Secretum am-2

by Rita Monaldi

  After skirting the chapel, we crossed the drive that led to the theatre and came to the rear entrance. We got ourselves a little dirty but at least we had avoided being seen by the other guests or by the guards watching over the main entrance. We must make sure that Albani, Spinola and Spada should know nothing of our search.

  Atto had commanded his secretary to remain at the reception and, most discreetly, to keep an eye on the three eminences, even though he did not expect to obtain much information.

  We both knew that, if we could lay our hands on the note, we would learn the details of their next appointment, and perhaps of their plans. It was true that Caesar Augustus would have chewed up the paper thoroughly where it was steeped in his beloved chocolate. That was precisely why I knew that he would not have got rid of it, but would have held on to it carefully so that he could from time to time return to lick its sweet surface with his pointed black tongue.

  We had just passed the San Pancrazio Gate when Atto grabbed me by the shoulder.

  "Look!"

  It was he. He was circling almost directly above our heads. He had surely heard us. He swerved at once to the right and then flew straight ahead. This was just what I had been expecting. Whenever he set out on his solitary adventures, abandoning the villa for days, sometimes even weeks on end, I would see him fly off towards the tallest, most forbidding trees; and that was what he now did. Leaving Rome, he had not much choice. The most majestic pines, the proudest cypresses, the most hospitable plane trees in the neighbourhood were all gathered in one place, and there we saw him disappear, shooting like a brilliant white and yellow comet, into the green gardens of the Vessel.

  Evening the Fourth

  10th J ULY, 1700

  As we slipped into the park of the Vessel, once again undisturbed, our gaze scanned the heights rather than what lay before us. Without a shadow of a doubt, Caesar Augustus was somewhere up there, perched on some high branch, perhaps even keeping an eye on us.

  The late afternoon was at last free of the burning influence of the summer sun but, as had happened on the occasion of our previous visits, no sooner had we entered the Vessel than the evening shadows, which seemed already to be lengthening over Villa Spada, vanished, swept away, together with the few clouds, by a sharp little breeze that left the field open to a pure, shimmering golden light. In short, twilight seemed to be an unwelcome guest at Elpidio Benedetti's villa.

  After crossing the entrance courtyard, we moved towards the espaliered citrus trees, in the neighbourhood of which we began a cautious investigation. The vivid tints of oranges and lemons, the splashes of colour of vases of roses, the leopard-like shadows of the chequerboard pergolas and the little wood confounded not only the sense of sight, but of smell, and indeed all the senses. Light breaths of wind caused every leaf to murmur, every flower to vibrate, every stem to sway. After a few minutes, I seemed to be seeing Caesar Augustus everywhere and nowhere. We walked the length of the drive, which was covered by a barrel-vaulted pergola ending with the fresco of Rome Triumphant. We found nothing. Even Atto seemed discouraged. We changed direction and headed for the house.

  "Damned bird," he murmured.

  "I confess that in my view we are most unlikely to find him. When Caesar Augustus does not want to be found, there is usually nothing that can be done about it."

  "Nothing to be done? That we shall see!" said he, brandishing his silver-pommelled stick at the heavens, as though he were admonishing some deity.

  "I tell you that if he does not want to be found, not even if…"

  "I know what we shall do and what we shall not do, my boy. I am a diplomat in the service of the Most Christian King," said he, silencing me.

  I held back briefly, then decided to answer.

  "Very well, Signor Atto, then explain to me why you tore the note from my hand when I had just got hold of it. If Buvat had not performed that clever trick, if he had not fallen on top of me, perhaps we should now have the note in our hands. Instead of which, you took it and allowed it to be snatched from you by the parrot!"

  I awaited his response with my chest tight with emotion. As usual, my sallies against Atto caused me a fine bout of anxiety.

  For a second he stayed silent, then he answered me with a cruel hiss.

