The cardinals rebelled against this indecorous situation, succeeding for a while in having the woman removed, but after that she managed to regain the saddle and to accompany the Pope even to the tomb; and that, after her own fashion: she concealed the Pontiff's death from the people for a good two days, so that she would have time to remove everything of value from the papal apartments. Meanwhile, the poor lifeless body was left alone in a room, a prey to the rats, while no one came forward to see to the burial. The funeral eventually took place amidst the indifference of the cardinals and the mockery and jibes of the common people.
Now, Donna Olimpia loved to play at cards, and it is said that one evening, in a gay assembly of ladies and cavaliers at her table, she found herself in the company of a young cleric who, when all other competitors had withdrawn from the game, accepted Donna Olimpia's challenge to play against her. And it is also said that there gathered around them a great crowd of people, to watch so unusual a contest. And for more than an hour, the two confronted one another, with no thought for time or money, occasioning great gaiety among those present; and, at the end of the evening, Donna Olimpia returned home with a sum of money of which the exact total has never been known, but which was by all accounts enormous. Likewise, rumour had it that the unknown young man, who in truth almost always held better cards than his adversary, was gracious enough so to arrange matters as to reveal those cards distractedly to a servant of Donna Olimpia, so that he lost all the decisive hands, without however (as chivalry requires) allowing anyone to see that, not even the winner; thus confronting his grave defeat with magnificent indifference. Anyway, soon after that, Pope Pamphili made a cardinal of that cleric, who went by the name of Benedetto Odescalchi, and attained the purple in the flower of youth, at the age of thirty-four years.
I had in the meanwhile completed my massage with the ointment.
"But remember," Robleda warned me hastily in a voice that had returned to normal, while he cleaned the poultice off his chest, "this is all gossip. There exist no material proofs of that episode."
Hardly had I left Padre Robleda's chamber than I experienced a sense of unease, which not even I could explain to myself, as I thought back over my conversation with that flabby, purple-faced priest. No supernatural talent was needed to understand that the Jesuit regarded Our Lord Pope Innocent XI, not as an upright, honest and saintly pontiff, but no less than a friend and accomplice of the Jansenists; all for the purpose of thwarting the designs of the King of France, with whom he had clashed. Furthermore, he saw him as consumed by unhealthy material appetites, avidity and avarice; and even as having corrupted Donna Olimpia to obtain his Cardinal's hat. But, I reasoned, if such a portrait were truthful, how could Our Lord Pope Innocent XI be the same person who had restored austerity, decorum and frugality to the heart of Holy Mother Church? How could he be the same person who for decades had extended charity to the poor, wherever he found them? How could he be the same man who had enjoined the princes of Europe to unite their forces against the Turks? It was a fact that previous pontiffs had showered their nephews and families with presents, while he had broken off that unseemly tradition; it was a fact that he had restored a healthy balance to the Apostolic Chamber; and finally, it was a fact that Vienna itself was resisting the advance of the Ottoman tide thanks to the efforts of Pope Innocent.
No, what that gossiping poltroon of a Jesuit had told me was simply not possible. Had I not, moreover, immediately suspected his manner of saying and not saying, and that capricious doctrine of the Jesuits which legitimised sin? And I too was guilty of having allowed myself to listen to him, even at a certain point encouraging him to continue, led astray by Robleda's casual and misleading mention of the poisoning of Signor di Mourai. This was all, I thought remorsefully, the fault of Atto Melani's attitude to investigation and the craft of spying, and of my desire to emulate him: a perverse passion which had made me fall into the snares of the Evil One and had disposed my ears to hearken to his whispers of calumny.
I returned to the kitchen where I found on the sideboard an anonymous note, clearly addressed to me:
three knocks on the door be ready
Night the Third
Between the 13th & 14th September, 1683
*
A little over an hour later, after Cristofano had taken a last look at my master, Abbot Melani knocked three times at my door. I was intent upon my little diary: I hid it carefully under the mattress before admitting him.
"A drop of oil," said the abbot enigmatically, immediately after entering.
I suddenly remembered how, when we last met, he had noticed a drop of oil on my forehead, which he had taken on a fingertip and brought to his tongue.
"Tell me, what oil do you use for the lamps?"
"The College of Cardinals has commanded that oil mixed with wine lees is always to be..."
"I did not ask you what you are supposed to use but what you do use, when your master," and he pointed to him, "is resting in his bed."
