similar beings appeared.
Before us stood a great stone wall which seemed to be that of an enormous edifice. We entered through a narrow tunnel. A number of torches set into the walls at last cheered the soul and the eyes. Suddenly, however, rock, moss and bare earth closed in on us, forming an impregnable fortress. The tunnel had come to an end. Ugonio turned, showing us his broken, blackish teeth in a malicious smile, taking pleasure in our discomfiture.
Buvat and I exchanged alarmed looks. Had we been led into a trap? The corpisantaro gestured that we were to make sure that our faces were well hidden under our cowls, so that no one could distinguish our features. Then he leaned against the wall to our left. The rock swallowed him up: Ugonio had entered it like water absorbed into a sponge.
Almost as though emerging from another dimension, he took a step backwards and motioned us to follow him.
Obviously, Ugonio had not penetrated the substance of the rock. The sharp noise of the painted wood forming the door set into the rock face had escaped me. This was a secret passage which intruders would be utterly unable to find but which Ugonio had obviously taken who knows how many times.
Once inside, it took a few moments for our eyes to become accustomed to the new situation. We looked all around us. Neglected for centuries, enormous and powerful, and now crawling with cerretani, the Roman amphitheatre of Albano lay before us.
'So we came in by a secret passage,' I whispered in Ugonio's ear.
'To bring about more benefice than malefice,' he assented, 'the normal orifices have been blockified. No strangers or noseinsinuators must get in here tonight.'
'But no one stopped us.'
'It is not necessitable. There are many guardians postified everywhich where and any introoter will be visualised, compressed and suppressed.'
So the amphitheatre was protected by a system of sentinels responsible for finding any intruders and rendering them harmless. Thanks to the disguise provided by Ugonio, no one had suspected us.
Along the internal perimeter of the amphitheatre, a long series of torches lit up the scene. In that vast space, enclosed but open to the sky, I felt simultaneously disoriented and imprisoned. Above our heads, the star-studded black of the sky warned that there was no hope of escape for those without wings. Waves of murmuring coming from the arena maliciously tickled the senses and the spirit. The air was sickly-sweet, humid and loaded with sin.
'But yes, of course, the amphitheatre,' said Atto under his breath, 'it had to be here…'
'Do you know this place?' I asked.
'Of course. Back in Cicero's day…'
Ugonio silenced us with a sudden movement of his arm. A few paces behind us there was still that old cripple with his two friends who had escorted him from outside. The animal caution with which the corpisantaro was leading us seemed all but tangible; and already we could feel the dismal atmosphere of a secret meeting of brigands clutch at our shoulders like some rapacious lemur.
From the centre of the arena shone the rays of several torches which, from what we could hear and see, lit up an assembly. At the same time, a confused babble of voices reached us. We approached, still following prudently in Ugonio's footsteps. After passing a heap of firewood, we could at last get a look at the scene.
A few paces ahead of us stood a huge brazier, as high as a man, in which a great flame burned generously, crackling and sending sparks high up into the sky. All around were small groups of cerretani; some were idly eating a wretched meal, others were gulping down cheap wine and yet others were playing cards. Then there were some who were welcoming new arrivals, raising their arms in salutation. The company was one great multitude of sordid, ill-dressed, mud-bespattered, evil-smelling people.
'We have arrivalled at the most suitful moment,' murmured Ugonio, motioning us with his hand to follow him in single file.
From another part of the amphitheatre, we saw approaching us a sort of procession, upon seeing which those camped near the brazier stood up dutifully.
'The electrocution has just taken place. The Maggiorenghi are now entrifying with the Grand Legator,' said Ugonio pointing to the procession and inviting us to stand aside. 'The firstsome is the head of the Company of Mumpers. Behind him are all the adjuncts and conjuncts of the othersome companies: Dommerers, Clapperdogeons, Brothers of the Buskin, Abram Coves, Pistoleros and Tawneymen…'
'So these are the heads of the cerretani companies?' asked Atto, opening his eyes wide, as we prepared to join the procession.
I looked at that vile troop. On the basis of what Il Roscio had told us, I could identify the head of the Dommerers' company. Around his neck, he wore a huge iron chain and he was constantly murmuring 'bran-bran- bran'; as I recalled, the speciality of his group was imposture: they claimed to have been prisoners of the Turks and so spoke Turkish. Of course, there was no pigeon to pluck that evening but the Dommerers, like all the other cerretanii, had, after a manner of speaking, come to their general meeting wearing their company uniform.
'And where is the Grand Legator?' he added, looking all around (although the very idea was absurd) for Lamberg's face.
In lieu of an answer, Ugonio moved to the head of the procession of Maggiorenghi. He greeted the head of the Mumpers, an individual with a flowing grey beard and long hair that spilled out from under a showy plumed hat; in accordance with the practice of his sect, he wore the clothes of a nobleman, save that these were unbelievably dirty and threadbare. The Mumpers, as I had just read in Geronimo's statement, were those who begged, saying that they were ruined gentlefolk or artisans. Ugonio knelt in the most unctuous and servile manner, momentarily slowing down the little cortege of Maggiorenghi. Instantly, we pulled our cowls down even lower, fearing that our faces might be seen. Fortunately, we were helped by the intermittent, flaming light of the torches which illuminated the space somewhat irregularly. I looked around me again: the whole place was crawling with cripples and lepers, with men blind, mutilated or emaciated, their bodies half naked, twisted and limping, bearing the marks of flagellation, chains and torture. It was a veritable catalogue of the cerretani' s impostures: all those apparent lacerations, those pustules, that exhausted dragging of legs, were merely the tricks of the trade: not suffering, but art, of which the canters kept the signs even when they were not actually engaging in their scoundrelly activities. Observing more closely, I saw that they were strolling peacefully here and there, downing their cheap wine, laughing and joking without a care in the world. I wavered between horror, fear and wonderment, but there was no time to exchange any comment with Atto. After a brief muttered colloquy, Ugonio returned to us and the procession continued on its way.
'Bemark the Mumper posterior to the Maggiorengo,' he whispered.
This was a bald, half-hunchbacked old man, wearing a badly torn artisan's apron and a pair of down-at-heel shoes. He, too, according to the dictates of his sect, begged, pretending to have been an honest workman who had fallen on hard times. On his shoulder, he carried an old bag in which one could just descry the white pages of a small tome.
'He is the Grand Legator,' announced Ugonio.
'What!' hissed Atto, his eyes bulging out of his head with surprise.
'He is a brother from Holland. His name is Drehmannius and he's a bit gagafied, he can't even read the foliables he binds, but he is indeed an excellentissimus buchbinder. That's why he's a Mumper. He has the treaty,' added Ugonio, with an imperceptible nod in the direction of the contents of the bag on the man's shoulder.
I saw Atto's jaws tighten. What Lamberg? What imperial plot? Now it was all crystal clear: the Grand Legator was no legatus or Ambassador but a legator, in the cerretanis'' dog Latin, that meant he was an ordinary bookbinder! So the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave, the key to Atto's destiny, was in the hands of that lousy insignificant old Dutchman.
'What's this Dutch bookbinder, Drehmannius or whatever he's called, proposing to do with my treatise?' asked Melani, on tenterhooks.
'To ungluify the binderings. The Maggiorengo has just secreted it to me.'
'To unglue the binding?' repeated Melani, utterly at a loss for words. 'What the deuce do you mean?'
But we had to stop talking. A tall, imposing cerretano, with filthy, stubby great hands, had drawn near to us, his right eye covered with a black bandage. He called Ugonio to one side and the latter followed him at once.
Thus, we were suddenly without a guide in the very midst of that demented, lawless mass, at the tail of a
