Imprimatur (50 page)

"Signor Atto, who can the patient be of whom Tiracorda spoke?"

"That is the easiest question to answer. Think about it: this is a patient whose illness must remain secret, and Tiracorda is physician to the Pope."

"Good heavens, it must be..." I swallowed as I dared to draw the inference "Our Lord Innocent XI."

"I do believe so. Nevertheless, I was surprised. When the Pontiff falls ill, the news spreads like wildfire. Yet, Tiracorda wishes to keep it secret. Clearly, they fear in the Vatican that the time is too sensi­tive: it is still unclear who will win in Vienna. With a weakened Pope, there is in Rome a danger of discontent and disorder; abroad there is a risk of raising the morale of the Turks and sapping that of the Christian allies. The trouble is, as Tiracorda said, that the Pontiff is not recovering, so much so that it will soon be necessary to change his treatment. That is why the news must not be bruited abroad."

"Yet Tiracorda confided this to his friend," I observed.

"He evidently thinks that Dulcibeni knows how to keep his lips sealed. And Dulcibeni, like ourselves, is shut up in an inn under quar­antine: he certainly has no opportunities to let out the secret. The most interesting thing, however, is not this."

"What is it, then?"

"Dulcibeni was travelling with Fouquet, now he is visiting the Pope's physician to talk of mysterious things: farms, brothers, 'enter dumb into here'... I would give an eye to understand what they were talking about."

While returning to the Donzello, we encountered the
corpisantari,
in their archives among the ruins under the Piazza Navona.

I noticed that the pair had reconstituted their filthy heap of bones, which now appeared to be considerably higher and more bulky. The
corpisantari
did not in any way salute our arrival: they were engaged in an intense discussion and appeared to be arguing over the owner­ship of an object. Ciacconio had the better of it, with a sudden ugly gesture grabbing something from Ugonio's hand and placing it, with an all-too servile smile, in the hands of Atto Melani. It was a few frag­ments of dry leaves.

"And what is this?" said Atto. "I cannot possibly pay for all the stupid things that you would like to sell me."

"It is an estranged foliage," said Ugonio. "To be more medicinal than mendacious, Ciacconio disgoverned it in the vicinity of the mor­tified, bloodified rodents."

"A strange plant near to dead rats... how curious," remarked Atto.

"Ciacconio says that it reeks in a stupefactual manner," continued Ugonio. "It is an excitifying, inquisitating, besotting plantation. In sum, to obtain more benefice than malefice, he is representing it to you, for by fulfilling one's obligations the Christian's jubilations are increased."

Atto took one of the leaves; while he was raising it to the light of the lamp in order to examine it, I had a sudden reminiscence.

"Now that I come to think of it, Signor Atto, I too seem to have seen dry leaves in the galleries."

"That is a fine one," he commented, clearly amused. "We are full of leaves down here. How is that possible? Trees do not grow under the ground."

I explained to him that, when we were following Stilone Priaso in the conduit, I had trodden on dry leaves, so much so that I feared I might be heard by Stilone.

"Silly lad, you should have told me. In situations like ours, noth­ing should be neglected."

Taking some of those friable vegetable fragments, I promised my­self that I would make up for that inattention. Seeing that I was unable to help Atto to decipher the business of the farms, brothers and "enter dumb into here" discussed by Tiracorda and Dulcibeni in the course of their incomprehensible conversation, I would at least endeavour to discover from what plant those dry leaves came: thus we might discover who had disseminated them throughout the un­derground galleries.

We left the
corpisantari
busy with their bones. During our return to the inn, I remembered that I had not yet reported to Abbot Melani my conversation with Devize. In the whirl of our recent discover­ies, I had forgotten it, all the more so in that I had learned nothing of importance from the musician. So I told Atto of this encounter (obviously omitting the fact that, in order to gain the guitarist's con­fidence, I had cast a slur on the abbot's honour).

"Nothing of importance, did you say?" he exclaimed, without allowing me to finish. "You are telling me that Queen Maria Teresa had contacts with the famous Francesco Corbetta, and with Devize, and you call that nothing of importance?"

Atto Melani's reaction took me by surprise: the abbot seemed al­most beside himself. While I was recounting these matters to him, we would proceed for a short distance, then suddenly he would stop, open his eyes wide and ask me to repeat what I had said; whereupon he would again move on in silence, and then halt yet again, lost in thought. In the end, he had me recapitulate the whole story from the beginning.

So I told him yet again how, on my way to Devize's apartment to give him a massage, I had heard that
rondeau
which he so often played and which had so delighted all the other guests at the Donzello be­fore the quarantine. I then asked him if he was the author of that piece and he replied that it was his master, one Corbetta, who had learned the melody of that
rondeau
during one of his frequent voy­ages. Corbetta had rearranged it and had made of it a tribute to the Queen; she had then handed the musical score to Devize, who in his turn had reworked it in part. In other words, it was not clear whose the music was, but we did at least know through whose hands it had passed.

"But do you know who Corbetta was?" asked the abbot, with eyes that had narrowed down to two slits, and stressing every single syllable.

The Italian Francesco Corbetta, he explained to me, had been the greatest of all guitarists. It was Mazarin who had called him to France to teach music to the young Louis XIV who adored the sound of the guitar. His fame had soon spread and King Charles II of England, another lover of the guitar, had taken him with him to London, had arranged a good marriage for him and had even elevated him to the peerage. However, in addition to being a wonderfully refined musi­cian, Corbetta was also something else which almost no one knew: a most skilful master of ciphers and codes.

