by Rita Monaldi
"Yet you did not know that Tetrachion means simply 'quadruple'.. " I hazarded.
"I had simply forgotten, at my age. Unlike Buvat, I am not a librarian," Atto corrected me.
"Perhaps there was something quadruple in Capitor's dish."
"As I told you, it represented Neptune and Amphitrite driving a chariot through the waves."
"Are you quite sure that there was nothing else?"
"That is all I saw, unless you regard me as completely senile," protested Atto. "However, we shall know for sure the moment that we find Capitor's three gifts. And you know well where we must look."
So, at a tired, funereal pace, we moved yet again towards Elpidio Benedetti's arcane Vessel. I then recalled that I had something urgent to ask Abbot Melani: whoever was that Countess of Soissons, who had sown trouble between Maria and the King? Was she in fact the Countess of S., the mysterious poisoner to whom the Connestabilessa had so reticently referred?
I was suddenly overcome by a bout of acute resentment for the Abbot: he still had made no mention to me of the Spanish succession, yet the Connestabilessa's letters spoke of nothing else. Atto spoke to me of another Spain, that of fifty years ago, the Spain of Don John and Capitor with her mysterious gifts to Mazarin. Might there be a connection between these two Spains? Perhaps there was one, contained in the mysterious essence of the Tetrachion.
"You are lost in thought, my boy," observed Atto, who had in truth until that moment been more absorbed than I.
The Abbot was observing my frowning, pensive face with some anxiety; like all professional liars, he was forever worrying that someone might sooner or later piece together the broken threads of his half-truths.
"I was thinking of the Tetrachion and, now that we are again approaching the Vessel, of Maria Mancini," said I with a great sigh.
This was, of course, a lie. It is true that I was thinking of Maria, but only because in the letters which she had sent to Atto, and which I had by now inspected several times over, there were still a number of things that eluded me.
"To be specific, I was wondering about the court's cruelty to that young woman; for instance, about the Countess of Soissons — by the way, who is she?" I asked with false ingenuousness.
"I see that even the intense events of the past few hours and even the lack of sleep have not caused you to forget all that I have been telling you," replied the Abbot with some satisfaction, probably believing that I had been so moved by his narration of the amorous vicissitudes of the young King of France that I was now begging him for more details. He had expected no less of me.
The Countess of Soissons, explained Abbot Melani, was none other than Maria's elder sister. She was called Olimpia Mancini and, according to some, she had been among the young King's initiators in the arts of love.
In the spring of 1654, when she was seventeen and Louis fifteen, they would often dance together on festive occasions; and she nursed the kind of hopes that might be expected in the circumstances…
However, her uncle, the Cardinal, promised her early on to the Count of Soissons, a member of the House of Savoy related to the royal family. They married in 1657.
"Olimpia was rather envious by nature," croaked Atto, bringing up what was plainly a disagreeable memory. "She had a long, pointed face with no beauty about it other than dimples on her cheeks and two vivacious eyes, which were unfortunately too small. The court wondered: 'Was she ever the King's mistress?'"
"Well, was she?" I interrupted, in the hope that Melani would let drop some detail of interest for my research.
"That is not the right question. One cannot speak of mistresses in connection with a fifteen-year-old boy. The most that might be asked is whether they may have given in to their urges. And the answer is: what does it matter?"
According to Atto, one thing was certain: whether platonic or not, the time passed with Olimpia left absolutely no mark on the young King: nothing that touched his soul. And when Maria and Louis's hearts first beat for one another, Olimpia was already expecting her first son.
"Alas, pregnancy did nothing to curb her terrible jealousy for her sister, who had succeeded in the most natural way in the world in obtaining what she had vainly but deliberately set out to win: the heart of the young King."
Spite thus spurred Olimpia once more to flirt with the Sovereign, between her first and second pregnancies; but this time, in vain. She then gained the secret support of the Queen Mother, who feared the love between Louis and Maria, and took pleasure in troubling her sister by showing her letters in which the King's mother expressed her opposition.
