The Judas Cloth

by Julia O'Faolain

  Nicola temporised. He had promised fellow members of the Minority to hold firm until their return. But, said Prospero, the Garibaldini might be here by then. ‘Ah,’ asked the cruel Nicola, ‘have you so little faith?’

  A thought had struck him. If they did get here soon, then the judiciary would be in their hands and might seek Amandi’s killer. But there was no time to ponder this, for he had to deal with Prospero who was grown emotional and hard to put off. Now, he insisted, when there was nothing to be gained from supporting the Church, was surely the time to support it.

  ‘Give your placet. It’s an act of loyalty. All the bishops are making it. Mérode has already given in and so have several of the fifty-five signatories who said they would hold out. Oh, don’t be surprised! There are no secrets.’

  ‘Were you sent or did you come?’

  ‘Both. His Holiness says that all who oppose him will be struck down. So why wait for this to happen? Look, I know hateful things were said and done. But the Garibaldini will be more hateful. Radicals always are. Remember 1792! Remember Napoleon’s treatment of Pius VII!’

  ‘I won’t. Pius IX has made too much capital out of it – yet his own worst experience was to be the house guest of the King of Naples. Why can’t he forgive? The Church needs calling to acount, not loyalty.’

  This, he now saw, was why he was eager to bring the wretched Maximin to book. He wanted clarity, a trial and a summing-up. A sad ruthlessness stiffened him – he felt it in his body – as he groped towards a way to cut himself off from his own tradition. The confessional, an instrument for controlling consciences and inner motivations, was dark, curtained and forgiving. But the courtroom threw light on what people actually did.

  Thirty-one

  Flavio was encouraging his guests to drink up his best wines lest Italian looters soon be drinking them instead. Let this be a libation to a dying Rome.

  This flippancy upset Prospero, who countered it with accounts of Mastai’s prayerful serenity and the stir at Antonelli’s office, which he described as awash in intercepted telegrams from foreign embassies. The same office was leaking false information – which came back to it in the telegrams! He laughed robustly. Human failure was grist to his milling faith.

  Before leaving, he promised to obtain permission for Nicola to remain a while longer. ‘For reasons of health. This will give you time to make your act of submission. Don’t delay too long. Remember: the See of Imola won’t be vacant long and won’t go to a rebel!’

  *

  So Nicola stayed on with Flavio to whom, one polleny evening, bright with fireflies, he talked of Maria Gatti’s son and the experience of coming face to face with an image of his youthful self. He did this to distract his host from the bulletins about the Langrand court cases which kept humming over the wires. The latest was that five directors had been declared personally bankrupt. Langrand himself was thought to be in hiding in London.

  ‘He was here for a while,’ said Flavio. ‘In this house.’

  It was a time of confidences. Villeggiatura: visits to neighbouring villas, drives, walks and mutual commiseration. They talked of Langrand and, one by one, Nicola learned the names of the Roman officials who had pocketed bribes. One was the man who had received him in Monsignor Randi’s stead and eluded his questions.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s bribable! You should have bribed him, Nicola! Not that he’d necessarily have produced the goods. He didn’t for me.’

  They were at a neighbour’s, watching tennis balls skew off a bumpy court, when news came that the French Emperor had been defeated at a place called Sedan. He had been ill, suffering from a stone in the bladder, and was said to have rouged his cheeks lest his pallor depress his men. Yet, after the surrender, they turned their backs on him, and the Pope – the news came through Rome – greeted his protector’s Calvary with a nursery pun. ‘He’s lost what? Sedan? Ses dents? Aha, he’s lost his teeth!’

  The chubby old man had the impulses of a spoilt child.

  ‘Well, he’ll soon lose his!’ said Flavio.

  ‘He doesn’t think so,’ said their informant. ‘His new visionary tells him Rome will not fall, so he’s serene!’

  *

  Thanks to the electric telegraph, news now came thick and fast. A republic had been declared in France and agreements made with the defunct Empire rendered void – which worried the Italian regime as much as it did the Pope’s. For what if the French were to revive the old idea of setting up a sister republic in Rome? This could take over the peninsula! Alarmed, the Italian monarch sent an ambassador to Pius.

  *

  ‘The Jesuits at the Romano are burning papers,’ said Flavio. ‘The people say so. They always know. No doubt the police at Montecitorio are having a little bonfire too.’

