by Rita Monaldi
While Atto was complacently boasting of Spada's friendships among his castrato colleagues, I was reflecting.
"There is one thing I do not understand, Signor Atto: how come Caesar Augustus changed owners, passing from Benedetti to the Spada family?"
"Elpidio Benedetti and Virgilio Spada knew one another very well: 1 heard at the time that the Vessel contained many of Virgilio's ideas, for instance the fact that the villa should contain far more curiosities than luxuries, and that it should be a fortress of deep speculations on the Faith and on knowledge, whereby to attract the visitor and induce him to reflect."
"The Vessel as an Ark and school of wisdom, in other words," I commented, with a touch of surprise at the bizarre correlation.
"So, in exchange for Monsignor Virgilio's suggestions, Benedetti may have given him his parrot to place in his aviary."
"Or perhaps that extravagant creature, instead of flying away from the Villa Spada to the Vessel was wont in those days to flee in the opposite direction and may have ended up by being adopted by the Spada household, with Benedetti's consent. On our own, we have no means of knowing, and Caesar Augustus will not tell us, all the less so as we've not yet succeeded in catching him. But his time will soon be up."
"How do you think you'll capture him?" I asked, perplexed by the Abbot's certainty.
"What a question… For example, with a parrot caller, if such a thing exists. Or with with the help of his favourite titbits, like chocolate. Or perhaps with a fascinating female parrot made of straw, why not?"
I avoided commenting on Atto's complete incompetence in the matter of fowls.
Meanwhile nightfall, to which the Vessel too had at last yielded, made it necessary to get back to the Villa Spada. As were retraced our footsteps, we heard Albicastro's voice in the distance:
Who would be wise by reputation
But isn't blessed with moderation Engages in pursuit absurd;
His falcon is a cuckoo bird.
Melani turned sharply in the direction of the voice. Then, taken with a sudden idea, he smiled and set off once more on his way.
"How are we to capture Caesar Augustus? We shall need a little help. I already have an idea of how to begin, and with whom."
We were both utterly worn out when we reached the gates of Villa Spada and without the least desire to get involved in the festivities and their trivial sophistication. All the way back, Atto had uttered not a word. He seemed weary of prying and meddling among the guests and desirous of retiring as soon as possible to his own chamber, there to meditate upon the many and surprising events of the day, which had multiplied unceasingly until our latest discovery of the painting by Pieter Boel.
We took leave of one another almost in haste, agreeing to meet the next day, but without specifying any time. Better thus, thought I. Perhaps I might tomorrow wish to take another solitary walk, as I had that morning. Or I might at long last get a chance to see my Cloridia and our two little ones. Or again (but this secret preference, I dared not admit even to myself), seeing that my adored consort and the little ones were in no danger, and Cloridia was surely rather busy, I wished I could find the time and the means to reflect deeply by myself upon all that was happening. The day which was now drawing to an end had dispensed a series of strange and suggestive occurrences which needed to be sorted out, yet the means of understanding them all were still missing; just as children know that they have human faculties of understanding and reasonably enough ask to be treated like adults, forgetting that they are still infants.
First, before awakening, there had been the nightmare of the old mendicant; then the procession of the Company of Saint Elizabeth, the brief conversation with the priest and the longer one with the innkeeper and the shoe-vendor about beggars true and false. After that came Atto's new revelations about the Most Christian King and Maria Mancini, the pair of encounters with Albicastro, the inscriptions in the Vessel which seemed to appear in unison with my thoughts, and the picture with the three presents: what was more, containing the image of Caesar Augustus… Of course, the parrot had disappeared along with with Albani's note, and now we had returned to the Villa Spada empty-handed.
It was too much, really too much, said I to myself as I went to sleep in my bivouac at the casino of the villa. Only the new day could bring me light and counsel, a clear picture of things, or at least a semblance of greater clarity.
As it turned out, I was mistaken.
