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This led to the decision that we should turn to the nearby mon­astery of Celestine fathers who would surely take pity on our sad condition and be willing to offer us succour and shelter.

And so they were; awoken in the middle of the night, the fathers welcomed us without great enthusiasm (perhaps also because of the suspicion of pestilence during the preceding days) but with pious generosity, assigning us to little cells, in which each of us could find the most dignified and comfortable refuge.

The great news of the following day, Saturday 25th September, arrived as soon as we awoke. The city was still immersed in the fes­tive climate of the Viennese victory celebrations, and hardly had I poked my nose out from my little cell than I saw how this carelessly relaxed attitude had affected even the Celestine fathers. None of them was keeping any special watch over us, and the only supervi­sory visit that I received was that of Cristofano, who had slept in the same cell as Dulcibeni, in order to be able to assist him with any nocturnal difficulties. He confirmed with a trace of surprise that we seemed not to be subject to restrictions of any kind and that whoever wished to do so could walk out from any of the monastery's many doors. In the coming days, he thought that some would inevitably make their way out. He did not, however, know that the first such escapade would take place within only a few hours.

It was an indiscreet conversation between two Celestine fathers outside my door that brought to my attention the event which was to take place that very evening: in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the victory at Vienna was to be celebrated with a great
Te Deum\
and this solemn rite of thanksgiving was to be conducted by His Beati­tude Pope Innocent XI in person.

I spent almost the entire day in my cell, apart from a couple of visits to Dulcibeni and Cristofano, and one to Pellegrino. My poor master was now beset by sufferings of both body and mind: it had been explained to him that the inn was in danger and that in the ear­ly hours of the morning, the stairs had completely collapsed, together with the landings and walls giving onto the inner courtyard. I myself gave a start upon hearing that news: it meant that in all probability the secret closet through which one could gain access to the galleries beneath had been lost. I would have liked to share that news with Abbot Melani, but it was too late.

When the afternoon light was already eroded by the soft embrace of twilight, it was not difficult for me to slip out from my cell and from the monastery, through an unguarded side door. For a modest sum (which I took from the few savings I had salvaged during our flight from the Donzello), I gained the complicity of a young servant of those friars, so as to be certain of finding the same door open on my return.

I was not fleeing; I had only one aim, and once I had satisfied that I would again retire to the monastery of the Celestines. It took no little time to reach the basilica of Saint John, where a huge crowd of people was gathering. From the monastery, I went first to the Pan­theon, then to the Piazza San Marco and thence to the Colosseum. Within a few minutes, after proceeding down the street that leads straight from the amphitheatre to the basilica, I found myself at last in the Piazza of Saint John Lateran, surrounded by an anxious, febrile multitude which was growing by the minute. I therefore approached the entrance of the basilica, where I saw that I had arrived only just in time: flanked by two wings of the jubilant crowd, His Holiness emerged at just that moment.

As I tiptoed to see him better, I received a blow on the ear from the elbow of an old man who was trying to barge past me.

"Hey, take care, boy," he said rudely to me, as though it was he who had been struck.

Despite the many necks and heads towering above me, by slip­ping with difficulty through the crush, I managed at last to catch sight of His Beatitude, just before he mounted his carriage, retreat­ing from the plaudits and attention of the multitude. I saw him, just when he saluted the faithful and, with a smiling, amiable ges­ture, blessed us once, twice, three times. Taking advantage of my youthful agility, I had managed to come within a few feet of the Holy Father; thus I could scrutinise his countenance from nearby and discern the colour in his cheeks, the light in his eyes and even his complexion.

I am not a physician, nor am I a seer. It was perhaps only my hunger to know the truth that stimulated my faculties of observation to an almost supernatural degree, beyond the confines of common experience, thus enabling me to see that there was not a trace of sickness in him. He had the face of one who has suffered greatly, that is true; but his suffering was of the soul, long wracked by anxiety for the fate of Vienna. Just next to me, I heard two aged prelates whisper that, upon receiving the joyous news of the victory, Innocent XI had been seen weeping like a child, kneeling on the ground and wetting the tiles of his chamber with his compassionate tears.

But sick, no, that he was not; this was clear from his luminous expression, his rosy complexion, and lastly from the brief but vigor­ous movement with which he mounted the step to his carriage before disappearing into it. Not far off, I suddenly descried the placid face of Tiracorda. He was surrounded by a group of young men (per­haps his students, I thought). Before the strong hand of a pontifical guard pushed me back, I had time to overhear Tiracorda: "But no, you are too kind. It is through no merit of mine... It was the hand of the Lord: after the happy victory, I no longer needed to do any­thing."

