by Rita Monaldi
We stood for who knows how long, pensively observing the watercourse, which seemed more black, fetid and threatening than ever. I shivered, imagining a ruinous fall into that disgusting and hostile current. Even Ugonio seemed worried. I sought to bolster up my courage by addressing a silent prayer to the Lord.
Suddenly, however, I saw Atto move away from me and direct his gaze towards a point where the right-hand wall of the gallery formed an angle with the channel through which the river ran. For a few moments, Atto remained immobile opposite the corner between the two conduits. Then he stretched out a hand along the wall of the fluvial gallery.
"What are you doing?" I called out in alarm, seeing him lean dangerously towards the river.
"Keep quiet," he whispered, groping ever more eagerly at the wall, as though he were seeking something.
I was about to run to his assistance, fearing that he might lose his balance. It was precisely then that I saw him at last retreat from this dangerous exposure, grasping something in his left hand. It was a little painter of the kind which fishermen use to moor their boats on the Tiber. Atto began to pull on the cord, gradually coiling it. When at last there seemed to be resistance at the far end, Atto invited Ugonio and myself to look at the little river. Just in front of us, faintly illuminated by the light of the lantern, there floated a flat-bottomed boat.
"I think that by now even you will have understood," said Abbot Melani soon afterwards, as we navigated in silence, driven by the current.
"No, I really do not," I admitted. "How did you manage to discover the boat?"
"It is simple. Dulcibeni had two possibilities: to cross the river or to go down it by boat. In order to take the river, however, he needed to have a boat moored at the point where the two galleries intersect. When we arrived, there was no trace of any boat; but, if there had been one, it would surely have been subject to the pull of the current."
"So, if it was secured by a rope," I guessed, "it would be pulled downstream by the current into the gallery to our right, where it flows down towards the Tiber."
"Exactly. The mooring had therefore to be secured to a point situated to the right in relation to gallery C, in other words, in the direction of the current. Had it been otherwise, we should have seen the hawser stretched from left to right, towards the boat. That was why I looked for the cord on the right. It was secured to an iron hook, which had been placed there who knows how long ago."
While I meditated upon this new proof of Abbot Melani's sagacity, Ugonio increased our pace by pulling gently on the two oars with which the boat was equipped. The bare landscape illuminated by our lantern was dull and monotonous. On the vaulted stone roof of the gallery, we heard the echo of the waves lapping against our fragile bark.
"But you were not sure that Dulcibeni had used a boat," I suddenly objected. "You said: 'Now, if there had been one…'"
"Sometimes, in order to know the truth, it is necessary to presuppose it."
"What do you mean?"
"It frequently happens like this in affairs of state: in the presence of inexplicable or illogical facts, one must figure out what must have been the indispensable condition which determined them, however incredible it may be."
"I do not understand."
"The most absurd truths, my boy, which are also the blackest ones, never leave any traces. Remember that."
"Does that mean that they will never be discovered?"
"Not necessarily. There are two possibilities: the first is that there may be someone who knows or who has understood, but who has no proof."
"And what then?" I asked, understanding very little of the abbot's words.
"He then constructs the proof which he does not have, so that the truth comes to the surface," replied Atto candidly.
"Do you mean that one can encounter false proofs of real facts?" I asked, open-mouthed.
"Bravo. But do not be surprised. You must not fall into the common error of believing, once it has been discovered that a document or a proof was counterfeited, that its content, too, is false. The contrary is likely to be true. Remember that when you become a gazetteer: often the most horrendous and unacceptable truths are contained in false documents."
"And what if even those are not available?"
"At that point, and this is the second assumption, it remains only to make suppositions, as I told you at the outset, and then to verify whether one's reasoning holds."
"If so, one must reason thus in order to understand the secretum pestis."
"Not yet," replied Melani. "First, one must understand the role of each of the actors, and above all the comedy which they are interpreting. And I believe that I have found it."
I looked at him in silence, with an expression which betrayed my impatience.
"It is a conspiracy against His Most Christian Majesty," exclaimed Atto solemnly.
