‘Shush!’
‘They don’t like my mother,’ he marvelled, ‘why don’t they?’
Looking back, he saw that the realities around him had been as shifty as clouds and that early on he had grown used to knowing alternately more and less than he thought. Insinuations spread like ragweed, and it must have become increasingly difficult for Gary to keep in with priests who were scandalized to find that the pretty, nubile Ellen Gould was living, ostensibly as a housekeeper, in his house, and twice as scandalized that she should have produced a son whom, as if foreseeing his and her fall from Eden, she chose to call Adam.
It was a ramshackle Eden, but Adam had loved it. As he grew, though, so did the scandal, though some people affected to believe that he was his mother’s nephew.
***
On being turned away for a second time from Belcastel’s door, Sauvigny grew haughty.
‘Who did you say is with him?’ he harried. ‘A priest? What kind of priest?’ In his boyhood members of the lower clergy had been sent to eat in the kitchen, and no gentleman would have been kept waiting on their account. ‘How long will he be?’
The Irishman went to inquire.
‘Say,’ Sauvigny could not help calling after him, ‘that I brought what I promised. It’s here.’ Slapping his leather bag, he opened the glass doors to the terrace and shot outside. The rebuff irked him, for he had hoped for plaudits, as why shouldn’t he? He had gone to Belgium on what had looked like a wild goose chase and, to his own amazement, brought back gold.
For years, his family’s handling of money had been so queasily inept that they had grown wary of dealing with it at all. He himself had once had a chance to marry a great fortune, then, on finding that there was a scandal attached to it, was glad he hadn’t. He had had a lucky escape, and the memory had almost prevented his undertaking last week’s mission to Brussels. Once there, however, he had had a stroke of luck. Falling in with some old comrades who were fresh back from the Congo, he asked if they could advise him how to raise funds and found that they could do better. They had funds themselves – bounties from the Belgian king for their success in fighting Arab slavers – and were ready to donate large sums. Truly? To the poor boxes of the French royalist clergy? But of course, cher Sauvigny, what better cause? They, it turned out, had been looking for just such a deserving one to endow with a fraction of their windfall fortune and purge the rest of some unspecified taint. ‘Let’s not go into that,’ they murmured to his relief. Soldiers’ tales! Having known men who thought you could see their crimes imprinted in their eyes or, contrariwise, that a dead man’s stare reflects his killer’s face, he had no urge to probe such vivid guilts. Some, who had fought to save the last pope’s lands, then fought again in America, were on their third and, they hinted, grimmest war. He wouldn’t give much for their stability. God knew how much they drank. He guessed them to have minds like magic lanterns for, having left home as hardly more than schoolboys, they had the sketchiest image of normality, and he learned with surprise that he, who had thought himself one of them, stood, in their eyes, for France, sobriety and virtue.
‘The donation will be a baptism for the money!’ Captain Joubert had gravely confided, adding that he hoped to make considerably more on his return to a small, personal fief, deep in the bush, which he had carved out for himself and where he had an African family. Didn’t the missionaries object, Sauvigny asked, and was told that, in an inferno like the Congo, priests learned to be flexible. After all, the ex-Zouaves were protecting them, and worse was going on than bigamy or miscegenation. ‘Cardinal Lavigerie likes to say,’ Joubert told him, ‘that we are raising the poor, benighted blacks to our level. If he saw what I’ve seen, he’d know that benighted darkness comes as much from us as from them. Can you imagine a Belgian throwing an infant against a rock so that its head burst like an egg? To force the parents to surrender loot? It’s true! A white man from Antwerp! Probably called himself a Christian! I witnessed that. And, before you ask, I couldn’t stop him. Take the money and remember us in your prayers.’ There was a hard set to Joubert’s mouth and a wavery depth to his glance, and when asked why he was going back to that place, he shrugged.
In Antwerp, the shrug implied, they worshipped the golden calf. But the gold was imported. By the likes of us, said Joubert. Under two species. ‘We still communicate these days, under two species. These are no longer bread and wine but rubber and ivory!’
