"Quite. And Mazarin, who was at the height of his power, did not care to be reminded that, secundum legis ordinem divinae, in other words, according to the order of God's law, he must sooner or later resign himself to relinquishing his command."
Someone at court hastened at once to whisper in his ear that the sphere which imitates the world (giving the illusion of being able with a glance and with the sense of touch to embrace the entire terrestrial orb) subtly suggests the notion of possession of lands, cities, entire nations: in other words, the prerogative of monarchs. This was a manner of saying that Capitor, and Don John, and in the final analysis, all Spain, recognised him as the real Sovereign of France. All the more so in that the Bastard had taken pains to make it clear that he was donating the terrestrial sphere to the Cardinal, while keeping only the globe of the constellations for himself. This interpretation ended up by flattering His Eminence, so that he regained his good humour.
Capitor then unveiled the second gift. It was a great and marvellous golden charger in the Flemish style with subjects in silver in relief, representing the god of the sea, Neptune, trident in hand in lieu of a sceptre, together with his spouse, the nereid Amphitrite. They were seated rather closely side by side on a rich chariot drawn by a pair of Tritons at the gallop, gloriously parting the waves and leaving a vast land behind them.
"One of the finest Flemish chargers that I have ever seen. It must have been worth a fortune," commented Atto. "Curiously, Capitor called it by a strange name, which imprinted itself in my mind because it was neither French nor Spanish, nor of any language of our times, and this I shall tell you later."
On the dish a number of pastilles of incense had been placed, which Capitor burned, releasing their potent and noble perfume. When the smoke began to thin, the madwoman turned to the Cardinal with a lopsided smile and, pointing with menacing mien, first at the two marine deities, then at the trident, proclaimed: "Two in One!"
Mazarin, continued Abbot Melani, was rather flattered. Like many of those present, he had seen in the two deities himself and Queen Anne, and in Neptune's sceptre, the French crown, held firmly in his hand. Others, however, saw in the marine allegory of the chariot ploughing the immense sea and leaving the land behind it, and above all in the trident in Neptune's grasp, not the crown of France but that of Spain, mistress of the oceans and of two continents, exhausted by wars and thus falling into Mazarin's hands. And that sent Mazarin into raptures.
"He who deprives the crown of Spain of its sons, the crown of Spain will deprive of his sons," Capitor added even more enigmatically, instantly silencing the murmuring of the audience.
"Here too, there was a wealth of possible interpretations. Everyone understood that the warning was aimed at Philip IV of Spain, all of whose male heirs had died at a tender age. According to others, it was because his sister Anne of Austria had been made to sign a deed renouncing the Spanish throne, thus depriving the Spanish crown of its descendants in the female line; while there were those who interpreted it in terms of Philip's obstinate refusal to appoint Don John the Bastard as his heir, despite the fact that many wanted him for their future King."
Capitor moved to the third gift. Yet again, she raised the red cloth with a sharp tug, casting it away. This time, it was a splendid goblet, yet again of silver and gold, with a long stem in the form of a centaur holding up the calyx.
"An object of the finest workmanship," commented Melani, "but above all, symbolic, like the other two presents."
The goblet was in fact full of a dense and oily matter, almost like plaster. Capitor explained that this was myrrh.
"The madwoman then invited me to step forward, and handed me the music. I already knew what she had asked me to sing, and there was no need to rehearse it even once. The accompaniment on the guitar was elementary and even the lunatic's modest musical ability was quite sufficient."
"What did you sing?"
"A little song by an anonymous poet that was quite well known at the time: the 'Passacalli della vita' or 'Passacaglia of Life'."
"And was it well liked?"
Atto made a face which betrayed all the bitterness of that memory with the icy fear induced by a bad presentiment.
"Not one bit, alas. Indeed, it was from this that all the trouble began."
"What trouble?"
In lieu of a reply, Atto chanted to me with a sure but discreet voice the passacaglia which, accompanied by a visionary madwoman, he had intoned some forty years before in the presence of the King of Spain's bastard son:
Oh, how wrong you are to think That the years will never end -
We must die.
And our life is just a dream And as good as it may seem It will very soon have passed
Die we must.
Just forget the medicine You 'll have no use for quinine All those cures are just a lie -
We must die.
Oh, when singing you can die Or when playing lute and fife Leave your love and lose your life -
We must die.
And when dancing you may die, Drinking ale or eating pie,
Dust can but return to dust,
Die we must.
Maidens, youths and little babes, All men move towards their graves -
We must die.
Sick or sound, brave or poltroon, Death will have us late or soon -
We must die.
If this you will not contemplate, It already is too late All your senses you have lost, And you've given up the ghost -
Die we must.
