Veritas (Atto Melani) (7 page)

Abbot Melani had even arranged for a small single-storey house to be purchased in our name near the church of St Michael in the Josephina, and had undertaken to have an extra storey added, an
operation that was still under way: my family and I would soon enjoy the great luxury of having a house all to ourselves, with the ground floor given over to business and the upper one to our
living quarters. A real dream for us, after our experience in Rome of having to share a
tufo
cellar with another family of paupers . . .

Now we could even send large sums of money to our two daughters who were still there, and we were even planning to have them join us in Vienna as soon as our new house was ready.

Atto, in his donation, had also included wages for a tutor who would teach our child to read and write in Italian, “since,” he had written in the accompanying letter, “Italian
is an international language and is, indeed, the official language of the Caesarean court, where hardly any other is spoken. The Emperor, like his father and his grandfather before him, attends
Italian sermons, and the cavaliers of these lands have such an affinity for our nation, that they vie for the opportunity to travel to Rome and master our language. And those who know it enjoy
great esteem throughout the Empire and have no need to learn the local idioms.”

I was infinitely grateful to Melani for what he had done, even though I had been a little hurt to find no personal note in his letter, no news of himself, no expressions of affection, just
generic salutations. But perhaps, I thought, the letter had been drawn up for him by a secretary, Atto being too old and probably too sick to see to such details.

For my part I had, of course, written a letter warmly proclaiming my sense of obligation and affection. And even Cloridia, having overcome her age-old mistrust of Atto, had sent him lines of
sincere gratitude together with an elegant piece of crochet work, to which she had applied herself for weeks: a warm, soft shawl in camlet of Flanders, yellow and red, the Abbot’s favourite
colours, with his initials embroidered on it.

We had received no reply to our attestations, but this did not surprise us, given his advanced age.

Our little boy was now doing his best to copy into his notebook simple phrases in the Germanic idiom and in a special gothic cursive, very difficult to read, which the people here call
Current.

While it was true, as Abbot Melani said, that Italian was the court language in Vienna – indeed, the sovereigns who wrote to the Emperor were required to do so in that language – the
common people were much more at ease in German; for a chimney-sweep wishing to practise his trade, it was essential to learn its rudiments at least.

With this in mind, I had decided that the wages Atto had set aside for an Italian tutor should be used to pay a teacher of the local language, since I myself would undertake to instruct my son
in his native language, as I had already done, quite successfully, with his two sisters. And so every second evening, Cloridia, my son and I received a visit from this teacher, who would endeavour
for a couple of hours to illuminate our poor minds on the intricate and impenetrable universe of the Teutonic language. Cardinal Piccolomini had already complained of its immeasurable difficulties
and its almost total incompatibility with other idioms, and this had been proved since the days of Giovanni da Capistrano; during his visit to Vienna, he had delivered his sermons against the Turks
from the pulpit in the Carmelite Square in Latin; he had then been followed by an interpreter, who took three hours to repeat everything in German.

While our little infant made great strides, my wife and I were left floundering. We made greater progress, fortunately, in reading, and that was why, as I said earlier, that in the late morning
of 9th April of the year 1711, in the brief post-prandial pause, I was able to flick casually (almost) through the
New Calendar-Agenda
of Krakow, written by Matthias Gentille, Count Rodari
of Trent, while my little boy doodled at my feet until it should be time to go back to work with me.

Like every master chimney-sweep of Vienna, I too had my
Lehrjunge
, or apprentice, and he was, of course, my son, who at the age of eight had already endured – but also learned
– more than a boy twice his age.

A little while later Cloridia joined us.

“Come quickly, they’re about to turn into the street. And then I have to get back to the palace.”

Thanks to the good offices of the Chormaisterin of the convent, my wife had found a highly respectable job at just a short distance from the religious house. In Porta Coeli Street, or
Himmelpfortgasse as the Viennese say, there was a building of great importance: the winter palace of the Most Serene Prince Eugene of Savoy, President of the Imperial Council of War, great
condottiero
in the service of the Empire in the war against France, as well as victor over the Turks. And now, on that very day, there was to be an extremely important event at the palace:
at midday an Ottoman embassy was expected to arrive from Constantinople. A great opportunity for my wife, born in Rome, but from the womb of a Turkish mother, a poor slave who had ended up in enemy
hands.

