Secretum am-2

by Rita Monaldi

  "Yes. But how did the sheet of paper come to be in Haver's shop? And how did the cerretani trace him?"

  "You will have to use your memory. Do you perhaps recall that this evening, right next to the rostrum where the Maggiorenghi sat, there was a young man we seemed to have seen somewhere?"

  "Yes, but I still can't remember where we came across him. Perhaps we saw him begging somewhere in town. Or perhaps he was among the other mendicants at Termine, that evening when we followed I! Roscio and Geronimo."

  "You're wrong. But 'tis hardly surprising. We saw him only for a matter of seconds. Anyway, I saw him better than you, because he sliced up my arm."

  "The cerretano Sfasciamonti was chasing in front of Villa Spada!"

  "Precisely. It comes as no surprise that he should have been so near the Maggiorenghi this evening, together with Ugonio and that little monster, what was he called?… Ah yes, Drehmannius. That beanpole of a lad, all skin and bones, was carrying the paper with the secret language somewhere. He collided with us and the sheet of paper went flying off into the air and got mixed up with all the other papers. And it ended up in the binding of my book. For the cerretani, with the help of Sfasciamonti, finding Haver's shop will have been child's play."

  "But why did the skinny cerretano stab you in front of the villa?"

  "He didn't stab me. It was an accident. Sfasciamonti had seen him in the area and knew that he was up to no good. After trying to stop him, he ran after him. The catchpoll had an excellent intuition: after all, the lad was carrying on his person the code for the new secret language. He was probably a courier. We now know that the assembly of the cerretani was imminent and preparations were surely in hand. When he was being chased, the lad unsheathed his knife, in order to defend himself if they caught up with him. That was when he collided with me, causing the wound which still hurts me and losing his knife. In any case, Sfasciamonti took the weapon, probably to be sure that no one else should be able to snatch the investigation off him."

  "But why, instead of complicating their lives by stealing your treatise, could the cerretani not simply obtain another copy of their code?"

  "It does not even exist, I think."

  "And how do you know?"

  "You need only add two and two. Buvat told us that, traditionally, only the Maggiorengo-Generai can dictate the new rules. He writes them out in his own hand and the text is read to a general meeting of all the sects who then do whatever is necessary to spread it far and wide. But Ugonio told us that a new Maggiorengo-Generai was to be appointed because the previous one had died. So the only person who knew the contents of that paper, namely its author, was no longer there."

  "At that point, however, the general meeting had already been convened, perhaps months earlier," said I, taking up the argument. "Swarms of cerretani were converging from all over Italy and a new code could not be drawn up because there was no time."

  "Of course. Even if, given the emergency, they'd wanted to fashion a new secret language in the place of the late Mag- giorengo-General, how do you imagine those beasts dressed in rags could have managed such a thing in less than a week?"

  "It is quite incredible," I commented, after a brief pause. "I could never have imagined Sfasciamonti running like that after someone with whom he'd come to terms immediately afterwards."

  "On the contrary, it is absolutely obvious. Corrupt catchpolls are always the first to arrive at the scene of a crime or where there's no more than a suspicion that something could take place; they're already counting the money they hope to extort."

  He fell silent an instant, wiping the sweat from his forehead with one of his fine lace handkerchiefs.

  "Do you think that he will make it?"

  "Have no fear. Before shooting him, I got him to turn around for two reasons: because he's a traitor, and traitors are shot in the back; and also because I aimed at his backside, the only part of the body where there's nothing one can fracture and there's almost no likelihood of infection."

  Abbot Melani's familiarity with infections caused by firearms caused me to suppose that he had in the past had no little experience of such matters. Like every true spy.

  When we arrived, it was already daylight. We arranged to be set down not too near to Villa Spada, so as not to be seen by any of the staff of the villa when we were leaving the carriage.

  Atto was exhausted. On his way to his apartment, he had to be supported by myself and Buvat. The servants of the villa, by now inured to our appearing and disappearing at the most absurd hours, pretended not to notice.

