Rumours kept alarm upon the boil. Garibaldi was acting on his own, since the king, browbeaten by Louis Napoleon, had disowned him. Thank God for that. Yet might the Emperor, who was known to support the ‘principle of nationalities’, again change sides? He might. At this very moment Italian envoys in Paris were begging him not to send troops to our defence. That whore the Countess Castiglione was adding her blandishments. Grandest of grandes horizontales, she was said to be the mainspring of Italian strategy, though it was also said that she had been supplanted by some other whore, who was unlikely to be a good Catholic, and, either way, it all went to prove the old adage about how a pubic hair could pull more weight than a team of oxen. Yet the Pope was said to be calm, praying, no doubt, but also remembering that Louis Napoleon still needed that pivotal Catholic vote in the upcoming French plebiscite.
Then came news of a victory! Near Mentana the French, armed with some new marvellous sort of gun, had defeated the Garibaldini! Thank God! Thank the new chassepots and the French Catholic voters who had forced Louis Napoleon to send troops!
Soberer voices murmured that France was fickle. After the plebiscite, the Emperor would need us less. If he fell, his successors wouldn’t need us at all. This could be the last time France would defend us. But the Garibaldini would still be here.
*
Amandi learned from Russell that Mr Gladstone and Lord Clarendon, who were visiting Rome, had urged Pius to make peace with the King of Italy. After all, they said, what other hope had he? His hope, Pius told them, lay not in armies but in Providence.
‘Providence,’ retorted his Protestant lordship, ‘has certainly performed miracles of late, but they have all been in favour of Italy.’
*
It was at this unpromising moment that Cardinal d’Andrea at last brought himself to swallow his pride and make his submission. He left Naples for Rome where a few loyal friends, including Amandi who had stayed in the city for that purpose, went to greet him at the Albergo Cesari and were shocked by what they saw. He was fifty-four and looked seventy-four. There seemed, wrote Amandi with frightened pity, to be no spirit left in him. No self. ‘One thinks of Lucifer after his fall! He, who had been the brightest of the angels, fell into numbing dark. This is scarcely a man, much less a priest or prince. His mind cannot sustain the shame. He will sign anything. Distinctions elude him. His body sways as though his bones had melted, and we would scarcely have marvelled if he had turned to dust before our eyes.’
The recantation, drawn up by d’Andrea’s most implacable opponents in the Sacred College, declared, ‘(1) I beg forgiveness for my disobedience in going to Naples in defiance of the Holy Father’s prohibition; (2) I deplore the scandal given to the faithful by my attitude towards the Sacred Person of His Holiness and to the Sacred Congregations in my articles in the Esaminatore of Florence whose heretical and schismatic doctrines I now reprove; (3) …’ Amandi could not bear to copy the rest. The man had been left with neither dignity nor belief. He was in hell and the restoration of his offices and revenues was a sour mockery. Like decking a corpse in the livery of grandeur, it emphasised not only the death of his spirit but the mortality of his flesh – for he was visibly dying on his feet.
‘He had an audience with H.H.,’ wrote Amandi in a letter which he would not entrust to the postal service, ‘who must have been punishing by proxy all the enemies he could not reach.’
Pius had been flanked by Antonelli and Patrizi when the suppliant stumbled into the room. Corpse-pale, he zigzagged towards the steps of the throne, then fell to his knees and began to sob. The Pope remained stony-faced while the sick man tried to pull himself together, made his request for pardon, crawled forward to kiss the papal slipper then, somehow, got himself out of the room.
‘I have to say,’ wrote Amandi, ‘that d’Andrea’s own version of the thing is different. He claims that Pius commiserated with him over his appearance and advised him to nurse his health and visit some spa. However, he is in such a state of craven self-delusion that it is hard to believe a word he says.’
It was clear that Amandi, who had for so long been twinned with d’Andrea in people’s minds, was shaken.
There was a last glimpse of the ruined cardinal. A friend, who went to see him in a country house to which he had withdrawn, found him holding a lighted taper to his face at noon, and begging to be told if he did not look healthier than before. ‘The victim’s victim,’ said Amandi, ‘has to pay for everyone’s sins!’
