Running as fast as I was able to, I rejoined Atto, who had charged out of Villa Spada without even a nod towards a pair of cardinals, who had themselves turned to greet him. Buvat meanwhile had obeyed his master's orders to remain in the villa and had turned back towards the great house.
"I have sent him to look for your wife," explained Melani. "We must find the book from which the Master Florist took that name. I want the author, the title, the page number, the lot."
He and I moved rapidly away from the Villa Spada. The Vessel awaited us.
"A curse upon Tranquillo Romauli and his chatter. I knew it: they've disappeared again."
It was midday. We had entered Benedetti's villa, but as on the previous occasions, of the three cardinals there was not so much as a shadow.
"It is noon. The appointment was fixed for precisely this hour," I observed after we had carried out our usual swift but careful preliminary reconnaissance.
We were on the second floor. Near us, on the ground, lay Pieter Boel's picture.
"It looks very like a gross error of workmanship," commented Atto.
The Abbot leaned over the canvas, intent upon comparing the depiction of Capitor's dish with the original which we had just examined so avidly at the Oratory.
"It is just as I had already observed: what at first sight appears to be Amphitrite's right leg comes from Poseidon's left side," continued the Abbot, "while what looks like the god's left leg comes from the nereid."
"Then it is as I said," I intervened, "there's just one leg placed over the other."
"That was my own first impression," he retorted, "but look carefully at the toes."
I leaned over in turn to examine the detail.
"It is true, the big toes. . ." I exclaimed in surprise. "But how is that possible?"
"From their position, it is clear that the two legs cannot be crossed: the nereid's right leg really is her own and Poseidon's left leg really does belong to him."
"It is as though, through the goldsmith's carelessness, they'd been wrongly attached to the statuettes."
"Quite. But do you not find that rather strange for an artist capable of producing a masterpiece like this?"
"We shall have to return to the Oratorian Fathers and ask to be shown the original again."
"Alas, I fear that would not be of much use. Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify to which statuette the legs are in fact attached. I already tried to look on the dish itself, but do you see the little strip of gold that runs horizontally across the flanks of the two deities, covering their pudenda?"
"Yes, I'd already noticed it."
"Well, the goldsmith soldered it to the statuettes, so it is no longer possible to raise it and resolve the mystery. Only, I wonder why ever..."
Melani broke off with an irate grimace of vexation.
"Him again, that demented Dutchman. But when will he stop?"
Re-emerging once more from who knows where, Albicastro was at it again: once again the theme of the folia echoed, proud and indomitable, through the halls of the Vessel. A little later, he entered the room where we were.
"I thank you for the compliment, Signor Abbot Melani," the violinist began placidly, showing that he had heard Atto's comment. "Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, overcame the suitors thanks to his madness."
Melani snorted.
"If you will kindly excuse me, I shall be on my way," said Albicastro amiably in response to Atto's rude gesture. "But remember Telemachus, he will be useful to you!"
It was the second time that the Dutchman had spoken of Telemachus, but on neither occasion had I grasped his meaning. I knew Homer and the Odyssey only in outline, having read it thus some thirty years before in a book of Greek legends; I remembered that Telemachus had feigned madness in the assembly of the suitors who had invaded his father Ulysses' palace and had thus delivered them up to the death which Ulysses planned for them. Nevertheless, I could not fathom the meaning of Albicastro's recommendation.
"Signor Atto, what did he mean?" I asked when he had left.
"Nothing. He's mad and that's all there is to it," was Melani's only comment as he shamelessly slammed the door behind the Dutchman.
We returned to the picture. A few seconds later, however, we again heard the penetrating sound of Albicastro's violin and of his folia. Melani rolled his eyes in vexation.
"Of the inscription on the dish, there's no trace in the painting," said I, in an attempt to bring his attention back to bear on the image of the Tetrachion. "It is too small for it to be possible to paint it correctly."
"Yes," Atto assented, after a few instants; "or else Boel did not wish to paint it; or perhaps someone ordered him not to do so."
"Why?"
"Who knows? Likewise, the goldsmith may have perhaps made that mess with the legs deliberately, because he was commissioned to do so."
"But why?"
"For heaven's sake, my boy!" shouted Atto, "I am only airing suppositions. It exercises the intellect, and one finds an answer every now and then. And above all, tell that Dutchman to stop that racket once and for all, I need to reflect in silence!"
Thereupon, he put his hands over his ears and moved towards the staircase.
It was rather rare for Abbot Melani to become angry. Albicastro's music was certainly not so loud as to disturb or annoy. I had the impression that more than the volume of sound, it was the music itself, the folia, which was getting on Atto's nerves; or perhaps, I thought to myself, Albicastro, that curious soldier-violinist, and his bizarre philosophising were even more irritating for him. It was very rare for Atto to call an adversary mad. With Albicastro, who was no enemy, he had done just that: as though the other's thinking set off some hidden inner rage in him.
