The Judas Cloth (35 page)

‘He’s like the Pope,’ said the irreverent Enzo. ‘He loves his subjects so much that he keeps them caged in.’

Nicola had not tried to say goodbye to Maria who was asleep.

Outside Fognano one of the horses cast a shoe and they had to look for a farrier. While the man heated the metal to a red-hot transparency, a procession of schoolgirls in white pinafores dawdled past. Two nuns walked with them and their black habits against the white had a bleak, prophetic harshness.

‘That’sh Shishter Paola,’ said the smith, speaking through a mouthful of nails. ‘Clever woman! Ushed to be the Pope’sh penitent. She cured my back.’

The slim nun waved at the smith who waved back, then went on
hammering
. ‘Look out for Garibaldini,’ he warned as he pocketed his fee.

Again the roads were hilly and Nicola imagined Don Giovanni Verità negotiating one with Maria riding pillion behind him. He wondered if he would see her again. As the coach was moving at a snail’s pace, he decided to dismount and relieve himself.

‘I’ll catch up with you,’ he told the coachman, then, a minute or so later, hearing Enzo’s whistle somewhere above his head, guessed that, if he were to climb straight through the woodland, instead of following the road’s bend, he would come out ahead of the coach. Accordingly, he struck up the hill.

Suddenly he was thrown to the ground. The sun, blazing through a ring of heads in silhouette, fell into his eyes. The sole of a boot loomed. He heard a shot.

‘Idiot,’ said a voice from one of the silhouetted heads. ‘What’s he trying to do? Attract the Austrian High Command?’

More men, dressed half in military, half in civilian, clothes now pushed Enzo and the coachman through the bushes. Garibaldini!

‘Why did you shoot?’ asked the one who had spoken before.

‘Had to,’ said one of the newcomers. ‘He,’ indicating Enzo, ‘had a gun.’

Nicola, addressed a dazzle of sky. ‘Please,’ he gasped, ‘I’m being sent to get better treatment for the captured men. It’s more urgent now because the Austrians have got Father Bassi.’

‘Lies. General Garibaldi’s party got over the border.’

‘They got separated.’

The boot rose again and pressed down on Nicola’s chin. ‘Tricky little abate!’ The boot’s owner’s voice lilted and the boot pressed. ‘A bit
young for an abate, aren’t you? But when did priests play by the rules? We don’t care for Father Bassi, see?’ The boot rose and Nicola squirmed away his face. ‘You let a few priests stay with us so that if we win you’ll be able to say you were really on our side. Decoys is what they are. Bassi too. The priest at Modigliana is another.’

‘Stop tormenting him.’

‘Why? Like pretty priests, do you? Got plans for him, eh?’

There was the sound of a scuffle and Nicola found that he had been released. Dust however had got into his throat and a cough jolted him so that he missed seeing the fight. When he recovered, Enzo had been stripped and tied to a tree. Someone unbuttoned Nicola’s jacket. ‘Sorry, abate, we need your clothes.’ Then he too was tied up and some red shirts left beside him. ‘In case you’re cold,’ mocked a voice.

‘Leave the dispatches. What use are they to you? Mine is a mission of mercy,’ he argued.

‘So is ours. Mercy for ourselves! Save your own skin is the first rule of war. Here, though, keep your dispatches.’ And they were tossed on the ground beside him.

By the time Enzo had wriggled free of his bonds and released the other two, it was again dusk and, under its cover, having decided against wearing the dangerous red shirts, they got into their carriage which their captors had preferred not to take and drove back to Modigliana in their underclothes, reaching it just as the priest returned from delivering Maria across the border. She was safe, he assured, though still mute. Not a word to be got from her. Don’t worry. Young women recover. Come and I’ll get you some food.

So they spent another night, drinking the priest’s sharpish wine while he confided that he had argued hammer and tongs with Father Bassi because he, Don Giovanni Verità, had never had any hope of this pope or any pope and did not think the Church should rule the secular roost. His was a family of smugglers whose smuggling was a moral act. It was a defiance of borders which should not exist and a remedy for the wounds which criss-crossed Italy. A lot of priests smuggled, he said, and conspired. Always had. Yes, he had heard of Don Mauro. He’d been unlucky. Let’s drink to him, poor man! In exile again, was he? Well, this life was an exile too and while we were in it, shouldn’t we defy oppression even when, here he lowered his voice, it came from our own Church? Which in these parts it often did. See what had just happened!
How the Pope had called in the Austrians to brutalise his people into submission! You couldn’t close your eyes. You had to follow your own lights. If you didn’t, how could you pray or ask God to help you? Smuggling was a short cut, a stop-gap while waiting for a new dispensation which wasn’t going to come tomorrow. It was safer to take the law into your own hands than to trust popes or kings.

