Secretum

Day the Tenth

16th J ULY, 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 make?" 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 grave ly "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 Janiculum 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.

I should have liked to have the Abbot's support for my reflections; but Atto had remained sceptical and had even laughed in my face and ended up by silencing me, even rejecting factual examples of what he had once taught me. I did not know whether he was incapable of understanding, envious, too old, or whether he really thought that, yes, he had for once listened to me drawing conclusions, only to find that I had come up with nothing but senseless ravings. Who knows whether mine were nothing more than the crude, ingenuous fantasies of a bumpkin who believes in monsters? Only one person could know that, perhaps.

We were approaching our goal. The postillion stopped the horses. I descended from the carriage, went to the other side and helped Atto to step down.

We walked the last few yards on foot, unhurriedly. On arriving in front of the convent, we stopped a moment to contemplate the facade. Shielding his eyes with one hand, Atto looked up at the windows of the upper storeys which in convents are traditionally reserved for guests staying incognito. Perhaps she was behind one of these.

Melani remained motionless, with his gaze fixed on those windows, as though he had come this far only to contemplate them, nothing more.

"It seems you'll have to climb plenty of stairs," said I, to shake him from his torpor.

He did not answer. Instinctively, I held out my arm to him, I know not whether to incite him to knock at the convent door or to offer him comfort. He hesitated. Then he handed me the rolled-up, sealed letter.

"There. Give her this as soon as you see her."

"Me? What do you mean? She is waiting for you and you have so many things to say to her and so many questions to ask, do you not want to…?"

Atto turned his eyes away, towards an old wooden bench, abandoned there by goodness only knows who.

"I think I shall sit down here for a moment," he said.

"Why, do you not feel well?"

"Oh, I am fine. But I should like you to go up."

I paused, disconcerted. "Do you mean that you will not be going?"

"I do not know," said Atto slowly.

"If you do not go, she will not understand."

"Go on, my boy, perhaps I shall follow you."

"But what will she say when she sees a stranger appear? And what am I to say? I shall have to tell her that you are a man of other times and you prefer to climb the stairs slowly…"

The Abbot smiled.

"Just tell her I'm a man of other times, nothing more."

I was unable to restrain a gesture of incredulity. My fingers closed around the letter.

"You are committing a folly," I protested weakly, "and besides.."

But Atto turned on his heels and made his way to the bench.

At that very moment (hard to say whether this was a coincidence, or because the nuns were secretly observing us) the convent door opened. A sister was looking questioningly at me, with her head peeping just outside the door. She was waiting for me to come forward.

I looked at Atto. He sat down. He turned towards me and raised one arm, a gesture combining a greeting and the order to go ahead. I just caught a glimpse of him as the sister closed the door behind me.

I was in a corridor, enveloped in that unmistakeable aroma peculiar to women's convents, smelling of orisons, fresh novices and dawn vigils. I followed my guide up stairways, steps and along corridors until we came to a door. The sister knocked, then turned the handle and looked in. A woman's voice said something.

"Please wait a while. There, take a seat here," said the nun. "Knock again in a few moments. They will let you in. I myself must go at once to the Mother Superior."

What was there in the letter I held tightly in my hand? Was it a message from Atto to the Connestabilessa, or was it rather a note penned by King Louis of France for his Maria? Perhaps both…

Days before, Melani had written that, when they met again, he would deliver to her something that would make her change her mind about the King's happiness. What exactly did that mean? The answer was in the letter 1 held in my hand.

I had little time but my decision was already taken. Atto's seal was badly applied; it had not stuck properly to the paper.

Here I was, about to raise the curtain on the most intimate spectacle of the hearts of those three old people. I unrolled the letter.

When I read it, I could hardly believe my eyes.

After I know not how much time, I knocked. My soul was serene, my spirit more lucid then ever.

"Come in," replied a pleasant feminine voice, mature but kind, gentle, well disposed.

She was, after all, as I imagined. I stepped forward.

After introducing myself and delivering the letter, I provided her with an explanation for Atto's absence, cobbled together in the most general terms. She was kind enough to pretend to believe me, nor were her words tinged with any note of reproach, only regret at have missed meeting Melani.

I bowed again and was on the point of taking my leave, when I thought that, all in all, I had nothing to lose. There was something I wanted to ask her; not about what I had just read — for that I needed no explanations.

