I was shocked by the cruel obscenities which Abbot Melani had unexpectedly unleashed. Then I understood. Atto was provoking Dulcibeni to make him explode. And he succeeded.
'Silence, castrato, shame of God, you who can only get your arse ripped open,' screamed Dulcibeni from afar. 'That you liked plunging your cock in the shit, that I knew; but that your head was full of it too…'
'Your daughter, Pompeo,' Atto continued, taking advantage of the moment, 'old Feroni wanted to buy her, is that not so?'
Dulcibeni let out a groan of surprise: 'Go on, you are getting close,' was, however, all that he replied.
'Let us see,' said Atto, panting from the effort of his climb, yet drawing ever closer to Dulcibeni. 'Huygens looked after Feroni's affairs; therefore, he often dealt with the Odescalchi, and so with you too. One day he discovered your little girl and took a fancy to her. That idiot Feroni, as usual, wanted to give her to him at all costs. He offered to buy her from the Odescalchi, perhaps even to sell her again when Huygens grew tired of her. Perhaps he obtained her from Innocent XI himself when he was still a cardinal.'
'He obtained her from him and from his nephew Livio, damned souls,' Dulcibeni corrected him.
'You could not legally oppose the sale,' continued Atto, 'because you had not deigned to marry her mother, a wretched Turkish slave, and so your daughter belonged not to you but to the Odescalchi. Then you found a remedy: to rake up a scandal against your masters, a stain on the honour of the Odescalchi. In short, you blackmailed them.'
Dulcibeni again remained silent, and this time his silence seemed more than ever to be a confirmation.
'I am lacking only one date,' Atto asked. 'When was your daughter abducted?'
'In 1676,' Dulcibeni replied icily. 'She was only twelve years old.'
'Just before the conclave, is that not so?' said Atto, taking another step forward.
'I believe you have understood.'
'The election of the new Pope was being prepared, and Cardinal Benedetto Odcscalchi, who had lost the previous conclave by a hair's- breadth, was determined to triumph this time. But with your threats, you held him in your power: if a certain item of news were to reach the ears of the other cardinals, there would have been an enormous scandal, and goodbye to the election. Am I on the right track?'
'You could not be more right,' said Dulcibeni, without concealing his surprise.
'What was the scandal, Pompeo? What had the Odescalchi done?'
'First, finish your own little story,' Dulcibeni invited him scornfully.
The night wind, which at that height makes itself felt more acutely, whipped relentlessly at us; I trembled, without knowing whether it was from cold or fear.
'With pleasure,' said Atto. 'By threatening them, you believed that you could prevent the sale of your daughter. Instead, you signed your own death warrant. Feroni, perhaps with the complicity of the Odescalchi themselves, abducted your daughter and thus closed your mouth for long enough for Benedetto to be elected Pope. After which, you tried to find the child. But you were not clever enough.'
'I raked through Holland from end to end. God only knows that 1 could do no more!' roared Dulcibeni.
'You did not find your daughter and you were the victim of a strange incident; someone caused you to fall from a window, or something of the sort. Yet you escaped with your life.'
'There was a hedge below, I was lucky,' explained Dulcibeni. 'Pray continue.'
Atto hesitated before this latest exhortation from Dulcibeni. Even I wondered why he was doling out so much rope to us.
'You fled Rome, hunted down and terrorised,' continued Melani. 'The rest, I already knew: you converted to Jansenism and in Naples you met Fouquet. There is, however, something else which I do not understand. Why take revenge now, after so many years? Perhaps because… Oh my God, now I see.'
I saw the abbot bring his hand to his forehead in a gesture of surprise. He had, meanwhile, in a bold balancing act, crossed another stretch of the wall, drawing even closer to Dulcibeni.
'Because there is a battle now for Vienna and if you kill the Pope, the Christian alliance will collapse, the Turks will win and will devastate Europe. Is it not so?' exclaimed Atto in a voice hoarse with astonishment and indignation.
