The Judas Cloth (74 page)

A priest stepped forth, then back into the crowd, as though playing some child’s game like Nuts in May. Again! Third time lucky, he came up to Monsignor Santi and introduced himself. His name was Gilmore and they had been at the Romano together.

‘I called a few weeks ago, but you were busy.’

Nicola tried to put the awkward man at his ease but couldn’t follow his rigmarole. He was looking for Monseigneur Darboy and had an eye out for him even while they talked.

‘You robbed me of an English passport in 1849!’ This, though said jovially, made it impossible to walk off. Besides, Nicola now remembered the man.

‘I hope you didn’t get into hot water.’

‘Oh, I’m rarely out of it.’

The bishop’s laugh faltered. ‘You’re serious.’

The man, eyebrows horripilant and face atwitch, mentioned a book he’d written against usury. His Adam’s apple gnawed at his Roman collar. ‘It was condemned.’ He laughed inappropriately. ‘Because of your venture with the Belgian. Our fates seem intertwined!’

Nicola waited for an appeal. Then, still looking for Darboy, tried to speed it up. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’

But the other said, ‘No, no, Monsignore, I hope to help you!’

Nicola waited.

‘You, I and Martelli were blamed for denouncing the Society.’ Lowering his voice. ‘But he didn’t enter the Church and you had protection. I was hounded all my life. Mine is a small country.’ Again that odd guffaw. ‘Nowhere to hide.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I am. I shouldn’t talk of myself. It’s just to let you know why Father Grassi thinks he has me in his hand. He sent me. I’m to be an example to you. Something, I think, like a corpse on a gibbet. You might ask why I let him send me. Well, I wanted to see you. In friendship, if that’s not presumption.’

The man’s emotion was undiagnosable. Nicola waited.

‘What they want is the paper you got Giraud to sign. He said you’d know what I meant. Otherwise they’ll retaliate. I’m only a messenger but I’m at your disposal to help any way I can.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Nicola. ‘Can you wait? I’ll be back.’

Darboy had come out of the
aula
and was leaving. He was the most
independent of the Opposition leaders and Nicola wanted him to have Giraud’s retraction to use as he thought fit.

As it happened, Darboy was in a huddle of excited men, so Nicola handed over the envelope without any mention of Grassi’s message which, anyway, was probably pure hot air. ‘Keep it carefully,’ he murmured, however. ‘It’s explosive.’

Returning to look for the Irishman, he didn’t find him and was, anyway, distracted by a group airing some new rumour about the Prussians and the French. Walking home past the Minerva where Cardinal Guidi was now semi-confined, he wondered whether some bishops might secretly be praying for the arrival of Garibaldi.

Outside Cardinal Amandi’s
palazzo
,
Gianni, the major-domo, was directing two young footmen who were doing something with lengths of black fabric. On seeing Monsignor Santi, Gianni rushed up and began to weep.

‘Monsignore! Oh Monsignore!’

‘Gianni, what is it? What’s happened?’

But the major-domo seemed to have lost the faculty of speech and could only sob.

‘Monsignore, we must implore you to treat this as a cross!’

Monsignor Randi, Governor of Rome and head of the Papal Police, was mortified at having had to send a subordinate to rush the bishop to Police Headquarters. He apologised in a voice deep with commiseration. Given a choice, he would have gone himself to the lamented cardinal’s residence. An appalling loss! Such a holy man! Cut down when our hopes for him were verdant! But this, Monsignore, was a thorny business! The Governor fingered thorns, then wiped a forehead which may have felt crowned by them. It trickled sweat, and his handkerchief came away grimy. He put it in his pocket. Such a visit would have given rise to talk – or rather to more talk, for talk, alas, there would be.

Nicola was numb.

Randi mentioned a dead woman. With a vote due in the Council within days …

Woman? The bishop tried not to blink. When he did, redness engulfed him and he saw the cardinal as he had glimpsed him just now. Blood encrusted his cassock like tangles of surplus piping. Nicola had been fetched away before he could take it all in.

