In truth everything surrounding Atto was bizarre, unusual, arcane. What could one say of the strange phenomena at the Vessel? And was there a connection between the death of the bookbinder, Atto's wounding and the strange circumstances in which this had taken place? On top of all that, there was the extremely troubling fact of the double raid on Buvat and myself, after we had both been safely drugged.
Again, I felt confusion, even desperation clutching at my breast. The languor of love for my Cloridia had given way to fear.
What was really happening? Were we perhaps the victims, as Melani had written to the Connestabilessa, of some pro-imperial plot? Or was this to do with the cerretani, as Sfasciamonti maintained? Or both things at once?
I began once more to reprove myself for having let myself get caught up again in the Abbot's webs. This time, in truth, even he seemed to be groping in the dark. What was more, I had seen him confused and upset during our strange visit to the Vessel. My thoughts then returned confusedly to Maria, and I recalled that she now seemed to be residing in Madrid. In Spain, the very place where, as I had learned from the letters between the two, the fate of the world was now being played out.. .
Suddenly, a sensation of warm silk enveloped my naked back and drew me softly from the grey torpor into which I had slipped unawares. A murmur soothed my ears:
"Is there room for me?"
I opened my eyes: my Cloridia had returned.
When we were sated with silent kisses and by our embrace in the warm light of sunset, Cloridia began.
"You haven't asked me how it went. If you only knew what an adventure it has been!"
For days and days, my wife who, as I have said, had for years been exercising the profession of midwife, had stayed far from me and from our conjugal bed in order to assist an expectant mother. Now she had returned and I could not wait to tell her everything and to receive comfort and counsel from her. She, however, seemed as impatient as I to tell me her latest news. So I considered that it would be better to let her speak first. Once the natural womanly loquacity of my Cloridia had been placated, I would have all the time I needed to tell her of the sudden reappearance of Abbot Melani and of my torments.
"The little ones?" I asked before all else, for our two daughters had gone with their mother to assist her.
"Have no fear, they're down below snoring happily with the other servant girls."
"Then," I said with feigned enthusiasm, "tell me all!"
"The factor of the Barberini farm is now the father of a fine, plump and well-formed infant. Healthy and with everything in the right place just as God ordered!" she murmured proudly. "Only..."
"Yes," said I, hoping that she would not prolong her account.
"Er, he was born after five months."
"What, that's not possible!" I exclaimed in a strangulated voice, pretending surprise, although I knew full well what she was leading up to.
"Those were the very words which the factor cried out when his poor wife was in the travails of childbirth. And yet, it is possible, my love. I spent hours and hours calming down that great ignorant beast and convincing him that, while it is true that the time assigned for a human birth is normally nine months, there are, however, cases of births in the fifth month, just as, on the other hand, there are births that take place only in the twelfth month.. ."
I freed myself from my wife's embrace and looked her in the eyes.
"... Pliny bore witness before a tribunal in defence of a woman," Cloridia continued candidly, "whose consort had returned from the wars only five months previously, and swore that it was possible to give birth after only five months. It is, moreover, true that, according to Massurius, under the Praetorship of Lucius Papirius, a sentence was pronounced against someone in a certain controversy concerning heredity, because his mother attested that she had been pregnant for thirteen months; but it is also incontrovertible that the great Avicenna saved a mother from stoning by giving testimony before a judge that it is also possible to give birth after fourteen months."
I was trembling from my anxiety to speak to her.
"Cloridia, listen, I have so many things to tell you.. ."
But she was not listening. The air was still warm and my beautiful spouse, after all those days of absence, seemed no less so.
"I was good, was I not?" she interrupted me as though she had not heard me, pressing her cool bosom against my chest. "I explained to that madman that, among all animals, man is the only one to have an indeterminate period before coming into this world. Beasts all have a fixed time: the elephant always gives birth in the second year, the cow in the first, the horse and the donkey in the eleventh month and the pig and the dog in the fourth, the cat in the third, while the hen always hatches her chicks after twenty days' brooding, and finally, the sheep and the goat drop their young in the fifth month. .."
Indeed, their husbands - I commented to myself - Master Ram and Master Billygoat, both have a fine pair of horns on their heads.
My Cloridia was utterly incorrigible. I had lost all count of the number of cases of dubious paternity resolved by the midwife's skills of my consort. In her love for children (whoever their father might be) and their mothers (whatever the fidelity of which they were capable), Cloridia did everything possible, swearing and forswearing, in order to convince suspicious husbands. She would stop at nothing. With a ready tongue, a smile on her lips and the most open expression in the world, she would furnish clarifications and examples in abundance for all husbands: from the freshly discharged soldier to the shepherd who had been absent for the transhumance, to the travelling vendor, even the grim mother-in-law or the meddlesome sister-in-law. And she was invariably believed, in despite of the sage's law that one should not believe all that is said by someone who talks much, for in many arguments one can almost always find lies.
