Imprimatur am-1

by Rita Monaldi

  We crossed the piazza stunned by disappointment, feeling even more naked and defenceless than we in fact were. We moved away from the centre of the square to the right-hand side, where we tiptoed along the walls, hoping to attract no attention. I was startled when a little boy, coming out from a nearby hut, pointed us out to the adult who was accompanying him. The latter stared briefly at us and then, fortunately, ceased to attend to our furtive and miserable presence.

  "They will notice us, damn it. Let us try to merge into the crowd," said Atto, pointing out to me a nearby group of people.

  So we mixed with a small but compact assembly, gathered around an invisible central point. We were just a few paces from the Cavalier Bernini's great Fountain of the Four Rivers in the middle of the piazza; the four titanic anthropomorphic statues of the aquatic deities, almost admonitory in their marmoreal potency, seemed to be participating in the pious atmosphere of the piazza. From within the fountain, a stone lion scrutinised me, ferocious but impotent. Above the monument, however, there stood an obelisk all covered in hieroglyphics and capped with a little golden pyramid, almost naturally pointing towards the Most High. Was this not precisely the obelisk which had been deciphered by Kircher, as someone had told me a few days earlier? But I was distracted by the crowd, which moved further forward, the better to listen to the sermon which I could hear coming from a few paces beyond.

  In the forest of heads, backs and shoulders I could descry the preacher for only a few brief instants. His hat revealed him to be a Jesuit brother; he was a rotund purple-faced little man wearing a tri- corn too big for his head and entertaining with torrential eloquence the small, tight group of spectators who had gathered around him.

  "… And what is the life of devotion?" I heard him declaim. "I tell you that it is to speak little, to weep much, to be mocked first by this man, then by that, to tolerate poverty in one's life, suffering in one's body, insults to one's honour, injuries to one's interests. And, can such a life not be most unhappy? I tell you, yes it can!"

  The crowd was stirred by a hubbub of incredulity and scepticism.

  "I know," continued the preacher vehemently. "Persons who live the life of the spirit are accustomed to these evils and would even wish spontaneously to suffer from them. And if they do not find them upon their way, they go out hunting for them!"

  Another murmur of disquiet traversed the crowd.

  "Think of Simon of Cyrene, who feigned madness in order to be mocked at by the people. Think of Bernard of Clairvaux, who suffered from poor health and always took refuge in the iciest and most cruel of hermitages! And do you therefore account them to have been no more than miserable wretches? No, no, listen with me to what the great prelate Salviano said."

  Abbot Melani caught my attention by pulling at my sleeve. "The way seems clear, let us go."

  We moved towards the way out from the square nearest to the Donzello, hoping that those last footsteps would not hold any bad surprises for us.

  "The great prelate Salviano may say what he will, but I cannot wait to get changed," complained Atto, nearing the limits of his patience and endurance.

  Without having the courage to turn round, I had the disagreeable impression that someone was following us.

  We were on the point of emerging safely from our perilous crossing when the unforeseeable occurred. Atto was proceeding ahead of me, skirting the wall of a palazzo, when from a little doorway I saw a pair of robust and decisive hands dart forth, seize him and drag him indoors by force. This terrible vision, together with my overwhelming weariness, almost caused me to lose my senses. 1 was petrified, unable to decide whether to run away or to call for help, in both of which cases I ran the risk of being identified and arrested.

  Extricating me from the horns of this dilemma, there came from behind me a familiar voice, whose sound was so improbable as to appear celestial: "Get you ultraquickly into the coneyhole!"

  Great though Abbot Melani's scorn for the corpisantari may have been, I believe that on this occasion he had no little difficulty in hiding his gratitude for their intervention. Not only had Ugonio miraculously survived the Cloaca Maxima, but after rejoining Ciacconio, he had tracked us down again and-although the method employed may have been somewhat rough-had brought us to safety. It was, however, Ciacconio who had dragged Atto through the little door on the Piazza Navona, whither Ugonio now urged me to enter in my turn.