Embarrassed, I confessed to him that I also used good oil, because we had it in abundance, while the impure oil mixed with dregs was in short supply.
Abbot Melani could not hide a sly grin. "Now don't lie: how many lanterns have you?"
"To begin with, we had three, but we broke one when we were climbing down into the gallery. There are two left, but one needs a little mending."
"Good, take the better one and follow me. And take that too."
He pointed at a rod, leaning vertically in a corner of the chamber, with which in his rare free moments Signor Pellegrino was wont to go fishing on the banks of the Tiber, just behind the little church of Santa Maria in Posterula.
A few instants later, we were already in the closet, and had entered the well that gave access to the stairs leading down to the underground galleries. We lowered ourselves with the help of the iron rungs set into the wall until we felt the brick platform under our feet, and then we took the square stairwell. At the point where the stairway was excavated directly from the tufa, we encountered again the coating of slime on the steps, while the air became heavy.
At last, we reached the gallery, deep and dark as the night in which I had discovered it.
As I followed him, Abbot Melani must have felt my curiosity as though I were breathing down his neck.
"Now at last you will know what that strange Abbot Melani has in his head."
He stopped.
"Give me the rod."
He laid half the cane across his knee and with a sharp movement snapped it in two. I was about to protest, but Atto stopped me.
"Do not worry. If you ever have to report this to your master, he will understand that this was a matter of emergency. Now, do as I tell you."
He made me walk in front of him, holding the broken cane vertically behind me and dragging the end of it along the vault of the gallery, like a pen sliding on paper. Thus we advanced for a few dozen cane's lengths. Meanwhile the abbot asked me some bizarre questions.
"Does oil mixed with wine dregs have a special taste?"
"I would not know how to describe it," I replied, although in reality I knew the taste perfectly well, having more than once furtively sprinkled some onto a slice of bread purloined from the pantry, when Signor Pellegrino was sleeping and the meal had been too frugal.
"Would you call it rancid, bitter and acid?"
"Perhaps... Yes, I'd say so," I admitted.
"Good," replied the abbot.
We advanced a few paces further, and suddenly the abbot ordered me to stop.
"We are there!"
I looked at him in some perplexity.
"Have you still not understood?" he said to me, his grin queerly deformed by the lamplight. "Then let us see if this will help you."
He took the cane from my hands and pressed it hard against the vault of the gallery. I heard something like the groaning of hinges, then a tremendous reverberation, and finally, the skittering of a little shower of di
rt and stones.
Then terror struck: a huge black serpent lunged at me and almost seized me, after which it remained grotesquely suspended from the ceiling like a hanged man.
I withdrew instinctively with a shiver, while the abbot burst out laughing.
"Come here and bring the lantern closer," he said triumphantly.
In the vault, a hole appeared, almost as wide as the entire cavity; and from it hung a thick rope. This was what, tumbling down when the trap opened, had brushed against me and terrified me.
"You let yourself be frightened by nothing, and for that you deserve a little punishment. You will go up first. Then you will have to help me up after you."
Fortunately I succeeded in climbing up without too much difficulty. Clinging to the rope, I swarmed up it until I reached the upper cavity. 1 helped Abbot Melani to join me there and he marshalled all his strength, twice coming close to dropping our one and only lantern.
We found ourselves in the middle of another gallery, aligned obliquely to the first one.
"Now, it is up to you to decide: right or left?"
I protested (weakly, fearful as I was): was this not perhaps the moment for Abbot Melani to explain to me how he had worked all this out?
"You are right, but then I shall choose: let us proceed to the left."
As I myself had explained to the abbot, oil mixed with dregs generally has a far less agreeable taste than that which is used for frying or for good cooking. The drop which he had found on my forehead the day after the first exploration of the gallery (and which, miraculously, had not come into contact with the blankets when I lay down) could not, according to its taste, come from the lanterns of the inn, which I myself had filled with good oil. Nor did it come from Cristofano's medicinal ointments, which were all different in colour. Therefore, it came from an unknown lantern which—who knows how—must have been situated above my head. From this, the abbot had concluded with his usual alacrity that there must be an opening in the vault of the gallery: an opening which also provided the thief's only possible way out, when he had so inexplicably vanished into nothingness.
"The oil that fell on your forehead must have dripped from the thief's lantern through a crack next to the hinges of the trapdoor."
