Imprimatur

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  Atto Melani's reaction took me by surprise: the abbot seemed al­most beside himself. While I was recounting these matters to him, we would proceed for a short distance, then suddenly he would stop, open his eyes wide and ask me to repeat what I had said; whereupon he would again move on in silence, and then halt yet again, lost in thought. In the end, he had me recapitulate the whole story from the beginning.

  So I told him yet again how, on my way to Devize's apartment to give him a massage, I had heard that rondeau which he so often played and which had so delighted all the other guests at the Donzello be­fore the quarantine. I then asked him if he was the author of that piece and he replied that it was his master, one Corbetta, who had learned the melody of that rondeau during one of his frequent voy­ages. Corbetta had rearranged it and had made of it a tribute to the Queen; she had then handed the musical score to Devize, who in his turn had reworked it in part. In other words, it was not clear whose the music was, but we did at least know through whose hands it had passed.

  "But do you know who Corbetta was?" asked the abbot, with eyes that had narrowed down to two slits, and stressing every single syllable.

  The Italian Francesco Corbetta, he explained to me, had been the greatest of all guitarists. It was Mazarin who had called him to France to teach music to the young Louis XIV who adored the sound of the guitar. His fame had soon spread and King Charles II of England, another lover of the guitar, had taken him with him to London, had arranged a good marriage for him and had even elevated him to the peerage. However, in addition to being a wonderfully refined musi­cian, Corbetta was also something else which almost no one knew: a most skilful master of ciphers and codes.

  "Did he write letters in code?"

  "Even better: he composed music containing ciphers, in which secret messages were encoded."

  Corbetta was an exceptional individual: both fascinating and intriguing, and a hardened gambler. For much of his life, he had travelled between Mantua, Venice, Bologna, Brussels, Spain and Holland, even becoming implicated in a number of scandals. He had died scarcely two years ago, in his sixtieth year.

  "Perhaps he too did not disdain the profession of... counsellor, alongside the art of music..."

  "I would venture to say that he was very much involved in the po­litical affairs of the states which I have mentioned," said Atto Melani, thus admitting that Corbetta must have had a hand in some affairs of espionage.

  "And did he use the tablature of the guitar for that purpose?"

  "Yes, but that was certainly not his invention. In England, the celebrated John Dowland, who played the lute at the court of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his music in such a manner that, through it, his pa­trons could transmit secret information."

  Atto Melani took no little time to convince me that musical nota­tion could include meanings completely foreign to the art of sound. Yet, this had always been so: both monarchs and the Church had for centu­ries had recourse to musical cryptography. The matter was, moreover, familiar to ail men of doctrine. To give an example accessible to every­one, he said that in De furtivis litterarum notis Delia Porta had listed all the systems whereby secret messages of every kind and length may be encrypted. By means of a suitable key, for example, every letter of the alphabet could be associated with a musical note. The succession of notes, annotated on the pentagram would thus provide whoever held the key to the code with complete words and phrases.

  "Thus, however, there arises the question of the saltus indecentes, or in other words, of disagreeable dissonances and disharmonies, which might even arouse suspicion in one simply casting an eye over the music. Someone then thought up more refined systems."

  "Who was that?"

  "Our Kircher, to be precise: for example, in his Musurgia Univer­salis: instead of assigning a letter to each note, he distributed the alphabet among the four voices of a madrigal or an orchestra, the better to govern the musical material, thus rendering the composi­tion less rough and disagreeable: after all, if the message was inter­cepted, such flaws would be enough to arouse suspicion in anyone. There are infinite possibilities for manipulating the sung text and the notes to be intoned. For example, if the musical note—'fa', 'la' or even 're'—coincides with the text, then only those syllables are to be taken into account. Or one can do the opposite, conserving only the remainder of the sung text which, at that point, will reveal its hidden meaning. It is, in any case, certain that Corbetta will have been aware of Kircher's innovation."

  "Do you think that, apart from his art, Devize will have learned from Corbetta this... art of communicating secretly?"

  "That is just what is rumoured at the French court; especially as Devize was not only Corbetta's favourite pupil but above all a good friend of his."

  Dowland, Melani, Corbetta and now perhaps also his pupil Devize: I was beginning to suspect that music was inevitably accompanied by espionage.

  "What is more," continued Abbot Melani, "Corbetta knew Fou­quet well, seeing that he was guitarist to Mazarin's court until 1660: only then did he emigrate to London, even though he in fact contin­ued to make frequent visits to Paris, where he finally returned ten years later."

  "But then," I concluded, without even wishing to believe my own words, "even that rondeau might conceal a secret message."

  "Calm down, calm down, first let us consider the other things we know: you told me that the rondeau was given by Corbetta to Queen Maria Teresa who in turn gave it to Devize. Well, this provides me with another piece of precious information: I had no idea that the Queen was in touch with the two guitarists. The thing is so extraor­dinary that I find it almost hard to believe."

  "I understand," I interrupted. "Maria Teresa led an almost reclu­sive existence..."