‘This pope,’ he said, ‘is not a lot better than the infamous Duke of Modena who intrigued with nationalists and then betrayed them. That was what started the troubles of 1831, which in turn shocked
Mastai-Ferretti
into thinking he was a Liberal. Spiritually speaking, he’s the progeny of the duke who murdered his confederate. How many of
his
followers will end up dead?’

This cast a gloom over the company which began arguing as to whether treachery was endemic to Italy. Enzo declared it to be a matter of poor timing at a time of change. The traitor was the man who got out of step with it.

The priest’s view was that traitors were men dazzled with hope, like poor Bassi who thought you could bring God’s kingdom to earth but was now – the news had been confirmed – in the hands of authorities which would judge him by mean and rigid laws. ‘I admire his heart but not his head,’ said Don Giovanni. ‘If you serve two masters, as I know well, you’ve got to keep your wits about you and be as tricky as a fox.’ By two masters, he explained, he meant God and the Pope.

All four men were by now drunk on wine and on the strain of keeping up with reality, so they said good night, lay down where they could and blew out their candles.

‘I must get to Bologna!’ Nicola, who had had a nightmare, sat bolt upright in a sweat of desperation.

‘Hush!’ said Enzo with whom he was sharing a bed.

Nicola’s nightmares were filled with knife-blades which, when he finally woke up, turned out to be the cracks in a shutter. Again the priest’s birds filled the air with their sweet captive chorus and the travellers left at dawn. All three wore such oddments as their host had managed to lay hands on without arousing suspicion or alerting anyone to their presence.

Cardinal Oppizzoni threw his arms around Nicola’s neck and wept a little. Yes, he confirmed, Father Ugo Bassi was indeed in Austrian hands and about to be brought here to Bologna. General Grozkowski was
unlikely to handle him gently. The general was stiff-necked and the cardinal was on bad terms with him. All communications now passed through the hands of Monsignor Bedini, His Holiness’s
Commissario
Straordinario
,
an Austrophile who, between ourselves, was less helpful than he might have been. The cardinal had been nettled by the General’s refusal to let him hold the Corpus Christi procession. A slight. A deliberate annoyance. Never in the fifty years that he had been at the head of this diocese had the procession not been held. As he had told Monsignor Bedini who had failed to support him – but he was losing track. What was this message from Gaeta then?

Nicola told him.

The cardinal looked sombre. So they wanted him to condemn Fathers Gavazzi and Bassi in the public newspaper, did they? By name? But,
figlio
mio,
that would be tantamount to throwing them to the wolves. The Austrians would take it as a repudiation of their ecclesiastical status, a withdrawal of the protection of the Church. Surely, surely this would be unwise? The two could then be treated as common criminals.

Nicola explained the bargain. The cardinal was to publish his repudiation of Republican priests and the Austrians would replace Grozkowski. Father Bassi would then receive a more lenient sentence. ‘If
you
condemn him,
they
won’t.’

‘But can I rely on this promise?’

‘Cardinal Amandi says the Pope agreed to the plan.’

‘He said that? Clearly?’

‘Yes.’

Oppizzoni put his head in his hands. ‘The Austrians hate us now. They even hate His Holiness. They can’t be trusted.’

He sent Nicola for a copy of the letter they wanted published. He hadn’t written it – or rather, he had, but under duress, to satisfy the reactionary clergy of this diocese. ‘I’m too old for such gambles. If only we had the electric telegraph here we could ask His Holiness for clarification.’ Changing tack, he noted querulously that he couldn’t publish the letter even if he wanted to. The Austrians wouldn’t let him. He had to submit every word he wanted published to their lapdog and lickspittle, Bedini, who had to submit it to
them
for their sanction and imprimatur. ‘Can you imagine the humiliation! They won’t forgive us for supporting the war against them. Poor Bassi will pay the price.’

Having lost a suit of clothes to the Garibaldini, Nicola remembered the one promised by an anonymous donor and went to see the tailor, only to learn that the order had been cancelled weeks ago which was when Amandi lost the fame of being a Future Secretary of State. ‘From now on,’ he had warned Nicola, ‘our connection may be more of a hindrance than a help.’ Well, thought the young man with regret and amusement, it had already cost him a suit.