So here was Sauvigny back in the rain-rinsed grounds of Dr Blanche’s establishment, with as yet unbaptized wealth in his bag, feeling nervous and impatient. Unable to quite clear his mind of the yarns he’d heard in Brussels. Loitering and vexed. Ready, because of this, to condemn the flexibility of priests. Pope Leo’s betrayal of the French monarchy had enraged the Vatican’s old French defenders – many of whom had fought for the last pope-king as a way of fighting for their own would-be king. Joubert, noting that Zouaves were often described as mercenaries, had sourly observed that the Church was more mercenary than they. ‘This is for the spiritual mercenaries,’ he had quipped when hefting Sauvigny’s bag of gold. ‘We fought for them for nothing.’ Joubert, older than Sauvigny and now in his fifties, had been with the French Guides, who had been forerunners of the Zouaves. ‘We provided our own uniforms and horses and were expected to have an income of 4,000 to 5,000 francs of our own to spend. But the Church forgets what we did for it. Here, take the money. It may jog some memories.’
Later, Sauvigny met and duly thanked other contributors to the sum in the leather bag, then joined them for an impromptu banquet. Toasts were drunk and speeches made, whose promise not to spoil the occasion by speaking too much of the Congo was more eloquent than speech. Seeing in their eyes something of the trusting bewilderment that sometimes gleams in the eyes of old dogs, Sauvigny guessed at the terrifying moral vacancy which these old warriors must have found in themselves. The impression sharpened when he heard them argue for restraint, discipline and a rigid chain of command. And it was with the pride of distilled pessimism that he and they stood up to drink the ambiguous toast: ‘Vive le roi.’ They were the Franco-Belges, and what was known of their respective monarchs was disheartening. The French one lingered in a country house in England because he was not allowed into France, while the Belgian Leopold was whispered to be a rapacious despoiler of the native peoples of Central Africa. Yet the ex-Zouaves, including Joubert, stood, squared their shoulders and drank the toast without a tremor. They were, it struck Sauvigny, drinking to imaginary, ideal leaders who represented the best of themselves. To the silver thread of loyalty which could unite and empower them. He felt moved and sad and soft and foolish as he, too, said the words. And ready, if he only knew whom to attack, to forge a fierce persona out of the opposite qualities and kill all round him.
V
‘Where?’ A cry rose from the shrubberies.
A second voice soothed. ‘We’ll ask the gardener to find it.’
‘What? No! I have it.’
‘Calm yourself now.’
There was some rustling and mumbling. Sauvigny ignored them.
Stepping back from the house, he stared up at the monsignor’s window and, framed in it, was shocked to recognize the tall silhouette – there couldn’t be another so tall – of the Reverend Father de Latour. Pale as limestone in his missionary’s robe, Latour was one of Lavigerie’s White Fathers! What business could he have with Belcastel? Should Sauvigny hail them? Before he could decide, he heard someone cry, ‘Don’t’, then something hit his head and lights flashed inside it. The flash coincided with the thought that any conspiring going on must be on our behalf. A clever man, the monsignor! Best not upset his stratagems. Staggering, Sauvigny told himself, ‘I mustn’t fall’, then did. Again lights razored past his vision, then waves of darkness rose.
‘Bull’s eye!’ came the madman’s shout. ‘J’ai fait mouche! He has my brains in his bag.’ As the darkness lightened, Sauvigny saw the lunatic make a rush towards him, then, to his relief, a
gardien caught and hustled him away.
By now several people were in the garden. One was a doctor. ‘How,’ he asked the madman’s keeper, ‘did he come to have a billiard ball?’
‘He plays billiards, sir, quite well. We think it helps him keep calm.’
‘Another time frisk him when he leaves the billiard room.’
‘Thief! Thief!’
Pain blossomed thickly in Sauvigny’s head, and something trickled down his temple, as officious minions tried to seize his bag. He fought them off. ‘I brought it in,’ he argued. ‘I’m a donor, not a thief.’
Luckily the Irishman now reappeared. ‘Monsieur le Vicomte, what happened? The monsignor said to say ...’
‘That he’s busy with Father de Latour. Yes? Never mind. Never mind. I’ll wait.’
‘Well, let’s have one of the doctors look at you. I’ll get some brandy.’
