Secretum

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  Atto imagined that he had silenced me with his exegesis. He wanted at all costs to avoid any close contact with the kind of occult phenomena which had so irritated and confused him during our incursions to the Vessel.

  This was not, however, the truth: I well recalled how enthusiastically Melani had, when he first spoke of Capitor, described the prophetic powers of that Spanish madwoman who had come to court in the retinue of Don John the Bastard. However, I held back and refrained from pointing this out to him.

  "And yet," he himself admitted after a moment's silence, without, however, breaking off his minuet of trying out new periwigs, "I must confess that something else in Capitor's words really came very close to being prophetic."

  This was, Melani explained, the sonnet about the globe as the wheel of fortune, which we also read above one of the doors at the Vessel. Atto recited the last lines:

  Behold, one to the heights hath risen

  Et alter est expositus ruinae;

  The third is stripped of all; deep down, to waste is driven.

  Quartus ascendet iam, nec quisquam sine

  By labouring he gained his benison,

  Secundum legis ordinem divinae.

  "This happened after the Cardinal's death," said Atto, grasping a perfume for periwigs and rapidly perusing a belt and two pocket watches: "Colbert's ascent must inevitably bring to mind, 'Behold, one to the heights hath risen', while the brewing storm that preceded the fall of Superintendent Fouquet seemed to fit perfectly with 'et alter est expositus ruinae' or, 'the other is exposed to ruin'. The fourth prefigured the coming to power of the Most Christian King in person who ' ascendetiam' or, 'is now ascending'. In fact, the young King did gird up his loins immediately after Flis Eminence's death and take personal control of the government of the state, as the sonnet says, 'nec quisquam sine' By labouring he gained his benison', in other words, on the strength of his own efforts, but also, 'secundum legis ordinem divinae'' or, 'according to the order of divine right' precisely upon which the King's power rests."

  "In your interpretation of the sonnet, the third personage is, however, missing, the one who's 'stripp'd of all; deep down, to waste is driven'."

  "Bravo. I see that you may be slow on the uptake, but you are by no means inattentive. The third character is Mazarin himself."

  "Did he really die poor?" I asked, utterly astonished. "When we first met, I seem to recall you telling me that he left a fabulous inheritance."

  "Your memory is absolutely correct. Only, he chose his heir badly. Armand de la Meilleraye, Ortensia Mancini's husband, was mad," he exclaimed, trying out all sorts and colours of capes, cloaks and cowls, in all materials from jujube-red Ormuz muslins to scarlet ferrandine silk and wool blends, brocaded cloth of gold and silver, bicoloured moire satins, and so compulsively that it truly seemed he too had taken leave of his senses.

  Armand de la Meilleraye: almost indifferent to the dubious spectacle which the Abbot, by now almost naked, was making of himself, I was deep in thought. I already knew from Buvat that, when Maria left Paris, Atto had transferred his attentions to Ortensia, thus enraging her mad spouse, who sent out ruffians to hunt him down and give him a beating and thus caused him to flee from France. Melani had taken advantage of this to go to Rome and, with the King's blessing and financial assistance, to seek out Maria, newly married to the Constable Colonna.

  "'Tis almost risible," continued the Abbot, by now lost in his dance of the costumes which, from a graceful minuet, had degenerated into an unseemly sarabande: "Mazarin had sought far and wide the best match for the most beautiful and sought-after of his nieces and had decided to make him his universal heir. The choice fell upon a nephew of Richelieu, the Due de la Meilleraye, who thus became master of the Cardinal's boundless and ill-gotten fortune. They married barely ten days before the death of Mazarin, who thus had no idea of the sad individual to whom he had abandoned his fortune."

  Armand de la Meilleraye, Atto narrated with acid sarcasm for his one-time enemy, was without question utterly mad. He was ashamed to have inherited from Mazarin, whom he regarded as a thief destined for hellfire. He therefore took an extreme pleasure in accepting the inheritance with the secret intent of destroying and delapidating it. He sought out the victims of the Cardinal's depredations and exhorted them to sue his heir, namely himself. In this way, he collected over three hundred lawsuits and did his very best to lose them all, thus restituting the great man's ill-gotten gains.

  For that purpose, he obtained the advice of the best and most costly lawyers, and then did exactly the opposite of whatever they recommended. One morning, what was more, he put paints and hammers into the hands of a group of servants and led them to the gallery where His Eminence had lovingly collected extraordinary works of art: and there he began violently to strike Greek and Roman statues, because they were naked, and ordered the servants to cover the paintings depicting nudity with black paint: Titians, Correggios and who knows what else. When the King's minister, Colbert, arrived distraught, hoping to save those masterpieces, he found the madman, exhausted but calm at last, in the midst of all the wreckage; midnight had struck: it was Sunday, the day of rest. The destruction had come to a halt, but almost nothing had survived.

  "As cruel irony would have it, in the last days of his life, Mazarin was seen wandering around his gallery, caressing those very statues and those marvellous paintings, sobbing and repeating over and over: And to think that I must leave all this! To think that I must leave all this!'"

  "It seems almost as though he was struck down by a curse," I observed.

