Veritas (Atto Melani) (44 page)

“You can’t understand the importance of Landau unless you look at a map,” said Atto, sketching an imaginary Europe in the air with his ancient, bony
hands.

Once back at the Porta Coeli, I felt a burning need to talk with Abbot Melani, to tell him everything, to seek consolation for the doubts and regrets that were gnawing at me, but above all to
look into his eyes to study his reaction. I wanted to understand whether Atto had anything to do with Hristo’s death, or whether the chess player and his companion Dànilo had paid the
penalty for their dishonourable trades.

And so, with my face still smeared in muddy slush, my limbs half-frozen and the chill of the young Bulgarian’s death – for which I myself was perhaps to blame – still upon me,
I knocked at Atto’s door.

His nephew opened the door, his face crumpled, his voice hoarse and his body racked by serial sneezing; he was suffering from a severe cold.

He observed my pitiable state in some puzzlement, particularly at that hour. Melani was already in bed.

“Forgive me, Signor Atto,” I began, “I didn’t think –”

“Don’t worry. I lay down out of boredom. An eighty-five-year-old man, blind, in a convent. What do you expect him to do but go to bed with the chickens?”

“If you want to rest, I’ll leave.”

“On the contrary. I was looking for you an hour ago. That blessed Countess Pálffy: I kept watch on her front door all afternoon, and nothing happened. She may be the Emperor’s
lover but she lives like a nun. Nothing like Madame de Montespan . . . These Austrians are so virtuous, even the adulterers! Virtuous and boring.”

“Signor Atto, I have serious news. Hristo Hadji-Tanjov, another of Simonis’s friends, is dead. They stabbed him and suffocated him in the snow.”

I told him about the tremendous adventure we had had in the Prater, and how I myself had only just escaped death. He listened without saying a word. As I talked, Domenico listened in amazement
and made the sign of the cross, wondering to himself where we had ended up, in Vienna or in hell.

At the end Atto asked: “What was this Hristo’s surname?”

“Hadji-Tanjov.”

“Ha . . . what?”

“Ha-
dji
-taniof, he was Bulgarian.”

He raised his eyebrows superciliously, as if to say, “I might have guessed.”

“Half-Turkish, in short,” he remarked dismissively.

“Why?”

“I see you’re not very strong on geography, or history. Bulgaria has been under the Ottoman yoke for four hundred years, in Rumelia, as the Turks call the European part of their
empire.”

I was staggered. So Hristo was a subject of the Sublime Porte.

“And how did he earn his living? Did he love dangerous trades as well, by any chance?”

The question, asked in that tendentious tone, caught me off guard.

“He was a chess player. He played for money.”

Atto Melani was silent.

“I know, gambling is not without its risks,” I admitted, “but this is the second time that one of my assistant’s study companions has been murdered, and once again
– strangely enough – just when he was about to meet me. And what’s more, his murderers fired at me. Why would they have done that if Hristo’s death had nothing to do with
the Turkish Agha?”

“Simple. Because they were afraid you had seen them. Maybe they’re in Hristo’s chess circles and they’re scared of being tracked down. Any more stupid
questions?”

“My questions may be stupid, but you don’t seem very bothered by the mortal danger I was in.”

“Listen, with the Pontevedrin’s death, there seems to be no doubt that it was a settling of scores. And Hadji-Tanjov also died because he took some wrong step – made a wrong
move, I should say, given his passion for chess. You make sure you don’t make any wrong moves. I will weep for you most sincerely, but if it’s your own fault, you must weep for
yourself.”

“You really have nothing else to say to me?”

“No, I haven’t. But if you’re really looking for the person to blame for this, look in the mirror: anyone who makes an appointment with you ends up dead,” he declared,
with a sardonic laugh.

I insisted no further. The news that Hristo was an Ottoman had filled me with doubts. Baleful Abbot Melani refused to take the death of these young students seriously, and my urgings only made
him clam up. If I wanted to get anything out of the moody old castrato, this was not the way to go about it. But I was now too tired to think.

