The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
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on, give me that tool."
While the haughty coachman watched, Goffredo, Sandor, and Laffranchi managed to mend with his tools where the metal rim had come loose and right the wheel. Still involved in intense conversation with Miss Parker, Cristina Belgioioso gave a series of glances to the carriage containing her sleeping daughter and to the group of strangers on their knees, hammering and grunting for her sake. Afterwards she thanked them gravely: "We are obliged."
Goffredo liked that.
Now all they had to do was find Garibaldi. They asked people they came across where the volunteer army of garibaldini was camped. Most laughed or shook their head. "In piazza," they were told. And each time they entered the square indicated, they found someone else who directed them to yet another. This went on until at last they entered a square crowded with common folk and also men like themselves, in homemade uniforms and with picturesque weapons. They were listening restlessly to an officer delivering a speech from the top step by the water basin of a raised fountain. The General wasn't there. At the top of the square tower flanking the porticoed church, however, there was a boy who ever so often yelled, "Viva Garibaldi!" Directly behind the fountain was a massive yellow-brick palazzo in very bad repair with a Papal seal over its entrance and its great door wide open; the tricolored green-red-and-white flag had been draped over its central balcony.
"The French are marching on Rome, and I've been given the task of making soldiers out of you," the grey-haired officer was saying, "but looking you in the eyes I see that this task of mine is already done. I see determination. I see courage."
Goffredo glanced over at Sandor: he was the only one standing at attention. There was, however, a lot of cheering. And more cheering still when the officer announced that the U.S. consul had been on hand for the Proclamation of the Roman Republic. "The Americans are the only ones giving us any support!"
In answer, applause and a drum.
"Tell about the trouncing we gave the Pope!" prompted a woman from the crowd, waving her hands over her head.
"She means no more property in the hands of the Church!" called another.
When the cheering had died down, the officer explained that the Republic had also ended Church censure and instituted a registry of civil weddings. "And my friends, it has proclaimed the right to religious freedom."
"We're not scared of any Pope," cried a man.
"But where is he? Nowhere to be seen!" The same woman from before stomped her feet. "Nowhere!"
"Now tell them the best part!" shouted another woman to the officer.
"Women now have the right to inherit family property."
Clapping their hands, the women performed the start of a folkdance, watching each other's feet with broad smiles and flushed faces.
"My friends, my friends!" The officer called them to order. "Remember please that the new French president, Charles Louis Bonaparte, has heeded the Pope's appeal for help and sent fifteen thousand troops---the ones marching towards us now—under Oudinot."
A loud boo went round the square.
"We—what uniform do we put on?" a man called out.
Sandor, Goffredo, and the students from Pavia crowded closer to the fountain to hear the answer.
"No uniforms," said the officer. "For those who want them, we have a few red shirts."
Next to the officer stood a corporal with a gunny sack.
"Red?" exclaimed the Pole in alarm.
For the first time the officer laughed. "You're right. No denying it. Makes it easier to shoot us down. Garibaldi bought them for nothing when a textile factory closed. They were intended for the men who work in slaughterhouses. They were red so as to hide the bloodstains."
The corporal compliantly pulled the shirts out of the gunny sack and distributed what he had.
Sandor crossed his arms in protest, his face dark. "This not instruction. I have years of instruction," he said to the officer. "You must to teach to shoot on command, fight with sword. These—"he indicated his companions, Goffredo included, "are not prepared."
The other shrugged. "We meet at daybreak at the Cestio Bridge. You want food and fire for the night? Come out to the camp some of us have set up and split the wood for it. We officers are using our lassos to hunt up the food."
Sandor did not deign to reply as the officer descended from the fountain and disappeared in the crowd.
"Sandor, we've made it, we're here," Goffredo said with feeling, over his friend's ongoing complaints about no training, as they left the square a few minutes later.
Sandor saw that Goffredo had not given real importance to their lack of drilling, and he was worried. He would personally have to make sure his friend was prepared for battle. Goffredo felt far too much awe for Rome.
American journalist Margaret Fuller stood with Cristina Belgioioso in the middle of the Sala Assunta, the presently empty, surprisingly modern hospital ward abandoned by the monks on Tiber Island in the heart of Rome when the Pope had fled into exile.
"Well, this is the section where you are to take charge," Cristina said, a bit perfunctorily as she was quite tired. "There are forty beds here for now and there's also a second floor of cots—up that staircase to the right of the altar in the alcove at the end of the room." She led the way down the vaulted white hall.
For Margaret it was a joy to have made Cristina's acquaintance. She had such esprit! And it was truly wondrous how she had developed what Transcendentalists like Margaret called a person's 'latent powers'. Being in the living presence of this spirit made all the hardship of living precariously abroad—as Margaret did—worth it. Just a minute ago, Cristina had said the most inspiring thing. Stopping to run her hand over the back of a chair, she'd murmured, "The man who finds this chair next to his cot will soon not just a changed dressing, but also soothing words and a bit of company from us. On a mass scale this has never been done before."
Margaret would write this in her next article.
It was getting late, and the two women inspected the second floor of beds quickly. "We just need to send out a call to as many women as we can," Cristina said. "I know it's not easy to find ones that are free enough to come, but we must."
Margaret nodded ruefully. This was indeed a problem. "I myself don't have many in mind."
"We must get them from the street then, from the whorehouses…though don't go round telling people I've said that."
Their eyes met.
"You're right, Cristina. Best to let sleeping dogs lie."
"What dogs?" Cristina raised her eyebrows.
"I mean we are both ostracized in certain circles for having had a child, well—."
"Mysteriously?" A smile crept over Cristina's face, and the conversation finally took on a more relaxed tone. "My daughter's named Maria. I understand your son's named Angelo. Not even a year old, is he?"
"No," Margaret smiled back. "Only seven months."
"It's rather hard when they're at that age. Even with a wet nurse."
Margaret couldn't afford a wet nurse. She did have an assistant, Eleonora, who gave her precious help with her correspondence in Italian. In return, Margaret paid her a small sum and taught her English. Eleonora was a nice girl and very enthusiastic about the Republican cause.
"I'm sorry but I must leave you now, Cristina. I've left the one volunteer I've found so far—Eleonora, actually—in the courtyard around the corner, with the carpenter who's making the stretchers for our wounded."
"That reminds me. I need to talk to that carpenter too, but not this evening, tomorrow will do. Let me get my shawl and I'll come out with you, Margaret." She sighed as she slipped the shawl over her shoulders. "To think it might have gone otherwise. Just two years ago I was at Charles Louis Bonaparte's