Secretum am-2

by Rita Monaldi

  She continued as before and then thought the time ripe to give our daughters a little lesson in obstetrics.

  "If the woman in labour has a tight womb, one anoints freely and unrestrictedly with oil of yellow violets. And since one or ten applications of ointment cannot compensate for natural defects, one may use up to twenty or thirty, until — as Hippocrates and Avicenna proposed — art corrects nature. Avicenna also favours squirting a few drops of oil right inside the womb, the better to relax the internal parts."

  The children paid attention, while the Deputy Steward and his wife, with her face all covered in perspiration, looked at one another full of admiration and gratitude for the knowledge of so fine, and renowned, a midwife.

  I was beginning to fume: Cloridia had promised to free Abbot Melani, but as yet nothing was happening. And I could see that Atto, too, was in a state of growing agitation, casting eloquent winks in my consort's direction.

  "Alas, there is not enough of this oil," said Cloridia. "My dear, please go and fetch the other bottle which I left in the bag."

  Atto obeyed. When he returned, Cloridia looked at him with a worried expression.

  "M'dear, you seem unwell."

  "Well, I really…" whined Atto who did not know what Cloridia was getting at.

  My wife began to scrutinise him attentively and asked: "Are you aware of any slight feelings of faintness? Lassitude? Do you feel confused?"

  Abbot Melani returned Cloridia's inquiring gaze with an uncertain expression and answered her fusillade of questions vaguely. Then suddenly my consort rose and put her hands around his neck. Atto, taken by surprise, opened his eyes wide and tried instinctively to defend himself, while Clorida energetically opened his blouse and plunged her nose in, pretending to observe the breasts.

  "Those red spots…" she murmured, lost in thought, prodding first the one, then the other breast, which I knew to be only stuffed with rags, while even the Deputy Steward's wife had left off complaining about her pain and was looking on with bated breath. "… and these purple ones here… My unfortunate friend, I fear that you may be suffering from the petechiae'

  "The what?" the other two both asked in unison.

  "The spotted-fever; in Milan, they call it segni," Cloridia announced to the couple, who looked frightened.

  Upon hearing that phrase, Atto at last realised what had already been clear to me for several minutes. I saw him change expression and restrain a sigh of relief.

  "This distemper is caused by the excess of heat and dryness," continued my wife, "and it tends to affect cholerical temperaments, as I know that of my colleague here present to be. My poor dear, you must go home at once and try to keep calm. Eat cold food, which will cool down the choler, and you will see that you will soon recover. We here shall manage without you."

  "You can take my mule, which is in the servants' stables," said the Deputy Steward, exceedingly worried about the risk of contagion. "It is the only one left in there, you cannot go wrong."

  "And the guards?" Atto asked in a weak voice.

  "You are right. I shall accompany you."

  "Of that, there can be no question!" Cloridia promptly cut in. "I need you here. Besides, you must avoid any possible infection. There must surely be some way out using a service door to which you will, I imagine, have the keys…"

  My astute consort had seen and foreseen everything. The Deputy Steward opened a drawer and pulled out a key.

  "I only have one copy of this," said the Deputy Steward to Atto, "but I beg you to…"

  "You'll get it back promptly enough, of that you can be sure," my wife cut him short, snatching the key from his hand and giving it to the Abbot.

  In reality, we had no need of that key: there would certainly be a copy in Ugonio's bunch, but that we could certainly not tell the Deputy Steward.

  With a warm and amused wink, Melani lit a candle and, going to the door, left in great haste.

  I leaned out an instant down the dark stairway to make sure that Atto had not forgotten Cloridia's directions and taken the wrong way.

  "Your wife really enjoys a good joke," he commented as soon as he rejoined me. "She took me by surprise with that story of petechiae, but I must say that she does have an excellent memory."

  Cloridia had in fact, in her little charade with the petechiae, merely quoted the sentences she had heard seventeen years before in the mouth of Cristofano, the Sienese physician and chirurgeon who had been shut in with all of us in quarantine at the inn where I was working, and where I had first met Atto. What he said had remained unforgettable for us; we all hung on every word from the lips of the doctor who was looking after us in those days when every moment was alive with the fear of contagion.

