In the fourteenth century the popes had, for a time, been exiled to France, and in the fifteenth a period of infighting had peaked with three rival popes rampaging around Europe — “A bibliographer’s nightmare,”
said Claudio laconically. The later popes had started trying to unify the archives in the sixteenth century. But when Napolй on had taken Italy, he hauled the whole lot away to France for a few years, doing still more damage in the process …
“But all we have is here,” Claudio said. “There are letters from popes as far back as Leo the First, from the fifth century, who faced down Attila the Hun. We have diplomas from Byzantine emperors. The correspondence of Joan of Arc. Reports of papal enclaves, accusations of witchcraft and other skulduggery in high places, sexual secrets of kings, queens, bishops, and a few popes. The records of the Spanish Inquisition, details of the trial of Galileo … Even the letter from England asking for the dissolution of the first marriage of Henry the Eighth.”
“And somewhere in all this,” I said, “is the true story of the Order. Or at least as the Vatican saw it.”
He waved a hand. “What I’m trying to tell you is that the archives are overwhelming. There are scholars who have spent most of their lives in here. It isn’t even all cataloged, and our only search engine is shoe leather. The idea that someone like your friend can just come in here—”
“Peter said you would be like this,” I said bluntly.
He looked aristocratically bemused. “I’m sorry? Like what?”
“Obstructive. It’s true, isn’t it? It’s just as when you stalled over giving me a contact with the Order in the first place. You don’t want to come right out and refuse to help. Instead you’re trying to put me off.”
He pursed his lips, his eyes cloudy. I felt a stab of guilt; perhaps he hadn’t even been aware of what he was doing. “Perhaps I’m not sure if I should help you.”
Something in the way he said that triggered an idea in my head. I said at random, “But you could help us, if you wanted to. Because you’ve done searches here on the Order yourself. ”
He wouldn’t concede that, but his aristocratic nostrils flared. “You are making big inductive leaps.”
“If you have, you could help Peter find what he wants very quickly.”
“You haven’t told me why I should.”
“Because of Lucia.” I knew Peter had told him about the girl. “Here’s the bottom line. Peter and I think she is coming to harm, because of the Order. I certainly don’t know for sure that she isn’t. You’re a priest; you wear the collar. Can you really turn away from a child in trouble? … You can’t, can you?” I said slowly, thinking as I spoke. “And that’s why you’ve done your own researches. You’ve had your own suspicions about the Order—”
He said nothing. He was right that I was making big inductive leaps in the dark, but sometimes my nose is good. Still, I could see he was in conflict, pulled by two opposing loyalties.
“Look,” I said, “help us. I give you my word that we will do you no harm.”
“ I don’t matter,” he said, with a priest’s steely moral authority.
“Very well — no harm to anything you hold dear. My word, Claudio. And perhaps we will do a lot of good.”
He said little more that day. He showed me out, his remaining conversation brief and stiff. I suspected I had compromised whatever friendship I had with him.
But a day later, perhaps after sleeping on it, he got in touch.
Under Claudio’s guidance, Peter immersed himself in the archives for days on end. And he surfaced with a string of tales: the diaries of pilgrims and nobles, records of wars and sackings, the account of a thwarted love affair — and even a mention of one of my own ancestors, a different George Poole …
George Poole had first come to Rome in 1863, in the company of the British government’s chief commissioner of works, Lord John Manners. Poole was a surveyor. It had been a time when the Modern Age, in the form of hydraulics, telegraphs, steam power, and railways, was just beginning to touch the old city, and British engineers, the best in the world, were at the forefront.
Poole had even been in the presence of the pope himself, for a time. He had seen the papal train, with its white-and-gold-painted coaches, and even a chapel on bogie wheels. The pope had come to the opening of a steel drawbridge, built by the British, across the Tiber at Porta Portese. The pontiff took a great interest in the new developments, and had asked to meet Manners and have the bridge mechanism explained to him — much to his lordship’s embarrassment, for in the middle of his working day he was carrying an umbrella and wearing an old straw hat.
When Poole came back to Rome twelve years later, it was in his own capacity as a consulting engineer. He returned at the invitation of a rather shadowy business concern fronted by one Luigi Frangipani, a member of what was said to be one of Rome’s great ancient families.
Poole expected that much would have changed. During his first visit it had been just three years since the great triumph of the Risorgimento had seen Italy unified under Victor Emanuele II. Now Rome was the capital of the new Italy. Among Poole’s circle of old friends, there had been great excitement at these developments, and much envy over his visit, for he was coming to a Rome free of the dominance of the popes for the first time in fourteen centuries.
But Poole was disappointed with what he found.
Even now the great political and technological changes seemed to have left no mark on Rome itself. Within its ancient walls, the city was still like a vast walled farm. He was startled to see cattle and goats being driven through the city streets, and pigs snuffling for acorns near the Flaminian Gate. The source of wealth was still agriculture and visitors, pilgrims and tourists; there was still no industry, no stock exchange.
But there were changes. He saw a regiment of bersaglieri, trotting through the streets in their elaborate operetta-extras’ uniforms. The clerics were much less in evidence, though you would see the cardinals’ coaches, painted black as if in mourning. He even glimpsed the king, a spectacularly ugly man, passing in his own carriage. He gathered that the king was a far more popular figure than the pope had ever been, if only for his family; after all, no pope since the Middle Ages had been in a position to display a grandson!
After a day of wandering, Poole met Luigi Frangipani. They went for a walk through the cork woods on Monte Mario.
Frangipani sketched in something of the background to his approach to Poole. “There is much tension in Rome,” Frangipani said, in lightly accented English. “It is a question of time, you see, of history. Rome is a place of great families.”
“Like your own,” Poole said politely.
“Some are prepared to accept the king as their sovereign. Others are prevented from doing so by loyalty to the pope. You must understand that some of the families are descended from popes themselves! Still others have made their fortunes more recently, such as from banking, and have yet a different outlook on developments …”
Poole thought all this talk of families and tradition sounded medieval — very un-British — and he felt oddly claustrophobic. “And what is it you want of me?”
They stopped at a wooden bench, and Frangipani produced a small map of Rome.
“We Frangipani, lacking the great wealth of some other families, are not so conservative; we must look to the future. Rome has been invaded many times. But now that it is the capital, a new invasion is under way, an invasion by an army of bureaucrats. The municipality was first asked for forty thousand rooms for all those teeming officials, but could provide only five hundred. To house its ministries the government has already requisitioned several convents and palaces. But much more housing is needed.