Secretum

^“ Si Deus et Caesar pro me, quis contra?'

I had no difficulty in recognising the voice which had pronounced that Latin phrase. It was Atto. He too must have knelt in homage to the powerful Austrian diplomat. 'If God and the Emperor are with me, who'll be against me?' he had said. I tiptoed as far as I could, staring over some churchman's shining pate and at last I was able to witness the scene.

Atto was indeed on his knees before Lamberg, but in an elegant, controlled posture which manifested the desire to be courteous without indulging in self-abasement.

Before him stood the Imperial Ambassador, whose face I was able to see distinctly better than the day before. His eyes were coal-black; not deep, but cold and shifting. His expression was tenebrous, evasive and full of disquiet, as though indicative of a soul given to lies and dissimulation. The forehead was high enough, the oval of his face, regular, yet his complexion was ashen and dull, as though it had been rendered opaque by a surfeit of lugubrious cogitations. A slender, well-trimmed moustache gave his visage an airy touch of almost extreme elegance, designed only to mark off the distance from his inferiors. All in all, his presence inspired deference and respect but, above all, suspicion.

'Those are wise words,' replied Lamberg, visibly intrigued. 'Who are you?'

'An admirer, desirous of expressing to Your Excellency the most profound and sincere of praises,' said Atto, handing him a note.

Lamberg took it. A murmur of surprise and curiosity ran through the crowd of guests. The Ambassador opened the note, read it and closed it. He gave a little laugh.

'Very well, very well,' said he, nonchalantly returning the note to Atto and moving on.

Abbot Melani promptly returned to his feet with a satisfied smile.

I returned to my place, standing near the fireplace, in the hope of gleaning other interesting snippets of conversation from the lips of the two prelates I had overheard previously. Now, however, a different pair was seated beside me, in the same armchairs.

'Now really, to have gone so far as to serve chocolate…' one young cleric was hissing through tight lips.

'But you are unwilling to face up to the facts: this is a proSpanish Pope, he is a native of the Kingdom of Naples, which is a Spanish possession, and Spada is his Secretary of State,' replied the other, a young man of excellent appearance who seemed to be of noble origin.

'Agreed, Your Excellency, but to have offered chocolate at a time when there may be a conclave within the year, what a shameless piece of Spanishry. Why, 'tis the favourite beverage of King Charles II of Spain…'

'It does seem like some partisan signal, I know, I know. You'll see that there will be talk of this in the next few days.'

I did not know that chocolate could be regarded as a political sign of Hispanophilia. I did, however, know that the idea of serving the cacao-based beverage had been Don Paschatio's and that Cardinal Spada had consented to it, going so far as to jest on the matter by declaiming a graceful sonnet. Yet, I thought, laughing to myself, once tidings of such criticism and suspicions reached his ears, it would be easy to foresee the Secretary of State's reaction and his latest reprimand to his unfortunate Major-Domo.

Suddenly, my attention was caught by a movement on the right- hand side of the room. One of Cardinal Spada's lackeys was moving towards Cardinal Spinola, who was surrounded by a small knot of guests. I realised this only because in making his way through the assembly he had bumped into the back of the Marchesa Bentivoglio, Lady in Waiting to the Queen of Poland, who had spilled a good deal of still hot chocolate on her corsage. The lackey, bitterly rebuked by the Prince of Carbognano, had after a thousand apologies gone on his way and delivered a note to Spinola. The latter read the billet with ostentatious nonchalance, as though to stress its unimportance to those present, and returned it to the messenger. It was too far off for one to be able to hear, in that infernal hubbub, what the Cardinal said to the lackey, moving towards him in the most rapid of movements as he sent him on his way. With a supreme effort of all my senses, overcoming for an instant all that festive noise and my own impotent immobility, I somehow thought that I could read on Spinola's lips, taken together with his gesture of complicity in sending the lackey on his way, a few eloquent syllables: '… outside, on the balcony.'

