Now the shutters were opened again and a man came in who claimed he had seen everything. An eyewitness! So, was the Emperor hurt? No, said the man, he had escaped miraculously. A bit of debris had made a hole in his hat. The Empress had a scratch in her face. That was all. The bombs, thrown under the carriage, had exploded sideways so it was the escort which took the brunt.
Jeanne wanted to see if she could get in the stage door. Prospero followed her doubtfully and again they were stopped. Two policemen were on duty and with them was Monsieur Angelo who drew Prospero aside. ‘It was Italians,’ he whispered. ‘Not English. I just heard from the police. A man’s been arrested. He’s been babbling, giving names and they’re all Italians. About a dozen people were killed.’ Monsieur Angelo shook his head. He was white as paper. There would be trouble now for the rest of us – not for gentlemen like your Excellency, but for ordinary Italians. ‘How,’ he remembered his professional duties, ‘did your Excellency like Jeanne? You should come back when things are quieter. She’s a nice girl. Ah, and here she is. Everything all right, Jeanne?’
‘Yes.’ Pertly, ‘All present and accounted for!’
She was her old self, Prospero saw. Her professional self. And with the perception came a nausea which he recognised as guilt, though about what or whom he no longer knew. It was a private, personal, secular guilt and possessed him like a fever – he was shivering – and, to propitiate it, he slipped money to Jeanne and some to Angelo who took it without protest. The performance would go on, he told his client. The imperial couple had to show they weren’t intimidated. But His Excellency must go round to the front. No need to hurry. The curtain would be late rising.
Back in the street, opera-goers’ carriages now edged forward in response to a signal from the sergeant de ville. Pale faces gleamed behind glass. Here, boxed in a convoy, was le tout Paris, the fine flower of the Second Empire which, for all it knew, was being borne to its own funeral. The last revolution in these streets had been exactly ten years ago. While thinking this, Prospero felt two arms flung about his neck. It was Jeanne who, finding he had given more than she expected, had run out to thank him. ‘You’re a generous little padre,’ she cried, excited into indiscretion. ‘Come and see me again!’ And exuberantly kissed him on the mouth.
Over her shoulder, while still imprisoned by her hug, he found himself within inches of a carriage windowpane through which the alarmed, beautiful, astounded eyes of Dominique de Menou stared at him in shock.
*
DESPERADOES STRIKE AT CROWNED HEADS. After an early appearance among the telegraphic dispatches, this item was to move to the front page of the Giornale di Roma, where it soon squeezed out THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW, a topic which had enjoyed pride of place for weeks because, being of no interest to anyone, it gave no trouble to the censors. By contrast, the new story’s implications were entirely favourable to the Pope’s regime and the Giornale, making the most of this rare circumstance, was soon able to announce that the miscreants had brought their murderous hand grenades to Paris from London, and a little later, that the would-be regicides were in custody thanks to the panic of an accomplice, Davide Viterbo, who, losing his head at the scene of the crime, had blurted out the ringleaders’ names. These were Pieri and Orsini.
Triumphing, Il Giornale printed exerpts from the French and English press.
‘Some of the refugees,’ marvelled the naïve Times of London, ‘were of the better sort with plenty of money in their pockets.’ And indeed 9,000 francs in English gold and banknotes had been found at their lodgings along with a stock of weapons.
In Paris, Le Constitutionnel concluded that the crime was the work of a subtle brotherhood of fanatics which had its headquarters in London. There followed a war of words between the two papers – gleefully reprinted by Il Giornale – about England’s refusal to abridge the liberty of those seeking asylum on her shores.
It was delicious for the Roman press to see the Pope’s enemies fall out and Piedmontese conspirators alienate at one swoop the French Emperor and English opinion.
‘Can they be so stupid?’ Nicola Santi asked Cardinal Amandi. ‘Might they have been manipulated by the other side?’
‘What side?’
‘Ours.’
‘Beware, figlio mio,’ said Amandi, ‘of growing too cycnical.’
‘In that case, could we not,’ asked Nicola, ‘try to do something for the unfortunate Mortara family?’ Then he described how Viterbo, in a desperate attempt to help his nephew, had been almost certainly persuaded to infiltrate and betray the bombers. But Amandi reasoned that if he was an infiltrator his masters would look after him.
