Daughter of Silence Page 5

  ‘And you accepted them, my dear. You were grateful, as I remember.’

  ‘You taught me that, too.’ The words came out in a rush of bitterness. ‘Say thank you for the sweetmeats like a good girl…. But when I wanted and took something for myself – like Basilio – ah, that was different!’

  For the first time a flush of anger showed in his pink, shining cheek. ‘Lazzaro is scum! No fit company for a woman of breeding!’

  ‘Breeding, Father? What is our breeding? You were a peasant’s son. You married poor and regretted it when you came to reputation. You despised my mother and you were glad when she died. Me? You know what I was to be? The model of the woman you wanted but never had. You know why you never married again? So that no one could ever match you. So that you could always despise what you needed and own what you loved!’

  ‘Love?’ Ascolini laid down the word with bleak contempt. ‘Tell me about love, Valeria. You have loved Carlo perhaps? Or Sebastian? Or the South American, or the son of the Greek who had money running out of his ears? Or have you found it rutting in a third-floor apartment with this Lazzaro fellow?’

  She was weeping now, head buried in her hands, and he thought that he had won. He said gently: ‘You and I should not hurt each other, child. We should be honest and say that what we have between us is the best we have known of love. For me it is all I have known worth having. For you there will be more, much more, because the world is still young for you. Even with Carlo there can be something, but you must make at least half the step towards it. He’s a boy, you’re a woman, rich with experience. But you must begin to prepare like a woman for a home and children. In a year or two I shall want to retire; Carlo will naturally step into my practice. You will have a secure estate. And there must be children with whom you can enjoy it. The locust years will come to you too, my dear, as they have already come to me. It is then you will need the little ones.’

  Slowly she heaved herself out of the chair and then stood, facing him with the brutal question: ‘And whose children will they be, Father? Carlo’s? Mine? Or yours?’

  Abruptly she turned away and left him alone in the vaulted library with two thousand years of wisdom on the shelves and no remedy at all against winter and disillusion.

  There was a legend in San Stefano that Little Brother Francis had built the first chapel there with his own hands. The frescoes in the church commemorated the event, and in the cloisters of the brown friars there was a garden with a shrine where the Poverello stood with outstretched arms welcoming the birds who came to bathe in the fish-pond at his feet. The air was cool, the light subdued, and the only sounds were the splash of water in the pond and the flapping of sandalled feet along arches of the colonnade. Here, seated on a stone bench, Carlo Rienzi found himself listening to the confession of Fra Bonifacio.

  It was a chastening experience, like watching a man read his own indictment in open court or hearing a physician diagnose his own malignancy. The old man’s face was scored and shrunken, his back bent as if by a heavy load. As he stumbled through his exposition, his knotted fingers laced and unlaced the cord of his cincture.

  ‘I told you earlier, my son, that what happened today was the last chapter of a very long story. There are many people involved in it. I am one of them. Each of us bears a measure of guilt for what happened today.’

  Rienzi held up a warning hand. ‘Let’s wait here a moment, Father. Let me show you first a little of the law. Murder was done here today. On the first evidence the crime was a premeditated act of revenge for a wrong done some years ago to Anna Albertini. There is no dispute about the act, its circumstances or its motive. The prosecution has an iron-clad case. The defence has only two pleas: insanity or mitigation. If we plead insanity we have to prove it by psychiatric testimony, and the girl’s case is hardly better than if she suffers the normal penalty for murder. If we plead mitigation we have a choice of two grounds: provocation or partial mental infirmity. A court is not a confessional. The law takes only a limited cognizance of the moral guilt of an act. It concerns itself with responsibility, but in the social order and not in the moral one.’ He smiled and spread his hands in deprecation. ‘I read your lectures, Father. Forgive me. But this time our roles are reversed. For my client’s sake, you must not lead me into irrelevance.’

