Secretum am-2

by Rita Monaldi

  "I still don't grasp your meaning."

  "In other words," I resumed, while my thoughts galloped ahead and words found it hard to keep up, "in my opinion, the madwoman meant that twins like those of the Tetrachion were the legitimate heirs to the Spanish throne, and she issued a warning to Mazarin."

  "To Mazarin?" exclaimed Melani, incredulous and impatient. "But what's come over you, my boy? Are you losing your senses?"

  I continued without paying any attention to this.

  "Capitor also said that punishment would be meted out to the sons of whoever deprives the crown of Spain of its sons. Perhaps…" Here I hesitated. "Perhaps those sons are the Tetrachion and, as we might have seen them at the Vessel, perhaps Cardinal Mazarin may have had them abducted from Spain…"

  The Abbot burst out laughing.

  "His Eminence ordering the abduction of that sort of octopus we thought we saw up there in the penthouse above the Vessel… Why, that's not such a bad idea, good for a picaresque novel. Are you quite insane? And why, for heaven's sake, should he have done that? To boil it and serve it up with carrots and olives? Perhaps with a sprinkling of fresh oregano, since Mazarin was Sicilian…"

  "He did it because the Tetrachion is the heir to the Spanish throne."

  "Might you be suffering from sunstroke, by any chance? Or could last night's trip to Albano have caused you to part with your senses?" the Abbot insisted; but he had grown serious.

  "Signor Atto, don't think that I have not reflected long and hard on the matter. You yourself said to me that, before Capitor's prophecies, Mazarin seemed to have very different plans for making Philip IV sign a peace favourable to French interests, and those plans were not matrimonial. But can you explain to me why? You also said that Mazarin had no intention of marrying the Most Christian King with the Infanta; indeed he was blissfully allowing the relationship between His Majesty and Maria to continue and develop undisturbed."

  Now Atto was listening without moving a muscle.

  "Perhaps Mazarin had a trump card in his hand, a horrible secret, born of the rotten blood of the Spanish Habsburgs: the

  Tetrachion. All Philip IV's legitimate heirs died but those twins survived against all expectations."

  "Do you mean that, before Charles II was born, Philip IV may also have sired twins like the Tetrachion?" he asked in a toneless voice.

  "Perhaps this was one of the less serious cases, as Cloridia mentioned: those joined only by a leg," I continued. "They could not be separated when small, but if they reached adulthood, then the thing could be done. There was an heir, indeed, there were heirs to the Spanish throne. Mazarin had them abducted to use them as assets to be horse-traded in the peace negotiations. Then along came Capitor with her prophecy of the virgin and the crown, the Cardinal became scared and wanted at all costs to separate his niece from the young King. As for the Tetrachion, he did not know what to do with it, so he sent it to Elpidio Benedetti, who…"

  "Halt. There's a serious logical flaw in all this," said the Abbot, stopping me with his hand. "If, as you assert, Capitor meant to warn Mazarin that he would be punished for having removed the Tetrachion from Spain, the Cardinal should have been beside himself with fear and therefore have returned the twins to Philip IV as quickly as possible. Instead, he sends them straight to Benedetti in Rome. Now, why?"

  "Because he did not understand?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You told me yourself. Mazarin was quite flattered by the gift of the charger with Neptune and Amphitrite. In the two deities who rule over the seas, he saw himself and Queen Anne, and in the trident sceptre of Neptune, the crown of France, held tightly in his hand; or perhaps that of Spain, mistress of the ocean and the two continents, exhausted by wars and by now in Mazarin's hands. This last possibility had sent him literally into raptures. Also, as you told me, the Cardinal had understood the mad seer's warning to whoever deprived the crown of Spain of its sons as being directed against Philip IV In other words, he did not realise that Capitor's words concealed a threat aimed at him."

  "My compliments for the fantasy, even if it is somewhat convoluted," said Abbot Melani scornfully.

