Outside the Mausoleum of Hadrian, known as the Castel Sant’Angelo, Fleurissoire suffered bitter disappointment. The building’s enormous mass rose from the centre of an inner courtyard, which was closed to the public and only accessible to visitors who had an official pass. It was a condition of entry that they were also accompanied by a member of the castle staff …
Needless to say, the excessive security measures confirmed Amédée’s suspicions, but at the same time they enabled him to reflect on the extravagant difficulty of the task he had set himself. Having finally got rid of Baptistin, he wandered along the embankment, almost deserted at the end of the day, in the shadow of the outer wall that defended the approach to the castle. Outside the drawbridge at the entrance he walked up and down, feeling gloomy and dispirited, then turned away towards the bank of the Tiber and attempted to get a slightly better view from there over the top of the outermost wall.
He had not paid any attention until that moment to a priest (there are so many in Rome!) who sat on a bench not far from him and who, although apparently immersed in his breviary, had been watching him for some time. This worthy man of the cloth had a long, flowing mass of silver hair, and his fresh, youthful complexion, the sure sign of a wholesome existence, contrasted oddly with that accompaniment of old age. From his face alone it was clear that he was a priest and, from some elusive quality of respectability that emanated from him, French.
As Fleurissoire was about to pass him for the third time, he abruptly got to his feet, came towards him and, in a voice that was filled with suppressed emotion, said, ‘Can it be true? I’m not alone! Do you mean to say you’re looking for him too?’
As he said it, he hid his face in his hands, and his sobs, held back for too long, erupted noisily. Quickly getting a grip on himself, he exclaimed, ‘Rash, rash man that I am! Hide your tears! Stifle your sighs! …’ Seizing Amédée by the arm: ‘Let’s not stay here, Monsieur, we are being watched. Already the emotion I was unable to hide has been noticed.’
Amédée followed him in dazed astonishment.
‘But how,’ he at last managed to say, ‘how did you guess my reason for being here?’
‘May the heavens have allowed only me to suspect it! But your anxiety, the gloomy looks you were giving this place – could they go unnoticed by someone who has been haunting it day and night for the past three weeks? Alas, Monsieur, as soon as I saw you, I don’t know what premonition, what portent from on high allowed me to recognise as kin to mine your … Careful! Someone’s coming. For the love of God, pretend to be completely casual …’
A grocery porter was coming along the embankment towards them. Immediately, without changing his tone of voice and as if seeming to continue a sentence, but at a slightly livelier tempo, the priest went on, ‘So that’s why these Virginia cigars, so appreciated by some smokers, will only light with a candle flame after you’ve pulled out the fine length of straw that runs through them and which leaves behind a narrow airway that allows the smoke to draw freely. A Virginia that doesn’t draw properly is only fit to be thrown away. I can tell you, Monsieur, I’ve seen choosy smokers light up to half a dozen before they find one to their liking …’
And as soon as the man had gone past he said, ‘Did you see how he looked at us? We absolutely had to trick him into thinking we were ordinary visitors.’
‘What?’ Fleurissoire exclaimed, stunned. ‘Are you saying that even that common-or-garden grocer’s boy is one of the people we have to stand up to?’
‘Monsieur, I am not in a position to prove it, but I presume so. The vicinity of the castle is particularly closely watched. Officers of a special police force patrol it continuously. So as not to arouse suspicion, they put on the most varied disguises. These people are so clever, so clever! And we are so gullible, so naturally trusting! What if I were to tell you, Monsieur, that I very nearly jeopardised everything by not suspecting an ordinary facchino to whom I gave my modest bags to carry as far as my lodging house, the evening I arrived in Rome! He spoke French, and even though I’ve spoken Italian fluently since I was a child … You’ll no doubt have felt the same emotion yourself, which I was unable to fight against, to hear my own mother tongue spoken on foreign soil … So this facchino …’
‘He was one of them?’
‘He was one of them. I was more or less able to prove it to my satisfaction. Fortunately I had not said more than a few words to him.’
‘You fill me with consternation,’ Fleurissoire said. ‘The evening I arrived, which is to say yesterday evening, I myself fell into the hands of a guide to whom I entrusted my suitcase and who also spoke French.’
‘Heavens above!’ the priest said in a tone of dread. ‘He wasn’t by any chance called Baptistin, was he?’
‘Baptistin: yes, that was him!’ Amédée wailed, feeling his knees turning to jelly.
‘You unhappy man! What did you tell him?’
The priest squeezed his arm.
‘Nothing that I can remember.’
‘Think! Think hard! Try to remember, in heaven’s name!’
‘No, honestly,’ Amédée stuttered, terrified. ‘I can’t think that I told him anything.’
‘What might you have let slip?’
‘Nothing, honestly, I assure you. But you do very well to put me on my guard.’
‘Which hotel did he take you to?’
‘I’m not at a hotel. I’ve taken lodgings.’
‘Never mind. But where did you end up, as it happens?’
‘In a little street you certainly won’t know,’ Fleurissoire stammered, deeply embarrassed. ‘It’s not important. I shan’t be staying there.’
‘Take great care. If you leave in a rush, you’ll only draw attention to yourself.’
‘Yes, perhaps you’re right: it’ll be better if I don’t leave straight away.’
‘But how I thank the heavens that brought you to Rome today! A day later and I should have missed you! Tomorrow, no later than tomorrow, I have to be in Naples to see a saintly and important figure who is secretly working for our cause.’