  Once beyond the threshold, and without giving us the time to ask any questions, the corpisantari made us pass through another little door and climb down an exceedingly steep flight of stairs which in turn led to a narrow and even more dismal windowless corridor. Ciacconio produced a lantern which, absurdly, he seemed to have been concealing, already lit, in the folds of his grimy overcoat. Our saviour seemed to be as soaked as we, and yet he trotted along as boldly and rapidly as ever.

  "Where are you taking us?" asked Atto, for once surprised and no longer master of the situation.

  "The Piazzame Navonio is perditious," said Ugonio, "and, to be more padre than parricide, the subpantheon is more salubricious."

  I remembered that, during one of our explorations of gallery C, the corpisantari had shown us the way to an exit which led to the courtyard of a palace behind the Pantheon, not far from the Piazza della Rotonda. For a good quarter of an hour, they led us from cellar to cellar, through an uninterrupted sequence of obscure doorways, steps, abandoned store-rooms, spiral staircases and galleries. Every now and then, Ugonio would bring out his ring laden with keys, open a door, let us through, then lock the door behind us with four or five turns of the key. Atto and I, already exhausted, were pushed and dragged along by the two corpisantari like two mortal vessels whose souls were ready to abandon them at any moment.

  We arrived at last before a sort of great wooden portal which opened creaking onto a courtyard. The daylight again hurt our pupils. From the courtyard, we emerged into a little alleyway and from there into another half-abandoned courtyard, to which we gained access through a door without any lock.

  "Ultraquickly into the coneyhole!" exhorted Ugonio, showing me a wooden trap in the ground. We raised the lid, revealing a dark and suffocating well. Across the top was laid an iron bar, from which hung a rope; and this we swarmed down. We already knew where it led: to the network of tunnels connected to the Donzello.

  As the trapdoor closed over our heads, I saw the cowled heads of Ugonio and Ciacconio disappear into the light of day. I would have liked to ask Ugonio how he had managed to survive the wreck of our boat in the Cloaca Maxima and how the deuce he had got out from there, but I had no time. While I lowered myself, grasping the rope, for a fleeting instant it seemed to me that Ugonio's eyes met my own. Inexplicably, it seemed to me that he knew what I was thinking. I was happy that he was safe.

  Hardly had I returned to my chamber than I changed in a rush and hid my dirty, mud-stained clothing. At once, I betook myself to Cristo-fano's apartment, ready to justify my absence by an improbable visit to the cellars. Too exhausted to worry, I was ready to face questions and objections for which I was utterly unable to find a reply.

  Cristofano, however, was sleeping. Perhaps still exhausted by the crisis of the day before, he had gone to bed without even closing his door. He lay clumsily sprawled across the bed, half-dressed.

  I took care not to awaken him. The sun was low on the horizon; I still had time for something before the appointment we had fixed with Devize in Bedfordi's chamber: to sleep.

  Contrary to my expectations, this sleep did not restore me. My rest was troubled by tormented and convulsed dreams, in which I relived those terrible moments when I was under the capsized bark; then those disquieting discoveries on the islet of the Mithraeum, and lastly, the nightmare of the Cloaca Maxima, in which I believed that I had met with death. That was why, when Cristofano's fists pounded on my door, I arose almost wearier than before.

  The physician did not seem to be in good form either. Two heavy bluish bags under the eyes marked his weary co
untenance; his gaze was watery and distant, and his posture, which I usually found so solid and erect, was slightly bent. He neither greeted me nor asked me anything, thank heavens, about the previous night.

  On the contrary, I found myself reminding him that we would soon have to make the usual arrangements for our guests' breakfast. First, however, we must turn our minds to the emergency. It was time to put Robleda's theories to the test: Bedfordi's infection would, this time, be treated by the notes of Devize's guitar. I went to inform the Jesuit that we were about to follow his advice. We called Devize and we then went to the adjoining chamber, where the poor Englishman lay.