Not only that: fearing that the infant, when he grew, might show too much of a resemblance to a neighbour or some other person above suspicion, Cloridia, even before the confinement, and immediately afterwards, would with tireless loquacity instruct the new father and the wary relatives, explaining that a woman's imagination could render her newborn child similar to a thing seen or imagined during coitus. She was always delighted, upon her return after a confinement, to tell me how, when and before what audience she had prepared her favourite story. In all those years, she had repeated it to me perhaps a thousand times, at every confinement spicing it with new or invented details, each time attributing to herself new ideas and discoveries. She loved that I admired her and took pride in her deeds, and the way in which I laughed when she wanted me to laugh and pretended to be surprised when she expected that. My desire was to see her gay and satisfied, and I played along for her.
Nevertheless, that afternoon, I simply could not do it. I had so much, indeed, too much, to tell her and I desperately needed her advice.
"I told the factor: 'Do you perhaps not know the story told by Heliodorus which shows how the imagination can produce creatures similar to the thing imagined? It is known the world over! Listen here,' I told him: 'Heliodorus tells, in the book of his Aethiop histories, how a beautiful white-skinned girl was born of a black mother and father, namely Idaspe, King of Aethiopia, and his Queen Persina. And this was a consequence only of the thought, or rather, the imagination of the mother, with whom the King conjoined in a chamber in which were depicted many actions of white men and women, and in particular the amours of Andromeda and Perseus; the Queen took such delight in the sight of Andromeda in the act of venery. . ."'
Obviously, I knew the rest of the tale inside out, and while, docilely but distractedly, I accepted Cloridia's sweet pressures on my body, I repeated mentally after her: the Queen took such delight in the sight of Andromeda in the act of venery that she became pregnant with a maiden similar to her; this explanation was given by the Gymnosophists who were the most learned men in that land. And Aristotle confirms...
I could console myself, I thought as I impatiently awaited the end o
f the tale: if the great Hippocrates, and Pliny and Avicenna too, had had the impudence to perjure themselves before a judge, coolly inventing such tali stories in order to save the lives of a mother and her child, my spouse was in good company.
"Alciatus, and before him Quintilian," continued Cloridia while she disarranged my clothing and gave ampler freedom to her appetites, "freed another woman from the same accusation who had given birth to a black daughter, her husband being white, because there was in her chamber the painted figure of an Aethiopian."
"And then? Did you tell him the tale of Jacob's sheep?" I asked her in order to please her, as I was beginning to fear the outcome of her manoeuvres.
"Obviously," she replied, without allowing herself to be distracted from her intentions.
"And your theory that even mere food could influence the appearance of the newborn child?" I asked, caressing the palms of her hands with my lips, so as to keep her under control and to distract her from the inspection which she was obstinately intent upon carrying out.
"Mmm, no," she replied with a hint of embarrassment. "Do you remember, when I attended the confinement of the wife of that Swiss coffee-house owner? Well, when I tried to assuage the suspicions of the husband, explaining to him that in animals one finds more resemblance than in men, because they eat always the same food, while men eat different foods, he replied with an ugly expression that in his part of the world Alpine men and women ate nothing but chestnuts and watered-down goat's milk, despite which they were born with the same differences as ourselves."
"And what did you say to that?"
"I still managed, using the story of feminine imagination. I swore that it was universally known to be true, indeed most certain, that a strong imagination and the fixed thought of a woman could mark the body of her child with the semblance and image of the thing desired. Do we not see every day infants who are born marked with pig's skin, or wine, or grapes, or other similar stains? A strong imagination can then mark in a woman's womb a body already fully formed, so much as to imprint the most varied forms on its skin, for these represent the woman's thoughts. So in the end I told him: 'You who exploit your poor wife night and day serving coffee at table now have your just deserts: the poor thing, by dint of spending so much time looking at coffee, has produced for you a son of the same colour!'"
Alack and alas. As we can read in the works of Cesare Baronio, the great Tertullian, a man of great fame, let himself be persuaded by a vile woman of no account that the souls of the just were coloured. Then just imagine my sharp-witted and erudite Cloridia allowing herself to be caught out by some cuckold coffee-house proprietor and, what's worse, with the thick skull of a Switzer. With this mute consideration, I accepted with resignation the account of my lady's prowess, while she in the meanwhile had resumed her effusions.
"Is a man's imagination worth nothing?" I asked, feigning astonishment and surprise in order to free myself a little of her over-active embrace.
