I waited hidden in the coach-house. As agreed, Cloridia soon announced that she had left a purse in the carriage and, while the Deputy Steward and Melani took the service entrance to go to the woman in labour, she brought me surreptitiously in. We went up to the first floor. First, I tried out the key ring lent to us by Ugonio. As expected, I did not need to try many times and soon found the right keys. The locks on the doors yielded quietly one after another.
"Wait here and don't make a sound," my wife commanded me, kissing my forehead. "Soon I shall send you Mistress Midwife Melani. Keep a lookout here," said she, opening a window in the wide corridor which gave onto the inner courtyard still sunk in darkness. "Here's what I thought when I came to this place yesterday."
From this window, Cloridia showed me, I could see almost everything that was happening in the room where the woman was giving birth. This would be extremely useful. While we were searching, we could keep a constant check on the Deputy Steward's presence near his wife and thus be sure that the coast was clear. I had a quick look: Atto and the Deputy Steward were down there and I could descry the woman lying on the bed. I smiled seeing Abbot Melani got up like that: he must be on tenterhooks waiting for Cloridia. To keep up appearances, he was removing the equipment from the bag and arranging it by the woman's bedside. Yet he held each item disgustedly with his fingertips, as though he were picking up dead rats.
Cloridia returned downstairs, leaving me in the dark, and entered the Deputy Steward's lodgings. I saw her take three bolsters and arrange them on the floor. Then, to my great surprise, she made the pregnant woman lie down there on her back. She arranged the three cushions carefully under her so that her head hung back towards the floor.
The posture was quite uncomfortable and the poor woman was complaining, but Cloridia made matters even more difficult for her, or so it seemed to my untrained eyes, by bending her knees so that her feet ended up under her back, as in the drawing which I am reproducing below.
"How hot it is in here!" exclaimed Cloridia, opening the window of the room, so that from my lookout I could hear as well as see all that was taking place within.
"But is it really necessary for my wife to give birth in that position?" moaned the Deputy Steward, who could not bear to see his wife bent in such a horrid posture.
"'Tis surely not my fault if your wife is so fat. All the lard in her paunch compresses the womb and makes it even tighter. Only thus can the woman's uterus be dilated sufficiently for her
to be able to give birth easily, however fat and corpulent she may be."
"And how is that?" asked the husband dubiously, turning also to Atto, who at once turned his eyes elsewhere with a vague expression on his face.
"Simple: the fat on the body spreads towards the sides," my wife replied, as though this were all perfectly obvious, "so that the infant is not prevented from coming out, as would happen if the birth seat were used, because the belly and the full weight of the fat and the intestines would compress the womb below and restrict the opening for the child no little, thus obstructing the delivery."
With the groaning woman lying thus arranged, Cloridia ordered the Deputy Steward and Abbot Melani (who, however, kept his gaze well averted from the woman's private parts) to hold her firm by both arms while she herself knelt between her legs, with a cushion under her own knees.
She covered the woman's pudenda and got our eldest daughter to hand her a terracotta jar full of oil of white lilies, with which she anointed both her hands and forearms and began to smear her patient's genitals and belly. Then with the greatest care, she thrust her right hand into the woman's privates and abundantly softened the insides with oil. Lastly, she ordered her to be turned on one side and also anointed the point four fingers above the ending of the back, known as the little tail or coccyx, which in childbirth sticks out no little, as I had occasion to observe when Cloridia gave birth to our two little daughters. She then made a movement with her hand which drew a resounding howl from the poor mother-to-be.
"Heavens, the canal really is narrow," complained Cloridia. "My friend," she then commanded, turning to Abbot Melani. "Go and get me the oil of yellow violets which is inside that glass jar."
She continued as before and then thought the time ripe to give our daughters a little lesson in obstetrics.
"If the woman in labour has a tight womb, one anoints freely and unrestrictedly with oil of yellow violets. And since one or ten applications of ointment cannot compensate for natural defects, one may use up to twenty or thirty, until - as Hippocrates and Avicenna proposed - art corrects nature. Avicenna also favours squirting a few drops of oil right inside the womb, the better to relax the internal parts."
The children paid attention, while the Deputy Steward and his wife, with her face all covered in perspiration, looked at one another full of admiration and gratitude for the knowledge of so fine, and renowned, a midwife.
I was beginning to fume: Cloridia had promised to free Abbot Melani, but as yet nothing was happening. And I could see that Atto, too, was in a state of growing agitation, casting eloquent winks in my consort's direction.
"Alas, there is not enough of this oil," said Cloridia. "My dear, please go and fetch the other bottle which I left in the bag."
Atto obeyed. When he returned, Cloridia looked at him with a worried expression.
"M'dear, you seem unwell."
"Well, I really..." whined Atto who did not know what Cloridia was getting at.
My wife began to scrutinise him attentively and asked: "Are you aware of any slight feelings of faintness? Lassitude? Do you feel confused?"
