When, a few minutes later, the Grand Legator scratched his foul mangy chest, he became aware at last of the theft of Saint Leboin's tooth and consequently that of the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave, which would otherwise have passed unobserved. That was why Ugonio had soon had to run for his life, succeeding in escaping his former allies only by dint of the strength which desperation lent him and with the help of Buvat's Catherine wheel.
"Drehmannius is a silly absent-mindless fellow," the tomb robber smugly concluded, betraying his genuine ape-like inability to forego his favourite fun and games.
"Beast, animal, idiot!" Atto burst out. "I paid you a fortune to get back my treatise, not to go hunting for your rubbish!"
Ugonio did not answer; his expression, which had suddenly become contrite and cringing, hypocritically masked (of this I was certain) that dull, bestial craving for possession which is the mark of primitive natures.
"Just one question, Ugonio: where is the holy relic now?" I asked in my turn, at once horrified and amused by the corpisantaro's extraordinary' rapacity.
Like a peasant taking his best rabbit out from a cage to show buyers, Ugonio swiftly extracted a small box from his cassock: the reliquary containing the tooth of Saint Leboin. He had carried it off.
"But now the cerretani are looking for me very concentratively," said he, with a note of anxiety in his voice which I had never heard before. "I must extrude me out of here pissed haste. I think I shall infibulate myself at Vindobona."
"You're returning to Vienna?" Atto asked in surprise as he slipped a full purse into the hand that was still sound; Ugonio estimated the value of this reward which was, after all, richly deserved, emitting a grunt of approval.
We knew that he came from the capital of the Empire, which explained his precarious grasp of Italian; but we could never have imagined that the cerretani might hunt him down so relentlessly as to make him return there.
"Still, I imagine that, after this Jubilee, you will not lack the means to settle down comfortably in your own land," observed Atto.
Ugonio was unable to suppress a self-satisfied grin.
"To be more medicinal than mendacious, the Jubiliary incomings have been satisfecund and abundiform. I shall low-lie in a quiet, refugious residence and trial not to wasten my economies."
Abbot Melani, despite being a champion cynic, seemed almost sorry to see him go: "Could you not find a temporary refuge in the Kingdom of Naples, a few hours distant from here, and return when the waters have grown calmer?"
"The cerretanici are rootless, murtherous and foxily cunningful," replied the corpisantaro, preparing to leave as he had probably come, through the window. "Most fortunitiously, they have baggered what they most ravened after."
Before making his exit, he pointed at the treatise which Atto at last held in his hands.
As the corpisantaro slipped out of sight (would I ever see him again?) I realised that the cover had in fact been torn off. Then I remembered that when Ugonio was trying to get away from his pursuers, the book had already been seriously damaged.
The cerretani had succeeded: the code of the secret language remained in their hands.
Day the Tenth
16th JULY, 1700
On the next day, Abbot Melani had Buvat summon me. I had allowed myself a few hours' sleep during which I had mostly relived the experience at Albano and, going back further, the arrival of the Connestabilessa, Atto Melani's incoherent emotions, and the tale of the sad old age of the Most Christian King who had never forgotten his Maria. On awakening, I had thought especially of the Tetrachion. And I had thought about it for some time.
Atto's secretary brought me a magnificent suit of clothes complete with patent leather shoes. At the end of his stay at Villa Spada, the Abbot was at last putting into practice his original intention to see me well dressed; and I knew why, or better, for whom.
I washed, dressed and combed my hair as well as possible, tying it with the fine blue bow that I had received with the suit.
As I was leaving, Cloridia caught sight of me: "My goodness, what extravagance! That Abbot of yours is really generous. Let us hope he at last pays out that blessed dowry for the girls."
"We are to go to the notary this afternoon," I informed her.
"At long last. I feel that you've more than earned it."
When I rejoined Atto, from his face one would never have thought that he had lived through the shattering events of the night before. He had recovered that state of nervous artificial calm in which 1 had left him in the afternoon. There was only one difference: he was, to my surprise, at last wearing that mauve- grey soutane with the hood and Abbot's periwig in which I had met him seventeen years before and which he had worn when he came to find me at the Villa Spada. Clothes which, although clean and well ironed, were somewhat outmoded and evoked bygone days.
This was, I thought, right. Was he not perhaps about to embark on a meeting with the past? I felt a surge of gratitude. He had at last decided to go to meet the Connestabilessa wearing the sober clothing which he had also worn when he presented himself to me.
The sole note of vanity was a French-seeming perfume which filled the whole room with a somewhat over-emphatic fragrance.
Atto was seated at his writing desk. He was placing a wax seal on the red ribbon enclosing a letter rolled into a tube. His old hand was trembling and seemed unable to get the better of the curved surface of the paper.
The day was already hot and rather stuffy. Through the window one could hear the chanting of a procession: that of the Arch-Confraternities, wending its way through the nearby streets of Trastevere to the church of the Madonna del Carmine.
