The Caravaggio Conspiracy
Page 3
At the same moment, the crowd let out its breath.
The Decollato set down his board and from one of his pockets drew out a black silk cloth, in which he wrapped the severed head before carrying it over to a rough coffin in which the second headsman was already depositing the body.
Caravaggio paled and realized that he was trembling. But he couldn’t stop staring. Next to die was Beatrice, a famous beauty, her blonde hair tied back, her neck long and inviting, like a swan’s. She said her prayers, murmured some words to her younger brother, which the artist couldn’t hear, and took her place on the block, so that her throat reddened with her mother’s blood. Few of those watching believed she deserved her fate, and her courage in the face of death had a serenity about it that caused a hush to fall over the crowd. Someone called out, ‘Spare her! For pity’s sake!’ But to no avail. Once more, the Pope nodded. Once again the axe fell.
There was a sound of shattered bone and the thud of the axe biting into the wood. As the axeman wrenched his blade free, Beatrice’s head shot off the block and skittered towards Caravaggio, rolling over and over until it came to a halt on the edge of the scaffold above where he sat so that her eyes, frozen in shock, appeared to be staring at him. Blood ran in rich red streams from her neck. He cried out and was sick.
Now Giacomo was hauled forward. Not for him the swift end offered by the axe. For him, as the one adjudged by the Inquisition to be most culpable, the penalty would be particularly awful. With his hands already tied behind his back and his legs in shackles, he was bound by his neck and ankles to a stake and his tunic ripped from his torso so that his breast was bare. As the bishop from the Holy Office read out the details of his crime and the sentence imposed, the second executioner lifted the heavy tongs from the chafing dish and showed the red-hot ends to the multitude. A sigh went up. Giacomo, after weeks of torture, had prayed he was immune to further pain, but to Caravaggio, just twenty feet away, his eyes told a different story. The masked executioner advanced on him, baring his teeth, then, with a grunt, clamped the glowing ends of the tongs, like pincers, onto the skin and muscle of his victim’s chest. Next, he twisted the steel jaws, first one way, then the other, and jerked back, ripping off a section of flesh. The resulting scream rang out across the Tiber, scattering a group of hooded crows perched on the statues on either side of the bridge.
‘Do you repent of your wickedness?’ the bishop called out. Giacomo could not answer. He could only scream.
Unsheathing a knife at his belt, the executioner peeled off the seared flesh, threw it into the corner, then advanced again, repeating the vicious act of torture three times as the thousands looking on either urged him to greater efforts or else averted their eyes.
Caravaggio felt his stomach heave again. But he had to watch. He had to know what was being done in God’s name.
By now the planks beneath the squirming figure of Giacomo Cenci had turned scarlet and the stench of burnt flesh filled the air. It was time for the final act. Releasing the condemned man from the stake, the chief executioner grabbed him by the hair and bundled him four paces across the scaffold to the waiting block. Giacomo, delirious with pain, called out to God and all the saints to save him and show him mercy. Perceiving this to be moment of truth, the Decollato holding on to Bernardo jammed the boy’s eyes open, forcing him to watch his brother’s last moments. It was almost done. The headsman directed a savage kick at the back of Giacomo’s legs, forcing him onto his knees, and pushed him forward as if he were a pig in an abattoir. Then, stretching out his hand, like a surgeon, he took hold of the bludgeon. Pope Clement inclined his head almost imperceptibly, as if unwilling to take on such a terrible burden of responsibility. But the executioner did not need further instruction. Raising the bludgeon, with its metal studs, he held it high for a second, then brought it down with all the force at his command. Giacomo’s skull shattered into pieces, splattering everyone with blood and brains. His body shook for a second, and was still.
The Pope rose and turned away. It was time for His Holiness to pray for the souls of the departed.
On the scaffold, Bernardo fainted. As the executioners flayed his brother’s body and hacked it into pieces, which they hung on hooks, he was led away into a lifetime of captivity as a galley slave. The boy had done no wrong, but was condemned as a member of a wicked family, guilty by association of the crime of patricide.
In his dream, as in life, Caravaggio looked down at his sketch of Beatrice and noticed that it was streaked with real blood. His hands shook and he wept.
When he woke seconds later, still uttering small cries, he wiped the tears from his face and sat up in his bed, which as usual was soaked with sweat. His mouth was dry; he reached for a cup of water on an adjacent table and drank it down. The executions had taken place more than three and a half years before under a different Pope. But to the artist, Beatrice Cenci’s eyes still stared at him as her life’s blood spilled from her neck onto the scaffold on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. It was as if the events of September 1599 had occurred just minutes before. They would be the key to his art and the keenest point of entry into the state of his mind.
