*
Nicola’s next move was to pay a visit to the red-haired priest who, though on his guard at first, unbent when he saw that the Coadjutor was keeping an open mind. He admitted that he had perhaps been imprudent in his dealings with the blacksmith’s wife, who had come to him because of her barrenness and her fear that this might be a punishment for her husband’s free-thinking. Perhaps, he admitted, he had encouraged this fear. He was a morose, tormented man. How, he asked the Coadjutor abruptly, can we know it isn’t true?
‘Because God doesn’t take sides!’
The priest was shocked. Did Rome not represent God? Yes, said Nicola warily, but perhaps a less fierce God than the one served by the red-headed priest who, for his soul’s peace – here he found the same phrases in his mouth as had been said to him when the Treasury was showing him the door – might be wise to move to another parish. The man looked resentful, seeing this as a judgment against him.
*
In May came the doctor’s bulletin from Florence. It roused the cardinal from his apathy and revived his Coadjutor’s hopes, for, confounding all likelihood, Langrand-Dumonceau had pulled off a coup! He had persuaded the Italians to strike out the worst part of their own draconian law. A contract, signed by their new Minister for Finance, ignored the clause declaring Church property forfeit, and agreed that, if the count would undertake its liquidation and pay the Italian government six hundred million francs over the next four years, the Church could keep the fourteen hundred million likely to be realised by the sale of the rest.
‘Think,’ Langrand had murmured into the ministerial ear, ‘of the stimulus to the economy! You can develop their lands and they will need to invest their cash!’
Surely, argued the doctor’s letter, this concession made it possible for the Pope to do business?
His next words fairly leaped off the page: a goodwill clause was to be incorporated whereby, in the interests of showing how a free Church could function in a free state, Sister Paola’s little hospital could stay open as ‘an example of the Church at its best’.
‘That,’ Amandi squinted through the gold wire spectacles which had a tendency to slide down his nose, ‘will stick in the papal gullet! I advise you to see that it is dropped before the contract goes to Rome.’
Nicola did not argue since, as he reminded the cardinal, he was no longer involved in the negotiations and would have no say.
‘The rest of it may get papal approval,’ judged the cardinal. ‘Happily, for His Holiness, nobody at a time like this is likely to tell him that such approval will be at odds with the opinions of his predecessor, Clement V, who pronounced it a heresy to defend the taking of interest! Mastai and all who negotiate on his behalf with your Belgian will be liable to penalties laid down by the papal law against heresy: Clementin i.5, De Usuris, title 5, as I recall. What percentage does our papal count take?’
‘Ten.’
‘Sixty million francs from the Italians! A hundred and forty million from us! Pope Clement must be spinning in his grave! It was simpler when the usurer was Monsieur de Rothschild! One should always do business with infidels, since one is not answerable for their souls.’ The cardinal had a fake mouse made of a bit of ermine trim which he now dangled for his cat. ‘Spinning!’ he repeated and spun his false mouse.
*
Friends in the Treasury kept Nicola informed. After all, if the count’s scheme triumphed, this, they reminded him, would be partly due to him. He was unsure whether to rejoice or quail. Yet what matter, he told himself, whether or not the financier was on the point of collapse? His ten per cent would save him so that he could save the Church. The miracle was a modern echo of St Peter’s walking on the waves.
Which penalties had Pope Clement had in mind? Burning? Nicola remembered Roman buildings blazing in the siege of ’49 and a recurrence looked likelier now than at any time since. The French had left. Their tricolour no longer flew over Castel Sant’Angelo and it was feared that the volunteers replacing them would be no match for Garibaldi, whose renewed rabble-rousing Nicola had himself glimpsed from a train window on his way here. The general had been wearing his old agitator’s red shirt and, although his harangue was inaudible, one knew the words to which it would boil down: Roma o morte!
So maybe we’ll all burn, Nicola thought, one way or another.
