Veritas (Atto Melani) (103 page)

In front of the Emperor a large silver crucifix bestowed its blessed protection. To the side was a holy water sprinkler. On the right were the Caesarean insignia: the crown, the Imperial Orb,
the sceptre and the Golden Fleece on a golden cushion; on the left the crowns of the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. Not far off, covered with black taffeta, were an urn and a silver shrine: in
accordance with the customs of the House of Habsburg, one contained the heart and tongue of Joseph, the other his brain, eyes and internal organs. On two chaises longues draped in black sat the
court chaplain and four barefoot Augustinian friars, who murmured the litanies for the dead.

Then, from afar, I saw them again. They were all there: the castrato Gaetano Orsini (still with some marks of bruising), Landina, the soprano wife of the theorbist Francesco Conti, and the
others. I did not let myself be seen: how could I greet them, voiceless as I was? I observed them, their wan faces and lost expressions. They had had to bid farewell to the
Sant’
Alessio
; the planned performance of the oratorio in honour of the Nuncio had obviously been cancelled. What would become of them, now that their beloved Joseph was dead, now that their young
benefactor, who had so greatly expanded the musical staff of the Caesarean chapel, was no more? Would his brother Charles, when he returned from Barcelona to sit on the long-desired imperial
throne, keep them where they were or sack the lot of them?

Vinzenz Rossi came up to us. He exchanged signs of fraternal consolation with Camilla, and while the Chormaisterin prepared to direct the chorus of musicians, he invited us to sit in a corner,
where we would be able to stay until the end of the choral performance. I knew Psalm 50 and, while the musicians sang in Latin, I repeated the words mentally in my own language:

So it was that the chorus of universal mourning was all one with the void that possessed me. The grief of every imperial subject entered me, passing through my body drop by
drop, and my body was a vague spark of sadness, borne on the wind of that song of imploring despair. Nonetheless, my thoughts did not soften. While all around me subdued weeping, sniffling noses
and sobs shook the air, I remained cold and impenetrable like a grey chip of slate. The impassive lens of my suffering focused on every event, and like a skilful surgeon I subjected it to
anatomical inspection, dissecting it with the scalpel of reason.

Sitting next to Atto on an uncomfortable velvet seat, I continued to reflect, measuring the present with the yardstick of the past.

At the time of our first meeting, in September 1683, Abbot Melani had come to Rome to carry out the secret mission that the King of France had entrusted him with. It was not till later that he
had had to carry out his own investigation, because he discovered that no one had explained to him either the real nature of, or the reasons for, his mission.

When we met again in 1700, Atto had been mysteriously stabbed in the arm on his arrival in Rome, and for this reason he had had to undertake a series of enquiries to find out who was threatening
him. But actually, on that occasion too, he had a secret mission to carry out for the Sun King, and from the beginning he knew perfectly well what steps to take: to forge a will, with the help of
his conspiratorial friend Maria Mancini; to stage a fake quarrel with Cardinal Albani, the future Pope, and so on, with the diabolic skills he was accustomed to employing.

This time, in Vienna in April 1711, things had gone very differently. The Abbot had come to the Caesarean city to urge Eugene of Savoy to conclude the war. He knew from the very beginning what
he had to do (hand over the forged letter to the Emperor), but on account of Joseph’s illness his attempts had soon proved futile, and in the end they had been swept away by the obscure
manoeuvres of someone much more powerful than Atto, but without a face. Now we knew that it was a question of an entire system, and not a single person.

This was the descending parabola of Abbot Melani, as he himself had fully understood. After reaching the heights of his diplomatic career in that warm Roman summer eleven years earlier, he was
now in steep decline. It was a new age. Atto was just a little old man, a memory of the past.

These were not the only comparisons I made between past and present. Joseph the Victorious was dead, but his wake pointed back to another sad day: the death of Maximilian the Mysterious. There
were so many things, and great things at that, the two unfortunate emperors had in common!

They had both gone into battle leading their armies in person, and had been tolerant towards the followers of Luther. They were forever bound to the Place with No Name: Maximilian for having
created it, Joseph for having desired its restoration, rendered impossible, alas, by his death. Schönbrunn, too, had been founded by Maximilian, and extended mostly by Joseph. They were both
polyglots, and intellectually more gifted than most of their predecessors and successors.

And yet all this glory had ended in nothing: Maximilian had soon been forgotten, and the same thing (I am prepared to bet) will happen to Joseph, if the dark forces that lead Ciezeber-Palatine
are not halted.

They both died prematurely of illness, and were both subjected to medical treatments that were suspicious, to say the very least. Both, finally, were succeeded by their brother, and not by their
son. Oh, how easy for even the most innocent spirit, to see in these twin destinies the stamp of a single murderous will!