London, 1868
From Cesarini to Monsignor Santi:
Monsignore,
Has it occurred to you that Miss Ella and you look remarkably alike? No? Well, the resemblance ends there. I loved her for qualities which you have not got. She incarnated the magic which the Church promises but fails to deliver. I thought Langrand-Dumonceau did too, but he, alas, is losing his powers – as you may see!
Enclosed were cuttings from Belgian newspapers. One from l’Echo du Parlement belge said: ‘The Langrand companies are in their judiciary phase. Thanks to the courts, those accounts books so carefully kept from shareholders will now see the light of day and the scales drop from the eyes of small investors bamboozled by agents in soutanes!’ Another clipping trumpeted: ‘Now that the collapse of Monsieur Langrand’s Crédit foncier et industriel has brought ruin to so many Catholic families, the clerical press …’
Nicola went cold. So the Pope had been right!
‘I,’ wrote Cesarini, ‘never did know what went on in L-D’s inner sanctum. Ignorance, though, may be no protection.’
He saved us, thought Nicola of Pius and skipped squeamishly on.
‘… the Pope has come in for some harsh criticism, since the papal title was an endorsement of …’ He did not want to read that. Turning the page, he found: ‘The Princes von Thurn and Taxis and Duke Cesarini as well as a host of other leading noble houses stand to lose …’
Contrary to the old compensatory law of fortune-telling – lucky in love, unlucky at the gaming table – Flavio had lost on all fronts!
‘Miss Ella …’
It appeared that she and the former chaplain were living sedately somewhere in Louisiana. They had opened a riding school. The letter informing Flavio had come through a lawyer. He was not to disturb their peace. A post scriptum informed him that they had adopted a child.
*
Cardinal Amandi, having left the Pope’s territory for Tuscany, could now write freely and his latest note gave details of an audience with Pius on the eve of his departure. He had requested it weeks ago so as to plead for d’Andrea. Pius, however, had divined and foiled this plan and Amandi had had to wait until after d’Andrea’s awful reception for his own. The memory of that hung ominously. However, Pius gave him his hand – d’Andrea had been proffered a foot – and, asked:
‘Is it true that you have a white cat called Cacanono?’ Plucking coquettishly at his own cassock. ‘As white as this? Does it mean “don’t shit” or what? Is it a devil’s name, Eminenza? Have you a predominant passion represented by this cat which has such an interesting name? It’s a pun, isn’t it? You must explain it to me. I like puns.’
Amandi, in a steady voice, said that the cat was an ordinary cat, Holiness, and not called Cacanono.
The Pope looked pained. ‘I am often misinformed. I am an Argus with a hundred squints! What is your cat called?’
‘Mangialuce, Holiness!’ The cardinal, red as his robes, eyed Mastai who said, ‘Another odd name!’ and eyed him back.
‘We both,’ wrote Amandi, ‘belong to that impoverished but resourceful squirearchy of the Marches. He knew I was rattling responses around my head and wondering which to risk. He was enjoying that but – I could see – the enjoyment was not malign. I was to be given a good fright, a tap of the crosier, then hauled back to the fold. The implications of Mangialuce’s name were not construed. “Beware of scandal!” said he. “My ears have been burning, Eminenza. Be wary! So many people spy! Our poor friend d’Andrea wasn’t wary
at all! The poor man was never papabile material, wouldn’t you agree?”
‘If there is any message in all this,’ concluded Amandi, ‘it is that those who say he is senile have been hoodwinked. Here it is not Hamlet, the pretender, but the old king who feigns madness.’
Rome, 1868
Monsignore,
You will recall our compact whereby, once Girolamo Marchese Cardinal d’Andrea was restored to the exercise of his episcopal jurisdiction in spiritualibus et temporalibus, you would send me a certain file. I count on your forwarding it. Yours affectionately in Jesus Christ
Prospero + Bishop of Philippi
Nicola’s dreams had been invaded by Sister Paola’s. Towards the end, these had fractured into tantalising slivers which flew together under the magnet of his curiosity.
