A Christmas Requiem

by S. J. Parris

  ‘You want me to spy on my host?’ I stared at him.

  ‘I simply ask you to give an account of the evening to my patron – who is the reason you’re here at all. It would be a fitting way to repay him for his exceptional generosity to you, and you have no loyalty to Cardinal d’Este – unless there is something you haven’t told me?’

  I shook my head, dismayed; he smiled without showing his teeth, one finger absently toying with the bristles on his cheek. ‘You can go now. No doubt you have much to prepare before your audience with His Holiness.’

  I pushed back my chair, unsure of how to respond. Gennaro and Porta were right; I was up to my neck in a nest of vipers. Less than four hours in Rome and already I was being used by one cardinal as a weapon against another.

  ‘May I ask you something, Fra Agostino?’ I said, as I stood.

  He looked up from his papers, irritated to find me still there. ‘What?’

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Is that a metaphysical question?’

  ‘I mean – I know that you are angry with me for the way I spoke to you in Naples. And rightly so,’ I added quickly, lowering my eyes. ‘I was disrespectful. So I don’t understand why you would have recommended me to Cardinal Rebiba, when it’s clear that you have no liking for me.’

  He stroked the bristles on his face and considered how to answer.

  ‘Put it this way,’ he said, after a moment. ‘If I had a dog that had been taught to perform tricks, I would want to show it to my neighbours. It does not follow that I would allow that dog to sleep in my bed.’

  ‘I was not expecting to sleep in your bed, Brother.’ I aimed for a light-hearted tone, but he merely looked at me with even greater disgust.

  ‘You are right to think that I dislike your manners. I find you uncouth, arrogant, wilful, disobedient and too pleased with the sound of your own voice. Because you are clever, you think yourself above the normal rules of deference and respect that apply to the rest of society, and particularly the Church. You have an abundance of self-regard and none of the humility befitting someone of your years and background.’

  ‘But apart from that, I’m exemplary,’ I said. His expression remained stony. I needed to stop trying to win him with humour; it was not working.

  ‘And you are also flippant and trivial. But apart from that, you are undeniably gifted. I recall the afternoon at San Domenico when you recited psalm after psalm with no notes, in Latin, Hebrew and Italian – any psalm people requested, and sometimes backwards – though I felt that was an unnecessary flourish which provoked too much mirth among your brothers at the expense of the holy scriptures, and added nothing to our understanding. I was more impressed that you had great swathes of St Thomas Aquinas by heart.’ He folded his hands together. ‘The art of memory has always been one of the strengths of the Dominicans, though other orders try to claim it as their tradition. But it is we who refined it. I felt that a talent as exceptional as yours should not be hidden away in Naples, but used to reflect greater glory on our order. His Holiness Pope Pius V, though he condemns frivolity, is always pleased by men who will use their abilities to further our understanding of God’s truth, particularly when they come from his own order.’

  In other words, he thought I might be a useful passport into the Pope’s favour; if I met with approval, he and his Cardinal Rebiba would take all the credit.

  ‘As long as you remember not to answer back, and don’t try to be funny, I’m sure the Holy Father will see the gold in the dross,’ he added, drawing his thick brows together. ‘Of course, I need not elaborate what the consequences will be if you do or say anything to bring me, the cardinal or this convent into disrepute.’

  I was about to come back with a witty response, but thought better of it, and closed my mouth.

  Cardinal d’Este’s palazzo, off the Piazza Navona, was so vast it would have taken me twenty minutes of walking around the perimeter walls to find the entrance, if Fra Agostino had not instructed one of the convent servants to show me the way. I noticed the man carried a thick wooden stave at his side, and I was glad of it, since I had left Porta’s knife in my cell, thinking it might be unwise to turn up armed at a cardinal’s party. Fra Agostino, it seemed, was attentive to the safety of his performing dog. Or his spy; the weight of that commission sat heavy on my shoulders as I was shown into a cavernous entrance hall and had my cloak lifted from me by a swarm of attendants. I wondered what harmless lies I might invent that would satisfy Fra Agostino and Cardinal Rebiba without making Porta feel I had betrayed him and his patron in any way.

