‘What caused this “falling-out”?’ asked Munthe.
‘We were at Oxford together. I won the Newdigate prize for poetry and, two years later, Rennell Rodd won it also. We revelled in one another’s success. And when it came to our final examinations and I secured a First, it was expected by one and all that Rennell Rodd would do the same. Alas, it was not to be. Rennell Rodd got a Second. He tried too hard. It’s his besetting sin.’
‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘It’s enough, isn’t it?’ He laughed and took a swig of brandy. ‘But you are right, Arthur. There was more to it than that. About ten years ago, I did young Rennell Rodd a kindness — at his behest. I wrote the foreword to his first book of poems. There are some men who can never forgive a kindness done to them. Obligation turns to enmity.’ My friend sat up once more, holding the lighted butt of his cigarette in the air. ‘Do you have a dead man’s hand that I might use as an ashtray, Doctor?’
Munthe picked up from his desk what appeared to be a large, black mummified hand, its fingers stiffly erect. He passed it to Oscar.
‘It’s surprisingly light,’ said Oscar, cupping the hand in his own. He looked at Munthe and smiled. ‘Is this, by any chance, the severed hand of the unfortunate workman who fell to his death from the rafters of All Saints?’
‘It is,’ replied Munthe, lightly. ‘I was called to the scene at the time of the accident. I found the hand at the foot of the pulpit. I knew the poor man would have no further use for it, so I kept it — as a souvenir.’
‘And you embalmed it?’ said Oscar, examining the hand more closely.
‘Yes,’ said Munthe. ‘Your cigarette can’t harm it now.’
l0
The sacristy
On the morning of the next day I sent a telegram to my wife, Touie, and allowed Oscar to take me to Keats’s tailor in the Via del Corso. I asked for something not too Italian’. Oscar and the tailor assured me they would have something ‘che va bene’ ready by lunchtime.
In the afternoon, at three o’clock, Munthe joined us at the Hôtel de Russie. The Swedish doctor was dressed precisely as he had been the night before, but his beard appeared freshly trimmed and his thick, round spectacles gleamed in the sunlight. He carried with him a small, somewhat battered, black leather medical bag. Together, by carriage, from the door of the hotel, the three of us proceeded to the Vatican. As we crossed the Piazza del Popolo the over-familiar urchin boys once again ran after our carrozza. As they called up to us, waving and laughing, I looked away. Oscar turned towards them, smiled and threw them some change.
‘Don’t encourage them, unless you want to,’ said Axel Munthe. ‘They’re notorious. Rome is full of feral children — waifs and strays who sleep outside the city walls and eke out a living by preying on kind-hearted tourists — but those two stand out from the crowd. I know them.
They hunt as a pair and once they’ve latched on to you, they won’t let you go.’
The sun was high; the air was dry; there was no breeze; the streets were dusty. Self-conscious as I felt at my appearance, I was grateful to be wearing the light linen suit that Oscar had chosen for me.
‘And the straw hat becomes you, Arthur,’ said my friend, teasingly. ‘We’ll make a Roman of you yet.‘
Door to door, the journey took less than half an hour. As we crossed the blue-brown river Tiber, Oscar looked down at a ragged knot of beggars sheltering from the sun beneath the abutment of the bridge.
‘The evolution of man is slow,’ he said. ‘The injustice of man is great.’ As we turned into the tree-lined Borgo Santo Spirito and caught our first glimpse of the mighty basilica of St Peter’s ahead of us, Oscar declared, ‘From Constantine’s foundations and Caligula’s obelisk to Bernini’s façade and Michelangelo’s dome, all beautiful things, I find, belong to the same age.’
As names, allusions and sententious turns of phrase tumbled out of him, I listened — intrigued, amused, impressed, but also conscious that my friend’s manner (and his learning) might well infuriate those who did not realise how essentially good-hearted he was.
The Piazza San Pietro was crowded with pedestrians: pilgrims, priests, friars, nuns, beggars, tourists, street-vendors, young men in boaters, old women in veils. Boldly, instructed by Munthe, our driver steered our carriage through the crowd, across the square itself, past the flower-sellers and rosary-pedlars, past the fountains, past a colossal, newly erected statue of St Paul, to a gate at the right-hand end of a colonnade of Doric columns. As the carriage pulled up before the gate, four or five members of the papal Swiss Guard, helmets gleaming, halberdiers in hand, stepped briskly forward. They looked resplendent in their red, blue and yellow striped uniforms, but not welcoming.
