search of our trio. In the end, they identified us and I saw them set off determinedly after us.
'Signor Atto, they've sent two fellows to catch us,' I announced, as we continued our difficult task of making our way through the crowd while showing no signs of haste.
The distance between us and the pair who were hunting us down decreased rapidly. Forty paces. Fifteen. The door leading to the secret passage through the rock was in sight. Ten paces from the brutes. Eight.
A sudden violent movement caught my attention. It was behind the pair following us and a little to the right. The outline of Ugonio, advancing with great difficulty, tugged back from behind — then turning to free himself — a hand taking Atto's tome away from him — but he resists, grabs it back, again begins to flee — other hands grasping the book, the binding is torn…
'Buvat!' commanded Atto, apparently referring to something already agreed.
I did not understand what he meant. Meanwhile, we were only some six yards from the bully boys. Now I could see them better. They were as dirty as all the others but quite muscular and obtuse-looking. I could tell instinctively that they knew very well how to inflict pain.
'But where am I to… Ah, here!' exclaimed Buvat, practically throwing himself at a cerretano bearing a torch.
The flame was incredibly intense: red, white and yellow as well as some shades of light blue, then the Catherine wheel became animated and spun wildly, flying towards Ugonio and those chasing after him. Buvat had worked most skilfully, hurriedly lighting the fuse at just the right point and aiming the firework perfectly. The crowd split into two like the Red Sea dividing to let the children of Israel pass.
Meanwhile, after the ceremony and the sermon, the time had come for Bacchus to take to the stage. An enormous vat was being transported towards the speakers' rostrum, to enable the revellers to give full rein to their baser instincts. The container, which must have weighed as much as a pair of buffaloes, was being carried by a group of cerretani who were already tipsy and was just in the way of the pair who were after us.
I just had time, as we disappeared into the secret passage, to catch a glimpse of the first of the two brutes, his face contorted with pain and his leg shattered under the huge vat, while the other screamed at the bearers terrorised by our rocket, and tried to co-ordinate their efforts so as to extricate his injured mate. The smoke from the Catherine wheel, which had ended up goodness knows where, was making those nearest to it weep and adding to the confusion. The chaos was total, the panic of the cerretani, too.
I could see nothing else. As the door closed behind us, there blew on my face for the last time, like the breath of a sleeping dragon, the rank, foul stench of the cerretano gathering.
The next sensory impression was the invigorating caress of the night breeze as we took the road back: a long march across fields, on the bare grass, avoiding the path so as to spare ourselves any disagreeable encounters. We kept our ears pricked and our eyes alert for any sign of whether Ugonio had made it to the exit: an all-too-faint hope, as he had been found out. In fact, we heard and saw nothing.
Atto was swearing. His treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave, which had perhaps already caused Haver's death, was still in Ugonio's hands and the last time that we had seen him, he had been in those of the cerretani. The tomb-robber had betrayed them for Atto's money. They would by now have found it on his person and torn him to pieces.
We came to the place where we had left Sfasciamonti, by now exhausted, our nerves shattered by the danger from which we had just escaped, and depressed by the defeat we had suffered. For the last few minutes, Atto had trailed behind us, fiddling with something in his waistcoat, so much so that Buvat and I had had to incite him to catch up with us.
Sfasciamonti came towards us.
'Let's get a move on, it will soon be daybreak,' he urged.
'Look out! Behind you!' Atto yelled at him.
The catchpoll spun around, fearing an attack from behind.
Atto approached and pulled something from his waistcoat. The report of the little pistol resounded sharply, almost stridently, in the night.
Sfasciamonti fell forward onto his face with a blind scream of pain.
'Let us go,' was all that Abbot Melani said.
I had not the courage to look back and see the sad, corpulent figure of the catchpoll disappear amidst the grass of the field, covered in blood right down to his ankles.
We were five when we left, only three returned. Ugonio was at that moment probably being murdered by the crowd in the amphitheatre, while Sfasciamonti must be dragging himself in search of help in a desperate attempt to survive.
At last, we reached the carriage which was waiting for us behind the haystack, and were on our way. In response to the questioning glance of the coachman, when he noticed the absence of Sfasciamonti (who had hired him) and Ugonio, Atto responded laconically: 'They preferred to stay overnight.'
Words accompanied by gold coin, which Atto forced into the postillion's hands, thus silencing any further questions.
Once again, as seventeen years before, I found myself sur-reptiously scrutinising the face of Abbot Atto Melani, one-time famous castrato singer, trusted aide to the Medici of Florence, to Mazarin and to a thousand princes throughout Europe, friend of cardinals, popes and sovereigns, and secret agent of the Most Christian King of France, and wondering whether I was not in fact facing a mere rogue, or worse, a professional killer.
He had shot poor Sfasciamonti coldly, cruelly and without showing the least sign of pity. In the face of such determination, no one had dared express the least opposition. Had I protested, perhaps I too would have met the same end.
Now, sitting in the carriage opposite the Abbot, my limbs felt as cold and rigid as marble. Buvat, overcome by emotion, had soon collapsed into heavy, infantile sleep.
Atto relieved me of the need to put questions to him. It was as though he had heard the sound of my thoughts and wanted to silence it.
'It was you who provided me with the necessary elements,' said he suddenly. 'In the first place, the ease with which the thief got into my apartment. It was you who pointed that out when we inspected the place immediately after the theft. After all, you said, Villa Spada was under close surveillance. And then I asked.'
'Whom did you ask?' said I, without understanding what Atto was getting at.
'The thief, obviously: Ugonio. And yes, he told me that, yes, the cerretani had told him that his work would be facilitated, so to speak, by those working in the Villa Spada.'
'Sfasciamonti betrayed us,' I murmured.
I was unable to accept this. Had Ugonio and his accomplices really carried out the theft with Sfasciamonti's complicity?
'Ugonio might have said that he'd been helped by Sfasciamonti for the sole purpose of calumnying him,' I objected. 'After all, the catchpolls are the enemies of the corpisantari.'
'That's true. But I told him straight away that I suspected Don Paschatio, with whom the corpisantari have no bone to pick. Thus, I avoided the risk of a less-than-genuine answer.'
'And what else?'
'Then it was you who again provided me with an interesting factor: the reform of the police, which you heard talk of during the celebrations. If that were to be put into effect, many catchpolls might lose their jobs, including Sfasciamonti. Our man's scared, he wants money, the future is uncertain. And then there's the incredible story of the ball.'
'Do you mean when we went to Saint Peter's?'
'It was quite clear that it was he who prevented you from taking my treatise from the ball, where it was hidden — a weird idea but, I must admit, a rather charming one — either by Zabaglia, the foreman at Saint Peter's in cahoots with the cerretani or, more probably, by one of them who'd done him some dirty favour. I pretended I believed him when he told me that he had picked up your inanimate body and carried you back to the Villa Spada all on his own, losing my treatise in the process — what a coincidence!'
'What do you think really happened?'
'He nearly killed himself to get to the ball before you because he wanted to stop you from getting your hands on his quarry. He did not fall accidentally, as it seemed to you, he must have thrown himself onto you with his full weight, knocking you down and giving you a good bash over the head to send you into the world of dreams. Then he
