Veritas

Day the First

THURSDAY, 9^TH APRIL 1711

11 of the clock: luncheon hour for artisans, secretaries, language teachers, priests, servants of commerce, footmen and coach drivers.

Greedily sipping an infusion of boiling herbs, I watched our little boy at his play and at the same time leafed through the New Calendar of Krakow for the year 1711, which I had picked up somewhere. It was now nearly midday, and at the eating house, for the modest price of 8 kreutzer, I had just consumed the usual lavish meal of seven dishes laden with various meats, which would have sufficed for ten men (and twenty of my size), a meal that is served in Vienna every day of the week to any humble artisan, but which in Rome only a prince of the Church would be able to afford.

I would never have imagined, just a couple of months earlier, that my stomach could feel so full.

And so I now made use — as I did every day — of Cloridia’s salutary digestive infusions, and sank sluggishly into my beautiful brand-new armchair of green brocatelle.

Yes, in this one-thousand-seven-hundred-and-eleventh year since the birth of Our Redeemer Jesus Christ, or — as the calendar recorded — 5,660 years since the creation of the world; 3,707 years since the first Easter; 2,727 since the construction of the temple of Solomon; 2,302 since the Babylonian captivity; 2,463 since Romulus founded Rome; 1,757 since the beginning of the Roman Empire with Julius Caesar; 1,678 since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; 1,641 since the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus Vespasian; 1,582 since the institution of the 40-days’ fast and since the holy fathers made baptism mandatory for all Christians; 1,122 years since the birth of the Ottoman Empire; 919 years since the coronation of Charlemagne; 612 since the conquest of Jerusalem under Godfrey of Bouillon; 468 since German supplanted Latin in the official documents of the chancelleries; 340 since the invention of the arquebus; 258 since the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Infidel; 278 since the invention of the printing press by the genius of Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz and 241 since the invention of paper in Basel by Anthony and Michael Galliciones; 220 since the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus of Genoa; 182 years since the first Turkish siege of Vienna and 28 years since the second and last one; 129 since the correction of the Gregorian calendar; 54 years since the invention of the upright clock; 61 years since the birth of Clement XI, our Pontiff; 33 since the birth of His Caesarean Majesty Joseph the First; 6 years since his ascension to the throne; well yes, in this most glorious Annus Domini in which we found ourselves, Cloridia and I owned an armchair — well, two actually.

They had not been a gift from some compassionate soul: we had purchased them with the proceeds of our small family business and we were enjoying them in our lodgings inside the Augustinian convent, where we were still living while we waited for an extra storey to be added to our house in the suburb of the Josephina.

This day, the first Thursday after Easter, fell almost two months after our arrival in the Caesarean capital and our life now showed no traces of the famine that had afflicted us in Rome.

This was all thanks to my job as a chimney-sweep in Vienna — or, to be more precise, as “Master Chimney-sweep by Licence of the Court”, hofbefreiter Rauchfangkehrermeister, as it is known round here, where even the humblest ranks will not forgo the gratification of a high-sounding title. That which in Italy was considered, as I have already said, one of the vilest and most degrading of trades, was regarded here, in the Archduchy of Austria above and below the Enns, as an art, and one that was held in high esteem. Back there we were seen as harbingers of ill, whereas here people competed in the streets to touch our uniforms because (it was said) we brought good luck.

That was not all: the job of master chimney-sweep brought with it not only a social position of great respect but also an enviable income. I could even say that I know no other job that is more highly esteemed or more thoroughly despised depending on the country where it is practised.

There were no ragged chimney-sweeps here, wandering from town to town, begging for a bit of work and some warm soup. No exploited children torn from needy families; no fam, füm, frecc, or “hunger, smoke, cold”, the three black condottieri that give their names to the wretched trade in the poor Alpine valleys of northern Italy.

One had but to leave those valleys behind and enter the imperial city to find everything turned on its head: in Vienna there were no roaming chimney-sweeps but only well-established ones, with all the formalities of regulation, confraternity memberships, fixed charges, (12 pfennig, or baiocchi, for a regular cleaning), official pecking orders (master, assistant and apprentice) and convenient home-cum-workshops, which often — as in my case — came complete with courtyard and vineyard.

And, to my great surprise, the Viennese chimney-sweeps were all Italian.

The first ones had arrived two centuries earlier, together with the master builders who had brought with them the Italian genius for architecture and building techniques. As houses grew in number and density, fires broke out more frequently, so that Emperor Maximilian I decided to hire the chimney-sweeps in Vienna on a permanent basis. In the headquarters of our confraternity there still hung on the wall, venerated almost like a sacred relic, a document from 1512: the Emperor’s order for the hiring as chimney-sweep of a certain “Hans von Maylanth”, Giovannino from Milan, the first of our brothers.

After a century and a half we had gained such a solid position in the city that, to practise the trade, we were issued with a licence complete with imperial permit. Since the art of chimney-sweeping had been imported into the Empire by us Italians, for two hundred years we had done all we could to keep it in our own hands. Martini, Minetti, Sonvico, Perfetta, Martinolli, Imini, Zoppo, Toscano, Tondu, Monfrina, Bistorta, Frizzi, De Zuri, Gatton, Ceschetti, Alberini, Cecola, Codelli, Garabano, Sartori, Zimara, Vicari, Fasati, Ferrari, Toschini, Senestrei, Nicoladoni, Mazzi, Bullone, Polloni. These were the names that recurred in the chimney-sweeping business: all exclusively Italian and all related to one another. And so the job of chimney-sweeping had actually become hereditary, passing down from father to son, or from father-in-law to son-in-law, or to the nearest relative, or, if there were none, going to the second husband of an eventual widow. That was not all: it could even be sold on. A rare and lucrative possession, which cost no less than two thousand gulden, or florins: a sum that very few artisans could afford! Not a day went past without my thinking gratefully of Abbot Melani’s generous action.

If my fellow chimney-sweeps, back in Italy, only knew what a hell they were living in and what a paradise was to be found just across the Alps!

I was making a very good living. Each of us chimney-sweeps was assigned a quarter or a suburb of the city. For my part, I had had the good luck, through Abbot Melani’s donation, to acquire the company responsible for the suburb of the Josephina, or the City of Joseph, from the name of our Emperor; this was a neighbourhood of modest artisans very close to the city, but it also included some summer residences of the high nobility, and with these alone I was able to earn more in a month than I had earned back home in my entire life.

As I was Italian, Abbot Melani had had no difficulty in acquiring the company for me. Futhermore, with his money he had acquired absolutely everything. He had only had to forge the documents — birth certificate, curriculum et cetera — that were necessary to prevent the confraternity of chimney-sweeps protesting to the court. To tell the truth, when I presented myself for the first time they received me rather coldly, and I could not really blame them: my appointment as chimney-sweep “by licence of the Court” did not go down well with my colleagues, who had had to sweat hard to get what had been given to me on a silver tray. I also aroused some mistrust since they had never heard of chimney-sweeps in Rome. My colleagues, in fact, all came from the Alpine valleys or even from the Ticino or the Grigioni. They accompanied me on my first cleaning assignments, to make sure that I knew how to do my job properly: Atto’s money had a lot of sway in Vienna, it was true, but it was not powerful enough to make a chimney-sweep out of an incompetent fool who might one day set the whole city alight.

And so began a new life for my family and myself in the Most August Caesarean capital, where even the humblest houses, as Cardinal Piccolomini had noted with astonishment, resembled princely palaces, and where every day the gates of the massive and sublime city walls let through an unending stream of provisions: carts loaded with eggs, crayfish, flour, meat, fish, countless birds, over three hundred wagons laden with casks of wine; by evening it would all be gone. Cloridia and I gazed open-mouthed at the greedy rabble, devoted to its belly, which every Sunday consumed what at Rome it would take us a year to earn. We ourselves were now allowed a place at the table of this lavish and eternal banquet.

Atto Melani’s act of generosity had come about thanks to a fortunate conjunction of circumstances: His Caesarean Majesty Emperor Joseph I wished to restore an ancient building that stood at the gates of Vienna, and needed a master chimney-sweep who would undertake to renovate the flues and overhaul the system of protection against fires, which seemed to be breaking out with increasing frequency. Shortly after my appointment, however, there had been such abundant snowfalls that I had been unable to start my work there, and, to make matters worse, part of the building had fallen in, making building repairs necessary. Today I was to visit the Caesarean property for the first time.

Just one thing was still unclear to me: why had the Emperor not appointed one of the many other master chimney-sweeps of the court, who were already responsible for the numerous royal residences?

Abbot Melani had even arranged for a small single-storey house to be purchased in our name near the church of St Michael in the Josephina, and had undertaken to have an extra storey added, an operation that was still under way: my family and I would soon enjoy the great luxury of having a house all to ourselves, with the ground floor given over to business and the upper one to our living quarters. A real dream for us, after our experience in Rome of having to share a tufo cellar with another family of paupers. .

Now we could even send large sums of money to our two daughters who were still there, and we were even planning to have them join us in Vienna as soon as our new house was ready.

Atto, in his donation, had also included wages for a tutor who would teach our child to read and write in Italian, “since,” he had written in the accompanying letter, “Italian is an international language and is, indeed, the official language of the Caesarean court, where hardly any other is spoken. The Emperor, like his father and his grandfather before him, attends Italian sermons, and the cavaliers of these lands have such an affinity for our nation, that they vie for the opportunity to travel to Rome and master our language. And those who know it enjoy great esteem throughout the Empire and have no need to learn the local idioms.”

I was infinitely grateful to Melani for what he had done, even though I had been a little hurt to find no personal note in his letter, no news of himself, no expressions of affection, just generic salutations. But perhaps, I thought, the letter had been drawn up for him by a secretary, Atto being too old and probably too sick to see to such details.

