Secretum am-2 Read online

  The strange circumstances of the attack on Atto had left in me a turmoil of dismay, mixed with curiosity, and on the pretext of trimming some hedges by the entrance, I grasped the shears which I had in my apron and marched back to the gate.

  "Was today's incident not enough for you, boy?"

  I turned, or rather, I raised my eyes heavenward.

  "The woods around here must be full of cerretani. Do you want to get into trouble yet again?"

  It was Sfasciamonti, who was mounting guard.

  "Oh, are you keeping watch?"

  "Keeping watch, yes, keeping watch. These cerretani are a curse. May God save us from them, by all the stars of morning," quoth he, looking all around us with a worried air.

  Cerretani. his insistence on that sinister-sounding term, the exact meaning of which escaped me, seemed almost an invitation to ask for some explanation.

  "What is a cerretano?

  "Shhh! Do you want to be overheard by everybody?" hissed Sfasciamonti, seizing my arm violently and dragging me away from the hedge, as though a cerretano might lie concealed under the greenery. He pushed me against the wall of the estate, looking to the right then to the left with an exaggeratedly alarmed demeanour, as though he feared an ambush.

  "They are… How can 1 put it? They are starvelings, beggars, vagrants, men of the mobility… Nomads and vagabonds, in other words."

  Far away, in the park, the notes of the orchestral players hired for the wedding mingled with the last hammer blows nailing together scaffolding ephemeral and theatrical.

  "Do you mean to say that they are beggars, like the Egyp tians?"

  "Well, yes. I mean, no!" he shook himself, almost indignantly. "But what are you making me say? They are far more, I mean less… The cerretani have a pact with the Devil," he whispered, making the sign of the cross.

  "With the Devil?" I exclaimed incredulously. "Are they perhaps wanted by the Holy Office?"

  Sfasciamonti shook his head and raised his eyes dejectedly to the heavens, as though to emphasise the gravity of the matter.

  "If you knew, my boy, if you only knew!"

  "But what exactly do they get up to?"

  "They ask for charity."

  "Is that all?" I retorted, disappointed. "Begging is no crime. If they are poor, what fault is it of theirs?"

  "Who told you they were poor?"

  "Did you not tell me just now that they are mendicants?"

  "Yes, but there are those who beg by choice, not only necessity."

  "By choice?" I repeated, laughing, beginning to suspect that within that mountain of muscle called Sfasciamonti there might be no more than half an ounce of brain.

  "Or better: for lucre. Begging is one of the best-paying trades in the world, whether you believe that or not. In three hours, they earn more than you can in a month."

  I was speechless.

  "Are they many?"

  "Certainly. They are everywhere."

  For a moment, I was struck by the certainty with which he replied to my last question. I saw him look about himself and scrutinise the avenue full of carriages and bustling with servants, as though he were afraid of having spoken too freely.

  "I have already raised the matter with the Governor of Rome, Monsignor Pallavicini," he resumed, "but no one wants to know about this. They say, Sfasciamonti, calm down. Sfasciamonti, go take a drink. But I know it: Rome is full of cerretani and no one sees them. Whenever something ugly happens, it is always their doing."

  "Do you mean that, even before, when you were following that young man and Abbot Melani was wounded…"

  "Ah yes, the cerretano wounded him."

  "How do you know that he was a cerretano?'

  "I was at the San Pancrazio Gate when I recognised him. The police have been on his heels for some time, but one can never catch these cerretani. I knew at once that he was up to some mis chief, that he had some mission to accomplish. I did not like the fact that he was so close to the Villa Spada, so I followed him."

  "A mission? And what makes you so sure of that?" I asked with a hint of scepticism.

  "A cerretano never goes down the street without looking to the right and to the left, in search of people's purses and many other such knavish and swindling things. They are arrant rogues, forever robbing, loitering and engaging in acts of poltroonery or luxuriousness. I know them well, that I do: those eyes that are too sly, that rotten look, they are all like that. A cerretano who walks looking in front of him, like ordinary people, is certainly on the point of committing some major outrage. I cried out until the other sergeants of the villa heard me. A pity he escaped, or we'd have known more."

