In the midst of that disc-like upper platform, there was a small circular building. I immediately looked around it; there was no door. I was on the point of despairing, for I had heard any number of times that one could get in there, and then I saw it: a sort of low window was set into the wall at about the height of my stomach. I bent down and entered, and just as I did so I heard footsteps on the platform below.
Surprisingly, it was not completely dark inside this structure: a faint dawn light glimmered through the window I had just entered.
I heard a slight reverberation above my head. A ladder stretched upward towards the goal: the bronze ball that rises above the very highest point of Saint Peter's, immediately beneath the great cross which surmounts the basilica.
Leaping forward, I grasped a rung and hauled myself up, giving the wall a few kicks to help me on my way. As I clambered up, I saw that the vague light was growing stronger.
It is said that the ball of Saint Peter's can hold up to sixteen people, so long as they are suitably placed. However numerous those chasing us might be, there would, I knew, be no chance to put that report to the test.
At last, I poked my head into the ball, then my shoulders, at last resting on my elbows inside the great bronze sphere. Only then did I realise that I was not alone.
Perched with his great backside on the concave inner surface of the ball was Sfasciamonti, sweating like a donkey and panting, utterly winded. He had made it before me, probably taking another of the four stairs with huge steps that reach up to the top of the cupola within its cavity wall. In one hand, he was holding a little tome: the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave; in the other, a pistol.
In the middle of the spherical cavity in which we stood, just next to the hole through which one gained access to it, there was a stool. The book must have been deposited on it and the catchpoll had been quicker than me in getting to it. Suddenly, he handed it to me.
"Put it in your breeches, they're coming!"
I heard a noise coming from below. Sfasciamonti's finger curved around the trigger. We seemed to have no way out.
"We can't fire, we are in a church... And besides, they'll arrest us," I observed, in my turn gasping for breath.
"If anything, we're on top of a church," the catchpoll sniggered.
It was pointless to try getting down from the ball: someone had entered the little structure and was about to climb the ladder. Sfasciamonti and I looked at one another, uncertain what to do next.
Then it all happened: our eyes were struck by a blinding flash which burned our faces like a whip, while our bodies contorted in shock.
Suddenly I understood why. As I penetrated, first, the little building, then the ball itself, I had been vaguely aware of a diffuse glimmer, growing ever clearer. Years back, I had known an old butcher whose son was employed in Saint Peter's Factory, and he had described to me what was now happening. The ball in which we stood had four slits in its sides, placed as high as a man at the four cardinal points: thrusting an incandescent blade into that facing east and flooding all with its presence, the sun had made its joyous introitus among us.
It was dawn.
Day the Ninth
15th July, 1700
*
As though it were a sign of destiny, the ray directly struck Atto's tome, which refracted its luminous flood into a thousand blinding white rivulets.
Indifferent to this curious event, Sfasciamonti pointed his pistol downwards.
"Halt or I fire, I am a sergeant of the Governor!" he cried.
Then (or so it seemed to me) he tripped over the stool, which fell through the hole in the ball with a great and general clangour. Perhaps the catchpoll fell after it. Perhaps, in his struggle to break his fall, he dragged me with him.
Time was no more. From light I passed to darkness, the world and the ball whirled drunkenly and suddenly I was elsewhere.
While they were carrying me away, a bag of worn-out, weary members, my eyes strove to catch one last fragment of those sacred pinnacles, that eyrie consecrated to the Lord.
I was head down; but by one of those curious algorithms of consciousness that enables some to read perfectly from right to left or to compose impromptu anagrams, before I again lost consciousness, it appeared to me, and I recognised it.
Proud and enigmatic, anchored on the heights of the Janiculum, the Vessel was observing us.
"Behind every strange or inexplicable death there lies a conspiracy of the state, or of its secret forces," pronounced Abbot Melani.
My head was throbbing. My neck was hurting. To tell the truth, I was hurting all over.
"But also those cases of persons who disappear, or are kidnapped, or suffer incredible accidents, then miraculously reappear from nowhere safe and sound, all these things are clear signs of subversive plotting. No one can escape death like that save with the help of an assiduous practitioner."
Atto's voice was suspended in a naked crystalline void. My eyes were still closed and there seemed to be no urgency about opening them.
Some memories came to me: the sensation of my body, lying heavily in the back of a cart; the cold of daybreak; then the return to warm, familiar surroundings.
A few hours passed (or were they only minutes?) until I was awoken by the sound of the door handle opening and closing, and of footsteps in the corridor. My eyelids at last decided that it was time to wake up.
I was lying on Abbot Melani's bed in the casino of Villa Spada, still fully dressed. Atto sat nearby, on an armchair, lost in who knows what thoughts. He had not realised that I had come to my senses. Only after a few minutes did he detach his gaze from that imaginary point in mid-air on which he had fixed it and turn to me.
