Don Marcellino craned his neck. ‘She’s with your friend,’ he told Nicola, who recognised the source of interest as Miss Ella, whose flow of muscle struck him, even at this distance, as scandalous. Rising from the table, she was pulling at her apparently suffocating bodice as though to open it. Remembering what it did and did not contain, he froze. Gentlemen in her vicinity were flapping napkins. She undid a button. Someone called for air.
‘Too tightly laced!’ judged Don Marcellino. ‘Ladies …’
Conjuring away scandal, Nicola prayed. ‘Let her not faint!’ It was mischievous of Flavio to have brought her to a place like this. Brought him – as if, wary of mind-readers, he corrected himself: her! ‘Oh God! I,’ he admitted to God, ‘should have made them break off the connection long ago. If You spare us a scandal, I’ll do it.’ And apparently his prayer was answered, for the second bodice button remained unopened and Miss Ella accepted a glass of water. Nicola, to discourage his neighbour’s twitter of curiosity, returned to their former topic. ‘The list of French-men who died at Castelfidardo,’ he told her brutally, ‘is short. Austria sent ten times more men than France, and even Ireland sent twice as many!’
The diners now left the table. Flavio walked Nicola to a quiet corner. He was so vivid with good fellowship that it was hard to start reproaching him. But Nicola did.
‘How could you have brought her here?’
Flavio put a finger to his lips. ‘It’s all right. I’ve introduced her as an heiress from Louisiana. See? She’s collecting admirers.’
And indeed there was a knot of men around her. Foremost in the knot was the wispy milord.
‘I saw your mother. I wrote to you about that. She was afraid you might marry Miss Ella. I suppose that was nonsense.’
Flavio drew him deeper into their alcove. ‘Not quite.’ It was, he said, an obsession with his companion who, indeed, had been threatening him with a scandal because he would not agree to it.
‘What kind of scandal?’
Flavio, looking hangdog, admitted that this varied. Just now, for instance, she might as easily have stripped off her clothes as told her true life story or a false horripilant one. ‘She’s capable of anything,’ he said with admiration. ‘I tell her she’s a demigoddess and being a duchess would be a come-down.’
‘Is that what you told her this time?’
‘No. I held my tongue.’ Ruefully: ‘To say anything could touch her off. I have plans which a scandal could spoil.’
Gambling, Nicola saw, was the pulse of life to his friend – friend?
‘Listen. I know I can’t marry Miss Ella if only because you might denounce us …’
‘Would denounce you. I’d have no choice.’
Flavio kept his voice soft. Marriage, he supposed Nicola was going to say, was sacred – but what about the marriage of his own legal parents? How many like that were there in this sacred city? Were they not travesties? ‘Moreover, Monsignore, you have no right to presume that my relations with Miss Ella are carnal. Supposing I say I want my friend to have a claim to my name and fortune? That I want a blessing on a business arrangement! What would be so unusual about that? The Pope regularly blesses the city’s nags and waggons!’
But Flavio’s reproaches turned out to be half-hearted – a tribute to a half-shelved indignation. Because the whole thing was probably over anyway. Miss Ella was leaving with her circus on a tour of the Ottoman Empire. ‘It may last a year. She’ll be dazzling pashas and may settle for one. I’m not irreplaceable. Tonight’s little show was – oh, her way of keeping reality mobile and me on the qui vive.’
Nicola was greatly relieved. ‘So will she go?’
‘Unless I give in.’ Flavio drooped. ‘How could I give in? Marry her? Could I, Monsignore?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there you are then. She won’t stay on any other terms. She and I are both stubborn as mules – and as deprived of posterity. My sister’s brood will recover the fortune I took from her. I suppose you’ll feel I deserve this?’
Nicola was spared having to reply, by the arrival of their host with a loquacious lady in tow. She, a marquise and a cousin of Monseigneur de Mérode, began to blast the Bonapartes and, more particularly, Plon-Plon, the Emperor’s dissolute cousin, whose marriage to poor little Princess Clothilde of Piedmont had sealed last year’s thieves’ bargain with France.
