Imprimatur am-1

by Rita Monaldi

  Of course, the serious accident of which Dulcibeni was the victim provoked a string of questions from Cristofano, who was certainly not so foolish as not to understand that the Marchigiano-and those who had brought him back-had been able to leave and return to the inn.

  The bruises, cuts and scratches which Atto and I had sustained in our fall from Tiracorda's carriage also called for an explanation. While Cristofano dispensed his cures-medicating the wounds with his specially prepared balsam and celestial water and anointing the bruises with oleum philosophorum and electuary of magisterial marsh mallow-we were constrained to admit that, yes, Dulcibeni had left the hostelry, seeking a way of fleeing the quarantine and, from the secret closet, had ventured forth into the network of tunnels under the inn. We two had, however, been watching him for some time, having guessed his intentions, and had followed him and brought him back. On returning, he had lost his balance and had fallen into the little well that led back to the inn, and this had caused the grave injury which now condemned him to his bed.

  Dulcibeni was, moreover, in no position to deny the story: the day after the fall, his fever was exceedingly high, depriving him almost completely of his powers of both reasoning and speech. Only gradually did he regain his wits, and then he would groan interminably, complaining of atrocious, unending pains in the back.

  Perhaps that painful spectacle also inclined Cristofano to indulgence; our tale was clearly full of gaps and improbabilities, nor would it have stood up to a serious interrogation, especially if conducted by two of the Bargello's men. Having regard, probably, to the extraordinary recovery of Bedfordi and to the likelihood of an early end to the quarantine, the doctor weighed up the risks and advantages and was kind enough to pretend that he believed our version, without informing the sentinel (who was still on guard before the doorway of the inn) of what had happened. At the end of our reclusion, he said, he would endeavour to ensure that Dulcibeni received all possible cures. These happy resolutions were probably inspired, too, by the festive atmosphere which was just then beginning to spread across the city, and of which I shall now speak.

  Already, rumours had begun to circulate concerning the outcome of the battle of Vienna. The first to be heard were on the 20th, but only on the night of Tuesday 21st (and the details of this I obviously obtained later) did Cardinal Pio receive a note from Venice with news of the flight of the Turkish army from Vienna. Two days later, again at night, other letters arrived from the Empire announcing the Christian victory. Gradually, the details had become more precise: the city of Vienna, so long besieged, had at last been relieved.

  On the 23rd day of September, the official announcement of the victory reached Rome, borne in the dispatches of Cardinal Bonvisi: eleven days earlier, on 12th September, the Christian troops had routed the hosts of God's enemies.

  The details were to arrive with the gazettes of the succeeding weeks, but in my memory the tales of that glorious triumph all blend into one moment: that of the exciting and exalting moment when we learned of the victory.

  When the stars came out on the night of the 11th and 12th September, the serried ranks of the Ottoman host were heard making their prayers, with piercing cries; this was also evident from the lamps and fires, lit in great symmetry, together with the double lights of the superb pavilions of the Infidel encampment.

  Our men, too, had prayed long and hard: the Christian forces were far inferior to those of the Infidels. At the first light of dawn on 12th September, the Capuchin friar, Marco d'Aviano, a great arouser and inspirer of the Christian army, celebrated mass with the Christian commanders in a little Camaldolese convent on a height called the Kahlenberg, which dominates Vienna from the right bank of the Danube. Immediately afterwards, our troops formed ranks, ready for victory or death.

  On the left wing were Charles of Lorraine with the Margrave Hermann and the young Ludwig Wilhelm; Count von Leslie and Count Caprara; Prince Lubomirski, with his fearsome Polish armoured cavalry; then Mercy and Tafe, the future heroes of Hungary. Together with dozens of other princes, the still unknown Eugene of Savoy prepared for his baptism by fire; like Charles of Lorraine, he had left Paris to flee the Sun King, and was subsequently to cover himself in glory, reconquering eastern Europe for the Christian cause. The Prince Elector of Saxony, too, prepared his troops, assisted by Field Marshal Goltz and the Prince Elector of Bavaria, with the five Wittelsbachs. In the centre of the Christian lines, next to the Bavarians, stood the Franconian and Swabian troops; besides them, the princes and rulers ofThuringia, from the glorious houses ofWelf and of Holstein; then came other great names like the Margrave of Bayreuth, Field Marshals and Generals Rodolfo Baratta, Dunewald, Stirum, Baron von Degenfeld, Karoly Palffy and many other heroic defenders of the cause of Christ. Finally, the right wing was held by the valorous Poles, King Jan Sobieski and his two lieutenants.

