Veritas (Atto Melani) (28 page)

I had known Melani for thirty years. I knew all too well that if something momentous was stirring and Atto was in the neighbourhood, he was bound to have a hand in it. Could the Agha’s
mysterious embassy have been brought about by some obscure manoeuvre of the Abbot’s? I was almost half a century old, as Atto well remembered, and he was eighty-five. It was not so easy to
hoodwink me now; I would keep my ears open.

In any case, that was why Atto had “suddenly” remembered his debt to me and had sent me to Vienna . . .

Once again he needed me – poor helpless being that I was, but still affectionate and idealistic – to weave his plots! Benefactor indeed!

I was swaying to and fro, like a felucca adrift, tossed on the currents of contrary feelings. What a generous man Abbot Melani was: instead of vanishing from my life, he had made me prosperous.
What a profiteer Abbot Melani was: instead of sending me to Vienna he could perfectly well have given me a piece of land in Tuscany as he had promised! By now my two girls would both be married,
instead of waiting on the outcome of my new life in the capital of the Empire. On the other hand, if he had not needed me in Vienna, would he not have left me to rot in Rome in my
tufo
cellar?

Under the weight of these thoughts my expression had grown baleful and my footsteps heavy and circumspect, when Abbot Melani’s words at last caught my attention again:

“What nobody remembers is that the Savoys by tradition are great traitors.”

“Traitors?” I said with a start.

“They reign over a duchy straddling the Alps, which is not large but extremely important from a strategic point of view. It’s the gateway into Italy for the two crowns, the French
and the Spanish. And they have shamelessly exploited this, continually switching alliances. How many times in Paris have I been left with no letters from Italy because the Duke of Savoy had
suddenly taken it into his head to arrest all the couriers passing through his states! There has never been any way to check these recurring acts of high-handedness, which amount to little more
than blackmail, nor to neutralise the family’s outrageous acts of treachery.”

We had returned to the Blue Bottle. Atto was cold, and wanted to conclude our conversation somewhere warm. We entered and took our seats.

Eugene’s great-grandfather, he continued, Duke Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy, in his reign of almost fifty years had managed to switch sides three times. First he had married the daughter of
Philip II of Spain; then he had passed over to the French side, hoping they would help him expand his dominions in Italy; then he had gone back to the Spanish side. His son Victor Amadeus I had
married a French princess, Christine. When he died, the widow, to keep her power, had to fight not against some foreign power but against her husband’s brothers, who treacherously wanted to
depose her.

One of these, Thomas Francis, was glorious Eugene’s grandfather. He too had married a French princess and seemed hell-bent on defending the Kingdom of France, even settling for a certain
period in Paris.

“Then came the usual
volte-face
: he set off for Flanders, entered the service of the Spanish enemy and announced to his relatives that he wished to devote himself heart and soul
to the struggle against French power,” said Atto, with a mixture of irony and disgust.

Eugene’s other direct relatives did not shine for their moral qualities, nor for their physical ones. His uncle Emanuel Philibert, the firstborn and thus the heir to the duchy, was deaf
and dumb. His aunt Louise Christine, who had married the Margrave Louis Ferdinand of Baden in Paris, suddenly rebelled against her husband, refusing to follow him to his lands in Germany, on the
pretext that in France their only son would receive a better education (her husband, a cousin of Eugene’s, responded by simply carrying the child off to his homeland). Eugene’s father,
finally, was not a traitor and had perfect hearing and speech, but had married Olimpia Mancini, Eugene’s mother, a perfidious, scheming woman, suspected of numerous poisonings.

“Splendid lineage, the Savoys and their wives,” concluded Atto, “ambitious, traitors, deaf mutes and poisoners.”

“I don’t understand: how can Prince Eugene have come from such a family?” I asked in bewilderment. “He is known as an upright man, an untiring
condottiero
, and a
faithful subject of the Emperor.”

“That is what the people say. Because they do not know what I know. And what I know will enable me to stop the war.”

He instinctively moved his head, as if he could still look around himself. Then he said to his nephew:

“Domenico, are there any snoopers here?”

“I don’t think so, Signor Uncle,” answered the young man, after glancing around at the nearby tables and the rest of the coffee house.

“Good. Now listen,” he turned back to me. “What I am about to tell you, you must reveal to nobody. No-bo-dy. Clear?”

Although worried by this brusque change in tone I agreed.

Atto pulled from his jacket a piece of paper folded in four, which concealed a letter. He opened it and set it before me. The text was in Italian.

“This obviously is a copy. The original is in the hands of the King of Spain, Philip V, to whom it was addressed,” whispered Atto.

He closed the letter and replaced it with great speed in its hiding place, bestowing a complacent little smile on me. Even without seeing me he must have guessed my stupefied and confused
expression.

“The matter arose at the beginning of the year,” he went on almost inaudibly.

An anonymous officer had gone to the Spanish court in Madrid, over which reigned Philip of Anjou, grandson of the Sun King. The anonymous officer had succeeded in getting the letter delivered to
Philip, and had then disappeared. On reading those lines, the young king of Spain had been thunderstruck.