On 6th August, Oppizzoni’s
Notificazione
appeared in the
Gazzetta
di
Bologna.
It was a copy of his letter to Gaeta, explaining his failure to condemn unruly priests at a time when, since the Republic was in power, the condemnation could have had no practical effect. Nicola was struck by the implication that this effect now could and should ensue.

Heading for the episcopal palace, he was held up by a press of people watching captured Republican soldiers being marched through the streets. They looked alike, as though defeat had soldered them into a homogenous mass.

‘They’ve come from Rimini,’ said someone; ‘they were captured at San Marino. The poor bastards don’t look as though they can remember a square meal. I heard there were eight hundred of them.’

‘If there are they’ll have to be released. The Croats won’t want to feed all those mouths.’

‘It’s the shepherds not the sheep that should be punished,’ said a man. ‘Let them catch the priests!’

Nicola found the cardinal squinting with an anxious eye at a copy of the
Gazzetta
di
Bologna
and his own
Notificazione.
‘It’s terrible!’ he said. ‘I never wrote it. Don Vincenzo Todeschi did. He’s an auditor of the Ecclesiastic Tribunal and knows how to blacken a man. There’s a bit about a
bordello
sacrilego.
Oh Madonna! He must have stuck that in after I’d passed his copy and now it’s in the paper. And the bit about talking of God in taverns is as venomous as it is vague. What will people take it to mean?’

The cardinal began wondering whether he could offset the bad impression of the
Notificazione
by protesting at Bassi’s arrest. There were opposing considerations: first, this had already been tried to no effect when Bassi was first arrested. Why think the Austrians would have softened? Courting a rebuff did nothing for ecclesiastical authority.
Second: Grozkowski was in Mantua today; and, third: it was Monsignor Bedini’s province. ‘But he’s a lickspittle,’ said the cardinal.

It was lunchtime and through open windows drifted smells of lunches being prepared in nearby palaces. Life was going on, onions being fried, and sweetbreads and leg of lamb served up with rosemary.

‘Let’s visit the cathedral,’ said Oppizzoni and Nicola lent him his arm to cross the piazza where vendors were putting away their wares.
Ex-votos
, small silver and tin facsimiles of limbs and inner organs blazed in the sunlight: lungs, hearts, arms and legs. Heat fell through coloured awnings and caught the old cardinal on the back of his neck as he removed his hat to enter the cathedral. His padded hand clutched and unclutched Nicola’s wrist.

‘Let us pray for him,’ he whispered and lowered his unreliable old frame onto a kneeler.

Nicola wondered whether Bassi was in a military gaol and whether he would be handed over to the Church which had its own places of confinement. Would he have done better to flee like Don Mauro to heathen England? Life without belief must be random and sad.

Oppizzoni, still clinging to Nicola, stumbled as they tried to genuflect in unison on the way out. Crossing the square, they were met by two priests who had brought a large cotton sunshade for the cardinal and an item of news. By order of General Radetzky in Milan, General Grozkowski was to surrender his governorship and move forthwith to Venice where the war was still going on.

‘God be praised!’ Oppizzoni gave Nicola’s hand a secretive squeeze.

The general’s replacement said the priests, according to a source inside the military governor’s office in Villa Spada, was to be General Count Strassoldo, who was to take over the day after tomorrow. ‘He’s said,’ they exulted, ‘to be as mild as milk!’

Next morning there was fresh news from the Villa Spada where Ugo Bassi was now being held. It was that his sister, Carlotta, whose husband owned a busy hotel in the middle of town – yes: the one in the via Vetturini! Well, this sister had driven over to the villa yesterday afternoon to see her brother and, though the officer in charge had refused permission at first, he had softened later, moved by either her tears or the knowledge that Grozkowski’s time was short.

A fraternal pity for the unfortunate Bassi now seized the fickle priests of Bologna, and in the episcopal palace anxious prognoses ran around offices and from desk to desk. Almost everyone had a detail to add to accounts of what Bassi and his sister had said to each other, for Austrian
soldiers had been present and had talked later in the presence of waiters, melon-vendors and grooms. These people’s linguistic skills, however, were haphazard and reports varied as to whether the officer in charge had been courteous and compassionate or had had the brother and sister torn from each other’s breasts.