"But she was Queen of France, she could not..."
"I know, I know," said Atto sharply. "I told you that old story only to help you understand what the Habsburgs are like. Even when they marry a foreign king, they remain Habsburgs."
"The blackwater is walloping!"
We had been interrupted by Ugonio, who was showing signs of nervousness. After a relatively calm stretch, the little river had become more impetuous. The corpisantaro was using his oars with more vigour, trying in fact to slow us down. Rowing against the current, he had just decapitated one oar against the hard bed of the watercourse.
An awkward moment then arose: a little further on, the river divided into two branches, one twice as wide as the other. The noise and the speed of the waters were distinctly greater.
"Right or left?" I asked the corpisantaro.
"Decreasing the scrupules so as not to increase one's scruples, and to obtain more benefice than malefice, I ignorify comprehension and navigate fittingly," said Ugonio, while Atto protested.
"Stay on the wider stream, do not branch off," said the abbot. "The other branch may lead nowhere."
Ugonio instead made a few decisive movements with his oar and steered us into the lesser channel, where our speed at once diminished.
"Why did you not obey me?" complained Atto, growing angry.
"The canaletto is conductive, but the grand canalisation is misodorous; while by decreasing the scrupules so as not to increase one's scruples, and by fulfilling one's obligations, the Christian's jubilations are increased."
Rubbing his eyes as though he were suffering from a violent headache, Atto abandoned any attempt to understand Ugonio's mysterious explanation.
Very soon, Abbot Melani's suppressed rage was unleashed. After a few minutes of placid navigation, the vault of the new gallery began to become lower and lower.
"It is a secondary sewer, a curse upon you and your sparrow's brain," said Atto, turning to Ugonio.
"Yet it misodours not, howsoever well the other ramification may flow," replied Ugonio, without in any way losing his composure.
"But what does he mean?" I asked, worried about the roof, which was coming ever nearer to our heads.
"It misodours not, for all that it is overstrait."
We gave up all hope of interpreting Ugonio's verbal hieroglyphics, also because the gallery had in the meantime become so low that we had to crouch uncomfortably at the bottom of the boat. It was now almost impossible for Ugonio to row and Atto himself had to help the boat forward by pushing from the stem with one of the poles. The stink of the black waters, which was already in itself almost unbearable, had now become even more painful because of the posture which we were compelled to adopt and the suffocating space into which we were being forced. With a pang of regret, my thoughts went out to Cloridia, to the intemperance of Master Pellegrino, to sunny days and to my bed.
Suddenly, we heard plashing around us, just next to our craft. Living beings of an unknown nature seemed to be moving excitedly in the waters around us.
"Rats," announced Ugonio. "They fugitate."
"How ghastly," commented Abbot Melani.
The vault was now even lower. Ugonio was forced to draw the oars aboard. Only Atto, in the stern, kept pushing our bark onward with rhythmic shoves from his pole against the bottom of the channel. The waters we were traversing were almost completely stagnant, yet deprived of their accustomed silence: for, all around us, in bizarre counterpoint to the rhythmic beat of Abbot Melani's pole, we were followed by the sinister gurglings of the rats.
"If I did not know that I was alive, I would say that, roughly speaking, we must be on the Styx," said Atto, panting from so much effort. "Always provided that I am not mistaken as to the first point," he added.
We now lay face upwards, pressed one against the other on the bottom of the craft, when we heard the acoustics of the gallery change and become gentler, as though the channel were about to widen. It was then that there appeared before our astonished eyes, on the roof of the gallery, a circle of crepitating fire, into which yellow and reddish tongues of flame seemed to want to draw us.
Disposed in a halo within the circle were three Magi, immobile and fatal. Enveloped in crimson tunics and long conical cowls, they observed us icily. Within the cowls, from pairs of round holes, flashing eyes observed us, evil and all-knowing. One of the three held a skull in his hand.
Overcome by the surprise, all three of us started in unison. The bark deviated slightly from its natural course and went askew, with its prow and poop scraping against the opposite sides of the channel; thus, it became stranded immediately under the circle of fire.
One of the three Magi (or were they perhaps sentinels of the Inferno?) leaned over, observing us with malevolent curiosity. He brandished a torch, which he waved several times, seeking the better to illuminate our countenances; his fellows consulted with one another in hushed tones.
"Perhaps I was indeed mistaken about that first point," I heard Atto stammer.
The second Magus, who held in his hand a great white candle, leaned forward in his turn. It was then that Ugonio exploded in a scream of infantile terror, struggling madly and involuntarily kicking me in the stomach and hitting Abbot Melani hard on the nose. Hitherto frozen by fear, we reacted with unpardonable discomposure, striking out in all directions. In the meanwhile, the bark had freed itself; so that, before we realised what was happening, our terrified trampling got the better of us and I heard one splash, then two, to either side of me.