  The old man digested the thought slowly and then nodded approval. ‘Every act of violence is a kind of madness, my son, but I would doubt whether you will find Anna Albertini legally insane. As to mitigation, here I think I can help you, though I cannot say how you may use what I tell.’ He paused a moment and then went on slowly. ‘There are two versions of this history. The first is the one which will be presented in court, because it is a matter of official record. The second …’ He broke off and waited a long moment, staring down at the backs of his knotted, freckled hands. ‘I know the second version, but I cannot tell it to you, because it came to me first under the seal of confession. I can only say that it exists and that you will have to ferret it out for yourself. Whether you can prove it is another problem again. And even then I am doubtful whether it will have validity in court.’ His voice trembled and his eyes filled up with the rheumy tears of age. ‘Justice, my son! How often is it abrogated by the very processes and the very people who are meant to preserve it I You saw Anna today. She is twenty-four years old. The last time I saw her was sixteen years ago – a child of eight putting flowers on her mother’s grave and scratching an inscription on the cemetery wall with a piece of tin. It’s still there. I’ll show it to you afterwards.’

  For all his professional detachment and his private preoccupations, Rienzi was moved by the pathos of the old man’s situation. He himself was a man familiar with guilt, familiar too with the impotence to purge it. This was the tragedy of the human condition: that every single act was contingent upon another in the past and spawned a litter of consequences for the future. Sin might be expiated, forgiveness might be granted, but the consequences spread out, ripples in a limitless pool, currents eternally moving in a dark sea.

  Rienzi prompted the friar gently: ‘The official story, Father – where does it begin? Where is it written? Who tells it?’

  ‘Everyone in San Stefano. The record is in Sergeant Fiorello’s files, attested by half a dozen men. It begins in the last year of the war, when the Germans were in control of this area, and Gianbattista Belloni was the leader of a Partisan band operating in the hills. It was, as you know, a time of confusion, suspicion and blood-feud. Anna was living in the village with her mother, Agnese Moschetti, who was the widow of a man killed in the Libyan campaign. For a while there was a small detachment of Germans quartered in the village and some of them were billeted in Agnese Moschetti’s house. When they moved out, she was accused of consorting with them and of betraying Partisan movements and personnel. She was arraigned before a drumhead court martial of Partisans, found guilty and executed by a firing-squad. Gianbattista Belloni presided at the court and signed the order for the execution. After the armistice, the proceedings of the court martial were attested and recorded in the police records of the village. A few years later, Belloni was made Mayor of the village and decorated with a gold medal by the President for gallantry in the service of his country …’

  He broke off and wiped his lips as if to erase an unpleasant taste. Rienzi asked him: ‘And what does the record say about Anna Albertini?’

  ‘Her existence was noted,’ said the old man drily. ‘And the fact that she was handed in to the care of Fra Bonifacio of the Order of Friars Minor, who had her sent away to Florence in the care of relatives.’

  ‘Where was she while her mother was tried and executed?’

  ‘The record makes no mention of that.’

  ‘But you know?’

  ‘Under the seal.’

  ‘Anna herself never told you?’

  ‘From the time of her mother’s death until this day I never heard a single word from her lips. Neither did anyone else in the village. At her mother’s g
rave she did not even cry.’

  ‘She’s married now. Do you know anything about her husband?’

  ‘Nothing. The police have sent for him, of course.’

  ‘Other relatives?’

  ‘The aunt who took her to Florence. I’m not even sure she’s alive.’ His old shoulders drooped despairingly. ‘It’s been sixteen years, my son. Sixteen years….’

  ‘You told me she wrote something on the cemetery wall. Could I see it, please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He led Rienzi round the circuit of the cloisters, through a creaking postern and into the walled confine of the Campo Santo, where marble cherubs and wreathed columns and shabby immortelles gave their mute testimony to mortality. The grave of Agnese Moschetti was marked by a rough headstone which recorded only the date of her birth, the date of her death, and the last pathos: ‘Requiescat in pace.’ There was hardly a pace between the headstone and the crumbling wall of the cemetery, and they squatted and wedged themselves close to the ground to read the painful childish etching: ‘Belloni, one day I will kill you.’

  Rienzi stared at the words for a long time, then asked sharply: ‘Has anyone else seen this?’