  I thought of how Abbot Melani would behave in my place.

  "I'll wager that you'll manage to obtain information," I hazarded, "and so to discover what became of that cerretano. Abbot Melani, who is lodging here at the Villa Spada, will certainly be most grateful to you," said I, hoping to arouse the catchpoll's cupidity.

  "Of course, I can obtain information. Sfasciamonti always knows whom to ask," he replied, and I saw shining in his eyes, not so much the hope of gain as professional pride.

  Sfasciamonti had resumed his rounds and I was still watching his massive figure merge into the distant curve of the outer wall when I noticed a bizarre young man, as curved and gangling as a crane, coming towards me.

  "Excuse me," he asked in a friendly tone, "I am secretary to Abbot Melani, I arrived with him this morning. I had to return to the city for a few hours and now I can no longer find my way. How the deuce does one get into the villa? Was there not a door with windows in it here in front?"

  I explained to him that there was indeed a door with a window, but that was behind the great house.

  "Did you not say that you are secretary to Abbot Melani, if I heard you correctly?" I asked in astonishment, for Atto had said nothing to me about his not being alone.

  "Yes, do you know him?"

  "About time! Where were you hiding?" snapped Abbot Melani, when I brought his secretary to his apartment.

  While escorting him to Atto, I was able to observe him better. He had a great aquiline nose planted between two blue eyes which sheltered behind a pair of spectacles with unusually thick and dirty lenses and were crowned by two fair and bushy eyebrows. On his head, a forelock strove in vain to distract attention from his long, scrawny neck, on which sat an insolently pointed Adam's apple.

  "I… went to pay my respects to Cardinal Casanate," said he by way of an excuse, "and I tarried awhile too long."

  "Let me guess," quoth Atto, half in amusement, half in irritation. "You will have spent plenty of time in the antechamber, they'll have asked you three thousand times who you were and who was sending you. In the end, after yet another half an hour's wait, they will have told you that Casanate was dead."

  "Well, just so…" stammered the other.

  "How many times must I insist that you are always to tell me where you are going, when you absent yourself? Cardinal Casanate has been dead these six months now: I knew that and I could have spared you the loss of face. My boy," said Atto, turning to me, "this is Buvat, Jean Buvat. He works as a scribe at the Royal Library in Paris and he is a good man. He is somewhat absent-minded and rather too fond of his wine; but he has the honour to serve sometimes in my retinue, and this is one such occasion."

  I did indeed recall that he was a collaborator of Atto's, as the Abbot had told me at the time of our first encounter, and that he was a copyist of extraordinary talent. We saluted one another with an embarrassed nod. His shirt ill tucked into his breeches and ballooning out, and the laces of his sleeves tightened into a knot with no bow were further signs of the young man's distracted nature.

  "You speak our language very well," said I, addressing him in affable tones, in an attempt to make amends for the Abbot's brutality.

  "Ah, spoken tongues are not his only talent," interjected Atto. "Buvat is at his best with a pen in his hand, but not like you: you create, he copies. And he does that lik
e no other. But of this we shall speak another time. Go and change your clothes, Buvat, you are not presentable."

  Buvat retired without a word into the small adjoining room, where his couch had been arranged among the trunks and portmanteaux.

  Since I was there, I spoke to Atto of my conversation with Sfasciamonti.

  "Cerretani, you tell me: canters, secret sects. So, according to your catchpoll, that tatterdemalion came accidentally with dagger drawn to try out his blade on my arm. How interesting."

  "Have you another hypothesis?" I asked, seeing his scepticism.

  "Oh, no, indeed not. That was just a manner of speaking," said he, laconically. "After all, in France too something of the kind exists among mendicants; even if people know of these things only by hearsay and never anything more precise."

  The Abbot had received me with his windows open onto the gardens, wearing a dressing gown as he sat in a fine red velvet armchair beside a table bearing on the remains of a sumptuous luncheon: the bones of a large black umber, still smelling of wild fennel. I was reminded that I had not yet eaten that morning and felt a subtle languor in my stomach.

