Imprimatur

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  "Then the dream presages misadventures."

  "Not necessarily: because in reality your master is only sick, and in a bad way, but not dead. And illness means simply idleness and little employment. Perhaps, since Pellegrino has not been well, you are afraid that you have been neglecting your duties. But do not be afraid of me," said Cloridia, lazily extracting another ring-cake from a basket. "I shall certainly be the last person to tell Pellegrino if you are a little disinclined to work. Tell me, rather, what are they say­ing downstairs? Apart from the unfortunate Bedfordi, it seems to me that the others are all still in good health, is that not so?" and, with a vague gesture, she added, "Pompeo Dulcibeni, for instance? I ask you, seeing that he is one of the oldest..."

  Again Cloridia was asking me about Dulcibeni. I hung back, feel­ing dejected. She understood at once: "And don't be afraid of coming close to me," said she, drawing me to her and ruffling my hair. "I, for the time being, do not have the plague."

  I then recalled my duties concerning health and mentioned that Cristofano had already delivered me the preventive remedies to be administered to all those in good health. Blushing, I added that I was to begin with the violet unguent of Master Giacomo Bortolotto from Parma, which I was supposed to spread on her back and her hips.

  She fell silent. I smiled weakly: "If you prefer, I also have here the fumigants of Orsolin Pignuolo from Pontremoli. We could begin with those, seeing that you have a fireplace in your chamber."

  "Very well," she answered. "So long as it does not take too much time."

  She sat down at her dressing table. I saw her uncover her shoul­ders and gather her locks up into a white muslin bonnet tied with crossed ribbons. Meanwhile, I attended to making a fire and gather­ing the burning coals from the fireplace in a pot, trembling briefly when I thought of the nudity which those coals must have seen dur­ing those still warm mid-September nights.

  I turned again towards her. On her head she had placed a piece of linen, folded double: she resembled a holy apparition.

  "Carob, myrrh, incense, liquid amber, benzoin, gum ammoniac, antimony, made into a paste with the finest rose water," I recited, having studied Cristofano's notes well, while placing the bowl of coals lightly on the little table and breaking a bag into it. "I must insist, breathe in with wide open mouth."

  And I pulled down the fine linen cloth until it covered her face. The room filled swiftly with a pungent odour.

  "The Turks make far better health-bringing fumigants than these," she muttered after a while from under the cloth.

  "But we are not Turks yet," I replied clumsily.

  "And would you believe it if I told you that I am one?" I heard her ask.

  "No, of course not, Donna Cloridia."

  "And why ever not?

  "Because you were bom in Holland, in..."

  "In Amsterdam, correct. And how come that you knew?"

  I was at a loss for a reply, since I had learned that detail only a few days earlier, when I stopped at Cloridia's door before knocking to deliver a basket of fruit and overheard a conversation between her and an unknown visitor.

  One of my girls will have told you, I suppose. Yes, I was born in a land of heretics almost nineteen years ago, but Calvin and Luther have never counted me among their own. I never knew my mother, while my father was an Italian merchant, who travelled a great deal."

  "Oh, how fortunate you are!" I sighed from the depths of my mere foundling's estate.

  She said nothing, and from the movement of her bust I guessed that she was inhaling deeply. She coughed.

  "If one day you should ever have to do with Italian merchants, just remember: they leave only debts to others and keep the profits for themselves."

  Cloridia explained that in Amsterdam she herself had known intimately the fame of the Tensini, the Verrazzanos, the Balbi, the Quingetti, and then the Burlamacchi and the Calandrini, who were also present in Antwerp: Genoese, Tuscans, Venetians, all merchants, insurers, shipowners, bankers and bill brokers, a few agents of Ital­ian principalities and republics, and for freedom from scruples there were none who could outdo them.

  "What does 'bill broker' mean?" I asked, leaning with my elbows on the little table, the better to hear and be heard.

  "It is one who acts as go-between between a lender of money and someone who borrows it."

  I brought my face close to hers: after all, she could not see me. And that made me feel very sure of myself.

  "Is that a good profession?"

  "If you wish to know whether those who exercise it are good peo­ple, well, that depends. If the question is whether this is work that makes one rich, why, that is for certain. Indeed, it makes those who practise it exceedingly wealthy. The Bartolotti, whose house on the Heerengracht is the finest in the whole city, started out as simple brewers and are now the most powerful people in Amsterdam, share­holders and financiers of the East India Company."

  Then Cloridia gasped: "May I get up?"

  "No, Monna Cloridia, not while there is still smoke!" I stopped her, although I myself felt the exhalations going to my head. I did not want to bring our conversation to so early a conclusion. Almost without realising it, I had begun to stroke a corner of the piece of linen which covered her head: she could not be aware of that.

  "Are the shipowners and insurers as wealthy?" I asked.

  She sighed. At this point, my ingenuous questions, together with my limited knowledge of the world (and of circumstances which I could not at present be blamed for not knowing) all had the effect of loosing Cloridia's tongue. Suddenly, she inveighed against merchants and their money, but above all against bankers, whose wealth was at the root of all manner of iniquity (only, here in truth, Cloridia used far harsher language and spoke with very different accents), especially when money was lent by usurers and brokers, and most of all, when those to whom it was destined were kings and popes.