Now I was certain. Once he had learned of the victory at Vienna, the Pontiff had felt better and leeching had become pointless. The Pope was safe and sound. Dulcibeni had failed.

I remarked that I was not alone in knowing this. A little way off in the crowd, I recognised, without myself being seen, the agitated and suspicious visage of Abbot Melani.

I returned to the monastery on my own, lost in the crush of peo­ple swarming homeward in disorder, without catching sight of Abbot Melani or making any attempt to retrace him. All around me, exuber­ant comments abounded: on the ceremony, the health of the Pope, and his glorious work for Christendom. Quite by chance, I found my­self in the midst of a group of Capuchin friars, who wended their way cheerfully, waving torches and thus perpetuating the rejoicings of the
Te Deum.
From their conversation I gleaned a number of curious details (the truth of which I was to ascertain during the months that followed) of what had taken place during the siege of Vienna. The fathers spoke of reports received from Marco d’Aviano, the Capuchin friar who had so valiantly dedicated himself to the League against the Turks. At the end of the siege—I heard them tell this with their tongues loosened by emotion—the Polish king had disobeyed the or­ders of Emperor Leopold and had made his solemn entry into Vienna, acclaimed as victor by all the Viennese. The Emperor, as he himself had confessed to Marco d’Aviano, envied him not for his triumph, but for the love his subjects bore him; all Vienna had seen Leopold abandon the capital to its fate, escaping like a thief, and now they were enthusiastically cheering a foreign king who had just risked his life, that of his people, and even that of his firstborn son, to save it from the Turks. Obviously, the Habsburg monarch would now exact payment from Sobieski for what he had done. When they did at last meet, the Emperor was peevish and icy. "I am petrified," Sobieski confessed to his people.

"But then the Lord has so arranged matters that all will be for the best," concluded one of the Capuchins, conciliatingly.

"Yes, indeed, if God so wills it," echoed one of his brothers. "In the end, all is for the best."

Those wise words still echoed in my head when, on the next day, I was informed by Cristofano that within a few days we would all be freed from the restrictions of the quarantine. Taking advantage of the festive spirit, the doctor had succeeded in persuading the authorities that there was no longer the slightest danger of any infection. The only person still in need of assistance was Pompeo Dulcibeni, whose condition was explained to the guards by an accidental fall down the stairs of the Donzello. As for Dulcibeni himself, he was, alas, a candi­date for perpetual immobility. Cristofano would be able to help him for a few more days; then he too would be returning to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Who would take care, I thought to myself with a bitter smile, of the man who had attempted to assassinate the Pope?

*

Five years had passed since the terrible adventure at the Donzello. The inn had not re-opened. Pellegrino had been taken away by his wife, to stay with relatives, I presume.

Cloridia, Pompeo Dulcibeni and I dwelled in a modest farmhouse outside the city walls, beyond the San Pancrazio gate, where I am even now consigning these words to paper. The days and the seasons were, then as now, measured only by the harvesting of our little field and the care of the few farmyard animals purchased with Dulcibeni's savings. I was already familiar with every hardship of the fields; I had learned to grub in the soil with my bare hands, to question the wind and the sky, to barter my own fruit for that of others' toil, to bargain and to detect cheating. I had learned to leaf through the pages of books in the evening with a peasant's swollen, dirty hands.

Cloridia and I lived as man and wife. No one could ever have blamed us for that: in our remote area, we never so much as saw a priest, even for the Easter blessing.

Since he had at length become resigned to the loss of his legs, Pompeo had grown even more taciturn and irritable. He no longer resorted to inhaling ground
mamacoca
leaves, the drug from Peru which he had obtained in Holland. Thanks to this, he had also ceased to be seized by those states of gloomy exaltation which had enabled him to sustain his wild excursions into the galleries under the Donzello.

He still could not understand why we had taken him in and pro­vided him with shelter and assistance. At first, he suspected that we were motivated by the not inconsiderable savings with which he could endow us. He never learned about Cloridia. Nor did she ever wish to reveal to him that she was his daughter. In her heart, she had never pardoned him for permitting the sale of her mother.

When enough time had passed to protect her from the anguish of memories, Cloridia at last recounted to me the vicissitudes which she had suffered after being torn from her father. Huygens had per­suaded the child that he had bought her from Dulcibeni. He had kept her hidden and then, when he tired of her, he had sold her to other wealthy Italian merchants before returning to Feroni in Tuscany.

