I was delighted to see the guests of the inn visibly satisfied with their meal. When I knocked at his door, Dulcibeni was still sipping his soup, which was cold by now, and greedily sucking it between tongue and palate.
'Do take a seat, dear boy. Pardon me, but today my appetite was slow to come.'
I obeyed silently, waiting for him to finish his meal. My attention wandered to the objects scattered across the chest of drawers next to his armchair, and stopped at three small volumes with vermilion covers and gilt lettering. They were very beautiful, I thought: but where had I seen them before?
Dulcibeni looked at me curiously: he had finished his soup and was holding out the dish for me. I took it with the most ingenuous of smiles and went out with lowered eyes.
Hardly was I out of the apartment than, instead of descending to the kitchen, I rushed up to the second floor. When I knocked breathlessly on Atto Melani's door, my arms were still laden with crockery.
'Pompeo Dulcibeni?' exclaimed the abbot incredulously, as I terminated my report.
The day before, I had in fact visited Dulcibeni's chamber in order to give him a massage and, during the treatment he had wanted to take a little snuff. He had, then, opened the chest in search of his snuff-box of inlaid cherry-wood and, in order to tidy the drawer a little, he had taken from it a few little books with a rather fine vermilion binding and gilt lettering. Now, in Tiracorda's library, I had noticed a number of identical books: an edition of the works of Galen in seven volumes from which, however, three were missing. And precisely these three I had just seen in Dulcibeni's chamber. On the spine of each was inscribed Galeni Opera and they belonged without the shadow of a doubt to the same set of the complete works of Galen in seven volumes as the four books in the house of Tiracorda.
'Of course,' the abbot reasoned, 'it is always possible that Dulcibeni and Tiracorda last met before the quarantine began. And it was perhaps then that Tiracorda lent those books to Dulcibeni.'
Nevertheless, he objected, both he and I were witnesses to the fact that the Archiater had received a guest in the middle of the night: a most curious hour for a visit! Nor was that all: he and his visitor had made an appointment for the following day at the same hour. Therefore, Tiracorda's mysterious guest was wont to wander around the city at the same hours in which we were able to leave the Donzello unseen. That guest must be Dulcibeni himself.
'How is it that Tiracorda and Dulcibeni know one another?'
'You are asking that question,' Atto replied, 'because you are unaware of one factor: Tiracorda is a Marchigiano.'
'Like Dulcibeni!'
'What is more, Dulcibeni is a native of the Marches of Fermo, and 1 seem to remember that Tiracorda too comes from Fermo.'
'So they are fellow citizens.'
'Just so. Rome has always been home to many illustrious physicians coming from that ancient and noble city: Romolo Spezioli, for instance, the personal physician to Queen Christina of Sweden, the chief court physician Giovan Battista Benci and even Cesare Macchiati, if my memory does not betray me, who like Tiracorda was physician to the conclave. Almost all the citizens of Fermo live in this quarter, around the church of San Salvatore in Lauro, where their High Confraternity meets.'
'Tiracorda, however, lives a few yards away from the Donzello,' I objected, 'and he surely knows that we are in quarantine. Does he not fear to be infected by Dulcibeni?'
'Obviously not. Perhaps he has repeated Cristofano's original view that this was not the pestilence, passing over Bedfordi's illness and the strange accident that befell your master.'
'Then it is Dulcibeni who stole my master's keys. He, who seems so severe!'
'Never trust to appearances. He will probably have been instructed by Pellegrino in the use of the subterranean passageways.'
'While I knew nothing of them. It seems incredible…'
Not siam tre donzellette semplicette semplicette, oh, oh, senza fallo…*
He teased me, striking up a comic pose and chanting with his little voice. 'Wake up, my boy! Remember: secrets are made to be sold. Originally, Pellegrino must have opened up the secret passage for him in return for payment. However, at the beginning of the quarantine, your master became comatose. Dulcibeni must then have had to borrow the bunch of keys in order to have a copy of the key to the closet made by an artisan in the Via dei Chiavari, the road where (as Ugonio puts it) Komarek impresses.'
'And what has Komarek to do with it?'
'Nothing whatever. I have already explained that to you, do you not remember? A pure coincidence; one which misled us.'
'Ah yes,' I replied, worried by my incapacity to keep pace with the congeries of discoveries, refutations, intuitions and false trails of the past few days. 'But why did Pellegrino not give Dulcibeni a copy of the key?'
'Perhaps your master, as I said, takes payment every time a client wishes to use the underground passages; meaning that no keys are provided.'
'Why, then, does Stilone Priaso have his own copy?'
'Do not forget that the last time that he sojourned at the Donzello was in the days of the late Signora Luigia: he will have asked her for one, or purloined it.'
'That does not explain why Dulcibeni should have stolen my little pearls, since he seems to be anything but poor.'
'And I have a question which is even more difficult to resolve: if he is indeed the mysterious thief whom we have taken such pains to follow, how is it that, on every single occasion, he has proven to be a hundred times faster than we, and has always given us the slip?'
'Perhaps he knows the galleries better than we do. However, now that I come to think of it, he cannot possibly move so fast: only two * Three little maids are we / Simple, oh so simple / Oh, oh with not a fault. In Italian, the last word 'fallo' may be a double-entendre, since it also means 'phallus'. (Translator's note). days ago, he suffered an attack of sciatica. And Cristofano told him that it would last for several days.'
'All the more reason. Add to that the fact that Dulcibeni is no longer a youngster and is somewhat corpulent, and whenever he speaks for any length of time, he becomes breathless: how the deuce does he manage to crawl every night up the hole which leads to the trapdoor?' concluded Atto with a hint of sourness, he who perspired and panted every time that we climbed through that narrow place.
I then told Atto all that I had recently learned concerning Pompeo Dulcibeni. I mentioned to him that, according to Padre Robleda, the elderly Marchigiano belonged to the sect of the Jansenists. I also told him of the harsh judgement which Dulcibeni had pronounced against the activities of the Jesuits in the sphere of espionage and of his fiery soliloquy against the consanguineous marriages which had for centuries been taking place among the royal families of Europe. The gentleman from Fermo was, I insisted, so scandalised by that practice and had become so heated as to exclaim in a loud voice-in an imaginary conversation with a woman, held before a mirror- that he longed for a Turkish victory at Vienna; thus, he hoped, a little fresh and uncorrupted blood would come to the thrones of our continent.
'A discourse, or should I say, a soliloquy worthy of a true Jansenist. At least, in part,' commented Abbot Melani frowning pensively. 'And yet, why desire a Turkish invasion in Europe, only out of pique against the Bourbons and the Habsburgs? That does seem to me somewhat excessive even for the most fanatical follower of Jansenius.'
Be that as it may, Atto concluded, my discovery compelled us to return to the house of Tiracorda. As we had heard last night, Dulcibeni would be returning there too.
Night the Sixth
Between the 16th and 17th September, 1683
As usual, we waited until all the guests, including Cristofano, seemed finally to have retired, before descending the well which led to the labyrinth beneath the hostelry.
