Secretum

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  It was not easy to read. Despite its being summer, the road to Albano was full of potholes and the bumps followed one another without a break. The carriage (despite the fact that it was an excellent vehicle, hired at the last moment at an astronomical cost) shook and jumped because of the road, swinging and sometimes tilting dangerously from side to side; but it kept moving. Atto, who sat to my left, had devoured Geronimo's statement. Now he sat there, silent and deep in thought, with his unmoving gaze fixed on the landscape, as though he were observing the rare lights from farmhouses, whereas his mind was implacably set on his anxieties.

  To my right sat Buvat, as stiff as a poker, despite a passing bout of somnolence. Before we mounted the carriage, I saw him briefly confer with Don Paschatio. From their confabulation, we overheard only a few last recommendations which the Major-Domo imparted when Buvat was already on his way to the carriage: "Take care: avoid dampness and excessive movement, and make sure to keep them upright at all times." I had no idea what this was all about, but when Buvat got in, Atto asked him no questions, so I too asked none. On the front seat, there sprawled Sfasciamonti's exorbitant bulk, as though squeezed by force into the tight space. He too was locked in impenetrable silence. A short while before our departure, he had held a long conversation with Atto, probably to agree on the price of his forthcoming services. The journey to Albano by night was no joke. Even less reassuring was the place to which we were headed; the agreed price must have been high. Next to the catchpoll sat the passenger who must, at the time of our departure, have most perplexed our coachman.

  As soon as the carriage arrived, Atto had ordered that we first be taken to the Baths of Agrippina. Objective: to pick up Ugonio. It was unthinkable to sneak into the meeting of the cerretani without a guide. As soon as we reached his hide-out, we brought him out simply by shouting his name at the top of our voices. Rather than attract the attention of the neighbourhood (for Ugonio, it was indispensable to have a discreet lair known to no one) the corpisantaro rapidly emerged and agreed to talk with us. At the outset, however, Atto treated him with obvious irritation. When he reported that the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave was to be brought ad Albanum, Ugonio meant the town towards which we were now heading. If he did not make that clear, it was because, to him, it was perfectly obvious. He could of course have no idea that a certain Cardinal Albani might be involved in Atto's affairs or that this might give rise to confusion on my part and Atto's. He could not be blamed for the misunderstanding, but it had wasted a huge amount of our precious time. To increase Atto's impatience, Ugonio put up a strenuous resistance when he knew for what purpose we meant to recruit him: to guide us to the meeting of the cerretani. Only under the combined pressure of threats and abundant offers of cash did he end up by giving in and accompanying us, bringing with him all that would be needed for the undertaking. Just before the corpisantaro climbed into the carriage, there was, however, one last negotiation. Atto drew the new passenger aside and held an intense discussion with him. Finally, he poured an unusually large number of gold coins - or so they seemed in the darkness that enveloped us - into Ugonio's purse. Last of all, he passed him a book. I tried to ask the Abbot, but he would not tell me what all that business was about.

  My thoughts turned once more to the curious meeting between Atto and Lamberg. Until that moment, we had acted on the assumption that the Imperial Ambassador was behind the assault and the theft suffered by Atto. But now we were stumbling in the dark: either Lamberg was a brilliant simulator, or else he really was a pious and fervent Catholic whose moral code had been afflicted by the cruel scourge of disillusionment. If that were the case, our journey to Albano was beset by even more unknown factors: the enemy towards which we were marching was faceless.

  I saw that my mind was wandering and broke off from that review of the latest developments to return to my reading.

  The record of the cerretano's interrogation, which I was subsequently able to transcribe almost in its entirety, began with the criminal notary's usual forms of words, followed by the arrested man's statement:

  DIE 18 MARTIJ

  Examinatus fuit in carceribus Pontis Sixti coram magnifico et Excell.ti Dno N. . . per me notarium infra scriptum Hieronymus quondam Antonij Furnarij Romani annorum 22 in circa, cui delato iuramento etc.

  Interrogatus de nomine, patria, aetate et causa suae carcerationis, respondit:

  "I was born in Rome, son of the late Antonio Fornaro of the Colonna ward near the Trevi Fountain. My name is Geronimo, I am twenty-two years of age, I have no trade, except that I go and work in the salt pans for four months every year, after which I return to Rome and go begging for alms. As you can see, I am very poor and sick, and for the past ten years I have been without father or mother, an abandoned orphan, trying to live as best I can, and I was arrested in Saint Peter's on Friday last March because I was begging in Church."

  Geronimo was then asked what he knew about the mendicants' secrets. Here, the interrogation repeated all twenty-five sects already confessed by his predecessor to which the accused added several others: the Trawlers, the Mountebanks, the Hucksters, the Dormice, the Mandrakes, the ABCs, the Bloodsuckers, the Mumpers, the Itchies, the Palliards, the Marmots, the Bullies, the Sharpers, the Errants and the Sweeps.