Melani caught sight of me and sighed, already exhausted before he had even ventured forth, as always happens when one feels unequal to the task which awaits one or to others' expectations about oneself. He did not even greet me.
"This morning I announced that I would be visiting. We must be there in half an hour," said he laconically.
"Where?"
"At the nuns' convent on Campo Marzio."
"Why did she not stay at the villa?"
"From what I could gather, she thought it inopportune. The celebrations are over and Cardinal Spada has very different matters to worry about."
A carriage awaited us at the entrance. Once we had left, Atto's gaze was soon lost in contemplation of Villa Spada as it receded into the distance.
I guessed, or at least I thought I could understand intuitively, what must have been going through his mind at that moment: the feasting was over, by now the cerretani belonged to the past, he was returning to reality. After seeing the Connestabilessa, he would resume his personal battle, the desire to impose his own stamp on human affairs at the forthcoming conclave. At the same time, he must have been painfully aware of the inexorable passing of time, feeling how hard the springs of the carriage were on his loins, far, far harder than when, as a young castrato decades before, armed only with his own talent and the protection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he had looked out over the same city from another carriage, with grasping eyes and an ardent heart, as he came to play his part in the great banquet of music, politics, intrigue and, perhaps, one day, glory.
Within a few months, with the new conclave, he would know whether a lifetime was sufficient to achieve those ambitions. In a few minutes, however, he would know whether a lifetime had been able to cancel out a great love.
When the horses passed in front of the Vessel, Atto leaned out instinctively, looking upwards. I knew what he was thinking of: the Tetrachion.
It was time to talk.
"Why, when Capitor said 'two in one', did she also point to Neptune's sceptre, in other words, the trident?" I asked without warning.
The Abbot turned towards me, surprised.
"What are you getting at?" he asked me, frowning.
"Perhaps she meant that those two figures were united with the sceptre, truly 'two in one'."
"But what sense would that ma
ke?" asked Atto, betraying his impatience at not, for once, thinking as fast as I. He could not know that I had turned that thought over a thousand times in my bed a few hours before.
"Do you recall what the chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy said to Cloridia? That the Tetrachion was the heir to the Spanish throne. And, as you yourself told me, what was the meaning of that trident in Neptune's hand? The crown of Spain, mistress of the ocean and of two continents. There, perhaps that is what Capitor meant."
"I still don't grasp your meaning."
"In other words," I resumed, while my thoughts galloped ahead and words found it hard to keep up, "in my opinion, the madwoman meant that twins like those of the Tetrachion were the legitimate heirs to the Spanish throne, and she issued a warning to Mazarin."
"To Mazarin?" exclaimed Melani, incredulous and impatient. "But what's come over you, my boy? Are you losing your senses?"
I continued without paying any attention to this.
"Capitor also said that punishment would be meted out to the sons of whoever deprives the crown of Spain of its sons. Perhaps. .." Here I hesitated. "Perhaps those sons are the Tetrachion and, as we might have seen them at the Vessel, perhaps Cardinal Mazarin may have had them abducted from Spain. .."
The Abbot burst out laughing.
"His Eminence ordering the abduction of that sort of octopus we thought we saw up there in the penthouse above the Vessel. . . Why, that's not such a bad idea, good for a picaresque novel. Are you quite insane? And why, for heaven's sake, should he have done that? To boil it and serve it up with carrots and olives? Perhaps with a sprinkling of fresh oregano, since Mazarin was Sicilian. .."
"He did it because the Tetrachion is the heir to the Spanish throne."
"Might you be suffering from sunstroke, by any chance? Or could last night's trip to Albano have caused you to part with your senses?" the Abbot insisted; but he had grown serious.
"Signor Atto, don't think that I have not reflected long and hard on the matter.You yourself said to me that, before Capitor's prophecies, Mazarin seemed to have very different plans for making Philip IV sign a peace favourable to French interests, and those plans were not matrimonial. But can you explain to me why? You also said that Mazarin had no intention of marrying the Most Christian King with the Infanta; indeed he was blissfully allowing the relationship between His Majesty and Maria to continue and develop undisturbed."
Now Atto was listening without moving a muscle.
"Perhaps Mazarin had a trump card in his hand, a horrible secret, born of the rotten blood of the Spanish Habsburgs: the
Tetrachion. All Philip IV's legitimate heirs died but those twins survived against all expectations."
"Do you mean that, before Charles II was born, Philip IV may also have sired twins like the Tetrachion?" he asked in a toneless voice.
"Perhaps this was one of the less serious cases, as Cloridia mentioned: those joined only by a leg," I continued. "They could not be separated when small, but if they reached adulthood, then the thing could be done. There was an heir, indeed, there were heirs to the Spanish throne. Mazarin had them abducted to use them as assets to be horse-traded in the peace negotiations. Then along came Capitor with her prophecy of the virgin and the crown, the Cardinal became scared and wanted at all costs to separate his niece from the young King. As for the Tetrachion, he did not know what to do with it, so he sent it to Elpidio Benedetti, who..."