‘And the little boy?’
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about him. The decision, from what I hear, has been taken by the Holy Father personally. He has made an offer of the child to God: a soul for religion. How ask him to take him back?’
‘It’s giving rise to gossip, though. Quite unedifying.’
Amandi shrugged. Everything did that.
Had he heard the story, asked Nicola, of how when His Holiness was a young layman he had a Jewish mistress and got her pregnant? Then she married a Jew who brought up the child as his so that it was left without baptism. Gossips said the Mortara child was payment: a soul for a soul.
Amandi wondered whether Nicola had heard stories about himself. Brusquely, changing the topic, he said:
‘I’ve mislaid my spectacles. What else is in the paper?’
Nicola turned from the front page – showily adorned with the Mastai-Ferretti coat of arms – to the second where the cardinal watched him skip an advertisement for a cure for chilblains and the schedule of foreign-language sermons at San Andrea della Valle: Polish, French … ‘Does Your Eminence want to hear about the glorious French campaign in Algeria? No? What about the list of foreign visitors to the city?’
Amandi chose that, which was how they learned that Duke Cesarini, Flavio, had at last returned to Rome.
Paris
Prospero was staying with the nuncio whose balconies overlooked a garden where branches were as black as iron and tree roots arched with a knuckled clench. Lingering here, he thought several times of visiting Madame de Menou, but did not. Neither did he go back to the Opera, for what had happened with Jeanne had revealed a way of being which he was convinced could only be open to men who lived on the surface of themselves. Passion bore witness to human scope but tepid comfort with the likes of Jeanne denied the spirit.
He turned his back on it.
Once he had, however, the tabooed memory acquired dignity. Jeanne renounced grew more worthy and it was in a mood of stimulated gloom that he at last made his way to the rue le Pelletier – only to find that she had left for the country, ‘To see her mother,’ said Angelo with an air of improvisation. He, though, had other resources. If His Excellency would leave it to him, he … No? Bene! Bene! Angelo did not insist. In a week or so then. If His Excellency had taken a fancy to little Jeanne, pazienza! Never deny the heart was Angelo’s motto.
*
When Prospero returned to the house, the nuncio, Monsignor Filippo Sacconi, was talking to an unwholesome and worried-looking fellow whom he addressed as Viterbo.
‘You remember the Orsini case,’ said Monsignor Sacconi to his guest. ‘Listen to this.’
Viterbo produced some crumpled papers which he smoothed out on the nuncio’s desk. They were rough drafts, he explained, of a letter to the Emperor which purported to come from the condemned cell of the would-be-assassin, Felice Orsini, but had, in fact, been written by journalists. Penny-a-liners. Men he knew.
‘It’s an appeal,’ explained Monsignor Sacconi, ‘to be magnanimous and help Italy gain its independence. Apparently it’s to appear in the press on the day of Orsini’s execution: a voice from the grave. The trick is likely to strike people’s imaginations. It’s a bold, not to say impudent, stroke which could do us damage. Viterbo here got wind of it some time back, since when I have been trying to have the thing censored bu
t keep coming up against resistance. Someone highly placed seems to want it to go through. This is why I have asked Signor Viterbo to come round here again. ‘Do you know who commissioned it?’ he asked Viterbo.
The man shrugged and the shrug turned into a shudder. He could have had palsy. ‘Excellency,’ he pleaded, ‘I can’t concentrate on anything until I get news of my nephew. I’ve been going from one Church authority to another looking for help.’ His voice shook. ‘May I sit down? I’m all in. I don’t sleep. Not a wink. You understand I’ve come to you and am selling out my principles in the hope of a trade, some assurance. But I’ve been disappointed. People have begun to suspect me. I – it was I, you know, who gave the alarm at the rue le Pelletier. That was at Father Grassi’s instigation. It was a risk. I pretended to lose my head, but not everyone believes it. Especially as the police released me too soon. There are spies among your servants. I don’t want to be seen coming here, especially if it’s all for nothing. I’ve been threatened. See.’ He handed the nuncio a letter. It reminded Prospero of the ones Pellegrino Rossi used to receive. This time though, instead of individual letters or words, a whole chunk of print had been cut out and mounted. He read it with a vague sense of recognition. But of course. It was the Carbonaros’ oath. ‘And if I betray this,’ he read, ‘may I be cut open from neck to toe and all my blood …’
‘Were you a Carbonaro?’ he asked the man.