‘King Victor Emmanuel has let everyone down! The Bonapartes have always aimed to marry blue blood and the House of Savoy is one of the oldest in Europe! How could he consent to the alliance?’
Old herself, she was a fossil layered in deposits of amber, jet and jade. Her hair, on its scaffolding of combs, could have come from some reliquary and, like relics, her purpose was to put backbone into the faithful.
‘Poor little princess. Fifteen years old and offered up like Iphigenia.’
‘For wind, marquise?’
‘Hot air! Cynics say her father accepted the mésalliance for the alliance. A calumny! It was his ministers who made him do it. Minestrone-makers, I call them. That’s what ministers are; half-cooks, half-liars! Clerical ones are no better.’ Her words rang fearlessly. ‘Can you credit this? A priest told His Majesty to his face that it might be a good thing if he were to lose his throne, since a Republic would be so repugnant to the Catholic Powers that they might then intervene!’
The old lady looked as though she had cocked a snook at Nicola and, for a moment, there was a glimpse of a flirtatious girl. A spurt of coyness. It was as though, roused by the turn of events, she had been summoning old strategies. In the alliance between throne and altar, the latter was not pulling its weight and this aged tease was here to ginger up the men of God. Some, ‘offspring of factors and stewards’ – a clear reference to Antonelli – were not to be trusted. ‘Blood tells!’ She looked at Nicola as though wondering about his. ‘Such people have their fortunes to make, whereas we can give our energies to serving our God and our king.’
It was the aristocratic argument in its mouldy nutshell.
‘Take Antonelli’s brother, the banker,’ she invited. ‘There’s a corrupt …’
Nicola moved off. The Cardinal Secretary might have observers here. Seeing his host momentarily alone, he crossed the room and delivered his message. The host nodded and, for a few minutes, they spoke of neutral matters. Looking back, Nicola saw with surprise that Flavio had managed to reduce the old marquise to attentive silence. When he was next alone, Nicola rejoined him.
‘Were you intriguing?’
‘Promising to sell her shares.’ Flavio grinned. ‘Money interests everyone, Monsignore! She was ready to think of it as an outward sign of inward grace – as, indeed, people have since they first minted coins with crosses. Do you know that a good fifth of public money here goes into private pockets? That shows that there’s no contempt for it at the papal court – only failure to understand how it works!’ Flavio’s eyes were shining.
‘You turn it,’ Nicola saw, ‘into a sport.’
‘Oh, once you risk anything, it becomes a sport. My boyhood was all risk and I miss that – as I’ll miss Miss Ella who is risk incarnate. Can you blame me, Monsignore?’
‘Yes!’ Because you worship the creature rather than the Creator and because it’s our mortality which you love. Our flaw, our chancy uncertainties. You revel in our fallen state!’
‘How well you understand!’ Laughing. Stepping behind Nicola, Flavio whispered warmly in his ear, ‘Retro Satana!’ Then: ‘Remember that story you told me once about the white stones? When you were a boy? You were investing promises. Competing with reality. You were already a financier, Monsignore!’
Nicola pivoted. ‘Are you here to tempt us into dangerous venturings?’ He was tempted. Flavio hadn’t even said what he was offering, but Nicola could sense the lure of it.
‘Money isn’t like St Peter’s rock, Monsignore. It has to move.’ Flavio began to talk of a man who was sweeping old Europe off its feet by teaching aristocrats to raise mortgages on
their land and invest the proceeds. So far, the profits were dazzling and this new Midas was the darling of the most impenetrable drawing rooms in Brussels and Paris. More remarkably, he was a Catholic and eager to put his genius at the disposal of the Holy Father.
‘You’re an emissary from the Golden Calf?’
‘In this season of vaches maigres, shouldn’t you burn a little incense to it?’
The financial wizard’s name was Langrand-Dumonceau and he liked horses with stars on their foreheads and collaborators with titles. ‘He, like your Crusaders, wants to serve the Curia, but offers money rather than blood?’
‘A gambler?’
‘The Icarus of gamblers. Gambling is the greatest adventure as we saw when one of the leading financiers in France came a cropper. Jules Mirès, the railway king, was decorated by the Emperor last September and arrested in February. That quickened our pulses. The sight of worldly glory in quick transit shakes people up. It was Rome’s delays, as it happens, which brought him down. He speculated on your railways which then did not get built.’