"Halt. There's a serious logical flaw in all this," said the Abbot, stopping me with his hand. "If, as you assert, Capitor meant to warn Mazarin that he would be punished for having removed the Tetrachion from Spain, the Cardinal should have been beside himself with fear and therefore have returned the twins to Philip IV as quickly as possible. Instead, he sends them straight to Benedetti in Rome. Now, why?"
"Because he did not understand?"
"What do you mean?"
"You told me yourself. Mazarin was quite flattered by the gift of the charger with Neptune and Amphitrite. In the two deities who rule over the seas, he saw himself and Queen Anne, and in the trident sceptre of Neptune, the crown of France, held tightly in his hand; or perhaps that of Spain, mistress of the ocean and the two continents, exhausted by wars and by now in Mazarin's hands. This last possibility had sent him literally into raptures. Also, as you told me, the Cardinal had understood the mad seer's warning to whoever deprived the crown of Spain of its sons as being directed against Philip IV In other words, he did not realise that Capitor's words concealed a threat aimed at him."
"My compliments for the fantasy, even if it is somewhat convoluted," said Abbot Melani scornfully.
"If Mazarin had not had those twins abducted," I continued, quite unshaken, "France today would not have any claim to the Spanish throne. With one deformed leg each, they would certainly have been crippled, but, unlike Charles II, they might have been able to procreate. Is there not in Spain the legend of King Gerion, who had three heads? And what are we to say of the two-headed eagle on the arms of the Habsburgs? Cloridia herself said this might be a memento of some defective birth which took place who knows when among the ancestors of Charles II. In other words, it does not seem that the Tetrachion is the first such case among the kings of Spain."
"And obviously, according to your theory, Elpidio Benedetti would have sheltered those two unfortunate children somewhere, then here in the Vessel, once the building had been completed," the Abbot concluded rapidly.
"It is not by chance that Mazarin then entrusted the three gifts to him as well as the picture depicting them," said I gravely-
"So, in that villa, as well as the apparitions of Maria, the King and Fouquet, and the picture with Capitor's three gifts, not to mention your parrot - what's he called? Caesar Augustus - we may also have seen the Tetrachion. Well, it all goes to make a fine stew, that Vessel, and there's no gainsaying that! It should have been called the Stewpot, ha!" he sniggered.
Atto went on laughing a long while. I looked at him without taking it badly. I knew that what I was saying was not at all as absurd as it seemed, and I was proud that for once it was I who was master, and he the disciple.
"You are forgetting one thing, however," the Abbot made clear after a while. "The Tetrachion that we saw up there was only the deformed reflection of ourselves."
"That's only what we've seen today. Besides, if we trust to those mirrors, we too must be monsters," I exclaimed with complete confidence.
My observation alarmed the Abbot: "Do you mean that the time before we might have seen those twins' reflections distorted by the mirrors?"
"Are you so sure you can exclude that?" I asked ironically. "We saw yesterday with our own eyes that those mirrors reflect one another. They may perhaps have sent us the reflection of the twins standing somewhere else in the penthouse, perhaps even confounding them with our own images. We were terrified by the distorted vision and fled for our lives without even looking around us."
Abbot Melani was drumming impatiently on the pommel of his walking stick.
"Why are you so unwilling to admit it, Signor Atto? There's nothing magical or inexplicable here. There's nothing to it but the physics of those mirrors and medical obstetrics which, for over a century, have described cases of twins born conjoined like the Tetrachion. And those twins we saw together had - just note the coincidence - the famous Habsburg jaw."
"And where are they supposed to have got to afterwards? We found no further trace of them at the Vessel."
"Once we'd found those distorting mirrors, we made no further attempt to find them. And that was a mistake. It was you who taught me seventeen years ago, with a wealth of examples: if one detail proves baseless, that does not mean the whole hypothesis is to be thrown out. Or, a document may be false, but tell the truth. In other words, as they say, we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Now, however, we have fallen for all these errors."
"Then, listen here," retorted the Abbot, cut to the quick: "Yesterday I mentioned this to you. To be
quite precise, Capitor said, 'He who deprives the crown of Spain of its sons, the crown of Spain will deprive of his sons'. This, if you want to know, does not, I believe, make any sense. Mazarin had no children, but his nephews and nieces had so many that the name of Mazarin is unlikely to die out at any foreseeable time. Do you know what I think? That all this is far too complicated to be true. I'm glad that I taught you never to trust appearances and to make use of suppositions, without censoring any, wherever evidence is lacking. But I beg you to calm down, my boy, to everything there's a limit. That madwoman was raving and she's making us lose our wits too."
"But think carefully about it..."
"Now, that will be enough of your nonsense, I'm tired."
Atto was looking out of the window at the heights of the Janic- ulum as we sped away: the villas, the verdant gardens, the gentle treetops; and then, at the city below, many-towered and abounding with the symbols of Christianity and the eternal power of the Church; and finally at the cupola of Saint Peter's.
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