Hirsch.’

At this, Nicola felt a chill of doubt. But Flavio pooh-poohed it. The money-shortage was, he assured, temporary and due to the American war. If anyone could survive these bad times, it was Langrand – and anyway we couldn’t change horses in mid-stream. Baptizing capital was our best and only hope.

‘This time it’s not my fault.’

Nicola nodded. He and Flavio – who was then in Pest – had arranged a visit to the rusticated Amandi. Instead, at the last minute, he had been deflected by telegram to Cesena, near the Adriatic coast, and thence to this convent garden. Tablets luridly depicting Christ’s passion were nailed to trees and, ranging in their shade, was an unrecognisable Flavio. He looked as though some large animal had chewed, then spewed him out.

‘Miss Ella’s back.’

For over a year now the epicene and her circus had been touring in Ottomon lands and Flavio had not seemed to miss her. The marriage gambit, he claimed, had been no more than that. A move in a game. Nicola must not judge Miss Ella by other people. Reality bored her and that included the
stuprum
which so haunted the clerical mind. Wanting to be a duchess was a joke such as children enjoy when rifling someone’s wardrobe.

Nicola reserved judgment. Whatever about sin – a matter, claimed Flavio, for
his
conscience only – a scandal could cause havoc in a papal court where the balance of power now hung by a thread. He had, therefore, been at pains to persuade his friend to end his entanglement, and at last Flavio wrote to tell Miss Ella that she must neither return nor try to see him.

‘She’s here! Threatening suicide. She means it too. Risk thrills her. Besides, it would delight her to drag us both – you too, Monsignore – down with her.’

It seemed that there was a nun here who had cured her back that time she had fallen from her horse: Sister Paola, a respected thaumaturge. It was on her account that Miss Ella had chosen this meeting-place and it was Sister Paola who had sent for Flavio. However, now that he was here and cooling his heels, neither nun nor protégée would see him.
Three times he had been refused entry by the portress who told him he had been given a bad character. Portrayed as a heartless seducer, it behooved him to marry Miss Ella, and the whole convent was praying that he would.

‘That’s why I need you here. To speak for me. For them she’s a ruined maiden.’

‘But, Flavio, I can’t tell them the truth! I suppose I condoned it. What did I condone? Sodomy? Certainly deception.’

We must, said his friend, trust each other. Be my advocate. Tell the nuns she’s demented. Bully them. The portress tells me that this Sister Paola enjoys prestige because of having cured Miss Ella’s back. The word miracle is whispered, and there’s talk of her trying for a second by softening my stony heart. Apparently, though, that’s to be done at a distance, for, as you see, I’m being kept out here like Henry IV at Canossa. I’m lucky there’s no snow.’

So Nicola told him to go to an inn at Cesena. He would see the nun.

Some time later, he was in the convent parlour when the abbess rushed in with news that Miss Ella had slipped off to take part in a balloon flight. The abbess, breathing hard, had clearly come with
un-nunlike
haste. The beads at her waist clicked and swayed and she lacked composure. Two noted French balloonists, said she, were to participate in a local charity-raising event. Feats would be performed. What nobody had known was that Miss Ella had made arrangements to sit astride a horse suspended from the basket of their balloon. A sort of trial by ordeal. She might leap off and kill herself. Given her state of mind.

‘Sister Paola had been trying to pour balm, but the unfortunate young woman …’

Nicola contemplated enlightening the abbess.

‘… driven, it seems, to despair …’

He let her talk. Then, ‘Does your convent claim that this Sister Paola performs … miracles?’

The abbess froze. Backing from the romance which had clearly bemused her community, she remembered caution. ‘No, Monsignore. Nobody
claims
anything. Sister Paola, it is true, is a holy …’

‘Holy?
Santa
?
Saintly perhaps?’

‘Well, that was a way of speaking, but …’

‘Not a claim?’ He smiled that indulgent smile which shows those who have overstepped the bounds of orthodoxy that they need rescuing.

The abbess, however, had recovered her poise. The concern now was practical and in practical matters, he saw, she would bow to no inquisitor.
The balloon flight might take off any minute from a park in Cesena. She had, she told him, sent to warn the duke and to dissuade the balloonists from allowing Miss Ella to go up.

