Secretum am-2

by Rita Monaldi

  "One moment," I interrupted, "how do you know all these details?"

  "These things are child's play. In France, everyone knows them; one need only purchase some suitable book, like that of the Abbe de Vallemont, which I think I have already mentioned to you."

  "The one of which you spoke to me at the Vessel?" I asked, vaguely troubled.

  "Exactly."

  The artifice that followed, Abbot Melani went on to explain, worked, not in the presence of fire, but if one lit a candle and then extinguished it. And our lantern, as those who organised all that machinery could easily foresee, reached the bottom of the slide still lit but was smashed upon contact with the ground. If the room had been well impregnated with the vapours of the mixture of spirits and salt, faces seen through that artificial atmosphere would take on the pallid, livid, deathly semblance of exhumed corpses, or lost souls. And that is what happened.

  "Excuse me," I then asked, realising that our ascent through utter darkness was practically at an end, and we were again walking on flat ground. "Why did you not realise at once that this was all an artifice?"

  "Surprise. They organised everything to perfection: first, the dancing fire, then our faces turned into spectres, and lastly the army of devils and the flaming sword, in reality heated up on some stupid fireplace… Unfortunately, in a state of shock, I too was slow to recognise the smell of camphor, otherwise I'd have warned you in time."

  "Then, what made you realise what was happening?"

  "When that idiot Ugonio, alias the German, opened his mouth. It was impossible not to recognise him, even after all this time. He, too, knew you. He said 'periculous blunderbungle', realising that he was on the point of committing a dangerous blunder. I'd say that his eyes and his memory are better than yours, heh!" guffawed Atto.

  "Was that why he did not strike me?"

  "I never bestrike," interrupted Ugonio's offended voice from the end of the line.

  "Never?" I asked, not without a trace of anger in my voice, recalling those terrifying moments at the mercy of the incandescent dagger.

  "All trespissers emergency profoundamentally pissified," grunted Ugonio, stifling with great difficulty an outburst of malign, conceited laughter.

  He was right. Before fainting, I too had involuntarily wet myself like a terrified infant.

  The purpose or all that infernal theatre was quite plain. Down there among the tunnels in and around the Baths of Agrippina, the German had his lair and no one was to enter there uninvited; the point was that anyone foolhardy enough so to do was to be subjected to that carousel of terror so that he would run for his life, ejected like a dog, soaked in his own urine.

  It was the first time for seventeen years that I had ventured into the subterranean city beneath Rome, and here again I had found Ugonio, just as when I last emerged from that labyrinth. What had brought me there? The investigations into the theft perpetrated against Abbot Melani: loot consisting of papers, a telescope and the relic of the Madonna of the Carmel with my three little Venetian pearls. Yes, the relic. I had almost forgotten it. I should have realised earlier, I thought with a little smile: relics and tunnels… the daily bread of the corpisantari. Now it only remained for us to find the place where the stolen goods were stored.

  By this time, we had come to the end of the stairway that had led us away from the second infernal chamber. Here we met with a surprise.

  We found ourselves in a spacious storeroom, at least thirty yards long by thirty wide, with a good level floor and walls reinforced with bricks, equipped with a number of exit doors (leading, presumably, to other tunnels) and a spiral staircase leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Here reigned indescribable chaos: piles and piles of objects of every imaginable and unimaginable shape and form made of the storeroom a mad pandemonium of knicknacks, remnants, relics, trifles, hardware, ornaments, toys, souvenirs, sweet nothings, playthings, scrap, builders' waste, shards and splinters, antique junk, food leftovers, bagatelles, detritus, rubbish and much other vile material regurgitated from burglaries and robberies in the city's most sordid back streets.

  Thus, I saw heaps of coins half-eaten by time, immeasurable piles of paper pressed together and tied up with string, baskets of filthy, greasy clothes, moth-eaten furniture piled up to the ceiling, dozens, indeed hundreds of pairs of shoes of all kinds, from rustic boots to courtesans' finest slippers, sashes and belts, books and exercise books, pens and inkstands, pots and pans, distorts and alembics, stuffed eagles and embalmed foxes, mousetraps, bear skins, crucifixes, missals, sacred vestments, tables large and tables small, hammers, saws and scalpels, entire collections of nails of all sizes, and then arrays of wooden planks, bits of old iron, brooms and brushes, rags and cloths, bones, skulls and ribs, buckets of oil, balsams, ointments and innumerable other disgusting things.