Day the Fifth
11th July, 1700
"On your feet, curses! On your feet, I said!"
It could not have been a worse awakening. Someone had seized me and was shaking me, yelling unpleasantly and dragging me back into the world of the awake, but at the cost of a great headache.
My eyes were still half-closed when I heard the words which made clear to me the identity of my assailant.
"I've been waiting for you to wake up for centuries! Someone here is in possession of the most important information. You must act, and act at once. This is an ord… Well, this is my firm will, and not just mine."
Abbot Melani's words (for it was obviously he) alluded to the menacing and iron-willed figure of the Most Christian King, whom he had by now learned to evoke astutely, sometimes dressed for the part of Maria Mancini's ill-starred suitor, sometimes, as now, presenting the inflexible tyrant to whose will all must blindly bend.
"A moment, I am just…" I mumbled in protest, my mouth still all gummed up, turning over in the blankets to get away from his tugging.
"Not one second more," said he, seizing my clothes from a nearby chair where I had left them and hurling them at me.
While freeing myself from his grasp, the first thing I looked at in the light of day was Atto, and he in turn stared at me with fiery, stabbing eyes. I noticed with no little curiosity that he had not come empty-handed. Against the chair he had leaned a bizarre collection of wooden and iron tools which seemed to me as familiar as they were out of place in a bedchamber.
Dressing hurriedly, I opened my eyes properly and realised what this was all about. Among the long-handled tools, I recognised a rake, a shovel, a hoe and a broom. In a heavy box with a handle, there were piled up a trowel, a bucket, a dibble, a pronged grubber, a sickle, shears, knives, a few pots and brushes. I recognised them.
"These gardening tools belong to the Villa Spada. What do you want to do with them?"
"What matters is what you will do," said he, rudely shoving all that hardware into my hands, so that it was a miracle that I did not drop the whole lot, and motioning me to follow him out of the door. "Now, however, there's an emergency Today is Sunday and the first thing we must do is go to mass, otherwise our absence will be noticed. Get a move on: Don Tibaldutio is about to begin the service."
Villa Spada was astir with preparations for the fifth day of celebrations. On the evening before, dinner must have gone on until all hours, for when I was going to sleep one could not hear the sound of guests' carriages leaving the villa. Nevertheless, that morning the servants were already busy going about their duties: sweeping, cleaning, tidying, cooking, preparing, decorating, repainting and retouching. As we left my little room, all around us maidservants, ushers and menservants were rushing. Some of them looked at me enviously, since for days now that mysterious Frenchman had been relieving me of a great deal of work. Atto spurred me on, poking the pommel of his walking stick painfully between my shoulder blades. By a mere hair's breadth we avoided encountering Don Paschatio (whom we heard a short distance away, lamenting the disloyalty of an absent seamstress), thus avoiding the command to execute some urgent duties. Laden down as I was with all kinds of implements, I proceeded clumsily, at the risk of falling, tripping on the rake I was carrying or being knocked over by some weary scullion.
Once I had laid down the box of tools in the garden hut, we both at last entered the chapel, curiously full of all kinds of worshippers, from the eminences lodging at the villa down to the humblest menials (discreetly to one side), just as Don Tib
aldutio's service was beginning. I took part in the rite wholeheartedly, inwardly begging the Lord also to pardon Abbot Melani, who was present at holy mass out of pure self-interest.
Once out of the chapel, Atto nonchalantly bestowed salutations right and left, but at the same time he had resumed poking me cruelly in the back.
"Get a move on, damn you," he hissed at me while smiling sweetly at Cardinal Durazzo.
"Now, would you kindly tell me what has got into you?" I protested while, once more burdened with the equipment, I followed him to the flower beds at the entrance to the villa. "What the deuce is it that's so urgent?"
"Shhh! There he is, 'tis just as well he has not gone," whispered Atto while inviting me to remain silent and indicating with his nose an individual bending over one of the two rows of flower beds lining the avenue giving access to the villa.