  "You really haven't got a whisper of a clue, and what's more, you've never had one. You would never have been able to hold onto that note. Albani was right there in front of you. They would all have seen you, you'd have had to return it to him. Only I and Buvat could have made it disappear, if your idiotic parrot had not been there to ruin everything."

  "In the first place, the parrot is not mine but was left to the household by the late lamented Monsignor Virgilio Spada, Cardinal Fabrizio's uncle, may God keep him in glory. And besides, it was thanks to the parrot that I was able to take the note from Albani."

  "I could have distracted Albani. In the meanwhile, Buvat would have taken advantage of the opportunity."

  "Distract Albani? But you've done nothing except to make an enemy of him. For the second time today you have caused a scandal in his presence with your verbal excesses. They'll all be talking about nothing else at the Villa Spada."

  "Silence!"

  I became furious. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I knew that my outbursts were thoroughly justified. Atto could not reduce me to silence that easily. But this was about something else.

  He was looking behind me, tense and on his guard, as though studying a wild beast at close quarters.

  "Is he behind me?" I asked, thinking of Caesar Augustus.

  "He is moving away. He is dressed in the same way as last time."

  "Dressed?"

  I turned.

  He was a little over ten yards off. Under his arm, he held a heavy bundle of papers tied with a red ribbon and was walking swiftly, with an absorbed frown, in the direction of a young girl with a complexion as white as ricotta and with thick, curly brown hair. With a bow, to which the maiden responded with a broad smile, he then handed her a purse full of money and some papers.

  I just had time to recognise them before they both disappeared behind a large vase containing a lemon tree. There was little room for doubt. It was the same pair again: the mature gentleman and the maiden with whom I had seen him in conversation on the first day when we had entered the Vessel. She was (identical to) Maria Mancini. He, now that I had seen him a second time, reminded me of someone; but who?

  Just as they had appeared, the two vanished. Already instructed by the previous apparitions, we made no attempt to follow them or to understand how they had disappeared. I looked at Atto.

  "Ahi, dunque'c'e pur vero, " he murmured.

  Now I knew whom we had seen.

  It would take too long to go over all the facts to which that phrase — "Ah, so it really is true" — referred. Suffice to say that seventeen years earlier, it had been uttered at the point of death by a guest at the Donzello, the inn where I was then working as an apprentice and where, in those same days, I came to know Melani.

  The dying man who had pronounced those words was Nicolas Fouquet, the former Superintendent of Finances of the Most Christian King, who was imprisoned for life following a palace conspiracy and had, after untold hardships and turns of fate, found refuge in Rome: at the Donzello, to be precise. Atto knew full well that I had a perfect memory of those events, since the memoir which he had taken from me and then paid for in cash recounted them in detail.

  "It was the same gentleman as the other day, with Maria…" I murmured, still shaken by that enigmatic manifestation.

  He did not reply, letting silence assent in his stead. Our altercation of moments before by now forgotten, we kept looking here and there, sticking our noses between leaves and branches, hiding from one another the fact that we were no longer looking for Caesar Augustus but into the abyss of memory in which the apparition had, through some necromancer's arts, cast us. I was thinking of the time when I had come to know Abbot Melani. He, however, was
thinking of yet earlier times, of his friendship with Fouquet, of his tremendous destiny and of his tragic end. That was why, I said to myself, the first apparition we had come across at the Vessel had shaken Abbot Melani even more than the subsequent ones. He had in one moment beheld that apparition of Maria, to whom he was tied by such a tangle of feelings, and of Fouquet, whose terrible death he had both witnessed and had a part in.

  Merely by looking at him, I could clearly perceive the powerful clash of opposing emotions which was taking place in Atto's soul. He had seen his old friend, not old and exhausted by years of imprisonment, but in the flower of strength and maturity. The bundle which he carried under his arm must contain working documents which he, an indefatigable worker in the service of the kingdom, even brought home with him — that I knew from Atto — before the machinations of the court of France stripped him of his minister's place, his honour, his liberty and his life.