  All these, however, were mixed with vases full of rings, bracelets and golden pendants, boxes of Roman medals and coins, frames and ornaments of the finest quality, silverware, porcelain dinner and coffee services, jewel cases, carafes, bowls and glasses of the finest Bohemian crystal, tablecloths from Flanders, velvets and upholstery materials, arquebuses, swords and daggers, entire collections of precious paintings, landscapes, portraits of ladies and of popes, nativities and annunciations, all roughly piled up one against the other and covered in layer upon layer of dust.

  "Good heavens," exclaimed Sfasciamonti despite himself. "This seems almost like…"

  "I know what you are about to say," interrupted Atto. "The proceeds of the last three hundred thousand thefts committed in Rome during the Jubilee."

  "It turns one's stomach," replied the catchpoll.

  "What they said about you was true," continued Atto, addressing Ugonio. "During the Holy Year, your business prospers even more than usual. You will, I imagine, have made some special vow to the Blessed Virgin."

  The corpisantaro did not respond to the Abbot's irony. I, meanwhile, was looking around prudently in the midst of all that vile chaos, taking care not to knock anything over. One had to proceed down narrow aisles between one heap and the next, without disturbing anything. Failure to do so might result, not only in breaking a vase but getting oneself buried under an avalanche of books, or a pyramid of amphorae, clumsily stacked on top of some rickety old cupboard. Something in a dark corner, half hidden beneath a tumulus of old sheets and a precious golden pyx, attracted my attention. It was a strange ironwork device, like a bush made up of curved pieces of tin and iron sheeting. I took it in my hand and showed it to Atto, who was approaching. He picked up the tangle of iron and his eyes opened wide as he examined it.

  "This once was two armillary spheres. Or perhaps three, I cannot tell. These beasts have succeeded in reducing it to mere wreckage."

  There were in fact two or three of these special devices in the form of a globe, consisting of several iron hoops rotating concentrically around an axis and fixed on a pedestal, which are used by scientists to calculate the movement of heavenly bodies.

  "The expropriament was complicationed by an unforesightable," said Ugonio in an attempt to justify himself. "Unfortuitously, the objectivities got jammied one against t'other."

  "Yes, jammied," murmured Atto in disgust, casting aside the little tangle of metal and exploring the mass of junk. "I have no difficulty in imagining what happened. After the theft, you will have gone off and got drunk somewhere. I suppose that here there will also be… Oh, here we are."

  It was a row of cylindrical objects, standing vertically on the flagstones, one beside the other. Atto picked up one that seemed a little less dusty and ill-used than the others.

  "Excellent," said Melani, dusting the cylinder down with his sleeve. "Those who don't die, meet again."

  Then he handed it to me with a triumphal smile.

  "Your spyglass!" I exclaimed. "Then it is true that the German was behind this."

  "Of course he stole it. Like the others in this collection."

  On the ground there stood a little forest of telesco
pes of all shapes and sizes, some brand new, others filthy and falling to pieces.

  Sfasciamonti too drew near and began to rummage about near the telescopes. At length, he picked up from the ground a large device that seemed familiar, and showed it to me.

  MACROSCOPIUM HOC

  JOHANNES VANDEHARIUS

  FECIT

  AMSTELODAMI MDCLXXXIII

  "This is the other microscope stolen from the learned Dutchman, as reported to me by the sergeants my colleagues, do you remember?" said he, "it is the twin of the one which I and you recovered from the cerretano a few nights ago."

  The hooded troop looked on powerless and embarrassed at the unmasking of their trafficking. We all looked at Ugonio.

  "You also stole my handwritten treatise," hissed Melani spitefully.

  The corpisantaro's hump seemed even more bent, as though he were struggling to become even smaller and darker in his desire to escape the consequences of his misdeeds.