‘Those railways may ruin more than Mirès. Our Treasury is still paying the bills for their construction, though the lands they run through have been lost.’
But Flavio knew this. He knew too that the Pope was floating a loan which was to be managed by the Rothschilds. A pity! Langrand should have been the one. Why must finance always be in the hands of Protestants and Jews? Flavio knew. It was because Catholics kept their money in tobacco jars, or locked in land. But Langrand was at last getting them to invest. ‘You should cut your ties with the feudal mummies.’ Flavio nodded at the Orleanist guests. ‘And then you’ll need new allies. Listen.’ Nicola did, doubtfully, half resisting, half enjoying this new circus act of Flavio’s, who teased and gleamed and dangled silver dreams of railway tracks flung across Ottoman lands and Mexico and, indeed, here. ‘We …’ said Flavio, and the mercurial pronoun expanded to embrace the Church Militant.
Prudent, but disliking his own prudence, Nicola wondered whether he was not keeping his imagination in the equivalent of a tobacco jar. Had his work with the visionaries – whom he had had to doubt – made him old before his time? Or should Flavio, a more dangerous visionary, be doubted too?
He was talking about how people must be given confidence to lend and how a papal blessing could help mobilise the savings of Catholic shopkeepers, priests and peasants all over Europe. If these were put to work, think of the good it could do. Think of the employment it could give. This had already begun to happen, but if the Church joined forces with the financier the mutual benefit would be enormous. No, no, don’t talk of usury or gambling! Or, rather, do! For religion was itself a gamble! Remember Pascal’s wager! Well, capitalism too relied on faith.
‘And,’ Flavio’s eyes danced, ‘Langrand will give you terms you would get from no infidel banker!’ Squeezing Nicola’s arm, he said, ‘We must arrange how to have you moved to a useful position in the Treasury. The Church has invisible assets – no, I mean the sort negotiable in this world! For instance, this idea of a blessing for Langrand could earn you solid returns. A title or even a medal would cost nothing and secure his devotion.’
As the two went in search of Miss Ella, Nicola felt so atingle that the sight of velvety ladies bent over cards or lazily swaying fans brought him into a new harmony with the agreeably orchestrated scene. Before, he had been watching from outside. Now, he was drawn in.
The harmony was shattered when they found the Englishman with Miss Ella. It was easy to guess what had happened, for Miss Ella’s amused smile told them that the boy knew who she was. How much could he know? That she was a circus-rider? This, though it had been indiscreet of Flavio to have passed such a person off as a lady, was no crime. At any moment, to be sure, she might, wilfully, reveal more.
Whinnying with pleasure, the English youth threw back his long equine head. ‘Magnifique Miss Ella!’ he cried in school-room French and added that he had gone on three separate nights to watch her perform in Marseilles. Then he invited her to supper and she, asparkle with malice, said, ‘Yes’.
Flavio grabbed his friend’s arm. ‘Wait,’ he whispered, ‘in the small library.’
So off went Nicola to a room which was clearly not much in use for there were jackdaw feathers in the grate. Here, he began to wonder whether this new turn meant that Flavio would not, now, be able to restore the solvency which the state had achieved on the eve of the Italian invasion – and then, of course, lost. Measuring his disappointment, he saw that he had begun counting on it. Fool, he chided himself. How count on Flavio who was so unreliable? Or was faith called for? God often did use odd instruments to effect His Will – and manifest His glory. This train of thought was bolstered by what happened when Flavio came in with the now half-cowed English youth, bowed Nicola into an imposing, throne-like chair, and started addressing him as ‘Excellency’ – a title to which he had no right – with a deference which turned his purple sash and stockings into deceptive props.
Clearly this was aimed at intimidating the young milord who kept nuzzling the air and protesting incomprehensibly about his leg.
‘You’re pulling it, aren’t you?’ he pleaded. ‘There must be a mistake. Une erreur!’ The nuzzling, it grew clear, was a wobble and the milord possibly about to weep.