  "If Mazarin had not had those twins abducted," I continued, quite unshaken, "France today would not have any claim to the Spanish throne. With one deformed leg each, they would certainly have been crippled, but, unlike Charles II, they might have been able to procreate. Is there not in Spain the legend of King Gerion, who had three heads? And what are we to say of the two-headed eagle on the arms of the Habsburgs? Cloridia herself said this might be a memento of some defective birth which took place who knows when among the ancestors of Charles II. In other words, it does not seem that the Tetrachion is the first such case among the kings of Spain."

  "And obviously, according to your theory, Elpidio Benedetti would have sheltered those two unfortunate children somewhere, then here in the Vessel, once the building had been completed," the Abbot concluded rapidly.

  "It is not by chance that Mazarin then entrusted the three gifts to him as well as the picture depicting them," said I grave ly "So, in that villa, as well as the apparitions of Maria, the King and Fouquet, and the picture with Capitor's three gifts, not to mention your parrot — what's he called? Caesar Augustus — we may also have seen the Tetrachion. Well, it all goes to make a fine stew, that Vessel, and there's no gainsaying that! It should have been called the Stewpot, ha!" he sniggered.

  Atto went on laughing a long while. I looked at him without taking it badly. I knew that what I was saying was not at all as absurd as it seemed, and I was proud that for once it was I who was master, and he the disciple.

  "You are forgetting one thing, however," the Abbot made clear after a while. "The Tetrachion that we saw up there was only the deformed reflection of ourselves."

  "That's only what we've seen today. Besides, if we trust to those mirrors, we too must be monsters," I exclaimed with complete confidence.

  My observation alarmed the Abbot: "Do you mean that the time before we might have seen those twins' reflections distorted by the mirrors?"

  "Are you so sure you can exclude that?" I asked ironically. "We saw yesterday with our own eyes that those mirrors reflect one another. They may perhaps have sent us the reflection of the twins standing somewhere else in the penthouse, perhaps even confounding them with our own images. We were terrified by the distorted vision and fled for our lives without even looking around us."

  Abbot Melani was drumming impatiently on the pommel of his walking stick.

  "Why are you so unwilling to admit it, Signor Atto? There's nothing magical or inexplicable here. There's nothing to it but the physics of those mirrors and medical obstetrics which, for over a century, have described cases of twins born conjoined like the Tetrachion. And those twins we saw together had — just note the coincidence — the famous Habsburg jaw."

  "And where are they supposed to have got to afterwards? We found no further trace of them at the Vessel."

  "Once we'd found those distorting mirrors, we made no further attempt to find them. And that was a mistake. It was you who taught me seventeen years ago, with a wealth of examples: if one detail proves baseless, that does not mean the whole hypothesis is to be thrown out. Or, a document may be false, but tell the truth. In other words, as they say, we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Now, however, we have fallen for all these errors."

  "Then, listen here," retorted the Abbot, cut to the quick: "Yesterday I mentioned this to you. To be quite precise, Capitor said, 'He who deprives the crown of Spain of its sons, the crown of Spain will deprive of his sons'. This, if you want to know, does not, I believe, make any sense. Mazarin had no children, but his nephews and nieces had so many that the name of Mazarin is unlikely to die out at any foreseeable time. Do you know what I think? That all this is far too complicated to be true. I'm glad that I taught you never to trust appearances and to make use of suppositions, without censoring any, wherever evidence is lacking. But I
beg you to calm down, my boy, to everything there's a limit. That madwoman was raving and she's making us lose our wits too."

  "But think carefully about it…"

  "Now, that will be enough of your nonsense, I'm tired."

  Atto was looking out of the window at the heights of the Janiculum as we sped away: the villas, the verdant gardens, the gentle treetops; and then, at the city below, many-towered and abounding with the symbols of Christianity and the eternal power of the Church; and finally at the cupola of Saint Peter's.