The world folded in upon itself and all grew suddenly cold and dark while beings leapt forth from diabolical whirlpools and crawled over my face, sprinkling it with disgusting filth. I screamed in turn, but my voice was broken and fell like Icarus.
I shall never know for how long (for seconds? for hours?) that nightmare in the subterranean canal lasted. I only know that it was Ugonio who saved me, when with bestial vigour he pulled me from the waters, dumping me on hard planks so rudely that he almost broke my back.
Overwhelmed by terror, I had lost my memory. I must have dragged myself along the sewer, sometimes tiptoeing along the bottom, which I was just able to do, sometimes floating, and been saved in the end by Ugonio. Now I lay in the bottom of the boat, which had been righted and emptied of water.
My back was quite painful; I was panting from cold and fear, and still in thrall to its diabolical effects. Thus I believed that my eyes were deceiving me when, upon sitting up, I looked around me.
"Both of you may thank Abbot Melani," I heard Atto saying. "If, when I fell into the water, I had let go of the lantern, we should by now be food for the rats."
The faint light continued heroically to light up the way, offering our eyes the most unexpected of sights. Although struggling to penetrate the darkness, I could clearly discern that we were in the middle of a vast subterranean lake. Above our heads, as we were able to tell from the echo, an immense and majestic cavern opened up. All around us there spread black and threatening waters. But our bodies were safe. We had landed on an island.
"To obtain more benefice than malefice, and to be more padre than parricide, I abominate the artefactor of this revolting, merdiloquent and shiteful spectacule. He is a disghastly felonable!"
"You are right. Whoever has done this is a monster," said Atto, for the first time completely in agreement with Ugonio.
It was not difficult to explore the islet upon which destiny (or rather, our carelessness and lack of the fear of God) had so kindly deposited us. The little strip of ground could be covered on foot in a few instants and I would not have said that it was any bigger than the modest little church of Santa Maria in Posterula.
It was, however, the middle of the island which caught the attention of Atto and Ugonio: it was there that several objects of varying sizes were gathered, and which I had difficulty in distinguishing clearly.
I felt my clothing: I was soaking wet and shivering with cold. I shook myself, striving to rev
ive my inner heat, and in my turn disembarked, diffidently testing the cindery soil of the isle with my outstretched foot. I joined Atto and Ugonio who were searching here and there with expressions at once thoughtful and disgusted.
"I must say, my boy, that your talent for fainting is growing ever more refined," said Atto in welcome. "You are pale. I see that our recent encounter has terrified you."
"But who were they? Good heavens, they looked like..."
"No, they were not the guardians of the Inferno. It was only the Societas Orationis et Mortis."
"The pious confraternity who bury abandoned corpses?"
"The very people. Do you not recall how they came to the inn to collect the body of poor Fouquet? Unfortunately, I too had forgotten that when they meet in procession, they wear tunics and cowls and bear torches, skulls and so on. Rather picturesque, really..."
"Ugonio too was terrified," I observed.
"I asked him why and he did not want to answer me. I am under the impression that the Societas Orationis et Mortis is one of the rare things that the corpisantari fear. The Company was proceeding along an underground gallery in which there is an opening above the sewer at exactly the same moment, alas, as we arrived on the scene. They heard us passing and leaned over to look, and panic played an unpleasant trick on us. Do you know what happened after that?"
"I... recall nothing," I admitted.
Atto briefly explained to me what had taken place: he and Ugonio had fallen into the water and the bark had suddenly lost its balance and capsized. I had remained imprisoned underneath the boat, with my body under the water and my head above it, which was why my screams had been stifled, as though under a bell. Terrified by the cataclysm, the rats which infested the waters had jumped onto me, running over my face and fouling me with their excrement.
I touched my face. It was true. I wiped myself with a sleeve, with my stomach turning in disgust.
"We were fortunate," continued Atto, while he guided me around the island, "for, between one scream and another, Ugonio and I managed to free ourselves of those disgusting beasts."
"Rats, not beasties," Ugonio promptly corrected him, while he gazed at a sort of cage which stood at our feet.
"Rats, mice, what you will! In short," Abbot Melani finished explaining to me, "we succeeded in bringing you and the bark out of that accursed sewer and finding our way into this underground lake. Fortunately, the three hooded ones did not attempt to follow us, and here we now are. Courage! You are not the only one to be cold. Just look at me: I too am soaked to the skin and covered in mud. Who could ever have imagined that I should ruin so many magnificent clothes in your wretched hostelry... But, come on now."
He showed me the bizarre workshop which occupied the centre of the isle.
Two large blocks of white stone lay on the ground and served as pedestals for two tables of dark, rotting wood. Upon one, I discovered a great array of instruments, pincers, pointed little knives and long butchers' knives, scissors and various blades without handles; bringing our lantern closer, I noted that they were all caked with congealed blood, of all shades from carmine to black. The table stank horribly of rotting carcasses. Among the knives were a couple of large, half-consumed candles. Abbot Melani lit them.
