'Perhaps it won't ill-treat him too much,' sniggered Melani. 'In any case, the only thing that matters to us is the note. If he lets go of it, he'll come to no harm.'
'You speak as though the falcon could understand what he's doing. Birds are beasts. They have neither intellect nor heart,' I replied.
'Enough of that, boy,' the falconer broke in.
He spoke with a northern accent, perhaps from Bologna, or Vicenza, where I knew that falconers had always been in abundance.
'Your ignorance is equalled only by the courage of my falcon,' he told me in a harsh voice. 'You say that birds have no pity. Do you not know that the great Palamedes, imitating the flight of cranes, which fly in V or A formation, or grouped to form many other letters, composed the characters from which came the alphabet, as Saint Jerome writes, and that from the imitation of the wise living of these cranes, or grues, comes the latin verb congruere, which means literally to be congruent, or coherent.'
'No, I did not know that, but…'
While he imparted these notions to me, above our heads the falcon traced a series of threatening circles in search of his victim.
We advanced cautiously through the long grass, looking for traces of Caesar Augustus. Atto and the falconer were sure of tracking him down. I was rather less sure, but I thought that if that were to happen, I should be able to make the parrot understand that it would be in its best interests to return Albani's note, on pains of suffering the cruellest of combats. We all stood there with our noses pointing up in the air, waiting for something to happen. The hound sniffed feverishly at trees, looking halfway up, watching the slightest movements.
'And how can you say that birds have no heart? They practise gratitude, fidelity and justice far better than men. The sparrow- hawk captures a little bird to help with its digestion and keeps it alive all night close to its belly, whereupon, out of gratitude, it frees it instead of devouring it. Geese are even more modest than a young maiden: they couple only when they know that no one can see them and, afterwards, they wash thoroughly. Crows practice only marital love. Widowed, a turtledove will never mate again. Swallows always feed each of their fledglings fairly and equally. Are human beings capable of that? Furthermore, among fowls, the males are loquacious and the females taciturn: the contrary of men and, when one comes to think of it, far better. Lastly, geese, although rather inclined to gossip, when they know that an eagle is approaching, resist the temptation to honk and thus be discovered by putting a stone in their beaks.
'They even assist us when we are ill: there is no better way of ridding oneself of stomach ache than to place on it a live duck. For pains in the ribs, you need only eat an Austrian parrot; those with weak stomachs should eat swan's, eagle's or cormorant's meat; the dropsy is treated with powder of burned bats, while for many distempers one takes swallows' nests dissolved in water, nor is there an end to the remedies which poultry breeders generously offer us, and… One moment.'
The falconer had at last broken off. Everything happened suddenly. The dog barked loudly and pointed: he had found the quarry. From a nearby shrub we heard a loud rustling, then the beating of wings. Caesar Augustus, brilliantly white and fluffed- up with his yellow crest, escaped from the thicket and took to the air. The dog barked loudly but the falconer held him back from following and cried out:
'Look! Look!'
Hearing that call, the falcon knew that its time had come. Instinctively, it directed its beak downwards and plunged towards Caesar Augustus who had fortunately, although three times slower than his aggressor, gained a good start. He was flying towards the fortified Roman wall; the raptor corrected the angle of its attack as it drew closer. It was like a projectile, ready to plant the tip of its beak into the flesh of its victim, or to brake at the last moment, then turn and wound it with its deadly talons. It would only remain then for it to follow the disorderly fall, diving at last onto the poor injured and defenceless body on the ground and slaughtering it with two or three decisive blows to the breast.
The parrot hastened towards the great wall, behind which it presumably hoped to find shelter at least from the first attack.
'Caesar Augustus,' I cried, hoping that he might hear me, but then I realised that everything was happening too fast for human senses.
The falcon was drawing ever closer. Twenty yards; fifteen; ten; seven. All of us, three men and a dog, stared breathlessly at the scene. The wall was too far off. The parrot could never make it that far. Only an instant and it would all be over. I awaited the impact.
'No,' the falconer hissed angrily.
He had made it. At the very last moment, Caesar Augustus had opted for a nearer refuge. He had hidden himself in a group of trees thick enough to discourage the falcon, who slowed down and at once regained height.
'Caesar Augustus!' I called again, approaching at a run. 'Let go of the paper and all will be well!'
We tried but failed to find the outline of the parrot among the branches. He had hidden really well, as the falconer, too, was forced to admit.
'You promised that you would give him time to ponder,' I protested vigorously to Atto.
'I am sorry. I did not realise that things would go so quickly. Nevertheless, he has had all the time he needed for thinking.'
'Thinking? But he'll be utterly terrified.'
The events that followed proved me to have been utterly mistaken.
While we were exploring around and under the thick clump of trees, a sudden, lacerating double whistle broke the silence. We looked at one another. It was the falconer's whistle, yet he seemed as astonished as we.
'I did not… did not do it. I never whistled,' he stammered.
Instinctively, he looked upward.
'The glove, damn it,' he cursed, seeing that his faithful pupil, hearing the call, was promptly returning and was looking for his forearm. So the falconer had to pull on his leather glove in furious haste and only just caught the flying beast in time. It was then, out of the corner of my eye, that I saw the white and yellow spot gliding silently to the left, once again in the direction of the Roman wall. Atto too realised this a few (important) moments later.
The parrot had imitated the falconer's whistle perfectly, thus causing the predator to return to its master, down below. Caesar Augustus had thus gained enough time to get away, before his enemy could gain height and, with that, the ability to attack.
'That way!' exclaimed Melani, turning to the falconer.
The wasted time had given Caesar Augustus a distinct advantage. The falcon was once again freed and once again had to gain height. The dog was barking wildly.
'Can your bird not attack at once?' asked Atto, running towards the point where Caesar Augustus had disappeared from sight.
'He has first to gain height. He does not attack horizontally like a goshawk!' replied the falconer, as offended as if he had been asked to attend a wedding dressed in rags.
This gave rise to a wretched, disorderly chase downhill along the Roman walls, following the road that traverses the Barberini property up to Piazza Cosimato. Behind the ancient walls, rhythmically punctuated by antique watchtowers, Caesar Augustus's yellow crest would reappear from time to time. He could not fly higher than the falcon, as herons do to dodge such attacks. He had, however, perfectly understood the enemy's weak points and was employing delaying tactics: flying low and passing very rapidly from a tree to a crack in the wall, then vice versa, alternating brief but lightning sorties with the repeated whistle which he had heard the falconer use and had at once learned to imitate to perfection. The falcon could only obey the commands which he had been taught from his very first training, and with every whistle he came back to his master, who was, understandably, almost out of his mind. A couple of times, Caesar Augustus also used the falconer's 'Look! Look!' hunting signal, throwing the adversary into such confusion that, if its master had not got it away from there with yells and curses, it might have turned its warlike attentions to a couple of innocent sparrows fluttering in the vicinity.
The last part of the road was flanked on both sides by two ordinary walls and no longer by Roman ruins. I turned around to look for Atto: we had lost him. Caesar Augustus, too, was nowhere to be seen. I did, however, hope that he would have continued along the same trajectory as he had followed hitherto. In that case, as soon as we reached the first open space, we might perhaps have caught sight of him. It was thus that we came to the front
