Veritas (Atto Melani) (72 page)

The Grand Vizier was strangled with a rope and then beheaded: the same end (the second cruel irony) that he had sworn for Cardinal Collonitz. Following the ancient Turkish custom, the skin and
flesh were then stripped from his face and head. To be certain of his lieutenant’s death, the Sultan had them deliver to him the skin of his face, stuffed with cotton and spices. The stripped
skull, along with the body and the rope, was buried (the third tremendous irony of the Sultan) in the mosque in Belgrade built by Kara Mustafa, as a perpetual warning to the subjects of the Sublime
Porte who failed in their duty.

“But then the Sultan was confunded by a most discomboboling and gastflabbering contangency,” concluded the pestiferous scoundrel.

The Sultan did not imagine that just five years later, in 1688, Belgrade would fall into Christian hands. After a fierce battle, under the command of the Prince-Elector of Bavaria and the Duke
of Lorraine, the imperial troops succeeded in breaking into the city and taking control of it. As the Jesuit fathers were the first to intone the
Te Deum
after the victory, the mosque of
Kara Mustafa was entrusted to two of this order, whose task it was to turn it into a Catholic church. The pair were the confessor of the Duke of Lorraine, Father Aloysius Braun, and the missionary
father Francis Xavier Beringshoffen.

One night disturbing noises were heard in the mosque, as of a pickaxe bashing the walls, and objects being smashed. Braun and Beringshoffen, terrified by the thought of ghosts, at once summoned
a group of soldiers to find out who could be in the building at that hour. The two trembling fathers entered the mosque with the soldiers, shakily holding a holy water sprinkler and lanterns out in
front of themselves, followed by the armed men. They found that it was not ghosts that were disturbing the nocturnal quiet but men of flesh and blood: it was a group of seven musketeers, enlisted
in the Christian armies that had just reconquered Belgrade. The musketeers, surprised and frightened by the ambush, explained that they had fought hard during the assault on the city, and some of
them had been wounded, but they had missed out on the sharing of the spoils. Winter was on its way, and they did not even have the money to buy warm clothes. However, they had learned from a friend
that Kara Mustafa had been buried in that mosque, along with many objects of great value, including luxurious winter garments, which would just suit the seven poor musketeers. They had not thought
twice and had broken into the mosque, profaning the tomb of the Grand Vizier.

Fearing that the two priests would be angry at the covert violation of the mosque, which legally belonged to the Society of Jesus, the seven soldiers offered to hand over to the Jesuits
everything they had found in the tomb of Kara Mustafa, including the most unexpected object: his head.

At that point Ugonio rummaged in his lurid jute bag and pulled out an object the size of a melon, wrapped in a greyish cloth. He unwrapped it: we all instinctively jumped back, even the
Abbot.

It was a human head covered in a layer of silver. However, the features could be discerned: a high forehead, a long aquiline nose rather like that of certain Jews, narrow eyes, traces of beard
on the cheeks, and a typically Turkish frown transformed by violent death into a contorted and desperate grimace.

“Then that is . . .” I hesitated.

“. . . the head of Kara Mustafa,” Atto completed, aghast.

“So that’s the head Ciezeber wanted from you!” I exclaimed.

Ugonio offered me the exhibit, which I examined with a mixture of curiosity, disgust and reverence, happy to leave it in the
corpisantaro
’s claw-like hands.

In that face covered by an accretion of silver, in its grimace of suffering and torment, lay all the tragedy of the last siege of Vienna: Kara Mustafa’s mad plan of conquest, the bloody
battle, the final defeat of the Ottomans and the tragic death of the Grand Vizier who had dreamed of crushing Christianity. How many deaths in battle was just one of the wrinkles of that
pain-wracked face worth? How many miles of military march had it seen? How many tears of widows, wounded men and orphans were condensed in just one of the tears wept by the dying Kara Mustafa? The
patina of silver, which was intended to protect this remnant of human flesh, actually made it a perpetual monument to the vanity of things.

Out of the corner of my eye I watched Atto as he listened to the story, as astonished as I was, hidden behind the protective cover of his blind man’s glasses. How many such interrogations
I had seen him carry out, years ago! But now it was I who held the cards: I was not just a fully rounded adult, but also a man marked by experience. Old Atto, I thought with a bittersweet mixture
of pride, vindictiveness and compassion, was at that age when even the boldest paladins become peons.