  "I do know of a number of ancient traditions," continued Atto, massaging his wounded arm, "but these are things that have now been somewhat lost. Once in Paris, there was the Great Caesar, or King of Thule, the sovereign of those ragamuffins and vagabonds. He would cross the city on a wretched dog-cart, as though mimicking a real sovereign. They say that he had his court, his pages and his vassals in every province. He would even summon the Estates-General."

  "Do you mean an assembly of the people?"

  "Exactly, but instead of nobles, priests and ladies, he would summon thousands of the halt, the lame and the blind, thieves, beggars, mountebanks, whores and dwarves… Yes, I mean all manner of beings," he broke off, hastening to correct himself, "but please do remove that apron with all those tools, it must be so heavy," said he, trying to change the subject.

  I did not take offence at Abbot Melani's unfortunate expression; well I knew that many of my less fortunate fellows populated the dark lairs of the criminal fraternity, and I was aware that I for my part had been kissed by good fortune.

  Buvat had returned, washed, combed and wearing clean clothes, but the sateen of his dark green shoes was visibly threadbare, if not torn; one of the oaken heels was shattered and the buckles dangled, almost completely ripped away from their moorings.

  "I left my new shoes behind at the Palazzo Rospigliosi," he at last summoned up the courage to admit, "but I promise you that I shall go and retrieve them before evening."

  "Take care not to forget your head, then," said the Abbot with a sigh of resignation that betrayed contempt, "and do not waste time loafing around as usual."

  "How is your arm?" I asked.

  "Magnificent, I simply adore being sliced up with a sharp blade," he replied, remembering at last to open the letter which had been delivered to him.

  As he read it, a rapid succession of contrasting expressions crossed his features: first he frowned, then his face opened for a few instants in a fleshy and heart-warming smile that caused the dimple on his chin to tremble. At length, he looked pensively out of the window, his gaze lost in the sky. He had grown pale.

  "Some bad tidings?" I asked timidly, exchanging a questioning glance with his secretary.

  We understood from the vacant look on the Abbot's face that he had heard nothing.

  "Maria…" I seemed to hear him murmur, before slipping the badly crumpled letter into the pocket of his dressing gown. Suddenly, Atto Melani looked old and tired again.

  "Now go away. You too, please, Buvat. Leave me alone."

  "But… are you sure that you need nothing else?" I asked hesitantly.

  "Not now. Kindly return tomorrow evening at nightfall."

  We had left the Abbot's apartments and descended the service stairs, and within moments my forehead and that of Buvat felt again the scorching breath of the afternoon heat.

  I was dumbstruck: why had Atto fallen into such grave prostration? Who was the mysterious Maria whose name had so softly touched his lips? Was she a woman of flesh and blood or had he perhaps invoked the Blessed Virgin?

  In any case, I thought, as I walked vigorously beside Buvat, it all seemed inexplicable. Atto's faith was certainly not fervent: never — not even at moments of the greatest danger — did I once recall him invoking the assistance of heaven. And yet it would be even stranger if this Maria were a woman of this world. The sigh with which Atto had murmured that name and the pallor which came into his face suggested a promise not kept, an old and unrequited passion, a torment of the heart: in short, a love entanglement.

  Love for a woman: the one test, I thought, to which Atto the castrato would never be equal.

  "You will have a long ride under the sun to Palazzo Rospigliosi, if you want to recover your shoes," said I, turning to Buvat, as I looked in the direction of the stables, seeking the groom.

  "Alas," he replied with a grimace of discontent, "and I have not even had lunch."

  I seized the opportunity without an instant's hesitation.

  "If you so desire, I shall arrange for something to be prepared for you quickly in the kitchens. That is, of course, if you do not mind…"

  Abbot Melani's secretary did not need to be asked twice. We turned swiftly on our heels and, after leaving the great house through the back door we were soon in the chaos of the Villa Spada's kitchens.