***
Latour, still at the monsignor’s window, had been watching the scene in the garden and now turned back to Belcastel. ‘So he brought you money,’ he guessed. ‘A large sum? Is that the message you just received? From the Irishman?’
‘How can I tell you?’ Belcastel tried not to show petulance. ‘It was in confidence. Do you want to dishonour me totally? I suppose you must, since you let him see you!’
Latour shrugged. ‘Honour is starting to seem a quaint notion. If he did bring money, what do you plan to do?’
‘Refuse it.’
‘If you do, he will know you have changed sides. Then you will be unable to atone for the wrong you did the cardinal.’ Latour’s smile must have tightened during his years in the tropics. His lips were as thin as cat-gut. ‘Hypocrisy – a humble virtue – can be used to a good end.’
‘You want me to pretend I am still working for the royalists?’
‘Why not? Drawing wild elements into a facsimile plot could stop them engaging in a real one. That strikes me as useful. Meanwhile, you can keep us informed of their plans. This is a delicate moment, as you may imagine. Republicans don’t trust us.’
‘You?’
‘Me, you, us. But the pope wants us to win their trust. Your friend out there,’ nodding towards the garden, ‘and his friends are likely to spoil our hopes of so doing by some ill-conceived coup. You might help prevent it. Surely this is worth one or two lies? In the interests of peace.’
‘I’m to be a safety valve? A soupape de sécurité?’
Latour smiled his dry smile. ‘A sub-pope and papal pawn? Why not? What do you suppose they expect you to do with the money?’
‘I haven’t said there was any.’
‘But if there were?’
‘I would use it for some safe and worthy cause. For our schools, perhaps.’
‘Safe?’ Amusement wavered across Latour’s face. ‘Schools, Monseigneur, are minefields. Have you followed the Catechism Scandal? Then you’ll know that the reason the government stripped five bishops of their salaries is because catechisms in their dioceses teach that it is a Catholic’s duty to vote against it, and understandably, our Republican masters are displeased. Some of our bishops are firebrands. And laymen egg them on. Between ourselves, I can tell you that neither the nuncio nor the minister wants trouble, but to men like ...’ Another nod towards the garden.
‘Poor Sauvigny?’
‘Trouble is the breath of life to men like him.’
‘Well, if he brings me money,’ said Belcastel, ‘note I say “if”, I shall take and give it to some harmless recipient: a fallen woman perhaps?’
‘I shall applaud.’
***
The blow seemed to have affected the inside of Sauvigny’s head even more than the outside, though this had begun to sport a bump which might soon reach the size of a gull’s egg. He was lying in a lunatic’s cell.
He felt feverish. The ache made him whimper. His skull felt porous, and he pictured meaty memories being shaken through its passages as ruthlessly as, on the feast of St Januarius, a vial of that saint’s dried blood is shaken in an attempt to liquify it. The fall seemed to have sprained a rib! How dangerous peace-time could be! He laughed. The laugh hurt and more memories were shaken up ...
The vicomte rarely pictured his person, for he had not been brought up to consider his looks. Men like us, his father and his father confessor had told him gravely when he was a small boy, need neither looks nor learning. Others may use such folderols to help them inch up the social ladder and become prime ministers or the like. Not we! We do not ‘become’. We are. Honour (said the father) and religion (said the priest) must be at the forefront of your mind. So Sauvigny, who was disinclined to study anyway, joined the pontifical army at the age of seventeen and found himself being fêted in Roman drawing rooms where his looks, to his surprise, turned out, after all, to be quite pleasing, and helped a lot with the ladies. What helped even more was that, taking his father’s comments to mean he was ugly, he had learned not to notice looks much. He danced with plain women, lacked vanity, gave himself no airs and was held by the beauty-worshipping Romans to be little short of a saint. Some mothers thought of him for their daughters, but when they learned that his father’s high-mindedness had reduced the family to penury, they backed off. Married women, eager for a gallant dalliance, were more persistent and, by the time he was twenty, the young vicomte had had a number of happy experiences. The ease with which these happened, together with his enjoyment of soldiering, and keyed-up friendships with two young men who were killed at the battle of Mentana within months of his meeting them, all bred a reluctance to become attached to worldly or even otherworldly hopes. He fought in the skirmishes which bandits and Garibaldini conducted on the frontiers of the diminishing papal state, danced in princely palaces back in the city, hunted in the Campagna, made love to yet another married lady, failed to notice that this one was dangerously in love with him and waved away friends’ warnings about trouble impending from that quarter. ‘Careful, Hubert!’ murmured the friends. ‘Hot blood, you know! Southerners aren’t like us! They can be a bit extreme in their behaviour. A bit operatic!’ He hardly listened. The end of an epoch was impending too, so how could he give thought to the end of a love affair?