  "The schemes whereby great men try to make their memory eternal, are utterly ridiculous," exclaimed Atto in response.

  He fell silent, shaken by the very phrase which he himself had just pronounced.

  "Ridiculous..." he repeated mechanically while, despite himself, his lips drooped, forming a tragic mask.

  The old castrato lowered his gaze to his chest. He looked at the breeches, the sash, the Venetian lace jabot and all the other things he had put on - more than one would ever place on a tailor's dummy. He moved slowly to the window and glanced into the park, where, I supposed, the Connestabilessa must still be waiting.

  Suddenly, there came flying capes and cloaks, sashes and jabots, the Bohemian cape, the cuffs, the pleated silk cloak and the stockings. The precious silks, the shining satins, the amber fur, the cloths enriched with gold and silver thread, the moire satins, the Milanese salia and the Genoese sateens, all flew into the air, flung by Atto in handfuls. There followed what looked like a bewitched aerial army of empty costumes: tabbies, grograms, striped and flowered linens, muslins, ferrandines and doublets all flew menacingly upwards. My eyes were confused amidst the colours of pearl, fire, musk, dried roses, ginger, scarlet, maroon, dove-grey, grenadine, berrettino grey, nacre, tan, milky white, moire and gris castor, and blinded by the gold and silver braiding and fringes which Atto was hurling to the floor in a silent, desperate frenzy.

  I was utterly at a loss in the face of Melani's assault on his sartorial masterpieces; all the more so when I recalled how, many years ago, he had cursed in the honeycomb of underground galleries beneath Rome every time a splash of mud dirtied his lace cuffs or his red abbot's stockings.

  When at last the curious army of costumes lay lifeless on the ground and the entire wardrobe was scattered far and wide, Atto's old body lay, like that of a half-naked satyr, slumped on the divan at the foot of the bed. Hardly had I overcome the icy grip on my members and rushed to the Abbot's assistance than the latter suddenly raised his face from his hands where he had plunged it and, standing up once more, moved away from me and slipped on his dressing gown.

  "Now do you understand the verse in the sonnet on fortune recited by Capitor?" he asked me, as though nothing unusual had taken place.

  He went to the console and poured two glasses of sweetened red wine, one of which he handed me.

  "The third is stripp'd of all, deep down, to waste is driven," said he, seein
g that he was unable to get a word out of me: "Hardly was he dead, than Cardinal Mazarin lost all that he had intrigued for."

  "Yes," was all I was capable of saying.

  I gulped down the wine in one go. My hands were trembling. Atto poured me another glass. He was avoiding my eyes. Fortunately, the fumes of alcohol soon dispelled those of emotion and I found myself once more at peace.

  "That was a true prophecy," I exclaimed, once I had digested the Abbot's revelations concerning Capitor's words.

  "Either that or a diabolical coincidence," he replied.

  I smiled. The old castrato was irredeemable; he would not admit in my presence to the inexplicable nature of certain phenomena; I would leave him that little satisfaction.

  "There is one so-called 'prophecy' of Capitor's that certainly has not come to pass," the Abbot insisted, for any such flaw corroborated his convictions. "That which she pronounced before the charger with the Tetrachion: 'He who deprives the crown of Spain of its sons, the crown of Spain will deprive of his sons.'

  What does that mean? Who has deprived Spain of heirs? King Charles II has no heirs; no one has been deprived of any. Capitor was talking nonsense, and that is the fact of the matter."

  "But, if I remember well," I objected, "Capitor, when she presented the dish, said first of all 'Two in one'. And in doing so, she pointed first to the couple formed by Neptune and Amphitrite, then to the sceptre in the form of a trident, is that not so?"

  "What are you getting at?" Atto grumbled, sounding as though he wished to set the matter to one side once and for all.

  "Does it not seem to fit in rather curiously with the monstrous Tetrachion of whom Cloridia spoke?"

  "I do not see how," the Abbot retorted drily.

  "Perhaps the Tetrachion is a pair of twins attached to one another at the side, like the two deities on the charger, and like the image we saw reflected in the mirrors," said I, illustrating my idea, myself surprised by the theory which had suddenly arisen in my mind. "After all, Capitor did say 'Two in one', did she not?"

  "Yes, but she was referring only to the figures on the charger; and that, my boy, is the one and only Tetrachion in this tale, for what we thought we saw in the penthouse at the Vessel was merely an optical illusion - or have you forgotten?"

  He turned his back on me, signifying that the conversation was at an end, and returned to the window.

  "Is she still there?" I asked.

  "Yes. She always loved gardens, man's hand bending the beauties of nature to his will and surpassing them," said he with a tremor in his voice.

  "Perhaps it is time for you to go down. . ."

  "No. Not now," he retorted at once, revealing which thoughts had triumphed in that cruel inner battle which had taken place before my eyes; "I shall see her tomorrow."

  "But perhaps you could. . ."

  "My mind is made up. Please leave me alone now. I have many things to deal with."