The Tetrachion. Perhaps she would be surprised, but she would not have me thrown out. She might have thought I was acting on behalf of my master, that my mouth and ears were his.

I began directly, because she perhaps was alone in knowing the truth; and there was little time.

My explanation had not taken more than a few minutes. During all that time, the Connestabilessa did not bat an eyelid. She remained seated, looking fixedly out of the window. She made no comment or gesture. She stayed silent, but hers was a silence that said more than thousands of words.

Here was the mute confirmation that what I was saying was not a figment of my imagination. That silence probably signified that at least a part of my reconstruction was mistaken, perhaps crude and ingenuous. But the kernel of it remained true and vivid, and Maria better than anyone knew how very real the case was. If I had just been raving, or if she had known nothing about all this, I would, at best, have earned myself a reprimand and been asked to leave. Instead, she had remained motionless and heard me out in total silence. She knew well of what I was speaking. It concerned that secret history against which all her hopes of happiness had been dashed and which had condemned her to a life of wanderings and misfortune. Her silence — explicit, yet prudent — was the best possible way of assenting to, confirming and encouraging my view.

I finished what I had to say, allowing the silence to fill the room and the space between us for a few more moments. She kept staring out of the window, as though she were already alone.

There was no more to be said. I took my leave with a bow, accompanying it with the same penetrating absence of words as that with which she had listened to my speech. This was the only possible farewell between persons who know that they will never meet again.

It might have been simply the latest surprise, but I was expecting it: in the street, no one was waiting for me. Neither Atto nor the carriage. By now, I had understood the game.

As I walked towards Villa Spada, the bittersweet impressions of my meeting with Maria Mancini soon gave way to the violent emotion aroused by the letter I had delivered to her.

One single sheet of paper, blank. And in the middle, rather high up, just three words, written in an easy cursive hand: yo el Rey

Even an idiot could understand. Since the Catholic King of Spain was certainly not in Rome, this was a forged signature. And as Charles II was about to die, what document could it be for, if not his will?

The more I thought of it, the more hatred and hilarity came together in my mind. What a fine little game Atto had used me in, without saying a thing to me! And what a fool I had been to suspect nothing…

The last will and testament of Charles II: the document in which the heir to the world's greatest kingdom would be named, the heir whom all Europe awaited.

Under the pretext of his nephew's marriage, Cardinal Spada invites both Atto and Maria to Rome. Atto brings with him the ideal person to forge the signature: a quite unusually refined forger.

After all, what had Abbot Melani said when he introduced Buvat to me? "He is at his best with a pen in his hand; but not like you: you create; he copies. And he does that like no other." At that moment, I had thought that he was referring to his secretary's work copying letters; but no. It was then, in a flash of memory, that I recalled what Atto had told me many years earlier, when first he mentioned his secretary's name. "Every time I leave Paris secretly, he looks after my correspondence. He is a copyist of extraordinary talent, and knows perfectly how to imitate my handwriting."

So that was what I had seen among Atto's secretary's well hidden papers: those strange proofs of e, l, R, o and which I had at first taken for badly performed calligraphic exercises, were in fact part of Buvat's preparations for forging a signature. He was practising to imitate that of Charles II, repeating over and over again the letters contained in the autograph yo el Rey. These exercises he had kept in order to compare them with authentic signatures of the Catholic King and to be able in the end to select the best copy.

I need only have put those letters together in the right order and I would have found out the truth. So that was why Atto kept so carefully concealed in his wig those three incomplete letters bearing the signature of the King of Spain: they were the models on which Buvat was to practise. They were, however, far too confidential to be left in his secretary's hands, and so Melani kept them on his person.

I resumed my reconstruction. Maria, then, had the task of bringing those forged signatures back to Spain, where they would be put to use in due course: when Charles II was dying and his will must be drawn up. A false will would be prepared, the last page of which would be that containing the signature prepared by Buvat. The blank space above would be used to set down the last part of the will. Obviously, a French heir would be appointed. That explained why Atto had never spoken to me of the Spanish succession, instead of which, he kept going on about the conclave! Poor fool that I am, I had not understood the real objective he was so doggedly pursuing.

Had the wait for Maria, then, been nothing but a charade? What a treacherous mise-en-scene, with all those sugary letters in which he spun out his yearning to see her again!