  I then told him of the lengthy monologue in which Devize de­scribed the humiliations which the Most Christian King had heaped upon his poor consort.

  "Reclusive?" said Atto at the end. "I would not use that term."

  And he explained to me that Devize had painted me perhaps too immaculate a portrait of the late Queen of France. At Versailles, even now, one might still encounter a young mulatto girl who bore a curi­ous resemblance to the Dauphin. The explanation of that wonder was to be found twenty years previously, when the ambassadors of an African state had sojourned at court. To manifest their devotion to the consort of Louis XIV the ambassadors had presented the Queen with a little black page called Nabo.

  A few months later, in 1664, Maria Teresa had given birth to a hale and lively little girl with black skin. When this prodigy took place, the Chirurgeon Royal swore to the King that the newborn child's colour was a passing inconvenience due to congestion at birth. Days passed, however, and the child's skin showed no sign of lightening. The Chirurgeon Royal then said that perhaps that court blacka­moor's over-insistent glances might have interfered with the Queen's pregnancy. "A glance?" replied the King. "It must have been most penetrating."

  "A few days later, with the greatest discretion, Louis XIV had the page Nabo put to death."

  "And Maria Teresa?"

  "She said nothing. She was not seen either to weep or to smile. Indeed, she was not seen at all. Yet, from the Queen no one had ever succeeded in obtaining anything except words of kindness and par­don. She had always made a point of telling the King of every little thing, in proof of her own fidelity, despite the fact that he dared to appoint his own mistresses as her maids of honour. It was as though Maria Teresa had not known how to appear anything but colourless, opaque, almost devoid of any will of her own. She was too good, too good."

  Devize's phrase came to mind: it was indeed an error to judge Maria Teresa by appearances alone.

  "Do you think that she dissimulated?" I asked.

  "She was a Habsburg. She was a Spaniard. Two exceedingly proud breeds, and bitter enemies of her husband. How do you think that Maria Teresa felt, exiled on French soil? Her father loved her dearly and had agreed to lose her only in order to conclude the Peace of the Pyrenees. I was pre
sent at the Isle of Pheasants, my boy, when France and Spain concluded the treaty and decided the nuptials between Louis and Maria Teresa. When King Philip of Spain had to bid his daughter farewell, and knew that he would never again see her, he embraced her and wept disconsolately. It was almost embarrassing to see a King comport himself thus. At the banquet which followed the agreement, one of the most sumptuous that I have ever seen, he barely touched his food. And in the evening, before retiring, he was heard to groan between his tears, saying, 'I am a dead man,' and other silly phrases."

  Melani's words left me speechless: I had never thought that pow­erful sovereigns, the masters of Europe's fate, might suffer so bitterly for the loss of a loved one's company.

  "And Maria Teresa?"

  "At first, she behaved as though nothing had happened, as was her wont. She had immediately let it be understood that her betrothed was pleasing to her; she smiled, conversed amiably and showed her­self pleased to be leaving. But that night, everyone heard when in her chamber she cried in torment: 'Ay, mi padre, mi padre!"

  "Then it is clear: she was a dissimulator."

  "Exactly. She dissimulated hatred and love and simulated piety and fidelity. And so we ought not to be too surprised that no one should have known of the gracious exchanges of musical scores be­tween Maria Teresa, Corbetta and Devize. Perhaps it all took place under the King's nose!"

  "And do you think that Queen Maria Teresa used the guitarists to hide messages in their music?"

  "That is not impossible. I recall having read something of the sort many years ago, in a Dutch gazette. It was cheap scribblers' stuff, published in Amsterdam but written in French in order to spread poisonous rumours about the Most Christian King. It told of a young valet at the court of Versailles, by the name of Belloc, if I recall correctly, who wrote scraps of poetry for recital during ballets. In those verses were inserted in cipher the reproaches and sufferings of the Queen for the King's infidelities, and these were said to have been commissioned by Maria Teresa herself."

  "Signor Atto," I then asked, "who is Mademoiselle?"

  "Where have you heard that name?"

  "I read it at the top of Devize's score. There were written the words 'à Mademoiselle'."

  Although the diffuse light of the lantern was faint, I saw Abbot Melani grow pale. And suddenly in his eyes I read the fear which for the past couple of days had begun silently to consume him.

  I then told him everything else about my meeting with Devize: how I had accidentally stained the score with oil and how, when en­deavouring to clean it, I had read the dedication "à Mademoiselle'". I recounted the few things which Devize had told me about Mad­emoiselle: namely, that she was a cousin of the King; and how the latter had, because of her past as a rebel, condemned her to remain a spinster.

  "Who is Mademoiselle, Signor Atto?" I repeated.

  "What matters is not who she is but whom she married."

  "Married? But was she not to remain unmarried, as a punish­ment?"