  Laid on his bed like a dead body, Abbot Melani closed his eyes and prepared for a long sleep. I was on the point of slipping out the door when I saw Atto's nose curl up as it always did in the presence of a bad smell. At the same time, my eyes, no less tired than Atto's limbs, noticed a movement behind the curtains. Looking down, the folds of the curtain failed to conceal a pair of old down-at-heel boots.

  "We'll never be free of all this," said I to myself, at once scared and exasperated. The intruder did not budge, perhaps fearing our reaction. Buvat, Atto and I stiffened in turn, waiting for him to make a move.

  "Come out from there, whoever you are," said the Abbot, grasping his pistol.

  There was a moment's silence.

  "To be more medicinal than mendacious, I desiderate to submit to your most subliminal decisionality this most modest production of my hardput industrialising," mumbled a hesitant voice.

  The sleeve of a sackcloth cassock stretched out from behind the curtain and held out the remnants of a book that looked as though it had been run over by a hundred carriages.

  "My treatise!" said Atto, grasping it and sharply pulling aside the curtain.

  Ugonio, in an even sorrier state than usual, wasted no time in idle chatter. He explained that he had escaped from the cerretani only thanks to the Catherine wheel which Buvat had lit just before we escaped from the fray. Once out in the open, he too had carefully avoided the main path, which was why we had not seen him. To return to Rome, he had adventurously purloined a horse from an unguarded stable, at the risk, however, of being caught and slaughtered by the irate owner who had followed him on a filly, armed to the teeth. Now he had come to deliver the promised goods and to receive a last, well-deserved reward.

  Abbot Melani was paying no great attention to him, so overcome was he by emotion at recovering his treatise. He opened it and I could at last see with my own eyes the little book for which I had risked life and limb:

  Atto proudly read me the frontispiece:

  "Secret Memoirs containing the most notable Events of the past four Conclaves, with severall Observations on the Court of Rome."

  "I am most factiously in urgent neediness of the ultimate parcel of my emollyment," Ugonio solicited, massaging one shoulder. One of his hands was bandaged and there were bloodstains on his face.

  "What happened?" asked Atto, turning from his beloved opus. He was still incredulous that the exceedingly skilful Ugonio should have been caught with his hand literally in the sack when stealing the treatise back for him.

  "A nothingness, an utteringly minimous snaggle."

  The answer was too evasive not to get on Atto's nerves:

  "What does that mean? With all the money I've given you, you let yourself be caught with my treatise in your hand and you call that 'a minor unforeseen contingency'."

  The corpisantaro said nothing, but showed clear signs of embarrassment. His wounds spoke for him: when he was filching the book from the cerretani, something had gone askew, nor could he refuse to explain what had happened. He therefore spoke as though at one remove, explaining after his own fashion (that is, in terms somewhat colourful and bizarre) how the Grand Legator Drehmannius had been wearing a little chain around his neck with a most interesting relic hanging from it: a small wooden crucifix from which hung a small box containing a canine tooth which Ugonio, with his unfailing flair, had at once recognised as coming from the sacred jaw of the Dutch Saint Leboin.

/>   "Who cares! You weren't there to…" Atto interrupted him, then suddenly clapped his hand over his mouth. His little eyes narrowed, becoming as sharp as two daggers about to strike.

  "Go on," said he.

  Amidst ambiguities and fragments of sentences, the confession painfully emerged. Ugonio, despite the fact that he had at great personal risk filched Atto's treatise from the Grand Legator's bag, had proved unable to resist temptation. With a feline movement, he had drawn close to the Dutch canter, whispering some empty compliments in his ear. The chaos provoked by the fireworks was still reigned, transforming the whole assembly into one wild, deafening crucible. With one hand, Ugonio had undone the little chain of the crucifix behind the other's neck, whereupon, pretending to lose his balance, he had practically fallen on top of him ("a most hightly commendable and productifer- ous technique!" he gloated) so that his victim should not notice that he was being robbed. The crucifix had fallen into the Grand Legator's lap, whereupon Ugonio had grabbed and pocketed it.