  "The Trawlers sleep at night and beg by day; the Mountebanks sell fake rings and pieces of earth of Saint Paul's Grace and fool the hicks most wonderfully; the Hucksters are dreadful charlatans, they always have some grubs or crabs with them - that's what they call the youngsters who work with them. They go to market and while they're at their huckstering or shopping, the grubs and crabs go stealing and cutting purse-strings, then in the evening they all share the spoils. They always have boys with them because they're all back-gammon players, which is what we call sodomites. The Dormice are crippled in all four limbs, they don't even have hands and feet, and they beg. The Mandrakes are cripples and get themselves pulled in little packing cases on wheels or carried on someone's shoulders, and they, too, beg. The ABCs are poor blind men, and they beg as well. The Bloodsuckers go from hamlet to hamlet selling chap-books of the lives of the Saints and Orations to Saints, which they sing, and then they all beg together for alms. The Mumpers are those who are well dressed and claim to have formerly been gentlemen or artisans and, with the most courteous, severe mien, off they go a-begging too.

  "The Itchies are mangy, scabby lepers and the like, and they beg like all the others. The Palliards are those who cut their hands or feet and seem to be crippled, but there's nothing wrong with them at all. They make false wounds on an arm or a leg with a piece of bloody liver, and beg. The Marmots pretend to be dumb or to have no tongue, and beg. The Bullies are those who go begging dressed in mountain men's sheepskins. The Sharpers play in hostelries and inns with marked cards and loaded dice, they're as cunning as they come. The Sweeps are those who say they're Jews and they have families, and they've converted to Christianity. That way they collect plenty of alms. Last but not least, there are the Doxies and the Autem Morts, who are women that beg in various ways. The Doxies are young and good company, whereas the Autem Morts are good for the hospital or the tavern and for the most part they're old."

  I skimmed through the statement rapidly until I came to the important information about Albano.

  "I have heard said that in May many beggars mean to meet at the grottoes of Albano, because they want to elect the new Maggiorengo-General and to give out the new jargon for us to speak, but, as we've heard that this has been stolen, they mean to set things in order and to lay down penalties so that no one gives the game away. And whoever does give us away they'll play Martin with - in other words, he'll find himself on the wrong end of a dagger. And I've heard that some fellows found that Pompeo near Pescheria and started to beat him up, and if he'd not run to a Church for sanctuary with the priests, they'd have killed him, as everyone was so angry with him for having sold out on them."

  So the cerretani would be meeting at Albano, as Sfasciamo
nti had told us (for safety, the statement spoke of May instead of July). They said someone had stolen their new secret language and they meant to restore order (though Geronimo did not say how they proposed to do so). What's more, they wanted to kill Pompeo, alias II Roscio, because they had heard he'd blabbed. But who'd told them?

  At the end, the criminal notary asked why the mendicant, who had made a full confession, did not abandon such bad company and such infamous practices and find a trade, as so many did in Rome.

  "Sir, I'll tell you the truth. We like this way of living freely here and there, sponging for bed and board, without having to make any efforts, far too much and, in short, whoever once has tasted of the canters' way of life will never give it up that easily. This is true both for the men and the women. I hope that with God's help I shall be able to change my life, if I can get out of prison, 'cos I'd like to go and stay with the friars of San Bartolomeo on the island and take care of their donkey."

  "In the end, of course, we had to let him go," laughed Sfasciamonti who, as had happened with Il Roscio, could certainly not have someone imprisoned who had not been legally arrested. "He'll surely go and take care of the donkey, so long as his comrades don't catch him first and play Martin with him, as they put it."

  "But how could they know he's been questioned?" I asked, worried about the idea of another leak of this kind of information.

  Sfasciamonti's visage darkened.

  "In the same way as after Il Roscio's arrest."

  "Meaning?"

  "I don't know."

  "Come now, what do you mean?"

  "These cerretani are diabolical. One of them says something and suddenly they all know about it."

  "It's true, damn it," Atto echoed him forcefully after a moment's silence, "they really are diabolical."

  This time, Buvat was not there. "Who," I asked, "played the part of the criminal notary?"

  "A real notary," the catchpoll replied.

  "How can that be?"

  "There's no more perfect forgery than an authentic object," Atto interjected.

  "I don't understand."

  "That's a good sign. It means the old law still works, and three centuries hence it will still be working," replied the Abbot.

  "Now I remember that when we met you spoke to me of how false documents sometimes contain the truth. Is that what you meant?"

  "No, this time I meant the exact opposite, and I'm not speaking only of papers but far more. I'll give you an example: who mints money in a state?" asked Melani.

  "The Sovereign."

  "Exactly. So the coin that comes from his mint, the state mint, will always be genuine."

  "Yes."

  "In fact, no. Or at least, not always. The Sovereign can always, if he wants, mint false money, and in large quantities: for example, to finance a war. All he need do is produce coin with a lower gold content than its nominal value. Now, will that money be true or false?"

  "False!" I answered, contradicting what I had just said.

