The Judas Cloth

by Julia O'Faolain

  ‘If there are they’ll have to be released. The Croats won’t want to feed all those mouths.’

  ‘It’s the shepherds not the sheep that should be punished,’ said a man. ‘Let them catch the priests!’

  *

  Nicola found the cardinal squinting with an anxious eye at a copy of the Gazzetta di Bologna and his own Notificazione. ‘It’s terrible!’ he said. ‘I never wrote it. Don Vincenzo Todeschi did. He’s an auditor of the Ecclesiastic Tribunal and knows how to blacken a man. There’s a bit about a bordello sacrilego. Oh Madonna! He must have stuck that in after I’d passed his copy and now it’s in the paper. And the bit about talking of God in taverns is as venomous as it is vague. What will people take it to mean?’

  The cardinal began wondering whether he could offset the bad impression of the Notificazione by protesting at Bassi’s arrest. There were opposing considerations: first, this had already been tried to no effect when Bassi was first arrested. Why think the Austrians would have softened? Courting a rebuff did nothing for ecclesiastical authority. Second: Grozkowski was in Mantua today; and, third: it was Monsignor Bedini’s province. ‘But he’s a lickspittle,’ said the cardinal.

  It was lunchtime and through open windows drifted smells of lunches being prepared in nearby palaces. Life was going on, onions being fried, and sweetbreads and leg of lamb served up with rosemary.

  ‘Let’s visit the cathedral,’ said Oppizzoni and Nicola lent him his arm to cross the piazza where vendors were putting away their wares. Ex-votos, small silver and tin facsimiles of limbs and inner organs blazed in the sunlight: lungs, hearts, arms and legs. Heat fell through coloured awnings and caught the old cardinal on the back of his neck as he removed his hat to enter the cathedral. His padded hand clutched and unclutched Nicola’s wrist.

  ‘Let us pray for him,’ he whispered and lowered his unreliable old frame onto a kneeler.

  Nicola wondered whether Bassi was in a military gaol and whether he would be handed over to the Church which had its own places of confinement. Would he have done better to flee like Don Mauro to heathen England? Life without belief must be random and sad.

  Oppizzoni, still clinging to Nicola, stumbled as they tried to genuflect in unison on the way out. Crossing the square, they were met by two priests who had brought a large cotton sunshade for the cardinal and an item of news. By order of General Radetzky in Milan, General Grozkowski was to surrender his governorship and move forthwith to Venice where the war was still going on.

  ‘God be praised!’ Oppizzoni gave Nicola’s hand a secretive squeeze.

  The general’s replacement said the priests, according to a source inside the military governor’s office in Villa Spada, was to be General Count Strassoldo, who was to take over the day after tomorrow. ‘He’s said,’ they exulted, ‘to be as mild as milk!’

  Next morning there was fresh news from the Villa Spada where Ugo Bassi was now being held. It was that his sister, Carlotta, whose husband owned a busy hotel in the middle of town – yes: the one in the via Vetturini! Well, this sister had driven over to the villa yesterday afternoon to see her brother and, though the officer in charge had refused permission at first, he had softened later, moved by either her tears or the knowledge that Grozkowski’s time was short.

  A fraternal pity for the unfortunate Bassi now seized the fickle priests of Bologna, and in the episcopal palace anxious prognoses ran around offices and from desk to desk. Almost everyone had a detail to add to accounts of what Bassi and his sister had said to each other, for Austrian soldiers had been present and had talked later in the presence of waiters, melon-vendors and grooms. These people’s linguistic skills, however, were haphazard and reports varied as to whether the officer in charge had been courteous and compassionate or had had the brother and sister torn from each other’s breasts.

  Painstakingly, a nucleus of probable fact was assembled: Bassi had said that he had not received a trial but stood falsely accused of having been caught with weapons; his fellow prisoner, Captain Livraghi, also faced a false charge. He was considered a deserter by the Austrians because he had once fought under their flag. The priests took less interest in his case.