Sure enough, four years after he got there, the papal state and the pope’s role as a temporal monarch came to an end when the Italian army broke through the city wall and the pope, whose small force had no hope of winning, forbade it to put up more than a token resistance. This, to Sauvigny, felt like the end of the honour and religion he was there to defend, and the sight of the white flag fluttering from the cupola of St Peter’s sickened him. He slept that night with his fellow Zouaves under Bernini’s colonnade, and, next day, stood with them for the last time to cheer the pope as king. Then, still numb and only half alert to what was happening, he went to say goodbye to his mistress and found, to his alarm, that she had packed her bags. Shutters were being drawn and dust covers laid over furniture. She knew that the Zouaves had just been disbanded and that he was now free to travel wherever he chose. So, she informed him, was she. Switzerland, Canada ... The old world had just died. The new, modern one was their oyster. Reopening a shutter, she let in light, handed him a glass of champagne and proposed a toast to honesty.
‘We can go wherever you like, my darling,’ she cajoled, holding out the glass which, as she had demonstrated on more intimate occasions, fitted perfectly over each of her exquisitely shaped breasts.
He mumbled, sipped and wondered what to do. She was rich, and he had learned that rich mistresses could be masterful. Even now, he was only half taking in what she was saying. His senses felt as though dust covers had been laid on them too.
‘I’m coming with you.’ Her husband, she reminded him, had died some months before. Then, when he started to commiserate, ‘Wait! Do you know how he died? No? Of poison. Yes. You heard me. Poison. I fed it to him. Slowly. Just as you slowly poisoned me.’
He had no idea what she meant. He was still only twenty-one, and in the morning light she seemed anci
ent to him. Black did not suit her. He had been seeing less of her and would have broken off sooner if he hadn’t known that he would be leaving anyway. He saw now that their passion had been one-sided. Rome had been bad for him. He had come here to devote himself to the pope’s cause and instead had grown worldly. He was not the shy, generous boy who had been ready to die when he first came. He was vain and carnal, and aware that his mistress’s sallow skin had the unpleasant texture of a dried-out field-mushroom. He disliked himself for thinking this. Appearances and surfaces were now all he ever saw. He tried and failed to remember how the priest’s words went on Ash Wednesday when rubbing ash into people’s foreheads. Quia pulvus sumus, was it? Dust and dustcovers, he thought, is all any of us are. Noticing that she was wearing too much white powder, he had an impulse to laugh. Possibly lack of breakfast had made him lightheaded.
She was still talking.
‘You poisoned me with love,’ she accused. ‘Love dosed with indifference is a kind of torture. It’s what I got from you.’
‘That’s the poison I fed you?’ He remembered his friends’ warnings about Southerners and was disgusted. Her mind, he thought, is the ugliest thing about her and, as dislike of himself turned to dislike of her, absolved himself of blame.
‘You drove me into a fever of need. I couldn’t sleep or rest. You poisoned my dreams. That’s why I did what I did to poor, unsuspecting Massimo. I poisoned his body because you had poisoned my soul.’
He did not ask whether the two poisons were equally fanciful, but was informed that they were not. She had, she claimed, truly, physically and with her own hands administered arsenic to her husband over a long period in small, patient, imperceptible and continuous doses. This was a local art, often talked about, probably less often practised, but one which she, she swore, had used. Sauvigny affected to think – indeed did think – that her story was a trick or a metaphor, but was assured that it was not. He told her that, whatever the truth, he could not take her with him, whereupon she said that her pharmacist suspected her, and that she had to leave. The wretch claimed to have kept records of the amounts of arsenic supplied to her household. Her sister-in-law too had been snooping about, questioning the servants. And her nephew.
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