observe when Cloridia gave birth to our two little daughters. She then made a movement with her hand which drew a resounding howl from the poor mother-to-be.
'Heavens, the canal really is narrow,' complained Cloridia. 'My friend,' she then commanded, turning to Abbot Melani. 'Go and get me the oil of yellow violets which is inside that glass jar.'
She continued as before and then thought the time ripe to give our daughters a little lesson in obstetrics.
'If the woman in labour has a tight womb, one anoints freely and unrestrictedly with oil of yellow violets. And since one or ten applications of ointment cannot compensate for natural defects, one may use up to twenty or thirty, until — as Hippocrates and Avicenna proposed — art corrects nature. Avicenna also favours squirting a few drops of oil right inside the womb, the better to relax the internal parts.'
The children paid attention, while the Deputy Steward and his wife, with her face all covered in perspiration, looked at one another full of admiration and gratitude for the knowledge of so fine, and renowned, a midwife.
I was beginning to fume: Cloridia had promised to free Abbot Melani, but as yet nothing was happening. And I could see that Atto, too, was in a state of growing agitation, casting eloquent winks in my consort's direction.
'Alas, there is not enough of this oil,' said Cloridia. 'My dear, please go and fetch the other bottle which I left in the bag.'
Atto obeyed. When he returned, Cloridia looked at him with a worried expression.
'M'dear, you seem unwell.'
'Well, I really…' whined Atto who did not know what Cloridia was getting at.
My wife began to scrutinise him attentively and asked: 'Are you aware of any slight feelings of faintness? Lassitude? Do you feel confused?'
Abbot Melani returned Cloridia's inquiring gaze with an uncertain expression and answered her fusillade of questions vaguely. Then suddenly my consort rose and put her hands around his neck. Atto, taken by surprise, opened his eyes wide and tried instinctively to defend himself, while Clorida energetically opened his blouse and plunged her nose in, pretending to observe the breasts.
'Those red spots…' she murmured, lost in thought, prodding first the one, then the other breast, which I knew to be only stuffed with rags, while even the Deputy Steward's wife had left off complaining about her pain and was looking on with bated breath. '… and these purple ones here… My unfortunate friend, I fear that you may be suffering from the petechiae'
'The what?' the other two both asked in unison.
'The spotted-fever; in Milan, they call it segni,' Cloridia announced to the couple, who looked frightened.
Upon hearing that phrase, Atto at last realised what had already been clear to me for several minutes. I saw him change expression and restrain a sigh of relief.
'This distemper is caused by the excess of heat and dryness,' continued my wife, 'and it tends to affect cholerical temperaments, as I know that of my colleague here present to be. My poor dear, you must go home at once and try to keep calm. Eat cold food, which will cool down the choler, and you will see that you will soon recover. We here shall manage without you.'
'You can take my mule, which is in the servants' stables,' said the Deputy Steward, exceedingly worried about the risk of contagion. 'It is the only one left in there, you cannot go wrong.'
'And the guards?' Atto asked in a weak voice.
'You are right. I shall accompany you.'
'Of that, there can be no question!' Cloridia promptly cut in. 'I need you here. Besides, you must avoid any possible infection. There must surely be some way out using a service door to which you will, I imagine, have the keys…'
My astute consort had seen and foreseen everything. The Deputy Steward opened a drawer and pulled out a key.
'I only have one copy of this,' said the Deputy Steward to Atto, 'but I beg you to…'
'You'll get it back promptly enough, of that you can be sure,' my wife cut him short, snatching the key from his hand and giving it to the Abbot.
In reality, we had no need of that key: there would certainly be a copy in Ugonio's bunch, but that we could certainly not tell the Deputy Steward.
With a warm and amused wink, Melani lit a candle and, going to the door, left in great haste.
I leaned out an instant down the dark stairway to make sure that Atto had not forgotten Cloridia's directions and taken the wrong way.
'Your wife really enjoys a good joke,' he commented as soon as he rejoined me. 'She took me by surprise with that story of petechiae, but I must say that she does have an excellent memory.'
Cloridia had in fact, in her little charade with the petechiae, merely quoted the sentences she had heard seventeen years before in the mouth of Cristofano, the Sienese physician and chirurgeon who had been shut in with all of us in quarantine at the inn where I was working, and where I had first met Atto. What he said had remained unforgettable for us; we all hung on every word from the lips of the doctor who was looking after us in those days when every moment was alive with the fear of contagion.
Since she had not had time to prearrange anything with Atto, my wife had therefore used those words to give him a clear signal; it was certain that, on hearing them, Abbot Melani would obey without thinking twice.
I guided Atto to the window on the corridor and explained that from there we could easily keep a check on the situation and thus avoid being discovered.
'And now,' Cloridia was ordering imperiously, 'avoid like the plague the ill wind that blows in draughts! Let us place your wife near the open window so that she may breathe the good sweet- smelling air of early dawn. But close the door tight, so that there are no draughts. We shall open up only once the child has been born.'
'But I have to do my round every half-hour,' protested the Deputy Steward.
'There can be no question of that.'
'But…'
'You will appreciate the importance, if one is to avoid all risks of contagion, of avoiding all agitation and over-activity. The distemper dessicates and in a short space of time extinguishes the body's radical humidity, and that can in the end kill,' declaimed our brave Mistress Cloridia, yet again quoting, this time solely for her own pleasure, the words which the physician had uttered so many years ago in the Locanda del Donzello.
Upon hearing those words, the Deputy Steward, suddenly as pale as death, hastened to close the door of the room, accompanied by my tenacious spouse's seraphic smile, as she again knelt between her patient's legs.
'Here we are.'
Thus Abbot Melani commented on the swift movement of the door which, with a short squeal, swung open on a dark space.
We entered, immediately closing the door behind us. We did not know how much time we had in which to operate: everything depended upon the pregnant woman's labour, after which Cloridia was to be accompanied home by the Deputy Steward. By that time, we would have had to complete our own search and take the mule away from the stables, otherwise the Deputy Steward might become suspicious.
We tried to make sense of the dark space which now enveloped us. We shed light with Atto's taper, which I myself brandished, turning it here and there, in an attempt to reconcile our tentative footsteps with the frenzy of our eyes. The room in which we stood seemed enormous.
'This does not seem to be the gallery of which your wife spoke,' commented Abbot Melani.
'Anyway, there are no globes here,' I observed.
We crossed the room, then another one, then yet another. All the walls were covered with rich frescoes and paintings which filled the Abbot with enthusiasm and wonder.
'Ah, I recognise these paintings, they're by a Flemish artist, Van Laer; I saw them years ago in the collection of Cardinal Casanate, peace be on his soul,' said he, stopping to contemplate four pictures depicting a cow, a tavern and two scenes of assassinations in the woods. 'The Cardinal has been dead these four months only and the Dominicans of la Minerva to whom he left everything have already begun to sell off his legacy,' said he with a bitter laugh.
While Atto kept stopping before every canvas, taper in hand, I made my way rapidly back, like a cat in the night, to spy on Cloridia through the window.
