by Rita Monaldi
Melani said nothing, but it was all too easy to guess his thoughts: yet another unexpected find, yet another object whose provenance was hard to determine; and yet again, blood.
As on the night before, the underground passage appeared to turn gradually to the left.
"That, too, is strange," commented Abbot Melani. "It is what I least expected."
Finally, the gallery seemed to be leading back towards the surface. Rather than a stairway, this time we encountered a rather gentle incline. Suddenly, however, a spiral staircase appeared before our eyes, with stone steps skilfully set into the ground. The corpisantari seemed unwilling to go any further. Ugonio and Ciacconio were ill-tempered: after having to give up the page from the Bible, the phial, too, had been snatched from before their eyes.
"Very well, then, you are to remain here until our return," Melani reluctantly conceded.
As we were beginning our ascent, I asked the abbot why he was so surprised that gallery D, which we had just traversed, should curve to the left.
"It is quite simple: if you have carefully studied the map which I gave you, you will understand that we have returned almost to our point of departure, in other words, to the vicinity of our hostelry."
We climbed the stairs slowly, until I heard a muffled noise, followed by Abbot Melani's lamenting. He had struck his head against a trapdoor. I had to help him push until the wooden lid opened.
Thus we gained access to an enclosed space in which the air was acrid with urine and damp with the reek of animals. We were in a stable.
Standing there was a small two-wheeled carriage, which we briefly examined. It had a leather hood, protected by waxed canvas stretched over a metal framework embellished with smooth iron knobs. Inside, a rosy sky was painted on the roof, while the seats were made comfortable by a pair of cushions. Next to it stood a more ordinary but larger carriage, with four wheels, and again a cowhide hood; and nearby, silent, but somewhat perturbed by our presence, stood two rather old and neglected horses.
Taking advantage of the faint light of the lamp, I looked inside the coach. Hanging behind the back seat, I discovered a large crucifix. From the wooden cross there hung a little iron cage which contained a glass sphere, within which was visible a small, indistinct brownish mass.
Atto too had approached, to illuminate the interior of the carriage.
"It must be a relic," said he, bringing his lantern closer. "But we must not waste time."
All around us lay buckets for washing the carriages, and combs, currycombs and horse-brushes (which almost caused us to trip up noisily).
Without tarrying any longer than necessary, we identified a doorway which, in all probability, led into a house. I tried the door carefully. It was closed.
In disappointment, I turned towards Abbot Melani. He too seemed to be hesitating. We could certainly not dream of forcing the lock, thus risking being surprised by the house's inhabitants and perhaps facing a double sentence, for escaping and for attempted housebreaking.
I was just thinking how fortunate we had been not to chance upon anyone in the stables, when suddenly I saw a monstrous hooked hand clutch at Abbot Melani's shoulder. I somehow managed to stifle a scream, while Melani stiffened, preparing to confront the stranger who was attacking him from behind. He told me to grab something, a stick, a bucket, anything and to strike the attacker. Too late. The individual was between us.
It was Ugonio. I saw Atto blanch with terror, so much so that he suffered a fit of dizziness and had to sit down for a few minutes.
"Idiot, you almost killed me with fright. I told you to remain down below."
"Ciacconio has scented a presence. He desiderates to be commandeered."
"Very well, let us return down the stairs and… but what have you in your hand?"
Ugonio held out both his forearms and looked questioningly at both his hands, as though he did not know what Atto was referring to. In his right hand, however, he grasped the crucifix with the relic which we had seen hanging inside the carriage.
"Put it straight back," ordered Abbot Melani. "No one must know that we have entered this place."
After grudgingly returning the crucifix to its place, Ugonio approached the closed door and brought his face close to the keyhole, examining the lock.
"What are you wasting time with, animal? Can you not see that it is closed and that there is no light on the other side?" Atto rebuked him.
"It may be that the portal can be unclavitated. To obtain, of course, more benefice than malefice," replied Ugonio, without losing his composure. And from his filthy overcoat he produced as though by enchantment an enormous iron ring to which were tied dozens, indeed hundreds of keys of the most varied styles and dimensions.