*
That June, Mastai invited the bishops of Christendom to join him in celebrating the eighteen-hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul in the reign of that notorious Rome-burner, Nero. Fireworks and illuminations defied fears of a repeat performance and the King of Italy – ‘of Piedmont Sardinia’ said Pius pointedly – was yet again ritually excommunicated together with his accomplices. Did this include all his soldiers and officials, along with the butchers, barbers and other tradesmen who kept them supplied? Two curial congregations were spinning out their debate on this question and waiting, said cynics, to see how the political cat would jump.
Pius told his assembled bishops that a power emanating from St Peter’s tomb must kindle and fan their ardour until they flamed like the lit tapers which they held in their hands. Had not the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles in the form of tongues of fire?
Nicola, looking around, saw tears in many episcopal eyes. All were foreigners’ eyes, to be sure. Flames were refracted in them so that the bishops’ faces seemed to be combustive.
‘I’ve just heard,’ Amandi whispered in his ear, ‘that he was planning to have his personal infallibility declared by acclamation here and now! It was to have been sprung on us, but Orléans and Mainz got wind of the plan and put a stop to it. The General Council will be his next chance.’
It had been confirmed that this was to be held in two years’ time.
‘If Garibaldi doesn’t get here first.’
‘He hopes his ghostly powers will stop Garibaldi! Indeed, Garibaldi is a boon to him: an excuse to increase his own authority. The Jesuits,’ Amandi lowered his voice even further, ‘are encouraging priests to take an oath to fight for the dogma “even unto bloodshed!” Usque effusionem sanguinis. It seems that two bishops already have. Manning of Westminster is one. Converts – he was a Protestant archdeacon – like that sort of thing. Having turned coat once, they feel a need to put themselves under restraint.’
‘I wonder whose blood Manning plans to shed? Ours or his?’
‘Do you notice who hasn’t come?’
‘Your fellow dauphin, d’Andrea!’
‘Don’t mention us in the same breath. They say he’s to be decardinalised! Mastai’s spleen bloats like a tick! All poor d’Andrea did was to leave Rome without formal permission and meet some leading Italians. Then, when stripped of his powers, he protested, as why shouldn’t he? What grounds are those for depriving him of his powers?’
Nicola whispered warningly, ‘He conspired with Italians who deprived Mastai of his! Tit for tat!’
*
Nicola left Rome before Amandi did. On his last day, the cardinal introduced him to Archbishop Darboy of Paris, a man whose independent spirit had cost him the red hat which usually went with his position.
‘I don’t need a hat!’ Darboy, a lean, fine-featured, chestnut-haired man in his fifties, spoke with robust humour. ‘I don’t suffer from colds. The Emperor was more upset than I because he’d asked that I should have it, thus ensuring that I would not. He is oddly blind to the pleasure Pius takes in biting the hand which protects him.’
On the topic of the Council, the Archbishop said he would welcome the prospect if he thought it would erase the stamp of an intolerant age which the last one – Trent – had impressed on Catholicism. Unfortunately, its more likely purpose would be to spread Rome’s power into every see and parish. He himself had clashed with Mastai over his intrusiveness, and the French clergy as a whole was smarting at the revocation of their right to worship according to their own rites. ‘He hates any show of independence.’
‘He was meddlesome even as a bisho
p,’ said Amandi. ‘Monsignor Ficanaso was his nickname then. Bishop Nosy!’
‘It is more dangerous in France,’ said Darboy. ‘We keep telling our opponents on the Left that if they will grant us the right to teach our children in our own way, we will respect their right to think in theirs. Yet how can they believe us when our leader issues a document like the Syllabus of Errors?’ Today, he lamented, a Catholic bishop’s dilemma was that he must seem like a yea-sayer to this haughty pope or the enemy of a besieged Church. ‘Yea-sayer, not to say idolator!’ Yesterday, he had heard hymns in which the word Deus had been replaced by Pius and, on voicing shock, learned that here in Rome the practice was widespread.
Cheering up, as he took his leave, he remarked that the Council would, after all, provide a forum and, who knew, might favour those who hoped to open the Church to new freedoms. ‘After all, man proposes and God disposes and,’ lowering his voice in a parody of fear, ‘Pio/Dio is still only a man!’
