‘Worth not one baiocco! We scribblers invent our own lies.’
Subtler spies tried to provide support for the changing conduct of France. Licentious living, they reported, had flourished under the Republic. The new class – lawyers, bankers, doctors and the like – had no morals. Church bells had been melted to make cannons and nuns violated … Bored with these banalities, the journalist made his way to the hospitals where – according to his informants – common prostitutes, enrolled as nurses, were polluting the hallowed halls where nuns had prayed – or, alternatively, caroused. Here the Princess Trivulzio di Belgioioso was in command but gave him short shrift. This lady had presided over an emigrés’ salon in Paris which he had visited once or twice but, though he sent his card with compliments about the good work she was doing, she refused to see him. She could not, ran her message, be friends with the French while they tried to destroy in Rome the freedom they had extolled at her table in Paris.
A priest called Gavazzi told him that there was a shortage of essential supplies and asked whether fresh attacks were expected. This hospital was dangerously exposed.
Aubry didn’t know. The city was full of rumours and all he could do was try to check them, which was what he was doing now. Was it true, for instance, that nurses had been enrolled without too nice a concern for their background? The priest said tightly that, though Christ had not rejected the ministrations of Mary Magdalene, he did not think the women here were anything less than respectable. Would it not be more useful for the journalist to write of our lack of bandages and tourniquets? Perhaps someone would find us some.
On his way out, Aubry nearly tripped over a young, noisily sobbing girl who had, she confessed, just been dismissed by the Princess for indecent behaviour with a patient. He offered to drive her in his carriage and when the girl said she had nowhere to be driven to, suggested that, while giving thought to the matter, they lunch together in an osteria. ‘We may have an inspiration and you can tell me about your indecency. Mmm?’
More tears and indeed snuffles and in the end he had to supply a handkerchief.
‘It wasn’t me,’ she kept protesting. ‘It was him! The dying man! His hand kept reaching between my legs. I couldn’t wrestle with him, could I? Not without breaking open his wounds. But he did this himself and while he was doing it the Princess came in and said I was a disgrace to the Republic. She said a foreign newspaperman was prying into our affairs at this very moment and there was I giving him ammunition. She sacked me on the spot! Out! The foreigner must have really upset her because she’s never been like that. Then, while I was trying to explain about the patient, he died and …’
The waterworks were now working overtime, so Aubry beckoned to the coachman and half helped, half bundled, the girl into his carriage. Her name, he learned, was Maria and she was from Bologna.
‘Take us somewhere jolly,’ he told the driver.
‘Oui’, Monsieur.’ The man was rousing his nag with a lickerish flick of his whip when a noise like great wooden clappers burst over them. ‘Madonna santa! They’re bombarding us. Get in, get in, sir. We’d best make off. The hospital is in the line of fire.’
‘So the treaty was disavowed!’ exclaimed the journalist.
‘French bastards!’ yelled the coachman, forgetting his fare’s nationality. ‘They’ve attacked without warning!’
*
As the shelling grew heavier, buildings burst open like pods. News of the fighting was brought by those who ventured out to watch it, by chaplains like Ugo Bassi, who raced between the front and the hospitals, and by the wounded who were so many that these hospitals overflowed.
A protest sent to the French commander, General Oudinot, by his compatriot, Aubry, received no response – until news came that Aubry’s paper had been closed down. A wind of reaction was sweeping France whose Prince-President, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, was courting the Catholic vote and whose Catholics had been thrown into a spiteful frenzy by tales of Garibaldi’s men breaking into Roman convents and eating omelettes made with consecrated hosts. These fables, originating in Gaeta, looked like leading to the reduction of Rome to rubble. Aubry knew the man who printed them and was not surprised that he conceived of sacrilege in culinary terms. Louis Veuillot, France’s leading Catholic journalist, was often to be seen dining in the company of prelates who had to sit well out from the table to accommodate their bellies and looked as if the only martyrdom awaiting them would come from their livers. They were now in Gaeta, whence they were clearly sending tall tales to Veuillot.