"And the cane?" I asked.
"I was sure that the trapdoor, if it existed, must be very well hidden. But a cane like that of your master's fishing rod is very sensitive to vibrations, and we were sure to feel a shock when it moved from the stone of the gallery to the wood of the trapdoor. Which is what indeed happened."
I was secretly grateful to the abbot for having in some way attributed to both of us the credit for having discovered the trapdoor.
"The mechanism is somewhat rudimentary," he continued, "but it works. The rope, which so affrighted you when it came down from the ceiling, is simply stowed on the top of the trapdoor and closed together with it. When the trap is opened from the gallery below, pushing upwards, the rope falls down. It is important to put it back in the same way when one returns if one wants it to be available again."
"Then you think that the thief always moves back and forth along this gallery."
"I do not know; I suppose so. And I suppose too, if you wish to know, that this gallery leads somewhere else."
"Did you also suppose that solely with the aid of the cane we should find the trapdoor?"
"Nature makes merit, but fortune sets it to work," pronounced the abbot.
And by the faint light of the lantern the exploration began.
In that gallery, too, as in the one we had left beneath us, a person of normal stature was obliged to stoop slightly because the vault was so low. And, as we at once observed, the material of which it was built, a pattern of diamond-shaped bricks, seemed identical to that of the previous gallery. The first stretch went in a long straight line which seemed gradually to slope downhill. "If our thief has followed this track, he must be strong and fit," observed Abbot Melani. "Not everyone could climb that rope and the terrain is rather slippery."
Suddenly we both suffered the most atrocious fright.
A stranger's footfalls, light but utterly clear, were approaching from a point which could not be identified. Atto stopped me, squeezing my shoulder hard, to signal the need for extreme caution. It was then that a reverberation caused us to tremble, similar to that when we had opened the trapdoor through which we passed not long before.
Hardly had we recovered our breath than we looked at one another, our eyes still wide with anxiety.
"Do you think it came from above or below?" muttered Abbot Melani.
"More above than below."
"I'd say so, too. So it cannot be the same trapdoor—it must be another one."
"And how many do you think there are?"
"Who knows? We were mistaken not to explore this ceiling too with the cane. Perhaps we might have found another opening. Someone must have heard us coming and have hurried to bar the passage between ourselves and him. The reverberation was too loud, I could not say whether it came from behind our shoulders or from the stretch which we have still to cover."
"Could it be the thief of the keys?"
"You keep asking me questions which cannot be answered. Perhaps he had the idea of taking a stroll this evening, perhaps not. Did you by any chance keep an eye on the entrance to the closet this evening?"
I admitted that I had not given much thought to that.
"Bravo," commented the abbot with a sneer. "So we have come down here without knowing whether we are following in someone's footsteps or he in ours, and, what is more... Look!"
We were at the top of a staircase. Lowering the lantern to our feet, we saw that the steps were in stone and skilfully carved. After an instant's reflection, the abbot sighed: "I have no idea what may await us down below. The steps are steep: if there is someone there, he knows that we are coming. Is that not true?" he concluded, calling down the stairs and creating a horrible echo which made me jump. Then, armed only with the feeble lamp, we began our descent.
When the steps came to an end, we found ourselves at last walking along a pavement. Judging by the echo of our footsteps, we appeared to be in a great hollow, perhaps a cavern. Abbot Melani thrust the lantern upwards. Great brick arches appeared in profile, cut into a wall so high that we could not distinguish its top, and through the arches led a passage towards which we had all the while been moving unawares.
Scarcely had we halted than all fell silent again. For a moment, the lantern flame weakened, until it almost went out. It was then that I noticed a furtive rustling to our left.
"Did you hear?" murmured the abbot, alarmed.
We again heard rustling, this time a little further off. Atto gestured to me not to move: and instead of following the passage that lay before us, he ran on tiptoe under the arch to our right, beyond which the light from the lantern no longer reached him. I stood waiting, with the lantern in my hand, petrified. Again there was silence.
A new rustling, this time nearer, came from behind my shoulders. I turned around sharply. A shadow slipped to my left. I rushed towards Abbot Melani, more to protect myself than to put him on guard.
"No-o-o," he whispered as soon as I could see him by the light of the lamp: he had silently shifted a few paces to the left and was squatting on the ground. Again, a grey silhouette emerged from who knows where and passed swiftly between us, trying to move away from the arches.
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