Then he wiped a veil of perspiration from his brow. He seemed to be living a second time the remote, chilling moments in which he realised that he had been made the instrument of some oblique warning to Mazarin.
At the end of the song, Atto cast a furtive glance at His Eminence. The Cardinal was as white as a sheet. He had in no wise lost control of his emotions, nor had he betrayed any annoyance, yet the castrato, who knew every wrinkle in his face, had clearly discerned his unexpressed fear.
"You see," Abbot Melani instructed me, "if you would truly know great statesmen, you must needs have spent no little time in their close retinue. That is because whoever governs a state needs to be a master of dissimulation, so that no one can fathom his nature. However, through the position which I had occupied, I was able to observe His Eminence from close quarters for quite some time. The Cardinal, who was by nature rather fearless and determined, feared only one thing: death."
"But how can that be?" I asked, astonished; "I thought that cardinals, princes and ministers, who are so close to the secrets and machinations of states, were. .. how can I put it?. .."
"Somewhat more distanced from these things because distracted by the high demands of affairs of state, is that not what you thought? Absolutely false. You must know that the power which such eminent personages exercise in no way saves them from the same phantasms as beset the humble. That is because human beings are always and quite invariably made of the same substance, and indeed the fact of rising among the learned and influential exposes one to the risk of imagining oneself to be godlike, so that it becomes hard to resign oneself to the fact that Our Lady Death will sooner or later come and make us equal to the least of her subjects."
Thus, Cardinal Mazarin had for some time been engaged in a vain struggle with the spectre of death, against which every effort must in the end prove in vain. The macabre song which Capitor had made Atto sing seemed chosen to perturb the Cardinal's already unquiet conscience.
"Myrrh was one of the Three Magi's gifts to Our Lord," I observed.
"Precisely. It is a symbol of mortality, since it is scattered on corpses," remarked Melani.
The second present too concealed a recondite message. The incense which it contained, whose penetrating odour Capitor had spread through the air, is indeed used in holy places and the Three Magi gave it to the Christ Child in acknowledgement of his divinity.
Many, then, were the aspects of His Eminence evoked and honoured by those gifts: his charge as
a Cardinal and ecclesiastic, represented by incense, and his nature as a mortal man, of which the emblem was myrrh.
"Lastly, the pedestal of the globe, which was in solid gold, was a sign of regal power: a homage to that of Mazarin, the Queen's lover and the absolute master of France, the most magnificent and powerful state in Europe and in the whole world," Melani commented gravely, "like unto Our Lord, who is called King of Kings."
The three objects, in sum, symbolised the three gifts which Our Lord received from the three Magi: gold, incense and myrrh; or the symbols of royal power, divinity and mortality.
"Capitor, His Eminence is grateful to you," said Queen Anne, dismissing her with benevolent ease, seeking to change the subject and to save everyone from embarrassment. "Now, let us invite the orchestra in," she concluded, gesturing that the doors should be opened.
Outside the room, a small crowd of musicians had indeed gathered, whose services Monsieur had commanded, together with a little table so laden as to relieve the guests' stomachs, once their ears had been catered for.
The doors were duly opened and the crowd of players began politely to take their places in the room, filling it with a growing hubbub. At the same time, groups of valets, panting at the effort, were bringing in tables already laid to satisfy the royal appetite. A little further off, there followed the obsequious multitude of courtiers, pressing forward keenly as they waited to be allowed to enter and partake of the remainder of the entertainment.
Louis, Mazarin and the Queen Mother were already distracted by this coming and going when Capitor, who was on the point of making way for the concert and the banquet, fixed her gaze one last time on the Cardinal.
"A virgin who weds the crown brings death," she declaimed, smiling, in a loud and clear voice, "which will be accomplished when the moons join the suns at the wedding."
Then she bowed and disappeared with her faithful retinue of birds into the human clouds of musicians and servants now bursting into the room in joyous disorder.
"Only then did Don John set aside his haughtiness," said Atto. "He turned to the Cardinal and the Queen begging their pardon on behalf of the madwoman. He admitted that her performances were supposed to be an entertainment, yet sometimes they were practically incomprehensible and, even when she seemed to overstep the limits of decency, she did not do so out of discourtesy but drawn by her bizarre and inconstant nature, et cetera, et cetera"
A madwoman could be forgiven for some madness, Abbot Melani reasoned, but Capitor's eccentricities that evening seemed all too much like threats; and Don John did not want to be thought of as having commissioned those hostile words.
The mad clairvoyant had made Atto sing a song that spoke of death and its ineluctability. Before that, she had offered the
Cardinal three costly objects, which alluded to his being a Cardinal - which was true - to his being a King, which was almost true, but inopportune, Mazarin being the Queen's secret lover; and lastly that he was destined to die: undeniably true, but no one likes to be reminded of that twice in the same evening.