  "Just as I thought," muttered Atto, barely restraining his fury.

  As Melani and I well knew, the corpisantari robbed, trafficked and made use of everything they could lay their hands on, but their ruling passion was for holy relics, whether true or false, (and we had witnessed their insane appetite for these things when first we met them seventeen years before). Unfortunately, their unbridled greed for relics all too often got the better of them when there were far more important matters at stake, thus ruining everything. Ugonio's rapacity had all too soon been punished, as he went on to explain, his voice growing more and more feeble with embarrassment.

  When, a few minutes later, the Grand Legator scratched his foul mangy chest, he became aware at last of the theft of Saint Leboin's tooth and consequently that of the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave, which would otherwise have passed unobserved. That was why Ugonio had soon had to run for his life, succeeding in escaping his former allies only by dint of the strength which desperation lent him and with the help of Buvat's Catherine wheel.

  "Drehmannius is a silly absent-mindless fellow," the tomb robber smugly concluded, betraying his genuine ape-like inability to forego his favourite fun and games.

  "Beast, animal, idiot!" Atto burst out. "I paid you a fortune to get back my treatise, not to go hunting for your rubbish!"

  Ugonio did not answer; his expression, which had suddenly become contrite and cringing, hypocritically masked (of this I was certain) that dull, bestial craving for possession which is the mark of primitive natures.

  "Just one question, Ugonio: where is the holy relic now?" I asked in my turn, at once horrified and amused by the corpisantaro's extraordinary' rapacity.

  Like a peasant taking his best rabbit out from a cage to show buyers, Ugonio swiftly extracted a small box from his cassock: the reliquary containing the tooth of Saint Leboin. He had carried it off.

  "But now the cerretani are looking for me very concentratively," said he, with a note of anxiety in his voice which I had never heard before. "I must extrude me out of here pissed haste. I think I shall infibulate myself at Vindobona."

  "You're returning to Vienna?" Atto asked in surprise as he slipped a full purse into the hand that was still sound; Ugonio estimated the value of this reward which was, after all, richly deserved, emitting a grunt of approval.

  We knew that he came from the capital of the Empire, which explained his precarious grasp of Italian; but we could never have imagined that the cerretani might hunt him down so relentlessly as to make him return there.

  "Still, I imagine that, after this Jubilee, you will not lack the means to settle down comfortably in your own land," observed Atto.

  Ugonio was unable to suppress a self-satisfied grin.

  "To be more medicinal than mendacious, the Jubiliary incomings have been satisfecund and abundiform. I shall low-lie in a quiet, refugious residence and trial not to wasten my economies."

  Abbot Melani, despite being a champion cynic, seemed almost sorry to see him go: "Could you not find a temporary refuge in the Kingdom of Naples, a few hours distant from here, and return when the waters have grown calmer?"

  "The cerretanici are rootless, murtherous and foxily cunningful," replied the corpisantaro, preparing to leave as he had probably come, through the window. "Most fortunitiously, they have baggered what they most ravened after."

  Before making his exit, he pointed at the treatise which Atto at last held in his hands.

  As the corpisantaro slipped out of sight (would I ever see him again?) I realised that the cover had in fact been torn off. Then I remembered that when Ugonio was trying to get away from his pursuers, the book had already been seriously damaged.

  The cerretani had succeeded: the code of the secret language remained in their hands.

  Day the Tenth

  16th J ULY, 1700

  On the next day, Abbot Melani had Buvat summon me. I had allowed myself a few hours' sleep during which I had mostly relived the experience at Albano and, going back further, the arrival of the Connestabilessa, Atto Melani's incoherent emotions, and the tale of the sad old age of the Most Christian King who had never forgotten his Maria. On awakening, I had thought especially of the Tetrachion. And I had thought about it for some time.

  Atto's secretary brought me a magnificent suit of clothes complete with patent leather shoes. At the end of his stay at Villa Spada, the Abbot was at last putting into practice his original intention to see me well dressed; and I knew why, or better, for whom.

