"A cerretano, as I said: a canter, a ragamuffin, a slubberdeguilion, a money-sucking mountebank or whatever the deuce you want to call such rogues. Dammit, Sirrah, perhaps he meant to rob you."
"Ah, a beggar," said I, translating.
"What is your name?" asked Atto.
"Sfasciamonti."
Despite his pain, Atto looked him up and down from head to toe.
"One who smashes mountains... Why, that's a fine name, and eminently well suited to you. Where do you work?" he inquired, not having seen whence Sfasciamonti came.
"Usually, near the Via del Panico, but since yesterday, here," said he, indicating the Villa Spada.
He then explained that he was one of the sergeants paid by Cardinal Spada to ensure that the festivities should take place undisturbed. The bookbinder drew near, as one with pressing tidings.
"Excellency, I have found the arm which injured you," said he, handing Atto a sort of shiny dagger with a squared-off handle.
Sfasciamonti, however, promptly seized the blade and pocketed it.
"One moment, Sir," protested Atto. "That is the knife that struck me."
"Precisely. It is therefore corpus delicti and to be placed at the disposal of the Governor and the Bargello. I am here to supervise the security of the villa and I am only doing my duty."
"Master Catchpoll, have you seen what happened to me? Thank heavens that wretch's dagger caressed my arm and not my back. If your colleagues catch him, I want him to pay for this too."
"That I do promise and swear unto you, by Wallenstein's powerderflask!" roared Sfasciamonti, raising a timorous murmur among the bystanders.
The wound was no light one, and the bleeding still by no means staunched. Two maidservants rushed up with more gauze and bandaged the arm so as to stop the flow. I had occasion to admire how stoically Abbot Melani bore pain: a quality of which I was as yet unaware. He even stayed behind in order to settle arrangements with the bookbinder, who had in the meantime gathered up all Atto's papers, upon which he was to confer the form and dignity of a volume. They rapidly agreed on the price and set an appointment for the morrow.
We moved towards the great house, where Atto intended to summon a physician or chirurgeon to examine the ugly wound.
"For the time being, it is not too painful; let us hope that it will not get worse. Heaven help me and my idea of giving an appointment to that bookbinder, but I cared too much about my little book."
"Apropos, what was it that you had bound?"
"Oh, nothing of importance," he replied, raising his eyebrows and pursing his lips.
We had returned to the house without exchanging another word. The affected carelessness with which Abbot Melani had replied (or rather, failed to reply) to my question, had left me in some perplexity. Those one thousand two hundred scudi compelled me to share the fate of the Abbot for a period of several days, in order to keep a record of his sojourn at the Villa Spada. Yet it still was not given to me to know what precisely awaited me.
I requested the Abbot's permission to take my leave, on the pretext of a number of most urgent duties which had accumulated since his arrival. In actual fact, I did not have much to do on that day. I was not a regular servant of the household and, moreover, preparations for the festivities were almost complete. I did, however, desire a little solitude in which to reflect upon the latest occurrences. Instead, the Abbot begged me to attend him until the arrival of the chirurgeon.
"Please tighten the bandages on my arm even more: those women's dressings are causing me to lose blood," he requested with a hint of impatience.
So I waited on him and added yet more bandages which the valet de chambre had taken care to provide.
"A French book, Signor Atto?" I resolved at length to ask him, referring to his previous allusion.
"Yes and no," he replied laconically.
"Ah, perhaps it circulates in France but was printed in Amsterdam, as often happens. . ." I hazarded, in the hope of extracting something more from him.
"No, no," he cut me short with a sigh of fatigue, "really, it is not even a book."
"An anonymous text, then. . ." I butted in yet again, scarcely dissimulating my growing curiosity.
I was interrupted by the arrival of the chirurgeon. While the latter was feeling around Atto's arm, giving orders to the valet de chambre, I had a moment in which to reflect.
It was plainly no accident that Atto Melani should have reappeared after seventeen years, asking me, as though it were a mere bagatelle, to be his chronicler; and even less surprising that he should have been among the guests at the nuptials of Cardinal Fabrizio Spada's nephew. The Cardinal was Secretary of State to Pope Innocent XII, who hailed from the Kingdom of Naples, and was consequently of the Spanish party. Pope Innocent was about to die and for months all Rome had been preparing for the conclave. Melani was a French agent: in other words, a wolf in the sheepfold.
I knew the Abbot well and by now I needed few clues to make my mind up about him. One had but to follow one single elementary rule: to think the worst. It always worked. Having learned from my memoir that I worked for the Cardinal Secretary of State, Atto must deliberately have arranged to have himself invited to the Spada celebrations, perhaps taking advantage of his old acquaintance with the Cardinal, to which he had alluded. And now he intended to make use of me, well pleased with the fortuitous circumstance which had placed me where I could serve him. Perhaps he wanted something of me other than a mere chronicle of his feats and deeds with a view to the forthcoming conclave. But whatever could he have in mind this time? That was less easy for me to guess at. One thing was quite clear in my mind: never would I, insofar as my limited means permitted, allow Abbot Melani's plotting in any way to harm my master, Cardinal Spada. In this respect, at least, it was a good thing that Atto had assigned me that task: it enabled me to keep watch over him.
The chirurgeon had meanwhile completed his work, not without extracting from Atto a few hoarse protests at the pain and a fine heap of coin which had to be paid by the wounded man in the temporary absence of the Major-Domo.
"What kind of hospitality is that?" Atto commented acidly "They stab the guests and then leave them to pay for their cure."
The Secretary for Protocol of the Villa Spada then arrived at Abbot Melani's bedside, in the absence of Don Paschatio, the Major-Domo, and ordered that he should at once be served luncheon, that two valets should stay to assist him with his meal, so as to give respite to the injured arm, and that his every desire should be satisfied forthwith; he apologised profusely, cursing in the most urbane language the delinquency and mendacity which with every Jubilee invariably reduced the Holy City to little better than a lazaret and assured him that he would be reimbursed immediately, with the necessary interest, and would indeed most certainly be liberally compensated for the grave affront which he had suffered, and said it was as well that they had hired a sergeant to watch over security at the villa during the festivities, but now the Major-Domo would call the catchpoll to account. He continued in this vein for a good quarter of an hour, without realising that Atto was falling asleep. I took advantage of this to leave.
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 Egyptians?"
"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 mischief, 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 like 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 win
dows 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."
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