"So it was she who calumnied Maria in the King's ear, as soon as she returned to Paris after the Spanish wedding!" I realised in surprise.
Given my condition as a foundling who had never had brothers and sisters, I had always dreamed of and liked to imagine myself with many, many siblings. And in my dreams, I always saw them as the truest and most trustworthy of friends.
"Are you surprised? Since the times of Cain and Abel, things have gone thus," replied Atto with a complacent air, whereupon he recited:
Blood brothers often will ingest
Dame Envy's fatal venom best:
First Cain, then Esau, and Thyestes,
And Jacob's sons and Eteocles,
For they were fired much more than others
As if their victims weren't their brothers,
And consanguinity incited
Will burn up stronger when ignited.
"As you heard, it is no accident that Sebastian Brant, who is so dear to that Albicastro, should have dedicated verses in his Ship of Fools to fraternal hatred. Fortunately, however, there is no infallible rule. Maria always kept up the closest of ties with another of her sisters, Ortensia."
Ah, yes, I thought. Was not Atto himself a living example of fraternal love? He had all his life been tied to his brothers by an unbreakable mutual aid pact. I had heard of this many years before, at the Locanda del Donzello, when a lodger hissed disapprovingly that the brothers Melani always moved "in a pack, like wolves".
"So Olimpia, as I was telling you, whispered malevolently in the King's ear that, while he was away at the Spanish border getting married, Maria had allowed herself to be courted by the young Charles of Lorraine and was even prepared to marry him."
"And what was she supposed to do, poor thing?" I commented. "By now, the King had taken a wife."
"Precisely, Maria was looking for a French match. She had no desire to return to Italy where women of high rank are compelled to rot at home as mere ornaments."
With malign joy, Olimpia saw her calumnies bear fruit. It happened when Maria was presented to Louis' new bride. This was the first time she had seen the King after a long absence: that time had seen their separation, Mazarin's violence and Louis's tears at the fortress of Brouage. Love, and with it jealousy, had not come to an end; it had simply been cast in chains.
Well, when Maria again came before him, Louis, eaten up by jealousy, looked at her with such coldness and scorn that she was barely able to complete the three ritual reverences. Olimpia's wickedness had triumphed.
Mazarin, on his deathbed, richly rewarded Olimpia's zeal in separating Louis and Maria: he appointed her superintendent of the Queen's household, to the great displeasure of Maria Teresa herself, who was anything but pleased to have her still hopefully hanging around her husband.
"Poor Maria Teresa. Olimpia took advantage of her closeness to the Queen to be the first to reveal the King's adulterous affairs to her."
It happened with Louis XIV's first official mistress, Louise de la Valliere. Olimpia, who stuck her nose in everywhere, offered her to the King as a screen, to cover his nocturnal promenades with his sister-in-law Henriette, secretly delighted that the man she could not have was now deceiving his own consort.
But the fence that separates the power of sovereigns from their desires is easily swept aside, and thus in the end it was Louise who became the King's real mistress. Then Olimpia became her
bitterest enemy, putting another of the Queen's maids of honour, Anne-Lucie de la Motte, into the fiery Sovereign's bed and then informing the naive Louise by means of an anonymous letter. Unable to separate the two lovers, Olimpia obtained an audience with the Queen and told her everything: from the King's escapades to the steady relationship with Mademoiselle de la Valliere. Then she sat back and enjoyed the spectacle: torrents of tears, a memorable scene between the King and his mother, and finally a palace scandal involving all the maids of honour.
The King himself remedied all this. In his exasperation, he took advantage of the opportunity to break away from his mother's influence and impose Mademoiselle de la Valliere on her, on his wife and on the whole court as his first official mistress.
"Olimpia was now hoist of her own petard," laughed the Abbot, "and that was the beginning of her ruin which, after all she had got up to, was not long in coming."
"Look!" I exclaimed, interrupting the narration.
We had passed the San Pancrazio Gate and had almost reached the Vessel. Before the entrance of the villa stood three magnificent carriages.