"But that is the Master Florist," said I.
"What is his name?"
"Tranquillo Romauli. He is the grandson of a famous gardener, and works here at the Villa Spada. I know him well. His late lamented spouse was a great midwife, who taught Cloridia and who presided over the birth of our two daughters. I have often been commanded by Don Paschatio to act as his assistant.
"Ah, yes, I was forgetting: you too are an expert on plants…" muttered the Abbot, recalling the humiliation he had suffered at my hands at the Vessel the day before, over the supposed flowers from the mythical garden of Adonis. "Well, be prepared for a surprise, Tranquillo Romauli knows of the Tetrachion."
In overexcited tones and employing lofty phrases, Abbot Melani explained to me how, that morning, he had awoken rather early, when Aurora was stretching her arms with a yawn and abandoning the conjugal bed she shared with Sunset. All night, he had been assailed by a thousand questions to which the previous day had given rise and left unanswered. The entire villa was still blessedly sleeping; the bluish first light of morn was penetrated only by the light of some furtive lamp issuing from the windows of those who, like Melani, wished to spy on the day in its secret youth. Atto had then descended to the garden in order to take a salutary walk and inhale the innocent and perfect air of the dawning day which only the idle despise.
"I wandered through the entire garden, without noticing anything suspicious," said he, thus betraying that the purpose of his walk was to spy and stick his nose into others' business. "I had reached the little grove when I saw him there, a few paces in front of me. He was busy using a pair of shears on a flower bed."
"That is his trade. So, what of it?"
"We spoke of this and that: the weather, the humidity, how lovely these flowers are, how I hoped it would not be so hot today, and so on and so forth. Then he named it."
"What, the Tetrachion?"
"Shhh! Do you want everyone to overhear you?" murmured Atto, darting nervous looks in all directions.
After the brief colloquy which he had described to me, Abbot Melani had moved on. He was only a short distance away when he had heard the Master Florist, no doubt thinking himself alone and therefore unheard, murmur a number of confused phrases. Then, still sitting, he had turned his eyes to heaven and had clearly pronounced the words which had thrown Atto into a state of such extreme alarm.
"'… and then the Tetrachion.' He said that, do you understand?"
"But this is incredible! What can he know of such things? The Master Florist has always seemed to me a spirit far removed from the things of politics. Not to speak of such… unusual matters as that of the Tetrachion."
"Usual or unusual, there's something behind this," Atto cut me short. "However unbelievable it may seem, he does know something. Perhaps he even wanted me to overhear him. It cannot be pure chance that he should have uttered those few words a few paces away from me, today of all days."
"Are you quite sure that you heard correctly?"
"Absolutely sure. Indeed, do you know what I think? This brings to mind the secret password of which your wife spoke."
"Cloridia did tell me that sooner or later she would have further information."
"Excellent. Except that, instead of reaching her, the information has come directly to us, in other words to the real interested parties, through the Master Florist."
"Passing Cloridia by? I find that hard to believe. In her circles, she is venerated. She assists at births all over Rome, and the women have no secrets from her."
"Yes, so long as they are mere women's gossip. But in an affair like this, no one would prefer some midwife to a diplomatic agent of His Majesty the Most Christian King," retorted Atto with ruffled pride.
"Perhaps I could try talking with the Master Florist, in order to see whether…"
"You could? Why, you must find out what he knows about the Tetrachion. Now, I shall be on my way. It is a fortunate coincidence that you should already have worked for him," said he, pointing at him and meaning that I was to commence my investigations there and then.
"Signor Atto, we shall need time to…"
"I do not wish to listen to ifs and buts. You are to begin forthwith. Stand next to him with all these implements and pretend that you mean to work. We shall meet at lunchtime. I must settle some rather urgent correspondence. I expect you to do your duty."
He set off at a determined pace for the great house. He had left me no choice.