Randi consulted papers. If we let it be known that a prince of the Church had been found murdered next to a woman, the rabble would draw certain conclusions. So, for now, all this must stay
sub
silentio.
Truth was elusive and though Monsignor Santi had given a version of events, frankly, Monsignore, nobody would believe it. Think, moreover, of the conflict of jurisdiction! The calumnies reaching close to the papal throne and … Patiently, Randi went over known ground. The Council Fathers’ tranquillity of mind must be our first concern. And think of the foreign journalists. What a boon for their malice if this got out! No, we must give no quarter. His late Eminence would surely have agreed.

Nicola’s numbness was wearing off and pain waiting to engulf him. Effortfully, as though building a dike of words against it, he asked,
‘What about justice? If you give it out now that the cardinal died of a heart attack’ – this was Randi’s proposal – ‘how open a murder investigation later?’

‘Monsignore!’ The Governor joined slim fingers in a steeple. ‘Trust us. We know our trade.’ The steeple became a probe. It nosed the air. ‘We shall discover in due season,
after
the
vote
, that His Eminence’s servants, moved by respect and other worthy motives, brought him home, bound up his wounds and concealed the scandal. As for our forgetting –’ Randi smiled pityingly ‘– we have files in this office which go back a hundred years!’

But the bishop, a prey to delirium, rose to his feet and raved at Randi and at Rome where all truth was turned to lies. ‘
Menzogne
!’ he groaned, then fell back in his chair.

Monsignor Randi walked to the door, signalled to someone, then, returning, stared from half-closed eyes at the afflicted bishop. Would he, he asked solicitously, like something for his nerves?

‘Where is the Zouave?’

‘Disappeared.’

‘And the witnesses who saw him leave the church?’

‘They don’t know there was a murder. The sacristan, a man of judgment, sent for us at once. Then he closed the church. The cardinal’s household can be made to hold their tongues. As for la Diotallevi,’ the Governor looked thoughtful, ‘her pension is paid by this office. For your own consolation, I can tell you that she confirms your story and was able to identify the second victim. She was a certain Maria Gatti, a woman who had been had up more than once before the Tribunale del Vicariato for her immoral life.’

Leaning forward, Monsignor Randi shot a sudden question, ‘Who has the retraction?’ The manoeuvre failed. Nicola did not blench. Randi sat back. ‘If His Holiness were to have you confined to a monastery, it would be for your own protection.’

‘Do you want me to sign something?’

But the Governor was all wounded courtesy, ‘I merely want your word that you will collaborate with us until after the vote. The cardinal can meanwhile be decorously buried and you may go about your business: mourn, vote in the Council, intrigue even.’ His smile was disillusioned. ‘We are tolerance itself.’

So the ceremony of mourning unrolled its pre-ordained forms as the cardinal’s corpse was laid out in falsified state. Its wounds were hidden and its face revealed a puzzled, perhaps faintly malignant surprise. It had been given out that his heart had failed: an act of God whose timing seemed to signify that Pius, whom Amandi had been expected to succeed, truly had God’s ear.

The cardinal’s household was in shock and the footmen on duty in their mourning livery shed real tears.

Mastai attended the Requiem Mass whose bleaker passages struck the congregation as heralding trouble in the near future rather than on Judgment Day. Rumours of coming turmoil had begun to seep through the censored post.

Gianni, the major-domo – never now to be a pope’s right-hand man – was shaken to find that he had won a
terno
based on three numbers standing for surprise, blood and sudden death which he had picked for wholly fortuitous motives connected with a visit to a cousin who was a part-time butcher.

After the funeral, the bishop went to see Monseigneur Darboy to whom, until now, he had had time only to say: keep Giraud’s retraction, but keep it dark. Its original purpose was now void – Giraud was on the run – but it could be useful if he was arrested. Nicola did not scandalise the archbishop by passing on a doubt planted in his mind by Martelli.