  Atto explained to me that matters were rather more complicated than Devize's version. Mademoiselle, who was in reality called Anne Marie Louise, Duchess of Montpensier, was the richest woman in France. Riches, however, were not enough for her: she was utterly set upon marrying a king, and Louis XIV amused himself by forbidding her the joys of matrimony. In the end, Mademoiselle changed her mind: she said she no longer wished to become a queen and to end up like Maria Teresa, subjected to the whims of a cruel monarch in some distant land. At the age of forty-four, she then fell in love with an obscure provincial gentleman: a poor younger brother from Gascony, with neither skills nor fortune who, a few years earlier, had had the good luck to be liked by the King, becoming the companion of his amusements and even acceding to the title of Count of Lauzun.

  Lauzun was a cheap seducer, said Atto scornfully, who had court­ed Mademoiselle for her money; but in the end, the Most Christian King consented to the marriage. Lauzun, however, being a monster of presumption, wanted festivities worthy of a royal wedding; "like the union of two crowns," he would boast to his friends. Thus, while the wedding was held up by too many preparations, the King had time to relent and again forbid the marriage. The betrothed couple begged, entreated, threatened; all to no avail. So they married secretly. The King found this out, and that was the ruin of Lauzun, who ended up in prison, in a fortress far from Paris.

  "A fortress," I repeated, beginning to understand.

  "At Pinerol," added the abbot.

  "Along with..."

  "Exactly, along with Fouquet."

  Until that moment, explained Melani, Fouquet had been the only prisoner in the enormous fortress. However, he already knew Lauzun, who had accompanied the King to Nantes on the occasion of his arrest. When Lauzun was brought to Pinerol, the Superintendent had been languishing in a cell for over nine years.

  "And how long did Lauzun remain there?"

  "Ten years."

  "But that is so long!"

  "It could have been worse for him. The King had not set the dura­tion of his sentence and could have held him at his pleasure."

  "How come, then, that after ten years he was freed?"

  That was a mystery, said Atto Melani. The only certain fact was that Lauzun was liberated a few months after the disappearance of Fouquet.

  "Signor Atto, I no longer understand a thing," said I, unable to control the trembling which had seized my limbs. We were now al­most back at the inn, filthy and overcome by cold.

  "Poor lad," said Atto Melani pityingly. "In a few nights, I have compelled you to learn half the history of France and of Europe. But it will all be useful! If you were already a gazetteer, you would have enough to keep you writing for the next three years."

  "But, in the midst of all these mysteries, even you no longer un­derstand anything concerning our situation," I dared retort, disconso­late and panting with fatigue. "The more we struggle to understand, the more complicated matters become. This much I know: your sole interest is in understanding why the most Christian King had your friend Fouquet condemned twenty years ago. As for my little pearls, they are lost forever."

  "These days, everyone is curious about the mysteries of the past," said Abbot Melani, calling me severely to order. "This is because the present mysteries are too frightening. I and you shall, however, re­solve both. That, I promise you."

  These words were, I thought, all too facile. I endeavoured to sum­marise for the abbot all that we had learned in six days of shared claustration at the Donzello. A few weeks earlier, Superintendent

  Fouquet had come to our hostelry, in the company of two gentlemen. The first, Pompeo Dulcibeni, was familiar with the system of tun­nels under the inn and used them to visit his fellow-countryman, the physician Tiracorda, who was at the present time caring for the Pope. Dulcibeni had, moreover, had a daughter by a Turkish slave, who had been stolen from him by a certain Huygens, backed by a man called Feroni, when Dulcibeni was in the service of the Odescalchi, in other words, the family of the Pope.

  Fouquet's second companion, Robert Devize, was a guitarist whose relations with Maria Teresa, Queen of France, were not clear. He was a pupil of Francesco Corbetta, an intriguing personage who had written and, before dying, donated to Maria Teresa the rondeau which we so often heard Devize playing. The music sheet of this rondeau, however, bore a dedication to Mademoiselle, the cousin of the Most Christian King and wife of the Count of Lauzun. The latter had, for ten years, been the companion of Fouquet at Pinerol, before the Superintendent's death...

  "You should say 'before his escape'," Atto corrected me, "seeing that he died at the Donzello."

  "Correct. And then..."

  "And then we have a Jesuit, a runaway Venetian, a harlot, a Neapolitan astrologer, a drunkard of a host, an English refugee and a phy­sician from Siena: like all his colleagues, a murderer of defenceless Christians."

  "And the two corpisantari," I added.

  "Ah yes, the two monsters. And, last of all, we ourselves who
are racking our brains while someone in the hostelry has the plague, bloodstained pages from the Bible are to be found in the galleries beneath the city, as well as phials full of blood and rats puking blood... too much blood, now that I come to think of it."

  "What does it all mean, Signor Atto?"

  "A fine question. How many times must I repeat to you? Think of the crows and the eagle. And behave like an eagle."

  By that time, we were already climbing the stairs that led to the secret chamber in the Donzello; and soon after that, we separated, after giving each other an appointment for the morrow.

  Day the Seventh

  17th September, 1683

  *

  Even in those days overburdened with emotion, there would some­times arise and keep turning in my mind an edifying maxim which the old lady who had so lovingly educated and instructed me was wont to chant, as one does with children: never leave a book half-read.