For my part I had, of course, written a letter warmly proclaiming my sense of obligation and affection. And even Cloridia, having overcome her age-old mistrust of Atto, had sent him lines of sincere gratitude together with an elegant piece of crochet work, to which she had applied herself for weeks: a warm, soft shawl in camlet of Flanders, yellow and red, the Abbot’s favourite colours, with his initials embroidered on it.

We had received no reply to our attestations, but this did not surprise us, given his advanced age.

Our little boy was now doing his best to copy into his notebook simple phrases in the Germanic idiom and in a special gothic cursive, very difficult to read, which the people here call Current.

While it was true, as Abbot Melani said, that Italian was the court language in Vienna — indeed, the sovereigns who wrote to the Emperor were required to do so in that language — the common people were much more at ease in German; for a chimney-sweep wishing to practise his trade, it was essential to learn its rudiments at least.

With this in mind, I had decided that the wages Atto had set aside for an Italian tutor should be used to pay a teacher of the local language, since I myself would undertake to instruct my son in his native language, as I had already done, quite successfully, with his two sisters. And so every second evening, Cloridia, my son and I received a visit from this teacher, who would endeavour for a couple of hours to illuminate our poor minds on the intricate and impenetrable universe of the Teutonic language. Cardinal Piccolomini had already complained of its immeasurable difficulties and its almost total incompatibility with other idioms, and this had been proved since the days of Giovanni da Capistrano; during his visit to Vienna, he had delivered his sermons against the Turks from the pulpit in the Carmelite Square in Latin; he had then been followed by an interpreter, who took three hours to repeat everything in German.

While our little infant made great strides, my wife and I were left floundering. We made greater progress, fortunately, in reading, and that was why, as I said earlier, that in the late morning of 9th April of the year 1711, in the brief post-prandial pause, I was able to flick casually (almost) through the New Calendar-Agenda of Krakow, written by Matthias Gentille, Count Rodari of Trent, while my little boy doodled at my feet until it should be time to go back to work with me.

Like every master chimney-sweep of Vienna, I too had my Lehrjunge, or apprentice, and he was, of course, my son, who at the age of eight had already endured — but also learned — more than a boy twice his age.

A little while later Cloridia joined us.

“Come quickly, they’re about to turn into the street. And then I have to get back to the palace.”

Thanks to the good offices of the Chormaisterin of the convent, my wife had found a highly respectable job at just a short distance from the religious house. In Porta Coeli Street, or Himmelpfortgasse as the Viennese say, there was a building of great importance: the winter palace of the Most Serene Prince Eugene of Savoy, President of the Imperial Council of War, great condottiero in the service of the Empire in the war against France, as well as victor over the Turks. And now, on that very day, there was to be an extremely important event at the palace: at midday an Ottoman embassy was expected to arrive from Constantinople. A great opportunity for my wife, born in Rome, but from the womb of a Turkish mother, a poor slave who had ended up in enemy hands.

Two days earlier, on Tuesday, five boats had arrived at the Leopoldine Island in Vienna, on the branch of the Danube nearest the ramparts, and the Turkish Agha, Cefulah Capichi Pasha, had disembarked with a retinue of about twenty people. Suitable lodgings had been provided for them on the island. To tell the truth, it was not entirely clear just what the Ambassador of the Sublime Porte had come to do in Vienna.

There had been peace with the Ottomans for several years now, since 11th September 1697, when Prince Eugene had thoroughly defeated them at the Battle of Zenta and forced them to accept the subsequent Peace of Karlowitz. War was now raging, not with the Infidel but with Catholic France over the question of the Spanish throne; relations with the Porte, usually so troubled, seemed to be tranquil. Even in restless Hungary, where the imperial armies had fought for centuries against the armies of Mahomet, the princes who had rebelled against the Emperor, usually chafing and combative, seemed to have been finally tamed by our beloved Joseph I, who was not known as “the Victorious” for nothing.

Despite this, in the second half of March an urgent courier had come from Constantinople bearing an announcement for the Most Serene Prince Eugene of an extraordinary embassy of the Turkish Agha, which was to arrive before the end of the same month. The Grand Vizir, Mehmet Pasha, must have taken the decision at the very last moment, as he had been unable to send a courier providing suitable advance warning. This had seriously upset the Prince’s plans: since the middle of the month everything had been ready for his departure for The Hague, the theatre of war.

The Grand Vizir’s decision cannot have been an easy one: as was pointed out in a pamphlet which I had picked up somewhere, in the winter it can take up to four months of hard and dangerous travelling to get from Constantinople to Vienna, passing not only through accessible places like Hadrianopolis, Philippopolis and Nicopolis but also filthy ones like Sofia, where the horses find themselves knee-deep in mud on the roads, through wretched villages in the uncultivated and unpopulated plains like the Ottoman Selivrea and Kinigli, or Bulgarian Hisardschik, Dragoman and Calcali, or fortified palankas, like Pasha Palanka, Lexinza and Raschin, crumbling border castles where the Sultan had left handfuls of Turkish soldiers to moulder away in long-forgotten idleness. .

No, the real difficulty of the journey lay in passing through the jaws of the Bulgarian mountains, narrow gorges, with room for just one carriage at a time; it lay in facing the equally fearsome pass of the Trajan Gate, following terrible roads, deep in thick, clinging mud, often mixed with rocks, and battling against snow and ice and winds strong enough to overturn carriages. And in crossing the Sava and the Morava, the latter tumbling into the Danube at Semendria, eight hours below Belgrade, rivers that in winter have no bridges, whether of planks or boats, since they usually get swept away by the autumn floods. And then, already worn out by the journey, entrusting oneself to the icy waters of the Danube on board Turkish caiques, with the constant danger that the ice might crack — perhaps, to crown it all, just beneath the terrible pass of the Iron Gate, most dreadful especially when the water is low.

It was no wonder that, ever since the first Ottoman embassies, it had become traditional to undertake the journey during the summer months, spending the winter in Vienna and then setting out again the following spring. There had been no exceptions to this rule on the Ottoman side, given the extreme dangers of a winter journey. And in Vienna they still remembered with fear and trembling the misadventures that had befallen them, after the Peace of Karlowitz had been concluded on 26th January 1699, during the mission of the State Councillor, Chamberlain, and President of the Noble Imperial Council Lord Wolffgang Count of Ottingen, sent by his Caesarean Majesty, Emperor Leopold I, as his Grand Ambassador to the Sublime Ottoman Porte. Ottingen, who had taken far too long in preparing his journey, had not departed until 20th October, with a retinue of 280 people, sailing out on the Danube towards Constantinople, and — after reaching the inhospitable mountains of Bulgaria around Christmas — had truly, as they say, been through the mill.

Despite this, and against all tradition, the Turkish Agha had set out in the depths of winter: the Grand Vizir must have a truly urgent embassy to communicate to Prince Eugene! And this had aroused a good deal of alarm in the court and among the Viennese people. Every day they watched the shores of the Danube anxiously, waiting to hear the distant fanfare of the janissaries and to catch the first sight of the seventy or more boats bearing the Agha and his numerous retinue. About five hundred people were expected: at any rate not less than three hundred, as had always been the case for over a century.

The Turkish Agha did not arrive until 7th April, over a week late. On that day the tension was palpable: even Emperor Joseph I had considered it politically wise to give the Turks an indirect sign of his benevolence, and had gone with the ruling family to visit the church of the Barefoot Carmelites, which was in the same quarter, the island of St Leopold in the Danube, where the Turks were to lodge. When the Agha landed on the island, to the accompaniment of waving flags, resounding drums and pipes, the Viennese were amazed to discover that he had no more than twenty people in his retinue! As I was to read later, he had brought with him, in addition to the interpreter, only the closest members of his household: the court prefect, the treasurer, the secretary, the first chamberlain, the groom, the head cook, the coffee-maker and the imam, who, the pamphlet noted with surprise, was not a Turk but an Indian dervish. Servants, cooks, grooms and others had been engaged among the Ottomans in Belgrade, like the two janissaries who acted respectively as standard-bearer and ammunition-bearer for the Agha. The reduction of the retinue had meant that it had taken the Agha only two months to reach Vienna; he had set off from Constantinople on 7th February.

That morning, the embassy — entering the city by the bridge known as Battle Bridge, and then passing below the Red Tower, skirting the square known as Lugeck and the Cathedral of St Stephen — was to make its entrance into the palace of the Most Serene Prince, who for that purpose had sent a six-horse carriage, with another four horses saddled and harnessed in gold and silver for the members of his court.

I rushed out. Just in time. Before the curious eyes of the crowd, the convoy had turned from Carinthia Street into our road, led on horseback by the lieutenant of the guards, Officer Herlitska, and followed by twenty soldiers of the city guard assigned for the protection of the embassy during their entire stay. But I had to stop and press myself against the wall of the house at the corner between Porta Coeli and Carinthia Street, on account of the dust raised by the procession, the great flock of spectators and the approaching horses. First came the carriage of the Caesarean Commissioner for Victualling, which had met the Turkish embassy on the border, at the so-called Ceremony of Exchange, and had escorted it towards the capital; then — to the amazement of all — came a strange horseman of advanced, though indefinable age, who, as I gathered from the crowd, was the Indian dervish, followed by three Chiaus on horseback — the Turkish judicial officers, one of whom was riding on the right, with his horse being led by two servants on foot. This Chiaus was theatrically brandishing in both hands his letter of accreditation from the Grand Vizir, all wrapped in green taffeta embroidered with silver flowers and set on ruby-red satin with the seal of the Grand Vizir in red wax and a capsule of pure gold. To his left rode the interpreter of the Sublime Porte.