  On the evening of the 7th, General Grozkowski returned from Mantua and next day took formal leave of the city’s notables. By then Strassoldo had arrived and an interregnum prevailed. In the hot white stillness of the August day, Nicola was glad to have a message to deliver to Monsignor Bedini at the legatine villa at San Michele in Bosco where he could catch a breath of air. During the slow, uphill drive, his coachman spotted General Grozkowski’s carriage on the road ahead of them and when they arrived at the villa the general and Monsignor Bedini were closeted in a farewell meeting. No sense waiting, the major-domo told Nicola. He might as well leave his letter. So Nicola left, his heart lightened by the success of his mission for Monsignor Amandi, now that Grozkowski was as good as gone. The breeze was refreshing and the carriage horses seemed to trot at an expanded, high-stepping gait.

  *

  As soon as he entered the city, he knew something was wrong. By now it was that tranquil, digestive hour of the afternoon when the heave and sigh of deep breathing should have been all-pervasive; a lazy ticking over of the city’s pulse. Instead, there was a tight silence as though breath were being held. Shutters and blinds were shut but awry as though to accommodate a discreet and vigilant watch. Knots of people dissolved as he passed. In a sliver of shadow Father Tasso – back from his spiritual exercises – waved his hat and mouthed with shocking indiscretion: ‘They shot Ugo Bassi!’

  ‘What? Shush. Wait.’

  ‘Murdered him.’ Tasso climbed into Nicola’s carriage. ‘Didn’t you hear the firing squad? Yes. Bassi.’ The priest repeated his information with a cold restraint as though to show that a new way of dealing with things must be learned. ‘They can’t have held a trial. If they did it was illegal, for the Church wasn’t informed – was it?’ The priest had a moment’s panic, then: ‘No,’ he reassured himself, ‘it couldn’t have been.’

  ‘But General Grozkowski is no longer governor. He was at the legatine villa just now taking leave of Monsignor Bedini.’

  ‘Well, Father Bassi was shot at noon. In the Cimitero della Certosa. Shot and shovelled into the ground. I want you to take me to the cardinal. That general must be excommunicated. Protests must be sent to Gaeta.’ Tasso dredged up words he had never thought to apply to his own town or time. Barbarism, sacrilege! Did Nicola realise …

  But Nicola was further along the road to disillusion than Tasso. Seeping into him was the knowledge that someone had used him to trick Oppizzoni. Who? Amandi? The Austrian? Or – who?

  ‘Bassi,’ whispered Tasso, weeping. ‘Il povero Ugo!’

  ‘Come into my office,’ offered Nicola when they reached the archbishop’s palace. ‘This is the cardinal’s nap-time. We’ll have to wait.’

  In the palace, indignation was being ground out between locked teeth. The priests’ wrath was turning towards the door behind which the old cardinal lay under the four faded cloth pineapples which topped the posters of his curtained bed. He had not yet learned the news.

  The Notificazione, which until now had bothered none of them, had begun to look sinister. Was a purge of priests to be carried out by the secular arm for the hierarchy and at its nod?

  A thin priest, called Padre Farini, polished his eyeglasses with a striped handkerchief. Perhaps he felt his vision needed adjusting? He was one of the two who had exulted at General Grozkowski’s removal.

  ‘Sapiens tacebit usque ad tempus!’ he quoted meaningfully. ‘The wise man waits for the right time – time for what?’

  Nobody answered. Time worried them. Had they paid insufficient attention to it? Failed to see that eternity was made up of an infinity of tricky bits of it? Bassi, said Tasso, had been a saint and a martyr.

  ‘And a scapegoat,’ said Farini shrewdly. ‘Catholic Austria could not kill all its prisoners, nor take revenge on the Pope who blessed their arm
s. A military chaplain is the perfect stand-in for both.’

  ‘It’s a sacrilege,’ said Tasso, ‘he wasn’t defrocked.’

  Padre Farini held up the Gazzetta di Bologna. ‘Not quite.’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘Read it. How can there be a protest on behalf of a priest who is said by his own bishop to have been untrue to his cloth?’

  ‘He’s not named.’

  Farini laughed.