I moved to the other table, upon which lay other more mysterious objects: a ceramic vase, complete with its lid, decorated all over and with a number of holes in its side, which seemed strangely familiar to me; a little phial of transparent glass, the appearance of which also did not seem new to me; next to it, a voluminous orange-coloured earthenware basin about an arm's length in diameter, in the middle of which stood a strange metal harness. It was a sort of tiny gallows.
Upon a broad tripod stood a vertical stem which ended in two curved arms which, using a screw, could be hooped and tightened at will so as to garrotte any unfortunate homunculus attached thereto. The dish was half-full of water, so that the little scaffold (which was no higher than a jug) was completely immersed, apart from the garrotting hoops at the apex.
On the ground, however, stood the most singular item of the whole mysterious elaboratory: an iron cage, as tall as a small child, and with rather close, narrow bars; as though it were designed to imprison minuscule, lively and volatile creatures like butterflies or canaries.
I noticed a movement within the cage and looked more closely. A tiny grey creature was, in its turn, looking at me, fearful and furtive in its nest: a little wooden box filled with straw.
Atto brought the lantern closer so that I could see what he and Ugonio had already discovered. Now the sole hostage of the isle, visibly scared by our presence, I descried with surprise was a poor little mouse.
Around the cage, piled one against the other, stood other sinister devices, which we examined with cautious disgust: urns filled with yellowish powder, drippings, secretions, bilious humours, phlegm and mire; little jars filled with animal (or human?) fat, all mixed with ashes, dead skin and other revolting elements; retorts, alembics, glass jars, a bucket full of bones, surely of animals (which Ugonio nevertheless examined meticulously), a lump of putrescent meat, the rotting peel of fruit, nutshells; a ceramic vase filled with locks of hair, another glass one containing a mass of little serpents preserved in spirits; a little fishing net, a brazier with its bellows, old firewood, half-rotten leaves of paper, coals and pebbles; finally, a pair of large, filthy gloves, a pile of greasy rags and other sordid and vile objects.
"It is a necromancer's den," said I, thoroughly disconcerted.
"Worse still," retorted Atto, while we still roamed around that mad and barbarous bazaar. "It is the den of Dulcibeni, who lodges at your inn."
"And whatever would he be doing here?" I exclaimed in horror.
"It is difficult to say. What is certain is that he is doing something to rats which does not find favour with Ugonio."
The corpisantaro was still pensively observing the butcher's table, completely undisturbed by the mortiferous stench which emanated from it.
"He imprisons, he strangulates, he bistourifies. Thereafter, however, it surpasses all apprehension," said he at length.
"Many thanks, thus far I too had come," said Atto. "First, he captures rats with his fishing net, then he puts them into cages. Then he uses them for some strange sorcery and he strangles them using that strange little gallows. Then he quarters them, and in the end I have no idea what else he may do," said Atto with an acid smile. "All, no doubt, in accordance with the pious prescriptions of the Jansenists of Port-Royal. The one in the cage must be the sole survivor."
"Signor Atto," said I, nauseated by this triumph of obscenity, "does it not seem to you that there is something here which we have already seen?"
I pointed to the phial on the table, next to the miniature gallows.
By way of a reply, Atto extracted from his pocket an object whose existence I had practically forgotten. Unwrapping them from a handkerchief, he exhibited the fragments of the glass phial full of blood which we had found in gallery D. Then he compared them with the phial that was still intact.
"They are twins!" I remarked with surprise.
The broken phial was indeed identical, both in its form and in its greenish glass, to that which we had just found on the island.
"But we have already seen the decorated vase with a lid," I insisted. "It was, unless I am mistaken..."
"... in Tiracorda's secret room," added Atto, coming to my help.
"There we have it!"
"No, no. You are thinking of the vase in which Dulcibeni was rummaging when his friend had gone to sleep. This one, however, is far bigger and the designs painted on it are far more intricate. The motif of the decoration and the holes in the sides are, I will allow, almost identical. Perhaps they are the work of the same artisan."
The vase found on the islet also had lateral air-holes on it and was likewise decorated with pond plants and little swimming beings, probably tadpoles which played about between the leaves. I opened the lid,
raised the vase to the lantern and immersed one finger: inside, there was greyish water, in which floated fragments of light white gauze; at the bottom, a little sand.
"Signor Atto, Cristofano told me that it is dangerous to handle rats during a time of pestilence."
"I know. I thought of that, too, the other night, when we encountered those two moribund rats which were spitting blood. Clearly, our Dulcibeni feels no such fear."
"The insula is not goodly, not justly, not sanitary," warned Ugonio in grave tones.
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