"Of course..." said I guiltily. "I was hoping to be able to make myself useful in some way."
"Very well, your wish has already come true," he replied with satisfaction, picking up a wooden case full of other tools and motioning that I was to follow him.
We were, he explained, on our way to the flower beds near the chapel of the villa. It was a fine day; the fresh early morning breeze seemed to be holding an amiable dialogue with the twittering of the birds and with the multiform ranks of clouds which observed placidly from on high the eternal round of terrestrial vanities. Our footsteps echoed softly on the fine gravel of the drives while the sun, still low on the horizon, warmed us with its first timid rays.
This delightful arrangement of the natural elements, however, completely escaped Tranquiilo Romauii who was, as ever, utterly preoccupied with the concerns of his art and had already begun to instruct me.
"Don Paschatio has ordered me to plant jasmine," he began in querulous tones. "Yet, I had told him quite clearly that the noblest garden has no place for jasmine. Neither our own yellow home-grown variety, of course, nor the common white lily. And even if there were any place for suchlike, they should take second place to the vermilion or orange Turk's head lily. These days, all sense has been lost of what is to be cultivated in a garden. 'Tis a veritable scandal."
"You are right, it is the most serious matter. So, you were saying that jasmine is unworthy of the best gardens?" said I, feigning interest.
"Let us say that pride of place is to be accorded to the 'silver goblet' or white narcissus, whichever one prefers to call it," he resumed, raising his voice. "Or to the double narcissus of Constantinople, which produces a set of ten or twelve flowers, to the Ragusa narcissus, the yellow narcissus or the starry variety; or again to the frasium, which resembles a rose, or a lettuce, to the ultramontane, which has the virtues of a double yellow rose, or to the sweetest smelling jonquils, with a perfume like that of jasmine, tempered by and mixed with the scent of orange blossom."
"I understand," said I, smothering a yawn and trying to see how I could place a word about the Tetrachion without arousing suspicion.
Meanwhile, we had moved around to the far side of the great house and had almost arrived at the flower beds near the chapel. The weight and bulk of my load was causing me to sway; inwardly, I was cursing Atto.
"I know that what I am about to say to you will sound obvious," added the Master Florist, "yet I shall never tire of repeating that it is a mistake of the moderns to neglect the false narcissus, also known as the trumpet lily because of its long, trumpet-shaped calyx. Likewise, greater use should be made of Indian narcissi, especially the Donnabella, which first became acclimatised to Italy in the gardens of the Prince of Caserta, and the spherical lilied narcissus which could not flower in France but, becoming at last a guest of Rome's amenity and majesty, here opened its flowers, almost like a sweet smile, in the happy plantations of my grandfather. And then, let them choose the crocus, the colchicum, the imperial crown, the iris, cyclamens, anemones, ranunculus, asphodels, peonies, fritellaria, lilies of the valley, carnations and tulips."
"The Dutch tulip?" I asked, if only to avoid the dialogue turning into a monologue.
"But of course! In no other plant does nature jest so freely or with so great a variety of colours, so much so that, years ago, someone enumerated over two hundred different colours. But take care," said he, stopping and looking me fixedly in the eyes with a severe mien.
"Yes, Master Florist?" I replied, stopping dead, dropping all the hardware I was carrying and fearing that I must somehow have said or done something displeasing.
"My boy," he admonished, in fact quite oblivious of me and absorbed in his own train of thought, "be sure not to forget that, alongside those I have named is the passion fruit, which is a native of Peru and is to be trained on cane trellises, Indian yucca, jasmine from Catalonia and Arabia and, lastly, the American variety which, it seems, some call quamoclit."
From this last assertion 1 realised that Tranquillo Romauli, even when he fixed his eyes on yours, had the eyes of his mind focused solely upon the sole true interest of his life: the loving care of plants and flowers.
"And now, to work," said he, handing me his box and beginning to scoop at the earth of the flower bed with his bare hands. "Hand me the implements one at a time, as I request them. First, the straight-edge."
I rummaged in the box and almost at once found the long stick which was used for aligning the sides of the flower beds. I gave it to him.
"Give me the little jar with the seeds."
"Here you are."
"Sprinkler."
"Yes."
"Pruning knife."
"By your leave."
"Pronged grubber."
"Yes."
"Dibber."
"Yes."
"Cannon."
"Take it."
He turned the tool around in his hands and stood up with a start.
"I don't believe it. 'Tis not possible!" he said to himself, biting on the knuckles of his right hand: I had made a mistake.
"But my boy!" he exploded, opening wide his arms and addressing me in the grave, commiserative tones of a priest lecturing a sinner. "How many times must I tell you that this is an extractor, not a cannon, which is four times bigger?"
I durst not reply, conscious of the gravity of the misdeed.