Atto and I were astounded. At once, Ugonio began with feline rapidity to sort through that clinking mass. In a few moments, his claws stopped at an old half-rusted key.
"Now Ugonio unclavitates and, if one is not to be a rustic physician, by fulfilling one's obligations the Christian's jubilations are increased," said he, cackling with laughter as he turned the key in the lock. The mechanism opened with a click.
Later, the two corpisantari would explain this last surprise of theirs. To gain access to the underground city, they often needed to make their way through cellars, store-rooms or doors which were locked or padlocked. In order to resolve the problem (and, as Ugonio insisted, "by decreasing the scrupules rather than increasing the scruples") the pair had dedicated themselves to the methodical corruption of dozens of servants, serving-maids and menservants. Well aware that the owners of the houses and villas who possessed the keys would never, but never, allow them to lay their hands on them, the two corp- isantari had haggled with servants to obtain copies of those keys. In exchange, they passed some of their precious relics to the servants. They had, of course, made sure that in the course of such trafficking, they did not release the best items of their collection. At times, however, they had been constrained to make painful sacrifices; for the key to a garden through which one obtained access to catacombs near the Via Appia, they had, for instance, had to give up a fragment of Saint Peter's shoulder-blade. It was less than obvious how they succeeded in such bargaining, what with Ciacconio's garglings and Ugonio's circumlocutions, yet it was clear that they possessed the keys to the cellars and palace foundations of a goodly part of the city. And those doors for which they did not possess the keys could often be opened with one of the many other more or less similar ones in their possession.
Therefore, once the door from the stable had been opened with Ugonio's key, we could be sure that we were in an inhabited house. Muffled by distance, we could hear sounds and voices drifting down from the upper floors. Before extinguishing the only lantern that we still had lit, a few seconds remained in which to take in our surroundings. We had entered a great kitchen, full of dishes, with a huge cauldron, three smaller ones, iron pans, basins large and small, copper cooking pots, moulds with iron handles, various stoves, kettles, jugs and coffee pots. All the kitchen equipment was hanging on the wall or kept in a sideboard of silver poplar wood or in a small cupboard, and almost all were of the best quality, as I would have wished the few utensils at my disposal in the kitchen of the Donzello to be. We crossed the room, taking care not to make any noise by tripping over one of the cooking pots that lay on the floor.
At the opposite end of the kitchen, there was another door; and through this we entered the next room. We were forced to light the lantern for a moment, but I covered it prudently with my hand.
We found ourselves facing a four-poster bed with a striped yellow and red satin cover. On either side stood a pair of little wooden tables and, in a corner, a simple chair, covered in worn stamped leather. Judging by the old furnishings, and by a certain stale and stuffy odour, the chamber must have been in disuse.
We gestured to Ugonio to go back and wait for us in the stable: in the event of our having to beat a rapid retreat, two intruders might perhaps succeed in escaping, but wi
th three, we should certainly be in worse trouble.
The chamber which we had just visited also had a second door. After again extinguishing the lantern, we listened carefully at that doorway. The residents' voices seemed distant enough for us to risk opening it, which we did most delicately, entering another, fourth, space. We were now in the entrance-hall of the house. The front door, as we could sense despite the almost complete darkness, was to our left. In front of us, at the end of a little corridor, began a spiral staircase, set into the wall and leading to the upper storey. From the top of the stairs, there filtered an uncertain glimmer which just enabled us to find our way.
With extreme caution, we approached the stairs. The noises and speech which we had first heard in the distance now seemed to have almost died out. Mad and foolhardy though the idea seemed to me, Atto began to climb the stairs, and I behind him.