It had all been planned to perfection, so designed as to withstand any attempts at espionage. The Connestabilessa was to arrive at the wedding celebrations as late as possible, just in time to collect the paper with the signature from Atto and Buvat! It was important that she should not in fact attend the festivities: the presence of Maria Mancini, Mazarin's notorious niece who resided in Madrid, would at once have given rise to suspicions of an anti-Spanish plot.

How convenient it had been to make use of me to deliver the paper with the signature to the Connestabilessa! Atto need not even dirty his hands with the chore. He knew perfectly well from the outset that he would never meet her: he had deceived me up to the very last moment, making me think that he was too perturbed to see her after their thirty-year long separation.

The theft of Atto's treatise had been a mere complication which had frightened and impeded him but had only partly distracted him from his prime objective. Once the mystery had been resolved and the stolen good had (once more, thanks to my good offices!) been snatched back from the cerretani, Atto had been able calmly to conclude his shady business of espionage.

Having rapidly made my way back, driven by the force of my anger, I entered Villa Spada, already knowing what awaited me.

When I went to knock at the door, I found it already open. A few articles of clothing remained on the bed, and on the day-bed, a dry inkwell and a few scribbled notes. The scene matched perfectly my poor dismayed and bewildered spirits.

Atto and Buvat had gone.

Doing my best to dissimulate my rage and disappointment, I made a brief investigation, questioning the servants of the villa. I learned that the pair had departed post haste and that their destination was Paris. They had stocked up with provisions, and Atto had left a long letter of thanks for Cardinal Spada, to be delivered by Don Paschatio.

Now I understood why, that morning, he had donned his abbot's mauve-grey soutane and periwig which I knew so well: it was his travelling costume!

They had been gone for quite a while by now. They must have packed their bags in extraordinary haste, like refugees fleeing the onset of war. This was no departure; they had fled.

What from? I was quite sure it had nothing to do with fear of any further threats from the cerretani. It was not like Atto to fear what he had already experienced, once he was familiar with its nature. Nor was he fleeing any supposed political threats, as he had put it about earlier. No, it was something else: he was fleeing from me.

Not that he had any material fear of me — of course not.

Nevertheless, at the last moment, having accomplished what he had set out to do and fearing that I might have guessed at the truth, he had not felt up to confronting me and answering for his lies and subterfuges.

He had turned up after an absence of seventeen years, asking me to act as the chronicler of his deeds with a view to the forthcoming conclave. Yet, he had not provided me with any further instructions, nor had he subsequently shown any interest in the matter.

The chronicle of those days at Villa Spada had been a mere pretext: the only thing that had mattered to him was that I should look, listen to and report everything that might be of use to him. Whether or not I wrote it down was quite indifferent to him. What had he said to me at the outset? "You will pen for me a chronicle in which you will give a judicious account of all that you see and hear during the coming few days, and you will add thereto whatever I may suggest to you as being desirable and opportune. You will then deliver the manuscript to me." He had persuaded me that I would be acting as a gazetteer. Instead, he had got me to spy. So much so, that he had left like a fly-by-night without even taking delivery of my work.

Nor did he give a fig for the conclave, of which he had initially spoken at such great length. We had seen, discussed and done all manner of things: from the alarums and excursions with Caesar Augustus to the insane climb up into the ball of Saint Peter's, from the ineffable experiences at the Vessel to the final nightmare when we narrowly missed being slaughtered by the cerretani. But we had hardly touched again on the subject of the conclave.

"What a stupid, ingenuous imbecile I have been!" I berated myself, torn between laughter and tears. He had kept me at his service, manipulating me without the slightest regard for my safety, just as he had done seventeen years before. He had pointed out one road to me, urging me on, while he himself tiptoed off in a very different direction.

This time, however, it was far more serious. Now he had played with the future of my little daughters. When I was on the point of withdrawing from his dangerous games, he had envei- gled me with the promise of a dowry for them, and I had fallen for the bait, even risking my life for him. That very afternoon, we had been supposed to go to the notary for the endowment. One moment, however: I did have the document with his written promise.

Stung by a thousand scorpions, I rushed home, grabbed the paper and spurred my mule towards town.

I went from lawyer to lawyer, from notary to notary, in search of someone who might at least give me a glimmer of hope. To no avail. I met invariably with the same question: "Do you by any chance know whether this abbot owns property in the Papal States?" And when I shook my head the sentence was always the same: "Even if you sued and won your case, we would have no means of claiming what is owed you." So, what was to be done? "You should find out whether you can also sue in France. That would be a lengthy and expensive process and, what is more, my good sir, the outcome would be utterly uncertain."