  He and Nicola were back in Rome.

  ‘I’m going there!’ said Nicola. ‘Before they burn Amandi’s file. Was what you told me about bribing that policeman true? I don’t want to draw a blank at this late stage of things.’ It was indeed late. Days ago, a notice in the Gazzetta Ufficiale di Firenze had announced that the King of Italy had ordered his troops into Roman territory and declared a state of siege.

  At Montecitorio, Nicola learned that the man he was seeking had resigned from the police and been appointed chaplain to a convent. A clerk winked. ‘He’ll be safer there when the Italians come!’

  Nicola took the address of the convent and set off again. All along the way French, Prussian and English flags flew on private palazzi whose owners had obtained the protection of foreign powers. Some doors were locked and barricaded but, by contrast and despite assemblies being forbidden, sightseers drifted about and a woman described a visit to the city walls, where an officer had allowed her up to view the defences. She sounded amused and so did youths who had climbed some scaffolding to take a look at the enemy camp.

  The nuns were expecting the worst. A frightened doorkeeper interviewed Nicola through a fist-sized shutter and said she had orders to let no one in. However, when he claimed to come from Montecitorio, the door was opened.

  ‘The Turks aren’t coming!’ he teased the two lay sisters who had opened it, but failed to raise a smile.

  The chaplain, having shriven all the nuns, was restoring himself with hot chocolate. He was unshaven and his cup rattled as he replaced it in its saucer. The spoon fell. Nicola refused his offer of hospitality and told him that his friend, Duke Cesarini, was in a dilemma. He must account to the Belgian courts for monies spent here in Rome to promote his scheme to save our Treasury.

  Dunking a piece of pan di Spagna in his chocolate, the chaplain avoided Nicola’s eye and waited to hear more.

  The trouble was, said Nicola, that the duke’s notebooks listed the names of those who had received emoluments; but if these were turned over to courts which, alas, were in a priest-baiting mood, the emoluments would be described in the press as bribes. Scandal must ensue and careers suffer. ‘I have been wondering how to advise the duke as to where his duty lies.’

  The chaplain, grasping the nettle, asked what the bishop wanted and Nicola asked for the police file on the cardinal’s death. ‘We spoke about it once in your office.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the ex-policeman, ‘but I can only repeat what I told you then. There is nothing at police headquarters. Nobody wants to keep compromising papers about and no file was opened.’ He added, in a little rush, that as a proof of good will, he could offer the bishop a related item of information: ‘Monsignor Randi knows that before Monseigneur Darboy left for Paris you gave him a certain secret paper. Now, as Randi has two audiences a week with His Holiness, he will certainly have told him this and Monseigneur Darboy will equally certainly be ordered to hand it over. That’s all the help I can give you, Monsignore. Are you sure I can’t offer you a cup of chocolate?’

  Nicola accepted and the man rang for a second cup. Waiting for it, he fidgeted and, as Nicola drank the sweet, foaming draught, kept stealing glances at him. Close by nuns’ voices were reciting a pr
ayer.

  ‘You want something else from me, don’t you, Monsignore?’

  Nicola observed that the Italians would soon be here. Some, having suffered at the hands of the papal police, might be vindictive with an ex-policeman who lacked protection. He had friends – he named Martelli – able to provide it.

  The chaplain asked with some spirit if the Monsignore was leaving the ship even before it sank.

  ‘I,’ said Nicola, ‘am not leaving. But I saw the result of a lynching back in 1848. A man called Nardoni. I saw his mangled body and hope you will help me avoid another such memory.’ He laid out his demands. The ex-policeman was to go back to his office and manufacture a letter acknowledging payment by Duke Cesarini of an unspecified sum to the Governor of Rome for distribution to such charities as the said governor thought fit. The governor’s seal should be appended and the date be three years old.

  ‘But Monsignore … a forgery …’

  ‘It is a short cut rather than a forgery. The duke did distribute large sums, as I think you know, but there is no time to solicit receipts from those who got them. As it is, this will have to be done today. The Italians …’

  The chaplain gave in.

  20 September

  Two days later Rome was awoken by cannon booming from three different points. This then was it! It was 5.15 in the morning by the new way of reckoning and Nicola and the duke had, like many others, been up half the night. A rumour had got about that the invasion was for today and, sure enough, here it was. Would the people rise and give the Italians a pretext for coming in? No. The people, like themselves, were sitting tight behind closed doors, eating their stored provisions and perhaps killing time with card games and other indoor pastimes.