Images recurred: a mountain presbytery and a convent school. One was bathed in bright air and the other crammed with the dull impedimenta of women who expected little from the here and now. Fierce practical jokes leavened the drabness. A cripple’s crutch was hung out of reach; a wigged bolster placed in someone’s bed; a sheet sewn across so that the occupant couldn’t get in; a spaniel bitch on heat was locked in a confessional so that canine hordes assailed the church. On that occasion, the chaplain demanded that the perpetrator, having committed a reserved sin, go to the bishop for absolution. Nobody did. Sister Paola recalled with a shocked giggle that the secret sinner had been more in awe of Monsignore than of hell and never owned up.
‘You were a terror, Monsignore!’
Her voice, at such moments, grew young, and old, innocent mischief animated her wrinkles. Her eyes were as bright as coins. He guessed her to be about fifty.
He came back and back again to see her, as she failed to recover or die, lingering perhaps until she had passed on her memories. He felt her intense interest in himself, her last listener, who was administering secular rites as well as the ones which the Church had taught him to give: a bonus to which she had every right since she herself had extended it to many. ‘Useful’ work was what nuns were expected to do by the Siccardi laws – called after the deputy who presented them to the Italian parliament – and that was what Sister Paola had agreed to do and did.
‘Tell me,’ he held her hand, ‘what you look like.’ He asked because her eyes were intermittently naïve with hope. ‘You came back,’ she had just said and he guessed that the ‘you’ she was addressing was not him. She bridled. ‘Oh, I have long hair. Black.’ Her fingers moved feebly towards the greying stubble on her cropped head. ‘A river of it! I wear it in a coil. I would like a silk dress. I’m not sure if I’m pretty. Napoleon Louis said I was. You never did!’ She laughed. ‘But I know you thought so, Monsignore!’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it does! Pretty women are grateful to God and charitable to others! They’re nicer people, hadn’t you noticed? Even pretty nuns are! And statues of the Virgin are always pretty. That shows that pious people value prettiness even though they pretend not to. Have you ever seen an ugly statue of the Virgin?’
‘Never.’
‘See!’
‘But we mustn’t tell the ugly that. They would be too unhappy.’ Absurdly, he flirted with this dying woman in her dotage. It was as if, beyond their roles as confessor and penitent, a connection had been established. They liked each other. There was something responsive in each to the other’s temperament. Like magnets, they leapt into conjunction again and again. And then, one day, he decided to reverse their roles.
‘Tell me,’ he decided to ask. ‘I know someone who perhaps had a son whom someone else now wants to find and adopt …’ But this sounded confusing even to himself.
Her face closed like a frightened sea anemone. ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do you raise that – that bit of the past?’
‘There may never have been one …’
‘There was!’
‘No, no, quite possibly, even probably, there wasn’t. But this person – the one who wants to adopt – will, I suspect, find a boy anyway whom he can pass off as the lost one!’ Nicola foundered, then decided to go on since, after all, he, like the barber in the old story of King Midas’s ears, was really talking to himself.
‘He says he wants to help the child – who, if it exists, is no longer of course a child – but his purpose may be …’
‘What?’
‘Sodomy.’ He doubted that she knew the word yet used it anyway. It was like addressing the Delphic sybil, a pythoness in a cave, someone whose answer must be dictated by some force beyond her own understanding. ‘Sin.’
She asked: ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Cesarini. Flavio. Do you remember him?’
‘Of course. Does he want to adopt the child?’
‘Yes, if he can find it, but …’
‘But how wonderful! Aren’t you pleased? We will be able to know it – her, him, without scandal. And it will be now be grown up, anyway, so what harm can come of it?’
Nicola marvelled at her sudden lucidity. Sibylline intuition? Had she a gift? Perhaps this was why Mastai – from what she had been saying – had asked her about his infallibility! The boy, he told her, would be eighteen now.
‘No, no!’ She argued. ‘Thirty-six.’
Twenty-six
Imola, 1869
In the garden walked His Eminence and his cat, a creature which carried itself like an emblem.