"And who would be behind such a plot?"
"Why, that is clear: his wife, the Queen."
Seeing my incredulity, Atto was obliged to refresh my memory. Louis XIV had imprisoned Fouquet in order to extort from him the secret of the plague. Around Fouquet, however, moved personages who, like the Superintendent, had been humiliated or ruined by the Sovereign. First among these was Lauzun, imprisoned at Pinerol together with Fouquet and used as a spy; then, there was Mademoiselle, His Majesty's wealthy cousin, whom the King had forbidden to marry Lauzun. Moreover, Devize, who had accompanied Fouquet to the Donzello, was faithful to Queen Maria Teresa, who had suffered all manner
of infidelities, vexations and overbearing behaviour on the part of Louis XIV
"But all this is no sufficient basis for holding that all of them plotted against the Most Christian King," said I, interrupting him to voice my doubts.
"That is true, but I ask you to consider: the King wants the secret of the pestilence. Fouquet refuses to give it to him, probably affirming that he knows nothing of it. When the letter full of Kircher's ravings which we have found on Dulcibeni comes into Colbert's possession, Fouquet can no longer deny all knowledge, on pain of his own life and that of his family. In the end, he reaches an agreement with the King and leaves Pinerol in exchange for the secretum pestis. Thus far, are we in agreement?"
"Yes. Agreed."
"Well, at this point, the King has triumphed. Do you suppose that, after twenty years of rigorous imprisonment and reduced to indigence, Fouquet will be content?"
"No."
"Would it have been human for him to gain some small satisfaction at the King's expense, before disappearing?"
"Why, yes."
"Exactly. Now, imagine: your immensely powerful enemy extorts from you the secret of the pestilence. He wants it at all costs, because he yearns to become even more powerful. However, he does not realise that you are also in possession of the secret of the antidote, the secretum vitae. If you cannot use that yourself, what will you do?"
"I could give it to someone… to a foe of my own enemy."
"Very good. And Fouquet had any number of such persons at his disposal, all ready to take their revenge on the Sun King: beginning with Lauzun."
"But why, in your opinion, did Louis XIV not realise that Fouquet also possessed the antidote to the pestilence?"
"This is my theory. As you will recall, in Kircher's letter, I also read secretum vitae arcanae obices celant or, in other words, the secret of life is concealed in mysterious obstacles, while the secret of the transmission of the pestilence is not. Well, I maintain that Fouquet was unable to deny that he knew the secretum morbi but succeeded in keeping to himself the secret of the antidote, adducing as a pretext-thanks to that phrase-that Kircher had hidden it from him too. This must have been quite easy for the Superintendent, seeing that the King's main interest was, if I know him well, how to spread the plague, not how to combat it."
"That does all seem rather complicated."
"But, it works. Now, consider this: with the secret of the pestilence in his hands, for whom might Louis XIV have been able to cause
a few headaches?"
"Well, above all for the Empire," said I, thinking of what Brenozzi had told me.
"Very good. And perhaps for Spain too, with whom France has been at war for centuries. Is that not correct?"
"That is possible," I admitted, without understanding what Atto was getting at.
"But the Empire is in the hands of the Habsburgs, and Spain too. To what royal house does Queen Maria Teresa belong?"
"To the Habsburgs!"
"There we are: if we are to impose some order on the facts, we must therefore assume that Maria Teresa received, and used, the secretum vitae against Louis XIV Fouquet may have given the secretum vitae to Lauzun, who will have passed it on to his beloved Mademoiselle, and she to the Queen."
"A queen, acting in the shadows against the King her husband," I reflected aloud, "why, that is unheard of."
"There too, you are mistaken," said Atto, "for there is a precedent."