It was not the first time that I had observed the murder of a distinguished person at close quarters. Twenty-eight years earlier I had witnessed the death of Nicholas Fouquet – the Most
Christian King’s Superintendent of Finances – the inevitable conclusion of a life fully exposed to calumny and hatred. Once he had been removed, his envied castle at Vaux-le-Vicomte was
plundered and stripped, and thus abandoned, like the Place with No Name.

The Loggia of Cavaliers now resounded with the sombre chorus of musicians, and I made their invocation my own:

Oh, Joseph the Victorious! Your death itself already reveals and lays bare the culprit. The assassination of the hero of Landau could never have been the work of one of your
peers. If the Sun King, even when it would have been easy for him, refused to have you kidnapped or killed in battle, how could he have assassinated you so furtively? It is low people that murdered
you: people low in spirit. Your death is the end of an era: the era of the great kings, of great personages, when sovereigns did not dare to knock off another king’s head, as Abbot Melani
taught me when I met him in Rome. We are in another century. Dark forces are on the rise, plots are stirred up by people with no faces or names, and above all no rules.

The choir conducted by Camilla, rendered sublime by the heavenly voices of Orsini and Landina, exhorted us to trust in the infinite wisdom of God:

I watched Atto pray humbly, every so often casting a glance at the body of the young Caesar, stretching his wrinkled neck to do so. He had been the first to understand the new
times. The people who may have been behind Joseph’s death, who at first had seemed to rule themselves out one by one, are all part of this play-acting. The new masters are undoubtedly in
charge, the lords of the Last Days of Mankind. But all the others, like the lions I had seen sinking their teeth into the carcase of the dying ox at Neugebäu, have found their profit in this
death as well. Nothing is missing. England and Holland, the instigators, have prevented the Empire from becoming too powerful, upsetting the equilibrium between the European powers. Then there are
the accomplices: the Jesuits have taken their vengeance on the only Emperor they have not educated and who had them banished; his brother Charles, who will now be emperor, has crowned his hatred
for his elder brother; the ministers of the old guard, whom Joseph had driven out or reduced to obedience, are sneering with satisfaction; and finally Eugene of Savoy, or Madame l’Ancienne,
whatever one wants to call him, has been avenged for the humiliation of Landau, when that little boy Joseph dared to steal the limelight from the greatest invert-general of all ages. Finally, the
hired killers: Islam, as ever, has been manipulated to do the dirty work of some faction of the West.

So who was responsible? All of them. They all armed a crazy dervish with a hundred names: Palatine, or Ammon, or Ciezeber, who is perhaps seven hundred years old. Or perhaps it’s the
opposite: it is the dervish, and those who like him have many names but no surname, who have manoeuvred England, Holland, the Jesuits, the ministers and even Eugene and Charles, to get the infamous
deed carried out.

It was stifling in the mortuary chapel; beads of sweat trickled from people’s wigs and all around people gasped with the heat.

Perhaps Joseph the Victorious had wanted to restore the Place with No Name, I thought, because he felt he was strong enough not to have to care about the forces still living that had devoured
Neugebäu and Maximilian. And instead . . .

I looked at Atto again. He looked back at me and, for an instant, it was as if his eyeballs spoke to me sadly. It was undoubtedly a mere dream, brought about by the sepulchral atmosphere of the
place and time:

I took my eyes off Atto’s. A group of nuns had entered the mortuary chamber, and they were reciting a rosary. Then Atto and I looked at each other again.

And then I thought back almost thirty years to when my late father-in-law had inveighed against the marriages between relatives among the monarchs of all lands, the eternal
incest among the ruling houses. With a sudden flash in his eyes, Atto told me that matters were very different now:

I thought back to Albicastro, the strange violinist I had met eleven years earlier during my second adventure with Atto. He too had expounded a similar prophecy to me, and now I
understood its full significance: it contained the instructions needed to face this new world.

The Flying Ship, the vessel abandoned by all but still able to fly – with its first mysterious helmsman, who had arrived from Portugal, like the tune that Albicastro was always playing,
the
folia
, and who had been secretly executed – was the heavenly sign that forces contrary to those teachings had been unleashed.

I kept silent. But was it right?

Paris
E
VENTS FROM
1711
TO
1713

The journey to Paris was very long, painful and punctuated by innumerable halts. Although assisted by Domenico, Cloridia and myself (now recovered except for the voice), Atto
had to travel constantly in a litter.

We had sold my profitable chimney-sweeping business very quickly to a family of Italians. Camilla, with the influence of Porta Coeli to back her, had handled the negotiations brilliantly: nuns,
as is well known, are always highly skilled negotiators. I had sent the proceeds from the sale to our two girls in Rome: it was the longed-for dowry.