  I should have liked to have the Abbot's support for my reflections; but Atto had remained sceptical and had even laughed in my face and ended up by silencing me, even rejecting factual examples of what he had once taught me. I did not know whether he was incapable of understanding, envious, too old, or whether he really thought that, yes, he had for once listened to me drawing conclusions, only to find that I had come up with nothing but senseless ravings. Who knows whether mine were nothing more than the crude, ingenuous fantasies of a bumpkin who believes in monsters? Only one person could know that, perhaps.

  We were approaching our goal. The postillion stopped the horses. I descended from the carriage, went to the other side and helped Atto to step down.

  We walked the last few yards on foot, unhurriedly. On arriving in front of the convent, we stopped a moment to contemplate the facade. Shielding his eyes with one hand, Atto looked up at the windows of the upper storeys which in convents are traditionally reserved for guests staying incognito. Perhaps she was behind one of these.

  Melani remained motionless, with his gaze fixed on those windows, as though he had come this far only to contemplate them, nothing more.

  "It seems you'll have to climb plenty of stairs," said I, to shake him from his torpor.

  He did not answer. Instinctively, I held out my arm to him, I know not whether to incite him to knock at the convent door or to offer him comfort. He hesitated. Then he handed me the rolled-up, sealed letter.

  "There. Give her this as soon as you see her."

  "Me? What do you mean? She is waiting for you and you have so many things to say to her and so many questions to ask, do you not want to…?"

  Atto turned his eyes away, towards an old wooden bench, abandoned there by goodness only knows who.

  "I think I shall sit down here for a moment," he said.

  "Why, do you not feel well?"

  "Oh, I am fine. But I should like you to go up."

  I paused, disconcerted. "Do you mean that you will not be going?"

  "I do not know," said Atto slowly.

  "If you do not go, she will not understand."

  "Go on, my boy, perhaps I shall follow you."

  "But what will she say when she sees a stranger appear? And what am I to say? I shall have to tell her that you are a man of other times and you prefer to climb the stairs slowly…"

  The Abbot smiled.

  "Just tell her I'm a man of other times, nothing more."

  I was unable to restrain a gesture of incredulity. My fingers closed around the letter.

  "You are committing a folly," I protested weakly, "and besides.."

  But Atto turned on his heels and made his way to the bench.

  At that very moment (hard to say whether this was a coincidence, or because the nuns were secretly observing us) the convent door opened. A sister was looking questioningly at me, with her head peeping just outside the door. She was waiting for me to come forward.

  I looked at Atto. He sat down. He turned towards me and raised one arm, a gesture combining a greeting and the order to go ahead. I just caught a glimpse of him as the sister closed the door behind me.

  I was in a corridor, enveloped in that unmistakeable aroma peculiar to women's convents, smelling of orisons, fresh novices and dawn vigils. I followed my guide up stairways, steps and along corridors until we came to a door. The sister knocked, then turned the handle and looked in. A woman's voice said something.

  "Please wait a while. There, take a seat here," said the nun. "Knock again in a few moments. They will let you in. I myself must go at once to the Mother Superior."

  What was there in the letter I held tightly in my hand? Was it a message from Atto to the Connestabilessa, or was it rather a note penned by King Louis of France for his Maria? Perhaps both…

  Days before, Melani had written that, when they met again, he would deliver to her something that would make her change her mind about the King's happiness. What exactly did that mean? The answer was in the letter 1 held in my hand.

  I had little time but my decision was already taken. Atto's seal was badly applied; it had not stuck properly to the paper.

  Here I was, about to raise the curtain on the most intimate spectacle of the hearts of those three old people. I unrolled the letter.

  When I read it, I could hardly believe my eyes.

  After I know not how much time, I knocked. My soul was serene, my spirit more lucid then ever.

  "Come in," replied a pleasant feminine voice, mature but kind, gentle, well disposed.

  She was, after all, as I imagined. I stepped forward.

  After introducing myself and delivering the letter, I provided her with an explanation for Atto's absence, cobbled together in the most general terms. She was kind enough to pretend to believe me, nor were her words tinged with any note of reproach, only regret at have missed meeting Melani.