Meanwhile, if French cannon did not bring down the Roman Republic, the financial crisis would. Aubry calculated that the reduction in customs duties and the price of salt plus the abolition of the corn-grinding tax had drained the Treasury. Money was worth less every day. Shopkeepers were refusing paper currency and everyone hoarded coins. The cost of grain had doubled since February and olive oil gone up by one third. The money-changers in the temple had been defeated not by their defiance of the laws of religion but by those of their own medium.
Ironically, he himself was one of the few to whom this ill wind was bringing good. French currency had shot up in value and he could afford to stay here in idleness.
‘So,’ he told the little Bolognese girl, ‘let us live and love.’ She had a nice little body. Retiring with her to the bedroom, it struck him that love alla Bolognese, a local term for sodomy, was an apt metaphor for what was happening to this state.
A loud booming kept coming from the French camp.
‘They’re getting closer together,’ said Maria.
‘Every two minutes. Never fear. I’m sheltering you with my body which is what we French are supposed to be doing for His Holiness’s subjects. I’m your bit of the French Army. You’re my bit of the Roman popolo.’
The booming grew louder until it sounded like giant croquet mallets hitting hollow balls. ‘Be brave,’ he encouraged her, ‘and I’ll take you to Spillman’s restaurant. It’s time,’ teasing her, ‘the popolo had a taste of the good life.’ The teasing was really aimed at himself who had expected to see this happen after last year’s French revolutions. Instead, in January, troops quartered in Paris had obliged a National Assembly with a Republican majority to vote its own demise. The Prince-President would soon have done for the very term ‘republic’ both here and in France.
‘We’re both being buggered by history,’ he told Maria who was adjusting her hair.
‘I’ve no clothes fit for a restaurant.’
‘I’ll buy you something elegant. Why shouldn’t you have it? The Army will soon be here dressing up its trollops.’
‘Is that what I am?’
He tried to comfort her. But she had gone cold. ‘My father was a Centurione. People called them “the Pope’s brigands”!’
‘Why are you telling me?’
A shrug. ‘Everything amuses you. Doesn’t this?’
‘I’ve upset you! I didn’t mean to.’
But she accused him of thinking that she was the gutter and that he had to lower himself to be with her. She didn’t want to be joined in her gutter. She paused and understanding dawned. He had, he told her, been looking forward to buying her gifts. But she said she wanted currency. Francs.
‘Very well.’ He gave her the sum she wanted although this spoiled his pleasure. It made him feel he was paying for what he would have preferred to think he had had for free.
Later, in the restaurant, he quailed a little when a compatriot of his came and sat briefly at their table. But Maria, dressed in the finery which he had made it a point of honour to buy her anyway, was affable and quite amusing about how Aubry had tried to persuade her to buy a cardinal’s hat which an old clothes vendor had been trying to get rid of for a few baiocchi. Looted property, to be sure, said she, lowering her voice. ‘Best not to be caught with it when things change. For now, though, it’s the colour of revolution and I could decorate it with a tricolour.’ She mimed herself doffing the imaginary hat.
&n
bsp; The other man laughed and Aubry began to feel possessive. The gap between private pleasure and the appearance one presented in public stimulated tenderness – and, really, he noted with surprise, she was looking very nice. Maybe he should take her to a few drawing rooms?
Contrasts were vital. Think of sour toffee apples or pears with cheese! Many of his republican comrades would disapprove. Austere men and all of a piece, they had been easily deceived by the two-faced conservatives – which proved, did it not, the drawbacks to austerity?
Taking leave of his friend, he and Maria moved to a café where, in the glow of an onion-shaped lamp, he saw her face grow agitated. A young man approached. Introducing himself – his name was Santi – he begged leave to exchange addresses with Maria, whom he clearly knew, saying that he needed to talk to her. Aubry acquiesced but she refused, saying they had no reason to meet. The young man, labouring under some press of feeling, said he needed to ask her something in confidence. Ask it now, said she. He hinted that it was private. She refused to take the hint. ‘Speak,’ she challenged, and Aubry laid bets with himself as to the source of all this. It was not far to seek. Santi – brother? lover? – was worried about a baby. She denied such a creature existed. He mentioned a mutual friend who had told him …
‘Lies!’ said Maria.