"Welcome back among the living," said he with a smile at once satisfied and ironic. "Your wife was very worried, she waited up for you all night. Even though it was dawn, I made sure she was informed that you had returned safe and sound.
"Where's Sfasciamonti?" I asked anxiously.
"Fast asleep."
"And Buvat?"
"In his little room. And snoring, to boot."
"I do not understand," I said, sitting up for the first time; "why did they not arrest us?"
"From what your catchpoll friend told us, you have been extremely lucky. Sfasciamonti threw himself at the sampietrino who was about to get into the ball, knocking you down in the process. After that, he disarmed him and, with a few kicks and punches, left him very much the worse for wear. Then he hoisted you onto his shoulders and carried you back down, without too much trouble, seeing his size. When he got there, nobody saw him. It was daybreak and there was not a soul about. Probably all the guards on duty had run after Buvat."
"After Buvat?"
"Yes, indeed. He took to his legs the moment they began to follow you, up on the terrace."
"What?" I exclaimed in astonishment, "I thought he had come up with us all the way to the.. ."
"Despite himself, he was quite brilliant. Instead of following you when you ran up the stairs towards the cupola, he turned and ran back down the stairs you had come from. One of the sampietrini who had been following you, a little fellow - oh, pardon me - followed him," explained the Abbot, excusing himself for his gaffe about my height. "But Buvat has long legs and he couldn't see him for dust. He ran out of Saint Peter's like greased lightning and no one even managed to get a glimpse of his face, he left them all standing. Then, typically enough, he got lost on the way back from Saint Peter's and arrived only a little while before you."
I was shocked through and through. I was convinced that I had two allies in my perilous rush up to the ball of Saint Peter's, but one had shamefully deserted while the other had collapsed on top of me.
"I know you bore yourself magnificently, you attained your goal."
"Your treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave!" I burst out. "Did Sfasciamonti give it to you?"
Atto's features became gently disconsolate:
"That was not possible. When he was car
rying you, the book slipped out from your breeches and flew down. If I have understood correctly, it landed on a part of the terrace too far off to risk going there. He had to choose between safety and my treatise. He could not, I imagine, do otherwise."
"I don't understand. . . It had all gone so well, then. . . It is absurd," 1 commented, thoroughly distressed. "And then, why did he bring me here instead of taking me home?"
"Simple: he does not know where you live."
Still somewhat groggy, I had to wait for the stupor and disappointment beclouding my soul to settle. That dangerous chase, the fatigue, the fear. . . All for nothing. We had lost Atto's book. Then a vague memory came to me.
"Signor Atto, while I slept, I heard you talking."
"Perhaps I was thinking aloud."
"You said something about unexplained deaths, conspiracies of state.. . well, something of the sort."
"Really? I don't remember. But now you must get some rest, my boy, if you so desire," said he, standing up and moving towards the door.
"Will you be going into town with the other guests to visit the Palazzo Spada?"
"No."
"Will you really not go?" I asked, imagining that Atto might be afraid of meeting Albani. By then, some sampietrino at Zabaglio's orders might have recovered Atto's tome and be handing it over to the cerretani, who would in turn give it to the Grand Legator, namely Lamberg, who would hand it to the Secretary for Breves.
"It is not the moment for that," Atto replied. "I should love to examine the marvels of Palazzo Spada by the light of day, but we have other far more urgent matters to worry about."
The weather turned a little grey. A sudden gust of hot wind lashed our faces as soon as we entered the spiral staircase to the terrace of the Vessel.
Our preparations for this incursion had taken quite some time. Among the many possibilities, we had in the end opted for the essentials: Atto's pistol, a long dagger, which I had stuffed into my breeches; and, last of all, a net, one of those used during the merry hunt three days before. Thus we were equipped to hold the creature at bay, to injure him if there should - oh horror! - be hand-to-hand fighting, or even act like retiarii in the gladiatorial ring, trapping him under the net.
We stood outside the little penthouse, our legs almost rigid with fear. After exchanging looks of reciprocal encouragement,
Atto advanced first, turned the handle and pushed the door open. Within, shadows and silence.
For a moment we neither spoke nor moved.
"I shall go ahead," said Melani at length, drawing his pistol and making sure that it was ready to fire.
I responded by brandishing the dagger and, spreading the net lightly across my left shoulder, I readied myself to throw it at the first opportunity.
Atto entered. Hardly had he crossed the threshold than he backed against the left door jamb, so as to reduce the number of directions from which he could be attacked. With one arm, he motioned me to advance. I obeyed.