  ‘Who knows?’ The old man shrugged helplessly. ‘They’ve been there so many years.’

  ‘Produce them in court,’ said Rienzi softly, ‘and we are dead before we begin. Find me a mallet and a chisel, man – and hurry!’

  At three-thirty in the afternoon Landon woke from an uneasy doze to find Carlo Rienzi sitting in his armchair smoking a cigarette and flipping through a magazine with moody disinterest. His shoes were dusty, his shirt crumpled. His face looked drawn and tired. He gave Landon a telegraphic account of the events in San Stefano and ended with the wry summation: ‘So that’s it, Peter. The dice are cast. I’ve accepted the brief. I’ve found a pair of associates to act with me and give me entry to the Sienese courts. I have my first case.’

  ‘Have you told your wife or Ascolini?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He gave a little lopsided grin. ‘I’ve had enough excitement for a while. I’ll leave the announcement until after dinner. Besides, I wanted to talk with you first. Would you do me a favour?’

  ‘What kind of favour?’

  ‘Professional. I’d like to retain you informally as psychiatric adviser. I’d like you to see the girl, make your own diagnosis and then indicate a possible use of medical evidence.’

  ‘That’s a tall order.’ Landon frowned dubiously. ‘It raises questions of ethics and medical politeness and my own status under the law.’

  ‘If you were assured that informal consultation would give no offence?’

  ‘Then I’d consider it. But I would still owe your father-in-law the courtesy of an explanation. After all, I’m his guest.’

  ‘Would you wait until after I’ve spoken with him?’

  ‘Naturally. But there’s something I’d like to ask you, Carlo …’ He hesitated a moment and then put the bald question: ‘Why this case? On the face of it, the odds are all against you. It’s your first brief and I don’t see that you have a hope in hell of winning it.’

  Rienzi’s drawn face relaxed into a rare, boyish smile, and then grew serious again. He said quietly: ‘It’s a fair question, Peter, and I’ll try to answer it, as I’ve already answered it for myself. It’s a naïveté to believe that legal eminence is founded only on victories. The lost cause is often more profitable than the safe brief. New light on classic antinomies, contentious applications of accepted principles, a strategy that takes advantage of the perennial paradox of legality and justice – these are the foundations of reputations in advocacy. It’s like medicine, you see. Who makes the greatest name – the fellow who cures an apple-colic or the man who massages ten seconds of life into a failing heart? There’s no cure for death, my dear Peter, but there is a high art in its deferment. In law there is a correlative art of illumination, and on this great careers are built. Ascolini’s for instance. And, I hope, mine.’

  Landon was shocked by the cool cynicism of the exposition. He could not believe that this was the nostalgic poet who had played Chopin, the pained lover whose world had blown up in his face. His lips seemed too young to have framed the argument, his heart too young to have surrendered to so bleak an ambition. Yet, in all justice, Landon had to agree with him. He had undertaken to beat Ascolini on his own ground, that narrow field of contention where the law defines itself by contradiction as an instrument of rule or an instrument of justice. Carlo Rienzi could only contend on the traditional terms, divesting himself of feeling as he divested himself of the common dress, clothing himself in the black inhuman habit of the inquisitor.

  Still, Landon had committed himself to friendship and he had to know how far Rienzi understood his own commitment. So he faced him harshly with a new question: ‘Do you understand what you’re saying, Carlo? You’ve engaged yourself to a client – and on the basis of hope. Not a great hope, maybe, but at least a small one. It’s a personal relationship that reaches far beyond legality.’

  ‘No, Peter!’ His denial was swift and emphatic. ‘It is based simply and solely on legality. I cannot make moral judgments on the state of my client’s soul. I cannot commit myself to sympathy or sentiment in her regard. It is my function to induce such sympathies in others, to advocate favourable judgment by others, to bend every provision of the law to her advantage. These are her claims on me. I can admit no others. I am neither priest nor physician, nor custodian of sick minds.’

