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by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  So the people were in dire distress, at every sunrise looking to the East and wondering whether the new day would bring with it swarms of bloodthirsty janissaries and chargers thirsting to drink from the fountains of Saint Peter's.

  This, then, was what the squabble between the Jesuit and the poet had touched upon: a terror that ran through the town like an under­ground river.

  The repartee of Stilone Priaso had piled fear upon fear in the already sorely tried spirit of Padre Robleda. Grim and trembling, the Jesuit's round face was framed by the angry pressure of the cushion of fat that danced beneath his chin.

  "Is someone here of the Turkish party?" he gasped maliciously.

  All those present turned instinctively towards the poet, whom a suspicious eye might easily have taken for an emissary of the Porte: brown, pockmarked skin, small eyes like coals, and an owl-like frown. His dark silhouette reminded one of those robbers with thick, short hair who are, alas, all too often to be encountered on the road to the Kingdom of Naples.

  Stilone Priaso had not the time to reply.

  "Silence, once and for all!" hissed one of the gendarmes, continu­ing the roll call.

  "Signor di Mourai, from France, with Signor Pompeo Dulcibeni from Fermo, and Roberto Devize, French musician."

  The first name called was, as my master Signor Pellegrino has­tened to explain, that of the old Frenchman who had arrived in the

  Locanda del Donzello at the end of July and who had now died, allegedly of the infection. He was certainly a great nobleman, added Pellegrino, in very delicate health, and he had come to the inn accompanied by Devize and Dulcibeni. Signor di Mourai was in fact almost completely blind and needed to be accompanied. About the old gentleman, almost nothing was known: the moment he arrived, he announced that he was very tired and every day he had his meal brought to him in his chamber, issuing forth only rarely for a short walk in the environs of the hostelry. The men-at-arms took rapid note of my master's statements.

  "It is simply not possible, gentlemen, that he should have died of the plague! He had excellent manners and was very well dressed; it must have been old age—that is all."

  Master Pellegrino's tongue had loosened and he began to address the militia in that soft tone of his which, although he employed it but rarely, sometimes proved highly effective for achieving his ends. De­spite his noble features and tall, slim figure—his gentle hands, the easy and slightly stooped carriage of his fifty years, his face framed by flowing white tresses caught up with a ribbon, his vague and languid chestnut eyes—my master was, alas, prey to a bilious and choleric temper and ornamented his discourse with a great wealth of oaths and profanities. Only imminent danger restrained him from giving free rein to his nature on this occasion.

  But no one was listening to him any longer. The young Devize and Pompeo Dulcibeni were called up once again, and stepped forward at once. Our lodgers' eyes shone as the French musician, whose guitar had enchanted them only moments earlier, advanced.

  The men of the Bargello were now eager to be gone and, without even giving Devize and Dulcibeni the time to reach the wall, pushed them to one side, while the officer called, "Signor Eduardus Bedfordi, Englishman, and the Lady... and Cloridia."

  The hasty correction and the vague smile with which the latter name was proffered left no doubt as to the ancient profession exer­cised by the one and only feminine lodger at the Donzello. About her, I really knew very little, for my master had not housed her among the other guests, but in the little tower, where she enjoyed a separate entrance. In the brief month of her stay, I had only to bring her pro­visions and wine, and to deliver (in truth, with singular frequency) notes in sealed envelopes which almost never showed the writer's name. Cloridia was quite young; she must have been about my own age. I had sometimes seen her come down into the chambers on the ground floor, and converse—quite charmingly, I must say—with one or other of our lodgers. Judging by her interviews with Master Pellegrino, she seemed intent on taking our hostelry as her fixed dwelling.

  Signor di Bedfordi could not pass unobserved: with fiery red hair and a mantle of little golden freckles over his nose and on his cheeks, and squinting sky-blue eyes such as I had never seen before, he came from the distant British Isles. From what I had heard, this was not his first sojourn at the Donzello: like the glass-blower Brenozzi and Priaso the poet, he had already stayed there in the days of the previ­ous hostess, my master's late cousin.

  Mine was the last name to be called.

  "He is twenty years old and has not been long in my employ," explained Pellegrino. "At the moment, he is my only apprentice, for at this time of year we have few guests. I know nothing about him, I took him in because he was alone in the world," said my master hur­riedly, giving the impression that he wished to distance himself from any responsibility for the infection.

  "Just show him to us, we must close," interrupted the men-at- arms impatiently, unable to identify me.

  Pellegrino caught me by the arm, almost lifting me off the ground.

  "Young man, you're nothing but a sparrow!" sneered the guard, while his companions guffawed.

  From the windows all around, meanwhile, a few heads poked out timidly. The people of the quarter had found out what had hap­pened, but only the most curious tried to draw near. Most kept their distances, already fearing the effects of the contagion.

  The men-at-arms had concluded their mission. The inn had four entrances. Two on the Via dell'Orso: the great main door and the broad entrance next to it—kept open on summer evenings—which gave onto the first of the two dining chambers.