Abbot Melani returned Cloridia's inquiring gaze with an uncertain expression and answered her fusillade of questions vaguely. Then suddenly my consort rose and put her hands around his neck. Atto, taken by surprise, opened his eyes wide and tried instinctively to defend himself, while Clorida energetically opened his blouse and plunged her nose in, pretending to observe the breasts.
"Those red spots. . ." she murmured, lost in thought, prodding first the one, then the other breast, which I knew to be only stuffed with rags, while even the Deputy Steward's wife had left off complaining about her pain and was looking on with bated breath. "... and these purple ones here... My unfortunate friend, I fear that you may be suffering from the petechiae'
"The what?" the other two both asked in unison.
"The spotted-fever; in Milan, they call it segni," Cloridia announced to the couple, who looked frightened.
Upon hearing that phrase, Atto at last realised what had already been clear to me for several minutes. I saw him change expression and restrain a sigh of relief.
"This distemper is caused by the excess of heat and dryness," continued my wife, "and it tends to affect cholerical temperaments, as I know that of my colleague here present to be. My poor dear, you must go home at once and try to keep calm. Eat cold food, which will cool down the choler, and you will see that you will soon recover. We here shall manage without you."
"You can take my mule, which is in the servants' stables," said the Deputy Steward, exceedingly worried about the risk of contagion. "It is the only one left in there, you cannot go wrong."
"And the guards?" Atto asked in a weak voice.
"You are right. I shall accompany you."
"Of that, there can be no question!" Cloridia promptly cut in. "I need you here. Besides, you must avoid any possible infection. There must surely be some way out using a service door to which you will, I imagine, have the keys.. ."
My astute consort had seen and foreseen everything. The Deputy Steward opened a drawer and pulled out a key.
"I only have one copy of this," said the Deputy Steward to Atto, "but I beg you to..."
"You'll get it back promptly enough, of that you can be sure," my wife cut him short, snatching the key from his hand and giving it to the Abbot.
In reality, we had no need of that key: there would certainly be a copy in Ugonio's bunch, but that we could certainly not tell the
Deputy Steward.
With a warm and amused wink, Melani lit a candle and, going to the door, left in great haste.
I leaned out an instant down the dark stairway to make sure that Atto had not forgotten Cloridia's directions and taken the wrong way.
"Your wife really enjoys a good joke," he commented as soon as he rejoined me. "She took me by surprise with that story of petechiae, but I must say that she does have an excellent memory."
Cloridia had in fact, in her little charade with the petechiae, merely quoted the sentences she had heard seventeen years before in the mouth of Cristofano, the Sienese physician and chirurgeon who had been shut in with all of us in quarantine at the inn where I was working, and where I had first met Atto. What he said had remained unforgettable for us; we all hung on every word from the lips of the doctor who was looking after us in those days when every moment was alive with the fear of contagion.
Since she had not had time to prearrange anything with Atto, my wife had therefore used those words to give him a clear signal; it was certain that, on hearing them, Abbot Melani would obey without thinking twice.
I guided Atto to the window on the corridor and explained that from there we could easily keep a check on the situation and thus avoid being discovered.
"And now," Cloridia was ordering imperiously, "avoid like the plague the ill wind that blows in draughts! Let us place your wife near the open window so that she may breathe the good sweet- smelling air of early dawn. But close the door tight, so that there are no draughts. We shall open up only once the child has been born."
"But I have to do my round every half-hour," protested the Deputy Steward.
"There can be no question of that."
"But. . ."
"You will appreciate the importance, if one is to avoid all risks of contagion, of avoiding all agitation and over-activity. The distemper dessicates and in a short space of time extinguishes the body's radical humidity, and that can in the end kill," declaimed our brave Mistress Cloridia, yet again quoting, this time solely for her own pleasure, the words which the physician had uttered so many years ago in the Locanda del Donzello.
Upon hearing those words, the Deputy Steward, suddenly as pale as death, hastened to close the door of the room, accompanied by my tenacious spouse's seraphic smile, as she again knelt between her patient's legs.
"Here we are."
Thus Abbot Melani commented on the swift movement of the door which, with a short squeal, swung open on a dark space.
We entered, immediately closing the door behind us. We did not know how much time we had in which to operate: everything depended upon the pregnant woman's labour, after which Cloridia was to be accompanied home by the Deputy Steward. By that time, we would have had to complete our own search and take the mule away from the stables, otherwise the Deputy Steward might become suspicious.
We tried to make sense of the dark space which now enveloped us. We shed light with Atto's taper, which I myself brandished, turning it here and there, in an attempt to reconcile our tentative footsteps with the frenzy of our eyes. The room in which we stood seemed enormous.
"This does not seem to be the gallery of which your wife spoke," commented Abbot Melani.
"Anyway, there are no globes here," I observed.