‘It wouldn’t be Cardinal San Felice, by any chance?’ Fleurissoire asked, quivering with emotion.
The astonished priest took two steps backwards.
‘How do you know?’
Then, coming closer: ‘But why should I be surprised? He’s the only person in Naples with the will to grapple with our secret.’
‘Do you … know him well?’
‘Do I know him? My dear Monsieur, it is to him that I owe … Never mind. Were you thinking of going to see him?’
‘Of course, if I must.’
‘He is the best man …’ With an impatient gesture he dried the corner of his eye. ‘Naturally you know where to go and find him?’
‘I suppose anyone in Naples will be able to tell me. Everyone must know him.’
‘Of course! But it goes without saying, I hope, that you don’t intend to tell the whole of Naples whom you have come to visit? And I don’t imagine either that you have been instructed about his part in … the matter we both know about, and perhaps entrusted with some message for him, without having been briefed at the same time on how to approach him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Fleurissoire began timidly, because Arnica had not sent him any such instructions.
‘What? Do you mean that you intended to go and find him just like that? Just turn up at the archbishop’s palace, perhaps?’ The priest started to laugh. ‘And then bare your soul to him without further ado?’
‘I confess that—’
‘But do you understand, Monsieur,’ the priest went on in a sterner tone, ‘do you understand that you would risk getting him imprisoned too?’
He was becoming so visibly annoyed that Fleurissoire did not dare answer.
‘So vital a cause, entrusted to such amateurs!’ Protos muttered, pulling one end of a rosary out of his pocket, thinking better of it, crossing himself nervously, and then turning back to his companion.
‘May I ask you, Monsieur, who asked you to meddle in this affair? Whose bidding exactly are you doing?’
‘Forgive me, Father,’ Fleurissoire said in confusion, ‘I am doing no one’s bidding. I am just a poor soul in a state of anxiety, seeking on my own account.’
His humble words seemed to disarm the priest, who extended his hand to Fleurissoire.
‘I spoke harshly to you … but it is because such dangers surround us.’ Then, after a momentary hesitation: ‘Look, why don’t you and I go together tomorrow?’ Raising his eyes heavenwards: ‘Yes, I dare call him my friend,’ he went on, in a voice that rang with emotion. ‘Let’s stop and sit on this bench. I’ll write a note that we will both sign, and which will warn him that we are on our way. If we post it before six (eighteen hours, as they say here) he will have it tomorrow morning and be waiting to receive us around midday. Knowing him, we shall even be able to lunch with him.’
They sat down. Protos pulled a notebook out of his pocket and, as Amédée watched him, wild-eyed, on a blank sheet wrote: ‘How are you, you old bugger …’
Enjoying the shocked expression on his new acquaintance’s face, he smiled calmly.
‘I suppose you’d have written to the cardinal himself, if we had left you to your own devices?’
And, in a more relaxed tone, he set about explaining the situation to Amédée. Once a week Cardinal San Felice left the archbishop’s palace by the back door, as it were, dressed as a simple priest, a humble chaplain by the name of Bardolotti, and set out for the slopes of Mount Vomero where, in an unremarkable villa, he entertained a few very close friends and received the secret letters that those in the know sent him under his false name. Even in such a plebeian disguise he could not feel secure: he was never certain that letters sent in the post were not opened and so begged his correspondents not to make any specific references or to allow any whiff of his eminence, any trace of respect, however small it might be, to be expressed.
Now that Amédée was in the know, it was his turn to smile.
‘You old bugger … Let’s think! What indeed are we going to say to the dear old bugger?’ the priest joked, his pencil poised in hesitation. ‘I know! I’ve got a real joker for you. (Yes, yes! Leave it: I know the tone we need.) Dig out a couple of bottles of Falernian and we’ll glug them with you tomorrow. It’ll be a laugh. Here, you sign it too.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t sign my real name?’
‘Oh, yours doesn’t need disguising,’ Protos said, writing next to the name of Amédée Fleurissoire the word ‘Cave’.
‘What do you mean? Are you surprised to see me sign that name? All you can think of are the Vatican caves, the ones under Sant’Angelo. Well, know this, my good Monsieur Fleurissoire: Cave is a Latin word that also means BEWARE!’
This speech was delivered in such a superior and peculiar tone of voice that poor Amédée felt a shiver run down his spine. It only lasted a second. Father Cave had already resumed his previously affable tone and, holding out to Fleurissoire the envelope on which he had just written down the cardinal’s apocryphal address, he said, ‘Would you mind posting it yourself? It will be more prudent: letters written by priests get opened. And now we should go our separate ways: we mustn’t be seen spending any more time together. Let’s arrange to meet tomorrow morning, on the 7.30 train for Naples. Third class, obviously. I shall naturally not be wearing my cassock (the idea!). You will see just a simple Calabrian farm labourer. (Because of my hair, which I don’t want to be forced to cut.) Farewell! Farewell!’
He strode away, giving little waves of his hand.
‘The heavens be blessed for leading me to that excellent father!’ Fleurissoire murmured, making his way back to his lodgings. ‘What should I have done without him?’
And Protos muttered too as he walked off, ‘Oh yes, you’ll get your cardinal, in spades! … The thing is that, left to his own devices, he was perfectly capable of going and finding the real one!’