Finally we saw the six-horse carriage sent by Prince Eugene, inside which the crowd recognised, with a buzz of uneasy curiosity, the Turkish Agha, wearing a great turban, a robe of yellow satin and a smock of red cloth lined with sable. Sitting opposite him was — as I gathered from the conversation of two little women beside me — the Caesarean interpreter. Alongside the carriage, puffing and panting and elbowing their way through the crowd, ran two footmen of the Prince and four servants of the Agha, followed by another Turkish cavalier, who was said to be the first chamberlain. The rear was brought up by other members of the Agha’s household, followed by soldiers of the city guard.

I approached the Prince’s palace myself. As I imagined, as soon as I reached the great front door I ran into Cloridia, who was holding an animated discussion with two Turkish footmen.

As I have already mentioned, thanks to the good offices of the convent’s Chormaisterin, Camilla de’ Rossi, my consort had found a job, temporary but well paid, of a certain prestige: thanks to her origins she understood and spoke Turkish quite well, and also the lingua franca, that idiom not unlike Italian, imported into Constantinople by the Genoese and the Venetians centuries ago, which the Ottomans often speak among themselves. Cloridia had therefore been taken on to act as intermediary between the staff of the embassy and Prince Eugene’s servants, a task that certainly could not be carried out by the two interpreters appointed to translate the official speeches of the two great leaders.

“All right, but no more than a jugful. Just one, is that clear?” said Cloridia, concluding the squabble with the footman.

I looked at her questioningly: although she had said the last few words in Italian, the Turkish footman had given her a sly smile of comprehension.

“He was taken prisoner at Zenta and during his imprisonment learned a little Italian,” explained Cloridia, while the man disappeared inside the great door of the palace. “Wine, wine, they’re always wanting to drink. I promised that I would get a jugful for them secretly, I’ll ask the sisters at Porta Coeli. But just one, mind you! Otherwise the Agha will find out and have both their heads cut off. And to think that every day the Commissioner for Victualling provides three okkas of wine, two of beer and a half of mulled wine for the Armenians, the Greeks and the Jews in the Agha’s retinue. What I say is: why don’t these Turks all convert to Our Lord’s religion, which even allows the priests to drink wine in church?”

Then Cloridia turned towards the convent.

“Do you want me to get the wine?” I asked.

“That would be good. Ask the pantry sister to send a jug of the worst stuff, Liesing or Stockerau, which they use to clean wounds in the infirmary, so the Agha’s footmen don’t get too fond of it.”

The great doors of the palace were closing. Cloridia ran inside and threw me a last smiling glance before the doors shut on her.

What a wonderful change in my wife, I thought, standing in front of the closed door, now that things had turned out so well for us. The last two years, full of hardships and privations of all kinds, had sapped her strength and hardened her character, once so serene and gay. But now the line of her mouth, the bloom of her cheeks, the expression of her forehead, the light in her complexion, the glossiness of her hair: everything was as it had been before the famine. Although the tiny wrinkles of age and suffering had not completely vanished from her delicate face, just as they furrowed my own, they had at least lost their leaden bitterness and were even in harmony with her cheerful physiognomy. For all this I had only Abbot Melani to thank.

The twisted and crazed thread that linked me, my wife and Atto to Rome and Vienna — I thought as I made my way to the convent’s pantry — actually led in a third direction: the Ottoman lands. The shadow of the Sublime Porte hung over my entire life. And not only because eleven years earlier, when I was working in the villa of Cardinal Spada, we servants had served dinner in the garden dressed up as janissaries for the amusement and delectation of the guests, including Abbot Melani. No, everything began with Cloridia’s origins: daughter of a Turkish slave, born in Rome and baptised with the name Maria, kidnapped in adolescence and taken to Amsterdam, where she had grown up, under the name of Cloridia, tarnished, alas, by the sin of trafficking her own body, before returning to Rome in search of her father, and at last finding — praise be to God — love and wedlock with my humble self. As I have already said, we had met at the Inn of the Donzello, where I was then working, in September 1683, just when the famous battle between Christians and Infidels was being fought out at the gates of Vienna, in which, by the grace of heaven, the forces of the True Faith had triumphed. And it was at that same time that I had met Atto Melani, who was also staying at the Donzello.

Cloridia had finally narrated to me the vicissitudes she had endured after being torn from her father. But she had never wished to confide anything more about her mother. “I never knew her,” she had lied to me at the beginning of our acquaintance, afterwards letting fall little half-sentences, like the fact that the smell of coffee reminded her strongly of her mother, and finally cutting short my curiosity by saying that she could remember “nothing about her, not even her face.”

It was not from Cloridia, but from the events of those days at the Donzello that I had learned the few things I did know about her mother: a slave of the powerful Odelscachi family, the same family for which her father had worked, shortly before Cloridia’s kidnapping she had been sold to some unknown person, and her father had been unable to oppose the transaction, since he had never married her, precisely because she was a slave.

But I had never found out anything about my wife’s infancy with her mother. Her face would cloud over as soon as I or our daughters showed any curiosity.

It was with great surprise that she had received the Chormaisterin’s proposal to work for the Savoys as an intermediary with the Agha’s serving staff. She had thrown me a dark look, indicating that she could guess who had told Camilla about her Ottoman blood. .

And I was equally amazed, having no idea till that moment that my wife knew Turkish so well! The perceptive Chormaisterin, on the other hand, on hearing of the Ottoman embassy, had immediately thought of Cloridia for the job, already certain of her linguistic abilities; this was a surprise, since I had clearly stated that Cloridia had been separated from her mother at a very early age.

As I arrived in the convent cloisters, I only just avoided a collision with two porters as they staggered under the weight of an enormous trunk which was threatening to scrape the plaster from the walls, to the extreme displeasure of the old nun at the door.

“Your master must have packed clothes for the next ten years,” grumbled the sister, clearly referring to some guest who had just arrived.

13 of the clock: luncheon hour for noblemen (while in Rome they have only just awoken). Court employees are already flocking to the coffee shops and performances begin in the theatres.

This day was doubly important. Not only had Cloridia begun her job at the palace of a prince, a distinguished condottiero and counsellor of the Emperor, but I myself was about to embark upon my task in the service of the Most August Joseph I. After the harsh winter months and a scarcely less icy start to spring, the first warm days had arrived; the snow had melted around Vienna and the moment had come to take charge of the chimneys and the flues of the abandoned Caesarean building, the task for which I had obtained so desirable an appointment: chimney-sweep by licence of the court.

As I have had occasion to mention, the harsh atmospheric conditions of the previous months had made it impossible to carry out any work in a large building like the one I had been told awaited me. Furthermore, a thaw in the upper stretches of the Danube had broken all the bridges and brought down huge quantities of ice, swelling the river and doing great damage to the gardens in the suburbs. And so some of the less envious chimney-sweeps had strongly advised me against visiting the building until the clement weather arrived.

On that beautiful morning early in April — although the temperature was still severe, at least for me — the sun was shining, and I decided the time had come: I would begin to take charge of His Majesty’s abandoned property.

Seizing the occasion, the Chormaisterin had asked a small favour of me: the nun who acted as bursar at Porta Coeli wanted me to have a look, as soon as I could, at the buttery that the convent owned in its vineyards at Simmering, not far from the place I would be visiting. It was very large and contained a little room with a fireplace, the chimney of which needed sweeping. I was given the keys to the buttery and I promised Camilla that I would see to it as soon as possible.

I had already told our assistant to harness the mule and to fill the cart with all the necessary tools. I picked up my son and went out into the street. I found the assistant waiting for me, sitting on the box seat, with his usual broad smile.

A master chimney-sweep, in addition to an apprentice, must have a Geselle — which is to say, an assistant, jobber, or servant boy, whatever you want to call him. Mine was Greek, and I had met him for the first time at the convent of Porta Coeli, where he acted as factotum: servant, odd-job man and messenger. It was Simonis, the talkative young idiot who, two months earlier, had accompanied Cloridia and me to our meeting with the notary.

As soon as he had heard that I owned a chimney-sweeping business, Simonis had asked me if I needed a hand. His temporary job clearing the cellars at Porta Coeli was about to end and Camilla herself had warmly recommended him, assuring me that he was much less of an idiot than he seemed. And so I had engaged him. He would keep his little room at Porta Coeli until my house was ready at the Josephina, then he would come and live with me and my wife, as assistants usually do with their master.

As the days went by we had a few short conversations, if I can so term the laborious verbal exchanges between Simonis, whose grasp of reasoning was shaky, and myself, whose grasp of the language was even more so. Simonis, perennially good-humoured, would ask countless questions, most of them fairly ingenuous, intermingled with a few friendly quips. When I understood these latter, they served, at least, to put me at my ease and make me appreciate the company of this scatterbrained but gentle Greek, amid the Nordic coarseness of the Viennese.

With his corvine fringe hanging down over his forehead, his glaucous eyes fixed rigidly on his interlocutor, his facial features, which would suddenly turn grave, it was never clear to me whether Simonis followed my answers to his questions, or whether his mind was seriously obfuscated. His protruding upper teeth, vaguely rabbit-like, were always exposed to the air, covering much of his lower lip, and he held his right forearm out in front of himself, but with his wrist bent so that his hand dangled downwards, as if the limb had been maimed by a sword blow or some other accident; these features inclined one to the latter hypothesis — that Simonis was a boy of fine character and goodwill, but with very little presence of mind.

This suspicion was corroborated by my sudden discovery, one day, that my young assistant understood, and spoke, my own language.