  I was led along a carpeted corridor bright with banks of candles, up a wide flight of stairs and into a chamber grander than anything I had seen in Naples. The ceiling must have been two storeys high, the walls faced with red and cream marble and every surface painted with frescoes of heroic scenes in scorching colours: rich cobalts, vermilions, ochres. The place blazed with light, as silver candelabra the size of cartwheels swayed from the roof beams. Branches of stone pine, laurel, juniper and winterberries had been wreathed into garlands to decorate the window embrasures for the Christmas season; at one end of the room, a trio of musicians with pipe, lute and viola de gamba played a lively dance tune. Overwhelmed by so much magnificence, I hovered in the doorway, feeling conspicuous in my Dominican habit. I was by no means the only man there in religious robes – I thought I glimpsed the scarlet of a cardinal’s skirts whisking through the crowd – but it was the costumes of the women that dazzled the eyes. So many women! In silk and brocade; cascades of lace and embroidery; jewelled sleeves, pearl headdresses and glass beads that caught the light, faces glowing as they tilted back their heads to laugh at a suitor’s joke, falls of gold or chestnut hair rippling as they moved. I found myself sincerely hoping that Fra Agostino had been right in his predictions of debauchery.

  By twenty-one I was not a stranger to women, despite my vows. At San Domenico, the prior picked his battles shrewdly and had evidently decided that the rule of celibacy was not one he was prepared to expend much energy enforcing; as long as no brother was foolish enough to get himself caught up in a paternity suit or attacked by a wronged husband, a blind eye was generally turned if young men slipped out through a garden door at night to visit local taverns like the Cerriglio, whose upper rooms served as a brothel. My experience in that regard was not so extensive as some of my brothers; my father’s stories of the horrors he had witnessed among his fellow-soldiers on campaign had instilled in me a healthy fear of the French pox, so I had generally kept away from professional women. The year before, I had imagined myself briefly in love with Porta’s niece, Fiammetta, though I had not seen her since she had left Naples to be married. But I had never, before that night, been in a room with so many beautiful and expensively dressed women; I cast my eyes around the party, mute with amazement at the bare shoulders and low-cut bodices, and noticed a few coquettish glances directed my way. It occurred to me that a number of these women might be courtesans, and I hoped I could get through the evening without making a fool of myself in front of Porta and his cardinal. I began to understand now why Fra Agostino and his patron disapproved of Cardinal d’Este, and found myself all the more disposed to like the man.

  A servant dressed in Este colours pressed a silver goblet of spiced wine into my hand and melted away; at the same time, I saw Porta weaving through the crowd, his arms outstretched in greeting, a broad smile on his face.

  ‘Here he is! The talk of the town. Come – let me introduce you to the cardinal.’ He took my arm and marched me the length of the room; as the crowds parted, I saw a group of people seated near the great fireplace.

  ‘Am I really?’ I asked, as Porta strode towards them. ‘The talk of the town?’

  He laughed. ‘Well. Not yet. But you will be. People here love new blood.’

  This did not sound especially reassuring, but before I could ask any more, he thrust me forward into the presence of the seated group and the young man in scarlet at its
centre sprang to his feet and held out his hand to me.

  I stared at him, briefly confused, but recovered myself quickly enough to drop to my knee and kiss the ring on his proffered hand. The only cardinal I had seen in the flesh was an old greybeard, and so I had pictured all churchmen of his rank to be well advanced in years, but I remembered now that many were significantly younger, thrust into the Sacred College by ambitious families to further represent their interests.

  Cardinal d’Este could not have been much over thirty; he had a full head of dark hair swept back from a high forehead, and eyes that gleamed with mischief as he gestured impatiently for me to rise. He gave the appearance of being a vigorous young nobleman who had dressed up as a cardinal for a game – which was, perhaps, not so many miles from the truth, except that the game was deadly serious.

  ‘So this is your young genius from Naples, Porta?’ He clasped me by the shoulders and looked me up and down. ‘You’re here to astound the Holy Father, I hear?’

  ‘I intend to do my best, Most Reverend Lord Cardinal,’ I said, bowing my head.