  Sfasciamonti drew the dagger and grabbed Ugonio by the collar of his filthy greatcoat.

  "Ow!" he cried, at once loosening his grip.

  The catchpoll had pricked a finger. He turned the collar of Ugonio's jacket and drew out a brooch. I recognised it at once: it was the scapular of the Madonna of the Carmel, the ex voto stolen from Abbot Melani. And above it were still sewn my three little Venetian pearls which Atto had so lovingly kept on his person all these years.

  The catchpoll tore the relic from Ugonio's breast and handed it to Atto. The Abbot took it between two fingers.

  "Er, I think it would be better if you held onto this," said he with a hint of embarrassment, turning away as he handed it to me.

  I was happy. This time, I would hold jealously onto my three little pearls, as a keepsake of that Abbot Melani who was from time to time capable of an affectionate gesture. I grasped the relic, not without a grimace of disgust at the dreadful odour emanating from it after its prolonged sojourn close to the corpisantaro.

  Sfasciamonti, meanwhile, had returned to work and was holding the dagger against Ugonio's cheek.

  "And now for Abbot Melani's treatise."

  Atto grasped the pistol. The corpisantaro did not need to be asked twice:

  "I have not stealed anyfing: I executioned a levy on commissionary," he whispered.

  "Ah! A theft on commission," Atto translated, turning to us. "Just as I suspected. And on whose behalf? That of your wretched compatriot the Imperial Ambassador Count von Lamberg, perhaps? Now, tell me, do you also have people stabbed on commission?" he asked emphatically, showing Ugonio the arm wounded by the fleeing cerretano.

  The corpisantaro hesitated an instant. He looked all around, trying to work out what the consequences might be for him if he were to remain silent: Atto's pistol, the dagger in Sfasciamonti's grasp, the corpulent bulk of the latter, and, on the other hand, his band of friends, numerous, but all more or less halt or lame…

  "I was commissionaried by the electors of the Maggiorengo," he replied at last.

  "Who the Devil are they?" we all asked in unison.

  Ugonio's explanation was long and confused, but with a good dose of patience, and thanks to some recollections of his extraordinary gibberish, retained from the events of many years ago, we did manage to grasp, if not all the details, at least the main message. The matter was simple. The cerretani elected a representative at regular intervals, a sort of king of vagabonds. He was known as the Maggiorengo-General and was crowned at a great ceremony of all the sects of cerretani. We learned among other things that the previous Maggiorengo had recently passed on to a better life.

  "And what has all this to do with the theft which they commissioned you to carry out?"

  "Of that I am iggorant, with all due condescendent respect to your most sublimated decisionality. Ne'er do we ejaculate the why and wherefore of a levy. 'Tis a problem of secretion!"

  "You are not speaking because it is a matter of secrecy between you and your client? Do you imagine you are going to get away with it that easily?" threatened Melani.

  The dusty and suffocating storeroom in which we stood was lit by a few torches set into the wall, the smoke from which escaped through channels set above the flames of the torches themselves. Atto suddenly grabbed one of these torches and held it next to a nearby pile of papers, which seemed to me to consist of legal and notarial deeds stolen from who knows where by the corpisantari.

  "If you will not tell me to whom you have given my manuscript treatise, as true as God exists, I shall set fire to everything in here."

  Atto was serious. Ugonio gave a start. At the idea of all his patrimony going up in smoke, he grew pale, at least as far as the parchment pallor of his face permitted it. First, he tried blandishments, then he tried to persuade Melani that he was placing himself in some ill-defined danger, this being a particularly delicate moment as the milieu of the cerretani had been shaken by a grievous robbery perpetrated against them.

  "A grievous robbery? Robbers aren't robbed," sneered Atto. "What have they stolen from the cerretani?'

  "Their novated lingo."

  "Their new language? Languages cannot be stolen because they cannot be possessed, only spoken. Try inventing something else, you idiot."

  In the end, Ugonio gave in and explained his offer to the Abbot.

  "Agreed," said Atto in the end. "If you keep your side of the promise, I shall not destroy this wretched place. You know full well that I can do it," said Atto, before having us accompanied to the exit. "Sergeant, have you anything else to ask these animals?"