While Domenico helped his uncle to to emerge from under the blankets and sit up on the bed, I pulled out a piece of cloth from my pocket to wipe my face and I dropped the piece of blackened
silver that Cloridia had taken from Prince Eugene’s palace.

“What’s that thing?” asked Atto at once, with a twitch of his eyebrows, looking in my direction.

I gazed in wonder at his vigilant eye.

“My blindness improves a little at night. Thanks to the treatment with the myrobolans, the gerapigra and the fact I sleep barefoot in all weathers,” he explained. “In any case
what I meant was, what was that tinkling I heard?”

He groped for his dark glasses on the bedside table. His nephew handed them to him and he put them on. I explained the circumstances in which Cloridia had found the object and placed it in his
palm.

“Interesting,” he remarked. He held it and seemed to study it closely with his fingertips.

“Sit down beside my bed. And tell me exactly what’s engraved on it,” he said.

I described in detail the two sides and read the inscription.

“
Landau 1702, 4 livres?
” he repeated with a slight smile, “and Prince Eugene had it in his hand during the audience with the Agha? I see, I see.”

“It looks almost like a rudimentary commemorative coin of the first conquest of Landau by the Most August Emperor, in 1702,” I commented.

“More than that, my son, much more.”

Landau, began Atto, was the nerve centre at the heart of Europe, right in the middle of the continent, equidistant from Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Milan and Paris. It stood in the Palatinate, in
the south-west of Germany, just above Italy and right next to Austria, but for decades it had been in the possession of the Sun King: it was the blade that France pointed at Germany’s
underbelly and Austria’s hip.

Given its great strategic importance, more than twenty years ago Louis XIV had entrusted the most brilliant of his engineers, the famous Vauban, with the task of strengthening its
fortifications. At once a suspicious fire had reduced three-quarters of the city’s private houses to ashes, and Vauban had found it easy to transform the town into an armoured and impregnable
stronghold.

It was the beginning of 1702, and the War of the Spanish Succession was already raging in northern Italy. Everyone was expecting hostilities to start up on German soil as well.

At the end of April the Empire’s troops began to surround Landau and occupy all the access routes to the city. On 19th June the imperial troops dug their trench. Eight days later, 27th
July, a colossal boom was heard: the imperial army was giving a martial salute as Joseph, the then twenty-four-year-old King of the Romans, the Empire’s crown prince, arrived in person.

The French commander of the citadel, Melac, at once sent a herald to the enemy camp, preceded by a trumpeter, with a message for the King of the Romans: in addition to respectful compliments on
his arrival, they asked him to indicate where he would pitch his tent, so that they could avoid hitting it with their cannons.

“What do you mean?” I said in surprise. “Did the French really offer to spare the leader of the enemy troops?”

“Do you know how to play chess?”

“No.”

“Well, in chess the king, supreme leader of the enemy army, is never killed. When the hostile pieces have forced him into a corner with no way out, checkmate is declared, and the game is
over. The defeated king has to capitulate, but does not die. That’s what happens with real sovereigns too: they are not killed. Their peers and generals know and respect the ancient military
customs.”

But Joseph, he went on, valiantly turned down Melac’s offer: “My tent is everywhere, shoot wherever you like. And save thou thy labour, gentle herald, come thou no more here. Tell
your commander they shall have no other answer, I swear, but these my joints; which if they have as I will leave ’em them, shall yield them little.”

Then he turned to his own men, dismayed and worried at the risk their commander-in-chief had chosen to run: “When I bestride my horse, I soar, I am a hawk. My horse is pure air and fire,
and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him. And no one, not even the French dogs, can shoot a hawk.”

In the days that followed Joseph visited the trenches, while the musket balls whistled all around him. A chamberlain of honour suggested that he should not endanger his precious person. He cut
him short: “Let those who are afeared go back.”