‘No. But they’re trying to frighten me. At first it was to stop me testifying, but my testimony wasn’t needed. They found enough to convict Orsini at his lodgings. Maybe they even know I’ve been seeing you. I don’t know …’ He stood up, then sat down again. His mind seemed to whirr like an unhinged mechanism. He was half stunned by panic. ‘Meanwhile, Excellencies, my nephew …’
‘It’s the Mortara case,’ explained the nuncio to Prospero. Then to Viterbo: ‘I can’t promise anything. I haven’t the power.’
‘If we even knew where he was. His mother is half demented. Can you imagine? Seven years old …’
‘He’s well cared for,’ said the nuncio. ‘What difference could it make where he is unless you’re thinking of kidnapping him back!’
Viterbo did not deny that he had thought of this. ‘We may make representations to the Emperor.’
‘It would only anger the Pope.’
‘What have I to lose? Or gain by helping you?’
‘You’re an exile. You could be granted an amnesty. A passport. You’d be safer back in Bologna than here. All the dangerous men are in exile. Things are quiet in Bologna. They’re preparing for carnival and, to show how tranquil the Government is, masks are to be allowed this year.’ Talking of masks, said Monsignor Sacconi, he was counting on Viterbo’s unmasking the false Orsini and finding out who was behind the appeal to the Emperor. He knew too much not to know that. Why was he holding out?
The Jew stared at his hands. ‘I don’t know where treachery is any more.’
It was a bit late to worry about that, said Monsignor Sacconi crisply. ‘You need our protection. You’ve already betrayed Orsini. So.’ He tilted his chin encouragingly.
Viterbo’s face suffered a spasm. ‘Well,’ he said, wrenched by a shift of mood, ‘it looks as if he’ll have the last laugh because this letter will do what his bombs could not. It’s to be used to mobilise sympathy here in France for a war against Austria.’ Viterbo cocked his jaw. ‘They say Louis Napoleon is ready to help the Piedmontese take Lombardy and Venetia. After that, can it be long before they take the Pope’s state too? That’s what’s being said in Italian circles here.’
‘Rumour?’
‘Everything starts as rumour, Excellencies.’
‘So who paid for the letter to the Emperor then?’
‘My best information,’ said Viterbo, ‘is that it was written to the Emperor’s own specifications.’
Nineteen
That July, Napoleon and Cavour met secretly at a spa and agreed that if Austria could be provoked into declaring war, they would unite to expel her from the Italian peninsula. Piedmont would then take Lombardy and Venetia.
Paris, September 1858
‘The constable, Excellency, was shitting his drawers!’
Monsignor Sacconi, the papal nuncio, was discouraged by the sight of the hot face mouthing at him. His guest was a journalist whom he had hoped to sound about a sensitive matter, but Louis Veuillot would clearly choke if he couldn’t first get his anecdote off his chest. Letting him finish, His Excellency gazed through high windows to where trees appeared to float in autumn mist. An early frost had yellowed the leaves and drained them of substance so that they glowed like monstrances and hung in ungrounded majesty, dazzling and irritating his eye. Facts were what he had been seeking since Viterbo’s disclosures nine months ago.
The summer had been trying. In June, an informer had picked up a hint that something was brewing between the Emperor and the Piedmontese. That was all. The informer then disappeared and His Majesty, as though to tease the nuncio, began chasing around France like a ringing fox. In July he was at a spa in the Vosges, in August in Brittany and now he and his family were in Biarritz. It was hard to know what was afoot, though Sacconi’s hopes rose when a man of his managed to suborn the personal maid of H.M.’s favourite, the Comtesse de Castiglione. That, however, came to nothing when the girl was caught spying by fellow-servants, whom one must suppose to be counter-spies. It was all likely to bode ill for the Church which was not popular. The Mortara case was still explosive and for months the nuncio had been walking on eggs.
