'I imagine that this Faithful Shepherd was one of the favourite readings of la Mancini and the King at the time of their amours,' I guessed, trying to understand what Atto had meant to say.
'More or less,' he mumbled, drawing suddenly away from the tapestries and pretending to take an interest in a picture of a wooded landscape. 'I mean, it was the favourite reading of many at the time. It is a very famous play, as I said to you.'
The Abbot seemed reticent, and then aware that I had noticed this.
'I detest gossiping about the love secrets of Maria and His Majesty,' he declared in familiar tones, 'above all, those they shared when they were alone.'
'Alone? Yet you are informed of them,' I commented dubiously.
'Yes, I and no one else.'
I found it distinctly curious that Melani should be seized now by qualms of conscience: he seemed never to have had any whenever he had complacently revealed to me whole series of secret and intimate episodes in the life of the Most Christian King. On the contrary…
I was on the point of replying when I heard the same footsteps yet again. They were drawing near at an alarming pace. They were coming up the stairs. We both turned to the spiral staircase which we had climbed at the far end of the hall.
As stiff as stockfish, both frozen by a fear which neither was willing to admit to the other, we waited with bated breath for the strange presence to manifest itself. The echoes created in the gallery by the footsteps on the marble stairs were so scattered that, without knowing where the staircase was, it would have been impossible to tell which way to turn. The footsteps drew nearer, then very near, so near that one would have sworn that they had reached the level of the gallery. Then they ceased. We both had our gaze fixed on the far end of the gallery. There was no one there.
Then he came. The shadow came between us, enormous, inconceivable. We had been deceived. The being was behind us, almost upon us, on the threshold of the loggia from which one could see the Vatican.
At that instant my mind struggled to understand how he had managed to materialise there behind us in complete silence. Simultaneously, I felt my left shoulder in his grip and knew that I was defenceless.
Transfixed by terror, I turned my head and saw the phantom. It was a small, aquiline, ill-dressed figure. His eyes were sunken, his skin, drawn. It was not necessary for me to lower my gaze to know the rest. The smell was enough: from his neck to his lower belly, his shirt was soaked in blood.
'Buvat!' cried Atto, what are you doing here?'
He did not reply.
'Your… your wife,' stammered the pale spectre, turning to me. 'You must run… at once.'
He leaned against the wall. Then he slid to the ground and fainted.
Evening the Third
9th July, 1700
I ran until my chest was bursting. Helped by the now late afternoon and the first evening breezes, I covered the short yet by no means negligible distance between the Vessel and the Villa Spada at a speed which not even the fear of my own death could have given me. 'Cloridia, Cloridia,' I kept repeating to myself in anguish, 'and the little ones? Where can they be?' The whole of the ground to be covered was quite clear in my mind, carved into it by the scalpel of anxiety: I must take the main entrance of the villa, run up the avenue, enter the great house, take a couple of short cuts inside the house, climb to the first floor, run to the apartments of the Princess of Forano..
Yet, the moment that I came in sight of the walls of the Villa Spada, I saw that it was going to be very difficult.
In front of the villa, absolute chaos reigned. At that moment, on the esplanade before the main gates, for hours already packed with carriages, retainers, hangers-on and servants, the party of one of the principal guests was making its entry: this was Louis Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco and Ambassador of the Most Christian King of France.
I tried to make my way through to the entrance of the villa, but in vain. From the neighbourhood there had gathered a multitude of peasants and plebeians, hungering for the sight of influential personages. All wanted to gain at least a glance at the eminences, princes and ambassadors invited to the nuptials. The crush had been worsened by the flow of persons entering and leaving the villa, under the eyes of two armed guards. Immediately outside the gates, the crowd was indescribable, the hubbub insufferable; one could see nothing for the dust raised by the horses' hooves; the human tide oozed and swelled, repelled in vain by those (coachmen, footmen, members of the escort) struggling to manoeuvre or to make their way into the villa.
'Make way, make way! I am a servant of the Villa Spada, let me through!' I cried out like a madman, struggling to traverse the heaving mass; but no one heard me.
Just then, a carriage moved backwards. Two women managed somehow to dodge it, screaming in terror. One of them fell on top of me. I fell to the ground and, in my attempt to cling on to something, pulled down another unfortunate with me. He in turn pulled down his neighbour, so that I found myself embedded in a bizarre heap of legs and arms; hardly had I regained my feet than I saw the harmless incident had degenerated into a brawl. Two footmen were flailing wildly in all directions with their staffs. Another two coachmen were pushing one another, one drew a knife; a voice rang out calling for the sergeants. The Prince of Monaco's procession ground to a halt, lurching and creaking like one immense carriage.
Ignoring the altercation, I ran again towards my Cloridia with my heart in my mouth; but the carriages barred my way and there was no way of getting through. I put my head down and plunged into the melee, trying to force my way through a forest of legs, boots and clogs. This gained me, first, an elbow in the chest, then a shove from a small boy. Like a ram, I hurled myself headlong, preparing to fight my way through. The boy's great blue eyes stared at me, helpless and shocked. I attacked.
Instead of encountering a soft belly, my forehead met with a surface that enveloped it firmly. It was a hand, enormous and invincible, which grabbed me by the hair and hauled my head up by brute force.
'By all the culverins! What are you doing here, boy? Your wife needs you urgently.'
Still holding me by the hair, Sfasciamonti was looking at me in amusement and surprise.
'What has happened to Cloridia?' I screamed.
'To her, nothing. But something good has happened to the Princess of Forano. Now, come.'
He raised me up, placing me on his massive shoulders and led me to the gate of the villa. From the height of that mount, I, like some new Hannibal on the back of an elephant, could enjoy a panoramic view of the situation.
The crowd was again becoming noisy and agitated: from his carriage, the Prince of Monaco was throwing money to the people. With a broad theatrical gesture he would hurl dozens of coins from a little purse, showering the heads of the public with shiny denari. His face betrayed all his pleasure at seeing the plebeians at each others' throats, fighting over what, for him, was nothing.
'The Prince of Monaco is truly a blustering jackass,' murmured Sfasciamonti as we passed the armed guards at the gates of the villa and entered the grounds at last. 'One may throw money to the populace from the balcony of one's own palace, not in front of someone else's villa.'
'So,' I began, at last a trifle calmer, as I dismounted from Sfasciamonti's shoulders, 'is Cloridia well? And how are my little daughters?'
'They are all very well. But did not Buvat tell you? The Princess of Forano has given birth to a fine little boy. While she was assisting the birth, your wife needed help. She called for the little girls and in the meantime asked for you. No one knew where you were, then Cloridia said to look for Abbot Melani. He too was nowhere to be found, so Buvat offered to help. The first thing that they asked him to do was to carry out the bloodstained sheets with which he made his shirt all filthy. Then he became very pale, saying that the sight of blood made him ill, and off he went to fetch you. By the way, where the deuce were you?'
At that very moment our eyebrows arched in amazement, when into the piazza came the procession of the bride, Maria Pulcheria Rocci. The retinue comprised no fewer than eleven carriages and innumerable others sent by