  *

  ‘Don’t weep for Bassi,’ said the cardinal. ‘I’m sure he died gloriously. Men like that do.’ He let a hand rest on Nicola’s shoulder. ‘They blame me, don’t they? Don’t take it hard. Just tell yourself that I have been fifty years at the head of this diocese and that the most useful thing I can do for it now is to magnetise blame. That’s politics, fili mi! Your confessor despises it, as did Ugo Bassi, who used to ride his white horse up and down the front line and write poems which I thought it wise to read. They’re irreproachable,’ said the cardinal, ‘and not much good. His poem was his life. He had a muse: a married lady, I believe. But his love was disembodied, which is the worst sort since it can never be dealt with and saps the soul. He wasn’t quite adult, which means he was one of the little children whom Christ calls to Himself. And I’m the Judas who’ll be to blame for his death. Judas or Caiaphas? Both perhaps. But Judas first, for he – you should know – is the secret patron of all active prelates since he was the man of whom Christ said that the thing had to be done but woe to him who did it. Poor Judas! I often think of him managing the disciples’ money and losing track of the long view. Serving the Church Militant has its risks. They’re angry aren’t they?’ He nodded towards the outer offices. ‘They want me to do something. Me, not Monsignor Bedini whose province it is, because they’ve no hopes of him. Me!’

  ‘They want the general excommunicated!’

  ‘No less!’ Oppizzoni laughed. ‘Ah well, they’ll end up no doubt on Christ’s right hand. With Ugo Bassi.’

  ‘But Eminenza …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Surely whoever is to blame should be …’

  ‘Whoever is to blame?’ Oppizzoni held Nicola’s gaze so firmly that Nicola dropped his own. ‘Even me? Or you? Who,’ said the cardinal coolly, ‘did not come here as fast as you might have done. Don’t explain,’ he interrupted. ‘Explain to your confessor. Reports were sent to me about your journey, but I didn’t read them. I have to keep my mind clear of small things. For you, however, this may be a big thing, so you’d better tell Father Tasso why you spent two nights in Modigliana, which is not on the main road. If you had not done so and had got here earlier, the general’s last day would have been the 6th not the 8th. Everything might have been different. Don’t cry. You must learn not to give way, or you will never be the foxy defender of the faith that Cardinal Amandi hopes. He sent you to me to learn to be that. From the first I took this as a rather painful judgment of myself – but also as a gift, since a young innocent is a delight to have around. Now I must destroy your innocence; it is refreshing in the young, but dangerous in older men and if let loose like Bassi’s wreaks havoc. No. I’m not being hard-hearted. I shall say masses for him. Publicly, however, don’t expect me to join in the Bassicult which I have no doubt will soon start up.’

  ‘Eminenza, do you really think I’m …?’

  To blame? My poor Nicola, we’re all to blame for Christ’s suffering. Our sins drive in the nails. And,’ added the cardinal, ‘so does our stupidity.’

  Fifteen

  9 August

  Father Tasso had spent the night trying to comfort Father Bassi’s ‘confortatore,’ Don Gaetano Baccolini, a bookish man who had had the misfortune to be assigned the task of administering the last rites to the condemned priest. It had been his bad luck to be to hand when his pastor, who was getting ready to celebrate a sung mass for the soul of a parishioner, received a message from the police. Two priests were wanted at Villa Spada.

  Tasso’s skirts cut the air like blades. ‘Think of it!’ he invited Nicola whom he had again dragged from the confessional. ‘Baccolini had been working on a series of sermons. Apart from dashing into church to say mass, he hadn’t left his room for days and hadn’t heard of Father Bassi’s arrest.’

  Nicola and Father Tasso were climbing the Montagnola to get some air. Reaching the summit, they stared down to where the Austrians had been defeated a year ago. Bassi had been shot on the anniversary of the battle. A tasty revenge!

  Nicola listened with resignation. He had come to confession full of his own scruples, only to find that his confessor couldn’t concentrate on them. He refused to say whether Nicola should or should not have left Maria to be raped.

  Baccolini and another unpractised priest had been taken to prepare ‘two delinquents’ to face the firing squad. This was bad enough. Worse followed when, after cooling their heels for an hour in the great saloon of the Villa Spada, they learned that the delinquents were Father Bassi and Captain Livraghi who had just been informed of their sentence. The four were then brought together, whereupon Bassi had to protect the ‘confortatori’ from Livraghi who was ready to throttle the ‘Austrian priests’. Bassi, convincing him that he was dying as surely for freedom as if he had fallen in battle, managed to calm him as he had calmed the dying on battlefields in Lombardy, the Veneto and Rome. He even comforted the men sent to comfort him.

