Secretum

reciting, Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, he turned once more to me:

'The world is one enormous banquet, my boy, and the law of banquets is: 'Drink or begone!''

I heard Albicastro go down the stairs. I stayed still for a while, with his words still humming in my head.

'We must yield to evidence.'

I raised my head. Atto Melani had returned.

'The gifts are not here,' he chanted.

'Perhaps we have not searched thoroughly enough, we should try to..'

'No, no use. It is not a matter of searching. It is the very idea that's mistaken.'

'What do you mean?'

'You told me that Virgilio Spada, the uncle of the Cardinal your master, was the first owner of the parrot.'

'Yes, and what of it?'

'The good Virgilio, as you too know very well, had a collection of curiosities.'

'That is true, yes, at Villa Spada, everyone knows of it. Virgilio Spada was very religious, but also a man of learning, a sage, and he had this collection of mirabilia, of curious and rare objects, which was rather famous, and…'

'Quite. I think that it must by now be clear to you too: when Benedetti decided to rid himself of the three presents and to give them to someone, Virgilio Spada was the ideal candidate.'

'But why should Benedetti have wanted to give away the presents? Was he not instructed by Mazarin to keep them here at the Vessel?'

'To keep them, yes, but… there is a detail I've not mentioned.'

It was thus that Atto disclosed to me what he had passed over in silence four days before, when we came to the Vessel for the first time and he spoke to me of Elpidio Benedetti, the builder and master of the Vessel, and his relations with Atto himself.

'Well, my boy, every person of influence must every day confront the most varied and unforeseeable intrigues,' said he, as a prelude, 'and so, he needs faithful and trusted men who accompany him through the myriad uncertainties of daily business.'

'Yes, Signor Atto, and so?' I replied, without concealing overmuch my irritation at that verbose introduction, which served no other purpose than to distract attention from Atto's past reticence.

'Well, Cardinal Mazarin had, in addition to his official secretaries and officials, a host of… staunch and trusty factotums shall we say, among whose number I myself had the honour to serve.'

These factotums, as Atto explained with a series of elegant circumlocutions, were in fact nothing but spies, straw men and schemers whom the Cardinal used for handling the most delicate and secret personal matters. Money was one of these; indeed, it was the main one.

'If I told you that the Cardinal was rich, I'd be lying to you. He was… how shall I put it?' said Atto, turning his eyes heavenward. 'He was wealth incarnate.'Years and years spent in power over the kingdom of France had enabled him to amass a mad, vertiginous, outrageous fortune. Moreover, an illegal one. The Cardinal had nibbled away here, there and everywhere: at taxes, tenders, grants, exports. He had mixed his own property freely with that of the crown and, when separating the two, much money from the royal coffers had remained stuck to his fingers.

Obviously, this enormous estate (at the death of Mazarin, they spoke of tens of millions of livres, but no one will ever know exactly how many) had to be invested with the greatest discretion.

'My poor friend Fouquet was calumnied, arrested for embezzlement, torn from his family and all he loved and incarcerated for life. Meanwhile, the Cardinal, who was really responsible, was never made to pay for his depredations, which were both heinous and innumerable,' the Abbot commented bitterly, 'but he must be credited with having succeeded in keeping completely out of trouble.'

Mazarin concealed his clandestine, illegal assets. This secret capital was entrusted to a network of bankers and men of straw, largely abroad, so as to prevent anyone from setting traps for His Eminence. The money was not deposited only with bankers. Mazarin instructed his henchmen to invest in pictures, precious objects and property. They had only to choose. There was nothing His Eminence could not permit himself, and his host of acolytes operated throughout Europe.

'Here in Rome, for example, Mazarin acquired sixty years ago from the Lante family the grandiose Palazzo Bentivoglio on Monte Cavallo, which thus became the Palazzo Mazzarino. For the past twenty years the Rospigliosi family has rented the palazzo, and my good friend Maria Camilla Pallavicini Rospigliosi has from time to time extended me the exquisite favour of receiving me there as a house guest.'

'So the Palazzo Rospigliosi is really Palazzo Mazzarino!' I exclaimed, a little shaken, thinking of the splendid building near Monte Cavallo which I had again seen when I accompanied Buvat to collect his shoes.

'Exactly. He paid seventy-live thousand scudi for it.'

'Quite a sum!' That is just to give you a small inkling of what was possible for the Cardinal. And do you know who convinced him to buy that palace?'

'Elpidio Benedetti?'

'Bravo. On the Cardinal's behalf, he bought books, pictures and valuables. Among other things, I recall some fine drawings by Bernini, which he made him buy, but at rather too high a price. What are we to say, then, of the Palazzo Mancini on the Corso, where Maria passed her childhood? Benedetti had it restored and enlarged at huge expense; all charged to Mazarin, obviously.

'When His Eminence sent Monsieur de Chantelou here to buy a few fine works of art, it was Elpidio Benedetti who sent him to Algardi, Sacchi and Poussin, whom you may remember.'

'Of course, the famous artists.'

'Quite. Then he recruited musicians on his master's behalf, to send to Paris, like that simpering Leonora Baroni.'

This time, Atto did not ask me whether I knew that name, but I recalled that many years ago he had told me of this lady, a highly talented singer who had been his bitter rival.

'Elpidio Benedetti also acted as a secret go-between on Mazarin's behalf. On the latter's death he found himself endowed with funds of which no one knew the real ownership. The Vessel is too large and fine to have been paid for out of Benedetti's pocket. It is no accident that he had it built immediately after the Cardinal's death.'

'So, the Vessel is…'

'It was built with Mazarin's money. Like everything that Elpidio Benedetti possessed, including his little house in town. It is, as I have already told you, no accident that Benedetti bequeathed it to the Duke of Nevers, Mazarin's nephew and brother to Maria.'

'He returned the ill-gotten gains.'

'Come, let us not get carried away: is one a thief if one robs another thief?' laughed Melani. So, when the Cardinal had entrusted Benedetti with keeping Capitor's presents, he had imposed an additional condition: those three ill-starred objects were not to be kept on his properties. Forever a prey to his guilt, and to the phantasms which it evoked, he had the obscure presentiment that not only his person but also his property should be kept physically separate from those infernal devices.

All this, Elpidio Benedetti executed to the letter. He himself was not insensible of the need to ward off evil influences. Thus, when the time came to choose the place to keep the three gifts, he gave up the idea of placing them in his own town house, which in reality also belonged to Mazarin. The Vessel did not yet exist (it was to be completed six years after the death of His Eminence), so that Benedetti had no other choice but to give the presents to someone else: Virgilio Spada.

'Do you recall the inscription that we read here? 'For three good friends, I did endeavour, but then I could not find them ever.' We already suspected that the three friends might be Capitor's three gifts, but that 'then I could not find them ever' refers perhaps to the fact that only their portrait is here, while the objects themselves cannot be found.'

'Because they ended up in the hands of Father Virgilio,' I concluded briefly.

'Of course, this will not have involved a sale but the placing in trust of the objects,' Melani made clear. 'For, as I told you, the Cardinal wanted to keep the three objects available for all eventualities. That is why it is possible that the gifts may still be among Virgilio Spada's things.'

'But where?'