‘Gardens,’ Prospero looked out the window, ‘remind me of Jacobins and their Utopias.’ He must, thought Nicola, be the last man left to call Liberals ‘Jacobins’. Nose to tail, the cat seemed to be chasing an errant piece of itself. ‘My father …’
He had died the year before and now Sister Paola too had slipped away in a dream which had, in the end, grown real to Nicola who could have mapped her uncle’s presbytery. Copper gleamed there; ceilings were sooty, faience plates crazed, and a hand ran, with tenderness, over the soft bindings of books. The uncle had been a scholar, rusticated for reasons she never knew.
‘Leniency,’ Prospero tried to persuade himself, ‘sells the pass.’ He was remembering a guillotining seen in Rome last November in the piazza dei Cerchi. He had not planned to witness it. ‘But, somehow, on the day itself, I felt I had to. D’Arbuez – our inquisitor saint – must have witnessed the deaths of the heretics he condemned. It was a test.’
‘I would fail it,’ said Nicola. ‘I would feel that our beliefs aren’t worth so much.’
Prospero’s face thawed into passion. ‘If they were worth Christ’s death, how could they not be worth those of Giuseppe Monti and Gaetano Tognetti?’ These were the dead men’s names. They had been convicted of trying to blow up a papal barracks.
The guillotine had been on a small platform and in the end the headsman or an assistant had held up the heads. First one. Then the other. By the hair. ‘One man’s was short. He had trouble grasping it. The blood …’
‘All right! All right!’ It was Prospero’s nausea which Nicola hoped to staunch.
‘There was sawdust to soak it …’
‘Prospero, it could have been your father!’
‘That’s why! Don’t you see?’ His voice was hoarse and his jaw clenched. ‘One must confront things!’
‘Let’s have lunch. I’ll send the footman to call His Eminence.’ Nicola pulled a thick, prettily twisted woollen bell-rope, yellow and pink.
*
He had known, of course, about Sister Paola, having guessed from the first, but hadn’t wanted, any more than she – surely? – could have done, to live through the recognition scene so familiar from opera libretti: ‘My mother!’ cries the repelled and horrified Figaro, on being confronted with an ageing woman who has mistaken her maternal instinct for amorousness … Horror and farce! What other response, implies the librettist, could there be to such an untimely revelation? The timelessness of Sister Paola’s memories were what Nicola had relished. The girl from 1831 was the one about whom he had wanted to know: unchanging, luminous and perf
ectly preserved. The remembering nun, lying there like a shell resonant with sea sounds, was best, for dignity’s sake, treated as the medium she was. Neutral and unrecognised. Separate and, if possible, distanced from the story which both had come to enjoy remembering. He rejoiced in imagining her at fifteen, a radiant creature at its peak, aquiver like a cresting wave – soon to be ruined by his birth.
His father’s identity was as elusive as a face on a spun coin. Libretto prince or incestuous uncle? Tenor or baritone? A ruthless man might have forced her to say – only to find, perhaps, that both masked the unbearable memory of an anonymous and multiple rape. Shrinking from that, he cherished uncertainty. As for her, the spirited old relic, he was as glad to have known her as that she had not known him. He genuinely mourned her now.
*
Amandi, reluctantly, agreed that they must hand over the La Salette file. ‘How resist his overweening if we become Petrine in our own opinions?’ His watchword, these days, was ‘flexibility’, and his hope that, even now, a way could be found ‘to conciliate Revelation and Revolution’. Why not? Why not? ‘After all,’ he said, ‘what is the Revolution but Charity grown impatient and turning to arms? It’s not hard to understand. D’Arbuez, in his day, stood for armed Faith. And he’s been canonised!’
*
At lunch none of this came up.
Nicola, seated between his seething friends, talked of the weather – a topic on which, said Amandi impishly, we must all learn to discourse! Not only was it the only one safe to discuss with H.H., it was also a challenge! How far could one spin out discussions of, say, wind? The sirocco and its properties. The tramontana. The winds of change! Gaiety seized His Eminence. ‘Do you know why it’s unsafe to talk to him of other things? It’s because he blows the gaff on his informants! He can’t help it! He gets carried away. That spiteful tale-bearer, Monseigneur de Ségur, got into hot water with his superior, Darboy, whom he had maligned secretly to Pius. When he got home Darboy knew every word he’d said!’ The cardinal laughed.
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