"Forgive me, I thought..." I struggled to justify myself, hastily returning the extractor to the box and pulling out the cylinder for transplanting known as a cannon.
"No excuses. Let us attend to our work now. I see that you have already brought some pots with you," said he, regaining his composure and preparing to extract the seedlings which he meant to transplant.
While Tranquillo dug up and replanted, delicately moving the soil, carefully watering the turf and lovingly positioning the new bulbs, I searched my mind desperately for ways of steering the conversation away from flowers towards what concerned me.
"Abbot Melani told me that you had an interesting and profitable conversation today."
"Abbot who? All. . . you mean the gentleman from Pistoia; or
France, was it not? He quite appreciated the way in which I had placed colours in my flower beds," said he, while cleaning the plants bordering the beds with a little brush and ridding them of the specks of earth scattered during the transplanting.
"Exactly, 'tis of him that I speak."
"Very well, 'tis no surprise that he should have expressed such pleasure. One must always so arrange matters that colours respond symmetrically to one another, and that I have done, as we did in the good old days at Duke Caetani's gardens at Cisterna: each bed must be filled with at least two or three sorts of flowers, differing among themselves in nature and in colour, and so arranged, frontally or sideways, that those which resemble or are the same as each other, although separated, correspond with one another."
"Precisely, and Abbot Melani said that. .."
"But mind you!" he warned, brandishing the copper watering can severely. "One can never, I repeat, never, mix ranunculus, Spanish jonquils and tulips, for that would produce disharmony and deformity. My grandfather, Tranquillo Romauli of blessed memory, who kept one of the finest gardens in Rome (ah yes, indeed, one of the few true exemplars of the art, such as are no longer to be found nowadays), as I was saying, my grandfather would always insist particularly on that point." Here, he sighed with exaggerated melancholy.
"Ah yes, you are quite right," said I, at the same time holding back another yawn, disappointed at my inability to break through the Master Florist's verbal wall.
A couple of servants passed behind us with as many baskets full of freshly killed and plucked poultry. They groaned, discreetly casting sardonic smiles of sympathy in my direction, for the Master Florist's terrible logorrhoea was well known at Villa Spada, and justifiably feared.
It only remained for me to risk my all.
"Well, Abbot Melani told me that he greatly appreci
ated his conversation with you," said I as rapidly as I was able to, "and he would be glad to renew the pleasure at your earliest opportunity."
"Ah yes?"
He had at last responded: a good sign.
"Yes, you know, the Abbot is very troubled. Death is hanging over El Escorial.. ."
He looked at me pensively, without uttering a word. Perhaps he had understood the allusion: the King of Spain's sickness, the succession to the throne, the Tetrachion. . .
"You are well informed," said he, speaking in unexpectedly grave tones. "The Escorial is drying up, son, while Versailles. . . and now Schonbrunn too. . ." he hinted, leaving his sentence unfinished.
That was the signal, said I to myself. He knew. And he had also referred to the most famous gardens of France and the Empire, the two contenders for the Spanish succession.
"We have a heavy burden to carry," he concluded enigmatically.
He had spoken of "we"; he was probably also referring to others: the order passed on byword of mouth, as suspected by Abbot Melani. And now he wanted to free himself of the secret that weighed upon his soul.
"I agree," I replied.
He nodded with a mute smile of secret understanding.
"If the Abbot, your protector, is truly so concerned for the fate of the Escorial, we shall surely have much to talk of, he and I."
"That would be truly opportune," said I, taking my tone from his last words.
"Provided that he is correctly informed," Romauli made clear. "Otherwise, it would all be just a waste of breath."
"You need have no doubts," I reassured him, without, however, having understood the meaning of his warning.
As I walked towards the great house, mentally repeating the conversation with the Master Florist, I had just turned a corner when I heard the sound of two persons' footsteps behind me on the gravel, accompanied by as many voices.
"... And what Abbot Melani dared to do was quite unheard of, on that point I am completely in agreement. But Albani's reaction was even more surprising."
Someone was talking about Atto. The voice was that of an old man of high birth. I could not miss the opportunity. 1 hid behind a hedge, preparing myself to listen to the content of that conversation.
"So many suspected him of being excessively Francophile," the voice continued, "and yet he gave Melani a good drubbing. So now he passes for a moderate, equidistant between the French and the Spaniards."
"Tis incredible how quickly a man's reputation can change," echoed a second voice.
"Ah, yes. Of course, for the time being, it will not profit him much. He is far too young to be made pope. But everything is useful for keeping afloat, an art of which Albani is a past-master. Heh!"
I almost crawled behind the hedge, thus stalking unseen the pair who were out taking their morning walk. These were clearly two guests who had spent the night at the villa; they might, in all probability, be two cardinals, but their voices were, alas, not sufficiently familiar for me to be able to identify to whom they belonged. The reconnaissance was also made more difficult for me by the rustling of the nearby shrubs, which from time to time made perfect vigilance impossible.