  Then there was the side door which led from the alley directly to the kitchen, and, finally, the little door which led from the en­trance hall to the courtyard. All were thoroughly sealed with stout beech planks made fast with nails a half-span long. The same was done to the door that led from Cloridia's little tower to the roof. The windows on the ground floor and the first floor, and those vents that opened onto the pavement from the top of the cellars had already been fitted with grates, and any attempt to escape from the second floor or from under the eaves would have involved the risk of falling or being seen and captured.

  The leader of the Bargello's men, a fat individual with a half- severed ear, gave us our instructions. We were to lower the corpse of poor Signor di Mourai from one of the windows of his chamber after sunrise, when the dead-cart from the Societas Orationis et Mortis would pass by to collect it, and they would see to the burial. We were to be under the surveillance of a Watchman by Day from six of the clock in the morning until ten at night, and a Watchman by Night for the remainder of the time. We would not be able to leave until the safety of the place was duly established and certified, and in any case not before twenty days had expired. During that time, we must periodi­cally answer a roll-call from one of the windows giving on to the Via dell'Orso. We were left a few large goatskins of water, pressed snow, a few round loaves, cheeses, lard, olives, some herbs and a basket of yellow apples. We were to receive a sum with which to pay for our victuals, water and snow. The inn's horses would remain where they were, in the hostler's stables next door.

  Anyone who left or who so much as attempted to flee would receive forty lashes with the knotted cord and be delivered to the Magistrate for punishment. At the entrance, they nailed the infa­mous placard with the inscription sanita—Health. We were then ad­monished to comply with whatever instructions might be given us thereafter, including the provisions adopted in times of infection, or plague; and whoever did not obey would be severely punished. From inside the hostelry, we heard dumbstruck that we were condemned to sequestration.

  "We are dead, all dead," quoth one of the guests in colourless tones.

  We were gathered in the long, narrow hallway of the hostelry, which had become dismal and dark since the barring of the door. We looked about ourselves, bewildered. None could make the decision to move to the adjoining rooms, where supper lay, already cold. My master, slumped on the great
bench in the entrance, inveighed, holding his head in his hands. He uttered abuse and curses unfit to be repeated and threatened harm to anyone so bold as to venture near him. Sud­denly, he began to rain down tremendous blows against the poor bench with his bare hands, causing the register of guests to jump up into the air. After that, he lifted the table and hurled it against the wall. We had to intervene and hold him back, clutching his arms and chest. Pel­legrino tried to break free but lost his balance, dragging a pair of the guests to the ground with him, and dashing them one against the other with a great din. I myself managed to dodge out of the way a moment before the human heap threatened to bury me. My master was nimbler than his would-be controllers and almost at once was back on his feet, shouting and again unleashing his wrath on the bench with his fists.

  I decided to abandon that narrow and now dangerous space and slipped away up the stairs. Here, however, after rushing up the first steps, I found myself face to face with Abbot Melani. He was coming down unhurriedly, stepping prudently.

  "So they have really locked us up, my boy," said he, with that strange French roiling of his V.

  "What are we to do now?" I asked.

  "Nothing."

  "But we shall die of the pestilence."

  "We shall see," he said with an indefinable nuance in his tone that I had already come to recognise.

  Then he changed direction and led me up to the first floor. We went right to the end of the corridor and entered the large chamber which the old man who had just died shared with his companion Pompeo Dulcibeni from the Marches. A curtain divided the room in two. We drew it aside and there, crouching on the floor and fumbling in his little bag, we found the chirurgeon Cristofano.

  In front of him, sprawled across the armchair, was Signor di Mourai, still half-dressed as Cristofano and the medical examiner had left him that morning. The dead man was somewhat malodorous because of the September heat and the foot bath in which his flesh was al­ready beginning to rot, the Bargello having ordered that nothing was to be moved until the end of the roll-call.

  "Boy, I asked you this morning kindly to clean up that noisome water on the floor," ordered Cristofano, with a note of impatience in his voice.

  I was about to reply that I had done so immediately after he had ordered me to; but glancing down, I saw that around the basin there were indeed still several small puddles. I did as I had been commanded without protesting, using cloth and mop and cursing myself for not having been more careful that morning. In fact, I had until then never seen a corpse in all my life and I must have been confused by the emotion.

  Mourai seemed even more meagre and bloodless than when he had arrived at the Locanda del Donzello. His lips were slightly parted and from them still dripped a little of that greenish froth which Cristofano, wishing to open his mouth a little more, began to remove with a cloth. The chirurgeon took pains, however, to touch this only after wrapping his own hand in another piece of cloth. As he had already done that morning, he scrutinised the dead man's throat carefully and sniffed at the froth. Then he got Abbot Melani to help him arrange the body on the bed. Once removed from the basin, the feet were greyish and from them emanated a dreadful odour of death which took our breath away.