"Did he write letters in code?"

"Even better: he composed music containing ciphers, in which secret messages were encoded."

Corbetta was an exceptional individual: both fascinating and intriguing, and a hardened gambler. For much of his life, he had travelled between Mantua, Venice, Bologna, Brussels, Spain and Holland, even becoming implicated in a number of scandals. He had died scarcely two years ago, in his sixtieth year.

"Perhaps he too did not disdain the profession of... counsellor, alongside the art of music..."

"I would venture to say that he was very much involved in the po­litical affairs of the states which I have mentioned," said Atto Melani, thus admitting that Corbetta must have had a hand in some affairs of espionage.

"And did he use the tablature of the guitar for that purpose?"

"Yes, but that was certainly not his invention. In England, the celebrated John Dowland, who played the lute at the court of Queen Elizabeth, wrote his music in such a manner that, through it, his pa­trons could transmit secret information."

Atto Melani took no little time to convince me that musical nota­tion could include meanings completely foreign to the art of sound. Yet, this had always been so: both monarchs and the Church had for centu­ries had recourse to musical cryptography. The matter was, moreover, familiar to ail men of doctrine. To give an example accessible to every­one, he said that in
De furtivis litterarum notis
Delia Porta had listed all the systems whereby secret messages of every kind and length may be encrypted. By means of a suitable key, for example, every letter of the alphabet could be associated with a musical note. The succession of notes, annotated on the pentagram would thus provide whoever held the key to the code with complete words and phrases.

"Thus, however, there arises the question of the
saltus indecentes,
or in other words, of disagreeable dissonances and disharmonies, which might even arouse suspicion in one simply casting an eye over the music. Someone then thought up more refined systems."

"Who was that?"

"Our Kircher, to be precise: for example, in his
Musurgia Univer­salis:
instead of assigning a letter to each note, he distributed the alphabet among the four voices of a madrigal or an orchestra, the better to govern the musical material, thus rendering the composi­tion less rough and disagreeable: after all, if the message was inter­cepted, such flaws would be enough to arouse suspicion in anyone. There are infinite possibilities for manipulating the sung text and the notes to be intoned. For example, if the musical note—'fa', 'la' or even 're'—coincides with the text, then only
those
syllables are to be taken into account. Or one can do the opposite, conserving only the remainder of the sung text which, at that point, will reveal its hidden meaning. It is, in any case, certain that Corbetta will have been aware of Kircher's innovation."

"Do you think that, apart from his art, Devize will have learned from Corbetta this... art of communicating secretly?"

"That is just what is rumoured at the French court; especially as Devize was not only Corbetta's favourite pupil but above all a good friend of his."

Dowland, Melani, Corbetta and now perhaps also his pupil Devize: I was beginning to suspect that music was inevitably accompanied by espionage.

"What is more," continued Abbot Melani, "Corbetta knew Fou­quet well, seeing that he was guitarist to Mazarin's court until 1660: only then did he emigrate to London, even though he in fact contin­ued to make frequent visits to Paris, where he finally returned ten years later."

"But then," I concluded, without even wishing to believe my own words, "even that
rondeau
might conceal a secret message."

"Calm down, calm down, first let us consider the other things we know: you told me that the
rondeau
was given by Corbetta to Queen Maria Teresa who in turn gave it to Devize. Well, this provides me with another piece of precious information: I had no idea that the Queen was in touch with the two guitarists. The thing is so extraor­dinary that I find it almost hard to believe."

"I understand," I interrupted. "Maria Teresa led an almost reclu­sive existence..."

I then told him of the lengthy monologue in which Devize de­scribed the humiliations which the Most Christian King had heaped upon his poor consort.

"Reclusive?" said Atto at the end. "I would not use that term."

And he explained to me that Devize had painted me perhaps too immaculate a portrait of the late Queen of France. At Versailles, even now, one might still encounter a young mulatto girl who bore a curi­ous resemblance to the Dauphin. The explanation of that wonder was to be found twenty years previously, when the ambassadors of an African state had sojourned at court. To manifest their devotion to the consort of Louis XIV the ambassadors had presented the Queen with a little black page called Nabo.

A few months later, in 1664, Maria Teresa had given birth to a hale and lively little girl with black skin. When this prodigy took place, the Chirurgeon Royal swore to the King that the newborn child's colour was a passing inconvenience due to congestion at birth. Days passed, however, and the child's skin showed no sign of lightening. The Chirurgeon Royal then said that perhaps that court blacka­moor's over-insistent glances might have interfered with the Queen's pregnancy. "A glance?" replied the King. "It must have been most penetrating."

"A few days later, with the greatest discretion, Louis XIV had the page Nabo put to death."

"And Maria Teresa?"

"She said nothing. She was not seen either to weep or to smile. Indeed, she was not seen at all. Yet, from the Queen no one had ever succeeded in obtaining anything except words of kindness and par­don. She had always made a point of telling the King of every little thing, in proof of her own fidelity, despite the fact that he dared to appoint his own mistresses as her maids of honour. It was as though Maria Teresa had not known how to appear anything but colourless, opaque, almost devoid of any will of her own. She was too good, too good."