"One of them is Cardinal Spada's," I noticed.
Suddenly, the three carriages moved off and turned to the right. As they drew away, we could clearly see that they were empty. Their passengers (Spada, Spinola and Albani) had descended at the Vessel, where, presumably, their lackeys would later be returning to collect them.
"Take courage, my boy, perhaps this time we're in luck: the trio are 'on board'," commented Melani.
So the three cardinals had returned to meet at Benedetti's villa. The time before, we had attempted to trace them, but in vain. Now we had found them by chance: perhaps it would go better this time.
Seeing that we had almost arrived at our destination, Atto rapidly completed his tale.
"Olimpia was ruined by her own jealous fury. She ended up by commissioning anathemas and poisons for the lovers of the Most Christian King and love potions for Louis himself. All these intrigues came to light with the Affair of the Poisons, which cost her an arrest warrant and compelled her to flee in all haste to Brussels. To this day, she still hops from place to place throughout Europe, a prey to an irreducible hatred for France, striving by all the means in her power to harm the reign of the Most Christian King. She is suspected, among other things, of having poisoned her husband, and even Madame Henriette and her daughter.
"Madame Henriette and her daughter?" I repeated hesitantly.
"For heaven's sake, here we go again, must I always repeat everything to you? Henriette, I have just told you, was the King's sister-in-law; what is more, we have seen her portrait on the ground floor here. She was the mother of Marie-Louise of Orleans, the first wife of King Charles II of Spain. But that is another story," said the Abbot, cutting short his account. Curiously, he was always in a hurry to terminate our conversation whenever it touched in some way on the present state of Spain.
Now at last I had discovered the identity of the mysterious Countess of S.: the Countess of Soissons was a sister of Maria Mancini. The Connestabilessa had in fact hinted at the suspicions of poisoning hanging over her head after the death of the Queen of Spain, Marie-Louise of Orleans. Her discretion in speaking of her was due, not to any involvement on Olimpia's part in the present state of affairs, but to the fact that she was her own sister. That was why Maria had, when referring to her, expressed such pain at her evildoing. In other words, I had made another fine blunder, the second of the day, after that with the Master Florist: the mysterious Countess of S. was in fact far from mysterious, nor had she anything to do with the dangers which seemed now to hang over Abbot Melani's head.
As Atto was ending his narration, although I was concerned not to show any sign of it, I once again became a prey to anger. For days and days now, I had been spying on the correspondence between Atto and the Connestabilessa concerning the Spanish succession, yet had found out absolutely nothing. What was more, Melani still had not uttered so much as a word on the matter of Spain, nor did he seem to have any intention of ever doing so. All his attention seemed to be taken up with investigating the meetings between my master, Cardinal Spada, Cardinal Albani and Cardinal Spinola di San Cesareo, with a view to the forthcoming conclave. And these meetings were taking place at the Vessel, or so it seemed, for, when all was said and done, despite our repeated visits to that strange villa towards which we were now directing our footsteps, we had never found anything to confirm that. The Vessel, however, with its disquieting and inexplicable apparitions, had led the Abbot to follow the thread of distant memories: Maria Mancini, the youthful King of France, even Superintendent Fouquet, all leading up to Capitor, Don John the Bastard's madwoman (and here we were, back in Spain) who forty years ago gave Mazarin three presents, among them the dish which she called Tetrachion.
The Tetrachion. As though lost in a circular labyrinth, here I was, again thinking of it. The chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy, on whose lips this obscure name had surprisingly appeared, had been skilfully interrogated by Cloridia to help me cast light upon a whole series of intrigues: the stab wound to Abbot Melani's arm, the death of Haver the bookbinder and the exchange of letters between Atto and Maria Mancini on the Spanish succession, in which my master Cardinal Fabrizio was, moreover, also mentioned. The letters reported that the Cardinal Secretary of State Fabrizio Spada had visited the Spanish Ambassador in connection with the King of Spain's request to Pope Innocent XII for assistance and, given the Pontiff's poor state of health, Spada was personally looking after policy in his place.