In 1637, said the abbot, a year before the birth of Louis XIV the secret services of the French Crown intercepted a letter from the Spanish ambassador in Brussels. The letter was addressed to Queen Anne of Austria, sister of King Philip IV of Spain and consort of King Louis XIII, in other words, the mother of the Sun King. From the missive, it was clear that Anne of Austria was in secret correspondence with her former country; and that, at a time when France and Spain were in open conflict. The King and Cardinal Richelieu ordered thorough but discreet inquiries. Thus, it was discovered that the Queen visited a certain convent in Paris rather too frequently: officially, to pray; but in reality, to exchange letters with Madrid and with the Spanish ambassadors in England and Flanders.
Anne denied that she had been engaged in espionage. She was then summoned for a private interview with Richelieu: the Queen risked imprisonment, the Cardinal warned icily, but a simple confession would save her. Louis XIII would pardon her only in exchange for a complete account of the news which she had learned in her secret correspondence with the Spaniards. The letters of Anne of Austria did not, indeed, relate solely to the usual complaints about the life of the court of Paris (where Anne was rather unhappy, as Maria Teresa was also to be). The Queen of France was exchanging precious political information with the Spaniards, perhaps in the belief that this could bring about an early end to the war. It was, however, against the interests of her kingdom. Anne confessed in full.
"In 1659, during the negotiations which led up to the Peace of the Pyrenees on the Isle of Pheasants," continued Atto, "Anne at last met her brother, King Philip IV of Spain, again. They had not seen each other for forty-five years. They had separated painfully when she, as a young princess barely sixteen years of age, had left for France forever. Anne tenderly embraced and kissed her brother. Philip, however, drew away from his sister's lips, looking her in the eyes. She said: 'Will you pardon me for having been such a good Frenchwoman?' 'You have my esteem,' said he. Ever since Anne had ceased to spy on his account, her brother had ceased to love her."
"But she was Queen of France, she could not…"
"I know, I know," said Atto sharply. "I told you that old story only to help you understand what the Habsburgs are like. Even when they marry a foreign king, they remain Habsburgs."
"The blackwater is walloping!"
We had been interrupted by Ugonio, who was showing signs of nervousness. After a relatively calm stretch, the little river had become more impetuous. The corpisantaro was using his oars with more vigour, trying in fact to slow us down. Rowing against the current, he had just decapitated one oar against the hard bed of the watercourse.
An awkward moment then arose: a little further on, the river divided into two branches, one twice as wide as the other. The noise and the speed of the waters were distinctly greater.
"Right or left?" I asked the corpisantaro.
"Decreasing the scrupules so as not to increase one's scruples, and to obtain more benefice than malefice, I ignorify comprehension and navigate fittingly," said Ugonio, while Atto protested.
"Stay on the wider stream, do not branch off," said the abbot. "The other branch may lead nowhere."
Ugonio instead made a few decisive movements with his oar and steered us into the lesser channel, where our speed at once diminished.
"Why did you not obey me?" complained Atto, growing angry.
"The canaletto is conductive, but the grand canalisation is misodorous; while by decreasing the scrupules so as not to increase one's scruples, and by fulfilling one's obligations, the Christian's jubilations are increased."
Rubbing his eyes as though he were suffering from a violent headache, Atto abandoned any attempt to understand Ugonio's mysterious explanation.
Very soon, Abbot Melani's suppressed rage was unleashed. After a few minutes of placid navigation, the vault of the new gallery began to become lower and lower.
"It is a secondary sewer, a curse upon you and your sparrow's brain," said Atto, turning to Ugonio.
"Yet it misodours not, howsoever well the other ramification may flow," replied Ugonio, without in any way losing his composure.
"But what does he mean?" I asked, worried about the roof, which was coming ever nearer to our heads.
"It misodours not, for all that it is overstrait."
We gave up all hope of interpreting Ugonio's verbal hieroglyphics, also because the gallery had in the meantime become so low that we had to crouch uncomfortably at the bottom of the boat. It was now almost impossible for Ugonio to row and Atto himself had to help the boat forward by pushing from the stem with one of the poles. The stink of the black waters, which was already in itself almost unbearable, had now become even more painful because of the posture which we were compelled to adopt and the suffocating space into which we were being forced. With a pang of regret, my thoughts went out to Cloridia, to the intemperance of Master Pellegrino, to sunny days and to my bed.