Seeing and moving were as one single motion. The urgency could not have been clearer: a message, sent in all probability from Spada to Spinola, was now being sent on to a third recipient. On the terrace, I already knew who might be present, as he had been a few moments earlier: Cardinal Albani. Communications were running unseen between the three members of the Sacred College who had met at the Vessel.

If we could only guess at the content of that message (for there could be no question of intercepting it), we should have made a considerable step towards understanding the manoeuvres taking place with a view to the conclave. We would perhaps be able to understand what point had been reached (and where and how) in the secret negotiations concerning the choice of the new pope, as suspected by Atto, and perhaps also why the three cardinals had chosen to meet at the Vessel, that place of a thousand mysteries. We must not fail.

I moved away from the wall and, taking care not to attract the attention of the other lackeys, I too made my way towards the balcony. The sun's glare was still blinding. As I drew near to the great window giving onto the terrace, I could descry against the light, like those figures which it seems the Jesuits know so well how to project against the backcloth in their theatrical performances, the dark silhouettes of the guests conversing in the open. Intuition, that indispensable ally in all difficult situations, enabled me at once to identify Cardinal Albani. There he was, to the left, still in the place where he had humiliated Atto, surrounded by that little congregation of friends and boot-lickers which always accompany every cardinal, just as cows are surrounded by flies. The only person to leave the group was a servant of the Spada household who had just finished refilling the cups with piping hot chocolate.

As I approached the door leading out from the salon, pushing my way between legs, chairs and tables, and praying the Most High that I should not be intercepted by Don Paschatio, I became aware that Melani had not missed what had transpired. Buvat who, giving up his usual attempts to find a glass of wine, was acting as lookout whenever Atto was engaged in conversation, had drawn close to him and whispered something in his ear. Atto had instantly taken his leave of a cordial trio of gentlemen, leaving them there without so much as a by-your-leave. Then, in his haste, he collided heavily with one of the secretaries in Lam- berg's retinue, somehow managing to avoid falling headlong.

The lackey had too great a start on us for it to be possible to catch up with him. It was thus through the window, I to the left and Atto to the right, that we witnessed the delivery of the note. Unfortunately, the company surrounding the Cardinal hid from our sight the moment when he opened and read the billet. A moment later, we reached the threshold of the balcony, breathless but taking care not to betray any signs of haste. At that very moment, I saw all the guests present on the balcony turn towards me. Every one of them bore on his face an expression of hilarious, amused curiosity. The sun, whose rays struck me frontally, hurt my eyes cruelly, preventing me from seeing the features of those near to me.

I turned towards Atto. He too looked at me in some surprise, but only for an instant, for at that precise moment Albani was folding the note and was irresistibly distracted from it. The look of wonderment on the faces of the others, still fixed on me, showed absolutely no sign of fading. Someone pointed at me, nudging his neighbour. I was purple with embarrassment. I dared not so much as ask what in my person might arouse such interest in them, but nor did I wish to move, now that I had reached Albani.

'How graceful,' said Cardinal Albani looking towards me. 'Cardinal Spada truly has exquisite taste.'

Then he placed the cup of chocolate on the little wall of the balcony, using the hand in which he still held the note. As he did so, some chocolate spilled and wet the piece of paper. The Cardinal at once snatched back his diaphanous hand, unaccustomed to contact with vile kitchen matter, and boiling hot to boot. The note fell from his hand, ending up on the wall, next to the cup. At once I felt a familiar swishing above me, accompanied by a sort of caress on the top of my head. A swift shadow came between me and the sun. With just a couple of sharp movements of its feathers, the being skilfully swerved and landed on the wall, like some animated spinning top, just next to Albani's cup of chocolate. I was unable to restrain myself.

'Caesar Augustus!' I exclaimed.

The events of the following instants were among the most convulsive of the day and surely the strangest thing that the Villa Spada had ever seen.

Until a few moments before, Cardinal Albani and his friends, together with all the guests present on the balcony had been rapt in admiration, not of myself but of the majestic plumage of Caesar Augustus, perched just above my head on a projection from the villa's outer wall.