  When they beheld that powerful deployment of friendly forces, the hard-pressed defenders of Vienna immediately gave way to jubilation, launching dozens of salvoes of rockets.

  The army was sighted from Kara Mustapha's camp too; but when the Turks decided to react, it was too late: the attackers were already charging down the slopes of the Kahlenberg at breakneck speed. The Grand Vizir and his men then emerged precipitously from their tents and their trenches, in their turn, deploying in battle order. In the centre stood Kara Mustapha and the great mass of the Spahis; by his side, the impious Infidel preacher Wani Effendi with their sacred standard; and before him, the Agha with his regiments of sanguinary janissaries. On the right wing, near the Danube, the cruel Voivodes of Moldavia and Walachia, Vizir Kara Mehmet of Diyarbakir and Ibrahim Pasha, from Buda; on the left wing, the Khan of the Tartars and a great number of pashas.

  The gentle green heights outside the walls of Vienna, with their many vineyards, were the theatre of the battle. The first, memorable, clash took place in the narrows of the Nussberg, between the Christian left wing and the janissaries. After prolonged battling back and forth, the imperial troops and the Saxons succeeded at midday in breaking through and chasing the Turks back to Grinzing and Heiligenstadt. Meanwhile, the troops of Charles of Lorraine reached Dobling and approached the Turkish encampment, while Count Caprara's Austrian cavalry and Lubomirsky's armoured horsemen made the Moldavians bite the dust after bitter fighting, chasing their remnants back along the Danube. Meanwhile, from the heights of the Kahlenberg, King Jan Sobieski hurled down the Polish cavalry, after the German and Polish infantry had cleared the way for them, chasing the janissaries from house to house, from vine to vine, from haystack to haystack, and, with cruel obstinacy, driving them from Neustift, from Potzleinsdorf and from Dornbach.

  The Christians' hearts trembled when Kara Mustapha tried to take advantage of the enemy's moves and to drive wedges into the gaps created by their powerful advance. These attempts were, however, short-lived: Charles of Lorraine sent his Austrians in to attack, making them converge on the right. In Dornbach, they cut off the retreat of the Turks, who were trying to withdraw towards Dobling. Meanwhile, the Polish cavalry smashed through all resistance, driving the enemy back as far as Hernals.

  At the centre, in the front line, while the glorious Sarmatian military ensign fluttered above, the King of Poland rode with the falcon's wing raised on the tip of his lance, splendid and indomitable, alongside Prince Jakob, barely sixteen and already a hero, flanked by his knights with their armour marvellously ornamented by their multicoloured surcoats, by plumes and by precious stones. To the cry of "Jesumaria!" the lances of the hussars and of King Jan's heavy cavalry swept away the Spahis and charged towards the tent of Kara Mustapha.

  The latter, observing the clash between his own men and the Polish cavalry from his command post, instinctively looked up to the green standard in the shade of which he stood. That sacred standard was precisely what the Christians were aiming at. He then yielded to fear, and decided to withdraw, dragging with him in his inglorious retreat, first the Pashas, then the whole body of his troops. The centre o
f the Turkish host then gave way, too; the rest of the army panicked, and defeat turned to disaster.

  The besieged Viennese at last took courage and dared to sally forth through the Scottish Gate, while the Turks fled, abandoning to the enemy their immense encampment, overflowing with incalculable treasures; not, however, without first cutting the throats of hundreds of prisoners and dragging with them as slaves six thousand men, eleven thousand women, fourteen thousand young girls and fifty thousand children.

  The military victory was so complete and triumphant that no one thought of stopping the fleeing Infidels. For fear of a return of the Turks, the Christian soldiers, on the contrary, remained on guard through the night.

  The first to enter the tent of Kara iMustapha was King Jan Sobieski, who took as booty the horsetail and the steed left behind by the defeated commander, as well as the many oriental treasures and marvels abandoned by the dissolute miscreant satrap.