  Since she had not had time to prearrange anything with Atto, my wife had therefore used those words to give him a clear signal; it was certain that, on hearing them, Abbot Melani would obey without thinking twice.

  I guided Atto to the window on the corridor and explained that from there we could easily keep a check on the situation and thus avoid being discovered.

  "And now," Cloridia was ordering imperiously, "avoid like the plague the ill wind that blows in draughts! Let us place your wife near the open window so that she may breathe the good sweet- smelling air of early dawn. But close the door tight, so that there are no draughts. We shall open up only once the child has been born."

  "But I have to do my round every half-hour," protested the Deputy Steward.

  "There can be no question of that."

  "But…"

  "You will appreciate the importance, if one is to avoid all risks of contagion, of avoiding all agitation and over-activity. The distemper dessicates and in a short space of time extinguishes the body's radical humidity, and that can in the end kill," declaimed our brave Mistress Cloridia, yet again quoting, this time solely for her own pleasure, the words which the physician had uttered so many years ago in the Locanda del Donzello.

  Upon hearing those words, the Deputy Steward, suddenly as pale as death, hastened to close the door of the room, accompanied by my tenacious spouse's seraphic smile, as she again knelt between her patient's legs.

  "Here we are."

  Thus Abbot Melani commented on the swift movement of the door which, with a short squeal, swung open on a dark space.

  We entered, immediately closing the door behind us. We did not know how much time we had in which to operate: everything depended upon the pregnant woman's labour, after which Cloridia was to be accompanied home by the Deputy Steward. By that time, we would have had to complete our own search and take the mule away from the stables, otherwise the Deputy Steward might become suspicious.

  We tried to make sense of the dark space which now enveloped us. We shed light with Atto's taper, which I myself brandished, turning it here and there, in an attempt to reconcile our tentative footsteps with the frenzy of our eyes. The room in which we stood seemed enormous.

  "This does not seem to be the gallery of which your wife spoke," commented Abbot Melani.

  "Anyway, there are no globes here," I observed.

  We crossed the room, then another one, then yet another. All the walls were covered with rich frescoes and paintings which filled the Abbot with enthusiasm and wonder.

  "Ah, I recognise these paintings, they're by a Flemish artist, Van Laer; I saw them years ago in the collection of Cardinal Casanate, peace be on his soul," said he, stopping to contemplate four pictures depicting a cow, a tavern and two scenes of assassinations in the woods. "The Cardinal has been dead these four months only and the Dominicans of la Minerva to whom he left everything have already begun to sell off his legacy," said he with a bitter laugh.

  While Atto kept stopping before every canvas, taper in hand, I made my way rapidly back, like a cat in the night, to spy on Cloridia through the window.

  The woman's labour pains were becoming more and more excruciating and the poor thing was suffering greatly, but, as my wife had predicted, the birth was proceeding extremely
slowly.

  Seeing how the situation was slowing down, and despite his wife's entreaties that he should hold her hand, the Deputy Steward had not forgotten his custodian's duties and had, alas, returned to his desire to do the rounds of the palace's rooms.

  Thus, on one of my incursions to check up on developments, I saw and heard through the window that, in order to detain him, Cloridia had took up her favourite argument: breast-feeding.

  "You want to hire a wet-nurse, did you say? Ah, you must have money to waste! And what objection does your wife have to giving suck herself?"

  "But Mistress Cloridia," stammered the Deputy Steward, "my wife must soon return to service…"

  "Yes, to earn enough to pay the wet-nurse! Would it not be better to keep the infant at home?"

  "We shall speak about that later, if we must. Now I must go out on my rounds…"

  "'Tis incredible," my wife attacked, rising from her position near her patient and barring the Deputy Steward's way. "Now even the wives of artisans yearn to send their new-born infants to wet-nurses outside the home, as though we were all princes and most delicate princesses, while those folk, yes, 'tis true that they cannot afford the luxury of babes crying in the house as they are always weighed down by public business."