  I bowed again and was on the point of taking my leave, when I thought that, all in all, I had nothing to lose. There was something I wanted to ask her; not about what I had just read — for that I needed no explanations.

  The Tetrachion. Perhaps she would be surprised, but she would not have me thrown out. She might have thought I was acting on behalf of my master, that my mouth and ears were his.

  I began directly, because she perhaps was alone in knowing the truth; and there was little time.

  My explanation had not taken more than a few minutes. During all that time, the Connestabilessa did not bat an eyelid. She remained seated, looking fixedly out of the window. She made no comment or gesture. She stayed silent, but hers was a silence that said more than thousands of words.

  Here was the mute confirmation that what I was saying was not a figment of my imagination. That silence probably signified that at least a part of my reconstruction was mistaken, perhaps crude and ingenuous. But the kernel of it remained true and vivid, and Maria better than anyone knew how very real the case was. If I had just been raving, or if she had known nothing about all this, I would, at best, have earned myself a reprimand and been asked to leave. Instead, she had remained motionless and heard me out in total silence. She knew well of what I was speaking. It concerned that secret history against which all her hopes of happiness had been dashed and which had condemned her to a life of wanderings and misfortune. Her silence — explicit, yet prudent — was the best possible way of assenting to, confirming and encouraging my view.

  I finished what I had to say, allowing the silence to fill the room and the space between us for a few more moments. She kept staring out of the window, as though she were already alone.

  There was no more to be said. I took my leave with a bow, accompanying it with the same penetrating absence of words as that with which she had listened to my speech. This was the only possible farewell between persons who know that they will never meet again.

  It might have been simply the latest surprise, but I was expecting it: in the street, no one was waiting for me. Neither Atto nor the carriage. By now, I had understood the game.

  As I walked towards Villa Spada, the bittersweet impressions of my meeting with Maria Mancini soon gave way to the violent emotion aroused by the letter I had delivered to her.

  One single sheet of paper, blank. And in the middle, rather high up, just three words, written in an easy cursive hand: yo el Rey

  Even an idiot could understand. Since the Catholic King of Spain was certainly not in Rome, this was a forged signature. And as Charles II was abou
t to die, what document could it be for, if not his will?

  The more I thought of it, the more hatred and hilarity came together in my mind. What a fine little game Atto had used me in, without saying a thing to me! And what a fool I had been to suspect nothing…

  The last will and testament of Charles II: the document in which the heir to the world's greatest kingdom would be named, the heir whom all Europe awaited.

  Under the pretext of his nephew's marriage, Cardinal Spada invites both Atto and Maria to Rome. Atto brings with him the ideal person to forge the signature: a quite unusually refined forger.

  After all, what had Abbot Melani said when he introduced Buvat to me? "He is at his best with a pen in his hand; but not like you: you create; he copies. And he does that like no other." At that moment, I had thought that he was referring to his secretary's work copying letters; but no. It was then, in a flash of memory, that I recalled what Atto had told me many years earlier, when first he mentioned his secretary's name. "Every time I leave Paris secretly, he looks after my correspondence. He is a copyist of extraordinary talent, and knows perfectly how to imitate my handwriting."

  So that was what I had seen among Atto's secretary's well hidden papers: those strange proofs of e, l, R, o and which I had at first taken for badly performed calligraphic exercises, were in fact part of Buvat's preparations for forging a signature. He was practising to imitate that of Charles II, repeating over and over again the letters contained in the autograph yo el Rey. These exercises he had kept in order to compare them with authentic signatures of the Catholic King and to be able in the end to select the best copy.

  I need only have put those letters together in the right order and I would have found out the truth. So that was why Atto kept so carefully concealed in his wig those three incomplete letters bearing the signature of the King of Spain: they were the models on which Buvat was to practise. They were, however, far too confidential to be left in his secretary's hands, and so Melani kept them on his person.