Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (25 page)

15

When a pope dies

O
nce
Felici had gone, Cesare Verdi picked up Axel Munthe’s medical bag and offered
his arm to Monsignor Tuminello. The papal exorcist took it, gratefully. Verdi
and Tuminello led the way; the Swedish doctor and the benevolent Capuchin
followed on with the enfeebled Father Bechetti. Slowly, the five men shuffled
and stumbled down the steps from the refectory and then up the immediately
adjacent steps to the chaplains’ cells. I volunteered to assist, but Munthe was
adamant:

‘No,
thank you, too many doctors spoil the diagnosis. We won’t be long.’

Oscar
resumed his seat at the head of the table. Once the medical escort-party had
departed, I took my cue from Oscar’s lightly raised eyebrow and resumed mine. I
noticed that Monsignor Breakspear had not moved. When Felici had got to his
feet at the conclusion of the grace, Breakspear alone had remained seated at
the table, gazing vacantly at the wall opposite.

Breakspear
appeared to read my mind. ‘It was not bad form. I owe no deference to Felici.
He and I and Tuminello are of equal standing. They are my senior in years — I
am not yet forty: they are fifty and sixty or thereabouts — but our status is
the same. There are fourteen grades of Monsignor within the Catholic hierarchy,
but, as it happens, we three are on precisely the same rung of the
ecclesiastical ladder. The papal Master of Ceremonies commands almost all he
surveys within St Peter’s, I grant you that, but he outranks neither the Grand
Penitentiary nor the papal exorcist. I do not need to stand in his presence.’

‘You
are all equally exalted,’ said Oscar, inclining his head respectfully towards
the Monsignor, ‘but I think you have reason to be the most exhausted. Listening
to confessions day in, day out, must take it out of a man.’

Breakspear
laughed. ‘They give this job to the younger ones, you know, because we still
have our hearing. In the confessional, the penitent is inclined to whisper. You
have to strain your ears to catch the full horror of his sins. It
is
exhausting.
And you end up with a crick in the neck.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘Shall we
steal a glass of Tuminello’s wine?’

‘What
is the wine?’ asked Oscar. ‘It is a dull colour.’

‘And it
has a deadening effect if drunk to the extent Tuminello drinks it. He imports
it personally. We’re doing him a favour if we drink some of it for him.’ He
fetched glasses and the decanter from the sideboard and brought them to the
table. ‘Come and sit down here, Conan Doyle. Let us pretend we’re gentlemen and
the ladies have left us to our port.’

I moved
to Tuminello’s place, on Oscar’s left, immediately facing Breakspear. The
Grand Penitentiary poured out the wine. Oscar sniffed at it with nostrils
superciliously flared. He took a tentative sip, and then another.

‘It’s a
Madeira,’ he declared, his face lighting up, ‘and it’s utterly superb.’ He
raised his glass to Breakspear. ‘Your health, Monsignor. “Drink deep, or taste
not the Pierian spring,” as Pope advises.’

‘Which
pope is that?’ asked Breakspear.

‘Alexander
Pope,’ said Oscar, ‘in his famous poem. “A little learning is a dangerous
thing, drink deep,” et cetera. You must remember it from school.’

‘We
didn’t study Pope at Stonyhurst, did we, Conan Doyle?’

‘I
think we did,’ I said. ‘I’m sure we did.’

‘That’s
the wrong answer, boy!’ cried Breakspear, laughing uproariously as he drained
the decanter, filling each of our glasses to the brim. ‘More of that cheek and
I’ll take the Tolley to you.

‘I am
glad I went to school in Ireland,’ said Oscar, smiling. ‘In England schoolboys
appear to take pleasure in beating one another
relentlessly.
They make a
ritual of it — a fetish, one might say. Very strange.’ He sucked the Madeira
from the edge of his glass and rolled the wine around his tongue, considering
Breakspear from beneath half-closed eyelids. ‘You’ve been in Rome how long,
Monsignor?’ he asked.

‘I came
here as soon as I left school. I trained for the priesthood at the English
College here. Pio Nono chose me as one of his chaplains when I was not yet
twenty-five. This is where I have been ever since.’

‘This
is your world,’ said Oscar, raising his glass to the room.

‘And
these men are my family,’ replied Breakspear, looking at the empty chairs set
around the dining table.

‘And
are they also your friends?’ enquired Oscar. ‘Do you like them?’

Breakspear
laughed. ‘Oh no, I know them far too well for that. I love them. But I can’t
say I like them. Not at all.’

‘Do you
trust them?’

‘I am a
Jesuit. The question is: do they trust me?’ He turned in his seat to look up at
the painting on the wall. ‘Father Bechetti trusted me. When I first came here
he was my one true friend. He was already old and past ambition. He did not
envy me my youth as the others did. He was not jealous of my promise. He
treated me like a son. I miss him.’

‘He is
still here,’ said Oscar quietly.

Breakspear
turned back from the painting. ‘But his mind has gone.’

‘Has
it?’ said Oscar. ‘He joined in the grace just now.’

‘You
noticed?’

‘He
speaks …’

‘When
the spirit moves him.’

‘From
the little I have seen of him, I would say that he understands something of
what is happening around him.’