Two days earlier, on Tuesday, five boats had arrived at the Leopoldine Island in Vienna, on the branch of the Danube nearest the ramparts, and the Turkish Agha, Cefulah Capichi Pasha, had
disembarked with a retinue of about twenty people. Suitable lodgings had been provided for them on the island. To tell the truth, it was not entirely clear just what the Ambassador of the Sublime
Porte had come to do in Vienna.

There had been peace with the Ottomans for several years now, since 11th September 1697, when Prince Eugene had thoroughly defeated them at the Battle of Zenta and forced them to accept the
subsequent Peace of Karlowitz. War was now raging, not with the Infidel but with Catholic France over the question of the Spanish throne; relations with the Porte, usually so troubled, seemed to be
tranquil. Even in restless Hungary, where the imperial armies had fought for centuries against the armies of Mahomet, the princes who had rebelled against the Emperor, usually chafing and
combative, seemed to have been finally tamed by our beloved Joseph I, who was not known as “the Victorious” for nothing.

Despite this, in the second half of March an urgent courier had come from Constantinople bearing an announcement for the Most Serene Prince Eugene of an extraordinary embassy of the Turkish
Agha, which was to arrive before the end of the same month. The Grand Vizir, Mehmet Pasha, must have taken the decision at the very last moment, as he had been unable to send a courier providing
suitable advance warning. This had seriously upset the Prince’s plans: since the middle of the month everything had been ready for his departure for The Hague, the theatre of war.

The Grand Vizir’s decision cannot have been an easy one: as was pointed out in a pamphlet which I had picked up somewhere, in the winter it can take up to four months of hard and dangerous
travelling to get from Constantinople to Vienna, passing not only through accessible places like Hadrianopolis, Philippopolis and Nicopolis but also filthy ones like Sofia, where the horses find
themselves knee-deep in mud on the roads, through wretched villages in the uncultivated and unpopulated plains like the Ottoman Selivrea and Kinigli, or Bulgarian Hisardschik, Dragoman and Calcali,
or fortified palankas, like Pasha Palanka, Lexinza and Raschin, crumbling border castles where the Sultan had left handfuls of Turkish soldiers to moulder away in long-forgotten idleness . . .

No, the real difficulty of the journey lay in passing through the jaws of the Bulgarian mountains, narrow gorges, with room for just one carriage at a time; it lay in facing the equally fearsome
pass of the Trajan Gate, following terrible roads, deep in thick, clinging mud, often mixed with rocks, and battling against snow and ice and winds strong enough to overturn carriages. And in
crossing the Sava and the Morava, the latter tumbling into the Danube at Semendria, eight hours below Belgrade, rivers that in winter have no bridges, whether of planks or boats, since they usually
get swept away by the autumn floods. And then, already worn out by the journey, entrusting oneself to the icy waters of the Danube on board Turkish caiques, with the constant danger that the ice
might crack – perhaps, to crown it all, just beneath the terrible pass of the Iron Gate, most dreadful especially when the water is low.

It was no wonder that, ever since the first Ottoman embassies, it had become traditional to undertake the journey during the summer months, spending the winter in Vienna and then setting out
again the following spring. There had been no exceptions to this rule on the Ottoman side, given the extreme dangers of a winter journey. And in Vienna they still remembered with fear and trembling
the misadventures that had befallen them, after the Peace of Karlowitz had been concluded on 26th January 1699, during the mission of the State Councillor, Chamberlain, and President of the Noble
Imperial Council Lord Wolffgang Count of Ottingen, sent by his Caesarean Majesty, Emperor Leopold I, as his Grand Ambassador to the Sublime Ottoman Porte. Ottingen, who had taken far too long in
preparing his journey, had not departed until 20th October, with a retinue of 280 people, sailing out on the Danube towards Constantinople, and – after reaching the inhospitable mountains of
Bulgaria around Christmas – had truly, as they say, been through the mill.