  ‘Give us a taste of it, then. Porta says you can do the psalms on request.’ He looked over his shoulder to the seated company. ‘What would you like to hear, Sisters?’

  I followed his gaze to the two women he had addressed; they too were around the cardinal’s age, and not the elderly spinsters I had anticipated. Both were strikingly handsome, with the same dark hair and long, straight nose as their brother, their gowns exquisite confections that shimmered in the light. Though they looked so similar, there was a marked difference in their manner; the one on the left, in a low-bodiced dress of deep red velvet with a collar of rubies at her throat, looked directly at me from under her painted brows with a mix of amusement and knowing. The other, in gold-veined white silk, her shoulders and décolletage covered more modestly with a silver shawl, sat back in her chair and regarded me as if reserving judgement.

  ‘Come, Lucrezia,’ the cardinal said, with a teasing smile, ‘you are renowned for your devotion to studying the holy scriptures – you must have a favourite psalm?’

  The woman in red threw her head back and let out a pleasingly unrefined laugh. ‘I prefer the Song of Solomon, Brother,’ she said, giving me that same direct look; I felt the blood rush to my face. ‘You had better ask Leonora – she’s the one who should have been an abbess.’

  Her sister raised her eyes briefly, as if this were a joke grown old, and turned her thoughtful gaze to me.

  ‘Psalm 140,’ she said.

  ‘Which language, my lady? Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian?’

  Cardinal d’Este laughed. ‘We’d better have it in Italian, or my sister Lucrezia will lose interest.’

  Lucrezia leaned forward. ‘Oh, you’re wrong, Luigi – I feel sure I could listen to this pretty friar all evening, in any language.’

  I blushed deeper, but I did not miss the way the young man standing behind her tensed at her provocative tone, and his knuckles whitened as he gripped the back of her chair. I glanced at him; a youth a few years older than me, with light brown hair and a smooth face, his mouth pressed tight, green eyes alight with anger. Porta had said the cardinal’s sisters were unmarried, but this young man’s possessive manner suggested he was a suitor, or believed he had some claim on her. I had no wish to make further enemies in Rome, so I directed my gaze politely to the other sister, Leonora, as I recited Psalm 140 from memory.

  When I finished, Porta clapped his hands in delight at the cardinal’s evident approval and cried, ‘Now backwards, Bruno!’ So I obliged by reciting the psalm backwards, which drew astonished exclamations from the onlookers. Hearing their gasps, more spectators gathered around to listen, until I was the centre of a considerable crowd.

  ‘Bravo!’ said the cardinal, regarding me with the open pleasure of a child watching a dancing puppet; I recalled Fra Agostino’s snide warning about his appetite for novelty. ‘What about Psalm 86? Give us that one in Latin, for my learned fellow clerics.’ A couple of older men in religious robes standing by laughed at this, and so I obliged; by now the audience had the hang of the game, and people started shouting out numbers of psalms to test me. I was glad I had barely had time to touch the wine; on my painfully empty stomach, even a glass would have blunted my ability to remember. I complied with each request, sometimes speeding up my delivery to impress them further, until eventually Lucrezia d’Este interrupted with a loud yawn.

  ‘Very clever of you,’ she said, toying with her necklace, ‘but can you parrot anything other than the holy scriptures? Which I must suppose you have been learning since your cradle.’

  ‘Come now, Sister – I will not have that!’ Cardinal d’Este rose gallantly to my defence. ‘I was raised for a life in the Church since the nursery too, as you know, and my memory is like a sieve – I count it an achievement when I can remember the whole Pater Noster. Fra Giordano is unquestionably a prodigy – he appears to carry the entire bible in his head. Even you, with your jaded taste for marvel, must acknowledge you are impressed.’

  Lucrezia did not appear willing to concede anything. Perhaps she had thought to make me look foolish, but I merely bowed and asked if she would care to hear some Petrarch. She sat up then, and favoured me with a cool smile.

  ‘Petrarch? You think, I suppose, that all women are set a-flutter by a sonnet of love?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, my lady. I have no experience of setting women a-flutter.’ I met her eye and saw the corner of her mouth twitch, amused. ‘I can give you some Cicero, if you prefer?’