  "Not now. I am curious to see whether they will keep their word tomorrow. Now, let us go. I do not wish to remain too long absent from Villa Spada."

  "Ugonio recognised me as soon as he saw me from close up. Do you think it possible that he did not know from whom he was stealing the treatise and the telescope?" I asked Melani.

  "Of course he knew. Rascals like him always know where they're sticking their hands."

  "And yet, he didn't think twice about doing it."

  "Certainly not. Evidently, the pressure from whoever commissioned him was too great. They must have offered him a great deal of money; or perhaps he was too afraid of failing."

  "Now I understand! That was why I always had the feeling of being watched at the Villa Spada," I exclaimed.

  "What are you saying?" asked Atto in astonishment.

  "I never told you this, because I was not sure of what I was seeing around me. We have already encountered so many strange things," I added, alluding to the apparitions at the Vessel. "I didn't want to make it look as though I'd become a visionary. Yet, several times in the past few days, I have had the feeling of being spied on. It was as though… well, as though they were constantly keeping an eye on me from behind hedges."

  "Obviously. Even a child could see that: it must have been Ugonio and the other corpisantari' said Atto, irritated by my slow thinking."Perhaps," I thought aloud, "they may even have been following us on the evening when we were drugged. Some rather strange fellows came into the wine shop where we had stopped, some mendicants who seemed to be spoiling for a fight. There was even a brawl which forced us to abandon our table. They almost knocked over the jug of wine."

  "The jug of wine?" exclaimed Atto, wide-eyed.

  I told him then of the scuffle that had broken out in the wine shop, which I and Buvat had witnessed, and how we had momentarily lost sight of our table. Atto exploded:

  "Only now do you think of telling me this?" he groaned impatiently. "For heaven's sake, did you not realise that you and Buvat were put to sleep by pouring a little sleeping draught into your wine?"

  I fell silent, humiliated. It was true, it must have been done like that. The mendicants (obviously a group of cerretani) had organised what looked like a brawl in order to create confusion in the place; thus, they had caused us to leave our table and got in our way while they poured the narcotic into our wine. After that, they had gone off without any further ado.

  "Once they
had put you to sleep," concluded Atto, calming down a little, "Ugonio and his companions in crime will have entered your house and Buvat's bedchamber. Then, as soon as they were able to, they tried again with me."

  "It is a miracle that they crossed the villa boundary and managed to leave with their loot without being seen by anyone," I commented.

  "Yes, indeed," said Atto, looking askance at Sfasciamonti, "it really is a miracle."

  The catchpoll lowered his eyes in embarrassment. Yes, while I had cut a poor figure, Sfasciamonti ran the risk of passing for an incompetent. Atto, on the other hand, by finding Ugonio, had found out not only who had put me and Buvat out of action with the sleeping draught, but the thief of his treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave and of the relic and the telescope, which he now held tightly in one hand, fuming in equal measure with disdainful rage and warlike satisfaction.

  No sooner had we crossed the Tiber than Sfasciamonti announced that he would hasten on his way in order to get back as early as possible, leaving us the advantage of proceeding at a more convenient and moderate pace.

  "I shall go on ahead of you, it is getting really late, corps of a thousand maces. My absences from the villa cannot last too long. 1 do not want Cardinal Spada to think I am shirking my duty," he explained.

  "Better, far better thus," commented Atto, as soon as we were alone.

  "And why?"

  "As soon as we get back, we shall have things to do."

  "At this hour of night?"

  "Buvat should have completed the task I set him."

  "What? Searching for the flower among the arms of noble families?"

  "Not just that," replied the Abbot laconically.

  Yes, Buvat. The evening before, I had seen him again after a prolonged absence, and Melani, after setting him to work searching for traces of the Tetrachion among the noble arms, had requested him also to see to an unspecified "other matter". What could he be up to? During the first few days, his presence had been constant and assiduous. More recently, he would appear briefly, then absent himself again for a long period. Now I knew that Atto had assigned him some task to which the scribe was obviously attending outside the villa. I realised that the Abbot had, for the time being, no intention of revealing to me what was going on behind the scenes.