Despite this, and against all tradition, the Turkish Agha had set out in the depths of winter: the Grand Vizir must have a truly urgent embassy to communicate to Prince Eugene! And this had
aroused a good deal of alarm in the court and among the Viennese people. Every day they watched the shores of the Danube anxiously, waiting to hear the distant fanfare of the janissaries and to
catch the first sight of the seventy or more boats bearing the Agha and his numerous retinue. About five hundred people were expected: at any rate not less than three hundred, as had always been
the case for over a century.

The Turkish Agha did not arrive until 7th April, over a week late. On that day the tension was palpable: even Emperor Joseph I had considered it politically wise to give the Turks an indirect
sign of his benevolence, and had gone with the ruling family to visit the church of the Barefoot Carmelites, which was in the same quarter, the island of St Leopold in the Danube, where the Turks
were to lodge. When the Agha landed on the island, to the accompaniment of waving flags, resounding drums and pipes, the Viennese were amazed to discover that he had no more than twenty people in
his retinue! As I was to read later, he had brought with him, in addition to the interpreter, only the closest members of his household: the court prefect, the treasurer, the secretary, the first
chamberlain, the groom, the head cook, the coffee-maker and the imam, who, the pamphlet noted with surprise, was not a Turk but an Indian dervish. Servants, cooks, grooms and others had been
engaged among the Ottomans in Belgrade, like the two janissaries who acted respectively as standard-bearer and ammunition-bearer for the Agha. The reduction of the retinue had meant that it had
taken the Agha only two months to reach Vienna; he had set off from Constantinople on 7th February.

That morning, the embassy – entering the city by the bridge known as Battle Bridge, and then passing below the Red Tower, skirting the square known as Lugeck and the Cathedral of St
Stephen – was to make its entrance into the palace of the Most Serene Prince, who for that purpose had sent a six-horse carriage, with another four horses saddled and harnessed in gold and
silver for the members of his court.

I rushed out. Just in time. Before the curious eyes of the crowd, the convoy had turned from Carinthia Street into our road, led on horseback by the lieutenant of the guards, Officer Herlitska,
and followed by twenty soldiers of the city guard assigned for the protection of the embassy during their entire stay. But I had to stop and press myself against the wall of the house at the corner
between Porta Coeli and Carinthia Street, on account of the dust raised by the procession, the great flock of spectators and the approaching horses. First came the carriage of the Caesarean
Commissioner for Victualling, which had met the Turkish embassy on the border, at the so-called Ceremony of Exchange, and had escorted it towards the capital; then – to the amazement of all
– came a strange horseman of advanced, though indefinable age, who, as I gathered from the crowd, was the Indian dervish, followed by three
Chiaus
on horseback – the Turkish
judicial officers, one of whom was riding on the right, with his horse being led by two servants on foot. This
Chiaus
was theatrically brandishing in both hands his letter of accreditation
from the Grand Vizir, all wrapped in green taffeta embroidered with silver flowers and set on ruby-red satin with the seal of the Grand Vizir in red wax and a capsule of pure gold. To his left rode
the interpreter of the Sublime Porte.

Finally we saw the six-horse carriage sent by Prince Eugene, inside which the crowd recognised, with a buzz of uneasy curiosity, the Turkish Agha, wearing a great turban, a robe of yellow satin
and a smock of red cloth lined with sable. Sitting opposite him was – as I gathered from the conversation of two little women beside me – the Caesarean interpreter. Alongside the
carriage, puffing and panting and elbowing their way through the crowd, ran two footmen of the Prince and four servants of the Agha, followed by another Turkish cavalier, who was said to be the
first chamberlain. The rear was brought up by other members of the Agha’s household, followed by soldiers of the city guard.

I approached the Prince’s palace myself. As I imagined, as soon as I reached the great front door I ran into Cloridia, who was holding an animated discussion with two Turkish footmen.

As I have already mentioned, thanks to the good offices of the convent’s Chormaisterin, Camilla de’ Rossi, my consort had found a job, temporary but well paid, of a certain prestige:
thanks to her origins she understood and spoke Turkish quite well, and also the
lingua franca
, that idiom not unlike Italian, imported into Constantinople by the Genoese and the Venetians
centuries ago, which the Ottomans often speak among themselves. Cloridia had therefore been taken on to act as intermediary between the staff of the embassy and Prince Eugene’s servants, a
task that certainly could not be carried out by the two interpreters appointed to translate the official speeches of the two great leaders.