Suddenly, we heard plashing around us, just next to our craft. Living beings of an unknown nature seemed to be moving excitedly in the waters around us.
"Rats," announced Ugonio. "They fugitate."
"How ghastly," commented Abbot Melani.
The vault was now even lower. Ugonio was forced to draw the oars aboard. Only Atto, in the stern, kept pushing our bark onward with rhythmic shoves from his pole against the bottom of the channel. The waters we were traversing were almost completely stagnant, yet deprived of their accustomed silence: for, all around us, in bizarre counterpoint to the rhythmic beat of Abbot Melani's pole, we were followed by the sinister gurglings of the rats.
"If I did not know that I was alive, I would say that, roughly speaking, we must be on the Styx," said Atto, panting from so much effort. "Always provided that I am not mistaken as to the first point," he added.
We now lay face upwards, pressed one against the other on the bottom of the craft, when we heard the acoustics of the gallery change and become gentler, as though the channel were about to widen. It was then that there appeared before our astonished eyes, on the roof of the gallery, a circle of crepitating fire, into which yellow and reddish tongues of flame seemed to want to draw us.
Disposed in a halo within the circle were three Magi, immobile and fatal. Enveloped in crimson tunics and long conical cowls, they observed us icily. Within the cowls, from pairs of round holes, flashing eyes observed us, evil and all-knowing. One of the three held a skull in his hand.
Overcome by the surprise, all three of us started in unison. The bark deviated slightly from its natural course and went askew, with its prow and poop scraping against the opposite sides of the channel; thus, it became stranded immediately under the circle of fire.
One of the three Magi (or were they perhaps sentinels of the Inferno?) leaned over, observing us with malevolent curiosity. He brandished a torch, which he waved several times, seeking the better to illuminate our countenances; his fellows consulted with one another in hushed tones.
"Perhaps I was indeed mistaken about that first point," I heard Atto stammer.
&n
bsp; The second Magus, who held in his hand a great white candle, leaned forward in his turn. It was then that Ugonio exploded in a scream of infantile terror, struggling madly and involuntarily kicking me in the stomach and hitting Abbot Melani hard on the nose. Hitherto frozen by fear, we reacted with unpardonable discomposure, striking out in all directions. In the meanwhile, the bark had freed itself; so that, before we realised what was happening, our terrified trampling got the better of us and I heard one splash, then two, to either side of me.
The world folded in upon itself and all grew suddenly cold and dark while beings leapt forth from diabolical whirlpools and crawled over my face, sprinkling it with disgusting filth. I screamed in turn, but my voice was broken and fell like Icarus.
I shall never know for how long (for seconds? for hours?) that nightmare in the subterranean canal lasted. I only know that it was Ugonio who saved me, when with bestial vigour he pulled me from the waters, dumping me on hard planks so rudely that he almost broke my back.
Overwhelmed by terror, I had lost my memory. I must have dragged myself along the sewer, sometimes tiptoeing along the bottom, which I was just able to do, sometimes floating, and been saved in the end by Ugonio. Now I lay in the bottom of the boat, which had been righted and emptied of water.
My back was quite painful; I was panting from cold and fear, and still in thrall to its diabolical effects. Thus I believed that my eyes were deceiving me when, upon sitting up, I looked around me.
"Both of you may thank Abbot Melani," I heard Atto saying. "If, when I fell into the water, I had let go of the lantern, we should by now be food for the rats."
The faint light continued heroically to light up the way, offering our eyes the most unexpected of sights. Although struggling to penetrate the darkness, I could clearly discern that we were in the middle of a vast subterranean lake. Above our heads, as we were able to tell from the echo, an immense and majestic cavern opened up. All around us there spread black and threatening waters. But our bodies were safe. We had landed on an island.
"To obtain more benefice than malefice, and to be more padre than parricide, I abominate the artefactor of this revolting, merdiloquent and shiteful spectacule. He is a disghastly felonable!"