‘Are we expected?’ I asked.
‘Have no fear,’ said Munthe, stepping down from the carriage lightly. ‘Follow me.’
The moment the Swiss Guards recognised Munthe, they moved aside to let our party pass.
‘It is the little black bag that does it,’ said Munthe. ‘It is a doctor’s passepartout. It allows you to go safely anywhere.’
‘Where are we going?’ bleated Oscar, eyeing the wide stone stairway that stretched up before us beyond the gate.
‘To the Sistine Chapel. It is no more than a hundred steps.’
‘No wonder the pope insists on being carried everywhere,’ cried Oscar, plaintively. ‘How on earth does Monsignor Felici manage?’
‘With difficulty,’ said Munthe. ‘I believe he has acolytes to help him. The Swiss Guard carry the old priest to and fro.’
‘Acolytes and guardsmen,’ murmured Oscar. ‘It’s the only way.’
‘More exercise, my friend,’ countered Munthe. ‘That’s the only way.’
Oscar said nothing more. He could not. His breath was all used up in climbing the steps.
When we reached the summit, Munthe did not pause. ‘This way,’ he said, leading us now along a wide, high-ceilinged and marbled outdoor corridor, lined with ancient Greek and Roman statuary. ‘Prepare to adjust your eyes, gentlemen,’ he instructed, as we arrived at a small, unmarked doorway cut into a high, whitewashed wall. With a heave, he pulled open the door and indicated that we should step through the narrow aperture ahead of him. I entered first. Oscar, breathing heavily, followed. Munthe’s warning was well given. From golden sunlight we were plunged into inky gloom.
As Munthe pulled the door close to behind us, I asked, ‘Is this the Sistine Chapel?’
‘Yes,’ said Munthe. ‘This is the private entrance.’
‘We have come to the most beautifully decorated space on the face of the earth,’ cried Oscar, ‘and we cannot see a thing!’
‘Well, you’re not ‘ere for the frescoes, are you, Mr Wilde?’
The question came out of the darkness in a cheery cockney accent. It was followed almost at once by the appearance of a cheery cockney face, lit by a single wax candle held up before it in a brass candlestick. Holding the candlestick was the owner of the face, a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some forty years of age, clean-shaven and sallow-skinned, with shiny, black, curly hair and shiny, black, merry eyes.
‘Good God,’ exclaimed Oscar. ‘It’s Gus Green!’
‘It ain’t, Mr Wilde. It’s ‘is brother: Cesare Verdi.’
Oscar turned to me, laughing. ‘This is Gus Green, Arthur — maître d’hôtel at Willis’s restaurant in King Street, St James’s, and my particular friend.’
‘No, Mr Wilde. It’s Cesare Verdi, sacristan at the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s, Rome. You think I’m my brother, but I’m not.’
‘You are Gus,’ insisted Oscar, peering at the man. ‘You must be. I can see the devil in your eye.’
‘Two peas from the same pod, Mr Wilde — but I’m the older, by a good hour, and I’m Italian. Si, è vero. I’m my father’s son. Augustus is the English one. ‘E’s ‘is mother’s boy. ‘E’s the one with the devil in ‘is eye. I’ve got the Archangel Gabriel in mine.’
Oscar laughed. ‘By all that’s
wonderful, can this be true? You’re telling me that you and Gussy are twins?’ Oscar gazed intently at the man behind the flickering candle. ‘But I’m sure I’ve met you. You seem so familiar.’
‘You ‘ave met me, Mr Wilde — at Willis’s. I come over to London now and then, to see Augustus and our mother, just for a little ‘oliday, you know. I ‘elps out at Willis’s when I can. I’ve had the ‘onour of serving you once or twice, sir, and I’ve ‘eard all about you from Augustus. ‘E’s partial to you, Mr Wilde.’
‘And I’m partial to him. He’s a good man.’
‘And what ‘e does for you gents in London, I do for my priests ‘ere in Rome. Augustus gets to look after Mr Oscar Wilde. I gets to look after ‘is ‘oliness Pope Leo XIII.’
‘Is that so?’ Oscar laughed.
The man laughed too. ‘But we’ll all be one in paradise, Mr Wilde. I’m counting on that.’
‘You are the sacristan here?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied, winking at me. (It was a genial wink, not furtive or conspiratorial.) ‘As my father was before me. And as ‘is father was before that. It runs in the family.’ He held his candlestick up above his head and turned to indicate the vastness of the chapel all about us. ‘Welcome to my world,’ he said.