  ‘God, no. It’s a party. Let’s have the Petrarch, then.’

  She gestured for me to begin, and I launched into some verses; she kept her gaze on me in a way that began to make me feel distinctly uncomfortable, until I faltered over the words. The room appeared to be growing hotter. She noticed my stumble, and I could see she was pleased by the effect; I was almost relieved when I was interrupted by the sudden crash of a tray of drinks smashing to the floor as the young man by Lucrezia stepped backwards into the attendant carrying it.

  ‘My apologies,’ he muttered, smirking at me, as the servant scrambled to pick up the fallen goblets, red-faced in front of his employer, while the women shrieked and lifted their feet lest their velvet slippers be splashed with wine. Cardinal d’Este took the opportunity to grasp me by the elbow.

  ‘Thank you for a most entertaining performance,’ he said. ‘Let us take some air together. Porta, join us.’

  He led me through to an adjoining room, equally breathtaking in its decoration; here the servant trotting before him opened a door and I followed Porta and the cardinal on to a wide loggia that ran the length of the building, above an inner courtyard. Away from the heat of the fire and the press of bodies, the sharp December air was as welcome as a draught of cold water and I felt my head begin to clear.

  ‘So, my friend,’ said the cardinal amiably, draping an arm around my shoulder. ‘What are you going to tell Cardinal Rebiba about me?’

  I stared at him. ‘Your Eminence, I—’

  ‘No need to be coy, Bruno – that snake Agostino da Montalcino will have asked you to spy on me tonight, I’m not a fool. Don’t worry, it doesn’t offend me. You’re not the first. I feel sure that between us we can concoct a few stories that will have the venerable Rebiba reaching for his sal ammoniac.’

  ‘You are not afraid of him?’ I realised as I spoke how naïve the question was. What must it be to come from a family so powerful that you never needed to fear what was said about you behind your back?

  The cardinal gave a mirthless laugh. ‘There’s not much he can do to me for now, I have enough allies in the Sacred College. But you should certainly be afraid of him.’

  ‘Your Eminence—’ There was a warning in Porta’s voice.

  ‘He needs to know, Porta. Listen.’ He leaned against a pillar and folded his arms, fixing me with a serious look. ‘Cardinal Rebiba is a dangerous enemy.’

  ‘But he’s not my enemy,’ I sai
d, glancing at Porta in alarm. Cardinal d’Este laughed again.

  ‘He’s certainly not your friend, whatever Fra Agostino has told you. Scipione Rebiba is as obsessed with purging heresy as Pope Pius himself. It was Rebiba who introduced the Roman Inquisition to Naples, nearly twenty years ago. And your convent, San Domenico Maggiore, resisted.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ A chill began to seep inside my robes; I could not tell if it was the air or the story he was about to unfold.

  ‘San Domenico is a rich convent. It had a comfortable relationship with the city authorities and the barons, with plenty of money flowing in for indulgences – the prior who was in place at the time didn’t want to be the one responsible for interrogating people for heresy all of a sudden. He feared it would affect those lucrative connections. So Rebiba contrived to have him replaced with someone more malleable.’

  ‘How do you know all this? You must have been a child at the time.’

  ‘My uncle Ippolito is also a cardinal. He’s told me all about it.’

  ‘My father remembers it too,’ Porta cut in, his expression grim. ‘The fear that spread through Naples when the Inquisition arrived. Suddenly anyone with a vendetta could accuse his neighbour of heresy, and see him put on trial and possibly tortured. The Dominicans were hated for a long time because of it.’

  ‘The prior that Rebiba installed died a few years later, and your current prior is showing himself increasingly reluctant to persecute heresy with the fervour that the Pope and Rebiba would like,’ Cardinal d’Este said. ‘The word here is that heresy is allowed to flourish in Naples because your prior is too liberal – including with his own friars. And the Spanish want to use that as an excuse to introduce their version of the Inquisition to Naples, which is even harsher than ours, and would clearly undermine Rome’s authority in the kingdom. Naturally, Cardinal Rebiba takes all this very personally. And he is not to be underestimated, Bruno.’ He exchanged a glance with Porta.