The sonnet even contained oblique references - to the inconstancy of fortune, the weight of failures - which no one would have dared to mention in the presence of the First Minister of the most powerful kingdom in Europe.
In the end, taking advantage of the arrival of the orchestra and of the valets bearing in the banquet, Capitor had escaped, leaving His Eminence a last menacingly allusive message.
None could have any doubts as to the meaning of those parting words. The crown was quite obviously young Louis. And who could the virgin be if not Maria Mancini?
"The allusion to the virgin, in particular, seemed to refer clearly to Maria, whom the King never knew: carnally, I mean."
"Really?" I exclaimed in surprise.
"No one believed that, except for myself, obviously, well aware as I was of the extreme innocence of their love, and the Cardinal who was kept informed of every minute of the young King's life. When Maria arrived in Rome and married the Constable Colonna, the latter confided in me not long after their wedding that he had found her to be a virgin and, being aware of what had passed between her and the King of France, had been frankly amazed by that."
If the marriage between the virgin and the crown were to be concluded, according to Capitor's warning, someone would pay with his life. And, seeing that the prophecy was aimed at Cardinal Mazarin, Maria's tutor and Louis's godfather, and thus arbiter of the destiny of the twain, it was easy to imagine that it was precisely his end that was being predicted, indeed even augured.
Proffered by anyone else, Capitor's words might have seemed mere harmless ravings. In the mouth of that being with her arcane faculties of divination, they sounded all too like the voice of the Black Lady with the ineluctable scythe.
"It is not easy to explain here and now, forty years later," said the
Abbot. "When that ugly being opened her mouth, it set one a-shiv- ering. Yet everyone laughed: the foolish because they were amused, the others, out of nervousness."
Atto, too, during Capitor's mad liturgy, had felt the touch of fear. He, too, had taken part, albeit passively and marginally, in the staging of the show for Mazarin.
Meanwhile, the wind had risen and the sky, which had hitherto been immaculate, seemed to have grown slightly darker.
"You yourself, Signor Atto, told me that Capitor was suspected of speaking as if she had been inspired to by the Spaniards who wanted a marriage between Louis and the Infanta and were consequently hostile to Maria Mancini. If that were the case, Capitor's message would have been, how can one put it?. . ."
"A perfectly normal threat for political ends? 'Tis true, there were those who saw it in those terms; but I believe that His Eminence was by no means so sure of it. The fact is that, from that moment on, Mazarin's attitude to Maria and the King changed sharply: no sooner had Don John the Bastard departed with his madwoman than the Cardinal became the most bitter enemy of the love between the two young people. There was, however, something else: Capitor called the dish by a Greek name: a word which you too now know."
"Do you mean?..."
"Tetrachion."
I was so caught up in the narration that I had almost failed to notice the curious phenomenon which had been taking place for the past few minutes: a sudden, bizarre change in climate, which had also occurred the day before in the very same place.
The wind, which was at first moderate, had found new vigour. The cirrus clouds which had quite unexpectedly begun to darken the vault of heaven swiftly gathered, by now forming a bank, then a cumulus. A powerful gust raised dead leaves and dust from the ground, forcing us to protect our eyes for fear of being blinded. As on the day before, we had to lean against a tree if we were not to lose our balance.
It lasted no more than a few instants. Hardly had the singular little squall blown over than the daylight seemed more joyful and free. With our hands we brushed down our dusty clothes as best we could. I raised my eyes to the sun and was more dazzled than I expected: there was hardly any difference between the light now and when we had left Villa Spada. "What curious weather there sometimes is here," commented Atto.
"Now I understand," I said. "The first time that you mentioned the Vessel to me you said that there were objects here."
"Good. Your memory is correct."
"Capitor's gifts," I added.
He did not reply. He was moving towards the front door.
"'Tis open," he commented.
Someone had entered the Vessel. Or, said I to myself, had gone out from there.
As we were crossing the hall on the ground floor, we heard the notes of the music which had greeted us on our first visit, the folia. I, meanwhile, had inevitably been besieging Atto with further questions.
"Pardon me, but why do you think that Capitor's gifts are here?"
"That is partly a matter of concrete fact, partly deduction, but there are no two ways about it."
Capitor's obscure prediction, Atto explained, circula
ted at lightning speed through court. No one had the courage to record it in writing, for it was said that the Cardinal had been terrified by it. Even the most meticulous of memorialists preferred to pass over the matter in silence, for their memoirs were made to be circulated and read at court, not to remain clandestine.
Yet, silence was not enough. Mazarin was already obsessed by the problem of how to retain power at the expense of the young King Louis who was bound, sooner or later, to cause him problems, and this he knew full well. After Capitor's dark prophecy, the Cardinal was beset nightly by new, black phantasms.
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