And here we were back at the start: the Spanish succession, in which the Tetrachion, an indefinable, faceless and formless entity, was said to be the legitimate heir.
Ever since the Abbot and I had set forth together on this adventure, I had kept returning again and again to the same considerations, yet without ever getting anywhere. Everything seemed to be connected — but how? Perhaps the solution was there, close at hand, yet I could not get at it. That tangle of clues was rather like the folia, a circular motif, pervasive yet intangible, a sort of sea serpent, at once evasive and insinuating, which in the end holds the innocent listener in its hybrid embrace, immobilising him in its coils.
The folia, the Abbot and I were crossing the threshold of the villa and already that music was enveloping us in the Lethe of its warm, spicy embrace.
Once again, we found Albicastro perched on his cornice, drawing from the magic quiver of his violin the scintillating sounds of the folia.
"Does he always have to be in the way?" muttered Atto. "He has no fear of making himself ridiculous!"
Albicastro left off playing and looked at us. I started, fearing that the musician had overheard the Abbot's unflattering remark, despite the fact that he had uttered it under his breath.
"Human affairs, like the Sileni of Alcibiades, always have two faces, each the opposite of the other. Did you know that, Signor Abbot Melani?" the Dutchman began enigmatically. "Like those ridiculous and grotesque statuettes which contained divine images, what seems from the outside to be death, when examined from within, proves to be life; and vice versa, what seemed alive, is dead."
The musician had, alas, heard Atto's acid words.
"In human affairs, what seems beautiful turns out to be deformed, what seems rich, poor, what seems infamous, glorious; the learned man may prove ignorant, the strong weak, the generous ignoble, the joyful sad; prosperity may reveal itself to be adversity, friendship hate, the enjoyable harmful. All in all, when you open up the Silenus, you find everything suddenly transformed into its opposite."
"Do you mean that what to me seems ridiculous, is perhaps divine?" said Melani teasingly.
"I am taken aback, Signor Abbot, that you, who come from France, should have difficulty in grasping my meaning. Yet you have the perfect example before your eyes. Who among all you Frenchmen would ever say that your king is not rich and master of all that surrounds him? But if he's in thrall to many vices, is he not perhaps equal to the
most ignoble of slaves? And above all, if his heart is devoid of the soul's wealth and he dies without having been able to satisfy it, should he not be called most poor? You doubtless know what Solon said to Croesus, King of Lydia: "The richest man is no happier than he who lives for the day, unless, having enjoyed a life in the midst of great wealth, he has the fortune to end it well."
Upon hearing these last words, Melani gave a start and walked off disdainfully, without deigning so much as to salute the Dutchman.
As I followed him, I too grew pensive. Croesus, King of Lydia: the name of that famous monarch of ancient Greece reminded me of something. The pallor I found on Atto's face when I cast a sidelong glance at him, walking tense and silent beside me, made me suspect that the musician had touched a tender place on his heartstrings. I strove for some resonance from another string, that of memory. Where had I heard the story of the sage Solon and the Lydian Croesus? I strove in vain. So I said to myself that, where memory would not reach, reasoning could. Albicastro had compared Croesus to the Most Christian King…
It took only a few seconds, then, for that name to come to mind: Lidio, which kept cropping up so enigmatically in Atto's correspondence with the Connestabilessa. Croesus was King of Lydia — another "Lidio". That mysterious personage was sending Maria messages through Atto, and through the same channel, she was replying to him. What was the Connestabilessa conveying to him? "In every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin." And, yet again: "With respect to that whereon you question me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that you have closed your life happily." Thinking about this, it all sounded as though these were quotations from some ancient book. What was more, did not these phrases resemble what Solon told Croesus, as quoted by Albicastro? I promised myself to seek out the episode between Croesus and Solon as soon as I possibly could in the library of Villa Spada.
I joined Atto and we looked all around us. Of the three cardinals, there was no trace.