"Signor Atto, I agree, I shall go down and tell him. . ."
But the Abbot had already disappeared from my sight.
"Forget it. I shall look for somewhere better," I heard him say from some adjoining room.
I followed him at once. I expected to find him in the central salon giving onto the four apartments. When, however, I got there, I found myself alone. Yet Atto had not gone downstairs: I checked the main staircase and not a sound reached me from below. I then went to the service stairs, and there at last I heard his footsteps. He was not going down but up.
"It is quite intolerable," he grumbled as he climbed the stairs to the top floor.
When I followed him, I understood why. As had already happened the first time that we met Albicastro, in the little spiral staircase, the sound of the violin was amplified beyond all measure and embellished by echoes which transformed that agreeable melody into an infernal jumble. The sonorous reverberation produced by the spiral cavity made it seem like, not one violin, but fifty or a hundred all playing the same tune, but one note out of time, so that the plain linear theme of the folia sucked one down into the all-enveloping vortex of a musical canon which wound in vertiginous coils ever more tightly around the hearer, like the coils of the stairway itself which I and Atto were now climbing a few paces apart, he fleeing the music and I, following him.
"Where are you going?" I yelled, trying to drown with my voice the deafening orchestra of a thousand Albicastros twisting like restless spirits in the stairwell.
"Air, I want air!" he replied, "I'm suffocating here."
As the stairs wound upward, I heard him cough once, then twice, and in the end came one long, tremendous outburst, a hoarse, painful attack like that brought on by a dreadful cold, suffocation, strangling or burned lungs. True, the Vessel was dusty in the extreme, but that feverish fit, that violent and malignant expiration bespoke a grave alteration of the humours. Atto's soul was in sore travail, his body was struggling to rid itself of all that was weighing it down by fleeing the folia.
"But Signor Atto, perhaps if you open a window. . ." I called out to him.
There was no response. Perhaps he had not even heard me. I realised then that, as I climbed, the music was getting louder, despite the fact that the
sound of Albicastro's violin seemed to be coming from the ground floor.
"Upstairs there's nothing but the servants' quarters, and they are empty," I called again, as I tried to catch up with him.
Almost at once, I reached that level; but Atto had gone on higher.
Two days earlier, we had reached that third floor, but to do so we had taken the grand staircase, which went no further. Unlike those stairs, the servants' ones went right up to the very top: to the terrace crowning the Vessel.
At last I too climbed those last narrow steps and, like a soul welcomed to paradise, fled the darkness of the stairwell and the unnatural thundering of the folia, emerging into the blessed, airy light of the terrace.
I found Melani slumped on the ground, still coughing, as though he had been almost asphyxiated.
"That accursed Hollander," he murmured, "damn him and his music."
"You have been coughing badly," I observed as I helped him to his feet.
He did not even answer me: he had raised his eyes and was staring, dumbfounded by the beauty of the space in which we stood, bounded by a wall surmounted by many fine vases decorated with floral motifs. In this wall were a number of wide oval openings through which one could enjoy an immense panorama dominating all the surrounding villas. At the four corners stood the four little cupolas crowning the Vessel and characterising it even from a distance. Covered with majolica tiles, over the four little domes stood weathervanes in the form of banners, each ending in a cross, which beautifully completed the terrace.
"With all the searching we've done here, we never discovered this belvedere. Admire it, my boy, what a gem! And such peace!"
His walking stick trembled. The fit of coughing, although short-lived, had shaken him badly. He seemed to me again the old, worn Atto I had found on the first day. He turned his back on me and walked towards the short end of the terrace, facing south and overlooking Via San Pancrazio, the street from which one enters the Vessel.
We allowed ourselves a few minutes in which to stare wide- eyed, leaning on an iron balustrade wrought to resemble foliage, at the splendid panorama surrounding the Vessel, with its vineyards and its pines, the solemn walls of the Holy City, the San Pancrazio Gate, and lastly, distant and discreet, the silvery glint of the sun on the sea.
We then moved to the head of the terrace, facing north. Here stood a rather lightweight structure, a sort of penthouse, crowned by a suspended balcony decorated at the corners with the fleur-de-lys, to which one gained access by two iron staircases set at either end.
We climbed the stairs on the left, and here our view opened up even more. We were simply overcome by the magnificence of the vistas which, both to the left and to the right, revealed to the spectator the triumphal grandeur of the Eternal City: in a pageant of symbols of the Faith, there stood before us a host of blessed cupolas, a forest of holy crosses, giddy pinnacles, venerable campaniles and the pink roofs of noble palaces, crowned by the hills which have always protected the cradle of Christianity. I remembered what Monsignor Virgilio Spada had suggested to Benedetti, and which Atto had mentioned a few days before: the idea of building a villa as a fortress of wisdom which would stimulate the visitor to reflect deeply on the victories of the intellect and the mysteries of the Faith.