  The Deputy Steward was speechless.

  "Who does not know, after all," continued Cloridia, "that in every state and condition of persons, it is far better to raise one's children at home than to give them out to wet-nurses? Aulus Gellius confirmed that centuries ago!"

  The man, who surely had not the least idea who Aulus Gellius was, seemed intimidated by the citation.

  "In this, women today are truly more inhuman than tigers or other cruel beasts," she continued, "for, apart from women, I know of no animal that is unwilling to give suck to its young. How can a mother, after carrying it in her belly and feeding it with her own blood, not yet knowing whether it was a boy or a girl or a monster, once she has seen her child, recognised it and heard its cries, sobs and sighs calling on her for help, then exile it from her bosom and from her bed, pleased with herself for having given that child its being yet denying it all well- being, as though her breasts had been given her by God and nature as a mere ornament of the torso, as in males, and not to feed her children?…"

  I had heard enough. I knew from experience that once she had launched into that subject, Cloridia would without difficulty detain the Deputy Steward for a long, long time.

  I returned to Atto and we resumed our search as the first light of dawn filtered into the palace. Soon we had left behind us a long series of rooms superbly decorated with mythological and historical subjects: the room of Amor and Psyche, the room of Perseus, the stucco gallery, and then the rooms of Callisto, Aeneas and the feudal era.

  "Tis no good. There's no trace of the globe you spoke of."

  At that juncture, we heard a series of screams, followed by a lacerating, interminable howl which almost caused Abbot Melani to faint. We ran to see: the Deputy Steward's wife had given birth. The herbs administered by Cloridia to stimulate delivery had worked more swiftly than our search.

  "A bane on your wife and the day when we placed our trust in her," muttered Abbot Melani. "Now we are stuck here and we have discovered absolutely nothing."

  At that moment, Cloridia looked up to the window, holding the squalling babe in her arms, already wrapped in a towel, and made a rapid signal in our direction, as though to say, "Go ahead, do not worry."

  So we returned to our search, uncertain and cautious. We visited the Achilles room, that of the Tales of Ancient Rome and those of the Four Elements and the Four Seasons, moving on to the Great Gallery, the study and even the chapel.

  "There's something here that doesn't square up properly," said Atto. "Let us return to the staircase."

  "Why?"

  "When we first came up from the ground floor, we turned right. Now, I want to turn left. Then I'll tell you why."

  The Abbot, as I was soon to see, had his good reasons. Retracing our footsteps, we realised that, turning left immediately after climbing the stairs, there was a gallery which we had not yet explored. The daylight, which was growing brighter moment by moment, enabled us to see not only the walls, doors and windows, but also the very high ceilings which the eye should enjoy on the first floor of every noble palazzo.

  As soon as we entered this new space, we stopped before a great candelabrum on the floor, whose candles we lit with our taper so that there was light all around us. Great was my wonder when we found ourselves facing a broad gallery, with a wealth of all kinds of frescoes, all kinds of works of art and the most precious furnishings.

  It was quite clear even to untrained intellects that this room was one of the most splendid and eminent treasures of the entire

  Palazzo Spada, one that could not fail to be shown to the benevolent guest in the course of a humble visit.

  It was a fairly spacious gallery, in the form of an elongated rectangle. On the one side, the walls were covered with frescoes and paintings, while the opposite side was subdivided into a series of great windows which in the daylight hours brightly lit the whole space, with, between them, a series of fine marble busts. The ceiling consisted of a curved vault which was adorned with an imposing fresco, the order and meaning of which I would, however, have been unable to understand at first glance, were it not for Abbot Melani's explanations.

  Atto explained that the magnificent imagery on the ceiling stood for Astronomy and Astrology. I saw cherubs holding up a white velarium on which were drawn lines intersecting on the surface of the earth; at one end of the fresco, one saw Mercury bearing a meridian in the heavens, while the whole assembly of the pagan gods looked on in wonderment. At the opposite end were four female figures representing Optics, Astronomy, Cosmography and Geometry who were also intent upon creating a catoptric meridian, 'midst many other splendid and praiseworthy anthropomorphic figures.