  With erect carriage, determined gait, distinguished features, a frowning expression, but only because his mind was turned towards matters high and noble: such had been Fouquet's bearing when Atto had known him in his own youth. Seeing him again, the Abbot was once more cast back into the depths of a thousand remote events, a thousand motions of the soul and of history, into an agony of infinite pain, and perhaps no less remorse. In that villa, as in a limpid and placid pool, the past was wondrously mirrored and, arranging its hair, almost coquettishly said: I am still here.

  I saw Atto walk awhile, no longer with the gay movements of a lively old man, but with the uncertain gait of a young man precociously aged. I felt incapable of confronting those ordeals of the heart and the spirit; if I were in his place, said I, my whole body would be all shaken with sobs. Yet, he was resisting, still pretending to look for the parrot. I could only pardon him, and I thought that his many defects (rashness, duplicity, arrogance) must be forgiven if I truly wanted to call myself his friend. This meant perhaps deluding myself about many things: for example, that he might be capable of sincere friendship and trust. "You are my truest friend": alas, that phrase, which I had heard during the first apparition of Maria Mancini and Fouquet, I could certainly never have uttered in relation to Abbot Melani. Yet, is not friendship perhaps the constant companion of illusion, an illusion which, nurtured for its own sake, thus prolongs the joys, ephemeral but necessary, which it brings to our lives?

  "1 do believe that you are right. Caesar Augustus is not here, or else it is too difficult to find him," said Atto tonelessly.

  "If he does not want to be found, this is perhaps the ideal place," I completed his reasoning, no less distractedly.

  "Yet it is truly curious that he should have flown to this exact spot," observed Melani. "The three cardinals, the Tetrachion, your parrot: this place is becoming somewhat crowded."

  "In the case of Caesar Augustus, I think that is fortuitous. He likes tall, leafy trees, and here there are the finest ones on all the Janiculum."

  "Well then, let us try to establish whether all the others came here fortuitously."

  "The others?" I retorted, thinking apprehensively of the apparitions. "Starting with the Tetrachion," Melani hastened to make clear, directing his steps towards the entrance of the building.

  Once again, however, he had to stop. The sweetest of melodies spread by an utterly aerial violin was softly filling the park. It was impossible to tell whence it came or for whose pleasure it was intended.

  "Again that music… the folia," murmured Atto.

  "Would you like to walk around the house and see where it is coming from?"

  "No; let us stay here. We have done enough running for the time being. I would not be averse to a little break."

  He sat down on a little marble bench. I thought he was about to justify himself with some pretext like "We all grow old" or "I am no longer a boy", but he said nothing.

  "The folia. Like that of Capitor," I ventured.

  "Did you too think of it?"

  "It was you who explained it to me: Capitor, the Spanish lunatic, whose nickname 'Capitor' is, you said, only a deformation of lapitora, which is supposed to be Spanish for 'the madwoman'."

  "Tout se tient.'* This, however, is a folia that seems never to come to an end. Every time we hear it there are new variations, while Capitor's folly did come to an end."

  "Do you mean that she left France in the end?"

  "Yes, one day she and the Bastard did go. But nothing was ever the same as before."

  "What happened?"

  "A series of unfortunate circumstances which may have led to the scene which we have just witnessed," Atto whispered, at last deciding to utter some words on the apparition of Maria and Fouquet.

  After Capitor's spectacle, Abbot Melani told me, the Cardinal's attitude changed radically. The madwoman's obscure prophecy, "A virgin who weds the crown brings death", was breathing down his neck and terror's trumpet resounded in his ears: the *"It all holds together." (Translator's note.) union between Louis and Maria must be eradicated, crushed, prevented by all means. Frightened, the Cardinal thought, "My head depends upon it," hiding behind his usual pallor his new unavowable fear.