‘You
are right. Now and then he does. But he is not the man he was. He has not been
the same since Pio Nono died.’ Breakspear drank his wine and closed his eyes.
For a moment he seemed lost in thought. ‘None of us is,’ he said.

‘What
happened on the day that Pio Nono died?’ asked Oscar.

Breakspear
sighed. ‘The world changed. Our world changed. Utterly.’ He opened his eyes and
smiled at Oscar. ‘Pio Nono was pontiff for almost thirty-two years — for
thirty-one years and two hundred and thirty-six days to be precise. He was the
longest-reigning pope in history. He was our Holy Father. He was pope before I
was born. He was my Holy Father.’

‘You
were with him at the last?’

‘We all
were. It seemed all Italy was there — cardinals, bishops, chaplains, monks and
nuns, members of the household, members of the Swiss Guard, servants, diplomats,
dignitaries. Towards the very end, half of Rome’s aristocracy turned up. The
king sent emissaries … The bedchamber was crammed to overflowing, like a
marketplace, except for the silence. No one spoke. No one made a sound.’

‘There
were no tears?’

‘Now
and then, at the back of the room, a reverend sister would begin to sob — and
there were prayers, of course. But it is the silence I remember chiefly, the
anxious stillness, as if, for hours on end, we all held our breath.’
Breakspear finished his wine and sat forward at the table. ‘When a pope dies,
it is a moment in history.’

‘And
you were there — in the room.’

‘I was
there, kneeling at the bedside. For a time, on that last morning, I held his
hand. He spoke to me —
to me. “Nicholas, questa volta me ne vado davvero”
—“Nicholas,
this time I am really going.” The poor man had been ill for months with
bronchitis and fever. For weeks on end, he had teetered at death’s door. He survived
the worst of the winter and died on 7 February 1878. It was a Thursday. On the
night before his death he slept quite well. He took quinine and a little broth,
and he blessed us with the crucifix he kept beneath his pillow. All night we
kept a vigil at his bedside. It was at a quarter to five in the morning that
the terrible trembling in the limbs and the rapid breathing came on. But his
mind remained clear to the end. When he received the Viaticum — the final
Eucharist — he repeated the prayers himself. He received extreme unction at
nine. At one o’clock, Cardinal Bilio, as Secretary of the Supreme Sacred
Congregation of the Holy Office, began the service for the dying. The Holy
Father struggled with the responses, but once he had completed the act of
contrition, with the words
“col vostro santo aiuto”
his strength seemed
to return. He revived until about four when the final agony began. Cardinal
Bilio recited the Proficiscere to him: “Go forth upon thy journey, Christian
soul! Go from this world! Go, in the name of God …“ He died at twenty to
six.’

From
the first I had had my reservations about Breakspear. Instinctively, I had
neither liked nor trusted him. But, I confess, I found this testament of his
strangely moving. ‘And at the moment of the pope’s death,’ I asked, ‘how did
you feel?’

‘Bereft.
Alone. Ashamed.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘I knew
that in that moment — of all moments — my thoughts should have been with the
Holy Father, but the truth is: I thought only of myself. Pio Nono was dead and
I felt sorry for
myself.
I felt close to despair.’ Breakspear rested his
fingertips on his eyebrows and pressed the lengths of his fingers against his
eyes.

‘Goodness,
gentlemen, I am supposed to be the confessor and here I am telling you things I
have not told anyone before.’

‘Please,’
said Oscar, leaning towards the Monsignor, ‘finish your story: complete the
account of the day. What happened next?’

Breakspear
looked at Oscar and appeared puzzled. ‘What happened next?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’
Oscar urged him on. ‘You left the chamber?’ Breakspear took a deep breath and
wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘Not at once. I stayed to witness the curious
ceremony that marks the death of a pope. One of the cardinals stepped forward,
holding a small silver hammer. You may have seen it. The sacristan keeps it
here on the sideboard. The cardinal stood at Pio Nono’s bedside and with the
hammer he struck the Holy Father on the forehead, three times, sharply, calling
him by his proper name,
“Giovanni Mastai, sei morto?”
— “Giovanni
Mastai, art thou dead?” And when answer came there none, the cardinal turned to
the room, raised his arms and proclaimed to the world that Pio Nono was no
more.’

‘And
the girl?’ Oscar cast his eyes towards the portrait hanging behind Breakspear
on the refectory wall. ‘The beautiful child in the painting, Agnes?’

‘What
about her? She was not there.’

‘Where
was she at the moment of Pio Nono’s death?’

‘In the
laundry, I suppose. In her dormitory? Somewhere. I don’t know. At prayer with
the reverend sisters, perhaps.’

‘When,
then, did she hear the news?’

‘I have
no idea. News of the death of a pope does not travel slowly. Within a few
minutes of the Holy Father’s passing she will have known. She will have heard
almost at once, poor child. She was always somewhere near by. She never left
the Vatican. Apart from anything, from the bell tower she will have heard the
death knell toll.’

‘But
you saw her that night, Monsignor Breakspear. I feel sure that you did.’

‘Why do
you say that?’

‘Because
when Monsignor Tuminello was talking about her just now — and talking about her
so animatedly, with such passion and fondness — you said nothing, nothing at
all. In my experience, when a clever man has a great deal to say, he says
nothing.’