But Flavio assured him that there was no error. The milord had been under observation since leaving England. ‘You look surprised? Did your tutors not warn you of the likelihood? Ah well, perhaps they’re agents themselves. Your coachman certainly is. Oh indeed. Servants are skilled at collecting evidence of the debauchery of well-born Protestants. We store it, you see. Market forces, my lord. We buy it cheap when young men like you first travel. Later, if you become a public figure – why not, a man of your birth! – why then it could be too expensive to collect. For now, to be sure, we have no desire to create trouble. But sodomy is not a sin His Holiness’s government can condone. If it were to become known, we would have to prosecute.’
And so on. The boy went white, bristled, stormed, denied and asked to speak to his host, but, on being told that, if he did so, Mérode, as Minister for Arms, would feel obliged to make the charge official, the young milord gave up the idea. He was very young.
‘You’re blackmailing me!’ he protested.
‘Exactly!’ said Flavio. ‘Did your mother never warn you about papist plots? Always believe your mother, milord.’
Nicola, feeling he had been used enough, moved towards the door.
‘His Excellency,’ he heard Flavio explain, ‘prefers not to take official cognizance of this …’
Back in the mirrored hall, churchmen were moving like dark planets around important suns: Mérode, General de la Moricière, ladies in pale spreading dresses and one or two cardinals who were about to leave now that dancing was to begin. Miss Ella too was holding court.
‘It’s done,’ said Flavio, reappearing. ‘He’s gone to his lodgings under escort and will leave the state tomorrow. He’s too frightened to talk to his consul.’
‘How did you know he was a sodomite?’
Flavio turned up his palms in the card-sharpers’ gesture. ‘I gambled.’
‘And his coachman? You’ve lost him his job.’
‘I’ll take him on. I’m sorry about the deception. I know you didn’t like it.’
Walking home, Nicola felt the dim, fungusy streets mime the spiral of his feelings as he circled walled gardens redolent of stagnant water and throbbing with a stridor of crickets. These recalled the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. Rome was full of the one and needed the other – but which was Flavio?
Twenty
There was a moon, and by its glimmer Nicola saw a startled Martelli wake up on a divan. He had had to wait, he explained, because he was leaving in the morning for Turin. Had Nicola got the letter?
‘Your man let me in. I sent him to bed.’
Nicola gave him an envelope and his friend slid it into the lining of his boot, then, with the
aid of a glue bottle, stuck a leather flap over the insertion. Nicola watched the deft movements with pleasure. ‘I’m keeping this as well hidden from my friends as yours,’ said Martelli. ‘Our National Committee would be gobbling with rage if they knew Turin was in touch with priests. Half of them are mad Masons!’ He laughed. ‘I sound like La Civiltà Cattolica! I fell asleep over its account of factious men, which means you and me, Monsignore. Spleen animates our old teachers. They’re beside themselves at the divisions in their ranks.’
Initiatives were indeed erupting in odd places, and men pledged to be staffs in the hand of the ageing Pope had, instead, begun to twitch like broomsticks. Foremost among these was Padre Passaglia. Once Professor of Dogmatics at the Romano and Rome’s leading theologian, he had, last year, approached the Pope with a bold proposal. This was that Mastai resign himself to his losses and come to an understanding with the Italian state. There was no theological barrier to such a pact, assured Passaglia, provided it guaranteed the Holy See spiritual independence. For the sake of Catholics whose consciences were on the rack, why not start secret talks, using Passaglia himself as go-between? Turn the other cheek, Holiness, he urged. And Mastai, hearing it put like that, agreed to give the idea a chance.
Unfortunately, the theologian muffed his mission. To the scandal of the Curia, he was seen in Cavour’s palace in Turin, and, on being taken for a renegade, for practical purposes, became one. Useless now as an envoy, he could not return to Rome where his presence would embarrass the Pope. At best, as Martelli pointed out, he could become a decoy and distract attention from ourselves who, unknown to him, were taking over his plan. ‘Misled by pride, he’s still buzzing about.’
Nicola did not like the dig at Passaglia’s pride, since for priests to renounce that now must look like a betrayal of their kind. He was about to protest but found it hard to stand on dignity with Martelli of whom he was immensely fond.
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