way out.
'We can't fire, we are in a church… And besides, they'll arrest us,' I observed, in my turn gasping for breath.
'If anything, we're on top of a church,' the catchpoll sniggered.
It was pointless to try getting down from the ball: someone had entered the little structure and was about to climb the ladder. Sfasciamonti and I looked at one another, uncertain what to do next.
Then it all happened: our eyes were struck by a blinding flash which burned our faces like a whip, while our bodies contorted in shock.
Suddenly I understood why. As I penetrated, first, the little building, then the ball itself, I had been vaguely aware of a diffuse glimmer, growing ever clearer. Years back, I had known an old butcher whose son was employed in Saint Peter's Factory, and he had described to me what was now happening. The ball in which we stood had four slits in its sides, placed as high as a man at the four cardinal points: thrusting an incandescent blade into that facing east and flooding all with its presence, the sun had made its joyous introitus among us.
It was dawn.
Day the Ninth
15th July, 1700
As though it were a sign of destiny, the ray directly struck Atto's tome, which refracted its luminous flood into a thousand blinding white rivulets.
Indifferent to this curious event, Sfasciamonti pointed his pistol downwards.
'Halt or I fire, I am a sergeant of the Governor!' he cried.
Then (or so it seemed to me) he tripped over the stool, which fell through the hole in the ball with a great and general clangour. Perhaps the catchpoll fell after it. Perhaps, in his struggle to break his fall, he dragged me with him.
Time was no more. From light I passed to darkness, the world and the ball whirled drunkenly and suddenly I was elsewhere.
While they were carrying me away, a bag of worn-out, weary members, my eyes strove to catch one last fragment of those sacred pinnacles, that eyrie consecrated to the Lord.
I was head down; but by one of those curious algorithms of consciousness that enables some to read perfectly from right to left or to compose impromptu anagrams, before I again lost consciousness, it appeared to me, and I recognised it.
Proud and enigmatic, anchored on the heights of the Janiculum, the Vessel was observing us.
'Behind every strange or inexplicable death there lies a conspiracy of the state, or of its secret forces,' pronounced Abbot Melani.
My head was throbbing. My neck was hurting. To tell the truth, I was hurting all over.
'But also those cases of persons who disappear, or are kidnapped, or suffer incredible accidents, then miraculously reappear from nowhere safe and sound, all these things are clear signs of subversive plotting. No one can escape death like that save with the help of an assiduous practitioner.'
Atto's voice was suspended in a naked crystalline void. My eyes were still closed and there seemed to be no urgency about opening them.
Some memories came to me: the sensation of my body, lying heavily in the back of a cart; the cold of daybreak; then the return to warm, familiar surroundings.
A few hours passed (or were they only minutes?) until I was awoken by the sound of the door handle opening and closing, and of footsteps in the corridor. My eyelids at last decided that it was time to wake up.
I was lying on Abbot Melani's bed in the casino of Villa Spada, still fully dressed. Atto sat nearby, on an armchair, lost in who knows what thoughts. He had not realised that I had come to my senses. Only after a few minutes did he detach his gaze from that imaginary point in mid-air on which he had fixed it and turn to me.
'Welcome back among the living,' said he with a smile at once satisfied and ironic. 'Your wife was very worried, she waited up for you all night. Even though it was dawn, I made sure she was informed that you had returned safe and sound.
'Where's Sfasciamonti?' I asked anxiously.
'Fast asleep.'
'And Buvat?'
'In his little room. And snoring, to boot.'
'I do not understand,' I said, sitting up for the first time; 'why did they not arrest us?'
'From what your catchpoll friend told us, you have been extremely lucky. Sfasciamonti threw himself at the sampietrino who was about to get into the ball, knocking you down in the process. After that, he disarmed him and, with a few kicks and punches, left him very much the worse for wear. Then he hoisted you onto his shoulders and carried you back down, without too much trouble, seeing his size. When he got there, nobody saw him. It was daybreak and there was not a soul about. Probably all the guards on duty had run after Buvat.'
'After Buvat?'
'Yes, indeed. He took to his legs the moment they began to follow you, up on the terrace.'
'What?' I exclaimed in astonishment, 'I thought he had come up with us all the way to the…'
'Despite himself, he was quite brilliant. Instead of following you when you ran up the stairs towards the cupola, he turned and ran back down the stairs you had come from. One of the sampietrini who had been following you, a little fellow — oh, pardon me — followed him,' explained the Abbot, excusing himself for his gaffe about my height. 'But Buvat has long legs and he couldn't see him for dust. He ran out of Saint Peter's like greased lightning and no one even managed to get a glimpse of his face, he left them all standing. Then, typically enough, he got lost on the way back from Saint Peter's and arrived only a little while before you.'
I was shocked through and through. I was convinced that I had two allies in my perilous rush up to the ball of Saint Peter's, but one had shamefully deserted while the other had collapsed on top of me.
'I know you bore yourself magnificently, you attained your goal.'
'Your treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave!' I burst out. 'Did Sfasciamonti give it to you?'
Atto's features became gently disconsolate:
'That was not possible. When he was carrying you, the book slipped out from your breeches and flew down. If I have understood correctly, it landed on a part of the terrace too far off to risk going there. He had to choose between safety and my treatise. He could not, I imagine, do otherwise.'
'I don't understand… It had all gone so well, then… It is absurd,' 1 commented, thoroughly distressed. 'And then, why did he bring me here instead of taking me home?'
'Simple: he does not know where you live.'
Still somewhat groggy, I had to wait for the stupor and disappointment beclouding my soul to settle. That dangerous chase, the fatigue, the fear… All for nothing. We had lost Atto's book. Then a vague memory came to me.
'Signor Atto, while I slept, I heard you talking.'
'Perhaps I was thinking aloud.'
'You said something about unexplained deaths, conspiracies of state… well, something of the sort.'
'Really? I don't remember. But now you must get some rest, my boy, if you so desire,' said he, standing up and moving towards the door.
'Will you be going into town with the other guests to visit the Palazzo Spada?'
'No.'
'Will you really not go?' I asked, imagining that Atto might be afraid of meeting Albani. By then, some sampietrino at Zabaglio's orders might have recovered Atto's tome and be handing it over to the cerretani, who would in turn give it to the Grand Legator, namely Lamberg, who would hand it to the Secretary for Breves.
'It is not the moment for that,' Atto replied. 'I should love to examine the marvels of Palazzo Spada by the light of day, but we have other far more urgent matters to worry about.'