  There, amidst the to-ing and fro-ing of the scullions who were cleaning and the assistant cooks who were getting ready to prepare the evening meal, I gathered together a few leftovers: three spiny needlefish cleansed of their salt, two unleavened ring-cakes and a fine white and azure chinoiserie in the form of a goblet, full of green olives with onions. I also obtained a small carafe of Muscatel wine. For myself, by now almost dying of hunger, I broke off a pair of rough hunks from a large cheese with herbs and honey and laid them on lettuce leaves which I retrieved still fresh from the remains of the luncheon's garnishings. It was certainly not enough to sate my appetite after a day's work, but it would at least enable me to survive until suppertime came.

  In the febrile activity of the kitchens, it was not easy to find a corner in which to consume our late meal. What was more, I was looking for a discreet recess in which to further my acquaintance with that strange being who was acting as secretary to Atto Mel ani. Thus I might perhaps be able to clarify my ideas somewhat about this Maria and the singular behaviour of the Abbot, as well as the plans which the latter was hatching for his own future and, a fortiori, for mine.

  I therefore proposed to Buvat, who needed no persuading, that we should sit on the grass in the park, in the shade of a medlar or peach tree, where we should also enjoy the advantage of being able to pluck a tasty fruit for our dessert directly from the tree. Without so much as a by-your-leave, we seized a basket and a double piece of jute and walked along the gravel scorched by the midday sun in the direction of the chapel of the Villa Spa da. The dense grove of delights which stood behind it was the ideal place for our improvised picnic. Once within the perfumed shade of the undergrowth, the soft freshness of the ground gave instant relief to the soles of our feet. We would have settled on the edge of the wood near the chapel if a subdued and regular snoring had not revealed to us the presence of the chaplain, Don Tibaldutio Lucidi, curled up in the arms of Morpheus, evidently having thought the time ripe to enjoy a brief respite from the fatigues of divine service. After, therefore, placing a certain dis tance between the chaplain and ourselves, we at length chose as our roof the welcoming umbrella of a fine plum tree replete with ripe fruit, ringed by little wild strawberry bushes.

  "So you are a scribe at the Royal Library in Paris," said I to open our conversation, as we stretched out the ample piece of sacking on the sward.

  "Scribe to His Majesty and writer on my own behalf," he re plied, half seriously and half facetiously as he fumbled greedily in the basket of provisions. "What Abbot Melani sai
d of me today is not exact. I do not only copy, I also create."

  Buvat had resented Atto's judgement, yet there was a hint of self-deprecating irony in his voice, the fruit of that resigned disposition which — in elevated minds destined to fill subaltern roles — results from the impossibility of being taken seriously, even by themselves."What do you write?"

  "Above all, philology, although anonymously. On the occasion of a pilgrimage I made to Our Lady of Loreto, in the Marches of Ancona, I arranged for the printing of an edition of certain ancient Latin inscriptions which I had discovered many years previously."

  "In the Marches of Ancona, did you say?"

  "Yes," he replied bitterly, allowing himself to fall to the ground as he plunged his fingers into the goblet of olives. " Nemo propheta in patria, saith the Evangelist. In Paris I have never published a thing: I must even struggle to obtain any pay. 'Tis as well that Abbot Melani is there to commission some small piece of work from time to time, otherwise that envious old skinflint of a librarian… But do tell me about yourself. It seems that you too write, or so the Abbot tells me."

  "Er… not exactly, I have never had anything printed. I should have liked to do so, but did not have the means," I replied, embarrassedly turning away my gaze and pretending to fuss over serving him some slices of needlefish with butter. I said nothing to him about my one and only opus, the voluminous memoir of the events which had befallen the Abbot and myself at the Donzello inn many years before, and which Atto had now stolen from me.

  "I understand. But now, if I am not mistaken, the Abbot has commissioned you to keep a record of these days," he replied, grasping an unleavened focaccia and greedily hollowing it out to make room for the stuffing.

  "Yes, although it is still far from clear to me what I am supposed to…"