In other words, I had no hope. Now that Atto was on his way to Paris, his promise was not worth the paper it was written on.

Returning to Villa Spada, I was tempted to hit myself with my own whip. I should have insisted on going straight to the notary, or at the very least, I should not have waited so long. The truth is that I had allowed myself to be swept along by events and I had let the Abbot use me like a slave, without any consideration for my family. What would have happened if I had died or become an invalid? Cloridia could not keep our household going on her own. What would have fed and clothed our daughters? Not their work as apprentice midwives. Farewell to those evenings when I had taught them to read and write and they had stared wide-eyed at the fine books bequeathed to me by my late lamented father-in- law. The children would have had to roll up their sleeves at once and slave away as scullery maids, probably in some foul tavern, unless Don Paschatio were magnanimously to find them some place in the Spada household.

I was boiling over with rage. Abbot Melani had deceived me.

He had run off and instead of the promised dowry I was left with nothing. I myself felt like fleeing, leaving that place; indeed, leaving this cruel deceitful world. Had my duties as a husband and father not prevented me, I would have taken flight like some new Daedalus, or become like Icarus, but instead of falling to earth, I would fall into the sky, sucked forever into the azure abyss of the celestial spheres.

As I was cursing to myself, I ran into one last piece of trouble.

"Signor Master of the Fowls! Did you not see what a success our festivities were? And did you hear the enthusiastic comments of our master, Cardinal Spada?"

Don Paschatio had intercepted me at the gate. He wanted to talk about the success of the festivities. No doubt he would point out that if I had not been so frequently distracted by Abbot Melani, and had made myself more available, the triumph would have been even more complete.

This really was not the moment for such things. Anything, anything rather than suffer his logorrhoea.

"Signor Major-Domo," I replied bluntly, "since during the past few days I have absented myself on several occasions, I am sure that you will not be surprised if I interrupt this conversation and ask you to set me some useful task so that I can make up for my past failings and avoid time-wasting."

Don Paschatio faltered, stopped short by so brusque a response.

"Er, well…" he hesitated. "Yes, you could attend to the cleaning and provisioning of the aviary, as I was just about to instruct you to."

"Very well!" I concluded, turning sharply on my heels. "It will be done at once, Signor Major-Domo."

Don Paschatio stared at me, scratching his forehead in perplexity, while I marched nervously towards the kitchens to collect feed for the birds and the necessary to clean the aviary.

I could not know it, but I was never to accomplish that task. Hardly had I opened the big cage when an unusual noise, a sort of furtive fluttering, caught my attention. I looked up towards the cage of Caesar Augustus which had remained empty since the day of his escape, and suddenly, in a bewildering flash of intuition, the bizarre events which had involved the parrot during the past few days became quite clear to me.

As I have had occasion to mention, recently, in other words, just before disappearing with the note addressed to Cardinal Albani, the parrot's mood had been unusually unhappy and agitated. What was more, he would often return with a twig in his claws, for some unknown purpose, something he had never done previously. The bird's nervousness had come to a head with the theft of the note and his long absence. Later, during the course of the hunting party organised for the guests, a badly aimed crossbow shot had brought down from a nest on a pine tree an egg of unidentified provenance. With the oddity I now found staring me in the face, I recalled that another parrot of the same race as Caesar Augustus had recently arrived and came to a quite inconceivable (but correct) conclusion.

"Dismiss him! Dismisssss him!" screeched Caesar Augustus, mocking me from his comfortable perch in the middle of a fine nest of feathers and twigs.

"But you… you are… you have…" I stammered.

I could not even bring myself to say it. No one could easily have accepted, even if they had witnessed it with their own eyes, that Caesar Augustus was really a female parrot… with a nestful of eggs.

I was amazed, almost entranced, watching the new manifestation of that surprising being, by no means accidentally once the property of the mad Capitor: he — she? — had, as a calm spectator, traversed decades and decades of history; he had seen the decline of Mazarin, the advent of the Sun King, and then a succession of no fewer than five popes, and now, with his eternal, unbearable squawking, he was making a triumphal entry into the new century in the sacred guise of a mother.