‘How do we know?’ the deputy had murmured between condolences, ‘that Giraud was not inspired to act? By the Vicar’s vicars?’

Darboy, as befitted the Emperor’s chaplain and a senator of France, had rented a magnificent apartment in the via Condotti which aroused envy. ‘Caesar’s friends’, murmured the shabby Italian bishops, ‘enjoy the good things of this world: hangings, carpets, fires and a chef trained in the imperial kitchens who won’t cook spaghetti!’

‘Caesar, meaning Napoleon III, has protected their idle hides and kept them in spaghetti for over twenty years,’ said Darboy coolly. He was an ascetic man of irreproachable morals, and if he made common cause with an Emperor whose morals were open to reproach – why, so did Pio Nono! ‘Our best memorial to Amandi,’ he told Nicola, ‘will be to win the day for his policies. That, though, may take time.’ Retreating from his earlier optimism, he was worrying about the
form
of the definition which was all anyone could hope to change for now. Zealots hoped for one so all-encompassing that Mastai would have the powers of an African witch-doctor. ‘Westminster and Regensburg want to lock up thought.’ The Archbishop’s cool eyes rested on Nicola. ‘They’ve got
le feu
au
cul
!
Their arses are on fire! Pius wants his definition fast before a war breaks out. The Council has a lot more on its agenda, but if he can get
that
he will let us leave Rome until the autumn. Then …’

‘Then?’

‘We shall come back and question its legitimacy.’

They talked of Amandi’s death. Darboy did not believe that Randi intended opening an investigation now or ever. Even, said the archbishop, if the police were to catch and charge Giraud, the Zouaves would defend their man. They had done so in the case of Watson alias Suratt, a Zouave wanted in connection with the murder of Lincoln who, when the
Americans
made a formal demand for him, was let escape. Indignantly,
President
Grant had then sent an aide-de-camp to Rome and, to satisfy him, the officer responsible was retired – causing disaffection in the ranks. ‘So you may be sure that Giraud will not be handed over.’

Gianni, the major-domo, had received an offer of a post in Paris in the household of the nuncio, Monsignor Chigi. This was rum and perhaps unsafe? His doubts grew when a policeman called to ask if he was going. No? Well, said the policeman, maybe he should think again. ‘He said,’ Gianni told Monsignor Santi, ‘that I’d better go because I was known to be in correspondence with Garibaldini and could be gaoled if I stayed here. They showed me letters signed in my hand – letters,’ said Gianni appalled, ‘that I never saw in my life! They say they’ll use them if I tell anyone that His Eminence was stabbed! They want me to take the first and second footman with me. The third can stay. He,’ it struck him, ‘must be one of
theirs
?
O
Madonna
santa
!’ And Gianni wept, as he had been doing increasingly often, for his nerves were frayed to pieces. Paris was as alien as the North Pole.

Nicola tried to see Monsignor Randi but had to be satisfied with a subordinate who, though courteous and deferential, knew nothing of the case.
Was
there a case? He hadn’t been informed. Making Rome safe for the Council was an overwhelming task. Had the bishop heard of the secret manufactory which had been discovered making umbrellas
containing
knives? Probably run by Masons! And how, asked the policeman, were things going at the Council now? Was the Holy Spirit’s moment coming?

Nicola decided to go and see.