Why, he asked, had the convent failed, up to now, in its custodial role? Pressing the point, he asked whether the unbalanced young person had not been stirred up here rather than calmed down. She answered, with spirit, that this was no time for debate, and, walking to the window, asked whether he would not himself drive to Cesena. He was spared having to consider this when a carriage appeared in a cloud of dust, out of which, like a demon in a morality play, stepped a priest. This, said the abbess, was the convent chaplain, Padre Gamba.

He had news. The balloon flight had duly taken off; Miss Ella and her horse were suspended dangerously beneath it and the wind was blowing the wrong way.

‘Wrong?’

‘Seawards,’ said the chaplain, ‘so it should be visible from here. Come.’ He led Nicola and the abbess to a place from whence they did, presently, spy a brightly striped globe – yellow and blue – whisking through puffball clouds. Hanging from its basket, was a horse and – but before they could see who, if anyone, was astride it, the whole thing was blotted out by the sun’s dazzle.

The wind had changed unexpectedly and now, said the chaplain, the balloonists risked being driven out over the sea to a certain death. All we could do was pray. The duke, he reported of Flavio, had gone to the coast.

Hours later there was still no news. Lunch had been served and after that Nicola and the chaplain had worn themselves out with prayer and speculation. Nicola’s prayers were that scandal be averted, though it was hard to see how, since a dead Miss Ella must be a source of it and a live one of mischief – unless, to be sure, she were to disappear totally at sea. But he could not very well pray for such an outcome, however convenient.

In the afternoon, the nuns took their recreation on a sweep of gravel outside their front door. Drawn up in two facing rows, so that one of the two was always moving backwards, they walked one way and then the other, to-ing and fro-ing, ebbing and returning with the rhythm of a double-bladed scythe.

Nicola, watching from a window, asked Father Gamba to point out the thaumaturge but was told that she was in retreat. After some
minutes, the abbess detached herself from the scything lines and joined the two priests. Still no news, she sighed, and when the Monsignore marvelled at the convent’s kindness to Miss Ella, who was to his certain knowledge not a Catholic at all, said, reprovingly, that the equestrienne’s was a deeply religious nature. And then, so it seemed to him, she gave him an ironic look.

Had Sister Paola nursed Miss Ella, he asked, seized by a tremulous suspicion. Could these nuns
know
?
But it appeared that Sister Paola had merely laid her hands on the injured rider.

‘And then we, who had seen her walk crookedly and in pain, had the joy of seeing her perform acrobatics on her wonderful white horse: a pure prayer, Monsignore, a glorious
Magnificat
!
As Father Gamba told us later, circus riders come up hard against the limits of their human skills and, like soldiers, learn to fling themselves into the merciful arms of God. Father Gamba,’ said the abbess, ‘was a military chaplain.’

Seeing the nuns and their chaplain so in thrall to Miss Ella, Nicola did not argue. Knowing him to be from the Treasury – this had been established earlier – he supposed they must think of him as blinkered by accountancy and blind to the realms of mystic risk which they had come to see in acrobatic terms. This was, to be sure, understandable. Imagining the drab, serge-swaddled women raising deprived eyes to the rider’s sequinned glories, he was moved by the incongruity of their joy. Tower of Ivory, he thought, Gates of Pearl! Hope of the Shipwrecked! Would they now picture the Madonna doing the splits on a white horse? How enlightened of their bishop, he remarked, to have sanctioned the display!

But the abbess, suddenly chary, twisted her bride-of-Christ’s wedding ring and avoided his eye. The See, she confessed, had been vacant at the time and the Vicar-General overworked. ‘So we,’ she admitted, ‘followed our own discretion.’

‘The better part of valour!’ Nicola, scoring a much-needed point, assured her of his.

‘She’s such a humble person!’ She was talking, he realised with a start, of Miss Ella. ‘She came here this time in a great crisis of
self-distrust
. I would call it a
religious
crisis
!
She begged Sister Paola for a more difficult miracle than mending her broken back and, when asked what it was, said “Make a true woman of me!” Can you imagine greater humility?’ asked the abbess.

Nicola drew breath and thought I’ll tell her. I must! The breath
escaped and he drew another. Then the chaplain said, ‘Here’s a carriage.’ He had been standing at the window. ‘It’s the duke’s.’

The three rushed downstairs.

Flavio was distraught. The balloon had indeed been swept out to sea. He wailed, ‘They should have landed!
Oddio
!
Why didn’t they? I waved from the beach, but they paid no attention. People have gone out in boats. Could they rescue them if they fell into the water? It seems unlikely. I hope you’re all praying!’

