"What?"
"Sfasciamonti's mother died sixteen years ago."
I fell silent, saddened by my own inadequacy. Atto had deduced Sfasciamonti's betrayal from observations and information much of which I myself had collected, and yet I had been incapable of collating it all logically.
"There is one thing I do not understand," I objected. "Why did you not unmask him earlier?"
"That is one of the stupidest questions you have ever put to me. Think of Telemachus."
"Again?" I exclaimed impatiently. "I know that the myth of Telemachus gave you the idea of creating a diversion to distract the cerretani with fireworks, but here, frankly, I can't see..."
"Homer called Telemachus 'wise'," Atto interrupted me, '"the equal of the gods' and even 'endowed with sacred strength'; he praises him in almost every verse. But what did the good Eumaeus, the swineherd who so loved him, have to say about him? That 'one of the gods has damaged his brain'. And what of his own mother, the faithful Penelope? She screamed at him: 'Telemachus, you are mindless and witless!' Thus was his behaviour judged by those who best loved him. They were unable to appreciate the subtle wisdom and extreme prudence of his apparently senseless acts. And do you know why?"
"He was pretending to be mad in order not to arouse the suspicions of the suitors who had occupied Ulysses' palace," I replied. "But, I repeat, I cannot see what this has to do with. . ."
"Just wait and hear me out. Telemachus himself masked as folly his boldest act, namely drawing the suitors into the fatal trap: the competition to draw Ulysses' bow. He said: 'Alas, Zeus, son of Cronos, made me mad and here I am laughing and joking like a madman.' And was he not, acting like a lark's mirror, the very first to try that bow which he said only his father could bend? He never gave away his own simulation until the moment when Ulysses seized the bow and massacred the suitors."
"I understand," said I at length. "You pretended to believe Sfasciamonti until we had an advantage over him."
"Exactly. If I had unmasked him earlier, we should never have learned anything from Il Roscio, nor would we have got as far as the German, in other words Ugonio, and so on and so forth. What's more," Atto concluded with a knowing grin, "it would have been complicated to get rid of Sfasciamonti earlier; I couldn't very well fill his buttocks with lead in the middle of the festivities at Villa Spada!"
Meanwhile, the carriage made its way in the first light of dawn. Fatigue weighed down our eyelids inexorably, yet too many questions still beset me.
"Signor Atto," I asked, "why did you swear when Ugonio told you that the Dutch cerretano was going to unglue the cover of your treatise?"
"At long last, you're asking me. The whole thing hangs on that."
"What do you mean 'hangs on that'?"
"It was a matter of wrong targets. When you take aim at the wrong target," said Atto, "you get nothing but trouble."
The first mistaken target had been Cardinal Albani. As we now knew, he had nothing whatever to do with the theft of Atto's treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave.
The second wrong target had been Lamberg. We had believed that the Imperial Ambassador was behind the theft, supposing that he meant to get hold of the secret information which Atto intended for the eyes of the Most Christian King only. That was another mistake.
"Lamberg is nothing but a very pious believer who, instead of trying to be an ambassador, should be at court in Vienna, gobbling down haunches of venison and strudel with soft cheese like all his compatriots, and looking after his tranquil estates. It was not he who ordered the theft of my treatise."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
"I am sure of that because nobody ordered the cerretani to steal the book. It was they who decided to do it."
"They? And why?"
"Do you remember what Ugonio said when we entered his lair at the baths of Agrippina? The cerretani are nervous, he muttered, because someone has stolen their language. That was confirmed by Geronimo, the cerretano whom Sfasciamonti questioned today. At the time, Ugonio's reply made no sense, but that phrase of his kept buzzing around in my head. The new language: is it not true that the cerretani have a secret language or jargon, gibberish, Saint Giles' Greek or whatever you want to call it? As we know, it is something rather more serious than that ridiculous play on words which you heard when you were thrown off that terrace in Campo di Fiore."
"D'you mean. .. 'teeyooteelie'?"
"Exactly. Until now, their secret language was the jargon which we managed to understand a good deal of thanks to the glossary which Ugonio procured for us. Now, however, precisely because that was beginning to become too well known, they had decided to update it. Do you remember what Buvat told us? This is an ancient language. When, however, it ceases to be impenetrable, they modify it a little, using small tricks of speech, just enough to render it incomprehensible once more. This time, however, someone stole the key to their code, the rules governing it, or something of the sort; just as Geronimo told Sfasciamonti and his worthy companions. Now, that something might be no more than a simple sheet of paper with the instructions for speaking and understanding the revised jargon."
"Yes, I follow you," said I, beginning to understand.
"Well, once they'd suffered this theft, the cerretani would obviously have done everything in their power to recover that magic scrap of paper, do you not think so?"
"Of course."
"Right. And what were they trying with all their might and main to get from me and to hold onto until this very evening?"
"Your treatise! Do you perhaps mean that the secret language of the cerretani is contained in.. ."