My eyes were gradually becoming accustomed to the gloom. I now saw that we were standing in a corner of the chapel, immediately adjacent to the high altar. Michelangelo’s triumphal Second Coming on the Day of Judgement was just discernible above us.
‘Come through to the sacristy,’ said Cesare Verdi, still chuckling. ‘We’ll get you some tea.’
‘And cucumber sandwiches?’ asked Oscar.
‘Not today, Mr Wilde. We do an English tea ‘ere —muffins, crumpets, anchovy toast and all — but not on a Friday.’
‘I believe Monsignor Breakspear is expecting us.’
‘Not today, Mr Wilde. ‘E’s not ‘ere.’
‘But he said …’
Cesare Verdi cocked his head to one side and looked at Oscar with an amused air. ‘Monsignor Breakspear is a Jesuit, Mr Wilde. And a Jesuit doesn’t always mean what ‘e says.’
Oscar did not rise to this sally. ‘Where is Monsignor Breakspear then?’ he asked.
‘With the ‘oly Father. The Monsignor is ‘earing the pope’s confession. It’s ‘is day for it.’
‘I thought the Holy Father was on his summer retreat, ‘I ventured, somewhat confused.’
“E is, in the summerhouse at the far end of the Vatican gardens. The pope does not leave the ‘oly City — ever.’
‘He chooses to be a prisoner here,’ explained Axel Munthe. ‘It is part of the Vatican’s ongoing struggle with the Italian state. It’s a territorial dispute.’
“Is ‘oliness will win in the end,’ said Cesare Verdi. “E ‘as God on ‘is side.’
‘I like your lively sense of humour, too, Signor Verdi,’ said Oscar.
‘It’s ,”Cesare”, Mr Wilde, and you’ll like my tea, too, sir. Darjeeling from Fortnum and Mason. Served in cups lately bequeathed us by Cardinal Newman. Fortified with a little Italian brandy, should you be so inclined. We aim for the best of both worlds ‘ere.’
The curly-headed cockney turned and led us just a few steps towards another unmarked door, as narrow and obscure as the one we had entered by. He opened it and we stepped back into the afternoon sunlight.
‘This is the sacristy,’ he said. ‘This is my domain.’
We had entered the first of what appeared to be a series of simple stone-built chambers located immediately behind the high altar of the Sistine Chapel. To our left was a wide window overlooking the rooftops of the basilica of St Peter’s; to our right were two separate sets of stone steps leading up to the rooms beyond. The walls of this first chamber were lined with dark-red damask. On the wall immediately facing us was a simply framed depiction of the Last Supper, painted in startlingly bright colours in something like the early style of Edward Burne-Jones. Below the painting, ranged against the wall, stood an elegant gilt chaise longue covered in deep-red velvet.
‘That is the seat of tears,’ said our host.
‘The seat of tears?’ repeated Oscar, looking down at it.
‘The Sacred College of Cardinals meets in conclave to elect a new pope in the Sistine Chapel. That much you know. The Sistine Chapel was built by Sixtus IV for the purpose.’
‘That much we know, also,’ said Oscar.
‘But you may not know this, Mr Wilde. When the new pope’s been chosen — the moment ‘e’s chosen — even as the ballot papers are being burnt and before ‘is name is given to the world, ‘e comes in ‘ere, alone. ‘E sits on that chaise, alone, and ‘e weeps. Alone. ‘E weeps for the world — and for ‘isself. Some is so miserable, they say they weeps tears of blood. Look there, you can see the mark — the stigmata.’
The man pointed to small brown smudge on the deep-red velvet. It was no larger than a thumbprint.
‘It’s a responsibility,’ I said, ‘becoming pope.
‘And that’s why I gives ‘im a nip of brandy and then ‘e gets ‘is change of clothes. Out of the cardinal red, into the pontifical white. Of course, we don’t know for certain beforehand who’s going to be elected so we ‘as to prepare papal robes in assorted sizes. Popes tend to go fat, thin, fat, thin — that’s the general rule, but you can’t depend on it. Pio Nono and Pope Leo were both pretty scrawny.
‘Were you here for Pope Leo’s election?’
‘I was, Mr Wilde. My father was sacristan, but I was ‘ere. And, God willing, I’ll be on ‘and to see the next one in, too. Pope Leo is an old man, but it’ll be a few years yet. Monsignor Breakspear is in with a chance — not much of a chance, not as much of a chance as ‘e thinks, God bless ‘im, but a chance all the same. ‘E’ll be a cardinal soon, that we can be sure of.’