He sounded frantic. Oh God, prayed Nicola with embarrassment – recent dealings with
Him
were all tinged with that – don’t let him let the cat out of the bag. You, Yourself, he argued mentally, said it was better for a man to be drowned with a millstone tied around his neck than to bring scandal! But thoughts of drowning had a discomforting immediacy to them and he had to stop himself wishing a murderous wish or praying a blasphemous prayer.

Meanwhile, the abbess, looking gratified, told the duke that the convent was indeed praying for his intention. She waved a hand to where the two rows of nuns, rosaries in hand, moved back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. A voice rose thinly, listing the Five Sorrowful Mysteries. The abbess looked at Flavio, as though hoping that he would now at last promise to marry the desperate Miss Ella. False worldly distinctions, she must be thinking, were all that prevented this. Human respect! Arrogance of lineage! Sternly, she looked him in the eye.

Nicola marvelled that good people – the abbess was undoubtedly good – should be left by God in such ignorance of the way things were that their best efforts were misdirected. Perhaps God was flummoxed by today’s world?

He frowned at Flavio who might be tempted to try trading false promises for a true miracle. Just now, Nicola guessed, he had the Prime Mover in his sights and, no doubt confused by his own shifts, failed to see that he was being punished by Mobility’s own avatar: the wind. Pinching his elbow, Nicola whispered: ‘Don’t even think of it!’ His eye caught the abbess’s. She looked amazed.

Flavio’s eyes bulged painfully. They were netted in red veins, for he had spent hours on a windy hilltop scrutinising the sky and had, he said, ended up seeing globes everywhere. At last, blind from scanning clouds, he had given up. If only, he exclaimed, there were something one could
do
!

‘Oh Christ! Oh shit! Sorry! Sorry, sorry! Better stay quiet!’

But moments later, he was raging again. Fancy her having the gall to
come asking for a miracle! he exclaimed. Mind you, it was in character! She would see nothing wrong with a whole convent being turned upside down on her behalf. Arsyversy! It was the circus-player in her. Not just a convent either! Half Cesena had taken to horse and carriage and gone to look out over the coast. Maybe they too expected a miracle? Or a disaster? It would, he cried bitterly, no doubt, be all the same to them!

Rushing to the window, he thrust a spit-moistened finger into the wind then pulled his arm in with a movement which menaced the sky. He was like a rabid beast which bites itself.

The chaplain reproved him. The people of this parish were, he said, God-fearing and devoted to Sister Paola. ‘They’re undoubtedly praying that she’ll be able to persuade heaven to send us a miracle!’

‘We must each do what we can.’ The abbess looked at Flavio as though to mesmerise him. ‘It was His will that brought you here!’

Flanking him, like good and bad angels, Nicola and she stood ready with contradictory advice.

‘
Oremus
!’ The chaplain, a well-intentioned umpire, fell on his knees.

Under his lead, the abbess ground out a decade of the rosary, interceding with the Virgin in the interests, thought Nicola, of a marriage not much odder, after all, than that of celibates like himself whose female soul was bride to the divine groom! Going down on one knee to murmur responses, he thought: our imagery is mad! Divinely mad? I am under strain.

Standing up left them all at a loss until the abbess proposed a refreshment, which was accepted with gratitude. Afterwards, Flavio drew Nicola out onto the balcony on the pretext of again testing the wind. He said, ‘I’ll have to say something. They won’t leave me alone until I do.’ And he tied a silk scarf to the iron balcony. The wind blew it eastwards.

‘Tell them,’ advised Nicola, ‘you’ll do anything short of sin.’

Flavio did this and Nicola kept his eyes on the rippling cloth while listening to his own ventriloquised casuistry.

Thanking God for what she took to be a promise, if not indeed a miracle, the abbess hurried off to inform Sister Paola. The chaplain went too.

‘What you should know,’ Flavio told Nicola, once they were alone, ‘is that we are in no position to alienate nuns or their chaplains.’

The loan, he confessed, was going badly. Bonds were not being bought. Clerical support was tepid and it looked as though the Catholic financier would do less well for the Vatican than Rothschild had done in the past. Moreover – here the duke’s voice sank to a whisper – our
reputations were under fire. It appeared that Langrand’s agents in Hungary had tricked Catholic peasants into signing papers they could neither read nor understand. In return for small land parcels – probably too small to provide a living – these illiterates had bound themselves to make payments which would enslave them for life. ‘They’re the new serfs,’ he admitted, ‘and will surely end up having to surrender the land.’