  The young musician had brought his little stool with him so that he could play in the corridor without entering the sickroom and thus risking his own health. The door would remain open, so that the guitar's (we hoped) beneficent sound could penetrate within. Cristofano, however, posted himself right by Bedfordi's bed, in order to observe the patient's reactions, if any.

  I stood discreetly in the corridor, a few yards from the musician. Devize sat on his little stool, sought the most comfortable position and began to tune his instrument. He soon broke off and warmed his hands with an allemande. This, he followed with a courante, after which he turned to a severe sarabande. He stopped again to tune and asked Cristofano for news of the patient.

  "Nothing new."

  The concert continued with a gavotte and a gigue.

  "Nothing new-nothing, nothing, nothing. He does not seem even to hear," said the doctor, both discouraged and impatient.

  It was then that Devize at last played what I had long awaited, the one piece which, among all the dances I had heard him perform, seemed capable of capturing the attention and the heart of all the guests at the inn: the superb rondeau which his master Francesco Corbetta had written for Maria Teresa, Queen of France.

  As I suspected, I was not alone in awaiting those fatally fascinating notes. Devize executed the rondeau once, then again, and then a third time, as though to let it be understood that, to him, too, those notes were-for unknown reasons-most sweet and delectable. We all remained in silence, rapt in like manner. We had listened to this music so many times, yet we could never hear it enough.

  But while we were listening to the rondeau for the fourth time, my pleasure in the sounds gave way to something utterly unexpected. Lulled by the cyclical repetition of the ritornello, I suddenly thought: what was it that Devize had said about it on the first day? The alternate strophes of the rondeau "contain ever new harmonic assays, which all conclude in an unexpected fashion, almost as though alien to good musical doctrine. And after reaching its apogee, the rondeau brusquely enters its finale."

  And what had Abbot Melani read in the letter from Kircher? That the plague, too, is cyclical and "there is in the final stages something unexpected, mysterious, foreign to medical doctrine: after reaching the height of its strength, the disease senescit ab abrupto, or suddenly begins to come to an end."

  The words used by Devize to describe the rondeau were almost identical to those used by Kircher when speaking of the plague.

  I waited until the music ended and at last put the question which I should have asked long-too long-before: "Signor Devize, has this rondeau a name?"

  "Yes, 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses'," he pronounced slowly.

  I remained silent.

  "In Italian, one says… barricate misteriose, mysterious barricades," he added, as though to fill the silence.

  I froze, utterly speechless.

  Mysterious barricades, les barricades mysterieuses: were those not the same obscure words which Atto Melani had muttered in his sleep the afternoon before?

  I had no time to answer my own question. Already, my mind was galloping out of control towards other mysterious barricades, the arcanae obices of Kircher's letter…

  My thoughts were swept away. Cast into a sea of suspicion and illusion by the exasperating buzz which those two Latin words had left in my mind, I was seized by vertigo. I rose suddenly to my feet and rushed straight to my chamber, under the astonished gaze of Cristofano and Devize, who was just beginning to play the same piece once more.

  I slammed the door behind me, crushed by the weight of that discovery and by all the consequences which, like the most ruinous of avalanches, it carried with it.

  The terrible mystery of Kircher's arcanae obices, the mysterious obstacles which concealed the secretum vitae, had at last taken form before my very eyes.

  I needed a pause for reflection, in total solitude, in my own room; not so much in order to clarify my ideas as to understand with whom I could share them.

  Atto and I were on the trail of those arcanae obices or "mysterious barricades" which had the supreme capacity to overcome the pestilence, as mentioned by Kircher in the ravings of his last letter to Superintendent Fouquet; then, I had heard the abbot, in his sleep, name the still unidentified barricades mysterieuses in the language of his chosen country. And now, when I asked Devize the name of the rondeau which he was playing in order to heal the plague-ridden Bedfordi, I learned that its very title was "Les Barricades Mysterieuses". Someone knew far more than he was prepared to admit.

  "But you really have no idea about anything!" exclaimed Abbot Melani.