We crossed the room, then another one, then yet another. All the walls were covered with rich frescoes and paintings which filled the Abbot with enthusiasm and wonder.
"Ah, I recognise these paintings, they're by a Flemish artist, Van Laer; I saw them years ago in the collection of Cardinal Casanate, peace be on his soul," said he, stopping to contemplate four pictures depicting a cow, a tavern and two scenes of assassinations in the woods. "The Cardinal has been dead these four months only and the Dominicans of la Minerva to whom he left everything have already begun to sell off his legacy," said he with a bitter laugh.
While Atto kept stopping before every canvas, taper in hand, I made my way rapidly back, like a cat in the night, to spy on Cloridia through the window.
The woman's labour pains were becoming more and more excruciating and the poor thing was suffering greatly, but, as my wife had predicted, the birth was proceeding extremely slowly.
Seeing how the situation was slowing down, and despite his wife's entreaties that he should hold her hand, the Deputy Steward had not forgotten his custodian's duties and had, alas, returned to his desire to do the rounds of the palace's rooms.
Thus, on one of my incursions to check up on developments, I saw and heard through the window that, in order to detain him, Cloridia had took up her favourite argument: breast-feeding.
"You want to hire a wet-nurse, did you say? Ah, you must have money to waste! And what objection does your wife have to giving suck herself?"
"But Mistress Cloridia," stammered the Deputy Steward, "my wife must soon return to service. .."
"Yes, to earn enough to pay the wet-nurse! Would it not be better to keep the infant at home?"
"We shall speak about that later, if we must. Now I must go out on my rounds..."
"'Tis incredible," my wife attacked, rising from her position near her patient and barring the Deputy Steward's way. "Now even the wives of artisans yearn to send their new-born infants to wet-nurses outside the home, as though we were all princes and most delicate princesses, while those folk, yes, 'tis true that they cannot afford the luxury of babes crying in the house as they are always weighed down by public business."
The Deputy Steward was speechless.
"Who does not know, after all," continued Cloridia, "that in every state and condition of persons, it is far better to raise one's children at home than to give them out to wet-nurses? Aulus Gellius confirmed that centuries ago!"
The man, who surely had not the least idea who Aulus Gellius was, seemed intimidated by the citation.
"In this, women today are truly more inhuman than tigers or other cruel beasts," she continued, "for, apart from women, I know of no animal that is unwilling to give suck to its young. How can a mother, after carrying it in her belly and feeding it with her own blood, not yet knowing whether it was a boy or a girl or a monster, once she has seen her child, recognised it and heard its cries, sobs and sighs calling on her for help, then exile it from her bosom and from her bed, pleased with herself for having given that child its being yet denying it all well-being, as though her breasts had been given her by God and nature as a mere ornament of the torso, as in males, and not to feed her children?. . ."
I had heard enough. I knew from experience that once she had launched into that subject, Cloridia would without difficulty detain the Deputy Steward for a long, long time.
I returned to Atto and we resumed our search as the first light of dawn filtered into the palace. Soon we had left behind us a long series of rooms superbly decorated with mythological and historical subjects: the room of Amor and Psyche, the room of Perseus, the stucco gallery, and then the rooms of Callisto, Aeneas and the feudal era.
"Tis no good. There's no trace of the globe you spoke of."
At that juncture, we heard a series of screams, followed by a lacerating, interminable howl which almost caused Abbot Melani to faint. We ran to see: the Deputy Steward's wife had given birth. The herbs administered by Cloridia to stimulate delivery had worked more swiftly than our search.
"A bane on your wife and the day when we placed our trust in her," muttered Abbot Melani. "Now we are stuck here and we have discovered absolutely nothing."
At that moment, Cloridia looked up to the window, holding the squalling babe in her arms, already wrapped in a towel, and made a rapid signal in our direction, as though to say, "Go ahead, do not worry."
So we returned to our search, uncertain and cautious. We visited the Achilles room, that of the Tales of Ancient Rome and those of the Four Elements and the Four Seasons, moving on to the Great Gallery, the study and even the chapel.
"There's something here that doesn't square up properly," said Atto. "Let us return to the staircase."
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"Why?"
"When we first came up from the ground floor, we turned right. Now, I want to turn left. Then I'll tell you why."
The Abbot, as I was soon to see, had his good reasons. Retracing our footsteps, we realised that, turning left immediately after climbing the stairs, there was a gallery which we had not yet explored. The daylight, which was growing brighter moment by moment, enabled us to see not only the walls, doors and windows, but also the very high ceilings which the eye should enjoy on the first floor of every noble palazzo.
As soon as we entered this new space, we stopped before a great candelabrum on the floor, whose candles we lit with our taper so that there was light all around us. Great was my wonder when we found ourselves facing a broad gallery, with a wealth of all kinds of frescoes, all kinds of works of art and the most precious furnishings.
It was quite clear even to untrained intellects that this room was one of the most splendid and eminent treasures of the entire
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