A remark about this had started his guest on his rigmarole. Perceiving that he was expected to sing for his supper, Veuillot had picked the wrong tune. What His Excellency wanted to know was this: would our Imperial protector let us down? So far, the connection had worked out well: shamefully so, to the minds of yesterday’s friends. Royalists, supposing God to be of their own persuasion, spoke of bishops ‘blessing a brothel’ – by which they meant Imperial France. They could neither see that our chief concern must be the maintenance of the French garrison in Rome nor that we were beholden to Louis Napoleon – ‘the new St Louis’ – for lighting a war in the Crimea to protect our interests in Palestine. How expect us to drop such an ally? The fear was that he might drop us.
‘Marriages of convenience,’ mused the nuncio, ‘are prone to adulteries.’
His guest looked surprised.
‘The age of faith,’ Veuillot’s voice drummed in the nuncio’s ear, ‘is still intact in mountain provinces. Lourdes survives on agriculture and a few rundown hotels which cater to travellers on their way to the spa at Cauterets. Naturally, it yearns to be a spa itself, and the hope is that this new spring …’
‘Ah,’ said the nuncio. ‘There’s a spring, is there? A spring and a young girl. French visions are all the same.’
‘No, no, Excellency!’ Stocky and pock-marked, Veuillot had small, restless eyes which made the nuncio think of a creature about to break cover – a boar perhaps? He had strong shoulders and a bristle of fierce hair. ‘This one,’ he triumphed, ‘is different because the civil authorities are playing into our hands!’
Must I humour him? wondered Sacconi. God give me patience, I suppose I must.
The faithful, said the journalist, were forbidden to go to the grotto! The police built a fence, then prosecuted some local women for putting it about that the Emperor had countermanded the order. ‘You don’t handle people like that. It was asking for trouble.’
Triumphing! Rubbing his hands. Gulping down the nuncio’s excellent claret as though it was pinot, he confided humorously, ‘This is when I started to plot. Une petite intrigue!’
Veuillot’s mouth was as tight as a scar. A cooper’s son, recalled Sacconi. If there were scribblers like this in Rome, nobody knew them. Here in France, though, he was our foremost champion. His bigotry appealed to country priests, though many bishops found it embarrassing and, some years ago, forty-six of them had published a reprimand in an attempt to moderate it. I
magine their shock when a papal encyclical took Veuillot’s side – thus bolstering Rome’s power and weakening theirs! Mastai’s madness had method.
‘As I told you, the police prosecuted women for saying that the Emperor had countermanded the grotto’s closure. Well, I resolved to make their allegation come true.’
The nuncio was growing interested in spite of himself. ‘What about the local bishop? What role did he play?’
‘He was playing possum until I woke him up.’
‘So you caused a miracle?’
Veuillot tittered. ‘Excellency! I think I can claim to have performed one at Lourdes.’ His story buzzed with relish, and His Excellency, worried by the imprudence of this rogue fighter, listened.
Veuillot had first gone to Lourdes after reading of the acquittal of the women accused of spreading rumours. As a journalist, his curiosity was piqued. Pausing in the local café, he picked up what gossip he could, then set off in search of three bishops: Auch, Montpellier and Soissons. In short, he organised a conspiracy. The nuncio digested this. Impudent. Directed against the Bishop of Tarbes, the local man who, the nuncio knew, had been judiciously dragging his feet – a sound policy but unsustainable in the face of Veuillot’s manoeuvrings. The conspiracy was two-pronged, for Veuillot then inveigled Madame l’Amirale Bruat, the confidante of the pious Empress Eugenie, to join him in forcing the police to let them enter the grotto – ‘At the thought of refusing such fine folk from the court, the constable, Excellency, was shitting his drawers!’ – He then followed this up with a five-column article in his paper, l’Univers, while the Archbishop of Auch went to see the Emperor at Biarritz and Madame l’Amirale Bruat spoke to the Empress. In short …
‘The grotto is to be opened?’
Veuillot grinned vengefully. ‘And some careers ruined, I hope. Those of the Mayor, the Prefect and one or two others.’
This chilled Monsignor Sacconi. ‘You know for a fact that the Emperor is disposed to override the normal procedures?’
The Judas Cloth Page 42