As an afterthought, he produced a French newspaper. ‘Here’s a blow struck for freedom and struck, my reverend friends, in your own diocese! I’ll leave it with you. Sorry if it disturbs your digestion.’ He left.
Amandi shook his head. ‘Brace yourself, fili mi, the French love to disturb. It’s their national vice.’ He unfolded the paper in which an article had been ringed in red ink. Entitled A VISIT TO THE POPE’S OLD STATES, it was an interview by a French journalist with Sister Paola:
The nun had to speak to us across a barricade, for the plain people of her village have locked her up so as to lose her neither to the new authorities nor the old. They think of her as one of themselves, and indeed when we saw her she was wearing clogs. She refused to talk about politics. ‘For most people,’ she told us, ‘politics are like cholera. You pray they won’t touch you and make the sign against the evil eye if they do.’
She wouldn’t talk either about the miracles with which she is credited nor of the crimes laid at her door. We asked if she knew of the whispered charges: performing abortions and making women barren. Using philters as old as paganism to remedy the sins of young girls. Could she guess where people got such ideas? No answer, so we tried another tack. Had she heard, we asked, of the coming Council in Rome? It was to be held in a few years’ time. Another blank look.
We, we explained, were wondering whether religion too sometimes seems like cholera to people through whose villages armies have marched so often in its name. Several visionaries, we told her, have prophesied that the coming Council will declare the Pope infallible so as to finish with strife and bring peace to parishes like hers. Does she, a holy woman, have anything to say about this?
But Sister Paola remained irredeemably taciturn.
Did she believe the Pope to be infallible? We knew he had been her confessor for several years. All she would say to this was that it was beyond her competence and, when pressed, added that the Pope was a good man but that the opinion of her uncle, who had also been a good man, was that if any mortal man were to be infallible, human endeavour would come to a halt. Trial and error were the way to improvement, this uncle used to say, and why change anything if we know we’re right now?
This brought us to the topic of ballooning and the story of how, three years ago, she saved one which was being blown out to sea. Eyewitnesses swore that as soon as she had prayed for the balloonists’ safety the wind shifted and blew them back to shore. Sister Paola laughed at this. The wind, she told us, was blowing in two different directions and when the navigator wanted to rise and catch a contrary wind he threw out ballast.
‘Do you think the state should do the same? Throw out ballast and change direction?’
No answer.
‘Should the Church?’
At this, Sister Paola must have given a signal to her protectors for they hustled us away. Far be it from us to claim that this unassuming woman is a pythoness. Still, it is heartening that the Church and the Kingdom of Italy which have so long been at odds have been able to agree on one small matter: the sparing of her small hospital which is to be let stay open as a symbol and, it is hoped, harbinger of their eventual entente. As we go to press, an agreement has been signed by the Italian Minister for Finance and Count André Langrand-Dumonceau who is thought to represent the Court of Rome.
Amandi folded the paper. ‘There will be trouble over this.’
Twenty-five
Imola
‘By Bacchus!’ Prospero, avoiding blasphemy, swore by pagan gods. Dio Bacco, Nicola was aggravating their afflictions.
The two were in the episcopal palace. From its walls gazed popes painted to look uniformly benevolent and stern.
‘I‚’ Nicola reminded, ‘have been looking into sanctity and the lack of it for years! Remember the children of La Salette? As the Cardinal’s assistant – and assistants, let us be frank, do the work – I put together files on them.’
‘So there are files?’ Prospero was interested. ‘And you are saying that this nun is a saint?’
‘Not at all. My approach is negative. Just as medical men concern themselves with boils, tumours and the like, I …’ And Nicola explained that, being inured to spiritual afflictions, it lightened his heart, for once, to find none.
‘Can you be sure this lightness is not a more … human feeling?’
‘She’s over fifty, Monsignore!’
‘Quite, but has His Eminence never …?’
‘Talked of her? Of course he has. When the Italians ruled that only “useful” convents might stay open, it was he who let hers start a small hospital. Very modest. The stories about abortions don’t ring true. Surely, a scandal can be avoided?’
Too late, said Prospero. Indeed, that was why he was here. The Holy Father was heartsick. Did Nicola think it had pleased him to read in the French gutter press of an agreement purportedly signed in his name by this Belgian trickster? ‘He has disowned it.’