  Cristofano donned a pair of gloves in brown material which he took from the little bag. He returned to his inspection of the oral cav­ity, then observed the thorax and the groin. First, however, he prod­ded delicately behind the ears; then turned his attention to the arm­pits, removing the clothing so as to be able to observe the soft flesh with its covering of sparse hairs. Lastly, he pressed repeatedly with his fingertips the soft skin halfway between the organs of generation and the beginning of the thighs. He removed his gloves carefully and placed them in a sort of little cage divided into two compartments by a horizontal grate. In the lower half, there was a small basin into which he poured a brownish liquid, then closed the door of the com­partment in which he had placed the gloves.

  "It is vinegar," he explained. "It purges the pestiferous humours. One never knows. That being said, I stand by my idea: this really does not seem to me to be the infection. For the time being, we may rest our minds."

  "You told the Bargello's men that it might be a congestion," I reminded him.

  "That was only an example, given to gain time. I already knew from Pellegrino that Mourai ate only broths and clear soups."

  "That is true," I confirmed. "Even this morning at dawn, he asked for one."

  "Ah yes? Tell us more," asked the physician, showing interest.

  "There is not much to be said: he asked my master for a clear soup with milk when, as every morning, he went to wake up Signor di Mourai and the gentleman from the Marches with whom he shared his room. But Signor Pellegrino was busy and so he asked me to prepare it. I went down to the kitchen, made it and brought it to him."

  "Were you alone?"

  "Yes."

  "Did anyone come into the kitchen?"

  "No."

  "Did you ever leave the milk unattended?"

  "Not even one moment."

  "Are you sure?"

  "If you are thinking that something in the broth might have harmed Signor di Mourai, know that I administered it to him person­ally, for Signor Dulcibeni had already gone out; and I myself drank a beaker of it."

  The chirurgeon asked no more questions. He looked at the corpse and added: "I cannot perform an autopsy here and now, nor do I be­lieve that anyone will do so, given the suspicion of plague. However, I repeat, this does not look to me like the infection."

  "But then," I asked, "why have we been placed in quarantine?"

  "Through excess of zeal. You are still young, but I believe that in these parts they remember the last visitation all too well. If noth­ing new occurs, they will soon realise that there is no danger. This old gentleman who, in any case, already seems not to have been enjoying good health, was not infected. And what is more, I would say that neither you nor I are. However, we have no choice: we shall have to pass poor Signor di Mourai's body and clothing out through the window, as the Bargello ordered. Each one of us will, moreover, have to sleep in a separate chamber. There are enough apartments in this inn, if I am not mistaken," said he, questioning me with his eyes.

  I nodded in agreement. On each floor, four chambers opened onto the two branches of the corridor: one rather spacious apart­ment just next to the stairs, followed by a very small one and then an L-shaped one, while at the end of the corridor was the largest room, the only one to give not only onto the alleyway but onto the Via dell'Orso. This would mean occupying all the apartments on the first and second floors, but I knew that my master would not complain too much about that, since no other guests could join us for the time being.

  "Dulcibeni will sleep in my chamber," added Cristofano. "He certainly cannot remain here with the corpse. However," he concluded, "if there are no other cases, true or false, in the next few days, they will release us."

  "In how much time exactly?" asked Atto Melani.

  "Who can tell? If anyone in the neighbourhood should feel un­well, perhaps only because he has drunk bad wine or eaten fish that has gone off, they will at once think of us."

  "Then we risk remaining here forever," said I, already feeling suf­focated by the thick walls of the inn.

  "Forever, no. But calm down now: have you not been here, night and day, for the past few weeks? I have rarely seen you leave the house; you are already used to being shut in."

  That was true. My master had taken me into service out of pity, knowing that I was alone in the world. And I worked from morning till night.

  It happened early last spring, when Pellegrino had come to Rome from Bologna, where he worked as a cook, to take over the activity of the Donzello after the misfortune which had befallen his cousin, the late innkeeper, Signora Luigia de Grandis Bonetti. She, poor woman, had given up the ghost following the physical consequences of an attack suffered in the street at the hands of two gypsy scoundrels, who were trying to rob
her of her purse. The hostelry had for thirty years been run by Luigia, together with her husband Lorenzo and their son Francesco, and subsequently by Luigia alone, when she had been widowed and be­reaved of her son. For a time, it was quite well known and received guests from all over the world. Such was Luigia's veneration for Duke Orsini, the owner of the little building in which the inn was situated, that she bequeathed to him all that she possessed. The Duke, however, made no objection when Pellegrino (who had to feed his wife, an unmarried daughter and a little girl) arrived from Bologna and begged His Grace to allow him to continue his cousin Luigia's flourishing activity.

  This was a golden opportunity for my master, who had already squandered another such: after a difficult career in the kitchens of a wealthy cardinal, in which he had reached the enviable rank of deputy carver, he was dismissed because of his choleric character and his all- too-frequent intemperance.

  Hardly had Pellegrino settled near the Donzello, waiting for the few passing guests to free the premises, than I was recommended to him by the parish priest of the nearby church of Santa Maria in Posterula. With the coming of the torrid Roman summer, his consort, who was indeed full of enthusiasm for the idea of becoming an inn­keeper's wife, left for the Apennine mountains, where her parents still lived. They were due to return at the end of the month, and, in the meantime, I was the only remaining helper.