For long years, she had travelled in the retinue of these merchants, and then of others, and yet others, more than once being bought and resold. From that to the ancient and shameful art, the step had been short; but with the money she had secretly and with great efforts set aside, she had bought back her freedom. Opulent and liberal, Am­sterdam was the ideal city for that vile trafficking in bodies. At last, however, she was overcome by the urge to retrace her father and to ask him to explain why he had abandoned her, and this, aided by the science of numbers and the ardent rod, had brought her to the door of the Donzello.

Despite all that she had suffered and the sad memories which often robbed her of sleep, Cloridia assisted Dulcibeni with constancy and devotion. He, for his part, ceased to treat her with disdain. He never asked her any questions about her past, thus sparing her the embarrassment of having to lie.

Pompeo soon asked me to go and recover the trunks full of books which he had left in Naples. He presented them to me, announcing that, with time, I would come more and more to appreciate their value. Thanks to those books, and the discussions which arose from reading them, little by little, Dulcibeni's tongue loosened. In time, he switched from observations to memories, and from these to teach­ings. He taught, however, on the basis not only of doctrine but of experience; one who has traded for years throughout Europe, and in the service of a powerful house like that of the Odescalchi, will have much to tell. There remained between us, however, hanging in the air, that unrevealed mystery: why had Dulcibeni made an attempt on the life of the Pope?

One day, he confided, he would unveil the secret. I knew, how­ever, that given his proud, stubborn nature, to ask him for it would, have been utterly useless. I must wait.

In the autumn of 1688, the gazettes bore news of the gravest and most painful occurrences. The heretical prince William of Orange had, with his fleet, crossed the English Channel and disembarked at a place called Torbay. His army advanced and met with almost no re­sistance. Within a matter of days, he had usurped the English throne, deposing the Catholic King James II of the House of Stuart, guilty of having only two months previously sired from his second wife the long-desired male heir to the throne, who would have robbed the Prince of Orange of all hope of ever becoming King of England. With William's incursion, England fell into the hands of the Protestant heretics and was thus forever lost to Rome.

When I informed Dulcibeni of the dramatic news, Pompeo made no comment of any kind. He was seated in the garden, stroking a kit­ten which lay in his lap. He seemed tranquil. Yet, suddenly I saw him bite his lip and chase the little creature away, with trembling fist, banging hard on the nearby table.

"What has come over you, Pompeo?" I asked, jumping to my feet and fearing that he might be unwell.

"He has done it, the wretch! He has done it at last!" he panted, staring at the horizon beyond my head in cold fury.

It had all started almost thirty years ago. It was then, Dulcibeni recounted, that the Odescalchi family had besmirched itself with the most infamous of crimes: aiding heretics.

It was about 1660. At that time, William of Orange was still a child. The House of Orange was, as ever, short of money. To give an idea of what that meant, William's mother and grandmother had pawned all the family jewels.

For Holland, there were portents of tremendous wars in the Euro­pean theatre; and indeed, these were not long in breaking out: first, against England, then France. Fighting these wars cost money: huge sums of money.

After a series of highly secret overtures, of which not even Dulci­beni knew the details, the House of Orange turned to the Odescal­chi. They were the most solvent moneylenders in Italy, nor did they draw back from the transaction.

Thus, the wars of heretical Holland were financed by the Catholic family of Cardinal Odescalchi, the future Pope Innocent XI.

The whole loan operation was, of course, conducted shrewdly and with all possible discretion. Cardinal Benedetto Odescalchi lived in Rome; his brother, who was the principal of the family business, re­sided in Como. The money for the Orange family was, however, sent to Venice through two trusted men of straw, so that it would in no way be possible to retrace it to the family of Innocent XI. The loans were, moreover, not addressed directly to members of the House of Orange, but to secret intermediaries: Admiral Jean Neufville, the financier Jan Deutz, the merchants Bartolotti, and to Jan Baptista Hochepied, Amsterdam councillor.

From the latter, this money was then redirected to the House of Orange, in order to finance the wars against Louis XIV

"And what about you?" I interrupted.

"I went back and forth to Holland on behalf of the Odescalchi; I made sure that the letters of exchange arrived at their destination and were duly encashed, and that the relevant receipt was obtained. Moreover, I made sure that all took place far from prying eyes."

"In other words, the money of Pope Innocent XI was used to finance the heretics' landing in England!" I concluded, utterly shocked.

"More or less. The Odescalchi, however, only lent money to the Dutch until some fifteen years ago, while William has only now landed in England."