So it was that I found myself once more in the monster's den, shoulder to shoulder with Atto. Panting and by no means any longer feline in his movements, the Abbot was, despite his advanced age and declining eyesight, as leonine as ever, behaving like the foremost among the King's musketeers.
The light was faint because of the smoked glass, and this time the passing clouds made it even dimmer than on the previous occasion. In the middle of the little building there were, as I remembered, two small pillars.
If it was there, it was well hidden.
A sharp pain made me jump. To catch my attention, Atto had jabbed me in the side with his elbow.
Then I saw it.
In the opposite corner, beyond the two pillars and close to the right-hand window, something had moved on the wall. Something rather like an arm, horribly deformed, and covered with a sort of scaly, serpentine skin seemed to emerge from the wall and had reacted to Atto's dig in my ribs. The beast was there.
Our view was partially obstructed by the two columns; we would need to get closer in order to understand what part of the monster had really moved and, above all, what it was doing so bizarrely stuck into the wall.
"Keep still. Don't make a move," whispered Abbot Melani, almost inaudibly.
A minute passed, maybe two, in total immobility. The Tetrachion's arm had ceased to move, as had its monstrous hand. The door was open. Both we and the creature could have broken and run. Whether out of courage or fear, neither dared resolve so to do. The air was humid because of leaks in the ceiling and the whole of the tight space seemed to be incrusted with saltpetre. Our bated breath seemed to make the atmosphere even damper, as did the heavy all- pervading silence, the materialised, fleshed-out fear.
While all this was happening (in reality, nothing whatever, save the storm in our hearts) I was fighting another battle. I was doing all I could, yet, despite the gravity of the moment, I knew that sooner or later I would have to give in. I absolutely had to, and yet I could not. In the end, I surrendered. I simply had to scratch my nose if I wanted to avoid something even worse - a sneeze. And I did so.
Never could any expression in human language convey the feeling of desperate amazement which seized me when I saw the monster's hand imitate mine in perfect synchrony, rising to its horrid face, which remained hidden behind the two small pillars. A terrible doubt came over me.
"Did you see?" I whispered to Atto.
"It moved," he replied in alarm.
I wanted to perform a second test. I freed the fingers of the same hand and made them flutter gaily. Then I moved a leg back and forth, rhythmically. At length, under Atto's stupefied gaze, I left my place and advanced towards the two pillars to look, free from all obstacles material or of the spirit, upon the mystery which had so cruelly enchained us.
"It is absurd. My boy, I forbid you to tell this to anyone," said Atto, without removing his eyes from the looking glass. "I mean, of course, not until we have made clear all that remains obscure," he prudently corrected himself to cover up the cause of his peremptory command: shame.
He again touched the gibbous surface of the deforming mirror, admiring how it alternately swelled up, hollowed out, curved or straightened his fingers, knuckles, palm and wrist.
"I saw something rather like this in Frankfurt a long time ago, when Cardinal Mazarin sent me there for some secret negotiations. But it did not have such a. . . tremendous. . . effect as this."
We had seen no Tetrachion. At least, so it seemed. Witty Benedetti, the ingenious creator of the Vessel, had for the greater amusement of his guests placed a number of distorting mirrors along the wall of the little penthouse which, thanks to the dim light and the dark, grim atmosphere of the place and the fact that they reflected one another, transformed the visitor's image into something like a monstrous being.
When I scratched my nose, I noticed that the presumed Tetrachion imitated my gesture with inordinate promptness. Likewise, my other little movements were mimed by the monster with quite incredibly exact timing. It could not be anything other than my own image reflected in some unknown distorting surface.
During our first incursion into the penthouse, our minds were full of the image of Capitor's dish, with Albicastro's voice, transmitted up there who knows how, and with the tales which Atto himself had recounted about Capitor. Faced with the absurd and alien features of a creature with four legs and two heads (in reality, myself and Atto, standing closely side by side) we thought we saw the Tetrachion. Instead, we were merely surrounded by curved mirrors. I heard Atto repeat:
This work I call a looking-glass
In which each fool shall see an ass.
The viewer learns with certainty;
My mirror leaves no mystery.
"Those are the verses we heard Albicastro's voice declaiming," said I.
"Quite. He knew of the distorting mirrors and he was taunting us," Atto replied, as he continued reciting:
Whoever sees with open eyes
Cannot regard himself as wise,
&n
bsp; For he shall see upon reflection
That humans teem with imperfection.
"But where did his voice come from?" I asked dubiously.
Instead of replying, Atto began to feel the walls where there were no mirrors.
"What are you looking for?"
"It should be here. . . or a little further along. . . Ah, here we are!"
With his face full of the cheer engendered by his regained sagacity, he showed me a brass tube which ran vertically down the wall and then curved towards us, ending in a trumpet.
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