‘How is Father Bechetti?’ asked Axel Munthe. The Swedish doctor was standing behind us, looking over our shoulders, studying the painting of the Last Supper.
‘Much as usual, Doctor. Brother Matteo’s with ‘im. ‘E’s in ‘is cell. They’re expecting you.’
‘I’ll go and see him now,’ said Munthe. ‘I know the way.’
With precise steps, the doctor, still clutching his black bag, slipped quietly out of the chamber up the right-hand set of stairs.
‘Is this one of Father Bechetti’s paintings?’ asked Oscar, indicating the Last Supper.
‘It is,’ said Cesare Verdi. ‘We’ve got ‘is paintings everywhere. Look.’ He turned and pointed to another large canvas on the wall behind us. It was a double portrait of an old man and a young girl. ‘Pio Nono and the Blessed Virgin Mary. What do you make of that?’
‘It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art,’ said Oscar.
‘I’d ‘ave thought the bright colours would’ve been to your liking, Mr Wilde — the vibrancy, if you knows what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, Cesare,’ replied Oscar, as he considered the picture.
‘Your English is remarkable, sir,’ I added, looking at our curly-headed host. The man’s black eyes and oily hair suggested a Venetian fisherman painted by Bellini, but his way of speaking was pure Billingsgate.
He laughed. ‘Remarkable — for an Italian.’
‘Are you Italian?’ asked Oscar.
‘Completamente,’ replied the sacristan. His Italian accent was as impeccable as his cockney. ‘But I was born by London Bridge, within the sound of Bow Bells. And I lived in London until I was eleven. My mother’s a cockney — and a cook.’
‘And the best of both, I’m sure,’ said Oscar, ingratiatingly.
‘She met my father just nine months before I was born.’
‘Your father was Italian?’
‘Assolutamente, del tutto — ‘e was Roman, to the core.’
‘And why was he in England?’
“E was sent there with Cardinal Wiseman, in 1850, when the Roman ‘ierarchy was re-established and the cardinal was appoint
ed first Archbishop of Westminster. My dad was part of the retinue — deputy sacristan in charge of vestments and the silver and gold plate. ‘E’d never been abroad. ‘E was in London only for a week or two, but it was long enough. ‘E was young and ‘ot-blooded.’
‘And Italian.’
‘Yes, Mr Wilde. By all accounts my conception was merry, if not immaculate, and my old dad, if not exactly a gentleman, did have the decency give my mother ‘is name and address — and when ‘e ‘eard about ‘er babies ‘e sent ‘er a few lire when ‘e could. And when I was eleven, and ‘is dad died, and ‘e became sacristan ‘ere, ‘e came to London to fetch me to join ‘im.’
‘And did your mother not object?’ enquired Oscar.
‘She ‘ad Augustus. Augustus was always ‘er favourite. And because we’re twins and we look alike, she says it doesn’t matter so much. When she sees Augustus, she sees me too. That’s what she says.’
‘She is a philosopher,’ said Oscar.
‘Does she still live by London Bridge?’ I asked.
‘No, she’s moved up west. She ‘elps out in the kitchens at Willis’s most nights — not for the money, but because she likes it. She’s ‘appiest in a kitchen. She lives in Bloomsbury now, so she can walk ‘ome. She’s got a nice ‘ouse, two-up, two-down. I’ve done my best to look after ‘er. It’s what Italian sons are supposed to do, you know — look after their mothers.’
He clapped his hands noiselessly and rubbed them together with filial satisfaction. As he did so, I noticed for the first time that he was wearing the rose-gold ring.
‘Tea, gentlemen?’ he said suddenly, as if rousing himself from a reverie. He smiled, showing small, very white teeth, and widened his shiny olive-black eyes. ‘With a nip of brandy?’
He went to the left-hand stairway and we followed him up the few steps, under a stone arch, to the adjacent chamber. It was a larger room than the first, windowless, with a flagstone floor and dark wood panelling on the walls. There were gas lamps on each wall and between each pair of brass gasoliers hung one of Father Bechetti’s colourful paintings. The most striking of these was a life-size portrait of a young girl. She was seated on a rock, dressed all in white, holding a prayer book and a rosary in her lap. Her golden hair fell in tresses to her shoulders.
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders Page 10