Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  “We’ll go the Place with No Name tomorrow. This matter is more urgent. But what do you plan to do?” I asked with some curiosity.

  “In my room I have just what is needed.”

  A moment later we were all in Simonis’s room. There we found Penicek, zealously scribbling away in the Greek’s notebooks, and Opalinski intent on copying the notes for himself.

  “Have you finished, Pennal?” asked Simonis brusquely.

  “At this very moment, Signor Barber,” he stammered. “Here, I’ve made a fair copy of everything.”

  “Good,” declared my assistant, after giving a quick glance at the lame Bohemian’s work. “And don’t you ever dare to give me a rough copy of the notes again, do you understand?” he reprimanded him severely.

  “Yes, yes, Signor Barber, forgive me, Signor Barber,” said the Bohemian, his head bowed.

  “A Pennal from Prague I had to end up with,” grumbled my assistant to himself, while he rummaged through the books in his trunk.

  He pulled out a tiny volume, then he went to fetch a chair for Cloridia. I picked up the book. The title page was decidedly spare in its details:

  Doctoris Henrici Casparis Abelii

  Studenten Künste

  Which is to say “Artifices of the Students” by Doctor Henry Gaspar Abelius. No date or place of printing, nor even the printer’s name. It was no more than forty or so pages. I opened it. There was no preface, no letter to the gentle reader, and not even a dedication to some respectable patron. It was divided into short chapters. I dipped into it.

  “Secret against wounds from weapons,” I read slowly in my laborious German.

  “Here, Signor Master,” Simonis said quickly, snatching the book from me and opening it at another page. “This is the part that interests us: ‘How to do invisible writing and make it reappear.’ ”

  “Magnificent!” exclaimed Cloridia. “Just what we need. How does it work?”

  Opalinski looked up inquisitively.

  Simonis explained the arduous and dangerous task we were embarking upon.

  I was afraid that the Pole might get alarmed and go rushing off. But he did not. As I had already noticed the previous evening, Janitzki did not seem particularly alarmed by the deaths of his fellow students.

  “So now,” concluded Simonis, “we finally have the chance to discover whether the Agha’s phrase conceals a secret or not. If we don’t find anything on this piece of paper either, it means that the Turks have nothing to do with the matter. And so our three companions did not die on account of their investigations into the Golden Apple.”

  “You can rely on my help,” answered Opalinski.

  “So,” the Greek went on to read, “here it says that to make writing invisible, you have to put acqua fortis in the ink, but this often results in yellow stains.”

  According to Doctor Abelius’s little book, Simonis went on, others write with strong vincotto mixed with straw ash, as is explained even more clearly in Weckeri Secretis, which we did not have.

  “If necessary we can send the Pennal to go and get it,” the Greek stated imperiously.

  “Um, what would that be?” asked Penicek timidly.

  “The De Secretis by Alessio Pedemontano, translated from Italian into Latin by Jacob Wecker – everyone knows it!” Opalinski mocked him, once again in a good mood.

  “Ass of a Praguer!” raged Simonis, cuffing the poor Pennal repeatedly and noisily.

  The Polish student, as Simonis had said and as I had observed myself, was extremely erudite. Poor Penicek, by contrast, did not seem so well prepared.

  My assistant began to read from the book again:

  “To make the writing reappear, take gall apples, crumble them into large pieces, leave them for an hour in vincotto, distil the resulting water, soak a cotton wad in it and dampen the writing.”

  “Right, we can start from there,” proposed Penicek.

  “Have you got any gall apples, idiot of a Pennal?” Simonis attacked him.

  “I haven’t but I know that Koloman Szupán is a real artist in these tricks.”

  “Really? He never told me,” said Opalinski, who was his great friend, in surprise.

  “Koloman is Hungarian: he has the blood of Attila, King of the Huns, who was more famous in his day for his skill in ciphering and deciphering messages, by means of invisible writing and such things, than for being the Scourge of God. He was a great diplomat,” stated Penicek.

  “Attila?” we all said in amazement.

  “Attila.”

