Free The Judas Cloth by Julia O'Faolain

it. That was what loyalty meant. But now the side itself had dissolved. Even his friends were turning coat – or dead. Theirs had been the party of property and order – and now all the men of property were joining the gaolbirds!
    ‘Possibly not all,’ the Jesuit had said. ‘Possibly not for long. Monsignor Amandi is a man of influence: clever and moderate. I’ll talk to him first. You needn’t say much at all.’
    Nardoni’s plans kept unravelling in his mind. ‘Are we against the pope?’ he had asked the Jesuit during one of their elusive and, to him, deeply opaque exchanges.
    ‘We hope to enlighten him,’ said the priest and left before he could be asked to enlighten Nardoni.
    He had got the Jesuits’ address from a friend. ‘ They ’renot happy either,’ said the friend. ‘They’re your best hope.’
    But he was too dispirited to hope. Being cooped up here could turn a man’s wits! He needed movement – exercise to bring the blood to his brain. Why not try a handstand?
    When Father Grassi opened the door, the spy’s face confronted him at foot-level, while his feet waved like those in a fresco showing the damned with their heads thrust downward into pots of boiling oil.
    *
    Nardoni thrust a paper at Monsignor Amandi. It was a summary of the advice reaching Roman Liberals from London. The Monsignore ran his eyes over it and Nardoni, watching their movement, remembered what he’d written: ‘(1) seize all pretexts – cheering the pope, etc. – for assembling the people; (2) let them see our strength; (3) let sympathetic priests and nobles think each move will be the last; never reveal the revolution’s final aims; (4) repeat the words “freedom, rights, progress, brotherhood, equality”, also: “despotism, privilege”; (5) encourage all those who will come some way with you; later, if they try to retreat, they will be isolated.’
    The Monsignore looked upset. Good, thought Nardoni: sweat a bit in your turn.
    ‘Who prepared this?’
    ‘We did, Monsignore. Ex-policemen.’
    ‘But this is new material – written since the amnesty.’
    ‘We continue to work. From loyalty.’
    Amandi crumpled the paper. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘To serve the state, Monsignore, and save us all. Dangerous information could reach the wrong hands.’
    He watched that register. Message received, he saw and went limp with relief which grew as talk turned to the Romagna. A maligned province. A place you could come to love, with its high skies and hardworking people. Nardoni, seeing that he was being soothed, joined in reminiscing about cafés and great players of bowls and billiards and it was in these coded terms that the two made their pact, agreeing that to reach an understanding could never be difficult for those who had the Holy Father’s interests at heart.
    *
    An after-image caught up with Amandi as he left the Collegio. At an upstairs window, a cluster of pale, young faces gleamed, as though blanched in the dim enclosures where the Jesuits kept their charges. Too late now to see the boy. Besides, he was not in the mood. Diplomatic politeness had given him a cramp in the mouth.
    Reaching the Caffè Venezia, he sat down to read the other paper in his pocket: a copy of Father Grassi’s letter to the pope. The date was old. Hence Grassi’s anxiety. The wind, he must feel, had changed and it was time to trim sail.
    Most Holy Father,
    I pray that Yr Holiness will disdain neither this humble expression of joy at Yr Holiness’s elevation …
    Amandi’s practised eye, skipping some pious courtesies, landed on the word ‘reforms’ and Grassi’s plea that Pius resist those pressing for them.
    … since reforms, oh most Holy Father, would open the way to a pluralism incompatible with the States of the Church. No compromise is possible with modernised forms of government since these take their mandate from the people’s will which is no substitute for truth, because:
    men do not understand their own