  Evening the Ninth

  15th July 1700

  *

  "One moment, please, all of you, one moment. Let us leave off from chewing, let us hold our tongues, let us curb our appetites! Let none rest on the laurels of their ill-conquered lunch! And let no one forget our kind Lord who, in offering us such a treat, is lavishing all these good things on us without a thought for the morrow, thus demonstrating with wise liberality the splendid generosity of his soul. Permit me then to raise my glass and dedicate this toast to our master, the most eminent, munificent and excellent Cardinal Spada, and to wish him the most magnificent and ever-increasing good fortune!"

  While a gay concert of clapping, cries of jubilation and the sound of clinking glasses accompanied the end of this short speech, he who had pronounced it, namely the Secretary for Protocol of the Spada household, Carl' Antonio Filippi, sprawled on one of the day-beds in the garden, then rolled up his sleeves and began to gorge himself on fried trout covered with lilies and stuffed with apricocks, candies, sugar and cinnamon and triumphally garnished with slices of lemon.

  The wine flowed fresh down my throat, but I wanted to keep my lips wet with it and pressed them against Cloridia's; while the two little ones who are the fruit of our union played at our feet, I kissed her tenderly, whispering sweet nothings, love pleasantries and other secret things.

  All around us the servants' banquet was in full, free and joyous progress: Cardinal Spada had allowed the servants to celebrate and enjoy themselves in the august park of the villa and even to pass the night in the Turkish pavilions, caressed by Armenian silks, which had until a few hours previously received the noble guests invited to the nuptial celebrations. This generous decision had provided Secretary Filippi, the author of the speeches given in the Spada household on important occasions, with yet another opportunity to display his mastery of impromptu eloquence and the whole company with a rare chance to feast like lords.

  I had not yet told my sagacious little wife the truth about the mad night at Saint Peter's: doing my very best to gloss over the dangers to which I had exposed myself, I strung out a sketchy, improbable account of that adventure, which she pretended to believe out of the kindness of her heart, aided and abetted by the festive atmosphere. From time to time, she would innocently pose me some trick question and I would invariably fall into the trap. But such was her joy to have me back by her side that she showed no great keenness to dig any deeper with her questioning: on that evening she took delight in using her tongue to caress rather than to scourge.

  The Secretary for Letters of the Spada family, Abbot Giuliano Borghi, was seated at a sumptuously laid table with Don Tibaldutio, Don Paschatio, the Venerable Dean Giovanni Griffi, Master Cupbearer Germano Hondadei, Auditor Giovanni Gamba and Aide de Camp Ottavio Valletti, all busily engaged in devouring a dish of soles pan-fried in butter and stuffed with pulped fish, marzipan, tellins and mostacciolo. True, these were leftovers, but marinated in gravy and their own good juices, they can sometimes taste even better.

  Footmen, lackeys, sub-deacons, coachmen, assistant coachmen and grooms, sitting around a simpler table, were sipping with evident pleasure and surprise at a soup of prawns, truffles, prunes, mantis crabs, lemon juice, muscatel wine and spices, with bread crusts garnished with prawns' shells stuffed with foie gras interspersed with little pastries alia Mazzarino, coated with pistachios.

  Another yet more humble group comprising porters, wardrobe servants, gardeners, prentices and assistants was gaily assembled around a souffle full of pulped bass, tench and eel, pork crackling, capers, asparagus tips, prunes, poached egg yokes and slices of citron.

  All the servants, even cooks and scullions, were seated under the stars or under cover in the Turkish pavilions, freely commenting on all the effort they had expended during those days.

  As though the world had been turned upside down, the servants were the gentry and the gentry were bereft of assistance: all the illustrious guests had departed or were taking their leave, and none was any longer paying any attention to goings-on at the villa. Cardinal Spada, for his part, had returned to affairs of state.

  After a week's unremitting labour, the humble company was relaxing and gossiping, commenting on all that had happened in town - whether important or frivolous - during the past few days. At the Apostolic Palace of the Quirinale, with the pontifical choir in attendance, mass had been sung by Cardinal Moriggia (whom by now everyone at Villa Spada knew well, especially Caesar Augustus, who had liberally covered him with insults); during Vespers in the church of the Madonna at Monte Santo, a beam had collapsed, killing a member of the choir; His Holiness, on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of his pontificate, had received the Sacred College of Cardinals and the ambassadors, who had proffered him their wishes for a long reign (knowing full well that this could never happen).

  Some of the chatter smacked of a return to normality. Everything, not only the celebrations, seemed to be over and done with. Maria had come but, thanks to Abbot Melani's eccentric behaviour, we had been able to descry her only from afar. I
f she had never come, might it not have been the same? Atto's treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave had remained in the hands of the cerretani, and perhaps it had already been handed over to Lamberg, if not to Albani in person. Thus, Atto was under the sword of Damocles. What was more, the three cardinals whom we had so carefully stalked had always evaded us and only on the last occasion had we been able to understand why: but too late.

  Lastly we had, it was true, tried to understand what the Tetrachion was, but the arcane atmosphere at the Vessel and the apparitions we had witnessed there had misled us; instead of the monster announced by popular prophecies and Capitor's bizarre charger, we had seen our own effigies, reflected in distorting mirrors. We had tried everything, and nothing had succeeded. We had been defeated by adverse conditions, our own incapacity and by human weakness.