  Hungary got its name from the Huns, explained Penicek. Those fearsome barbarians occupied it in remote ages. It was part of ancient Pannonia, subjugated by Rome under the Empire of Augustus, and famous for its continual rebellions. In Pannonia, explained the Pennal, there was a certain nation close to the banks of the Maeotian Marshes. The people that lived and traded there were wild, misshapen brutes, unable to communicate articulately; they used a certain grunting sound that always seemed to finish with hunhun, from which they became known as the Huns, and then the Hungarians.

  “By the way,” my assistant asked Jan, “do you know where Koloman is?”

  “No.”

  “No one’s seen him,” observed Penicek. “A pity. He’s the one who knows Balamber’s trick.”

  “What is that?” we all asked together.

  The Huns – explained the Bohemian gazing upwards, as if searching in his own memory – had lived isolated from everything and everyone until the year of health 370. The Church of Christ was governed at that time by St Damasus, the Empire by Valens, and the Kingdom of the Scythians by Balamber. When hunting a deer, Balamber was drawn by it away from his lands, to the Maeotian marshes, which were frozen at the time. Without knowing it, he was the first foreigner to arrive in Hungary. After observing the view, Balamber forgot about the deer and began to consider the new lands before him and to explore them. When he got back home he talked about them and praised them so highly that the desire to take possession of those lands grew, and very soon the Hungarian lands were overwhelmed by a great invasion. Balamber crossed over the Tanaïs, subjugated the Tauric Chersonese and the Goths who occupied it, and joining up with the Alans moved on towards the provinces of Moesia and Dacia.

  “Nobody could resist him. He gave his messengers little pieces of blank paper, from which only his allies could extract the messages of the Scythian king.”

  On his way through these regions, however, Balamber died, and was succeeded by Mundsuch, captain of the same nation. Mundsuch finally conquered the lands of Hungary. His sons were Attila and Bleda.

  “Bleda did not last long: Attila, who had a nasty temper, very soon killed him. Because of his cruelty he was known as the Scourge of God, but he had inherited the secret of his grandfather Balamber, and it was thanks to that – and not to his strength – that he was able to descend into Italy undisturbed with a hundred thousand men and put the peninsula to fire and the sword. But he also founded the beautiful and most serene Venice, which – and it is no coincidence – is the queen of espionage. It is said that the Doges secretly hand down the secret of Balamber, left to them by Attila, from one to another. And everyone knows the shady dealings that go on between the Most Serene Republic and the Sublime Ottoman Porte.”

  Penicek was right, I remembered at that moment. Twenty-eight years earlier Abbot Melani himself had told me that when the Pope had called upon the whole of Europe to defend Vienna from the Ottomans, only one other power, apart from France, had held back: Venice.

  “So this piece of paper could hold a secret message written using Balamber’s trick!” I exclaimed.

  “Highly possible,” confirmed the Pennal. “And in that case Koloman is our last hope.”

  “First of all, let’s read on,” Opalinski proposed, returning to the recipes of Doctor Abelius. “Perhaps we’ll find less secret means.”

  “I agree,” Simonis echoed him. “If we fail we’ll look for Koloman.”

  To cancel something writ
ten, continued the little handbook, some used lemon juice, Spiritu vini and Sale armoniaco, but if you then added Alumine piumoso and distilled it in an alembic, the writing would reappear. Of course, as my assistant’s little room was hardly an alchemical laboratory, we did not have any Alumine piumoso on hand, nor even a simple alembic.

  “There, maybe I’ve got it,” exclaimed Simonis. “Here it says how to write something secret using normal words.”

  This happens, explained the book, when the words or letters that matter are counter-marked by little signs or hooks, or the words follow in a fixed number, or when the seventh or eighth word or letter matter, but in such a way that both meanings – the patent and the hidden one – work well in the context, so that the secret is not noticed by third parties and yet is understood by those who need to know it.

  We pored over the paper but could find no trace of little marks, however miniscule. So then we tried the other method. But there were very few words and they were all short; one of them, “ad”, consisted of only two letters.

