to the right and to the left: at my feet, a fathomless vision of the inside of the basilica. There lay the colossal central nave of Saint Peter's, precisely at the point where it intersects with the transept. Just there, but many, many yards below, I knew there stood the Cavaliere Bernini's grandiose baldaquin, the glory of the basilica and of all Christendom. Above me, the immeasurable vault of the cupola, an abyss standing over an abyss, made me feel like an atom of dust lost in interstellar space.
At my height, on the walls of the great tambour supporting the cupola, were colossal mosaics with tender little cherubs the size of five men seated on cornucopias as big as two carriages.
All that, I could, however, see only with the eyes of the imagination: the interior of the church was dimly lit by a handful of torches; a boundless dark cavern echoing only to the desperate rhythm of my feet.
The threshold whence I had emerged into that vertiginous observatory was one of the four entrances to the annular corridor, which were placed diametrically opposite one another at the cardinal points.
Right or left? Left again. This time, the threshold contained a door. I pushed: it was open. Left again: I banged my nose against the handle of a door, which was closed. Now there was no light at all, only moonless night. Left again, then.
A stairway. Stairs going straight up, then winding, but the broadest of steps. From the wall on the left, a glimmer of light, almost none. There was a large window giving onto the outside. Through it one could descry the roofs of the basilica, tranquil and indifferent to my desperate agitation. The spiral staircase kept climbing, then became rectilinear. Once again I collided with an obstacle: before me was a tight, airless little spiral staircase climbing vertically. I took it. The others, too, must have been in some difficulties; 1 heard a cry. I appeared to be going fast. The noise from them seemed a little further away. But, where was I? I prayed that my calculations would not run up against hard facts. Escape was even more important than attaining my goal. Negotiating the labyrinth of the cupola was like dismantling a delicate piece of clockwork, but Atto had shown me all the details. Fortunately, in the library of Villa Spada we had found all we needed and we had made use of the night hours before my departure to refine our tools. The tome we studied was The Vatican Temple and its Origin by the learned Carlo Fontana, rich in tables and illustrations and published in Rome six years earlier, in 1694. It contained plans, sections and prospects of the basilica and, of particular interest to me, the cupola. In a couple of hours' close study, I had memorised the arrangement of corridors and stairways in the upper part of the basilica. Although approximate, my memory had guided me well.
The stairs again began to wind. Strangely, both walls, the outer and the inner, leaned frighteningly to one side, leaving hardly any room to advance. I wondered how Sfasciamonti would manage to get through those absurd bowels: the air was dense, heavy, almost unbreathable. Every now and then a window provided a little relief and less torrid air, but there was no time in which to stop for breath.
Only then did I understand: I was in the cavity between the two layers of the cupola. The spiral stairs were installed between the outer surface and the inner one, which was only visible from within the basilica. But almost at once the vertiginous sensation of walking inside a body suspended over the void came to an end. The spiral no longer led upward, there was a brief level passage. From below, more cries.
'Sfasciamonti, Buvat, where are you?' I called.
In response, only voices and vague noises. My legs trembled a little, not only from fatigue. I tried to go faster, but slipped and fell heavily. I tumbled down several steps, hurting my thighs and knees severely. I stood up, still in one piece. I returned to the horizontal corridor, dragging myself forward who knows how far. No stairs, no way out, nothing.
Then I sensed it: something was missing, two or three paces in front of me: the floor. I tried to stop, lost my balance, held on with my right arm to the inner wall. And I felt it.
It was a stone step, an absolutely enormous one, almost up to my neck. I stretched out my arms and touched it. Yes, there was another step above it, and one above that, too. It was more or less as I had imagined it, and I felt confident: from that point on one climbed further. It was one of four stairways with huge steps, one at each cardinal point leading to the summit of the cupola within its cavity wall. The stairs began again. At last I realised with joy that being small meant one weighed little, and those who are light can move fast.