“If I’ve understood properly,” I said, “with this letter Eugene is proposing an agreement. If Spain hands him its possessions in Flanders –”

“You call it an agreement,” Atto interrupted me. “The correct name is treachery. Eugene is saying: if Spain promises to award me the hereditary possession and government of its
territories in Flanders, then out of gratitude I will abandon the Empire and its army. The Emperor, deprived of his valiant commander-in-chief, will undoubtedly accept an armistice, which France
desires intensely, and the path towards peace negotiations will be open.”

I kept silent, bewildered and disturbed by the tremendous revelation. I did not like the turn the conversation was taking.

Philip, continued Atto, had immediately transmitted a copy of the letter by confidential paths to Versailles, where only two people had read it: the Sun King and his prime minister Torcy.

“Let me tell you,” said Atto, “that I myself have the honour of reporting to Torcy all the arguments, even secret ones, that foreign diplomats do not wish to present to His
Majesty in official audiences. In short, they still make intensive use of my services at court. And so His Majesty and Minister Torcy decided to entrust me with this mission.”

“You mean your peace mission?”

“Exactly. The young Catholic King of Spain and his grandfather, the Most Christian King of France, cannot accept such a barefaced offer of betrayal. But they can take advantage of the
situation, and achieve the same result: peace. That’s why they decided to send me to Vienna to inform the appropriate authorities of Eugene’s treachery. In this way the imperial army
will find itself effectively without a leader, and the path towards the armistice will be open.”

“Inform the appropriate authorities?” I stammered, guessing where the conversation was leading.

“Certainly: the Emperor. And you will help me.”

The terror I suddently felt must have been painted so clearly on my face that Atto’s nephew asked me if by any chance I wanted a glass of water. Now it was clear why Atto had forced me to
listen to all that preamble about Eugene of Savoy. I wiped a few beads of sweat from my forehead, as gelid as the flowing Danube under its crust of winter ice. In the confusion that swirled around
my brain, where the Turkish Agha was weaving enigmatic dances first with Abbot Melani and then with the Duke of Savoy, one thought outweighed all others: Atto had once again ensnared me in one of
his fateful intrigues.

What could I do? Refuse outright to help him, and maybe arouse his ire, with the risk that he might revoke the gift he had bestowed on me or that he might commit some indiscretion and reveal me
as his accomplice? Or take the risk, and try to satisfy him, maybe in as uncommitted a fashion as possible, hoping that he would leave Vienna very soon?

One thing was certain: the donation that had made me wealthy was not a reward for the services I had done him in the past, but for those that he was expecting from me over the next few days.

“Holy heaven,” I sighed, my voice choking, as I myself began to look around to see if anyone was listening in, “and how do you think I can help you?”

“It’s simple. My cover as an intendant of the imperial posts cannot hold out for long, here in the city. If I tried to present myself at court I would be recognised as a French
enemy, and cut into pieces like a sausage. We’ll need some kind of shortcut to reach the Emperor.”

He leaned forward again, to whisper even more tremulously: “In the same street as the Porta Coeli there lives a person who is close to the Emperor’s heart. She is a girl aged just
twenty, named Marianna Pálffy. She’s the daughter of a Hungarian nobleman faithful to the Emperor and she is Joseph’s lover.”

“Lover? I had no idea . . .” I said in consternation.

“Of course you had no idea. These are tempting items of gossip that the Viennese do not confide to foreigners; but French agents ensure that they reach Paris. Joseph found lodgings for her
in Porta Coeli Street, on the suggestion of Eugene, whose own palace is next door. She lives, to be precise, in a small building owned by a nun from Porta Coeli, Sister Anna Eleonora Strassoldo, a
noblewoman of Italian origins, who is now headmistress of the convent’s novitiate. She can also serve as a means to reach the Pálffy woman,” he replied, in the most casual of
tones.

I felt crestfallen: that was why Atto had found lodgings for himself and for me at Porta Coeli! The convent was right at the heart of the web of intrigue that he was busily weaving between
Eugene’s palace and the house where the lover of Joseph the Victorious lived. I felt like telling him that I had understood his design, but I did not have time to open my mouth. Atto had
already asked his nephew to hand him his stick and was now standing up.

“I’m going for a stroll. Let’s not go out together again, people might notice. You stay here, if you want to enjoy the warmth a little longer. I’ll contact you when
it’s time to act.”

I was quite prepared to stay there by myself, sitting at the table, dazed and disconsolate, when the door of the coffee shop opened again and a new arrival took Atto and his nephew by surprise.
At the entrance to the Blue Bottle stood Cloridia.

“I got your note at the Porta Coeli,” she said to me – and then she saw
who
was with me. At first she could not believe her eyes.

“Signor Abbot Melani . . . Signor Abbot Melani! Here?”

Unlike the previous occasions when they had met, Cloridia broke into a broad and heartfelt smile on seeing Atto. She was full of generous affection and thanked him profusely for
the gift that had finally brought us comfort and prosperity. The Abbot responded to Cloridia’s words with great tact and equal friendliness, and when she expressed her sorrow at his loss of
sight, Atto even seemed to be touched. Time had left its marks on both their faces, but had sweetened their characters. Cloridia found a withered, fragile octogenarian, and Atto a mature woman.
While they were still exchanging affectionate words, the door opened yet again. It was Simonis. He humbly greeted Cloridia, Atto and Domenico; Abbot Melani, catching the unpleasant smell of soot,
raised his handkerchief to his nose again.