On 28th July he had the army line up for battle, after examining their equipment himself. On the night between 16th and 17th August the citadel was attacked. The French resisted heroically three
times. But in the meantime the coffers of Landau’s garrison had been depleted. Melac did not hesitate: he paid from his own pocket.

“What do you mean?”

Atto brandished the strange piece of blackened silver I had given him.

“It’s another case of the good conventions of war that I was talking about. A true commander will never allow his men to fight without being paid. Domenico, please, could you adjust
the cushion behind my back?”

“Of course, Uncle.”

Melac therefore had the silver plates from his own dinner service broken up, and by makeshift means they printed the coins of Landau on them. They were rough, wretched fragments, each one of a
different shape – rectangular, square, or triangular, like the pretend money in a children’s game.

“The metal stampings, done half by a French goldsmith and the other half by a German, weren’t all the same either. But each of those coins not in circulation was worth more than
gold, boy,” said Atto, staring at me gravely, “because they were the offspring of the noble rules of war.”

“So this coin-like object was the money for Melac’s soldiers. A fragment of his silver dishes!” I said, amazed at the ingenuity of the idea. “That’s why it’s
so irregular. So it’s a war souvenir: that’s why Prince Eugene has a whole collection of them. He must really value them if he still keeps one in his pocket.”

During the siege in 1702 Joseph took part in the most dangerous assaults, serving as an example to everyone and exposing himself selflessly. He was charitable to the wounded, he grieved with the
widows and consoled the orphans of the fallen. The soldiers were incredulous when they saw his luminous dashing figure amid the cannon smoke, his sword always raised, his long tawny hair, freed
from his wig, besmirched with the dust of battle and he, King of the Romans, heedless of fatigue, of danger, of blood, forever to the fore.

The imperial operations were coordinated by Margrave Louis of Baden. Among his subordinates was an Italian, Count Marsili.

“Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, is that right? I know that name,” I said. “I think I bought a couple of his treatises some time ago, one on coffee and one on phosphorus, if
I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s he. A great Italian,” declared Atto.

The Margrave was slow and awkward at manoeuvring men, and unlike Marsili did not know the refinements of trench warfare, the use of explosives or the technique of sappers. For two months no
progress had been made, they had suffered great losses and the French resistance seemed invincible. A French army under General Catinat was approaching; if Landau was not conquered soon, they would
be crushed. Marsili, who could not bear to see his men die one by one, let Joseph knew about the mistakes made by the Margrave of Baden. They must reinforce their cannons and mortars, he said, and
improve their aim. Joseph inspected the lines in person and showed confidence in Marsili: he would follow his advice. Louis of Baden foamed with rage. Marsili promised that Landau would be taken
within a week.

Joseph then discovered what no general had had the courage to explain to him: the troops were tired, disheartened and frightened. Capturing Landau seemed an impossible enterprise to them, and if
Catinat’s army of liberation arrived it would be a disaster. We need more men – Joseph heard people murmur around him – there are too few of us.

The day before the final engagement, the King of the Romans left his generals and mingled with the troops, amid the simple infantry. He heard a soldier complaining again: the French are a tough
proposition, we need more men to win. So Joseph climbed on top of a cannon and spoke to his men on an equal footing.

“Soldiers, subjects of the Emperor, listen to me! What’s he that wishes we were more? If we are mark’d to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer
men, the greater share of honour. God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. Rather proclaim it, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his
passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse! We would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us. Tomorrow will be the day of the Battle of
Landau. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a-tiptoe when the day is named, and rouse him at the name of Landau. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on
the vigil feast his neighbours, and say, ‘Tomorrow is the day of Landau:’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars and say ‘These wounds I had on Landau’s
day.’ Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot, but he’ll remember with advantages what feats he did that day. Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words –
Joseph King of Romans, Fürstemberg, Bibra, and Marsili – be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d. This story shall the good man teach his son, and the Day of Landau shall
ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember’d; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my
brother; be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition: and gentlemen at home and safe a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap
whiles any speaks that fought with us upon the Day of Landau!”