'Europe has already been devastated: by her own kings,' retorted Dulcibeni.
'Oh, you wretched madman,' replied Atto. 'You would like… you want…' and he sneezed three, four, five times with unaccustomed violence, at the risk of losing his grip on the wall and tumbling into the abyss.
'Damn it,' he swore, thoroughly put out. 'Once there was only one thing that made me sneeze: textiles from Holland. And now at last I know why I have been sneezing so much since I entered that accursed hostelry.'
I too understood: it was the fault of Dulcibeni's old Dutch clothing. Yet, I suddenly recalled, Atto had sometimes sneezed upon my arrival. Perhaps I was just returning from the Jansenist's apartment. Or…
This was no time for such cogitations. I observed Dulcibeni move along the top of the amphitheatre's facade, first to the left, then to the right, continuing to keep an eye on Tiracorda's carriage.
'You are still hiding something, Pompeo,' cried Atto, recovering from his bout of sneezing and regaining his balance as he straddled the wall. 'With what did you manage to blackmail the Odescalchi? What is the secret with which you held Cardinal Benedetto in your power?'
'There is no more to be said,' Dulcibeni cut him short, again looking in the direction of the Chief Physician's carriage.
'Ah no, that is all too convenient! Besides, your daughter's story does not hold water: it is simply not enough to explain an attempt on the life of a Pope. Come, come: first, you were not even willing to wed her mother, and now you would do all this to avenge her? No, that makes no sense. Besides, this Pope is a friend of you Jansenists. Speak, Pompeo.'
'It is no business of yours.'
'You cannot…'
'I have no more to say to a spy of the Most Christian King.'
'Yes, but with your leeches, you wanted to do the Most Christian King a great favour: to free him of the Pope and Vienna at a blow.'
'Do you really believe that Louis XIV will defeat the Turks too?' replied Dulcibeni invidiously. 'Poor deluded creature! No, the Ottoman tide will cut off the head of the King of France, too. No regard for traitors: that is the victor's rule.'
'So is this then your plan for palingenesis, your hope for a return to the pure Christian faith, you true Jansenist?' retorted Atto. 'Yes, of course, let us sweep away the Church of Rome and the Christian sovereigns, let the altars go up in flames! Thus we shall return to the times of the martyrs: our throats cut by the Turks, but firmer and stronger in the Faith! And you believe that? Which of us is the more deluded? Dulcibeni?'
Meanwhile, I had moved away from Atto and Dulcibeni, reaching a sort of little terrace, near the stairs which we had climbed to the first storey; from that viewpoint, I could observe what was taking place outside the Colosseum, and I understood why Dulcibeni was looking down with so much interest.
A group of the Bargello's men were busying themselves around the carriage, and in the distance the voice of Tiracorda could be heard. Some of them were observing us; soon, I imagined and feared, they would come up and capture us.
Suddenly, however, I had cause to shiver, not on account of the freshness of the late night wind: a howl arose, nay, a savage chorus which came from all sides of the open space before the Colosseum, and a diffuse crackling sound which seemed to be caused by the throwing of many stones and projectiles.
The horde of corpisantari (who had evidently planned their incursion with care) poured screaming into the forecourt of the Colosseum, armed with clubs and sticks and charging at full speed, without even giving the Bargello's men time to understand what was happening. Our view was somewhat improved by the light which the guards' torches spread here and there on the scene.
The ambuscade was sudden, barbarous, pitiless. A group of attackers emerged from the Arch of Constantine, a second descended from the wall around the orchards overlooking the ruins of the Curia Hostilia, another rushed out from the ruins of the Temple of Isis and Serapis. The warlike cry of the assailing mob rose high and wild, utterly disconcerting their victims, who numbered only five or six.
A pair of guards who were more cut off from the group, almost paralysed with surprise, were the first to suffer the blows, scratches, kicks and bites of the three corpisantari arriving from the Arch of Constantine. The clash came in a chaotic scrimmage of legs, arms, heads bestially grasped, a rudimentary brawl devoid of any