  Thus, over the next two months, in the spring of 1659, ever more fearful obstacles came between the two lovers. In June, Mazarin formally decreed that Maria must leave the court. The Cardinal, who planned to travel to the Pyrenees in order to discuss a number of details of the peace treaty with Spain, would take his niece with him and separate from her during the journey, sending her on to La Rochelle, where she was to reside with her two younger sisters Ortensia and Marianna. The departure date: 22nd June.

  The Queen, fearing Louis's reaction, took care not to break the news to him. Mazarin therefore charged Maria with announcing her departure to the King. Louis's wrath exploded: he threatened Mazarin with disgrace, and Maria's despair immeasurably increased his rage and thirst for revenge. For three days, he would not let his mother speak; in utter desperation, he cast himself at the feet of Mazarin and the Queen, begging them in tears to allow him to marry Maria. With consummate rhetoric and in a firm voice, Mazarin reminded the young King that he, the Cardinal, had been chosen by his father and mother to assist him with his counsel, that he had served him with inviolable fidelity and that he could never have done anything that might damage the glory of France and of the crown; and finally, that he was the tutor of his niece Maria and would rather have killed her than consent to such a betrayal.

  The King, in tears, gave way. When they were alone, Mazarin said to the Queen: "What are we to do? In his place, I'd do the same thing."

  Even after that day, Louis kept telling Maria that he would never consent to marry the Infanta of Spain, that he expected to overcome the resistance of the Cardinal and his mother and that only she would one day sit on the French throne. As a pledge of his faith, he gave her the most precious necklace which he had acquired from the Queen of England and which he had set aside for the day of his betrothal.

  Maria, however, had no more illusions: deeply wounded by her loved one's weakness, she even went so far once as to urge Louis to wed the Infanta.

  Louis tried to reassure her, swearing that he had thoughts for none but her and would surely find a solution. Such promises could no longer satisfy the woman who received them, nor even the man who pronounced them.

  The days that followed were nothing but an alternation of contrasting sentiments and humours: of Maria's love for the King, on the one hand, and love for her honour, on the other. At court meanwhile, Louis constantly repeated that his pain at the separation was unbearable. But words no longer sufficed.

  "Few men, my boy, have seen what I then saw, and none will ever speak of it, of that you may be sure," said Atto.

  So that the looseness of his tongue would not cause his legs to grow heavy, Atto and I took a brief promenade under the pergolas of the park. In that place populated by the phantasms of the past, every drive seemed to elicit from him an episode, every hedge a phrase, every flower bed a detail.

&nb
sp; On the eve of Maria's departure, the King was far from resigned. On 21st June, the day before the separation, the Queen Mother and her son had a long private conversation in the bath chamber. Afterwards the King was seen to leave with swollen eyes. Maria was to depart; Louis had lost a battle, yet hoped somehow to win the war.

  On the next day, suffering from an exceptionally violent lovesickness, he was bled twice, on the foot and on the arm (in the days that followed he was subjected to four purges and to another six treatments with leeches). Sobbing unrestrainedly and promising in a loud voice that he would make her his wife, Louis accompanied Maria to her carriage.

  "She, obviously, could not understand. He was the King, he could do what he wanted; and yet he was yielding to his mother and to the Cardinal."

  "And what did Maria say to him?"

  "Ah Sire! You weep: but you are the King, and it is I who am departing!'" said Atto with a thin smile on his lips.

  "But why did the King not impose his will?"

  "You should know that only the absence of the beloved reveals her importance. Louis felt in love but precisely because it was the first time he did not realise that it would be the only one. Queen Anne convinced her son that with time he would forget and one day he would be grateful to her for the hurt she was inflicting on him. He believed her. And the damage was irreparable."

  We again sat down on a marble bench.

  Once Maria had gone, there began between the two an intense, impassioned exchange of letters. She chose to leave her sisters at La Rochelle and to take refuge at the nearby fortress of Brouage.

  It was August. Louis, with Queen Anne and the court in his train, set out for the Pyrenees where the treaty between France and Spain was to be signed; and the seal of that accord was to be the marriage between Louis and the Infanta.