I saw him rise briefly from the nest lovingly to arrange the surviving eggs with his beak. The hunters who had examined the egg that had fallen from that pine tree were all mistaken: it belonged neither to a riparian swallow nor to a pheasant, nor to a turtle dove or a partridge, but to a parrot.

"Doiiiiinnnnng," went Caesar Augustus, with a pair of accusing eyes, imitating the sound of a crossbow bolt embedding itself in a branch and making it vibrate: the same bolt which, shot by Marchese Lancellotti Ginetti during the hunting party, had caused Caesar Augustus's egg to fall from its nest and had obviously forced him to abandon the pine on the Barberini property for the relative safety of the familiar aviary of Villa Spada.

"I know, I know, for you it must have been quite terrible," I answered.

"One does not shoot at nests, it is both pointless and cruel," said he, repeating the words of the cavalier who, immediately after the incident, had derided Lancellotti Ginetti's bad shooting.

"Lancellotti did not mean to harm you," I tried to explain to him. "Of course, building a new nest and transporting your eggs must have been a terribly difficult job; but, after all, it was only an accident, and you shouldn't have imitated that arquebus shot that so terrified all…"

"Dismiss him!" he replied sharply, descending to cover with loving wings the little whitish spheres containing his brood.

Don Paschatio and the others at the Spada household would never have believed their eyes. I could already imagine the rush to find some other noble Latin name for the fowl: Livia or Lucretia, Poppea or Messalina? I had known that bird for so long that I had come to treat him almost as an equal, from one male to another. Instead, I had really been dealing with a scornful, rebellious, intractable lady clothed in feathers. I felt almost guilty for having developed these all but comradely feelings; the only extenuating factor was the fact that it is, as is well known, almost impossible to determine the sex of a parrot visually or by touch. To solve the mystery, the only possibility is to wait until, once the right company has been found, it lays eggs or becomes the vigorous defender of the nest.

After a few more moments of stunned surprise, I recovered my aplomb.

"If I know you, I'm prepared to bet that, in addition to the eggs, you transported something else. Do you not have a certain something to return to me, now that you have calmed down?"

He continued to turn his back on me, pretending not to hear.

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about," I insisted.

The bird acted swiftly and apparently with utter unconcern, almost scornfully. With one foot, it scratched inside the nest, extracted it and let it fall. My request had been granted.

Like any other dead leaf, Cardinal Albani's message fluttered crazily down, making a few graceful pirouettes until my hands grasped it.

It was dirty, torn and stank of birds' droppings. How could it have been otherwise, seeing that the parrot, after sating itself chewing the corner dipped in chocolate, had used it for its nest? And, stubborn as he was, after building a nest inside the aviary, he had not failed to bring it with him.

With eager fingers, I opened the scrap of yellow paper. There were just three lines, but they rent my already lacerated soul even more:

Opinion ready.

Wednesday 14th at the Villa T, time to be confirmed.

Arrangements already made for scribe and courier.

My arms grew heavy and fell by my sides. What for anyone else would have been mysterious was for me as clear as daylight and as painful as a fiery arrow.

The Villa T. was obviously the Villa del Torre, where in fact on Wednesday 14th Atto and I had, from the terrace on top of the Vessel, seen the three cardinals. The ready opinion was clearly the document to be copied by the scribe and sent by courier to the King of Spain, whereby the Pope was indicating an heir to the throne.

As I already knew from what I had overheard just before the play at Villa Spada, on Monday 12th the Spanish Ambassador Uzeda and the three cardinals (those four "sly foxes", as they had called them) had convinced the Pope to set up a special congregation to be entrusted to the same Albani, Spada and Spinola. The Pontiff had formally created it two days later, on the 14th July. However, they had already made their decision even on the day when the message was stolen by the parrot, namely Saturday 10th!

It had all been a great sham. If the King of Spain was a dead man walking, the Pope too no longer counted for anything. Albani, Spada and Spinola had dictated the destiny of the world from the Villa Spada, between a cup of chocolate and a hunting party, without anyone knowing anything of it. Atto, the vigilant eye of the King of France, had kept an eye on them from a distance; and I, without knowing it, had seconded him.

Instilling in me a desperate feeling of impotence, Albicastro's words came back to mind: "The world is one enormous banquet, my boy, and the law of banquets is: 'Drink or begone!'"

Would I then never have any other choice? Did the authority invested by God no longer count for anything?