The Judas Cloth (76 page)

‘One trembles to think – well, better not even to consider the possible ramifications!’ Prospero was referring to the people’s cult of the dead nun and how a makeshift shrine had had to be removed. ‘I presume you know about what has been happening in Imola. Your Vicar General must have written.’

But Nicola had been neglecting the diocese and letters from it. The two fell silent, for the story was explosive and repugnant to them both. Turning to less charged matters, Prospero talked of his brother and of how he never visited the villa now. Why go to quarrel? ‘If I couldn’t stand my father’s Byronic patriotism, how put up with Cesco’s? Those rigged elections! Church property taken by fraud! No doubt, he knows on which side his bread is buttered! That’s why I have always thought of you, Nicola, as my true younger brother. Personal ambition moves neither of us. I hope you believe that of me, and even,’ smiling, ‘of my friends.’

‘I can’t believe it of their leaders. Manning …’

But Prospero said the Englishman was dedicated to strengthening a Church which often, these days, could seem as frail as St Peter’s did during the silver illuminations.

He was referring to that phase of festive evenings when the lanterns ranged along the basilica’s contours first began to glow. Lit earlier but invisible until dusk, they emerged with the slow radiance of stars, and for moments this figured a heartbreaking fragility before being overtaken by a conflagration, ‘the golden illumination’ which pyrotechnists made to whirl along columns and cupolas in a river of fire. It was, of course, charged with meanings, for this was a city of symbols which of late had begun to say different things to different people.

What they said to Mastai was that he must prepare to be martyred. This, said Prospero, explained his harshness with the Opposition whose concerns could only seem petty to a man engaged in a dialogue with invisible powers. ‘The external world can seem like an encumbrance. He deals with it summarily.’

‘Including, if your story is true, myself.’

‘We can’t judge, Nicola! We can’t imagine the circumstances. There are moments outside of time which, when time takes up again, reproach a man forever.’

‘Amandi thought him mad!’

‘It’s only a word. Randi used it of you. It’s late. I’ll walk you home.’

They walked towards the river whose shrunken current gleamed like
a lazy reptile. Reeds rattled in a pre-dawn breeze. Prospero pointed to some lighted windows. Plots?

‘The Minority? Surely it’s too late?’

But Prospero had been thinking of the Italians.

Nicola asked, ‘If you found you had a son you’d never known about – it could happen – what would you do?’

Prospero thought about this. ‘Nothing. It’s usually the safest course. If he were in need I would do something for him. Anonymously. As we both know from that source of everyday knowledge, the confessional, this city is full of such cases. Blood is a materialistic fetish and significant only in your case because of your loyalty to someone you mistook for a blood relative. Mastai probably doesn’t know about you.’

It was the eve of the final vote. Archbishop Darboy was ill and Nicola feared missing him altogether since the bishops would start leaving after tomorrow’s vote if not before.

In the morning, he attended a meeting of the Minority leaders where, in Darboy’s absence, the Hungarian, Haynald, urged a course of action of which he would have approved. This was that all go boldly to tomorrow’s Solemn Session and, following their consciences, in the face of God, Pope and the representatives of the world’s peoples, forthrightly maintain their ‘
non
placet
’.

‘Hear, hear!’

Haynald’s infectious courage had carried the meeting, when Bishop Dupanloup came in late in a state of sickened scruple and argued that although having voted
non
placet
five days ago, they could not vote
placet
now, neither could they vote
non
placet
in defiance of a revered and threatened Pope. The Catholic world would be scandalised. The word, Nicola saw, worked like a ‘close Sesame’ on bishops’ minds. Limply – for, with Lord Acton gone and Darboy absent, there was no one strong enough to ginger them – the very men who had been acclaiming Haynald’s proposal now agreed to Dupanloup’s compromise, which was to draft a letter to Pius and stay away from tomorrow’s Public Session.

The letter, they agreed with relief, would register the Council’s lack of unanimity and could be used, when it reconvened, as grounds for
challenging the decree. The fight could be deferred. Nobody need go out on a limb. It was the perfect middle way.

Leaving the meeting in angry disappointment, Nicola made for home. He seemed to be coming down with malaria and certainly
mal
aria
was what all had been breathing, rather than the breath of the Holy Spirit on which Mastai was still counting.

Feeling increasingly feverish, Nicola was about to take to his bed when he received an unexpected summons. He was to go to the Vatican this evening for an audience with the Pope.

‘Tonsured lackeys!’

The hiss mingled with the engine’s steam.

The Opposition bishops were in full retreat and extra carriages had been hooked up to the train to accommodate those leaving Rome before tomorrow’s Solemn Session. The
Stazione
Termini
was filled with valises, trunks, boxes of china, books, bedding, favourite chalices and vestments donated by pious patronesses. In orbit around each departing bishop wheeled friends, servants, secretaries and commiserating sympathisers come to see them off.

‘… lackeys!’

Monseigneur Dupanloup tried to think he had imagined that hiss, which was not impossible since he had lately grown very thin-skinned. Since coming here, he had been pointedly snubbed by Pope Pius, who was well aware of Dupanloup’s personal fondness for him – not to say ‘love’. That was a word often taken in vain, but Dupanloup, a fiery, tender man, had opened his heart to it. In France, where the great effort of his generation of priests had been to reconcile their country with their church, he had found souls tempered in that difficult combat and bound himself to them in ways which, it was sometimes said, smuggled some of the devotion due to God into relations with his fellows. But
was
it due only to God? What about loving one’s neighbour? There it was again, sibilant and sour! This time, definitely, he had heard the hiss.

Addressed to whom? To all. To all the Minority bishops. This frivolous old city hated to be stirred up and would no doubt sing a gleeful Te Deum on seeing the back of De Pavone Lupus and his troublesome friends!