  On the next day, the dead were counted: the Turks had lost ten thousand men on the field of battle, three hundred cannon, fifteen thousand tents and mountains of arms. The Christians mourned two thousand dead, including, alas, General de Souches and Prince Potocki; but there was no time for sadness: all Vienna yearned to welcome the victors, who entered in triumph the city which they had saved from the Infidel hordes. King Jan Sobieski wrote humbly to the Pope, attributing the victory to a miracle: venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit.*

  It was, as I said, only later that we were to learn all this in detail. Yet, around the Donzello, jubilation was growing: on 24th September, * We came, we saw, God conquered. (Translator's note.) a notice was posted in all the churches of Rome ordering that the Ave Maria should be sounded that very evening by all bells to thank the Lord for the defeat of the Turks; gay lights were placed in all windows and with universal and excessive exultation the bells rang out, while rockets, Catherine wheels and little mortars went off all around. Thus, from our windows, one could hear not only the people giving vent to their joy but above all the loud explosions of the fireworks, whose flashes illuminated the roofs of embassies, the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Piazza Navona and the Campo di Fiore. Having flung open the shutters and glued ourselves to the bars of the hostelry's windows, we witnessed in the street the burning in effigy of vizirs and pashas, amidst the uncontainable joy of the populace. We beheld entire families, groups of boys, clusters of young men and old, marching back and forth bearing torches, as though crazed, lighting up the sweet September night and accompanying, with their laughter, the silvery counterpoint of the bells.

  Even those who dwelled close to our hostelry and who had hitherto taken care not to approach our windows for fear of contagion, now shared with us their joy, their gibes, their cries of gladness. It seemed that they felt the approach of our liberation, almost as though the triumph of Christian arms in Vienna portended the release of our poor inn from the menace of the plague.

  Although still sequestered, we too were overcome by immense joy; it was I myself who brought the news to each of the guests. We all celebrated together in the chambers on the ground floor, embracing each other and drinking toasts with the greatest and most cheerful exultation. I, above all, was in seventh heaven; Dulcibeni's plan to strike at the heart of Christian Europe had come too late, even if I was still anxious about the health of the Pope.

  Besides all these genuine manifestations of joy, in the news which was circulating among the populace and which reached us from the street, there were two circumstances which I found somewhat unexpected and worthy of reflection.

  First, from one of the watchmen (who were continuing to keep an eye on the inn, in the absence of further orders) we came to know that the Christian victory had been aided by an inexplicable series of errors on the part of the Turks.

  The armies of Kara Mustapha had, in fact, by means of the novel technique of mines and trenches, reduced the city walls of Vienna and, in the opinion of the victors themselves, could unquestionably have carried out a concentrated and victorious assault long before the arrival of King Jan Sobieski's reinforcements. Yet, instead of rapidly unleashing the decisive attack, Kara Mustapha had, quite inexplicably, made no move, wasting several precious days. Nor had the Turks taken the trouble to occupy the heights of the Kahlenberg, which would have given them a decisive tactical advantage. Not only that: they had neglected to confront the Christian reinforcements before they crossed the Danube, thus allowing them to draw irremediably close to the beleaguered city.

  Why all this had happened, no one could tell. It was as though the Turks had been waiting for something… Something which made them feel sure of victory. But, what could that be?

  Secondly, another strange circumstance: the outbreak of the plague, which had been ravaging the city for months, suddenly died out, for no apparent reason.

  To the victors, this series of miracles was seen as a sign from divine providence, the same benign providence which had to the last sustained the desperate forces of the besieged and Jan Sobieski's liberating troops.

  The culmination of the festivities in Rome took place on the 25th day; of that, I shall recount more later, since my concern here is to tell of other important facts which came to my acquaintance during those days of sequestration.

  The strange manner in which the plague in Vienna had suddenly been extinguished gave me no little cause for reflection. After terrorising the besieged even more than the Ottoman foe could, the pestilence had rapidly and mysteriously petered out. This factor had been decisive: had the infection persisted and spread among the population ofVienna, the Turks would certainly have prevailed without the slightest difficulty.