Tired of mumbling half-sentences in German, one day, as we were cleaning a particularly problematic flue, I was about to slip and, taken by surprise, I yelled in Italian for him to help me, pulling on the rope that was holding me up.

“Don’t worry, Signor Master, I’ll pull you up!” he immediately reassured me, in my own language.

“You speak Italian.”

“Yes,” he answered with candid terseness.

“Why did you never tell me?”

“You never asked me, Signor Master.”

And so it was that I discovered that Simonis was not in Vienna in search of some little job to make ends meet, but for a far nobler reason: he was a student. Of medicine, to be precise. Simonis Rimanopoulos (this was his surname) had begun his studies at the University of Bologna, which explained his knowledge of Italian, but then the famine of the year 1709 and the prospect of a less impoverished life had sent him — reasonably enough — to the opulent city of Vienna and its ancient university, the Alma Mater Rudolphina, on which students from Hungary, Poland, eastern Germany and many other countries converged.

Simonis belonged to the well-known category of Bettelstudenten — poor students, those without family support, who maintained themselves by all sorts of expedients, including, if necessary, mendicancy.

It had been a stroke of luck for Simonis that I had hired him: in Vienna the Bettelstudenten were not looked on with favour. Despite the frequent edicts published, vagabond students were often to be seen — together with others who joined them, but who were not really students — begging in the streets and in front of the churches and houses night and day, even during lesson times. Under cover of studying, they loafed about, pilfering and thieving. Everyone remembered the tumult that had broken out between 17th and 18th January 1706 both within and without the city, and also at Nussdorf; strict (though fruitless) investigations into this affair were still being carried out so that the culprits might be punished harshly. These students tarnished the good name of the other students and His Caesarean Majesty had issued numerous resolutions, with the aim of uprooting once and for all this lamentable practice of betteln, or begging — which was the word for lounging about and succumbing to vice under the pretext of study. After the tumults of five years earlier, the rector, the Caesarean superintendents and the assembly of the ancient University of Vienna had been commanded to issue a special edict giving a final warning to the Bettelstudenten who were roaming around and not studying: within fourteen days they had to leave the Caesarean capital. If they failed to do so they would be seized by the guards and taken ad Carceres Academicos, to the university prisons, where suitable punishment would be meted out. Those impoverished students, on the other hand, who daily and continuously applied themselves to their studies, had to seek a study grant in the Alumnates or some other means of sustenance; only those who were unable, because of the numbers, to obtain such assistance, or those who were following a particularly demanding course of study and for the moment had no other choice than to seek alms outside lesson times, would be allowed to continue in this fashion — but only for their bare necessities and until the arrival of new orders. In addition they must always carry with them the badge identifying them as true Bettelstudenten, which they must get renewed every month by the university and wear on their chests while begging. Otherwise they would not be recognised as genuine poor students but as vagabond students, and so be immediately incarcerated.

This explains why Simonis had offered himself as an assistant chimney-sweep: the risk of having to beg for alms to survive, and consequently ending up in prison, was always lurking.

But how that mild and simple spirit had managed to learn my own language so well and, above all, how the devil he managed to study (and at the university, no less) — these matters remained a mystery.

“Signor Master, do you want me to drive the cart, as I know the way?”

I had, indeed, only the vaguest idea where the Caesarean property lay: in the plain of Simmering, a flat area of grassland south-east of Vienna near the village of Ebersdorf. The exact name, as it appeared in the deed of appointment, was nothing if not exotic: “the Place with No Name known as Neugebäu”, or the New Building. I had tried to question my workmates, but I had received only vague answers, partly of course because my imperial appointment had not made me popular. No one had been able to give me a clear idea of the building I was about to inspect. “I’ve never been there,” said one, “but I think it’s a kind of villa”. “Even though I’ve never seen it, I know it’s a garden,” said another. “It’s a hunting lodge,” swore another, while the next one defined it “a bird enclosure.” One thing was certain: none of my fellow chimney-sweeps had ever visited the place, nor did they appear to have any wish to set foot there.

It was a long way to the Place with No Name. And so I was perfectly happy to leave the mule’s reins in Simonis’s hands. My little boy had asked, and had been allowed, to sit on the box seat, alongside the Greek, who every so often let him hold the reins to teach him how to drive the cart. I settled myself behind them, among the tools.

My son gradually dozed off and I secured him to the cart with a rope, so that he would not fall off. Simonis drove with a firm and methodical hand. Strangely, he kept silent. He seemed absorbed.

In the open country, as we headed towards the plain of Simmering, there was no noise but the rattling of the cartwheels and the clatter of the mule’s hooves.

All things considered, I reflected with a smile as I gazed absently at the monotonous panorama and yielded to the drowsiness of the middle of the day, on board the cart were three children: my little son; myself, a child in stature; and Simonis, who had remained an infant in mental capacity.

“We’re here, Signor Master.”

I woke up numb and aching where the tools had pressed into me while I dozed. We were in a large abandoned courtyard. While Simonis and the little boy got down and began to unload the tools, I looked around. We had entered via a large gateway; looking back I could make out the road we must have travelled along through the open country.

“We’re inside the Place with No Name,” stated the Greek, observing my still glazed eyes. “Through that arch is the entrance to the main building.”

In front of us an archway led to a low outbuilding and gave onto another open area beyond. To our right, a little door in the wall revealed a spiral staircase. Looking upwards to the left I could see castellated walls and, to my surprise, a hexagonal tower whose roof was adorned with curious pinnacles. Everything — the tower, the gateway, the arch, the merlons — was in bright white stone such as I had never seen, and which dazzled my eyes, still heavy with sleep.

“This leads down to the cellars,” announced my little apprentice.

He had been running around exploring things and had stopped in front of a blanched semicircular keep of unexpected shape, actually a kind of apse, from which there extended a long construction that could be glimpsed through the arch and which was apparently the main building.

“Good,” I answered, since one always starts cleaning the flues from the cellars.

I got down from the cart and, like Simonis, armed myself with tools. Then we joined my son.

We crossed the threshold of what did in fact appear to be the entrance to a cellar and then descended a staircase. The ceiling was low, with a barrel vault, and the walls were imposing. A door at the bottom led into a great space that was completely empty: rather than abandoned, it looked incomplete, as if they had never finished building it.

While my two assistants groped the walls looking for the opening of a flue, I went ahead. Dazzled by the light outside, my pupils had not yet adjusted to the growing darkness and suddenly I found my nose pressed up against something cold, heavy and greasy. Instinctively I rubbed my nose and looked at my fingertips: they were red. Then I screwed up my eyes and peered.

It was dangling from a rope that hung from the ceiling and was swaying gently from where I had knocked it. It was the trunk of a bleeding corpse, naked, legless, headless and armless, and blackish blood was trickling from it onto the floor. It was attached to the rope by a great rusty piece of iron that pierced the body right through. It must have been flayed alive, I thought in a flash of lucid horror, since those parts that were not dripping blood were bright red, revealing nerves and bands of whitish fat.

Appalled by what I had seen, while my chimney-sweep’s tools fell to the floor in a jangling clatter, with all the breath I had in my body I yelled to Simonis to run for it, bearing my son to safety without waiting for me — and then I fled myself.

I saw Simonis obeying me with the speed of lightning. Without any idea why, he lifted the little boy onto his shoulders and pelted away on his long legs. I hoped I would make it as well, even though my own legs were far from long. My hopes proved vain. I emerged into the sunlight and saw Simonis already disappearing over the horizon, lashing wildly at the mule — and then I heard it.

It was not very different from the way I had imagined it a thousand times: a tremendous bellowing, which makes men and beasts and all things tremble.

I had no time to realise what direction it came from: a powerful paw sweep knocked me sideways. I tumbled to the ground, fortunately well away, and as I rolled I heard the roar again. It was then that I saw it approaching: Prince of Terror, Mauler of Flesh; even as I recognised the demoniacal eyes, the lurid mane, the bloody canines, I was running for my life, stumbling at every pace, moaning with terror and unable to believe my eyes. In that lonely place outside Vienna, on that frosty crisp day of early spring, in the cold north above the Alps, I was being chased by a lion.

I dashed into the little doorway immediately to my left, and with the speed of lightning I pelted down the spiral staircase. I found myself in a little open area. I heard the beast faltering for just a second or two and then come roaring after me, and I made my way into a large roofless building in search of some means of escape.

I thought I was in the middle of an incomprehensible nightmare when I suddenly found myself in front of. . a sailing ship.

It was smaller than usual but unmistakeable. And that was not all: it was in the shape of a bird of prey, complete with head and beak, wings and tail fins, with a flag attached to these latter.

Certain now that I must be the victim of some envious demon and his lethal conjuring tricks, I leaped onto the feathery tail of that absurd vessel, with the desperate idea of yanking the flagpole from its place and using it as a weapon to ward off the lion, whose roar continued to set my flesh and all around me trembling.

Unfortunately, despite my chimney-sweep’s agility and slim build, my age told against me. The animal was faster: in a few bounds it had reached me and launched itself with a final pounce onto its prey.

But it failed. It had not managed to leap high enough to catch me. Yielding perhaps to the lion’s assaults, the feathered ship began to sway and its oscillations grew wider and wider. The lion tried again with a higher leap. It was no use. The more the lion leaped, the smaller it seemed to become. While I clung with all my strength to the wooden feathers, the ship was now pitching and rolling dizzily, and its bizarre sail — a kind of dome that formed the back of the bird — twisted and swelled with cavernous gulps of air.

The world was whirling frantically around me and my terror-distorted senses told me that the absurd carved bird was taking flight.

It was then that I heard someone declaim threateningly in the Teutonic idiom:

“Bad Mustafa! Straight to bed with no supper!”