The jibe with its dig at his bastardy carried an implication that a bar sinister cut through his loyalties – which was quite untrue! For why in the first place had he entered the Church? He had been following his
heart! And it had led him to Christ, to the priesthood and to Pius IX! Love-child of a young cavalry lieutenant who had not acknowledged him – although relatives did help his career – the young Dupanloup had felt so needy for affection that charm became second nature and very soon – the quip was Renan’s – made him into ‘the most fashionable priest in Paris’, with three queens sitting in at his catechism class at the Madeleine. He did like to be liked. Even as a teacher, he appealed to pupils’ feelings and the method worked well for him. But it was not worldliness which ruled him. He was not divided. No. He was loyalty itself – and just now he was loyalty spurned.

Smiles. Melancholy embraces. Goodbye for now. See you when the Council reconvenes!
Deo
volente.
Monsignor Haynald was travelling too. Did he think less of Dupanloup because he could not fling his
non
placet
in the pontiff’s face? Did Darboy? Dupanloup was glad they didn’t know of a plea which he had sent secretly to Pius after the trial ballot. ‘Mad!’ had been Pius’s reaction, which a third party promptly reported back. ‘Either he’s mad or he thinks I am!’ And perhaps the Bishop of Orléans had indeed lacked sober sense. But how could a man of faith and feeling always gauge the possible? What he had done was to make a proposal and a promise never, if the pontiff were to adopt it, to reveal that it had been his. It was that Pius, now that he had won his point, should defer the definition until passions had cooled. Such sublime magnanimity would, urged the bishop, ‘astound the world and excite universal gratitude’. Writing these words, his eyes had moistened. It was his last filial cry and elicited no response, because, he now saw, the idea was too French. He had appealed to Pius as to a character in a Cornelian tragedy exquisitely attuned to his own heroic virtue.
La
gloire
!
Honour! But neither Rome nor Pius could conceive of such a thing.
Noblesse
oblige
struck them as vapouring vanity. Prideful! A showy fanfaronade if not indeed a sin!

Anxiously, Félix Dupanloup examined his conscience. Could Renan have been right? Had he been affected by the fashionable world to the point of confusing delicacy with morals? Grown feminine? Lost the virile resolution needed in a fight?

Georges Darboy too had heard the hiss. He made a moue.

He wished Haynald’s plan had been carried but, as things stood, what mattered was solidarity. In a month the Council would reconvene. Meanwhile the fifty-five signatories to the letter must try to stand firm
while being prepared for desertions. Even Christ in His agony had found His disciples asleep.

Our letter would no doubt end in the Vatican archives bearing, unlike Veronica’s veil, no sign of the anguish which had gone into it. It ran:

This letter was to be handed to the Secretary of the Council before tomorrow’s Session.

Monseigneur Darboy was returning to his flock with foreboding. He, more directly than any other bishop, had sought help from his
government
and saw its refusal as ominous. Why had it been so loath to interfere? A Christian king would have been less pusillanimous.
Sixteenth
-century ones had done their damnedest to interfere at Trent. The Empire was clearly in a shaky state and ‘Napoleon the Small’ seemed to be falling back on that great cure for domestic discontent: the quest for glory on foreign battlefields. His failure to find it in Mexico had, providentially, been far away. Next time the risks would be closer to home.

As the train pulled out, the Archbishop looked for Amandi’s Coadjutor, but didn’t seem him. A pity. The young Monseigneur was one of the few Italian bishops with any pluck. Darboy had wanted to assure him that the fight was still on, despite today’s setback, and that he must not despair of our getting justice for poor Amandi. Terrible tragedies had happened as
a result of this Council. Old, loyal bishops had seen their faith rocked and their hearts broken. Good men had been turned into cynics. We owed it to them to continue the struggle. Hailing a mutual acquaintance, he asked him to bring the Coadjutor a one-word message: ‘
Coraggio
!’

Nicola’s audience with the Pope was stormy. Later, he supposed he must have been more affected than he knew by a dose of medicine taken to bring his fever down.

His Holiness wanted his
placet
at tomorrow’s Solemn Session. ‘You, Monsignore, are one of our own bishops from whom we expect more loyalty than has been forthcoming from some foreign ones.’

Though stern, he spoke with what seemed to be genuine feeling about the loss of poor Amandi. He was hard to resist. His confidence was electric, his gestures potent. He smiled with his whole face and his lower lip jutted as though a bee had stung it. Nicola thought, I don’t look like him. Can there be anything to Prospero’s story? It was as if there were two Piuses: the one here in front of him and the unlikely, shaming one who might be his father. He could not deal with both at the same time.

‘He and I were friends long before you were born,’ said this Pius of Amandi. ‘His was a noble soul! How
sad
all these divisions are. I am glad you are loyal to his memory, Monsignore. It speaks well of you.’ And the old pontiff shook friendly jowls and crinkled his eyes with such an air of understanding that the bishop felt softened and was thinking how hard it must have been for Amandi to defy old allegiances when it was borne in on him that he was being asked for Giraud’s retraction. Monsieur Louis Veuillot wanted it, and he was a man, said His Holiness, whom he would not hesitate to defend against a bishop. Indeed, he had defended him in the past against their Lordships Dupanloup and Sibour – Darboy’s predecessor in the See of Paris who had since then, poor man, been senselessly murdered by a mad priest. Such things happened nowadays, even within our own ranks! That was why a lay champion like Veuillot was worth his weight in gold. ‘Gold, Monsignore! He’s a brave soldier for Rome and Rome will stand by him. There are those who say that priests in France are refusing to become bishops because they fear he will have more power in their dioceses than they. I say it’s just as well such priests do not become bishops. We have too many already who dislike bowing to our authority.’