  Cloridia had risen from the hot coals and torn off the covering from her head, causing me to step sharply back, red with shame. She then cast off her bonnet and her long curly mane fanned out across her shoulders.

  She appeared to me then for the first time in a new and indescrib­able light, capable of cancelling out all that I had hitherto seen of her—and above all, what I had not yet seen, but which seemed to me even more indelible—and I saw with my pupils and even more with my soul all that lovely lucent brown velvet complexion which contrasted with her luxuriant Venetian blond curls. Little did I then care that I knew them to be the creation of white wine lees and ol­ive oil, if they framed those long black eyes and the serrated pearls of her mouth, that rounded yet proud little nose, those lips smiling with a touch of rouge just sufficient to remove their vague pallor, and that small but fine and harmonious face and the fine snow of her bosom, intact and kissed by two suns, on shoulders worthy of a bust by Bernini or so at least it seemed to me et satis erat, and her voice which, although distorted and almost booming with rage, or perhaps precisely because of that, filled me with lascivious little desires and little languid sighs, with rustic frenzies, with flower-strewn dreams, with a lusciously odorous vegetable delirium, until it seemed that I could become almost invisible to others' eyes, through the mist of desire that enveloped me and made Cloridia appear to me more sublime than a Raphael Madonna, more inspired than a motto of Teresa of Avila, more marvellous than a verse of the cavaliere Ma­rino, more melodious than a madrigal of Monteverdi, more lascivious than a couplet by Ovid and more edifying than an entire tome of Fracastoro. And I said to myself that, no, the poetics of an Imperia, of a Veronica, of a Madremianonvuole would never have such power (although my soul was weighed down with knowing that a few paces from the locanda, in the Stufa delle Donne, there lay in wait low females, ready and willing for anything, even for me, so long as I had but two scudi) and while I listened to her, in a lightning flash as rapid as Cardinal Chigi's horses, I was transfixed by the mystery of how I, who time and time again had brought to her door the tub, with pails of boiling hot wa
ter, for her bath, could possibly have remained indifferent to her presence behind those few wooden planks, with her servant-girl gently rubbing the nape of her neck with talcum and lavender water, so much did she now fire my mind and my senses and my whole spirit.

  And thus absorbed I lost sight (and only later was 1 to realise this) of how bizarre was all that inveighing against merchants by a mer­chant's daughter, and above all how unexpected those protestations of horror for lucre in the mouth of a courtesan.

  And in addition to being blind to such strange behaviour, I was almost deaf, too, to the rhythmic drumming of Cristofano's knuckles on Cloridia's door. She, however, responded promptly to his courte­ous request to enter and invited the physician in. He had sought me everywhere. He needed my help in preparing a decoction: Brenozzi was complaining of a great pain in the jaw and had requested a rem­edy. Thus was I unwillingly snatched away from my first colloquy with the only feminine guest of the Donzello.

  We at once took leave of one another. With the eyes of hope I strove to discover in her countenance some trace of sadness at our separation, and that despite my descrying—as I was closing the door—the most horrible scar on her wrist, which disfigured her al­most as far as the back of her hand.

  Cristofano brought me down to the kitchen, where he instructed me to find a number of seeds, herbs and a new candle. He then made me heat a cooking pot with a little water while he reduced the in­gredients to powder and sieved them, and when the water was hot enough, we put in the fine mixture which immediately gave off a most agreeable aroma. While I was preparing the fire for the decoction,

  I asked him whether it was true, as I had heard say, that I could use white wine also for cleaning and whitening my teeth.

  "Of course, and you would attain a good, indeed, a perfect result, if you only were to use it as a mouth-wash. If, however, you should mix it with white clay, you would see a very fine effect which will greatly please the young ladies. You must rub it into the teeth and gums, ideally with a piece of scarlet such as that over Cloridia's bed, on which you were sitting."

  I feigned not to have noticed the double allusion and hastened to change the subject, asking Cristofano if he had ever heard tell of his Tuscan compatriots, such as the Calandrini, the Burlamacchi, the Tensini, and others (although in reality there were a couple of names which I could not recall without distorting them). And, while he or­dered me to put the mixture of herbs and wax into the cooking pot, Cristofano replied that, yes, some of those names were quite well known in Tuscany. They were, however, all so bound up with trade with Holland, where they had bought lands, villas and palaces, that in Tuscany they were known as the infiamengati—the new Flemings. Some had made their fortune, had married into and had become kinsmen of noble families of that country; others were crushed under the weight of their debts and of them no more news had been heard. Others had died in ships that had sunk among the Arctic ice floes of Archangel or in the waters of Malabar. Others had eventually grown rich, and at an advanced age had preferred to return to their own land, where they were accorded well-merited honours: like Francesco Feroni, a poor dyer from Empoli, who had begun by trading with Guinea old sheets, bright buntings from Delft, cotton canvas, Venetian beads, quantities of spir­its, Spanish wines and strong beer. With his trade, he had grown so rich that in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany he was famous even before his return home, also for having served as an excellent ambassador of the Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici, in the United Provinces. When at length he did decide to return to Tuscany, the Grand Duke himself had him appointed his Depositary-General, thus arousing the envy of all Florence. Feroni had brought back conspicuous wealth to Tuscany, and had purchased a splendid villa in the country of Bellavista, and despite all the evil that the Florentines could say of him, he could count himself fortunate to have returned to his home country and have escaped all dangers.