"Oh, not in what I wrote. I know nothing of their language. The sheet of paper is, to be precise, concealed in the volume."
"How?"
"Do you know how they make covers like that with which I asked poor Haver to bind my treatise?"
"By gluing. . . old papers together! I have it. The instructions for the secret language were glued inside the cover! After all, Ugonio said that the weird Dutch cerretano, the bookbinder, was going to unglue a page."
"Certainly. He was to separate from my cover the page which describes the new rules of the secret language. In fact, the pages which are used for bindings are usually glued to the cover on their written side."
"So that's why they brought an expert all the way from Holland to unglue it. But there's something I still don't understand: how did it come to be there in the first place?"
"What a question! Haver, the bookbinder, put it there. Without knowing it, obviously."
"That's why the cerretani broke into Haver's shop and carried everything off: they were looking for your book!"
"And the poor man died of fright," Atto added sadly. "Only, as you'll recall, when they raided Haver, I had already withdrawn my book and so they got nothing. This they realised only after they'd gone through what they'd looted: mountains of old paper."
"Then they commissioned Ugonio to steal the treatise."
"Quite. The tomb robber went about it with a sure hand. There were no other freshly bound manuscripts in my apartment. Otherwise, it might have been difficult for him to be sure of taking the right book, seeing that neither he nor the cerretani knew what its contents were."
"Yes. But how did the sheet of paper come to be in Haver's shop? And how did the cerretani trace him?"
"You will have to use your memory. Do you perhaps recall that this evening, right next to the rostrum where the Maggiorenghi sat, there was a young man we seemed to have seen somewhere?"
"Yes, but I still can't remember where we came across him. Perhaps we saw him begging somewhere in town. Or perhaps he was among the other mendicants at Termine, that evening when we followed I! Roscio and Geronimo."
"You're wrong. But 'tis hardly surprising. We saw him only for a matter of seconds. Anyway, I saw him better than you, because he sliced up my arm."
"The cerretano Sfasciamonti was chasing in front of Villa Spada!"
"Precisely. I
t comes as no surprise that he should have been so near the Maggiorenghi this evening, together with Ugonio and that little monster, what was he called?... Ah yes, Drehmannius. That beanpole of a lad, all skin and bones, was carrying the paper with the secret language somewhere. He collided with us and the sheet of paper went flying off into the air and got mixed up with all the other papers. And it ended up in the binding of my book. For the cerretani, with the help of Sfasciamonti, finding Haver's shop will have been child's play."
"But why did the skinny cerretano stab you in front of the villa?"
"He didn't stab me. It was an accident. Sfasciamonti had seen him in the area and knew that he was up to no good. After trying to stop him, he ran after him. The catchpoll had an excellent intuition: after all, the lad was carrying on his person the code for the new secret language. He was probably a courier. We now know that the assembly of the cerretani was imminent and preparations were surely in hand. When he was being chased, the lad unsheathed his knife, in order to defend himself if they caught up with him. That was when he collided with me, causing the wound which still hurts me and losing his knife. In any case, Sfasciamonti took the weapon, probably to be sure that no one else should be able to snatch the investigation off him."
"But why, instead of complicating their lives by stealing your treatise, could the cerretani not simply obtain another copy of their code?"
"It does not even exist, I think."
"And how do you know?"
"You need only add two and two. Buvat told us that, traditionally, only the Maggiorengo-Generai can dictate the new rules. He writes them out in his own hand and the text is read to a general meeting of all the sects who then do whatever is necessary to spread it far and wide. But Ugonio told us that a new Maggiorengo-Generai was to be appointed because the previous one had died. So the only person who knew the contents of that paper, namely its author, was no longer there."
"At that point, however, the general meeting had already been convened, perhaps months earlier," said I, taking up the argument. "Swarms of cerretani were converging from all over Italy and a new code could not be drawn up because there was no time."
"Of course. Even if, given the emergency, they'd wanted to fashion a new secret language in the place of the late Mag- giorengo-General, how do you imagine those beasts dressed in rags could have managed such a thing in less than a week?"
"It is quite incredible," I commented, after a brief pause. "I could never have imagined Sfasciamonti running like that after someone with whom he'd come to terms immediately afterwards."
"On the contrary, it is absolutely obvious. Corrupt catchpolls are always the first to arrive at the scene of a crime or where there's no more than a suspicion that something could take place; they're already counting the money they hope to extort."
He fell silent an instant, wiping the sweat from his forehead with one of his fine lace handkerchiefs.
"Do you think that he will make it?"
"Have no fear. Before shooting him, I got him to turn around for two reasons: because he's a traitor, and traitors are shot in the back; and also because I aimed at his backside, the only part of the body where there's nothing one can fracture and there's almost no likelihood of infection."
Abbot Melani's familiarity with infections caused by firearms caused me to suppose that he had in the past had no little experience of such matters. Like every true spy.
