Secretum

'The knitted stockings, too? Ah, no, that I cannot bear. Find another solution, Monna Cloridia.'

'Do you want the Deputy Steward to ask me how it is that my assistant is wearing fine red abbot's stockings under her skirts?'

When I arrived at my appointment with Cloridia, I could not believe what the moon's grey reflection presented to my eyes: Atto, with his smooth, flaccid face half concealed under a white midwife's bonnet, and dressed in large women's clothes left over from my wife's last pregnancy, was mounting a last, vain resistance to Cloridia's expert hands as they lifted the skirts of his disguise.

Cloridia had dressed him well for the part of an old midwife and now, having discovered that under that attire the Abbot had secretly kept his favourite red stockings, was making him change them for a pair of knitted hempen ones of the kind worn by women of the people. It was these that had provoked Atto's rebellion. The old castrato, who had sung the most varied feminine roles in half the world's theatres, was not so ill at ease dressed up as a midwife; but, like a real prima donna, could not bear the vulgarity of those knitted stockings of the sort worn by any common woman.

'Would you rather go barefoot in your clogs, like a beggar woman?' Cloridia rebuked him impatiently.

'Good idea, you'd make a perfect cerretana,' I interrupted, making fun of Atto by way of greeting, whereupon we exchanged winks.

While the barouche waited outside the gates, my consort rapidly summed up the situation. Unfortunately, her herbs had acted earlier than expected: Cloridia had counted on having the morning free in which to inform us about what she had been able to see and study at the palace the day before.

'So now we have no time,' said she anxiously. 'Anyway, I have learned that on the first floor there's a gallery, which is kept locked, and which Father Virgilio in person had built. It contains various objects, including the Flemish globe you mentioned to me yesterday. Perhaps you will find what you are looking for in that gallery. The Deputy Steward's lodgings are on the ground floor, on the right-hand side of the vestibule with its three small aisles; you'll find the stairs immediately after that. The rest I shall show you when we get there.'

We moved towards the gates, followed by the little girls. During the ride, Cloridia explained her plan to me.

'I shall tell the Deputy Steward that, as his wife is fat, I have had to bring a trusty old midwife with me, as well as my daughters,' and here she pointed at Atto, 'because I need someone who, together with the husband, can hold the woman down while I induce her to give birth, while our two little ones look after the instruments, towels and all the rest.'

From her little smile, it was, however, quite clear that Atto would need to make no great effort to mimic a woman's voice and movements more than convincingly.

Atto, then, was to pretend to be an assistant midwife; the thing was far from being without danger, even without considering the disgust which it caused the Abbot. How the deuce had Cloridia persuaded him to attempt this masquerade? I regretted not having been present when my consort was using her powers of persuasion.

'This is all very well,' retorted Melani, 'but you still have not explained to me how I am supposed to get away from the Deputy Steward's lodgings. I'd not want to run the risk of having to provide real assistance throughout the delivery and then having to return empty-handed.'

'Trust me,' murmured Cloridia, for we were already approaching the gate. 'There's no time to explain it to you now, but I'll make sure you know when the time comes to leave me.'

'But…' Atto tried to say.

'Hush, now.'

'And what about me?' I asked.

'You, pretend to take your leave of us and, while I distract the boy who's driving the barouche, put on your cape and get onto the back axle.'

My sweet wife had not thought any disguise necessary for me; ah yes, I thought with a trace of melancholy, my small size made it easy for me to slip in concealed…

Once they had all got down from the barouche, I leapt up as swiftly and stealthily as possible and hid myself behind it. Fortunately, I thought with a smile, the presence of my two little ones in the barouche, well behaved but not without vivacity, created so much noise that it helped keep my presence hidden from the young driver.

When the carriage entered the palace courtyard, 1 stretched the cape even further over my head. The guards let us pass with a nod.

As Gloridia had advised us, the Deputy Steward and his wife, who had come from Milan not long before the pregnancy to take up service with the Spada family, were temporarily lodging in a small room on the ground floor, which enabled them to keep an eye on the entrance to the palace, now that the servants had all been sent to the wedding at Villa Spada.

I waited hidden in the coach-house. As agreed, Cloridia soon announced that she had left a purse in the carriage and, while the Deputy Steward and Melani took the service entrance to go to the woman in labour, she brought me surreptitiously in. We went up to the first floor. First, I tried out the key ring lent to us by Ugonio. As expected, I did not need to try many times and soon found the right keys. The locks on the doors yielded quietly one after another.

'Wait here and don't make a sound,' my wife commanded me, kissing my forehead. 'Soon I shall send you Mistress Midwife Melani. Keep a lookout here,' said she, opening a window in the wide corridor which gave onto the inner courtyard still sunk in darkness. 'Here's what I thought when I came to this place yesterday.'

From this window, Cloridia showed me, I could see almost everything that was happening in the room where the woman was giving birth. This would be extremely useful. While we were searching, we could keep a constant check on the Deputy Steward's presence near his wife and thus be sure that the coast was clear. I had a quick look: Atto and the Deputy Steward were down there and I could descry the woman lying on the bed. I smiled seeing Abbot Melani got up like that: he must be on tenterhooks waiting for Cloridia. To keep up appearances, he was removing the equipment from the bag and arranging it by the woman's bedside. Yet he held each item disgustedly with his fingertips, as though he were picking up dead rats.

Cloridia returned downstairs, leaving me in the dark, and entered the Deputy Steward's lodgings. I saw her take three bolsters and arrange them on the floor. Then, to my great surprise, she made the pregnant woman lie down there on her back. She arranged the three cushions carefully under her so that her head hung back towards the floor.

The posture was quite uncomfortable and the poor woman was complaining, but Cloridia made matters even more difficult for her, or so it seemed to my untrained eyes, by bending her knees so that her feet ended up under her back, as in the drawing which I am reproducing below.

'How hot it is in here!' exclaimed Cloridia, opening the window of the room, so that from my lookout I could hear as well as see all that was taking place within.

'But is it really necessary for my wife to give birth in that position?' moaned the Deputy Steward, who could not bear to see his wife bent in such a horrid posture.

''Tis surely not my fault if your wife is so fat. All the lard in her paunch compresses the womb and makes it even tighter. Only thus can the woman's uterus be dilated sufficiently for her to be able to give birth easily, however fat and corpulent she may be.'

'And how is that?' asked the husband dubiously, turning also to Atto, who at once turned his eyes elsewhere with a vague expression on his face.

'Simple: the fat on the body spreads towards the sides,' my wife replied, as though this were all perfectly obvious, 'so that the infant is not prevented from coming out, as would happen if the birth seat were used, because the belly and the full weight of the fat and the intestines would compress the womb below and restrict the opening for the child no little, thus obstructing the delivery.'

With the groaning woman lying thus arranged, Cloridia ordered the Deputy Steward and Abbot Melani (who, however, kept his gaze well averted from the woman's private parts) to hold her firm by both arms while she herself knelt between her legs, with a cushion under her own knees.

She covered the woman's pudenda and got our eldest daughter to hand her a terracotta jar full of oil of white lilies, with which she anointed both her hands and forearms and began to smear her patient's genitals and belly. Then with the greatest care, she thrust her right hand into the woman's privates and abundantly softened the insides with oil. Lastly, she ordered her to be turned on one side and also anointed the point four fingers above the ending of the back, known as the little tail or coccyx, which in childbirth sticks out no little, as I had occasion to