"Here, there arises a considerable doubt. According to Aristotle, yes. According to Empedocles and Hippocrates, whose view I praise, a man's imagination will succumb to a woman's, which is most vehement," said she, while she acted most vehemently. "Save in a single case. That of the wise father with a foolish son. Why should a foolish son sometimes be born of a wise father? It is not possible that the mother should desire this. And yet, yes, that is the case. Most studious husbands are of ever-melancholy humour, and melancholy is sister in the flesh to madness: both especially hated by women when it comes to lovemaking. It may then be that during the carnal act their imagination may run to desiring a happy fool rather than a melancholy sage. Quite apart from the fact that distracted husbands do not pay sufficient attention to that task.. ."
I winced for shame. Cloridia was right. I had not responded to her ardour and had remained melancholy and absent. Not even when she had put all her womanly arts into play, from the most subtle to the most manifest, had she succeeded in calling my anxious member to his sweet and sacrosanct conjugal duties. And to think that only a little earlier I had so longed for her! The Devil take those damned thoughts of the Abbot, the bookbinder and the thieves and all those things which had so horribly cast me down into that pit of anguish.
"Would you then prefer a silly but happy consort, dear wife?"I asked her.
"Well, a happy and foolish man is always a good thing for the quality of the offspring, for he greatly pleases the woman in their encounter and will make her desire wisdom to be united to so much gaiety, so that, through the power of the imagination, she will succeed in generating a son who is both joyful and wise in spirit."
I smiled, embarrassed. She sat up and laced her bodice.
"Come, what's so perturbing you?"
Thus, I was at last able to tell her: of Atto's arrival, the theft of my memoir, the task of serving as the Abbot's biographer during this time and, at last, of my suspicions and lacerating doubts, without forgetting Atto's wounding, the strange death of the bookbinder, as well as the double raid on our home and against Buvat. But above all I told her of the mysterious Maria, who had then turned out to be Madama the Connestabilessa Colonna, with whom Atto was secretly in correspondence, and of the disquieting visit to the Vessel. Lastly, the news of how the incursion had turned our nest upside down caused her a shudder.
"And only now are you telling me?" was Cloridia's sole response as she looked at me wide-eyed, as though she had suddenly discovered that she had married an idiot.
My prickly consort had already forgotten how long I had had inanely to await the end of her chatter. She calmed down quickly enough: learning of the tidy little sum which the Abbot had already paid us put her in a good mood at once.
"And so Abbot Melani is again in these parts, doing damage," commented Cloridia.
My wife had never had much sympathy for the Abbot. Through me, she knew of all the base deeds of which the castrato had been capable, and thus was not in the least impressed either by the diplomat's eloquence or by my experience of countless adventures by his side.
"He sends you his greetings," I lied.
"You may reciprocate," she replied with a hint of scepticism. "And so your castrato abbot has been pining for a woman these thirty years," she added, in a tone halfway between sarcasm and satisfaction. "And what a woman!"
Cloridia, being a good tattler, had already heard tell of Maria
Mancini and knew from high authority of her Roman vicissitudes as the wife of the Constable Colonna.
On the visit to the Vessel and the enigmatic apparition which I had witnessed, she made no comment. I should very much have liked her to enlighten me with her wise opinion, for she had once been so expert in the occult arts such as reading the palm, the science of numbers and guidance by the ardent rod, but my wife passed directly to the next phase: she would ask around, among her women, in order to help us with our inquiries. She would set in motion the powerful and secret network of feminine word of mouth; a thousand eyes would keep vigil - observing, following, memorising for us, shooting astute glances - unseen, behind the deceptive appearance of an expectant mother's calm contemplation or the languid eyelashes of a spouse.
We talked for a long time and as usual she was prodigal with politic advice, wise recommendations and exaggerated praise of my virtues. She knew me well and knew how much encouragement I would be needing.
I had no more doubts. Now that I had told her all and had put my trust in her, my fears had dissolved, and with them the weight which drained my senses of all strength and tumescence.
We lay together and at last we loved each other. In the shade of the great beech, like some new Titirus, I sweetly modulated my flute in honour of my woodland muse.
We had by now been overtaken by nightfall. Freeing myself from my Cloridia's embrace, I discreetly rearranged her apparel and walked slowly towards the great house and my meeting with Abbot Melani.
It was then that, my soul being touched by the grace of conjugal love, I first beheld the gardens of the
villa in the gay fullness of their splendour. Cardinal Spada had spared no expense to bestow upon the festivities every imaginable perfection. Villa Spada was smaller and more modest than other noble dwellings, but its master desired that it should for the occasion be among the foremost in the display of magnificence. He had not failed to enhance that which, more than all else, makes Roman villas so very special and different from those in all the rest of the world, namely their unique situation; for, wherever their site may be, there is perforce a most delightful conjunction with the vestiges of ancient Rome.
The statues, marbles, inscriptions and all the other things which ignorant workmen had brought to light in the gardens of Villa Spada were, by order of Cardinal Fabrizio, raised from oblivion in the cellars or under the invasive maidenhair ferns and so arranged as to punctuate the modern gardens with majestic whiteness.
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