My eyes then turned to the gardens of the Vessel and to the great pergola of grapes over the avenue leading from the entrance: as the Abbot had observed, Benedetti welcomed his visitors with grapes, the Christian symbol of rebirth.
"We're standing on the prow," said Atto.
In the naval architecture of the Vessel, that hanging balcony did indeed correspond to the upper deck.
Like two admirals on the bridge, we looked towards the Vatican Hill, that custodian of things imperishable. The Vessel dared point its bows towards the apostolic palaces, as though it were claiming: I too possess a fragment of eternity. Then I thought to myself, was not the Vessel perhaps a place of rebirth, where the broken threads of past and present again came together? Had this not perhaps happened when I had been able to witness the apparation of the young Louis and his beloved Maria and their dalliance? Likewise, when we beheld in the garden the image of Superintendent Fouquet, serene, free, untouched by disgrace or calumny. Those apparitions in that garden had recreated for us what history had denied them. The theatre of what should have been but never was: such was the Vessel.
It was on the strength of that very high office that this galleon claimed its place near the Vatican Hill. Saint Peter's, rock of the Faith and, near it, that other guardian of things eternal: the Vessel, fortress of justice, banished from the pedestal of history.
So it was that, standing on that little terrace suspended above infinity, with the wind raising the laces of my shirt, for an instant I felt like an intrepid sailor on the deck of a new Ark, a miraculous craft able to salvage just Fate and to stand guard over it in another time.
While I was thus wandering off into my daydreams, Atto suddenly called me back to things present.
"Perhaps you will have formed a precise image of it."
I knew at once to what he was referring.
"No," I replied. "It is a monster; that is the only thing I have understood. If the forecast is correct, a monster with four legs is about to succeed to the Spanish throne. That really doesn't seem to make much sense, does it?"
"I know. I've not stopped thinking of it for a moment, but nothing else comes to mind. Until your wife gets hold of the book that Romauli saw, I fear we shall not be able to make head or tail of it."
"I hope that Cloridia is as quick as usual."
"Let us go back down," said Atto at length. "I want to go and take another look at the picture."
It was then that we made the discovery.
"Look!" said Atto. "That is where they get through."
It could be seen only from there, at that particular angle. No other observation point anywhere in the Vessel was high enough or faced in the right north-westerly direction like the steps on which we stood. From here we could descry a little gate in the boundary wall of the garden through which one could pass unseen into a street adjoining the Vessel. This exit was cleverly concealed by a barrier of plants and brambles. It was quite impossible to locate unless one already knew of its existence. Once out, where did one go? That, we could see for ourselves: a furtive little group, perhaps the escort of one of the three cardinals, was entering a similar gate in the wall of a villa further down the road, the property of a Genoese nobleman by the name of Torre.
Peering more closely, I could make out a little further off the three cardinals of our acquaintance as they strolled undisturbed in Torre's garden.
"So that's why Spada, Spinola and Albani always make their appointments at the Vessel," said Atto. "They confound anyone who might wish to follow them, including us, by entering here then mysteriously disappearing. In actual fact they meet at Torre's villa. For your master Cardinal Spada, that is an ideal solution. At a short distance from his own estate he has a safe house in which to hold secret meetings, Torre's villa, and a place to muddy the waters, namely the Vessel. It is not by chance that until this moment he has always succeeded in shaking us off."
As he spoke, Abbot Melani did not take his eyes off the trio for one moment. I saw him suddenly stretch out his neck and screw up his eyes as though trying to see better what was going on; but the distance was too great. Our lookout point may indeed have been exceptional, but it would soon be useless. It was then that the Abbot suddenly slapped his forehead.
"What a fool I am. Fortune assists me and I neglect it!"
He reached into his jacket and drew out a long, fine cylinder: the telescope. He had kept it on his person ever since we had located Romauli in the garden of Villa Spada, as thence we had gone directly to the Vessel.
Fie looked briefly, then handed me the spyglass.
"Take a look yourself; it will be a useful experience."
I brought the eyepiece to my pupil and looked.
Cardinal Spin
ola was shaking his head gently, as though he were hesitating, while Spada and especially Albani were deep in conversation. The thing really did not last long; following a few words from Albani, Spinola assented with a somewhat unwilling nod, or so it seemed to me from that distance. Then Albani took him by the arm with visible pleasure and the three continued their stroll. Atto then took the telescope back from me and resumed his observation.
In the light of what I had learned the evening before from reading the exchange of letters between Atto and the Connestabilessa, the episode had no more mysteries, even for me. The three cardinals had to provide His Holiness Innocent XII with an opinion on the question of the Spanish succession, so that the Pope could respond as best he could to the request for help put to him by the King of Spain, Charles II. The three eminences had therefore to agree on a common line: a gesture of immense political importance which could make the fortune of the trio or be their ruin. It was quite clear that Spinola was not of exactly the same opinion as the other two prelates.
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