"And what about the note they were passing to one another? Is what I was told yesterday true?"
"I checked and they told me that, yes, it was quite true. The parrot stole the message and went off to read it in his nest, heh! Albani did not show it, but he was desperate. He charged two of his servants with searching for the bird high and low, without showing themselves, for no one was to know how important the matter was. One of the two was, however, seen by the Major- Domo climbing up a tree in the garden and ingenuously explained to him what he was up to, so that the news was bruited abroad. No one knows where the bird is."
Although I pricked up my ears as much as I was able to, I was unable to overhear anything else, for the hedge along which I was moving turned to the right, while the two turned off to the left. I remained a while crouching on the ground, waiting for the pair to move away. I was already recapitulating with secret euphoria all the urgent news to be reported to Atto: the Master Florist who had promised, however obliquely, to reveal to him all that he knew about the Tetrachion; Albani desperate at the loss of his note, which therefore did contain really precious information, for no one else's eyes; and lastly, the political speculation on the two altercations between Atto and Albani who, it seems, had, precisely as a result of this, rid himself of his uncomfortable reputation as a vassal of the French.
What I did not know was that I would not be telling him any of these things in the immediate future.
"... to read it in his nest, heh!"
I was already on my feet and gave a violent start. I crouched down once more, terrified of being caught spying. It was the voice of one of the two cardinals overheard a few moments earlier. How could he have turned around without my realising it?
"Everything's useful for keeping afloat, eh?!"
I grew pale. My ears could not betray me. The cardinal was behind me.
I turned around and saw him just as he was opening his wings and taking off, insolently showing me the plumage of his tail, his talons and the piece of paper which for many hours now had been held tightly in their grasp.
I rejoined Atto in his apartment, where he awaited news of my conversation with the Master Florist; as soon as he knew of the most recent development, namely the appearance of Caesar Augustus, we rushed into the garden, exploring above all the area around the tool shed where I had seen the bird not long before. There was no trace, however.
"The aviary," I suggested.
We hastened there with our hearts in our mouths, anxious to pass unobserved among the servants at work and the eminences out walking. In the aviary, too, there was no sign of Caesar Augustus. Helpless, I looked at the flocks of nightingales, lapwings, starlings, partridges, francolins, pheasants, ortolans, green linnets, blackbirds, calandra larks, chaffinches, turtle-doves and hawfinches. Blissfully unaware, they pecked away at seeds and salad leaves, without a care for our concerns. Even if they knew where the parrot was hiding at that moment, they could do no more than stare at us with their vacant eyes. I was already regretting the fact that the wretched parrot was the only one among them to have the gift of speech when I noticed that a young francolin kept looking upwards, apparently worried by something. I knew that vivacious and impertinent bird perfectly well, for often, when I was feeding the aviary, it would perch on my arm, pecking in the palm of my hand at the dry bread of which it was inordinately fond and which it hated me to distribute to its companions. Now it was showing the same signs of disquiet, twittering away with its beak pointing upwards. Then I understood and I too looked up there.
"Everything's useful for keeping afloat, eh?!" repeated Caesar Augustus when he saw that he had been found out.
He was perched at the very top of the aviary, but on the outside: above that graceful little cupola of metal netting which crowned the entire structure of that prison for birds. Since the moment of his flight, obviously, Caesar Augustus' regular ration of food had not been placed before his personal cage. He must therefore have stolen somewhere the piece of bread which he was pecking at on that pinnacle, while the francolin looked enviously on.
"Come here at once, and give us that piece of paper," I ordered him, taking care, however, not to call too loud for fear of being overheard by the other servants.
His sole response was to fly off and perch on a nearby tree, but without his usual nonchalance. It was quite clear that he meant to provoke us; he had probably taken a dislike to one of us and it was not hard to see who that might be.
"He seemed to have some trouble perching, he must still have that note hooked onto one of his claws," I said to Atto.
"Let us hope that it does not fall who knows where, and that the solution soon comes."
"The solution?"
"I have sent Buvat to find a specialist. He went on horseback with one of the servants. Fortunately, your colleague had all the nec
essary details but I hope there will be no delay, otherwise we shall soon have everyone gathering around us, starting with the Major-Domo."
I was on the point of asking him what he meant by the term "specialist" when events anticipated my words. Buvat appeared behind a hedge, announcing his arrival.
"Thank heavens!" exclaimed Melani.
Thanks, perhaps, to some obscure premonitory faculty, Caesar Augustus flew off at precisely that moment in the direction of the vegetable garden of the excellent Barberini estate, which shared a long border with the Villa Spada.
"Do the Barberini have armed guards in their garden next door?"
"Not to the best of my knowledge."
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