The Thief of Time (9 page)

I thought about it for a moment and wondered whether I should point out the obvious flaw in his argument. He was, after all, a perfect embodiment of that which he disapproved of. He was Swiss, not Italian. His argument – while theoretically debatable – did not merit such passion on his part, as the enforcement of his convictions would surely have led him back across the Alps and into a career in clock-making or conducting the local chapter of the Swiss Yodelling Society. I considered pointing this out to him in ungentlemanly language but decided against it. He did not like me. We had just met but he did not like me, of that I was sure.

‘I would be keen to find out more about my responsibilities,' I said eventually, hoping to move the conversation on a little. ‘The duties you mentioned in your letter, while fascinating, remain a little vague. I suspect there is a lot more that you can tell me about them. For instance, to whom do I report? Who will offer me instruction? Whose plans am I here to fulfil?'

Signor Carlati sat back in his chair and smiled bitterly at me, his fingertips creating a temple before his nose. He waited before answering and watched for my amazed expression as he told me who had desired my appointment to the Roman government and from whom I could expect to receive my instructions.

‘You are here', he said clearly, ‘under the direct will and desire of II
Papa
himself. You are to meet with him tomorrow afternoon in his apartments in the Vatican. It seems that your reputation has spread even to his ears. How very fortunate for you.'

He took me so much by surprise that I burst out laughing, a reaction which I can assume only from his disgusted expression he considered to be typical of an ignorant French immigrant such as myself.

Sabella Donato was thirty-two years old when I met her. She had dark brown hair, pulled back fiercely from the sides of her head into a bunch behind, and wide, green eyes, which were her most captivating feature. She had a habit of looking at you from their corners, her face turned slightly to one side as she observed your every movement, and was widely considered to be one of the three most beautiful women in Rome at that time. Her skin was not quite so dark as those Italians who worked out of doors all the time, and she exuded an air of worldliness, of European mystique, despite the fact that she had grown up the daughter of a fisherman in Sicily.

She was introduced to me at a reception given by the Comte de Jorve and his wife, where their daughter Isobel was to sing a selection from
Tancredi.
I had met the Comte a few weeks earlier at one of the many official lunches I had to attend in my new role and had been drawn to him immediately. A round faced fellow whose whole body betrayed a love of fine food and wine, he had come to speak to me about the opera house which he had heard I was designing.

‘It's true then, isn't it, Signor Zéla? It is to be the finest opera house in Italy, I believe. Set to rival La Scala?'

‘I don't know where you are receiving your information from, Comte,' I replied with a smile, swirling a glass of port in my hand. ‘As you know, no announcement has yet been made as to where the major funds are to be distributed.'

‘Come, come, signor. All of Rome knows that His Holiness is intending for it to be built. His obsession with outclassing Lombardy dates back to before his elevation, you know. Some say he sees his relationship with you as resonant of that between Leonardo and -'

‘Really, Comte,' I said, amused but flattered. ‘That is ridiculous. I am a mere civil servant, that is all. Even if we were planning an opera house, I would not be the designer, merely the man who sees that all the funds are dispersed in a sensible manner. The artistic creations I am bound to leave to other, more talented people than myself.'

He laughed some more and poked my ribs with a chubby index finger. ‘I can't get you to let loose any secrets then?' he asked, his face growing purple with curiosity as I shook my head.

‘Afraid not,' I replied. Of course, it was not long afterwards that the announcement
was
made and from then on I was fair game for anyone in the city to corner with their ideas of how the building should be constructed, how large the stage should be, how deep the pit, the very design for the drop curtains. But it was the Comte whose views I listened to the most at the time, for we became friends quickly and I learned that I could trust him to keep our conversations to himself. I was only sorry that his daughter was not a better singer, for I had hoped to be able to repay my debt of friendship to him by offering some assistance to Isobel, who was twenty-five, plain, unmarried and without a future.

‘She's dreadful, isn't she?' asked Sabella, approaching me for the first time just as Isobel finished her third excerpt and we were finally allowed to disperse for some much needed refreshments.

‘With training, there is some hope,' I muttered charitably, immediately attracted to the smiling vision beside me, but unwilling to be disloyal to my friend simply in order to ingratiate myself with a woman. ‘She handled the second movement skilfully, I thought.'

‘She sounded like she needed to have a movement herself,' said Sabella lightly, picking up a cracker and inspecting its burden suspiciously before popping it inside her mouth. ‘But she's a lovely girl all the same. I spoke to her earlier and she told me not to expect much from her singing.' I smiled. ‘Sabella Donato,' she said after a moment and extended a gloved hand towards me. I took it and kissed it gently, the satin warm beneath my lips.

‘Matthieu Zéla,' I said, bowing a little as I stood back up.

‘The great arts administrator,' she replied with an intake of breath, looking me up and down as if she had been waiting to meet me all day. ‘So much is expected of you, signor. The city is talking of your plans day and night. I hear there is to be an opera house somewhere in our future.'

‘Nothing has been confirmed as yet,' I muttered.

‘It will be good for the city,' she said, ignoring my half-denial, ‘although your friend the Comte should not expect his daughter to be singing there on opening night. She is more likely to end up gracing one of the many boxes in the audience.'

‘And you, Madame Donato,' I began.

‘Sabella, please.'

‘You will be singing if such a great achievement was to come into place? Your reputation precedes even my own, you know. I hear it sometimes gets its own invitation to parties.'

She laughed. ‘I don't come cheap, you know,' she said. ‘Are you sure you could afford me?'

‘The Holy Father has a very large purse.'

‘Which he keeps very tight control over, I believe.' I opened my hands a little to indicate that I had no comment on that matter and she laughed. ‘You are very discreet, Signor Zéla,' she said. ‘That's an admirable trait in a man these days. I think I would like to know you better. All I ever hear are rumours and, while such things do have an unpleasant habit of being true, it is foolish to rely upon them.'

