shoe-vendor about beggars true and false. After that came Atto's new revelations about the Most Christian King and Maria Mancini, the pair of encounters with Albicastro, the inscriptions in the Vessel which seemed to appear in unison with my thoughts, and the picture with the three presents: what was more, containing the image of Caesar Augustus… Of course, the parrot had disappeared along with with Albani's note, and now we had returned to the Villa Spada empty-handed.
It was too much, really too much, said I to myself as I went to sleep in my bivouac at the casino of the villa. Only the new day could bring me light and counsel, a clear picture of things, or at least a semblance of greater clarity.
As it turned out, I was mistaken.
Day the Fifth
11th July, 1700
'On your feet, curses! On your feet, I said!'
It could not have been a worse awakening. Someone had seized me and was shaking me, yelling unpleasantly and dragging me back into the world of the awake, but at the cost of a great headache.
My eyes were still half-closed when I heard the words which made clear to me the identity of my assailant.
'I've been waiting for you to wake up for centuries! Someone here is in possession of the most important information. You must act, and act at once. This is an ord… Well, this is my firm will, and not just mine.'
Abbot Melani's words (for it was obviously he) alluded to the menacing and iron-willed figure of the Most Christian King, whom he had by now learned to evoke astutely, sometimes dressed for the part of Maria Mancini's ill-starred suitor, sometimes, as now, presenting the inflexible tyrant to whose will all must blindly bend.
'A moment, I am just…' I mumbled in protest, my mouth still all gummed up, turning over in the blankets to get away from his tugging.
'Not one second more,' said he, seizing my clothes from a nearby chair where I had left them and hurling them at me.
While freeing myself from his grasp, the first thing I looked at in the light of day was Atto, and he in turn stared at me with fiery, stabbing eyes. I noticed with no little curiosity that he had not come empty-handed. Against the chair he had leaned a bizarre collection of wooden and iron tools which seemed to me as familiar as they were out of place in a bedchamber.
Dressing hurriedly, I opened my eyes properly and realised what this was all about. Among the long-handled tools, I recognised a rake, a shovel, a hoe and a broom. In a heavy box with a handle, there were piled up a trowel, a bucket, a dibble, a pronged grubber, a sickle, shears, knives, a few pots and brushes. I recognised them.
'These gardening tools belong to the Villa Spada. What do you want to do with them?'
'What matters is what you will do,' said he, rudely shoving all that hardware into my hands, so that it was a miracle that I did not drop the whole lot, and motioning me to follow him out of the door. 'Now, however, there's an emergency Today is Sunday and the first thing we must do is go to mass, otherwise our absence will be noticed. Get a move on: Don Tibaldutio is about to begin the service.'
Villa Spada was astir with preparations for the fifth day of celebrations. On the evening before, dinner must have gone on until all hours, for when I was going to sleep one could not hear the sound of guests' carriages leaving the villa. Nevertheless, that morning the servants were already busy going about their duties: sweeping, cleaning, tidying, cooking, preparing, decorating, repainting and retouching. As we left my little room, all around us maidservants, ushers and menservants were rushing. Some of them looked at me enviously, since for days now that mysterious Frenchman had been relieving me of a great deal of work. Atto spurred me on, poking the pommel of his walking stick painfully between my shoulder blades. By a mere hair's breadth we avoided encountering Don Paschatio (whom we heard a short distance away, lamenting the disloyalty of an absent seamstress), thus avoiding the command to execute some urgent duties. Laden down as I was with all kinds of implements, I proceeded clumsily, at the risk of falling, tripping on the rake I was carrying or being knocked over by some weary scullion.
Once I had laid down the box of tools in the garden hut, we both at last entered the chapel, curiously full of all kinds of worshippers, from the eminences lodging at the villa down to the humblest menials (discreetly to one side), just as Don Tibaldutio's service was beginning. I took part in the rite wholeheartedly, inwardly begging the Lord also to pardon Abbot Melani, who was present at holy mass out of pure self-interest.
Once out of the chapel, Atto nonchalantly bestowed salutations right and left, but at the same time he had resumed poking me cruelly in the back.
'Get a move on, damn you,' he hissed at me while smiling sweetly at Cardinal Durazzo.
'Now, would you kindly tell me what has got into you?' I protested while, once more burdened with the equipment, I followed him to the flower beds at the entrance to the villa. 'What the deuce is it that's so urgent?'
'Shhh! There he is, 'tis just as well he has not gone,' whispered Atto while inviting me to remain silent and indicating with his nose an individual bending over one of the two rows of flower beds lining the avenue giving access to the villa.
'But that is the Master Florist,' said I.
'What is his name?'
'Tranquillo Romauli. He is the grandson of a famous gardener, and works here at the Villa Spada. I know him well. His late lamented spouse was a great midwife, who taught Cloridia and who presided over the birth of our two daughters. I have often been commanded by Don Paschatio to act as his assistant.
'Ah, yes, I was forgetting: you too are an expert on plants…' muttered the Abbot, recalling the humiliation he had suffered at my hands at the Vessel the day before, over the supposed flowers from the mythical garden of Adonis. 'Well, be prepared for a surprise, Tranquillo Romauli knows of the Tetrachion.'
In overexcited tones and employing lofty phrases, Abbot Melani explained to me how, that morning, he had awoken rather early, when Aurora was stretching her arms with a yawn and abandoning the conjugal bed she shared with Sunset. All night, he had been assailed by a thousand questions to which the previous day had given rise and left unanswered. The entire villa was still blessedly sleeping; the bluish first light of morn was penetrated only by the light of some furtive lamp issuing from the windows of those who, like Melani, wished to spy on the day in its secret youth. Atto had then descended to the garden in order to take a salutary walk and inhale the innocent and perfect air of the dawning day which only the idle despise.
'I wandered through the entire garden, without noticing anything suspicious,' said he, thus betraying that the purpose of his walk was to spy and stick his nose into others' business. 'I had reached the little grove when I saw him there, a few paces in front of me. He was busy using a pair of shears on a flower bed.'
'That is his trade. So, what of it?'
'We spoke of this and that: the weather, the humidity, how lovely these flowers are, how I hoped it would not be so hot today, and so on and so forth. Then he named it.'
'What, the Tetrachion?'
'Shhh! Do you want everyone to overhear you?' murmured Atto, darting nervous looks in all directions.
After the brief colloquy which he had described to me, Abbot Melani had moved on. He was only a short distance away when he had heard the Master Florist, no doubt thinking himself alone and therefore unheard, murmur a number of confused phrases. Then, still sitting, he had turned his eyes to heaven and had clearly pronounced the words which had thrown Atto into a state of such extreme alarm.
''… and then the Tetrachion.' He said that, do you understand?'
'But this is incredible! What can he know of such things? The Master Florist has always seemed to me a spirit far removed from the things of politics. Not to speak of such… unusual matters as that of the Tetrachion.'
'Usual or unusual, there's something behind this,' Atto cut me short. 'However unbelievable it may seem, he does know something. Perhaps he even wanted me to overhear him. It cannot be pure chance that he should have uttered those few words a few paces away from me, today of all days.'