5*
The future: conclave minus 17
Judge Carlo Minghetti was not one of those Italian jurists who pretended indifference to the media. As his cases progressed, particularly those involving terrorism, he found it helped him make sense of the previous day’s proceedings to read a crisp, 400-word summary in La Stampa or the Corriere della Serra. It amused him to compare the commentaries by so-called legal experts and pundits of left and right who presumed to read his thought processes and anticipate his judgments.
As one of Italy’s top anti-terrorist judges, Minghetti had earned a reputation for upholding the rule of law even in the most difficult of cases. It was well-known that he was a conservative. He had been a member of Opus Dei, the most reactionary religious movement in the Catholic Church, since the year he graduated from the University of Ferrara. But not even his worst enemies – among whom he counted the Jesuits, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Green Party – had ever accused him of bigotry.
The case on which he was due to rule today was a particularly interesting one. Two men, a Moroccan and a Bosnian, charged with bombing an immigration office in Bologna, had been convicted by a lower court and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, to be followed by deportation. Had anyone died as a result of their actions, they would have faced a life sentence, but the blast had occurred at two o’clock in the morning and the only victim, a passing drunk, had merely required treatment for cuts and brusies. The defendants’ lawyers had appealed on the grounds that their clients, allegedly, confessed under duress – which was perfectly possible. Hearing the appeal had meant reviewing much of the original evidence and then questioning both city detectives and agents of the anti-terrorist police, DIGOS.
Speculation in the morning’s media, including no doubt the internet – on which his career received detailed, almost line-by-line scrutiny – centred not on the guilt or innocence of the accused but on the extent to which Minghetti would extend the sentence imposed by the lower court.
How little they knew him.
His front-door buzzer sounded three times. It was the signal that his official car had arrived to take him to court. The judge downed his second cup of espresso, kissed his wife and picked up his briefcase.
‘I’ll be back at three o’clock,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry,’ his wife replied, running her right hand through his silver hair while with her left patting his jacket pocket to make sure he hadn’t forgotten his mobile phone. ‘Everything is packed and ready. We’ll be on the road to Rimini five minutes after you come out of the shower.’
Her husband nodded, checked his watch and disappeared in the direction of the front door, where the police officer in charge of his personal security was waiting.
‘Buon giorno, Giudice.’
‘Good morning, Emilio. Looks like another fine day.’
It was at that moment that the shots rang out.
There were four in all, fired so quickly, one after the other, that it seemed impossible they could have been individually aimed. The police forensic team would later record that they struck the brick wall behind which Minghetti was standing no more than ten centimetres above his head, forming a shallow ellipse, or crescent. Whoever was responsible was obviously an expert and the intention, apparently, was not to kill, but to make a point.
The police officer, who had spun round with commendable speed and self-control to pull the judge forward and down, drew his sidearm and slithered forward, waiting for a target to present itself. At the same time, the official driver got on his car radio and called for backup.
Two carloads of Carabinieri were on the scene within minutes, closely followed by an ambulance. But the incident had concluded. Whoever had fired the shots had done so from a considerable distance, using a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight. By now there would be no trace of him. He would simply have melted into the heavy morning traffic.
Two hours later, appellate court number two of Bologna’s Palace of Justice, in the Piazza Tribunali, opened for business, Judge Carlo Minghetti presiding. A crowd had gathered outside and the public gallery was filled.
Judge Minghetti, dressed in black robes and white cravat, signalled to the clerk of the court to shut the doors.
‘This morning,’ he began, ‘an attack was made not simply against my person but against Italian justice. That attack is now being investigated by the Carabinieri and the anti-terrorist police. If the intention was to intimidate this judge, then it has failed.’
At this, everyone in the courtroom, other than the defendants and their supporters, broke into wild applause.
Minghetti brought down his gavel sharply and called for order. ‘Silenzio!’ he said. ‘Silence in court.’
The applause died down. Minghetti resumed. ‘The accused, here today to hear my ruling on the sentence imposed against them by a lower court, should know that the verdict I am about to deliver will not differ in any respect from the one I had intended to deliver before the incident outside my home.’
Reporters in the press box smiled and shook their heads. Two young men in the public gallery rolled their eyes. The wife of the injured drunk looked for a moment as if she was about to utter a comment, but was silenced by a glower from the bench. Once again the gavel came down hard.
Minghetti’s assertion that he had been unaffected by the shooting was not entirely accurate. Having considered the case against the accused, taking into account their claims of intimidation by investigating officers, he had decided the previous night, over a glass of grappa, to increase their sentences from seven years to eight. Now he added a further twelve months. He felt he owed it to himself and his wife as much as to the amour propre of civil society. And if it shocked those two bastards in the dock, and those who supported them, so much the better.
‘Be grateful,’ he told the prisoners, ‘that your case has been heard in a country where the rule of law is not influenced by the violence and intolerance which each of you represents and which will never, I trust, be tolerated in a Christian society.’
Again, the court burst into applause. This time, Minghella did not intervene.