His name was Frosch, he stank of wine and the lion crouched tranquilly at his feet.

He explained that the animal loved the company of men and so, whenever anyone turned up round those parts, it had the bad habit of greeting them with roars of joy and playful leaps in its desire to lick them.

The Place with No Name, known as Neugebäu, was not just any place, he clarified. It had been built about a century and a half ago, by His Caesarean Majesty of honoured memory Emperor Maximilian II, and the only thing it retained today of its former splendour was the imperial menagerie, which was rich in exotic animals, especially wild beasts. As he spoke, he stroked the enormous lion, now fortunately listless and decrepit, which just a few moments before had seemed to me an invincible brute.

“Bad Mustafa, you’ve been bad!” Frosch kept scolding it, while the lion docilely let him put a chain round its neck and gazed sidelong at me. “I’m sorry that he scared you so,” he finally apologised.

Frosch was the keeper of the menagerie of the Place with No Name. He looked after the lions, but also other animals. While he introduced himself, my legs were still trembling like reeds. Frosch offered me a sip from his flask, which he swigged from frequently. I refused: if I thought back to the bleeding corpse I might well throw up.

Frosch guessed my thoughts and reassured me: it was just a piece of mutton, put there to attract the lion, as it had just run away from him and could have gone anywhere.

Unfortunately, these explanations were offered to me in the only language the keeper knew, that guttural German, cavernous and corrupt, spoken by the humblest inhabitants of Vienna. I am reporting our dialogue as if it had been a normal conversation, instead of a confused babel, with me asking him to repeat every other sentence, provoking a series of impatient snorts from Frosch and, as he drew from his flask of schnaps (the robust liquor with which he kept up his spirits), the occasional vexed burp.

“Italian. Chimney-sweep,” I introduced myself in my primitive German, “I. . clean chimneys castle.”

Frosch was pleased to hear why I was there. It was time some emperor took care of Neugebäu again. Now only he and the animals lived there, he concluded, waving his hand at Mustafa, who was polishing off the remains of the mutton with great gusto.

Every so often the keeper would frown at the lion, and Mustafa (the name was chosen out of contempt for the Infidel Turks) would appear to shrink, in humble contrition. The gruff keeper seemed to exercise an invincible influence over the beast. He assured me that I ran no risk now: while Frosch was present, all the animals obeyed blindly. Certainly there were some rare exceptions, he admitted in a low tone, since the lion had escaped from his control and had been wandering around freely until just a while ago.

So I was not in a terrible nightmare, I thought with a sigh of relief, while I prepared to clamber down from my mount. I had another look at it, sure that my eyes would now show me something less absurd than the sailing ship in the form of a bird of prey that I had thought I had beheld in those moments of terror.

But no. What I now saw was a mysterious object, and I would not have known whether to describe it as a monster, a machine or a ghost.

It was a cross between a ship and a wagon, between a bird of prey and a cetacean. It had the solid form of a barrow, the capacious hull of a barge, and the unblemished sail of a naval vessel. At the prow, there was the proud head of a gryphon, with a hooked, rapacious beak; at the stern, the caudal fins of a great kite; at the sides the powerful pinions of an eagle. It was as long as two carriages, and as broad as a felucca. Its wood was old and worn, but not rotten. On board, in the middle of a broad space shaped like a bathtub, there was room for three or four people, in addition to the helmsman. At the prow and stern were two rudimentary wooden globes, half corroded by time, one representing the celestial spheres and the other the earth, as if to suggest the route to the pilot. The whole ship (if it really could be defined such) was covered by a great sail, the frame of which gave it a semi-spherical shape. At the stern was the flag, which I had vainly endeavoured to pull out; it bore a coat of arms, surmounted by a cross.

“It’s the flag of the Kingdom of Portugal,” Frosch clarified.

There was only one thing that I had dreamt: the ship was not hovering in the air but rested solidly on the ground.

I asked him in wonder what on earth this bizarre vehicle was and how it had got there.

By way of answer, as if fearing that the explanation would prove too long, or implausible, he rummaged in a corner of the room and thrust a heap of papers under my nose. It was an old gazette.

Even in the most difficult languages, reading is less arduous than conversing. So I sat down on the ground and managed to decipher the pamphlet, which bore a date of about two years earlier:

News of the Flying Ship that successfully arrived in Vienna from Portugal with its inventor on 24th June

New edition for the Fair of Naumburg subsequent to the exemplar already printed.

Year 1709

Vienna, 24th June 1709

Yesterday around 9 of the clock the whole city was in great alarm and agitation. Every road was full of people, those who were not in the streets were at the windows, and were asking what was amiss. Hardly anyone, however, could give an account of what had occurred, people ran hither and thither, shouting and crying: the Day of Judgement is upon us. Others believed it to be an earthquake, while yet others swore that an entire army of Turks was at the gates of the city. Finally in the sky there appeared a great number of birds, both large and small, which, as it first appeared, were flying around another very large bird, and were quarrelling with it. This tumult began to descend earthwards, and everyone now saw that the cause of this chaos, which had been taken for a bird, was in fact a machine in the form of a ship, with a sail, which was stretched out above it and which swayed in the wind, and on board of which was a man in the habit of a monk, who with several pistol shots announced his arrival.

After circulating in the sky, this Cavalier of the air revealed that his intention was to set himself down on the ground in an open space in this city, but there suddenly arose a wind, which not only impeded his project, but drove him towards the summit of the bell tower of St Stephen’s Cathedral, and caused the sail to entangle itself around said tower, so that the ship became immobilised there. This event aroused a fresh clamour among the townspeople, who ran towards the square of the bell tower, so that at least twenty people were trampled in the affray.

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the man suspended in the air, but that was certainly of no assistance to him, since he was asking for help, and to that end it was hands that were needed. After observing what was happening in the city for a couple of hours, since no one could assist him, he became impatient, picked up the hammer and other tools that he had with him on the ship and set to work hammering and striking, until the top of the Bell Tower which had blocked him became detached and fell. Thus he took flight again and, after swaying to and fro for a while, with great dexterity brought his Flying Ship to earth not far from the Imperial Palace. At once a company of soldiers from the garrison of this city was sent there to take the new arrival under their protection, for otherwise the curious townsfolk would have trampled him underfoot.

He was taken to the inn of the Black Eagle, where he was able to rest for a few hours, after which he delivered some letters he had with him, and he recounted to the Ambassador of Portugal and to other Noblemen who had called to visit him in what fashion he had set off from Lisbon at six in the morning the previous day in the Flying Machine of his own invention, what great difficulties and adventures he had experienced with eagles, storks, birds of Paradise and other species, with which he had been forced to combat unceasingly, declaring that without the two shotguns and the four rifles that he had with him, and which he had had to use constantly, he would not have survived.

When he passed close to the moon, so he recounted, he realised that he had been sighted himself, which aroused a great tumult on the Moon; and since his flight had brought him very close to the Lunar Planet, he was able to see and distinguish everything and, as far as his haste permitted him, he noted that on it there are mountains and valleys, lakes and rivers and fields, and even living creatures, and men who, so he said, have hands like men down here, but no feet, and who slide on the ground like snails, and bear on their backs a shield like that of tortoises, into which they can withdraw their whole body and take shelter. And since in this way they have no need of any dwelling space, he thought that it was for this reason that on the planet Moon there is not a single house, nor a castle. According to him, if the Kingdom of the Moon were attacked with forty or fifty Flying Ships like the one he had invented, each with four or five armed men, it could be conquered with great ease, and without encountering great resistance. It will be seen later whether His Royal Majesty of Portugal will wish to undertake such a conquest.

I will make known with the next courier what else I can find out about this new Theseus. His Machine has been taken to the arsenal.

P.S.

I have just been informed that the so-called Flying Navigator has been incarcerated, as a Magician and Sorcerer of the first rank, and it appears that he will be burned with great urgency together with his Pegasus; this is perhaps to keep his art secret, since if it became common knowledge it could cause great trouble in the world.

I asked him if the winged sailing ship which lay abandoned in the Place with No Name was really the glying ship spoken of in the dispatch. By way of answer Frosch handed me another piece of paper. This time it was an illustration taken from an old issue of the Diary of Vienna.

There was not the shadow of a doubt: it was a faithful drawing of the ship. It was accompanied by a short account dated 1st June 1709:

There has arrived here at the Caesarean Court from Portugal a courier with letters of 4th May and the present illustration of a device for flying, capable of travelling two hundred miles in twenty-four hours and with which war troops, letters, reinforcements, provisions and money could be sent even to the farthest lands, and in addition places under siege could be supplied with all necessities, including goods and commerce. A document has been shown which was presented to His Majesty the King of Portugal by a Brazilian priest, inventor of the aircraft. On 24th June next a trial flight will be essayed in Lisbon.

I felt a jolt in my heart: had that sailing ship really flown, as I had believed it to be doing in my desperate agitation?

It was no surprise that the ship had come from Portugal, Frosch went on to explain: just a year earlier, in 1708, the king of that country had married one of Joseph’s sisters, Anna Maria. The ship had remained for a few months in the city arsenal, until the emotions aroused by its arrival had calmed down. Meanwhile the city authorities, as was reported in the gazette, had done all they could to hush the matter up. Nothing had been recounted to the Emperor: Joseph was very young, lively in spirit and enterprising; he had already become overexcited at the sight of the drawings brought to him by the Portuguese courier. He would certainly have wanted to see and study the diabolical invention, and this, in the opinion of the old ministers, was to be avoided at all costs. No one must know. The Flying Ship was dangerous, and could provoke turmoil and disorder.