  News of blood-letting in France was said to have upset the Pope and dissuaded him from authorising a last-ditch fight. It would have been a carnage. His men were outnumbered ten to one!

  ‘The Zouaves will be furious! Maybe they’ll persuade him to change his mind.’

  ‘No chance. He’ll let it go on just long enough to show that force was used and that he didn’t give away God’s patrimony!’

  ‘A last pageant!’

  At ten came news that white flags had been raised on the Vatican and the Quirinal – bed sheets in both cases. The duke insisted on going out. ‘You stay here,’ he warned Nicola. ‘Priests will be in danger. I’ll bring back news.’

  But it was days before news could be sifted from rumour.

  For a while, it was believed that Monseigneur Randi had been lynched in his office by the vindictive riffraff which had arrived with the Italian Army. Then it turned out that he had been lent a carriage in the nick of time and driven hell for leather to the Città Leonina, that small area bounded by the Santo Spirito Bastions, the Castel Sant Angelo and the Vatican Hill into which the Pope and his aides were now crammed like so many sardines in a barrel. Yes, that was all the armistice was leaving His Holiness! And yes, it had been signed. Needs must. Randi was safe but not everyone had been so lucky. Reports were murky but there had been savage scenes, and one who had had to be rescued from a lynch-mob was la Diotallevi. Martelli and some Italian friends had intervened at the last minute and spirited her away.

  Nicola learned from the Zouaves’ chaplain, Monseigneur Daniel, how, after the ceasefire, Zouaves had been insulted, spat on, and even killed by what the chaplain refused to believe were Romans.

  ‘Look at the faces in the streets,’ invited Daniel, whose own face was that of a man who had drunk vinegar. ‘They’re scum, Monsignore! Vermin! Trainloads of them are being imported gratis to vote in the so-called plebiscite! A sinister canaille!’

  Enfevered by loathing, the chaplain described girls dancing with the invaders, and his horror on visiting General Kanzler in the single room which the Minister for Arms was obliged to share with his wife and small son! ‘They put a screen around the bed!’ he explained in shock. But no wonder God’s servants had no place to lay their heads! The Italians were seizing Church property throughout the city. Even the Quirinal Palace had been seized in a scene – though the chaplain did not know this – orchestrated by Cardinal Antonelli. It had been agreed during the preliminary negotiations that it should be handed over. But when the moment came, the cardinal packed the place with the families of papal dependants and refused to give up the keys. The ensuing lock-picking and forced evictions provided a tale calculated to distress the faithful in distant countries and kindle energies in the papal cause. Christ had given Peter the keys of the kingdom – but then the lock-pickers came! A powerful parable!

  Daniel’s was a high-coloured face which one could imagine being painted by some unknown Maestro on a pocked wooden panel. Nicola had sought him out in the hope of learning something about the whereabouts of Maximin Giraud. But it proved impossible to wrench the conversation round to this. The chaplain was full of his last hours with Mastai. ‘Daniel,’ His Holiness had said to him, ‘we are in the lion’s cage!’ And it was a double pun, for His Holiness was indeed caged up in the Leonine City. The chaplain’s eyes were fierce but wet. How, he asked, had Nicola held on to his apartment?

  It was private property, Nicola told him. It did not belong to the Church. Daniel looked as though the distinction astonished him. He brooded a while then burst out with the remark that disloyalty would surely draw down heaven’s wrath. ‘And sooner rather than later. God has already punished the absconding French. Has it escaped your notice, Monsignore, that Paris fell to the Prussians on the selfsame day as Rome did to Victor Emmanuel?’ The chaplain’s face, which was as raw as flayed meat, thrust itself close. His breath was sulphurous. ‘Even if the Empire had not fallen, it might not have helped us, for Monseigneur Darboy is not loyal. There are Judases in the episcopacy, Monsignore! They too should be punished! We,’ said Monseigneur Daniel, ‘will have a tale to tell in France!’

  Nicola, ill at ease, but unable to escape, had to hear of the Pope’s last review of the Zouaves, when, preparing to deliver his blessing from a Vatican window, Pius found his voice failing and fell sobbing into his chamberlain’s arms.