Three hundred kilometres south, far from the clamour of events, Cardinal Bosani and Father Visco watched the evening news on Italian state television. They were relaxing in the Camerlengo’s private sitting room in the Governorate.
‘Whose idea was it that the bullet holes should form a crescent?’ Bosani wanted to know. ‘That was a nice touch.’
‘Not mine, Eminence,’ Visco replied. ‘I regret to say that it would never have occurred to me. But I trust that the incident overall met with your approval.’
Bosani patted his secretary’s hand reassuringly. ‘You did well, Cesare. The righteous anger of a Christian people was on display in that court today. Minghetti came across as an avenging angel, yet one acting within the law, guided by high Catholic principle. The cardinal electors will have taken note. It will be their duty to elect a pope whom those who praise Minghetti as a man of principle – and an officer of Opus Dei – can equally well respect.’
6*
Conclave minus 16
‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you the things to come.’
—John 16: 12-13
The fourth-floor office of Father Declan O’Malley, Superior General of the Jesuits, overlooked the Borgo Santo Spirito, just a hundred metres from St Peter’s Square. Strictly speaking, the Curia Generalizia of the Company of Jesus was part of Rome, and Italy. But as a concession to the Vatican, it was designated zona extraterritoriale, giving O’Malley the de facto status of an ambassador.
The Irishman, the first of his race to head the institution created in 1540 by St Ignatius Loyola, looked frail at first glance. His hair was snow-white and his dark eyes were sunk deep into his head. In fact, though into his seventies, he was fit and wiry, still able to get through Mass in thirty minutes flat, with or without an altar boy.
Today was a special day for him. His nephew Liam, in Rome for the summer, had called to tell him that he was on his way over to say hello. It wasn’t, in fact, their first meeting. O’Malley had previously arranged for his nephew to attend the annual summer party at the Irish College two days after he flew in from Dublin. But it was the first time in ten years at least that he had visited him on his home turf.
With his old-fashioned looks, set off by a thick head of reddish-blonde hair, Liam Dempsey reminded his uncle these days of the young Robert Donat, from The Thirty-Nine Steps. He had had a hard upbringing – harder even than he knew. Kitty – O’Malley’s sister – had died giving birth to him. Her husband, because of the intensity of his belief, gave priority to the child. O’Malley, keenly aware of the enormity of his brother-in-law’s dilemma, had not presumed to instruct him on the Church’s teaching, confining himself to expressions of sympathy and support that he now saw as hollow and inadequate. Pat Dempsey’s decision to sacrifice his wife was the cross he would bear, alone, for the rest of his days.
In the years that followed, O’Malley watched intermittently as Dempsey’s faith calcified, becoming harsh and brittle, robbed of all outward show of affection. He remembered how he had looked on, dismayed, as his nephew grew up an only child in a home lacking a mother and with a bereaved father who saw in him the origin of his loss.
Liam, now aged twenty-eight, was never told of the choice that was made. His father felt that the weight of the knowledge of what he had done was for him alone, and O’Malley respected his decision. Later, as he pursued his vocation in a variety of locations across the globe, he often thought about the brother-in-law he had left behind. It seemed to him that with Kitty gone, it was his brother-in-law who had pursued a monastic life, not him. While he travelled the world, writing his books and moving up in the Company of Jesus, it was Pat who laboured alone, getting up each morning at five, saying his prayers, attending to his cattle, seeing to it that his son was fed and educated. Which of them had better answered Christ’s call? He didn’t have the answer.
It wasn’t easy for the son either. Every day, in all weathers, Liam had trudged two miles from the farm in Bearna, overlooking Galway Bay, to the local national school, returning home each evening to help with the milking. His father, in permanent mourning, was both taciturn and a strict disciplinarian, showing his emotion only when drunk. How Liam had emerged mentally intact was a mystery. In fact, while playing rugby enthusiastically and developin
g an eye for the girls, he did well, taking a history degree at Trinity College, Dublin, then winning a place at the Irish army officer training college.
It was two years after he was commissioned into the Western Brigade that a second calamity befell him. His battalion was posted to Iraq to serve under the UN flag, keeping the peace beween Arabs, Turks and Kurds. A bomb, detonated as his patrol passed a water trough, killed five of his soldiers and left Liam, at the head of the column, grievously wounded. His recovery, in a specialized burns unit in Marseille, was long and agonizing. He had spent months in virtual isolation, barely able to move, with some saying privately that he’d be better off dead.
It was O’Malley, speaking from behind a surgical mask, who brought the young lieutenant the news that in the meantime his father had died from a stroke. Unable to offer the consolation of prayer, he had just stood there, watching. The loss, on top of everything else, was wretched. Father and son hadn’t spoken for more than two years, ever since Liam announced that he had lost his faith. Now they could never be reconciled.