I was amazed at these words: had not man dreamt for centuries of cleaving the air like a bird? It was no surprise that Frosch’s gazette compared the Flying Ship to the mythical Pegasus, the winged ship from the ancient Greek sagas, and its pilot to the heroic Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur. Nonetheless, the gazette openly condemned the poor aerial wayfarer, who had even been incarcerated. I myself would have given my own soul to find out how he had flown, and where he had obtained his knowledge. I asked the keeper if he knew anything. He shook his head.

Once the matter had been hushed up, he continued, the caravel of the air was secretly transported outside Vienna, to the abandoned castle. Nobody was likely to go snooping around there. And if it were to be needed one day, it could always be salvaged.

I walked around the boat, and then boarded it, clambering up on one of the wings, which were carved in wood like the tail and the bird’s head, and which served almost as gangplanks.

Overhead were ropes supported by four poles, two at the prow and two at the stern, similar to the cords one uses to hang washing. Only it was not clothes that were hung from them, but stones. They were little yellow things that sparkled, and they were secured to the ropes with little pieces of string. Not being able to reach them with my hand, I screwed up my eyes, trying to make out what material they were made of, and suddenly I realised:

“Amber. It’s amber. Good Lord, it’s beautiful, it looks like good quality. It must cost an arm and a leg. Why on earth have they been put there. .”

Once again I glanced at Frosch; I could tell from his face he had no idea what purpose the stones served.

I climbed down and examined the mysterious vessel again. The curious machine, to tell the truth, was not in the pitiful state to which a prolonged exposure to rain, wind and sun might have reduced it. The wood was actually in good condition; it was as if, every so often, someone had rubbed it over with a protective oily varnish, like the one I had seen fishermen brush their boats with on the Tiber in Rome. Then I noticed that the surface of the hull was not flat and smooth, like the fishing boats. It was made up of rectilinear tubes that ran the whole length from prow to stern, as if the craft were nothing more than a bundle of pipes.

I tapped my knuckles on one of the tubes. It sounded hollow, as did the others that I tried. The tubes had moulded openings towards the prow as if they were supposed to collect something. At the stern — which is to say, at the tail end of these tubes — were trumpet-like openings, which appeared to be made to channel upwards — and so towards the sail that covered the whole boat — what was collected at the prow.

I had a look at the mast, which was still upright, at the proud prow, and at the small graceful deck. Here and there planks had been replaced, cracks patched up, loose nails fixed. Under close inspection, the small ship did not appear damaged or derelict. It was just out of commission, as if in the Place with No Name it had found a dock where it could be fixed, and perhaps also an attentive ship-boy to look after it.

“It’s a small ship in every sense,” I remarked, as I stroked the keel meditatively, which was not at all worn.

“Right, a ship of fools!” quipped the keeper with a coarse laugh.

At those words I gave a start.

I wanted to get away. The afternoon’s events had prostrated me. What was more, I was now on foot: Simonis had fled with the cart to take my little boy to safety. I had a long walk ahead of me. I would come back the next day to start work. I told Frosch so, asking him to look after the chimney-sweeping tools that I had left in the cellar when I took to my heels.

Before leaving, I gave a last look at the building we were in. As I had already noticed, it had no roof. But it was only then that I realised how enormous this space was — as broad, long and tall as an entire palace.

“What is. . What is this place?” I asked in surprise.

“The ball stadium,” answered Frosch.

And he explained (although, I repeat, it was not always easy for me to follow his idiom) that in the days of Emperor Maximilian, the founder of the Place with No Name, the ball game imported from Italy had become popular among the great lords. In this recreation the players faced one another with a sort of wooden sheath on their arms, with which they competed for a leather ball, slamming it vigorously, like cannon shots, trying to get the better of their adversaries. Frosch added with a snigger that wearing your guts out over a ball was ridiculous, and unsuited to the court of a Caesar, and a game of this sort was bound to be forgotten forever, and this, indeed, was what had happened; but in those remote times the pastime must have had quite a following, because otherwise such a generous space would not have been set aside for it.

Frosch was a wild-looking man with a big pear-shaped face, which was grey down to his nose and rubicund below the cheeks, with a greying moustache, pale eyes, a large belly and hands as large and rough as shovels. He was not likeable, I thought, but nor was he bad. He was a man to be treated with circumspection, like his wild animals: animals are capricious by nature, man becomes so through a thoughtless love of alcohol. Frosch could tame lions, but not his own thirst.

Throughout our conversation I had kept an eye on Mustafa, incredulous that such an enormous beast, however poorly in appearance, was allowed to stay outside a cage. He tore his meat to pieces, ravaging it with his fearsome fangs and claws; only an attentive eye revealed his advanced age and the lack of that vital force which, had it still been present, would have been the end of me just a few minutes earlier.

Pulling the lion by his chain, the keeper led him out of the stadium. He announced that before I set to work it would perhaps be prudent if he showed me around the place and the other beasts locked up there. He suggested that we should take a short tour, so that I would avoid any other nasty surprises tomorrow. I agreed, although with a touch of anxiety at that word “prudent”, which Frosch had stressed.

“No one ever comes to check up on things here,” remarked the keeper disconsolately.

Unfortunately it was very rare for an imperial commissioner to come and visit the collection of exotic animals in the Place with No Name, Neugebäu. At the court, explained Frosch sadly, this place, which had once been so splendid, had been forgotten about by everyone — at least until the advent of beloved Joseph I. Now the feeding expenses for Mustafa and his companions were paid more regularly, as were their keeper’s wages, and this had made him hopeful for the future of Neugebäu. In particular, three years earlier, in 1708 — it had been the afternoon of Sunday 18th March, Frosch remembered it clearly — the Emperor, together with a great suite of ladies and gentlemen of the court, had accompanied his sister-in-law, Princess Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wofenbüttel, to the Place with No Name. As his brother Charles was in Barcelona staking his claim for the Spanish throne, Joseph had represented him at the marriage celebrated by proxy between Charles and the German princess in Vienna. Then, shortly before she herself set out for Spain to join her husband, Joseph had chosen, as an act of homage, to show her the wild animals kept at Neugebäu, especially the two lions and the panther, which had only recently been acquired. This had been a memorable event in the poor keeper’s forgotten life; with his own eyes he had seen His Caesarean Majesty strolling the avenues of the garden and with his own ears had heard him announce, in youthful, vigorous tones, that the place would soon be restored to fresh life. But time had gone by since then; it was already six years since Joseph I had ascended to the throne and the castle was still in a pitiful state.

“Well, what can we do?” Frosch grunted sadly.

Those days were over, I asserted. Now Emperor Joseph wanted to put everything to rights again; I myself had been summoned to start inspecting the flues and the chimneys. Restoration work would soon get under way.

Frosch’s eyes gleamed with something similar to joy and hope, but a moment later he was staring vacantly again.

“Well, let’s hope for the best,” he concluded dully.

Without adding anything he turned his flask upside down and noted with disappointment that it was empty. He mumbled that he had to go back and see someone called Slibowitz, or some such name, and get it refilled.

Such is the pessimistic nature of the Viennese: subjected for centuries to the same imperial authority, they are always sceptical of any good news, even when it is what they long for. They prefer to renounce all hope and prepare themselves with philosophic resignation to undergo inconveniences they consider inevitable.

As we proceeded I grew aware of a filthy and nauseating stink, and a sort of low-pitched, hostile growling. A little further on a barred fence blocked the way; beyond it was a ditch. Frosch signalled to me to stop. He led the lion forward, drew from his trousers a set of keys, opened a narrow gate in the railing and pushed Mustafa inside. Then he locked it again, turned back to me and led me into a colonnade, which looked down to the right onto a series of ditches, from which came the stink and the grunts. I shuddered as soon as I could peer down: in addition to Mustafa, the ditches held more lions, tigers, lynxes and bears, such as I had only ever seen in book engravings. Frosch was clearly satisfied by my expression, which was one of both amazement and terror. I had never thought to see so many beasts of that size assembled together. From one of the ditches, a tiger cast a suspicious and hungry look up at me. I shivered and instinctively drew back, as if trying to hide behind the railing that protected the visitor from falling into that abyss of jaws, fangs and claws. From each of the ditches rose palpable waves telling of torn flesh, bloody cravings and murderous desires.

“It takes a lot of meat every day. But it’s the Emperor that pays, ha ha ha!” laughed Frosch heartily, giving me such a violent slap on the shoulder that I swayed. Two bears, meanwhile, were fighting over an old bone. Only Mustafa remained all by himself in his pit. He was ill and detested the company of his fellow creatures; he preferred to take a walk every so often with his keeper, Frosch explained.

We turned back. From one of the buildings alongside the spiral staircase I could hear an insistent and noisy chirping. I recognised it at once.

As soon as I entered the building, the chirping grew deafening. It came from birdcages, and the noise and sight instantly took me back to those happy days when I had looked after the aviaries at Villa Spada, in the service of the Lord Cardinal Secretary of the Vatican State. I was well acquainted with the feathered race, and I felt a pang when I saw how Frosch cared for the poor creatures in the Place with No Name. Instead of the commodious aviaries that I had tended at Villa Spada, the cages here were cramped and smelly, only fit for chickens and turkeys. What sunlight there was came filtering in through the door and from a couple of windows. Every specimen was in danger of suffocating, crammed together with dozens of others in the same prison. I saw species I knew, but there were many I had never seen before: marvellous birds of paradise, parrots, parakeets, carpofori, dwarf-birds, birds that resembled bats and butterflies, with wings of gold, jute and silk. The vast cavernous space containing the wretched cages was worthy of attention and admiration: it was a huge stable, as Frosch explained, which someone had decided to embellish with grand Tuscan columns. The upper capitals, close to the ceiling, were linked by great transversal arches, which intermeshed creating a network of vaults, in which light and dark mingled in an artistic contest of honest and decent beauty.