A silence ensued. To break it, Aubry offered the lover-or-brother a brandy. The two together interested him more than Maria alone. The boy restored context to her. He accepted and sat down. Aubry told her she was lucky to have friends concerned for her welfare and detected panic in her eye. Was he, she must wonder, going to hand her over? Changing the subject, he asked about the latest news and learned that 221-pound shells were falling on the hospital at the Trinità di San Pellegrino.
‘That’s where we met,’ he reminded Maria, who looked sulkily away.
Patients were being moved from there to the Pope’s palace on the Quirinal, said Santi. Some saw this as a sacrilege! ‘As if we hadn’t been commanded to help the sick!’
A believer? Aubry’s sympathies flickered. In France he would have taken the young man for a hypocrite. But to come to Rome was to move back in time. Here was a boy whose mental world must be close to that of Pascal. As if this compounded his youth, Aubrey felt protective towards him.
Maria was questioning him irritably. ‘So you talked to Gianna?’
‘Yes. Because of what Rangone told me.’
‘Rangone!’ She was suddenly in a fury. A Merimée heroine, thought Aubry with delight A Carmen! Exasperated, she leaned across the table and hissed: ‘It died. All right? If you must know, I hid it in the latrine in Casa Salvione in the via dei Burrò. It was as good as dead. I lived on a farm. I’ve seen lambs and calves. It had no life in it.’ Her voice had grown as hoarse as an old woman’s. ‘You wanted to know,’ she repeated furiously. ‘Both of you! Well, now you do!’
The young man looked stunned.
‘It wasn’t yours,’ she told him. ‘I went to Rangone, but he sent me away.’
The young man drew breath. Aubry put a hand on his wrist. ‘Don’t talk to her of religion,’ he advised. ‘Not now.’
To change the subject – give her a chance, he signalled, to simmer down – he asked if Santi knew why Father Bassi was so popular. ‘The people have their own saints,’ he observed. “And their own orthodoxies. I’ve seen the words “Down with atheistic religion” on the walls of Rome. At first, I thought they’d been put there by priests who saw that Republicanism was a sort of religion and were attacking it. Then I learned that it was the Republicans referring to die priests.’
Santi, still stunned, answered dully. He said he thought that Father Bassi was sincere but did not understand politics.
‘You astound me. I thought he was your great political padre. He succours men in the front line, riding a white horse and carrying the crucifix. He’s a legend. Our men – the French – captured him during the last siege and he so impressed them that they used him as a go-between, then let him go.’
Santi shook his head. ‘I mean he doesn’t understand the politics of the Church! He has enraged the whole hierarchy. I know this because I work for the Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna.’
Aubry was fascinated. ‘Tell me more.’
But Santi shook his head. He couldn’t think just now. Sorry. Aubry was asking whether they might meet again when Maria cut in suddenly. ‘What I said before …’
‘Yes?’ For a moment the men had forgotten her.
‘I don’t know why I said it. No, I do. It’s because it could have happened. For months I dreamed of its happening, but it didn’t. It didn’t!’ She was sobbing, washing away what she had said. ‘I went to see Rangone,’ she confessed, ‘in Imola and stayed there until his father cut up rough. Then I came here.’
Santi asked: ‘So what did happen here, Maria?’
‘I wasn’t pregnant at all. It was a mistake. Women make mistakes. Ask any midwife.’ She was shaken by sobs and hiccups and rage at the abstract indifference of men.
*
That night Nicola spent several wakeful hours being tantalised by the thought of her. She had looked beautiful in her fine clothes, and his two confessors’ warnings pursued him. How would she end? And what of the story about the baby in the latrine?