  “Sssapva, ooodoeu, solaone . . .” we all tried together, one of us taking the first letters, one the second, and one the first, second and third in succession, and then starting over again with the first . . .

  Soon Simonis’s room echoed with a confused mewling that lasted until we had exhausted all possibilities. In vain, alas.

  The Greek leafed through his curious handbook again.

  “Ah, there are writings that remain invisible until the paper is immersed in water or passed in front of the fire. This is much simpler.”

  “What?” said Cloridia, startled. “I have to take that piece of paper back to the palace just as it is!”

  “Give it to me,” I said to Simonis, taking the book from him and beginning to read: “Take vitriol or galanga, dissolve it in water, throw in powder of gall apples and stir it. After twenty-four hours filter with a clean cloth and use it to write; when it is dry you will not be able to see anything on the paper.”

  If you wanted to read what was written, concluded the recipe, you had to put the paper in clean water and after a few minutes white letters would appear.

  But if the invisible writing had been done with the juice of onions or garlic, anyone who wanted to read it would have to hold the letter over the fire and at once reddish writing would appear.

  The other systems indicated by Doctor Abelius were, unfortunately, even more complicated. If lemon juice had been used to write, in order to read it you had to grate a Lithargyrium nut, or silver foam, boil it in vinegar and then immerse the paper in it. This would reveal white script. But if the ink consisted of vitriol that had been crushed and dissolved in water, you would have to pulverise a dram of gall apples, pour a half measure of pure water over it, stir, sift with a cloth and wet the paper with this water; this would reveal black script.

  Another way to make invisible writing and bring it to light, was to make an ink by dissolving vitriol in vincotto, filtering it with a linen cloth and leaving it to stand until it became clear. Then you took oat straw reduced to ashes and rubbed it with pure water on a coloured stone, until it became a convenient colour for writing. With this ink you then wrote – between the now dry invisible lines on the same piece of paper – a normal letter with nothing secret in it, so that no one would suspect there was anything hidden. Anyone who wanted to read the hidden lines would have to boil gall apples in wine, dip a sponge in it and wipe it delicately over the letter. The visible lines would disappear and the previously invisible ones would emerge in their place.

  In short, the waters that should bring out the hypothetical writing on the Agha’s piece of paper were complicated concoctions of ingredients that only an apothecary could supply. But the worst hypothesis of all was yet to come. If the writing had been done with a mixture of minced silver foam, strong vinegar and egg white, to read it we would have to burn the Agha’s paper until it turned black: at that point white letters would appear.

  “Have you gone mad?” my wife kept repeating as we read the book aloud, with her hands on her chest.

  In the end she was persuaded to allow the least risky expedient: rapid immersion in water. But she did not want to witness the experiment, which made her extremely anxious, and took the opportunity to go back to our rooms to watch over Abbot Melani as he slept and to take care of our son.

  Fortunately the Agha’s paper was of the best and thickest, the kind used for messages to be sent by courier through rain and snow, over rivers, lakes and countless other obstacles. It was designed to stand up to all the discomforts of travel; I was sure it would resist. Almost as if it were a sacred ceremony, Simonis fetched a bowl of water, while Opalinski stretched out a white cloth on which we would lay the Agha’s paper. With my heart pounding, I dipped it for an instant into the bowl, taking care not to wet the part with the Agha’s phrase, for fear the ink would run.

  Nothing happened, but fortunately the paper passed the test more or less unharmed. We waited for it to dry, placing a small brazier a little way off. Then we tried with the gentle flame of a candle stub to see if any hidden writing emerged. Nothing. For obvious reasons I discarded the carbonisation method, and resigned myself to trying the remaining methods. I told Simonis to make a list of what we needed: vitriol oil, alembics, alumine piumoso, et cetera et cetera. Then I gave it to Penicek.

  “Here’s some money,” I said. “Go in your cart to the Red Crab apothecary, near the Old Market, and get everything.”

  “A pity good old Koloman Szupán isn’t here with us,” sighed the Pennal, screwing up his little eyes to stare at the list for the apothecary. “With all this stuff he would know how to get any secret out of the Agha’s paper.”