  On the walls there was an extensive and unusual series of splendid paintings, for the most part faithful and highly realistic portraits of illustrious men. Although I could not yet make out the details, it did seem almost as though there were a multitude of real faces looking down upon us. A great whitish crab was perched above our heads on the vaulted ceiling and seemed to be sternly observing us.

  "Good heavens, Signor Abbot, look up there. Never have I seen so huge a crab, and what's more, creeping along a ceiling. And all white!"

  "Well, my boy, here now is an opportunity for you to learn something. This is Palazzo Spada's celebrated Gallery of the Anacamptic Astrolabe."

  "Ana- what astrolabe?…" I tried in vain to repeat after him, still keeping a wary eye on the great white crab which did not, however, for the time being show any sign of leaping on us.

  "Or catoptric dial, if you prefer, to use the terminology of the learned Father Kircher."

  For a moment, I fell silent.

  "Did you say Kircher?" I asked, recalling how we had come into rather close contact with that personage in the course of our adventures seventeen years ago.

  "If you were to read newspapers from time to time," was his only reply, "you would sooner or later learn something about the marvels of your city."

  "Yes, I knew that Palazzo Spada abounded in architectural marvels and that people come to admire it from all the world over, but…"

  "I imagine that you at least know what a sundial is," said the Abbot, cutting me short.

  "Of course, Signor Atto. It is a clock in which the shadow cast on given points by a certain object, like a stone or a piece of metal, enables one to tell the time."

  "Correct. This, however, is a special dial: it functions catoptrically, to employ Kircher's terminology. In other words, not thanks to the sun's rays but to reflection. Do you know what there is down there, outside?" said he, pointing to a sort of little window that gave onto the courtyard.

  "I do not know."

  "A stand with a mirror on it which reflects the light of the sun and the moon. Th
e Spada household has mirrors of various forms and designs which reflect sun or moon-rays and project luminous images like your white crab. This, as you can now see, is nothing but light refracted onto the ceiling of the gallery, which thus gives the exact time."

  I looked up again: he was right, the beast was white because it was drawn on the ceiling by a ray of light.

  "And it tells the right time?" I asked incredulously.

  "Certainly. You too can surely see those lines marked on the vault, which permit anyone who can read them to follow the hours and minutes on the ceiling of the gallery, so long as the light is a little stronger than this candelabrum. For the whole thing is an immense sundial, but upside down. The light does not reach it from above but rather from below. That crab is reflected moonlight, and I suspect that it takes the form it has because in these July days we are in the sign of Cancer, the Crab. This is probably done by using a mirror of the right shape."

  Atto's explanation was interesting, but it was I who interrupted it with a cry of surprise.

  "Look, there's the Flemish globe! Indeed, there are two of them."

  We drew near the better to examine our find. Further down the gallery, there were in fact two wooden globes, one representing the terrestrial regions, the other, the heavens. We read the name of their maker, a certain Blauew of Amsterdam.

  "Alas, if this is indeed a terrestrial globe like that of which you have heard tell, it has nothing to do with Capitor's globe," said he in weary, opaque tones.

  "It is not the one?"

  "No."

  The globe which stood before us did not in fact much resemble that in the picture, and it did not even have a golden pedestal.

  "So, what now?" I asked.

  "It is no good. We have made a mistake. Once again, we have got everything wrong," groaned Atto, sitting wearily on a chest.

  I raised my eyes, drawn by something on the wall opposite. My gaze drew near to the series of portraits decorating the windowless wall and stopped deep in thought at one of them. This was the likeness of an individual with a severe face, whose expression was strong but gentle, his forehead broad, the mouth decisive and the beard bristling. He wore a tricorn hat similar to those of the Jesuits, and an embroidered surcoat with on its breast a heart betwixt two branches.