  It was impossible not to consider that news in the light of what Atto and I had so laboriously uncovered or deduced, all of which I strove to sum up in my mind. Louis XIV hoped for a Turkish victory in Vienna, the better to carve up Europe with the Infidels. In order to achieve his dreams of dominion, the Sun King counted upon using the infectious principle of the secretum pestis, in other words the secretum morbi, which he had at last succeeded in extracting from Fouquet. At the same time, however, the consort of the Most Christian King, Maria Teresa, was striving to achieve a diametrically opposed design. Proudly attached to the destiny of the House of Habsburg which occupied the imperial throne and of which she herself was a scion, the Queen of France strove secretly to impede her husband's plans. Indeed, according to the theory advanced by Atto, Fouquet had succeeded in delivering to Maria Teresa, through Lauzun and Mademoiselle (both of whom detested the Sovereign no less than Maria Teresa herself), the only antidote capable of countering the secret weapon of the plague: the secretum vitae, that is, the rondeau with which Devize had beguiled us during those days at the Donzello, and which seemed even to have cured Bedfordi.

  Nor was it by chance that the antidote should have been in the hands of Devize; the rondeau, although probably composed by Kircher in its original, crude form, had been perfected and consigned to paper by the guitarist Francesco Corbetta, a past master of the art of enciphering secret messages in musical notes.

  Even thus simplified, the picture was as hard on the intellect as on the memory. Yet, if the method which Atto Melani had taught me held water (to act on suppositions, where one has not the benefit of knowledge), then everything fell into place. One must use one's powers of reasoning persistently in order to uncover what was needed to explain patent absurdities.

  I therefore asked myself: if Louis XIV had wished to deliver the coup de grace to the dreaded Habsburgs, who flanked him on either side in Austria and in Spain, and above all to the hated Emperor Leopold, where would he have unleashed the plague? Why, in Vienna; the answer astounded me with its simplicity.

  Was that not the decisive battle for the fate of Christianity? And was I not aware, ever since I had overheard the conversation between Brenozzi and Stilone Priaso, that the Most Christian King was secretly playing on the side of the Turks in order to catch the Empire in the teeth of an infernal trap set between East and West?

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p; Nor was that all. Was it not true that there had for months been an outbreak of the plague in Vienna, which had spread apprehension amongst all the heroic, beleaguered warriors? And was it not also true that the infection had died out, or had been mysteriously tamed by some arcane invisible agent, thus saving the city and all Western Europe?

  Although deeply immersed in such meditations, I myself found it difficult to accept the logical conclusions to which they gave rise: the plague in Vienna had been unleashed by agents of Louis XIV or by anonymous cut-throats in their employ, thus putting into effect the occult science of the secretum morbi. That was why the Turks had not moved for days and days, despite the fact that Vienna was in their grasp: they were awaiting the dreaded effects of the infection sent by their secret ally, the French sovereign.

  The infamous sabotage had, however, encountered no less powerful adverse forces: the emissaries of Maria Teresa had arrived in Vienna in time to dispel the threat, activating the secretum vitae and thus overcoming the infection. How this was done, I would never know. What is, however, certain is that the vain hesitations of the Turkish army were to cost Kara Mustapha his head.

  This summary, so overcrowded with events, risked seeming too fanciful, indeed almost fantastical. Did not all the interweaving of the affairs of Kircher and Fouquet, Maria Teresa and Louis XIV Lauzun and Mademoiselle, Corbetta and Devize also smack of folly? Yet, I had spent entire nights in Atto Melani's company reconstructing, piece by piece, in a sort of divine madness, all that senseless intrigue, which had become more real for me than the life which continued outside the walls of the Donzello.

  My imagination was peopled by the shadowy agents of the Sun King, intent upon spreading the pestilence throughout poor Vienna when the city was already in extremis, on the other side, the defenders, the shadow-players of Maria Teresa. All of them were investigating secret formulae concealed in the pentagrams of Kircher and Corbetta, agitating retorts and alembics and other obscure instruments (like those seen on Dulcibeni's island) and reciting incomprehensible hermetic phrases in some abandoned cloister. Thereafter, some would have poisoned-and others cleansed-waters, orchards, streets. In the invisible struggle between the secretum morbi and the secretum vitae the vital principle had in the end triumphed: the same one which had enthralled my heart and my mind as I listened to the rondeau played on Devize's guitar.