‘And I you,' I said, ‘although the stories I have heard concern your talent and beauty, both of which are undeniable. I know not what you have heard of me.'

‘Charm is not everything,' she answered, looking suddenly irritated. ‘Do you know, wherever I go, from morning till night, people flatter me? Or try to anyway. They tell me how my voice is God's own instrument, how my beauty is incomparable, how this, how that, how everything in the world is wonderful because of my presence in it. They think this will make me happy. They think it will make me like them. Do you think it works?'

‘I doubt it,' I said. ‘A confident person knows their own talents and doesn't need to have them reinforced by being assured that they are there. And you seem to me confident already.'

‘So how would you seek to flatter me then? What would you do to impress me?'

I shrugged lightly. ‘I don't try to impress people, Sabella,' I said. ‘That's not in my nature. The older I get, the less interested I am in being popular. I don't wish to be actively disliked, you understand, I just find that I don't care so much about the opinions of others. My own opinion is what matters. That I respect myself. Which I do.'

‘So you wouldn't try to impress me at all?' she asked, smiling, flirting with me as we stood there. I felt powerfully drawn to her and wanted to take her somewhere we could talk in private, but grew weary of this slightly forced repartee, the language of two people who are trying to make a good impression on each other, something which despite my assertions to the contrary I was clearly attempting to do.

‘I think I would point out your flaws,' I said, moving away slightly and putting my glass down on a table. ‘I'd tell you where your voice lets you down, why your beauty will some day fade, and why none of it really matters a jot. I'd talk about the things that other people never talk about.'

‘If you were trying to impress me, you mean.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Well, then, I look forward to hearing about all my flaws,' she said, stepping away now and looking back with a smile, ‘when you feel brave enough to point them out to me.'

I watched her disappear back into the crowd and would have followed her immediately had not Isobel begun another movement with a surprisingly flawless B flat which forced me to stay where I was out of respect for the best part of fifteen minutes, by which time the famous singer and beauty had already disappeared.

All this talk of opera houses related back to the afternoon following my stormy meeting with Signor Carlati. By the time I gratefully left his shabby office that day he had given me instructions on how to conduct myself throughout my appointment with Giovanni Maria Mastai-Feretti, the Vicar of Rome, Pope Pius IX, my new employer.

We were to meet in his private apartments in the Vatican at 3 p.m. and I admit that I was somewhat nervous as I made my way through the stately, historical palace, guided at every step by a nervous, priestly secretary who informed me on at least seven occasions that I was to address the Pope as ‘Your Holiness' at all times, and never interrupt him when he was speaking, as it gave him a migraine and he would become irritable. I was also not to contradict anything that the Holy Father said, nor was I to offer any alternatives which were particularly contrary to the requirements which he would make of me. It seemed that conversation was frowned upon by the Holy See.

I had made it my business to find out a little about this Pope in the twenty-four hours at my disposal between interviews. At a mere fifty-six years of age – a child in comparison to my 104 – he had been in office only for a couple of years at the time. His personality confused me as I read through various newspaper articles about him, for they were all quite contradictory in what they believed to be his true persona. Some considered him a dangerous liberal whose opinions on freeing political prisoners and allowing laymen into his council of ministers could spell a dangerous end to the authority of the Papacy in Italy. Others viewed him as potentially the most powerful force for change within the country, able to unite the old left and right factions into a union of accord, opening up the press for discussion and setting about writing constitutions for the Papal States. For a man so close to the start of his reign, he appeared to have mastered the art of the true politician in that no one, neither friend nor enemy, seemed able to define his true beliefs or plans for either himself or the country.

The room into which I was ushered was smaller than I expected and the walls were furnished with books, long religious tracts, enormous histories, some biographies, poetry, even a little of the new fiction. It was Pius's private study, I was told, the room to which he went when he wanted to relax a little, unburden himself from his duties for a time. I was privileged, the nervous priest told me, that I was being invited to meet with him there for it meant that our meeting would be somewhat informal, even enjoyable, and that I would perhaps see a less official side to the Pope than others did.

He entered from a side door with, surprisingly, a bottle of red wine in one hand. Had he not been walking in a perfectly straight line, I would have suspected drunkenness.

‘Your Holiness,' I said, bowing slightly, unsure for all that I had been told whether that was in fact the correct etiquette. ‘It's a pleasure to meet you.'

‘Sit down, please, Signor Zéla,' he sighed as if I had already exhausted his patience, indicating one of the seats by the window. ‘You will take a glass of wine with me of course.' I was unsure whether this was a statement of fact or a request so I merely smiled and inclined my head a little to one side. He barely noticed anyway and poured the wine slowly into two glasses, turning the rim as he finished pouring like a waiter might. The notion crossed my mind that he might have been a waiter in his youth before he had settled on his vocation. He was a little shorter than me, about five foot eleven, with a large round head and the thinnest eyebrows and lips I had ever seen on a grown man. From beneath his skull-cap, a peak of dark hair pointed forward in an ironic display of diabolism and I couldn't help but observe from his upper neck that he must have cut himself shaving that morning, a human inaccuracy that one might never have expected of the Supreme Pontiff; his infallibility obviously did not extend to a steady hand.

We made some idle chatter regarding my trip to Rome, my lodgings, and I told a few lies about my early life, getting the basic facts right but loosing up the chronology a little. The last thing I wanted was for him to summon forth a conclave of cardinals to declare me a modern day miracle. We talked of the arts – he cited
The Beggar's Opera
in music,
Reflections on the Revolution in France
in literature,
The Hay Wain
in painting and
The Count of Monte Cristo
in fiction, claiming to have read the latter five times since its publication a few years earlier.