Halfway up the stairs, between the ground and the first floor, we found a little room lit by a candelabrum, with various fine objects in it which we stopped briefly to examine. 1 was astounded by the wealth of the furnishings, the like of which I had never seen before: we must be in the house of a well-to-do gentleman. The abbot approached a little inlaid walnut table covered with a green cloth. He raised his eyes and discovered a number of fine paintings: an Annunciation, a Pieta, a Saint Francis with Angels in a gold-bordered walnut frame, another picture representing John the Baptist, a little picture on paper with a tortoiseshell and gilt frame and, lastly, a plaster octagon bas-relief representing Mary Magdalene. I saw a wash-stand which seemed to me to be in pear-wood, turned with great art and skill. Above it, there hung a small copper and gold crucifix with a cross fashioned from ebony. Completing the little parlour, there was a little table in light-coloured wood with its fine little drawers, and two chairs.
In a few more steps, we reached the first floor, which seemed at first to be deserted and enveloped in gloom. Atto Melani pointed out to me the next flight, leading even higher, and on which the light fell clearer and stronger. We craned our necks and saw that on the wall by the stairs was a sconce with four large candles, beyond which one came to the second floor, where, in all probability, the people of the house were at that moment.
We remained briefly immobile on the stairs, listening intently. There was not a sound; we continued to climb. Suddenly, however, a loud noise startled us. A door on the first floor had been opened and then roughly slammed, and in the interval we heard two men's voices, too confused to be intelligible. Gradually, we heard steps approaching the stairs from the chambers. Atto and I looked at one another in confusion; hurriedly, we rushed up the four or five remaining stairs. Beyond the sconce, we found a second little room halfway up, and there we halted, hoping that the footsteps would not continue up the stairs, in the direction of our temporary hiding place. We were lucky. We heard one door close, and then another, until we could hear neither footsteps nor the two men's voices.
Crouching awkwardly in the little room halfway up the stairs, Atto and I exchanged looks of relief. Here too, a candelabrum afforded us sufficient light. Once we had recovered our breath and allowed our panic to subside, we took a look around us. Around the walls of the second small room, we discovered tall and well-stocked bookshelves, with many volumes placed in good order. Abbot Melani took one in his hand and examined the frontispiece.
It was a Life of the Blessed Margaret of Cortona, by an unknown author. Atto closed the book and returned it to its place. There then passed through his hands: the first of an eight-volume Theatrum Vitae Humanae, a Life of Saint Philip Neri, a Fundamentum Doctrinae motus gravium Vitali Iordani, a Tractatus de Ordine Iudiciorum, a fine edition of the Institutiones ac meditationes in Graecam linguam, a French grammar, and lastly, a book which explained The Art of Learning to Die a Good Death.
After rapidly leafing through this last curious volume of moral reflections, Atto shook his head in irritation.
"What are you looking for?" I asked him in the lowest voice of which I was capable.
"Is it not obvious? The owner. These days, everyone marks their books, at least those of value, with their name."
So I assisted Atto and there soon passed through my hands the De arte Gimnastica of Gerolamo Mercuriale, a Vocabularium Ecclesiasticum and a Pharetra divini Amoris, while Atto set aside with a snort the Works of Plato and a Theatre of Mankynde by Gaspare de Villa Lobos, before greeting with surprise a copy of Bacchus in Tuscany by his beloved Francesco Redi.
"I do not understand it," he whispered impatiently at the end of the search. "There is everything here: history, philosophy, Christian doctrine, languages ancient and modern, devotional works, various curiosities and even a little astrology. Here, take a look: The Arcana of the Stars by a certain Antonio Carnevale and the Ephemerides Andreae Argoli. Yet in no book is there the owner's name."
Seeing that fortune had thus far remained on our side, and that we had avoided only by a hair's-breadth being surprised by the master of the house, I was about to suggest to Atto that we should be on our way when, for the first time, I came across a book on medicine.
I had in fact been searching on another shelf, where I came across a volume by Vallesius, then the Medicina Septentrionalis and Practical Anatomy by Bonetus, a Booke of Roman Antidotes, a Liber observationum medicarum Ioannes Chenchi, a De Mali Ipocondriaci by Paolo Tacchia, a Commentarium Ioannis Casimiri in Hippocratis Aphorismos, an Enciclopedia Chirurgica Rationalis by Giovanni Doleo and many other precious texts on medicine, chirurgie and anatomy. I was, among other things, struck by four volumes of a seven-volume edition of the works of Galen, all rather finely bound, in vermilion leather with golden lettering; the three others were not in their place. I picked one up, enjoying the feel of the precious binding, and opened it. A small inscription, at the foot of the frontispiece and on the right-hand side read: Ioannis Tiracordae. The same thing, I rapidly established, was to be found in all the other books on medicine.