  "But the King minted it. So it will be both true and false at the same time. To be precise, this money will be genuine but misleading. The trick's as old as the world. Four hundred years ago, when the King of France, Philip IV the Fair, wanted to finance a war against the Flemings, he reduced the livre tournois by half. Initially, it weighed eleven and a half ounces. But he also did the same thing with its gold content, lowering it from 23 carats to 20 carats. That way the King's coffers gained six thousand Parisian livres 'under the counter'. In the process, however, he reduced the land to extreme poverty."

  "Does that kind of thing still happen today?"

  "More than ever. William of Orange did it when he minted forged and suitably 'lightened' Venetian zecchini."

  "How awful! False things that reveal the truth and true things that spread what's false," I sighed.

  "That's the chaos of human society, my boy. That pain-in- the-proverbial, Albicastro, did say at least one thing that was absolutely right: 'Human affairs, like the Sileni of Alcibiades, always have two faces, each the opposite of the other.' That is and always will be the way of the world: open a Silenus, and you'll find everything transformed into its opposite," concluded Atto, surprising me by quoting the Dutchman whom he so detested.

  The Abbot was speaking of the Sileni mentioned by the violinist, those grotesque statuettes which contained divine images within.

  "Getting back to the subject," added Melani. "Friend Sfasciamonti had Geronimo examined by a real notary, who drew up a record of the interrogation that was in the correct form down to the smallest details, as not even Buvat could have done. It is not a false document. It contains information which is somewhat. .. imprecise, if you wish, like certain dates; nevertheless, it was drawn up by a genuine notary, assisted by genuine sergeants. It is not a faithful document, but it is an authentic one, indeed, most authentic. Is what I say correct?" asked Atto, turning to his travelling companion.

  The catchpoll said nothing. He was not pleased that these methods should be spoken of openly, but he could not deny what had been said. Instead of answering, he looked away from us, thus giving his tacit assent.

  "Remember, my boy," said Atto to me, "great falsifications call for great means; and these, only the state possesses."

  Following Ugonio's directions, we ordered the coachman, a mercenary used to all manner of missions (nocturnal fugues, adulteries, clandestine meetings) to take us to a quiet spot in the town. We were set down in a dark alley behind a big haystack. The houses were plunged in darkness. Only from rare windows did faint lights still glimmer, while the sole denizens of the narrow streets were cats and their customary victims.

  The driver told us to take care, but carefully avoided asking us what we proposed to do in that God-forsaken place at that hour.

  The streets were singularly free of any sign of life; yet it was a warm, comforting summer night of the kind beloved by insomniacs, clandestine lovers and adventurous boys. Judging by the deathly pall over all our surroundings, one might have thought we were in the midst of a blizzard in the dark lands of the far north of the kind so well described by Olaus Magnus.

  The corpisantaro carried a big greasy sack on his shoulder. We took a lane that led out into the fields, split into two separate roads, then petered out amidst a group of ruins. Our march was long and tortuous. We crossed vegetable gardens, then an uncultivated field. The only counterpoint to our footsteps was the chirping of crickets and the petulant buzz of mosquitos. We had in truth to advance rather cautiously, to avoid falling into some hidden ditch.

  "Is it still far?" asked Atto, somewhat impatiently.

  "'Tis a particulate and secreted location," said the corpisantaro in justification, "that must remain incognito."

  Suddenly, Ugonio stopped and drew from his sack three filthy hooded cassocks.

  "Only three?" I asked.

  The corpisantaro explained that Sfasciamonti could not come with us.

  "These vestibulements would be overmuch too tight-knitted for him," said he, pointing at the cloaks. "He has an excess of corpulousness. Better that he should vegetate here until our retourney, decreasing the scrupules so as not to increase our scruples, naturalissimally."

  The catchpoll grunted some discontented comment but did not protest. What a strange destiny for Sfasciamonti, I thought. He'd striven so long to investigate the cerretani, despite the opposition of colleagues and superiors, and here he was, reduced to doing so on Abbot Melani's behalf: in other words, as a mercenary. And now, after travelling by night all the way to Albano, he could not even come with us to the meeting.

  I put on the smallest of the cassocks. There is no point in my dwelling upon the disgust that those vile, stinking rags inspired in me, worn for years by creatures accustomed to crawling amidst subterranean rubbish in a world utterly alien to the very notion of cleanliness. They reeked of stale urine, rotting food and acid sweat. I heard Atto cursing under his breath against Ugonio's companions and their filth. Buvat put up with t
hese clothes uncomplainingly, faithful secretary that he was.

  The undeniable advantage of the garments was, however, their disproportionately voluminous cowls which covered almost all one's face, the outsized sleeves which concealed one's hands and the way they trailed along the ground, so that one could walk without one's footwear or stockings being visible. Holding back a wave of nausea, I slipped my arms into the sleeves. I had been transformed into a smelly cocoon of clumsy, formless sackcloth. Only their stature rendered Atto and Buvat a little less awkward.