Free The Judas Cloth by Julia O'Faolain Page A

needs;
    universal suffrage delivers them up to the frauds of demagogues;
    the sole safeguard for human happiness is order;
    order depends on institutions and especially on the one now in Yr Holiness’s keeping.
    Since dynasties incarnate the unity and continuity of creation, princes are symbols of the Supreme Being and, since it is on this mystic harmony, not on changeable constitutions, that human society is based, it follows that it is the duty of all princes to preserve the powers they inherit and pass them on intact …
    And so forth. Several more pages warned against introducing such ‘instruments of communication and conspiracy’ as the electric telegraph, and climaxed in a request for indulgence for Grassi’s forthrightness. Then the writer prostrated himself with veneration to kiss His Holiness’s feet.
    Amandi folded the letter. He marvelled that Mastai – whom he knew to be easily swayed – had resisted the warning. It was true that others were pushing him the other way.
    *
    Sister Paola had not burned His Holiness’s letters and was glad because, now that he had been translated to a higher sphere, they were all she had of him. He had sent a last note to say he would not write again and she must choose a new confessor. His tone was cool. ‘I am making time to write,’ said the note, ‘so as to encourage you to detach yourself from creatures and fling yourself with greater resignation into the arms of Divine Bounty.’ That phrase cropped up as often in his letters as the ones professional writers copied from the manual. As a small girl, in her uncle’s parish, she had enjoyed hanging round their tables on market days when they were one of the chief attractions.
    ‘Tell her the cow calved,’ a client might say, ‘and that we’ve planted the tobacco and my leg is better.’
    ‘Put in something fancy,’ a listener was sure to suggest. ‘Something from the manual.’
    ‘It’s to my daughter,’ the client would argue. ‘She’s in service in Forlì. She’ll want the news.’
    This was always a disappointment. Letters to daughters were rarely interesting. ‘My daughter,’ began the ex-confessor’s letters because we were all part of God’s family and must love and see God in each other – which meant, did it not, that to fling yourself into the arms of God was also to fling yourself into his ?But he didn’t like that sort of thinking.
    ‘Your last letter,’ ran one of his old ones, ‘is hard to understand, but I warn you that the mind’s dwelling on certain sorts of temptation comes from our nature’s having been corrupted by Eve’s sin and weakened by our own. Close your mind to such fantasies … Don’t yield to anxiety. That makes things worse. Say humbly to Jesus Christ: see how abased and vile your bride is now! Despise these temptations. No matter what happens in them or what shapes they assume, victory will be yours so long as your will refuses its consent …’
    But her will did not refuse and – could he even imagine what happened in what he called her ‘temptations’? She blushed to think he might. Some seemed as real as memories, and sometimes she was ready to think that that was what they were. Mad, she scolded herself, you’re mad.
    ‘Pray to St Gregory,’ instructed another of his old letters, ‘that he may defend the Church and assist our own Pope Gregory who is governing it among tribulations …’
    Now he was governing it himself. Yet he had thought of her one last time. She wondered whether he had a picture of her in his mind: Sister Paola, the one who needed rallying. ‘ Ca l ma ’ was his great word whenwriting to her. It was one her uncle had used when running his hand down the necks of carriage horses which had not yet learned to be staid. ‘ Calma , buano !’Picturing the hand on a horse’s coat, she felt her skin shiver in sympathy.
    The abbess did not inspect cells. If she had, Sister Paola could not have hidden the letters. You were supposed to