But I shook off these thoughts and returned to the present.

“Why were you so afraid to tell us this story?” I asked Ugonio. “How did you think that Ciezeber might hurt you?”

“Decreasing the scrupules so as not increase one’s scruples, I have sworn and cursed not to blabber anything of the task the dervishite has consigned me. The Ottomaniacs desiderate
most lustily and lechily the noggin of the Great Visionary. They think it will prevent all misfortunations: it will help them to organise a most cudgelsome and slaughterous army, and to spiflicate
Vienna with much pervertitude and ravishment.”

I learned with amazement that the Turks thought that they could obtain from the head of a dead man what he had failed to achieve when alive. But what bewildered me was the new picture that was
forming after Ugonio’s revelations. When my Cloridia had overheard Ciezeber demanding someone’s head at Eugene’s palace, it had had nothing to do with assassination, let alone the
feared regicide, but merely concerned the theft of Kara Mustafa’s head. The dervish had hired Ugonio on account of the
corpisantaro’s
long experience in trafficking relics and
mortuary objects, and not for any homicidal project.

And I had thought the life of the Emperor himself was at stake!

The
corpisantaro
meanwhile concluded the story of the decapitated head. From Belgrade the two Jesuits had brought Kara Mustafa’s head to Vienna, where they delivered it –
thus bringing the vengeance full and ironic circle – to none other than Cardinal Collonitz. On 17th September the Cardinal deposited the trophy in the city’s arsenal. Twenty-two years
had passed since then.

“And how the devil did you get hold of Kara Mustafa’s head? How did you know where it was?”

“I conductified a painstoking investifigation, and then committed a most blackguardsome and mischieving burgledom,” explained Ugonio.

The
corpisantaro
had succeeded not only in discovering that Kara Mustafa’s head was held in the city arsenal, but also in stealing it. But then, I said to myself, had I not seen
him in Rome carrying out dozens of such nefarious enterprises?

Ugonio, he himself explained with ill-concealed pride, had made rather a name for himself among collectors in that sector. While in the Holy City it was saints’ relics that were most
profitable, here in the Caesarean city the market was dominated by anything connected with the two sieges, especially projectiles from the Ottoman cannons. The
corpisantaro
listed a series
of desirable items of booty, like the stone weighing 79 pounds that had been fired from the Leopoldine Island in 1683 and which, complete with commemorative inscription, was still embedded in the
façade of the Neustädter Hof, a palace not far off, which ran from Press Street to Crab Street. Or the three cannonballs almost half a rod in diameter, also lodged in the walls,
complete with commemorative plaque, of the house known, naturally enough, as House of the Three Balls in the nearby quarter of Sievering. Or the famous Golden Ball, fired by the Turks on 6th August
1683 and still embedded in the façade of a corner house in the square known as Am Hof, a tavern that belonged to Citizen Councillor Michael Moltz, who had had the ball gilded and had named
the house At the Golden Ball. Or again the Turkish ball that could be admired in the saloon wall of the Golden Dragon alehouse in Steindlgasse. But the Eszterházy buttery, in Haarhof, was
also full of sacred Turkish relics, as the defenders of the city in 1683 had often refreshed themselves there with a glass of good wine; not to mention the rare objects left by the great Polish
King Sobieski, when on 13th September 1683, the day after the victory over the Ottomans, he had personally recited the
Te Deum
in the Loreto Chapel. And to conclude, declared Ugonio, now
slavering at the mouth, the relic of relics: in the Romanesque chapel of the Scottish Church there was the oldest Marian statue in Vienna, dating from four centuries earlier, which was said to have
miraculously extinguished the fire that had broken out in the early days of the 1683 siege.

These, it was fairly clear, would be the next victims of the
corpisantaro
’s rapacity. While Ugonio listed them avidly, I groaned to myself.

Once again I found myself floundering midstream. And so the head belonged to Kara Mustafa, Ciezeber’s rituals had purely therapeutic aims and Abbot Melani was a poor old man reduced to
attempting a feeble forgery, which had failed almost immediately: but the Emperor was ill and so was the Dauphin!