  "Such as going down with one's ship?"

  "Not only that, my boy! Certain trades involve enormous risks."

  I should have liked to ask him what he meant, but the decoction was ready and Cristofano told me to bring it to Brenozzi in his little chamber on the second floor. Following the doctor's instructions, I recommended the Venetian to inhale the steam while it was still hot, with his mouth wide open: after such a treatment, his jaw would hurt far less or not at all. Afterwards, Brenozzi was to leave the cooking pot outside his door for collection. Thanks to his toothache, I was spared his garrulousness. Thus I could return at once to the kitchen to resume my conversation with the physician before he regained his apartment. It was, however, Abbot Melani whom I found there.

  I struggled to hide my consternation. The brief time I had spent with Cloridia, concluding with the disquieting vision of her martyred wrist, together with her singular diatribe against merchants, made me feel a desperate need to interrogate Cristofano further. The doc­tor, however, following his own prescription, had prudently regained his chamber without waiting for me. And now Atto Melani, whom I found rummaging carelessly in the pantry, had come to oppress my thoughts yet further. I pointed out to him that his disobedience of the physician's instructions endangered all of us and it would be my duty to advise Cristofano; it was, moreover, not yet time for sup­per and I would in any case soon be busy preparing the wherewithal to satisfy the appetite of our honourable guests, if only (and here I cast a meaningful eye on the slice of bread which Melani held in his hand)... if only I could dispose freely of the larder.

  Abbot Melani tried to conceal his own embarrassment, and re­plied that he had been looking for me to tell me certain things which were on his mind, but I cut him off and told him that I was tired of having to listen to him when we were all obviously in dire danger, nor did I yet know what he really wanted or was looking for, and I did not wish to be party to goings-on of which I did not understand the purpose and that the time had now come for him to explain himself and to dispel all possible doubts, for I had heard gossip concerning him which did not do him honour, and before placing myself at his service, I demanded adequate explanations.

  The meeting with Cloridia must have endowed me with new and fresh talents, for my audacious discourse seemed to catch Abbot Melani utterly unprepared. He said he was surprised that someone in the hostelry should think that he could dare dishonour him without paying the price and demanded, without great conviction, that I reveal the name of that insolent fellow.

  He then swore that he in no way intended to abuse of my services and affected utter astonishment: had I perhaps forgotten that he and I together were seeking to discover the unknown thief of Pellegri­no's keys and of my little pearls? And indeed, before all that, was it not urgently necessary that we should understand if there was any connection between those events and the assassination of Monsieur de Mourai, and how all that related—if indeed there were any rela­tion—to the misadventures which had befallen my master and the young Bedfordi? Did I no longer fear, he reproved me, for the lives of us all?

  Despite the unstoppable flow of his words, it was clear to me that the abbot was becoming muddled.

  Encouraged by the success of my sudden sally, I interrupted him impatiently and, with a corner of my heart still turning towards Cloridia, I demanded that Melani explain to me instantly what had brought him to Rome and what his intentions were.

  While I felt my pulse pounding hard in my temples and mentally wiped the sweat from my brow at the audacity of my claims, I was utterly taken aback by the reaction of Abbot Melani. Instead of re­jecting the arrogant pretensions of a mere apprentice, his expression changed suddenly and with all simplicity and courtesy he invited me to sit down in a corner of the kitchen so that he could satisfy my just demands. Once we had taken our places, the abbot began to describe to me a series of circumstances which, although they seemed fantas­tic, I must, in the light of what later transpired, take to be true or at least to possess the appearance of truth, and these I shall therefore report as faithfully as possible.

  Abbot Melani began b
y saying that in the last days of August, Col­bert had fallen gravely ill, and was soon so close to death that it was feared this might follow within days. As happens on such occasions, in other words when a statesman who is the repository of many se­crets is approaching the end of his life on earth, Colbert's house in the Richelieu quarter suddenly became the object of the most varied visits, some disinterested, others less so. Among the latter was that of Atto himself, who, thanks to the excellent references which he enjoyed from no less than his Most Christian Majesty in person, had been able without great difficulty to gain access to the four walls of the minister's home. There, the great coming and going of persons of the court calling to pay their last tribute to the dying man (or simply to show their faces) had enabled the abbot to slip quietly out of an antechamber and, circumventing the already lax surveillance, to en­ter the private apartments of the master of the house. Here he had in truth twice come close to being discovered by the servants as he hid behind an arras or under a table.