The poor birds, being extremely delicate (even the most robust bird of prey is so in captivity), clearly suffered from their cramped conditions. Frosch explained that these had originally been the stables of the Place With no Name and when the aviaries had fallen into disrepair, no one had troubled to build any new ones; at least in the stables the birds were sheltered from the excessive winter cold, and, as the door could be sealed hermetically, they were protected from the beech martens.

Frosch asked me whether I wanted to visit the rest of the castle now that I was here, but the sun was already sinking and I remembered that I had to walk all the way home. I was also anxious to get back to Cloridia, who — if Simonis had already recounted what had happened — would have fainted by now, at the very least.

I remounted the spiral staircase, bade him a hasty farewell and said I would return the next day.

On my way home, I gave free rein to my thoughts and my memories, which, from the moment we had left the Flying Ship, had been seething away in a corner of my brain.

Could that strange rattletrap really have flown all those years ago? The gazette undoubtedly contained details of pure fantasy, like the sightings of the inhabitants of the moon. But it was hard to believe it was entirely mendacious; the author could have invented with impunity events that had happened in far-off, exotic lands (and God alone can say how many gazetteers have done such things!), but not the arrival of an airship in the very capital of the Empire, where the gazette, although originally written for a fair, enjoyed a wide circulation.

But there was more to it than this. Frosch had described the device as a “ship of fools”. This had sparked off a number of memories for me.

Eleven years earlier, in Rome, with Abbot Melani: a villa, abandoned just like the Place with No Name, which had the bizarre form of a ship (it was known, in fact, as “the Vessel”), had hosted a strange character dressed in black like a monk (just like the pilot of the Flying Ship), who had appeared before us hovering above the battlements of the villa, playing a Portuguese melody known as the folia, or “Foolishness”, and reciting verses from a poem entitled “The Ship of Fools”. Subsequently we discovered that he was not in fact flying. He was a violinist, and his name was Albicastro. He had gone off, one day, to enlist in the war. I had heard no more of him. Often, over the years, I had thought of him and his teachings and wondered what had become of him.

Now, the numerous coincidences with the ship in the form of a bird of prey and its pilot who seemed to possess the secret of flying, had brought him back sharply to my mind. The Diary of Vienna referred vaguely to a Brazilian priest, but perhaps. .

17 of the clock, end of the working day: workshops and chancelleries close. Dinner hour for artisans, secretaries, language teachers, priests, servants of commerce, footmen and coach drivers (while in Rome people take but a light refection).

Contrary to my fears, I did not find Cloridia swooning in terror. My gentle consort had left word, by means of a note slipped under the door, that she had to stay on at the palace of the Most Serene Prince Eugene. This meant, I thought, that the work of the Turkish delegation was particularly intense; or, more probably, that the Ottoman soldiery in the Agha’s retinue were continuing to pester Cloridia with requests for services of varying degrees of urgency, like fresh supplies of wines.

Simonis sat faithfully waiting for me. His unchanging face showed no signs either of apprehension on my behalf or of relief at seeing me safe and sound. I was expecting him to unleash his loquacity, which had not yet found an outlet today. I was already prepared to face a barrage of garrulous questions; but no. He just told me that he had returned from the eating house, where he had taken my little apprentice for the usual lavish seven-course dinner.

“Thank you, Simonis. Aren’t you curious to know what happened to me?”

“Immeasurably so, Signor Master; but I would never permit myself to be so indiscreet.”

I shook my head. Defeated by Simonis’s disarming logic I took my little boy’s hand and told them to follow me to the eating house, where I would tell them all about it.

“Let’s make haste, Signor Master. Don’t forget that very soon the dinner will go up in price, from 8 kreutzer to 17; after 6 — or after the hour of 18 as you Romans say — it will cost 24 kreutzer and after 7 as much as 27 kreutzer. At 8 the eating house will close its doors.”

It was true; Vienna was strictly regulated by timetables in all matters, and it was they, more than anything else, that distinguished the nobleman from the poor man, the artisan and the pen-pusher. As Simonis had just reminded me, at both lunch and dinner the same (lavish) meal had different prices according to the hour of day, so that the different social classes could eat undisturbed. And the other moments of the day were similarly divided, so that one could truly say — reversing the old adage — that in Vienna the sun was not the same for everyone.

The Caesarean city was like the proscenium of a dance theatre, on which the artists made their entrances in separate groups, strictly ranked by order of importance, and when a new line of dancers made its appearance on the stage, another left it.

However, in order that each social stratum should be able to find its own place comfortably in the day, the authorities had decided that for the humbler classes the day should begin not with the rising of the sun, as for the rest of the earthly orb, but in the middle of the night.

I had literally leaped out of bed, two months earlier, the day after our arrival in Vienna, when the stentorian bellow of the night guard had set the window-panes rattling: “Now rise O Servant, praise God this morn, the light now gleams of a new day’s dawn.”

The gleaming light of dawn was actually a long way off yet: the little travelling pendulum-clock that we had bought before our departure with the credit of Abbot Melani indicated the hour of three. And it was not a mistake or a bad dream. A few moments later, the bell of the Lauds announced the start of the day from the Cathedral of St Stephen. As I would soon learn, once its imperial chimes had resounded there would be no peace: by the inflexible law of the clocks, at three in the morning the day’s hard work begins. At that hour, to tell the truth, market gardeners and flower-sellers are already setting up their vegetables and plants in the baskets on the market stools. At half past three the taverns selling mulled wine and collations open up for business near the gates of the city, where day-labourers, bricklayers, carpenters, woodcutters and coach drivers take their breakfast. At four artisans and servants start work. The city gates open: milkmaids, peasants and vendors of fruit, butter and eggs swarm in towards the market squares. We chimney-sweeps, together with the roof-tilers, could be considered fortunate: in winter, because of the darkness, we never begin work before six.

In Rome, when I used to set out before dawn to reach places in the outlying suburbs, I would cross the dark, spectral city, peopled only by threatening shadows. In Vienna, by contrast, at four in the morning the city is already bustling with busy honest folk, so that one might attribute the blackness of the sky to an eclipse of the sun, rather than the early hour.

From eleven onwards, every hour is good for eating, and the last meal in the aristocratic palaces coincides with the first dinner of the humble classes. At midday, court dependants take their luncheon, and at one o’clock the nobility, who between two and three pay or receive visits from friends and acquaintances. At three o’clock clerks go back to work and school children to school. At five in the afternoon work is over and, as already said, the humble classes go to dinner. An hour later court employees dine, while theatres close their doors. At half past six the city gates close, at least until mid-April, after which they close a quarter of an hour later. Latecomers have to pay a hefty fine of 6 kreutzer. The Bierglocke chimes, the so-called beer bell: after it has rung no one can go and drink in the taverns, or walk the streets bearing arms or without a lantern. At seven the humble classes go to bed, while the nobles settle down for dinner; a far cry from the homes of the Roman princes, where people are still feasting at midnight!

At eight the eating houses close. The most hedonistic nobleman never goes to bed after midnight. The hours between midnight and three constitute the short night common to all Viennese, whatever their social rank.

The tumultuous Eternal City, seen from seraphic Vienna, reminded me of the menagerie of beasts in the Place with No Name. And my mind and heart turned gratefully to the image of Abbot Atto Melani, who had borne me away from there.

18 of the clock: dinner hour for court employees.

I had finished my dinner at the eating house. The bowls and dishes that had held the seven courses lay piled up on a corner of the table, forgotten by the host. The soup of the day, always different; the plate of beef with sauce and horseradish; the vegetables variously “seasoned” with pork, sausages, liver or calf’s foot; the pasty; the snails and crabs with asparagus ragout; the roast meat, which this evening was lamb, but could be capon, chicken, goose, duck or wildfowl; and finally the salad. This sequence of dishes — such as in Rome I had only ever glimpsed on the table of my patron, the Cardinal Secretary of State, many years earlier — was served, as I have already said, at the modest price of 8 kreutzer and was equally lavish throughout the year, except in Lent and the other periods of obligatory fasting, when there were still seven courses, but the meats were replaced by inventive dishes of fish, egg puddings and an array of rich confectionery.

This evening everything had been dutifully dispatched — not by me, apart from some minor items, but by Simonis. Although he had already dined with my little boy shortly before my arrival, my apprentice, who looked so lean, possessed a bottomless stomach. I myself was still so shaken by the afternoon’s events that I had done little more than toy with the dishes, and Simonis had clearly taken it as his duty to spare the host the insult of having to take away dishes still laden with food.

Actually, apprentice boys had their own regular tables, when their fraternity did not possess their own private taverns and even hostels, where they would all eat together at luncheon and dinner, instead of eating with their master. The corporations of arts and trades usually had their own reserved corner in the taverns, like the tailors, butchers, glove-makers, comedians and even the chimney-sweeps. The tables were often divided: one for the masters and one for the assistants. But neither I nor Simonis liked to sit separately and, to tell the truth, the envious reception accorded us by my brother-sweeps had made us devoted customers of the eating house closest to the convent, instead of the locales favoured by the corporation.

While my apprentice so generously helped me out, I completed my far from easy account of the events of Neugebäu, omitting a great many details that would only have puzzled him inordinately. The story of the lion amused him; he was much less successful in grasping what the Flying Ship was, at least until I thrust under his nose the gazette with the detailed report of what had happened two years earlier. This absorbed him fully and, after concluding his reading with a laconic “Ah”, he asked no further questions.