In truth, I should have preferred to go first to the kitchen and get myself something to eat; but Master Tranquillo had already caught sight of me and I did not wish to give him the impression that I had something to hide. I therefore went up to him, wearing the least hypocritical smile of which I was capable.
Tranquillo Romauli, who had been named after his grandfather, that most skilled and distinguished of floriculturists, welcomed me benevolently. His physical presence contrasted curiously with the silent and sober art of gardening. He was a great fat bear of a man with a thick, bristling beard, black hair and vaguely obtuse little eyes surmounted by a pair of tangled, bushy eyebrows. He had a strong jaw and a big stomach, swelled up by many and generous bouts of eating, and this made him at once imposing and comically ridiculous when he reached out his great paws to prune the leaves of some tiny sick seedling. Above all, owing to some previous illness of the auditory organs, he had become rather hard of hearing, and his booming voice made every conversation an exchange of shouts, at the end of which the person speaking to him was left no less deaf than the Master Florist. To find out from him what he knew of the Tetrachion, if ever he was prepared to reveal that, would be no easy matter. A conversation with Romauli could practically never be settled in a few easy exchanges; although his character was exquisite, he was the most verbose individual, garrulous to the point of being insufferable and obsessed with one exclusive, all-embracing, mind-dulling topic: flowers and gardening. His science was so vast and profound that he had come to be regarded as a sort of walking encyclopaedia of flower cultivation. It was said that he could recite the whole of Father Ferrari's De florum cultura and that he knew by heart the origins, history and design of every vegetable or flower garden in Rome.
After a few brief exchanges of pleasantries, he asked me if I had nothing to do that morning.
"Oh well… nothing in particular, to tell the truth."
"Really? Then you must be the only person here at the Villa Spada without some business to attend to. I imagine, however, that all those implements which you are holding in your arms must be there for some purpose," said he, pointing at the tools which Atto had heaped onto me.
"Of course…" said I guiltily. "I was hoping to be able to make myself useful in some way."
"Very well, your wish has already come true," he replied with satisfaction, picking up a wooden case full of other tools and motioning that I was to follow him.
We were, he explained, on our way to the flower beds near the chapel of the villa. It was a fine day; the fresh early morning breeze seemed to be holding an amiable dialogue with the twittering of the birds and with the multiform ranks of clouds which observed placidly from on
high the eternal round of terrestrial vanities. Our footsteps echoed softly on the fine gravel of the drives while the sun, still low on the horizon, warmed us with its first timid rays.
This delightful arrangement of the natural elements, however, completely escaped Tranquiilo Romauii who was, as ever, utterly preoccupied with the concerns of his art and had already begun to instruct me.
"Don Paschatio has ordered me to plant jasmine," he began in querulous tones. "Yet, I had told him quite clearly that the noblest garden has no place for jasmine. Neither our own yellow home-grown variety, of course, nor the common white lily. And even if there were any place for suchlike, they should take second place to the vermilion or orange Turk's head lily. These days, all sense has been lost of what is to be cultivated in a garden. 'Tis a veritable scandal."
"You are right, it is the most serious matter. So, you were saying that jasmine is unworthy of the best gardens?" said I, feigning interest.
"Let us say that pride of place is to be accorded to the 'silver goblet' or white narcissus, whichever one prefers to call it," he resumed, raising his voice. "Or to the double narcissus of Constantinople, which produces a set of ten or twelve flowers, to the Ragusa narcissus, the yellow narcissus or the starry variety; or again to the frasium, which resembles a rose, or a lettuce, to the ultramontane, which has the virtues of a double yellow rose, or to the sweetest smelling jonquils, with a perfume like that of jasmine, tempered by and mixed with the scent of orange blossom."
"I understand," said I, smothering a yawn and trying to see how I could place a word about the Tetrachion without arousing suspicion.
Meanwhile, we had moved around to the far side of the great house and had almost arrived at the flower beds near the chapel. The weight and bulk of my load was causing me to sway; inwardly, I was cursing Atto.