When we arrived, it was already daylight. We arranged to be set down not too near to Villa Spada, so as not to be seen by any of the staff of the villa when we were leaving the carriage.
Atto was exhausted. On his way to his apartment, he had to be supported by myself and Buvat. The servants of the villa, by now inured to our appearing and disappearing at the most absurd hours, pretended not to notice.
Laid on his bed like a dead body, Abbot Melani closed his eyes and prepared for a long sleep. I was on the point of slipping out the door when I saw Atto's nose curl up as it always did in the presence of a bad smell. At the same time, my eyes, no less tired than Atto's limbs, noticed a movement behind the curtains. Looking down, the folds of the curtain failed to conceal a pair of old down-at-heel boots.
"We'll never be free of all this," said I to myself, at once scared and exasperated. The intruder did not budge, perhaps fearing our reaction. Buvat, Atto and I stiffened in turn, waiting for him to make a move.
"Come out from there, whoever you are," said the Abbot, grasping his pistol.
There was a moment's silence.
"To be more medicinal than mendacious, I desiderate to submit to your most subliminal decisionality this most modest production of my hardput industrialising," mumbled a hesitant voice.
The sleeve of a sackcloth cassock stretched out from behind the curtain and held out the remnants of a book that looked as though it had been run over by a hundred carriages.
"My treatise!" said Atto, grasping it and sharply pulling aside the curtain.
Ugonio, in an even sorrier state than usual, wasted no time in idle chatter. He explained that he had escaped from the cerretani only thanks to the Catherine wheel which Buvat had lit just before we escaped from the fray. Once out in the open, he too had carefully avoided the main path, which was why we had not seen him. To return to Rome, he had adventurously purloined a horse from an unguarded stable, at the risk, however, of being caught and slaughtered by the irate owner who had followed him on a filly, armed to the teeth. Now he had come to deliver the promised goods and to receive a last, well-deserved reward.
Abbot Melani was paying no great attention to him, so overcome was he by emotion at recovering his treatise. He opened it and I could at last see with my own eyes the little book for which I had risked life and limb:
Atto proudly read me the frontispiece:
"Secret Memoirs containing the most notable Events of the past four Conclaves, with severall Observations on the Court of Rome."
"I am most factiously in urgent neediness of the ultimate parcel of my emollyment," Ugonio solicited, massaging one shoulder. One of his hands was bandaged and there were bloodstains on his face.
"What happened?" asked Atto, turning from his beloved opus. He was still incredulous that the exceedingly skilful Ugonio should have been caught with his hand literally in the sack when stealing the treatise back for him.
"A nothingness, an utteringly minimous snaggle."
The answer was too evasive not to get on Atto's nerves:
"What does that mean? With all the money I've given you, you let yourself be caught with my treatise in your hand and you call that 'a minor unforeseen contingency'."
The corpisantaro said nothing, but showed clear signs of embarrassment. His wounds spoke for him: when he was filching the book from the cerretani, something had gone askew, nor could he refuse to explain what had happened. He therefore spoke as though at one remove, explaining after his own fashion (that is, in terms somewhat colourful and bizarre) how the Grand Legator Drehmannius had been wearing a little chain around his neck with a most interesting relic hanging from it: a small wooden crucifix from which hung a small box containing a canine tooth which Ugonio, with his unfailing flair, had at once recognised as coming from the sacred jaw of the Dutch Saint Leboin.
"Who cares! You weren't there to. . ." Atto interrupted him, then suddenly clapped his hand over his mouth. His little eyes narrowed, becoming as sharp as two daggers about to strike.
"Go on," said he.
Amidst ambiguities and fragments of sentences, the confession painfully emerged. Ugonio, despite the fact that he had at great personal risk filched Atto's treatise from the Grand Legator's bag, had proved unable to resist temptation. With a feline movement, he had drawn close to the Dutch canter, whispering some empty compliments in his ear. The chaos provoked by the fireworks was still reigned, transforming the whole assembly into one wild, deafening crucible. With one hand, Ugonio had undone the little chain of the crucifix behind the other's neck, whereupon, pretending to lose his balance,
he had practically fallen on top of him ("a most hightly commendable and productifer- ous technique!" he gloated) so that his victim should not notice that he was being robbed. The crucifix had fallen into the Grand Legator's lap, whereupon Ugonio had grabbed and pocketed it.
"Just as I thought," muttered Atto, barely restraining his fury.
As Melani and I well knew, the corpisantari robbed, trafficked and made use of everything they could lay their hands on, but their ruling passion was for holy relics, whether true or false, (and we had witnessed their insane appetite for these things when first we met them seventeen years before). Unfortunately, their unbridled greed for relics all too often got the better of them when there were far more important matters at stake, thus ruining everything. Ugonio's rapacity had all too soon been punished, as he went on to explain, his voice growing more and more feeble with embarrassment.
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