Initially, the huge steps were higher than they were wide; then, gradually, as one approached the very top of the cupola, the proportions were inverted. In the end there were only three more steps, then two, then one. Exhausted, but again on my feet, I pulled myself onto a horizontal platform, while from above a weak gleam of light came down to me — or perhaps one might better describe it as darkness less total. I fumbled to the right, to the left, in all directions, finding, first, a wall, then an opening. I stumbled, perhaps on a step, and my right hand found a banister. I no longer knew where I was going but I followed through without hesitation and at last I felt fresh air on my skin, found the outside world, the sky: I had emerged into the open.
My feet were treading the circular walkway that runs all around and above the cupola. On the inside, there was a double row of columns, under which one could pass through a series of arches. On the outside, however, the paving sloped downwards to allow rain water to run off, and this made the visitor feel continuously drawn towards the abyss. The only protection was a handrail, beyond which my eyes reeled, intoxicated by the invisible panorama of nocturnal Rome, lethargic and sunk in passivity. Wherever I looked, a plunge to death threatened.
'My sweet wife, from this point on I shall tell you nothing,' I murmured, as my legs stiffened with fear and emotion.
Again I heard the panting of the guards. Whoever was hunting me down could not be far off now.
There was almost no time left. I looked for it, knowing from the book I had read with Atto at Villa Spada that it did exist. Halfway around the platform, I found it. A dark corner, an iron grate, two hinges: there it was. A little doorway that seemed almost to have been scraped with fingernails from the hard stone of the cupola. I pulled off my sweat-soaked shirt and drew from my breeches Ugonio's jingling bunch of keys. I looked for the right one. A big one, a slightly smaller one, another, the right size. Seconds passed, I was losing my advantage. I turned the key in the lock, needlessly: the door was already open. No time for cursing; a few rapid strides and I was inside.
The moment I passed through that door, I found myself on a narrow circular platform very similar to that which I had just left, but far smaller, with a handrail surround punctuated by great mushroom-shaped stone supports, even more perilously clinging to the top of the cupola. If only I had had the time, I would have delighted in the sprinkling of lights which the stars scattered across the black vault of heaven, indulging the fantasy that I could reach out and touch them with my hands.
In the midst of that disc-like upper platform, there was a small circular building. I immediately looked around it; there was no door. I was on the point of despairing, for I had heard any number of times that one could get in there, and then I saw it: a sort of low window was set into the wall at about the height of my stomach. I bent down and entered, and just as I did so I heard footsteps on the platform below.
Surprisingly, it was not completely dark inside this structure: a faint dawn light glimmered through the window I had just entered.
I heard a slight reverberation above my head. A ladder stretched upward towards the goal: the bronze ball that rises above the very highest point of Saint Peter's, immediately beneath the great cross which surmounts the basilica.
Leaping forward, I grasped a rung and hauled myself up, giving the wall a few kicks to help me on my way. As I clambered up, I saw that the vague light was growing stronger.
It is said that the ball of Saint Peter's can hold up to sixteen people, so long as they are suitably placed. However numerous those chasing us might be, there would, I knew, be no chance to put that report to the test.
At last, I poked my head into the ball, then my shoulders, at last resting on my elbows inside the great bronze sphere. Only then did I realise that I was not alone.
Perched with his great backside on the concave inner surface of the ball was Sfasciamonti, sweating like a donkey and panting, utterly winded. He had made it before me, probably taking another of the four stairs with huge steps that reach up to the top of the cupola within its cavity wall. In one hand, he was holding a little tome: the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave; in the other, a pistol.
In the middle of the spherical cavity in which we stood, just next to the hole through which one gained access to it, there was a stool. The book must have been deposited on it and the catchpoll had been quicker than me in getting to it. Suddenly, he handed it to me.
'Put it in your breeches, they're coming!'
I heard a noise coming from below. Sfasciamonti's finger curved around the trigger. We seemed to have no