This might matter to Atto, but it was of very little concern to me. Now that the Abbot had confessed that he no longer counted for anything on the European chessboard, I could finally heave a
sigh of relief; there was no longer any risk of my ending up on the gallows for high treason. But no – I said to myself, suddenly on the rack again: someone, after all, must have murdered
Dànilo, Hristo and Dragomir, Simonis’s student companions! If the Bulgarian and the Romanian, as the Abbot had said, were subjects of the Sublime Porte, Atto himself, the previous
evening, had not been able to rule out the possibility that the three deaths were linked to one another.

One thing was certain: we had not yet discovered what was hidden behind the Agha’s Latin phrase. It could not be an innocent phrase, as everyone had interpreted it during the audience at
Prince Eugene’s palace: since then there had been three deaths, and all three victims had been carrying out research into the Golden Apple. That was not all. Hristo, before dying, had
confided to Simonis that in his opinion the riddle of the phrase lay in
soli soli soli
and it had to do with checkmate, or “Shah matt, the King is enclosed”, as I had read in
the note found in his chessboard. But what did it mean? To find that out, would we have to start our research all over again, this time focusing on chess? Three students were dead already, the
Emperor was ill: time had run out. The path indicated by the Bulgarian really looked like a dead end.

Although the Abbot considered the strange tales about the Golden Apple nonsensical legends (and how could one blame him?), they were the only clue we had to the real meaning of the Agha’s
phrase. We needed to take a different tack.

I pulled out Ugonio’s precious ring of keys, which he instinctively tried to grab with his gnarled hands, uttering a muttered exclamation halfway between a curse and a cackle.

“Not yet,” I commanded, jerking back the tinkling metal ring.

The
corpisantaro
drilled me with his bloodshot little eyes.

“Tell me what your plans are for the next few hours,” I bade him.

“I must insinufy myself into Eugene’s palace,” he answered without losing sight of the key ring, “to deliverate the noggin of the Grand Visionary to the
dervishite.”

“Once you have handed over Kara Mustafa’s head to Ciezeber you’ll have no more to fear, I gather.”

The
corpisantaro
did not answer, thus providing mute confirmation.

“Fine. So if you really want to get your keys back, there’s just one small step you need to take. It’s clear there has been an unfortunate misunderstanding. Our previous pact
is no longer valid. We thought we were dealing with a plan for a murder, but it turns out to have been, well, an archaeological mission: the search for Kara Mustafa’s head. You realise that
we had to wait quite a while just to discover that you had nothing important to tell us. These are setbacks that call for serious reparation. We have to reconsider our agreement: I will give you
back the keys when you find out what words are written on the spire of St Stephen’s, where the Golden Apple once was!” I said, remembering that Ugonio was working on a deacon at the
cathedral to get information on the subject. “I’m sorry, but only then will our accounts be settled.”

Ugonio answered first with lively protests (“It is an adulterous swindlification, treacherish and duplishitous!” he yelled, rising to his feet), but seeing that Atto and I were
adamant, and observing Simonis’s muscles, he gradually became more submissive, settling down to a cantankerous capitulation. He had no choice: we held all the cards. In fact, we would never
have denounced him: with all the murders that had happened around us, Atto and I had as little desire to approach the city guard as he did. But he could not know this, and wanted a quiet life.

“I know it perfectfully, and in most pedantical detail!” Ugonio suddenly exclaimed, looking up with a determined air, his eyes fixed on his beloved keys.

“Ah yes?” I said diffidently.

“We are all ears,” said Abbot Melani, who had remained thoughtful throughout. “Begin by telling us who you heard it from.”

“I . . . I was informatised. The peas were spilt to me by . . . um, a secretary of the burgermister.”

“A secretary of the burgomaster? When and how, for goodness’ sake?”

“To be more padre than parricide, it was two years, six quatrains, thirteen inches and half a lustrum ago, in a secret and most confidentiable meeting,” he answered, promptly putting
his hand on his heart by way of oath.

“That may be. But just yesterday you didn’t know it. And what are the words?”

“Er . . . hum . . .
Quis pomum aureum
,” began the
corpisantaro
with his index-finger solemnly raised as if to recite a speech by Cicero, “
de multiis
cognoravisti . . . etiam Viennam multorum turcarum . . . talis mela-mangiaturpaternosteramen.”