  I washed, dressed and combed my hair as well as possible, tying it with the fine blue bow that I had received with the suit.

  As I was leaving, Cloridia caught sight of me: "My goodness, what extravagance! That Abbot of yours is really generous. Let us hope he at last pays out that blessed dowry for the girls."

  "We are to go to the notary this afternoon," I informed her.

  "At long last. I feel that you've more than earned it."

  When I rejoined Atto, from his face one would never have thought that he had lived through the shattering events of the night before. He had recovered that state of nervous artificial calm in which 1 had left him in the afternoon. There was only one difference: he was, to my surprise, at last wearing that mauve- grey soutane with the hood and Abbot's periwig in which I had met him seventeen years before and which he had worn when he came to find me at the Villa Spada. Clothes which, although clean and well ironed, were somewhat outmoded and evoked bygone days.

  This was, I thought, right. Was he not perhaps about to embark on a meeting with the past? I felt a surge of gratitude. He had at last decided to go to meet the Connestabilessa wearing the sober clothing which he had also worn when he presented himself to me.

  The sole note of vanity was a French-seeming perfume which filled the whole room with a somewhat over-emphatic fragrance.

  Atto was seated at his writing desk. He was placing a wax seal on the red ribbon enclosing a letter rolled into a tube. His old hand was trembling and seemed unable to get the better of the curved surface of the paper.

  The day was already hot and rather stuffy. Through the window one could hear the chanting of a procession: that of the Arch-Confraternities, wending its way through the nearby streets of Trastevere to the church of the Madonna del Carmine.

  Melani caught sight of me and sighed, already exhausted before he had even ventured forth, as always happens when one feels unequal to the task which awaits one or to others' expectations about oneself. He did not even greet me.

  "This morning I announced that I would be visiting. We must be there in half an hour," said he laconically.

  "Where?"

  "At the nuns' convent on Campo Marzio."

  "Why did she not stay at the villa?"

  "From what I could gather, she thought it inopportune. The celebrations are over and Cardinal Spada has very different matters to worry about."

  A carriage awaited us at the entrance. Once we had left, Atto's gaze was soon lost in contemplatio
n of Villa Spada as it receded into the distance.

  I guessed, or at least I thought I could understand intuitively, what must have been going through his mind at that moment: the feasting was over, by now the cerretani belonged to the past, he was returning to reality. After seeing the Connestabilessa, he would resume his personal battle, the desire to impose his own stamp on human affairs at the forthcoming conclave. At the same time, he must have been painfully aware of the inexorable passing of time, feeling how hard the springs of the carriage were on his loins, far, far harder than when, as a young castrato decades before, armed only with his own talent and the protection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he had looked out over the same city from another carriage, with grasping eyes and an ardent heart, as he came to play his part in the great banquet of music, politics, intrigue and, perhaps, one day, glory.

  Within a few months, with the new conclave, he would know whether a lifetime was sufficient to achieve those ambitions. In a few minutes, however, he would know whether a lifetime had been able to cancel out a great love.

  When the horses passed in front of the Vessel, Atto leaned out instinctively, looking upwards. I knew what he was thinking of: the Tetrachion.

  It was time to talk.

  "Why, when Capitor said 'two in one', did she also point to Neptune's sceptre, in other words, the trident?" I asked without warning.

  The Abbot turned towards me, surprised.

  "What are you getting at?" he asked me, frowning.

  "Perhaps she meant that those two figures were united with the sceptre, truly 'two in one'."

  "But what sense would that make?" asked Atto, betraying his impatience at not, for once, thinking as fast as I. He could not know that I had turned that thought over a thousand times in my bed a few hours before.

  "Do you recall what the chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy said to Cloridia? That the Tetrachion was the heir to the Spanish throne. And, as you yourself told me, what was the meaning of that trident in Neptune's hand? The crown of Spain, mistress of the ocean and of two continents. There, perhaps that is what Capitor meant."