  Baccolini, said Tasso, had dwelled painfully on his own inadequacy. Over and over. Weeping, saying his mea culpa, drinking port. By the evening’s end, Tasso had the account by heart and repeated it now, then broke off to wonder where Bassi had got his courage. Was it the priest in him or the soldier who had dealt so decorously with death? Without him, Livraghi would have died cursing, for the official ‘confortatori’ had, by their own admission, been as useless as a brace of ganders.

  *

  Bologna knew of the execution right away. The closed police carriage was seen driving to Villa Spada and, later, people recognised the beat of loose-skinned drums as the condemned men were taken to the cemetery. Then they heard the shots.

  Over night the people’s hero became their saint, and Austrian grenadiers, posted by the ditch where his body was interred, were kept busy chasing away women who came with tricolours and wreaths. Bitter graffiti appeared on walls whose owners had to remove them on pain of a fifty scudi fine for a first offence and twice that thereafter plus a spell in gaol.

  A smoky contagion compounded of patriotism and piety prickled the air. It was hot, even for August. There were rumours that cholera had broken out and that the authorities had discredited themselves with God. Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate were mentioned. A legend was taking shape and the authorities hastened to abort it.

  ‘The Zelanti want Baccolini to say that at the end Bassi repudiated his political faith.’

  ‘Which Zelanti?’

  Tasso didn’t know. Bedini? The cardinal? Who knew which of those two was the puppet and which pulled the strings?

  Nicola spoke up for Oppizzoni who was no zelante, but Tasso said, ‘Don’t tell me he’s not an old fox!’

  ‘He says he’s a fox for God.’

  *

  ‘Barca!’

  Twinned by its image, a toy sailboat skimmed the pond while a child of maybe six struggled to get around and meet it on the other side. ‘Barca!’ the child shrieked again then, finding he had lost a shoe, flopped down on sodden ground, dug it from the mud and began laboriously putting it on. Hair fell across his eyes. This must be Prospero’s stepbrother. When he stood up, the seat of his britches had a muddy patch.

  *

  ‘So,’ Prospero had been asked in the inn where he changed coaches, ‘you missed your father’s wedding?’ Inquisitive eyes slid sideways. ‘Likely he didn’t think you could get away. Not with what’s going on in Rome!’ Then the gossips asked about that. Discreetly though. Weighing their words, for Bologna was under martial law. ‘How’s Rome?’ they asked.

  But Prospero’s news was stale.


  ‘If he’d been expecting you, the Signor Conte would surely have delayed the wedding.’ He read their thoughts: the count’s fancy woman was now his wife. How was the son taking that? ‘It was a quiet wedding,’ they told him.

  Well, so it should be! A widower-bridegroom, even of the count’s station, could be subjected to the charivari: a serenade of saucepans. His impulsive father was as vulnerable as the toy boat which was now listing to one side. Ten to one, he was agonising about what to say to Prospero who, in turn, had been worrying about putting him at ease. Needing time to prepare a spontaneous face, he had had the coachman put him down some way from the villa. Walking through familiar vegetation, he was nipped by the immediacy of known sounds and smells, every one of which reminded him of his mother. Mushrooming with her, blackberrying, heaping up mounds of leaves into which he could then thrillingly dive. Sailing the toy boat.

  When he reached die pond and saw it, a phantom on silken waters, a jostle of feelings choked him. But, meanwhile, here was the small usurper in difficulties. Prospero had been observing him from behind a tree. Up and down the shore stumbled the short, stubby legs, for the craft was marooned in mid-pond. There were weeds there, Prospero remembered, and the only way to reach it now was by rowboat.

  ‘You’ll have to be your brother’s keeper,’ Nicola had joked when they met this morning on Prospero’s way through Bologna. ‘And your father’s!’ Nicola had been sent by Cardinal Oppizzoni to warn Prospero that his father was making last-ditch efforts to win the Pope back to Liberalism. ‘It’s too late for that,’ he warned. ‘He’s drawing attention to himself and that, in the present climate, is unwise. Especially, if he’s up to anything else.’

  ‘Nicola, my father supports – no, idolizes, the Pope.’

  ‘Yes, but the pope of today is not the pope of last year!’ Nicola reminded him that old portraits of Pio Nono were being collected and destroyed, the ones where he said ‘God bless Italy’ and blessed the troops. ‘He doesn’t want embarrassing reminders. Your father could become one.’