Next day he called on the journalist. There was no sign of Maria so, after walking to the city walls with Aubry to see die fortifications, he came disconsolately home. But home was merely a cell which had been put at his disposal in a monastery and, though the purpose of its scanty furnishings was to encourage meditation, his was the wrong sort. It was as if the Frenchman’s easy capture of Maria had released him from scruples and he begun to dream of her with a flaunting, greedy and angry love.
He returned to see the Frenchman who raised an amused eyebrow and said, ‘She’s not special. You should try another girl.’
Nicola burned with embarrassment and Aubry said he knew what it was to be Nicola’s age, adding, ‘You mustn’t think she cares for me. I’m a purse and a place to stay. She’ll move on when she finds something better. Meanwhile, I teach her what I can, which isn’t a great deal. She will never be any of the things I imagine you fancy her to be – an imperilled soul, a passionate woman, or a possible friend. She is a little peasant who doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a servant. She has had a whiff of the good life, senses the coming of the French Army and hopes to make hay while the sun shines. It won’t shine very long for her because she is not very clever.’
Nicola wanted to hate him. It would have been an outlet for his humiliation. But he knew the Frenchman was only pointing out what he needed to know.
They were sitting in Aubry’s outer room. A little later, the journalist excused himself and went through into what must be his bedroom. Nicola could not resist straining his ears.
‘… doesn’t come for me,’ he heard. ‘Why don’t you come out for a few minutes? The poor fellow would be so pleased.’
Then he heard Maria’s sulky voice and when the door opened caught a breath of body smells mixed with scent. He left as soon as he decently could.
Fourteen
After sustaining a month’s siege, Garibaldi retreated from Rome
The French were entering the city. Wave after wave – there were said to be 20,000 – poured up the Corso on horseback and foot, carrying their arrogant flags. Nicola stood in a sullen crowd. When a horse raised its tail and did what the French call ‘dropping incense’, that too looked arrogant.
A priest pushed to the edge of the footpath and began to applaud. Voices hissed: ‘Don’t clap, traitor!’ But he paid no attention. He was a tubby little priest and beside himself with glee. Defying the warnings, he raised his clapping hands and shouted, ‘Vive le Pape! Evviva il Papa Re!’ His face shone. Someone caught his arm; he staggered, slumped against Nicola’s legs, then rolled into the gutter. Blood oozed from the back of the cassock. A man whispered to Nicola. ‘Best remove him fast.’
A third man lent a ha
nd and the three carried the body into the nearest house where it was laid on a bed. The dead man was heavy and there was still a trace of elation on his broad, simple face. A woman said she would inform the parish priest, and sent them quickly away. Better if they weren’t around to be called as witnesses. They separated without telling each other their names.
*
Cardinal Amandi was expected soon, so Nicola decided to wait, pay his respects, then leave for Bologna. Meanwhile, he went looking for Don Mauro.
A French soldier, on duty at the hospital, refused him entry, so he hung about until a nurse came, then learned that priests, now in charge, were sacking nurses and accusing the Republicans of having stolen things. ‘They’re drawing up inventories of things nobody ever saw,’ whispered the girl. ‘They’re threatening to charge the Principessa and Father Gavazzi. Don Mauro has been told not to come back. They say he’s not a priest at all. Could that be true?’
Nicola said he didn’t know and went on looking for him.
He found him in the Circolo, sitting with a dispirited Martelli, who was insisting that Don Mauro must get out of the state fast and would need false papers. Don Mauro did not protest. Reality had descended on him and with it shock at his own imprudence. He had administered the sacraments while defrocked. ‘My case,’ he tried to justify himself, ‘was going forward and Father Rosmini said I could count on a favourable outcome. At the time he was tipped to be Cardinal Secretary of State. How could I not trust him? Then, later, there was so few priests here and so much need if people were not to turn from religion …’ His voice trailed off. ‘My intentions were pure.’ But the word from men close to the Curia was categoric: Don Mauro had better leave while he could.
The Judas Cloth Page 29