  “I’d really like to know where he’s got to,” said Simonis.

  “Perhaps Opalinski,” the Pennal timidly ventured, “has some notion –”

  “Not the faintest idea,” the latter cut him short.

  “A pity,” repeated Penicek. “Perhaps Koloman is hiding because he’s scared. After they killed Dragomir in that way . . .”

  Opalinski lowered his eyes.

  “If he’s vanished because he’s afraid,” the Bohemian considered, limping towards the door, “it would soothe him to know that the dervish didn’t really want to cut anyone’s head off. It’s a pity we can’t tell him so.”

  “This evening I’ll go and see if I can track him down in some tavern,” promised Jan Janitzki.

  “This evening will be late,” insisted Penicek. “Signor Barber is right, this is the great chance to find out if the Agha’s phrase conceals something or not. Signor Barber says truly: if we don’t find anything on this paper, it means the Sublime Porte has nothing to do with this whole story. And so – as Signor Barber neatly puts it – we will finally have the proof that Dànilo, Hristo and Dragomir were not done away with for their enquiries into the Golden Apple.”

  “Bravo, Pennal! Incredible, there really is a glimmering of intelligence in that brute’s head of yours!” exclaimed Simonis, pleased with the praise bestowed on him.

  “All the same,” I put in, “if Koloman is hiding, we could end up wandering all over the city . . .”

  “He’s at the House Goat.”

  Opalinski knew where to find the Hungarian. Koloman had confided in his friend: he was hiding in the attic of an open-air inn, known as the House Goat, in the suburb of Ottakring.

  Penicek had guessed correctly: after Populescu’s death, Szupán was afraid. And so he had gone into hiding and had made Jan swear that he would not reveal his hiding place to a living soul.

  But now the Pole had spoken. It was a question of tracking Koloman down to let him know the reassuring news about the dervish, and at the same time to seek his help in examining the Turkish Agha’s paper. But Opalinski already seemed sorry he had let the secret out, and his face had turned dark.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I exhorted him impatiently.

  “If you don’t mind, wouldn’t it better if I went first to the a
pothecary to get the remedia before he shuts up shop?” the Bohemian proposed. “I’ll come straight back, pick you up in the cart and we can all go to Koloman.”

  “If we all set out together we’ll be quicker,” I objected. “Once we get to Koloman, we can start the experiments with his help.”

  “With Signor Master’s permission, if I may be so bold,” Penicek timidly remarked, “doesn’t Signor Master think it risky to let the Agha’s paper leave the secure walls of this convent and to carry out delicate trials in a public place?”

  “Good Lord, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “I must be really tired. You’re right, we had better go and fetch Szupán and bring him here.”

  “On reflection,” Opalinski put in, “despite the good news we’ll be bringing him, it might take hours to persuade Koloman to lend us a hand in this matter. And, I repeat, even though we are friends, he has never talked to me about Balamber, Attila, ciphered codes or any of the rest. If he doesn’t agree to help us, we could end up not having enough time to do the experiments by ourselves.”

  After further discussion we finally decided to try without Koloman. Opalinski’s face brightened: should the experiments work, his Hungarian friend would never find out that he had blown the gaff on his hiding place. And so we sent the Pennal to the apothecary.

  “And hurry!” roared the Greek, making the poor cripple jump.

  The Bohemian student returned more than an hour later, panting and sweating from his hurried journey and from a long argument with the apothecary, who had been unwilling to sell him some of the preparations, which were potentially toxic. He had asked a thousand questions about what the devil all this stuff was for, and finally had kept him waiting a good while on account of the laborious Galenic preparation of a couple of remedia.

  My assistant’s little room was quickly turned into an alchemic kitchen, with the cauldron on the hearth full of smoking and foaming alembics, while the air was saturated with pungent smells.

  “Nothing at all, damnation!” Simonis cursed impatiently.

  The only effect achieved by all that busy activity was that the paper now had unsightly creases and singed margins.