A ‘trial ballot’ was being held on the schema,
De
Romano
Pontefice.
A dry run for the Solemn Session on the 18th, it aimed to test resistance to chapters on the Primacy and Infallibility which had been amended and re-amended in meetings which Nicola had missed. The text on
Infallibility
was still unsatisfactory to the Minority. The one on the Primacy now ran, ‘Jesus Christ established … primacy in Peter for the perpetual good of the Church … until the end of the world. Therefore Peter lives, presides and exercises judgment in his successors, the bishops of the Roman See.’ Those in favour stood up, then those against, and it was clear that both texts had the required majority. Next came the vocal ballot when ‘aye’ was ‘
placet
’, no ‘
non
placet
’, and those wanting an amendment said
‘
placet
iuxta
modum
’. Darboy had hoped for a hundred and forty ‘
non
place
t
’s, which would be a significant vote of dissent. However, there were only eighty-eight as seventy-six Opposition
members
, though still in Rome, felt unable to publicly defy the Pope’s wishes and failed to turn up. The ‘
placet
’s were thus 451, with sixty-two ‘
placet
iuxta
modum
’s.

Next day Darboy went to see Cardinal Bilio in the hope of striking a bargain. His plea was that, if one counted the absentees and the
iuxta
modums
, the dissenters amounted to a sizeable group and he would recommend that they submit a solemn protest stating that, since the Council lacked moral unanimity, they did not feel bound by its decrees.

It was clear to Nicola that Bilio would not budge, for he knew Darboy’s following to be neither resolute nor of one mind.

Returning to the apartment, he found Gianni looking sick. It had just struck him that a widow with whom he had been friendly must have given specimens of his handwriting to the police. She was illiterate and he had often written letters on her behalf.

A note from Prospero requested a meeting, but Nicola did not reply. He did not want to see anyone, though neither could he bear to sit in this residence which he had shared with Amandi and where he was a prey to streams of condoling visitors. Restlessly, he ordered his carriage and had himself driven about at random until this too palled and, remembering an address mentioned by Monsignor Randi, he found himself pulling the bell of the apartment in the Trastevere where Maria Gatti had lived.

The door opened a crack and a nose and mourn showed through. Sullenly, the mouth said, ‘If you want my mother, she was buried days
ago.’ His mother? ‘Yes,’ raged the mouth. ‘I am Signora Gatti’s son, Pietro. She’s dead. If you’re one of her’ – with a quick intake of breath – ‘regulars, you can spread the word.’

‘I haven’t seen her for twenty years.’

‘Ah.’ Opening, the door revealed a boy who should have been
good-looking
but wasn’t. He was too furtive, and the look seemed ingrained.

‘May I come in?’

The boy stepped aside. Passing him, the bishop spied a quick grimace. Moving to a window which overlooked nothing, he mumbled foolishly about the view. Maria. Paralysis had seized him, for the young man was a living replica – though sulky and tormented – of himself twenty years ago.

Fine bones and figure. Slippery eyes. That reddish hair! Reflected in the windowpane against roof tiles and chimneypots were two quivering images. Old self? New son? Say nothing, he cautioned himself, then wondered if the advice echoed that made by and to his own father forty years before. Trapped in a trinity of ghosts, he took refuge in the ritual of condolence. His mother, he told the flinching youth, had been a lovely girl when he, Nicola, had known her.

The grubby apartment was a wistful imitation of Diotallevi’s – and perhaps Maria Gatti had got her cast-offs? A Turkey carpet, too big to unroll, was half-bunched against a wall and a magpie scatter of baubles might, by candlelight, approximate Donna Costanza’s opulent effects.

‘Did your mother bring you up?’

No. The nuns had. He had only known his mother in recent years, after Signora Diotallevi got him work in a photographer’s shop on the via del Babuino. Mother Church suckled us all, thought the bishop: me, Flavio, this youth. Furtively, he closed then opened his eyes to test his perception of the likeness. Had he imagined it? He was already less sure and his recollection of his young self seemed to melt like snow.

How, he asked Pietro Gatti, had his mother died?

‘Strangled. The police favour the notion of a burglary.’ He had not lived here himself, he explained. A neighbour found her.

‘Here?’

‘Where else?’

Nicola was back in the Governor’s office at Montecitorio, where Monsignor Randi was striding about, punctuating his speech by short pauses and whirls which made his cassock bell.