  Monseigneur Daniel’s voice shook as he described the shout from the piazza. ‘Viva Pio IX! Long live our king!’ cried the chaplain, in imitation of the Zouaves’ farewell. Then his control cracked and he wept into his handkerchief.

  Rome, Autumn 1870

  It was over. Rome was part of Italy and the new order settling in. Pope and Curia had shut themselves up in the Vatican.

  Riffraff disported themselves in clerical cafés and priests who had been in hiding were starting to emerge. Some looked dazed. Others scoured the papers for signs of hope., One market day a peasant, indignant at the new taxes, had yelled a defiant ‘Viva Pio Nono!’

  Flavio had gone to Belgium, taking his receipt from the Governor of Rome. This would save him from the embezzlement charge, but others, he now admitted, were pending. A legacy from Amandi had left Nicola financially indpendent, which was lucky, for the See of Imola had gone to someone else and he was in an administrative Limbo. This and the dwindled reach of the papal censorship left him free to join in the dispirited exchanges going on among the Minority bishops, many of whom now faced troubles at home.

  French friends sent gloomy letters from their fallen country, often relegating to postcripts the question which had kept them so painfully on tenterhooks for eighteen months.

  PS The Bull proroguing the Council leaves our bishops in a worse case than ever, since pressures are being brought on those who have not submitted. The nuncio appeals over our heads to our priests with the result that Bayeux has had to go into hiding, and Autun’s efforts to explain his non placet to his curés were drowned out by foot-stamping. PPS Monseigneur Darboy is shut up in Paris by the siege, so we have no news of his state of mind. As recently as last September, however, he spoke of the doctrine as ‘inept’ and the Church as run ‘like a huckstery’. Burn this.

  Repeated messages from Prospero reminded Nicola that his own submission was waite
d on.

  In December Rome was flooded. The waters, as though rebaptizing the city, immersed it to the depths of three, then four metres, and gave King Victor Emmanuel a pretext for a first flying visit to comfort his new subjects and show his excommunicated face. Gossip claimed that he had tried to abdicate from very shame and that his ministers had had to stiffen him. To thwart them, Cardinal Antonelli, now a full-time agent provocateur, protested at the royal visit, as he had at the occupation of the Quirinal Palace and other iniquities. Formal protests dispatched to nuncios all over Europe were a way of affirming the Pope’s surviving sovereignty.

  Meanwhile, taking their cue from the Curia, some of the great Roman families sealed up their front doors as a snub to the new regime. But they were not greatly missed, as new arrivals from Turin and Florence were disembarking from every train. Piazze, lately as dreamy as cloisters, bustled, and the wild flowers which had adorned their cobblestones died beneath the heels of new citizens, while old ones complained angrily of the noise.

  News kept reaching Nicola of Minority bishops who were still staunch and of those who had recanted. In the privacy of episcopal palaces throughout Europe, struggles were painfully coming to a head. Stiffened by their country’s victory, the Germans were resisting best.

  By early February the last French bishops to hold out were Darboy and Dupanloup. Then, on the 18th, Dupanloup wrote his letter of consent, and on 2nd March, one month after the capitulation of Paris to the Prussians, its archbishop surrendered to the Pope. Some weeks later, a letter came from one of the priests who had been with Darboy in Rome. Its gist was that Monseigneur wanted Monsignor Santi to know his motives for recanting.

  The Archbishop of Paris had not, said the priest, abandoned his principles. He did, however, feel obliged to postpone the struggle for them. As Monsignor Santi must surely guess, the decision had been taken after much agony of conscience. What he might not so easily imagine was the devastation here. This was no time for controversy. Events in France and Italy had inflicted wounds which it would be wicked to exacerbate. Unity was now the prime concern and Darboy believed that Catholics must be seen to work for it if they did not want religion to become hateful to their compatriots. Accordingly, despite his own links to the fallen Empire, he had ordered a hymn begging God’s blessing on the new French Republic to be sung in all his churches and, in a similar spirit, made his submission to the Pope. Monsignor Santi must not despair. The justice he craved could be sought in happier times. For now, Monseigneur begged him to believe in his paternal love and in his loyalty to the memory of the late Cardinal Amandi. A postscript, written in the priest’s own name, noted that Monseigneur’s embrace of the new republic had angered many. Monarchists were especially enraged. ‘The pursuit of peace,’ concluded the letter, ‘is a via dolorosa.’