The weather turned a little grey. A sudden gust of hot wind lashed our faces as soon as we entered the spiral staircase to the terrace of the Vessel.
Our preparations for this incursion had taken quite some time. Among the many possibilities, we had in the end opted for the essentials: Atto's pistol, a long dagger, which I had stuffed into my breeches; and, last of all, a net, one of those used during the merry hunt three days before. Thus we were equipped to hold the creature at bay, to injure him if there should — oh horror! — be hand-to-hand fighting, or even act like retiarii in the gladiatorial ring, trapping him under the net.
We stood outside the little penthouse, our legs almost rigid with fear. After exchanging looks of reciprocal encouragement,
Atto advanced first, turned the handle and pushed the door open. Within, shadows and silence.
For a moment we neither spoke nor moved.
'I shall go ahead,' said Melani at length, drawing his pistol and making sure that it was ready to fire.
I responded by brandishing the dagger and, spreading the net lightly across my left shoulder, I readied myself to throw it at the first opportunity.
Atto entered. Hardly had he crossed the threshold than he backed against the left door jamb, so as to reduce the number of directions from which he could be attacked. With one arm, he motioned me to advance. I obeyed.
So it was that I found myself once more in the monster's den, shoulder to shoulder with Atto. Panting and by no means any longer feline in his movements, the Abbot was, despite his advanced age and declining eyesight, as leonine as ever, behaving like the foremost among the King's musketeers.
The light was faint because of the smoked glass, and this time the passing clouds made it even dimmer than on the previous occasion. In the middle of the little building there were, as I remembered, two small pillars.
If it was there, it was well hidden.
A sharp pain made me jump. To catch my attention, Atto had jabbed me in the side with his elbow.
Then I saw it.
In the opposite corner, beyond the two pillars and close to the right-hand window, something had moved on the wall. Something rather like an arm, horribly deformed, and covered with a sort of scaly, serpentine skin seemed to emerge from the wall and had reacted to Atto's dig in my ribs. The beast was there.
Our view was partially obstructed by the two columns; we would need to get closer in order to understand what part of the monster had really moved and, above all, what it was doing so bizarrely stuck into the wall.
'Keep still. Don't make a move,' whispered Abbot Melani, almost inaudibly.
A minute passed, maybe two, in total immobility. The Tetrachion's arm had ceased to move, as had its monstrous hand. The door was open. Both we and the creature could have broken and run. Whether out of courage or fear, neither dared resolve so to do. The air was humid because of leaks in the ceiling and the whole of the tight space seemed to be incrusted with saltpetre. Our bated breath seemed to make the atmosphere even damper, as did the heavy all- pervading silence, the materialised, fleshed-out fear.
While all this was happening (in reality, nothing whatever, save the storm in our hearts) I was fighting another battle. I was doing all I could, yet, despite the gravity of the moment, I knew that sooner or later I would have to give in. I absolutely had to, and yet I could not. In the end, I surrendered. I simply had to scratch my nose if I wanted to avoid something even worse — a sneeze. And I did so.
Never could any expression in human language convey the feeling of desperate amazement which seized me when I saw the monster's hand imitate mine in perfect synchrony, rising to its horrid face, which remained hidden behind the two small pillars. A terrible doubt came over me.
'Did you see?' I whispered to Atto.
'It moved,' he replied in alarm.
I wanted to perform a second test. I freed the fingers of the same hand and made them flutter gaily. Then I moved a leg back and forth, rhythmically. At length, under Atto's stupefied gaze, I left my place and advanced towards the two pillars to look, free from all obstacles material or of the spirit, upon the mystery which had so cruelly enchained us.
'It is absurd. My boy, I forbid you to tell this to anyone,' said Atto, without removing his eyes from the looking glass. 'I mean, of course, not until we have made clear all that remains obscure,' he prudently corrected himself to cover up the cause of his peremptory command: shame.
He again touched the gibbous surface of the deforming mirror, admiring how it alternately swelled up, hollowed out, curved or straightened his fingers, knuckles, palm and wrist.
'I saw something rather like this in Frankfurt a long time ago, when Cardinal Mazarin sent me there for some secret negotiations. But it did not have such a… tremendous… effect as this.'
We had seen no Tetrachion. At least, so it seemed. Witty Benedetti, the ingenious creator of the Vessel, had for the greater amusement of his guests placed a number of distorting mirrors along the wall of the little penthouse which, thanks to the dim light and the dark, grim atmosphere of the place and the fact that they reflected one another, transformed the visitor's image into something like a monstrous being.
When I scratched my nose, I noticed that the presumed Tetrachion imitated my gesture with inordinate promptness. Likewise, my other little movements were mimed by the monster with quite incredibly exact timing. It could not be anything other than my own image reflected in some unknown distorting surface.
During our first incursion into the penthouse, our minds were full of the image of Capitor's dish, with Albicastro's voice, transmitted up there who knows how, and with the tales which Atto himself had recounted about Capitor. Faced with the absurd and alien features of a creature with four legs and two heads (in reality, myself and Atto, standing closely side by side) we thought we saw the Tetrachion. Instead, we were merely surrounded by curved mirrors. I heard Atto repeat:
This work I call a looking-glass
In which each fool shall see an ass.
The viewer learns with certainty;
My mirror leaves no mystery.
'Those are the verses we heard Albicastro's voice declaiming,' said I.
'Quite. He knew of the distorting mirrors and he was taunting us,' Atto replied, as he continued reciting:
Whoever sees with open eyes
Cannot regard himself as wise,
For he shall see upon reflection
That humans teem with imperfection.
'But where did his voice come from?' I asked dubiously.
Instead of replying, Atto began to feel the walls where there were no mirrors.
'What are you looking for?'
'It should be here… or a little further along… Ah, here we are!'
With his face full of the cheer engendered by his regained sagacity, he showed me a brass tube which ran vertically down the wall and then curved towards us, ending in a trumpet.
'How idiotic not to have thought of that earlier,' he exclaimed, slapping his forehead in frustration. 'Albicastro's voice, which we heard on that occasion, and which seemed like that of a phantom, came from this: the old tube used to pass orders to the servants on other floors and which I showed you on the ground floor. That mad Hollander must have been on one of the lower floors near to one of the mouths of the tube. When he realised that we might be in this wretched place full of distorting mirrors, he began chanting the verses of that damned Sebastian Brant and his Ship of Fools and froze the blood in our veins,' Atto concluded, revealing how frightened he had been last time.
Atto's conclusions were incontrovertible. The 'mirror of folly' cited by the bizarre Albicastro fitted in perfectly with the perverse game whereby the Tetrachion mentioned by the madwoman Capitor relived in the mirrors of the Vessel. What was more, did not the Dutchman's little song warn that what appears in a looking glass is not always worthy of our confidence? At that moment, Atto recited:
He's stirring at the dunces' stew;
He thinks he's wise and handsome too,
And with his mirror form so pleased
You'd think he had a mind diseased;
