'Hey, go easy,' we both protested when he dragged us both by brute force into the dank, dark porch.
'Hush!' hissed the catchpoll, flattening himself against the front door behind one of the pilasters framing it.
'Two cerretani, they were stalking you. When they saw me, they hid. Perhaps they've gone now. I must go and see.'
'Were they shadowing us?' Atto asked worriedly.
We held our breath. Prudently craning our necks, we caught sight of two ragged and emaciated old tramps, crossing the road.
'You are a dunderhead, Sfasciamonti,' whispered Atto, uttering a sigh of relief. 'Do you really think those two half-dead wretches could spy on anyone?'
'The cerretani watch over you without giving themselves away. They are secretive,' answered the catchpoll without so much as batting an eyelid.
'Very well,' cut in Abbot Melani, 'have you spoken with the person I told you to find?'
'All in order, by the recoil of a thousand howitzers!' came the catchpoll's immediate reassurance, accompanied by his curious imprecations.
The place was in a side-road giving onto the Via dei Coronari, scarcely a block away from the bookbinder's shop. We arrived there by the most tortuous route, as Atto and Sfasciamonti wanted at all costs to avoid passing in front of the scene of the crime, where there was a risk of encountering the sergeants assigned to the case. Fortunately, darkness was our ally.
'Why are we hiding, Signor Atto? We have nothing to do with the death of the bookbinder,' said I.
Melani did not answer me.
'The criminal judge has assigned new officers to the case. I do not know them,' announced Sfasciamonti as we left Piazza Fiammetta behind us, setting off towards Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro.
We defiled through the alleyways of the quarter, where Buvat stumbled upon a sleeping congregation of ragged friars, barely managing to avoid falling against a pile of boxes and baskets belonging to street vendors who lay dozing as they awaited dawn and their first customers. Under the cloths and blankets delicious odours betrayed the presence of French lettuces, sweet lupin seeds, fresh waffles and cheese.
The rendezvous was far removed from prying eyes, in the shop of a coronaro, that is, a maker of rosaries. We were welcomed by the artisan, an old man with a face covered in wrinkles who greeted Melani with great deference, as though he were long acquainted with him, and led us towards the back of the shop. We made our way through that cool little den replete with great rosaries made of wood and of bone, of every form and colour, finely interwoven and hanging on the walls or laid on little tables. The coronaro opened a drawer.
'Here you are, Sir,' said he respectfully as he handed the Abbot a packet enveloped in blue velvet, which seemed to me to be in the form of a little picture.
After saying this, the coronaro disappeared with Sfasciamonti into the back room. Atto gestured to Buvat that we were to follow them.
I could not understand. Why ever should the death of the bookbinder have led us into that shop of devotional objects to take delivery of what I imagined to be the picture of some saint, presumably to be hung on the wall? I was unable to make a connection between the two things.
Atto guessed my thoughts and, taking me by the arm, deemed the time right for providing me with some initial explanations.
'I had arranged this morning with the bookbinder that he should leave the little book here, with this good man.'
So it was not some small picture that the coronaro had brought Melani, but the mysterious little book of which the Abbot was so unwilling to speak.
'I know this coronaro well, he helps me out whenever I need it and I know that I can trust him,' he added, without, however, adding what services he might need of a coronaro or giving me the slightest clue as to the nature of the book.
'Since the bookbinder was often absent from his shop, I thought that it would be more convenient to collect it here,' continued the Abbot. 'After all, I had already paid for the new binding. And I did well so to arrange matters, for otherwise, if I wanted to collect my little opuscule, I'd have found myself in a quarrel with some sergeant asking too many questions: whether I knew the bookbinder, how long I'd been acquainted with him, what relations I had with him… Try explaining to him how, at the very moment when I was talking with poor Haver, I was stabbed in the arm by a stranger. They'd never have believed me. I can just imagine the questions: how is it that it happened just then, there must surely be a connec tion, what were you doing here in Rome, and so on and so forth. In other words, my boy, it does not bear thinking about.'
Then Atto beckoned me to follow him. He did not move towards the door but took me into the back room, into which Sfasciamonti had disappeared a few minutes before with the coronaro and Buvat. In the back of the shop, we were awaited by a little woman of about fifty, seated at a worn old table, modest and somewhat poorly dressed. She was talking with Sfasciamonti and the coronaro while Buvat listened as though stunned. When Atto entered, the woman stood up at once out of respect, having realised that here was a gentleman.
'Have you finished?' asked Melani.
The catchpoll and Buvat nodded.
'That woman is a neighbour of poor Haver,' Sfasciamonti be gan to explain to us as we walked away from the shop, leaving
Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro behind us. 'She saw everything from a window. She heard someone lamenting and knocking at the binder's door. The latter, who seems to have been a very pious man, opened up straight away but had no time to close the door before two other figures slipped in. They went away half an hour later, carrying off a great pile of paper with them as well as a number of books that had already been bound.'
'Poor Haver. And poor fool, too,' commented Atto.
'But why they took away papers, we know not,' said I, looking at Atto.
'Where the cerretani are involved, one can never understand a thing,' interrupted Sfasciamonti, his visage growing dark.
'But how can you be so sure that this was the work of your mendicants?' asked Atto, growing somewhat impatient.
'Experience. When one springs up — and here I speak of the one who was running away and who wounded you — he is invariably followed by others,' said the catchpoll gravely.
Atto stopped suddenly, thus bringing all three of us to a stop.
'Come on now, what are you talking about? Sfasciamonti, we cannot go on like this with your half-baked explanations. Kindly tell me once and for all what it is that these mendicants do, these… Cerrisani, as you call them.'
'Cerretani,' Sfasciamonti humbly corrected.
I was sure of it. He would never have admitted it, but even then Atto Melani felt the serpent of fear slide up from his ankles into his guts.
He knew all too well that he had had a physical encounter with one of the strange individuals of whom Sfasciamonti was speaking, and from that encounter he had received a stab wound which was still hurting and hindering him, following which the bookbinder in whose presence all that had taken place had been assaulted that very night in his own shop, and had died. And he had had his own little book bound by that same unfortunate man; coincidences which could have brought pleasure to no one.
'Above all, I want to know,' the Abbot added brusquely, his impatient mind struggling with the fatigue of his old limbs, 'are they acting on their own behalf or for hire?'
'Do you really think it is so easy to find that out? With the cerretani strange things are always happening. Indeed, only strange things happen.'
The catchpoll then began to describe what, as far as he had learned, was the origin of the cerretani, and the real nature of that mysterious confraternity.
'The cerretani. A rabble. They come from Cerreto in Umbria, where they took refuge after fleeing Rome. They were priests, and the higher priests chased them away.'
In Cerreto, the account continued, the cerretani chose from among their number a new Upright Man or head priest who di vided them up according to their talents, into groups, cells and sects: Rufflers, Clapperdogeons or