  I had just awoken him from a deep sleep in order to obtain explanations and suddenly the fire of the news had rendered incandescent both his words and his gestures. He asked me to repeat my account word for word: about Devize who was playing the rondeau for Bedfordi's health and who had freely confessed to me that the music was entitled "Les Barricades Mysterieuses".

  "Pardon me, but you must leave me a few minutes in which to reflect," said he, almost overcome by what I had told him.

  "Yet you know that I desire your explanations, and that…"

  "Yes, of course, of course, but now please let me think."

  So, I had to leave him and again to knock at his door a few minutes later. From his eyes, which had regained their vigilance and pugnacity, I would have thought that he had never slept.

  "Just at this moment when we are near to the truth, you have chosen to become my enemy," he began, in almost heartbroken tones.

  "Not your enemy," I hastened to correct him, "but you must understand that…"

  "Enough," he interrupted me. "Just try to reason for one moment."

  "If you will permit me, Signor Atto, this time I am able to reason perfectly well. And I say to myself: how is it possible that you should know the title of that rondeau, and that it should also be the translation of arcanae obices?"

  I felt proud to have that most sagacious of beings with his back to the wall. I stared at him suspiciously and accusingly.

  "Have you finished?"

  "Yes."

  "Very well," said he at length, "now let me speak. In my sleep, you heard me murmur ' barricades mysterieuses’ if I have understood you correctly."

  "Exactly."

  "Well, as you know, that is more or less a translation of arcanae obices."

  "Indeed. And I want to know once and for all how you knew…"

  "Be quiet, be quiet, that is not the point."

  "But you…"

  "Trust me just this one last time. What I am about to tell you will make you change your mind."

  "Signor Atto, I cannot follow these mysteries any longer, and besides…"

  "You need follow nothing. We are there already. The secret of the arcanae obices lies here between us, and perhaps it is more yours than mine."

  "What do you mean?"

  "That you have seen it, or better, heard it more often than I."

  "Pardon me?"

  "The secretum vitae which protects against the plague is in that music."

  This time, it was I who needed time to get used to the shocking news. In the marvellous rondeau which had so fascinated me, lay the centre of the mystery of Kircher and Fouquet, of the Sun King and Maria Teresa.

  Atto gave me time to blush, a helpless prey to surprise, and to stammer defencelessly:
"But I thought… it is not possible."

  "That is what I too said to myself initially, but if you think about the matter, you will understand. Just follow my reasoning: have I not told you that Corbetta, Devize's master, was expert at encrypting messages into his music?"

  "Yes, that is true."

  "Good. And Devize himself told you that the rondeau 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses' was composed by Corbetta and that, before he died, he presented it to Queen Maria Teresa."

  "That, too, is true."

  "Well, the dedication of the rondeau, which you saw with your own eyes, is ' a Mademoiselle': the wife of Lauzun. Lauzun was in prison with Fouquet; and Fouquet had received the secret of the plague from Kircher. Now Fouquet, when he was still Superintendent, must have commissioned Corbetta to encrypt in music the secretum vitae (or arcanae obices or mysterious barricades, if you prefer) which brings salvation from the pestilence."

  "But you told me that Kircher too knew how to encrypt messages in music."

  "Certainly. Indeed, I do not exclude the possibility that Kircher may have passed on to Fouquet the secretum vitae already encrypted in a musical score. It is, however, probable that such music was still at a rather rough, preparatory stage. Do you remember what Devize told you? Corbetta created the rondeau, rearranging it on the basis of an earlier melody. I am sure he was referring to Kircher. Not only that: Devize himself, playing it again and again on his guitar, may have so perfected its performance that it became quite impossible to suspect that so sublime a harmony might conceal a message in ciphers. Incredible, is it not? I myself find it difficult to believe."

  "And it is in the form of a rondeau that the Superintendent must jealously have conserved the secretum vitae."

  "Yes, that music somehow survived all the misadventures which befell my friend Nicolas."

  "Until in Pinerol…"