  If he were as precise and as eloquent as this on the floor of the court there could be great hopes for him. But Landon wondered how many were the pupil’s words and how many were the master’s. He wondered, too, how far Rienzi understood that the detachment of the great lawyer or the great surgeon was the fruit of bitter experience, the mature conviction of ultimate futility. He asked himself whether it were not as great a mistake for Rienzi to commit himself too early to the detachment of age as to surrender too readily to the compassions of youth. But he was the spectator and Rienzi was the actor, so he shrugged And said lightly: ‘I should stick to my own cobbling. Anyway, if your client is as beautiful as you tell me you’ll make an impressive pair in court.’

  Rienzi’s face clouded and he said thoughtfully: ‘She’s like a child, Peter. She’s twenty-four but she talks and thinks like a child – simple and unaccountable. I doubt she’s going to be much help to me or to herself.’

  ‘An insanity plea?’

  Rienzi frowned. ‘I’m no expert, but I doubt it. This is why I need your expert advice. I confess I’m relying more heavily on mitigatory evidence which I hope to dig up in San Stefano.’

  ‘Investigations like that can be expensive.’

  ‘Fra Bonifacio has undertaken to raise the expenses for the defendant. But I shouldn’t be surprised if I have to meet some of them from my own pocket.’

  ‘You’re gambling a great deal, aren’t you?’

  ‘The biggest gamble of all is Valeria,’ said Rienzi gravely. ‘But I am resigned to that, so the rest is bagatelle.’ He held out his hand. ‘Wish me luck, Peter.’

  ‘All the luck in the world, Carlo. Go with God.’

  Rienzi gave him a swift, searching look. ‘I think you mean that.’

  ‘I do. I’m no great example of devotion, but I know that no matter how far you fall you’ll never quite fall out of the hand of God. You may need to remember it some time.’

  ‘I know,’ said Rienzi moodily. ‘Tonight I think I shall need it most of all.’

  Then he was gone and Landon felt an oddly poignant grief for him. There were swords at his back and a battle looming ahead, but Landon could not shake off the uneasy conviction that he was fighting with the wrong weapons and for the wrong cause – and that victory for Carlo Rienzi might well prove the subtlest defeat of all.

  Ascolini’s dinner party began, genially enough, with cocktails in the library. The old man was urbane and eloquent, Valeria was affectionate to him and attentive to her guests, if a
shade more reserved than the occasion seemed to demand. For Landon, his fellow guest was a pleasant surprise. He found her decorative, diverting and agreeably feminine. She had none of the studied languor of her Italian cousins, none of their giddy coquetry which promised much but was apt to be niggardly in fulfilment. She talked well and listened with flattering interest – and she was more than a match for the ironic malice of the advocate.

  Ascolini was making a patent comedy out of his role of matchmaker. He said heartily: We must provide some diversion for you, Landon. A pity you’re not in the marriage market. You’d be the rage of the town.’

  ‘Don’t you provide for bachelors in Siena?’

  Ascolini laughed and tossed the question to Ninette Lachaise. ‘How would you answer that, Ninette?’

  ‘I would say that bachelors generally manage to provide for themselves.’

  ‘It’s a legend,’ said Landon with a grin. ‘Most bachelors get what they ask for and end by finding it isn’t what they want.’

  ‘We have our legends, too,’ said Ascolini with tart humour. ‘Our virgins are virtuous, our wives content, our widows discreet. But love is always a lottery. You buy the ticket and wait on your luck.’

  ‘Don’t be vulgar, Father,’ said Valeria calmly.

  ‘Love is a very vulgar business,’ said Doctor Ascolini.

  Ninette Lachaise raised her glass in a toast. To your conquest of Siena, Mr Landon.’

  He drank to it cautiously. There was no coquetry in her frank brown eyes, but a faint smile clung to the comers of her mouth. Good-humoured women were rare enough in his life, and the intelligent ones were either boresome or unbeautiful. He toyed with the thought that with this one he could risk more than he had ever dared before of confidence, intimacy and perhaps even love. He saw Ascolini watching with a smile of thin amusement, and wondered if the thought were patent to the old man. Then Carlo came in, immaculate and apparently in the best of humour, to pour himself a drink and join in the conversation.