We returned to the convent; the Greek to go to bed, myself and the child to our nightly appointment with the digestive infusion. As we crossed the cloisters, I explained to my little boy, who was asking after his mother, that Cloridia had been obliged to stay on at Prince Eugene’s palace. Suddenly my face contracted in the grimace of one drinking a bitter medicine:

“Mich duncket, daß es ein überaus schöne Übung seye, die Übung der Italiänischen Sprache, so in diesen Oerthern so sehr geübt in unsern Zeiten. Der Herr thut gar recht, dass er diese Sprache, also die fürnembste, und nutzbareste in diesem Land, mit Ihrem Knaben spricht!”

After the first instants of panic (a feeling well known to neophytes of the Germanic language), I managed to grasp the sense of the words addressed to me: “That seems to me a beautiful exercise, that of the Italian language, so widely used around here in these times. Your lordship does well to talk to your son in this language, which is the principal and most useful in this country!”

I smiled weakly at the good Ollendorf: time had flown and the dreaded hour of our German lesson had arrived. With Teutonic punctuality our preceptor was already standing at the door and waiting for us.

20 of the clock: eating houses and alehouses close their doors.

Once the torture of the German lesson was over, in which as usual my son had shone and I had suffered, we left the convent once again for our evening appointment with the rehearsals at the oratory.

I have not yet had a chance to explain that we had had to make ourselves useful to Camilla de’ Rossi. The directress of the choir of Porta Coeli was an experienced composer, and for the last four years had been charged by the Emperor to write and put on four oratorios for voices and orchestra, one a year, which had earned general applause. At the end of the previous year, however, she had asked Joseph I for permission to retire and enter a convent as a lay sister. His Caesarean Majesty had therefore assigned her to the monastery of the Augustinian nuns of Porta Coeli, with the task of directing its choir. Quite unexpectedly, just a few weeks ago Camilla had been told (“on urgent notification,” as she herself informed us with ill-concealed satisfaction) that His Caesarean Majesty was demanding from her another Italian oratorio in music, which was to be prepared with all possible alacrity. In response to Camilla’s respectful protests, the imperial emissary declared that if the task of composing a new work was beyond her, His Caesarean Majesty would have no objections to hearing again the oratorio from the previous year, Sant’ Alessio, which had been fully to his liking.

The reason for this insistence was a pressing one. In recent years relations between the Empire and the Church had deteriorated to their lowest point for centuries. The conflicts between Pope and Emperor were identical to those in the Middle Ages, when the Teutonic Caesars used to invade the territories of the Church, and the Popes who did not have enough cannons would retaliate by firing off excommunications. This was what had happened three years earlier, in 1708, when the troops of Joseph I — who in the inflamed atmosphere of those bellicose years considered the Pope too friendly towards the French — had invaded the Papal State in Italy and occupied the territories of Comacchio on the pretext of an old imperial right to those lands. The Pope, this time, had decided to use his cannons instead of an excommunication, and so an unfortunate war had broken out between Joseph the Victorious and His Holiness Clement XI, which had, of course, concluded with the victory of the former. At the end of this unequal conflict, the crisis had been protracted for another two years, and only now, in the spring of 1711, thanks to diplomatic efforts, was it finally drawing to a peaceful conclusion: the Emperor, of his own free will, was about to hand back the Comacchio territories. Naturally, a complete and definitive peace, like any other political strategy, required a suitable framework, such as could be afforded by a series of reciprocal acts of kindness and goodwill. And so five days earlier, on Holy Saturday 4th April, on the eve of Easter, Joseph I had been accompanied by the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna, Cardinal Davia, and by a large entourage of ministers and high-ranking nobles, on a visit on foot to various churches and chapels in the city. The next day, Easter Sunday, the Nuncio had accompanied Joseph to high mass, both in the morning and in the afternoon, in the church of the Reverend Barefoot Augustinian Friars at the imperial palace, as faithfully reported by the gazettes. Finally, the following evening the two of them had attended the five last important sermons of Lent (which until two years earlier had included that of the most famous court preacher, the late Pater Abraham from Sancta Clara), and as they emerged they had been saluted by a triple volley of musket-fire. This had created a great stir: never before had His Majesty spent Easter with the Nuncio.

And so, to seal the happy re-establishment of relations with the Holy See, and the resolution of the Comacchio dispute, it had been decided that an oratorio should be performed immediately after Easter, in the Roman fashion, with all the trappings of scenery, costumes and action, as in the rite of the Holy Sepulchre; this marked a break with the tradition of the Caesarean court, which only called for oratorios in Lent and without any stage scenery.

Camilla had therefore been entrusted with the task of preparing an Italian oratorio, which would be symbolically attended by Joseph and the Nuncio Davia, representing His Holiness, sitting side by side.

Although no one in the court had said so explicitly, Camilla knew perfectly well that the aim of her work was far more political than musical. The Sant’ Alessio, which in 1710 had proved so successful with numerous noblemen and people of fine perception, would be repeated this year in the Most August Chapel of His Caesarean Majesty for the ears of the Nuncio. All eyes would be on her; the Chormaisterin had set to work with a will, urgently recruiting singers and musicians from the previous year, personally choosing the replacements for those she had been unable to hire again, making sure that the ornaments of the chapel were suitable, that the musical instruments were of the finest, and making fresh copies of orchestral scores that had become faded or crumpled.

Believe it or not, in this delicate operation I myself, humble chimney-sweep, had a part to play. The oratorio required the presence of some children as extras, but it was not easy to find families willing to let their offspring out of the house at that late hour. Camilla had therefore asked us to help replenish her troop of children; given my slight stature, we were able to supply her with not just one extra, but two.

And so, in the solemn setting of the Caesarean chapel, almost every evening we attended the rehearsals of the Sant’ Alessio, taking part when necessary in the scenes of action, and, when our participation was not required, quietly observing the orchestra players and singers as they rehearsed.

It was like being reborn into the world of singing: in my whole life I had never listened to anything other than the voice of Atto Melani singing the notes of his old master, Seigneur Luigi. By some strange quirk of fate what I was now listening to were not the arias of Luigi Rossi but those of a de’ Rossi, Camilla; almost the same surname, which was now indissolubly linked in my mind to the idea of singing.

Among the motley crew of orchestra musicians, many of them well established in court circles, my little boy and I, although a little nervous on account of our ignorance of the Euterpean art, could now boast a few acquaintances. Every evening we were greeted with respect and friendly remarks by the theorbist Francesco Conti, who played several parts as soloist in Sant’ Alessio; by Conti’s wife, the soprano Maria Landini, known as the Landina, who sang the role of Alessio’s betrothed; by the tenor Carlo Costa, who played Alessio’s father in the oratorio; and finally by Carlo Agostino Ziani, vice-maestro of the imperial chapel and by Silvio Stampiglia, court poet, both of whom had a high regard for Camilla de’ Rossi’s music and often came to listen to the rehearsals of the oratorio.

With such high-ranking personages, who bestowed their benevolence upon us precisely because they knew us to be friends of the Chormaisterin, we could, of course, only have fleeting contacts. The only one who would engage in conversations of any length was a singer — an Italian, like most musicians in Vienna. His name was Gaetano Orsini, and he played the leading role in the oratorio. I greatly appreciated the fact that he was on very free and easy terms with us, something that his rank did not require of him in the least; he was personally acquainted with the Emperor, who held his art in high esteem and kept him on a salary among his own musicians. From the first moment I spoke to him, I felt as if I had always known him. Then I realised why: Orsini shared with Atto Melani a feature of no slight importance. He was a castrato.

I arrived at the rehearsal a little late. As I approached the door of the Caesarean chapel I heard that Camilla had already started off the orchestral players. When I entered I was greeted by Orsini’s singing. The oratorio narrated the moving story of Alessio, a young Roman nobleman on the threshold of marriage. On the very day of his wedding he receives a divine command to renounce all worldly joys, and so he leaves his betrothed, goes to sea and, taking shelter in distant lands, leads a life of poverty and solitude. When he returns to Rome, disguised as a beggar, he is given hospitality at his paternal home and stays there for seventeen years without being recognised, sleeping under a staircase. Only on the point of death does he make himself known to his parents and his erstwhile fiancée.

That evening they were rehearsing the aria with dramatic dialogue between Alessio and his betrothed on the day of the uncelebrated marriage. I had just taken my place among the other extras when, introduced by the tinkling of the theorbo and the cymbals, and sustained by the concise, reasoning tones of the violins, we heard the anguishing words with which Alessio takes leave of his betrothed:

Credi, oh bella, ch’io t’adoro

E se t’amo il Ciel lo sa

Ma bram’io il più bel ristoro

Mi t’invola altra beltà. .¹

In the recitative that followed, she answered just as heart-rendingly:

Come goder poss’io di gemme e d’oro,

Se da me tu t’involi, o mio tesoro,

Che creda, che tu m’ami or mi spieghi

E l’amor tuo mi nieghi.

Conosco che il tuo amore

Sta solo su le labbra e non nel core. .²

Despite his bride’s distressed reply and the melodiousness of Camilla de’ Rossi’s music, my thoughts took me elsewhere. In my mind’s eye I saw myself once again on the Flying Ship where it lay inert in the deserted ball stadium. I imagined its unknown pilot in his monk’s garb, his fate shrouded in mystery: such an arcane affair, I thought, was worthy of a poem by Ariosto.

Meanwhile Alessio rejected his beloved’s entreaties, and announced his final departure:

In questo punto istesso

Devo eseguire il gran comando espresso

Più dimora qui far già non poss’io.

Cara consorte, il Ciel ti guardi, addio. .³

I closed my eyes. As the beautiful music of the Chormaisterin of Porta Coeli swirled around the solemn space of the Caesarean chapel, my mind resounded with the roars of the lions of Neugebäu and the screeching of the birds in their cages.