"So, what happened then?"

Something bizarre had then taken place, explained Dulcibeni. In 1673, Carlo Odescalchi, the brother of the future Pope, had died. Thus, Cardinal Odescalchi was no longer able to follow the family business from Rome and decided to suspend the loan to the Dutch. The game had become too dangerous and the pious Cardinal could no longer risk discovery. His image must remain immaculate. He was far-sighted: within three years, the conclave took place which was to make him Pope.

"But he had lent money to the heretics!" I exclaimed, scandal­ised.

"Listen to the rest of it."

With time, the debt of the House of Orange to the Odescalchi had increased beyond all measure, to over five hundred and fifty thou­sand scudi. Now that Benedetto had been elected Pope, how was all that money to be recouped? In the event of insolvency, the initial agreement stipulated that the Odescalchi would be able to lay claim to William's private property. Now, however, Benedetto Odescalchi, having become Pontiff, was in the public eye: he could not impound the property of a heretic prince, for that would also reveal the loans to that prince. And that would lead to a dreadful scandal. It is true that in the meantime Benedetto had made an apparent donation of all his goods to his nephew Livio, but in reality it was well known that it was still he who continued obstinately to control everything.

Besides, there was another problem. William was still short of money, since his Dutch creditors (in other words, the wealthy fami­lies of Amsterdam) had tightened their purse-strings. Thus, Inno­cent XI was in danger of never seeing his money again.

That was why, said Dulcibeni, Innocent XI had always been so hostile to Louis XIV: the Most Christian King of France was the only one who could bar the way to William's mounting the throne of Eng­land. Only Louis XIV came between Innocent XI and his money.

The Odescalchi had in the meantime succeeded in keeping all this secret. In 1676, however, a little before the conclave, the Huygens incident took place: the right-hand man of the slave merchant Francesco Feroni (who also had dealings with the Odescalchi) be­came infatuated with Pompeo Dulcibeni's daughter by a Turkish slave and—with the support of Feroni—wanted to take possession of her. Dulcibeni could not oppose this legally, since he had not married the child's mother. So he let the Odescalchi understand that, if Huygens and Feroni did not renounce their claims, indiscretions might circulate which would be somewhat dangerous for Cardinal Bene­detto: a matter of loans with interest, granted to Dutch heretics... And Cardinal Odescalchi could then bid the conclave adieu...

The rest, I already knew: the maiden was abducted and Dulci­beni defenestrated, escaping death only by a miracle. Pompeo had to go into hiding, while Benedetto Odescalchi was elected Pope.

"Until now, the Pontiff will not have been able to lay his hands upon the money loaned to William of Orange. I am quite sure of that; I know how these matters are managed. Nevertheless, that will all now be settled," Dulcibeni concluded.

"Why is that?"

"It is quite clear: now William will become King of England and he will somehow manage to repay his debts to the Pope."

I fell silent. I was confused and felt lost.

"So that was what lay behind your plans: the visits to Tiracorda, the experiments on the island... Abbot Melani was right: you were not motivated solely by your daughter's abduction. It was as though you were acting to punish the Pope—I do not know how to put this—for betraying..."

"For betraying religion, precisely that. For lucre, he bartered the honour of the Church and of Christendom. Now, never forget that disease of the body is nothing compared to that of the soul. That is the true pestilence."

"Yet, you wanted the ruin of all Christendom: that was why you chose to infect the Pope during the siege of Vienna."

"The siege of Vienna... There is something else that you should know; and it concerns not only the gold of the Odescalchi but the Emperor too."

"The Emperor?" I exclaimed.

"The ploy was straightforward, and this time, too, it was conduct­ed in great secrecy. In order to finance the war against the Turks, the House of Habsburg had been subsidised from the coffers of the Apostolic Chamber. At the same time, however, the Emperor con­tracted a private loan with the Odescalchi. In surety, the Pope's fam­ily received the quicksilver extracted from the imperial mines."

"And what did the Odescalchi do with that quicksilver?"

"That is simple. They resold it to the Dutch heretics; to be quite precise, to the Protestant banker Jan Deutz."

"But then Vienna owes its salvation to the heretics!"

"In a sense, that is true. Nevertheless, the city was saved above all by the money of the Odescalchi. And you may be certain that they will obtain a return of the favour which they did the Emperor; and here, I am not speaking only of money."

"What do you mean?"

"In time, the Emperor will surely grant the Pope, or his nephew and sole heir, Livio, some great political favour. Wait a few years, and you will see."