"I know!" I whispered excitedly. "I know where we are."
I was about to share my discovery when we were again surprised by the sound of a door opening on the first floor, and by an old man's voice:
"Paradisa! Come down, our friend is about to take his leave of us."
A woman's voice replied from the second floor that she would be coming at once.
So we were about to be caught between two fires: the woman descending from the second floor and the master of the house awaiting her on the first. There was no door to the little room and it was, moreover, too small for us to crouch in unseen. We should be discovered.
Hearing, understanding and acting came together in a single movement. Like lizards hunted by. a hawk, we scuttled down the stairs in furtive desperation, hoping to reach the first floor before the two men. Otherwise, there would be no escape.
In less than a second came the moment of truth: we had just come down a few stairs when we heard the voice of the master of the house.
"And tomorrow, do not forget to bring me your little liqueur!" said he, under his breath but in a rather jovial tone of voice, obviously addressing his guest, while they approached the foot of the stairs. There was no more time: we were lost.
Whenever I think back on those moments of terror, I tell myself that only divine mercy saved us from many punishments, which we doubtless deserved. I also reflect that, if Abbot Melani had not had recourse to one of his ploys, matters would have gone very differently.
Atto had a flash of inspiration and energetically blew out the four candles which illuminated this flight of stairs. We again took refuge in the little room where, this time in unison, we puffed up our chests and blew out the candelabrum. When the master of the house looked up the stairs, he was confronted with pitch darkness and heard the woman's voice begging him to light the candles again. This had the double effect of not giving us away and making the two men return, bearing a single oil lamp, in order to fetch a candle. In that brief lapse of time, we groped our way swiftly down the stairs.
Hardly h
ad we reached the ground floor than we rushed into the abandoned bedchamber, then into the kitchen and, thence, to the coach-house. There, in my haste, I tripped and fell headlong on the fine layer of hay, making one of the nags nervous. Atto rapidly closed the door behind us, and Ugonio had no difficulty in locking it in time.
We remained motionless in the dark, panting, with our ears glued to the door. We thought that we could hear two or more people descending into the courtyard. Footsteps moved over the cobbles in the direction of the doorway to the street. We heard the heavy door open, then slam shut. Other footsteps turned back until they were lost on the stairs. For two or three minutes, we remained in sepulchral silence. The peril seemed to have passed.
We then lit a lantern and went through the trapdoor. As soon as the heavy wooden lid had closed on us, I was at last able to inform Abbot Melani of my discovery. We had entered the house of Giovanni Tiracorda, the old court physician to the Pope.
"Are you certain of that?" asked Abbot Melani as we again descended into the subterranean city.
"Of course I am," I replied.
"Tiracorda, what a coincidence," commented Atto with a little laugh.
"Do you know him?"
"It is an extraordinary coincidence. Tiracorda was physician to the conclave in which my fellow-citizen Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi was elected. I was present, too."
I, however, had never addressed a word to the old Archiater. Tiracorda, having been chief physician to two popes, was honoured in the quarter, so much so that he was still addressed as Archiater, although in reality his office was now that of locum. He lived in a little palazzo belonging to Duke Salviati, situated in the Via dell'Orso, only a few houses beyond the Donzello, on the corner of the Via della Stufa delle Donne. The map of the underground galleries which Atto Melani had drawn had proven to be accurate: moving from one gallery to another and coming to Tiracorda's stable, we had almost arrived back at our point of departure. I knew little, indeed very little indeed, about Tiracorda: that he had a wife (perhaps the Paradisa whose name we had heard him call not long before), and that in their large and fine house there also lived two or three maidservants who helped with the work of the household, and that he practised his art at the Arcispedale di Santo Spirito, at Sassia.