Nicola couldn’t credit this. ‘It saved the bulk of our assets!’
‘It condoned the seizure of the rest. And he wants the convent closed down. He’ll accept no favours from Florence!’
‘But …’ This was baffling. ‘The people love Sister Paola!’
‘Oh … love!’ Irritably, tapping a windowpane, Prospero disclosed that the Italians were already dealing with, among others, Baron James Rothschild of Paris. Jackals would not be lacking to pick our bones. Perhaps we should rejoice? This way, even if the new agreements took all our property, we would not be party to them. ‘How can we join the Roman soldiers dicing for Christ’s robe?’ His tapping fingernails did, though, sound like dice.
Nicola, too stunned to listen, caught a reference to bishops who lacked loyalty. Cardinal d’Andrea was mentioned: a controversial case. Prospero said, ‘I want the dossier on the children of La Salette.’
His skin looked papery and his nose pinched, as though chary of breathing in too much air. Nicola, with a rush of sympathy, mourned the Prospero of years ago. As the dossier, though, was Amandi’s and contained God knew what, he said he couldn’t lay hand on it. He was angry with Rome for sending a friend to work on his feelings. So, asked Prospero, who had the file?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘You must know! His Holiness will want it. Who has it, Monsignore?’
‘Cardinal d’Andrea.’ It was an inspired lie. ‘He was Prefect of the Congregatio Indicis when some books came out on the case. As you know, there were controversies …’
‘And he kept the file?’
Nicola nodded. D’Andrea, now a refugee in Naples, was the one prelate from whom Rome could not easily recover it.
‘Would you get it for us? Go to Naples?
‘Why should I?’
Prospero’s dry-pod face cracked a smile. ‘This,’ he coaxed, ‘is in the strictest confidence. The secret of La Salette was that the Pope should be declared infallible. Individually, by himself and apart from the episcopacy.’
‘That wasn’t in the dossier!’
‘No. It’s the secret
which the Virgin gave to the boy, Maximin, and which he later revealed to the Holy Father in a confidential letter. We need to see the dossier in case there are contradictory elements there. As the secret was communicated to the child in 1846, the year of Mastai’s elevation, its publication cannot fail to touch hearts. The Council, you see, will aim to dogmatise the doctrine so that there may be no more strife and the Church strengthened.’ Prospero’s eyes shone. ‘Think,’ he urged, ‘of the comfort it will bring to millions.’
Nicola thought of Amandi and Darboy. ‘Sudden and secret moves,’ he warned, ‘harden opposition. However, I’ll strike a bargain with you: if you get a pardon for d’Andrea, I’ll ask him for the dossier. I’ll want a promise from the Pope himself.’
*
Cardinal Amandi wrote advising d’Andrea to make his submission, but feared, privately, that the humiliation could kill him. D’Andrea was an aristocrat, a man of another age. To have to grovel – and, bargan or no bargain, Mastai would make him do that – could destroy him. Amandi sighed. The Church, once a collegial corporation, was now an autocracy. The new instruments of communication – rail and telegraph – long seen as threats to the central power, would instead reinforce it and the chemin d’enfer be a chemin de Rome. The Council would put its stamp on that!
‘This time,’ he prophesied, ‘you may depend upon it, the secular powers won’t intervene as they tried to do at Trent. Instead, they’ll sit back and watch us give the world a spectacle of archaic folly. Infidels and Protestants will split their sides and atheists wish they had a god to thank.’
*
Nicola, taking the train for Naples, joined the ‘crows and ravens’, which was how the Italians decribed the clerics dispersing, after their gathering in Rome. D’Andrea, once the drollest of prelates, received him dully. Disappointment had shrivelled him. His movements were wooden, his shoulders pale with dandruff, and he had the friable look of a pillar of salt. He was out of the running for the succession, and even here must be feeling the cold since the Italians, who had made him so welcome three years ago, knew that a cardinal likely to be ‘decardinalised’ was of no political use. Minor maladies seemed to beset him and there was a raw, albino look to the skin around his eyes.
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