"Espionage!" snarled Atto. "There, I knew it! That accursed Lamberg!"
"But how do they obtain secrets?" I asked.
"First of all, they always pass unobserved. No one pays any attention to an old, seemingly half-witted, beggar slumped by the roadside," said Buvat, "and yet he always sleeps with one eye open, observes when you enter and leave the house, sees who's with you, listens to your conversations from under the window and, if the opportunity presents itself, steals things from under your nose. What's more, there are so, so many of them, and word gets around very fast among them. Supposing one sees something, ten will know of it at once, then a hundred. No one can tell them from one another, for they all look the same, ugly and dirty, and above all no one can understand a word of what they say when they talk. Their sects…"
"Hold on: did you look in that book which I told you of?" Yes, Signor Abbot. As I thought, Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools contains a chapter on German canters. They too have a secret language and are in close contact with the Italian cerretani. So much so that among Italian vagabonds there are groups known as lanzi, lancresine or lanchiesine, probably because those names come from the German landreisig, meaning stray and homeless. What's more, every group of.. "
"Ah, so they're in close contact. Good, excellent; go on."
"Yes. The Ship of Fools is an excellent historical source for the study of canters and cerretani and their customs, 'tis perhaps even the first such book since it was published in Basel for the Carnival of 1494, while the so-called Liber vagatorum, which is regarded as the oldest surviving document on canters, was already circulating at the end of the fifteenth century but was printed only in 1510…"
"Get to the point."
Buvat hurriedly drew a sheet of paper from his pocket and read:
They speak a sort of pedlars' French;
They beg and thus their thirst they quench,
Their doxies clothe and bed and board'em
By mumpin', filchin' and by whoredom.
They limp their way across the city,
In robust health, arousing pity.
And what they win, the canter soaks,
Then rolls false dice the bens to hoax.
He'll beat his heels and begone quick
As soon as he has pinched the wick He always plays it fast and loose -
He'll snitch a hen or swipe a deuce,
Which he unleashes, grins and sells
To please the heels, and charm the dells.
In the wide-open, in the mud,
He'll cheat the chewers of the cud.
Every which where, through town and village,
These beggars scrounge and steal and pillage.
"Here at last we have the gibberish, their secret language. Translate!" The doxies are the bawds, mumping and filching are begging and stealing, to soak is to drink, a ben is a fool, pinching the wick means to defraud, to beat one's heels means to run for it, the wide-open means the countryside, deuce is a goose, to unleash means to strangle, to grin means to cut off someone's head, the heels are the accomplices in crime, dells are buxom young wenches, and lastly chewers of the cud are the bumpkins and riff-raff."
Buvat had rattled all this off in one long breath, without the Abbot or I understanding a word of what he had said.
"Good, good," commented Atto. "Excellent, my compliments. So now, at least, the cant language is no longer a secret to us."
"Ummm… to tell the truth, Signor Abbot," stammered the secretary, "I did not translate the gibberish quoted by Brant: the edition which I consulted was annotated."
"What? Are you saying that you found no other terms for the cant language…?" Melani assailed him.
"No dictionary, manual or list. Nothing whatever, Signor Abbot Melani," confessed Buvat with a sigh. "So the language of the cerretani remains completely undecipherable. I guarantee you, no glossary exists which…"
"Are you telling me that you have been loafing at my expense for days on end in libraries," roared Atto, "sifting through old papers and scribbling, wasting precious time on Greek codexes, the acts of Church councils and other such idiocies, all to come up with this?"
"Really…" the secretary attempted to object.
"And I, who went so far as to intercede on your behalf to get you an increase in pay from that miser of a chief librarian of yours!"
"In any case, he did not grant me any…" Buvat dared contradict with a quavering voice. "But, getting back to the dictionary which you requested of me, Signor Abbot, you must believe me…"
"There's no time: we must act now."
Ugonio had kept his word. As agreed, through a filthy little boy who acted as his courier, he had informed Sfasciamonti where we were to meet him. The ride on horseback was initially free from danger or discomfort. The rendezvous was in a place outside the city walls, beyond Piazza del Popolo, at the cemetery of the harlots.
As we rode, I was able to question Atto without being overheard by Sfasciamonti, who went some way ahead of us, while Buvat trailed wearily behind.
"Yesterday, you said that Buvat was collecting evidence with which to entrap Lamberg. I must confess that your words were something of a mystery to me."
"It is quite straightforward. Unless one has a burning desire to arrive at the truth, one will never get at it," he replied with a smile, as though challenging me. "Anyway, it really is simple; just listen to me. The cerretani ambushed the bookbinder who, whether it was fate or something less, died as a result. What did they want from poor Haver? My treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave. This was a theft on commission, for those tramps would certainly not know what to do with such a thing. From Haver, the cerretani took all that they could. But afterwards, examining the stolen goods, the person who ordered the theft found that my treatise was missing."
"Because you had already withdrawn it from the coronaro?'
"Exactly."
"And you are quite sure that Count Lamberg is behind all this."
"But of course. The prime mover, as one can see from the whole context, has excellent connections in Rome — men, money, protectors — and is interested in matters of high diplomacy. He knows full well that Abbot Melani too enjoys discreet support from several quarters and knows facts and persons that could prove decisive at the next conclave. All of this fits in perfectly with Count Lamberg."
While the clip-clop of the horses' hooves echoed between us, I chewed over Atto's explanation. I thought of the grim figure of the Imperial Ambassador, of his sphinx-like expression and the sinister fame that accompanied the Empire's meddling in Spain's affairs: the conspiracies, the mysterious deaths, the poisonings…
"The break-in at Haver's place was carried out by the cerretani'," Atto resumed, "and just bear in mind the coincidence that in the German-speaking lands there also exist other canting sects which are somehow linked to the Italian ones. Lamberg may perfectly well be familiar with suchlike rascals who, thanks to their accursed skills, are capable of getting up to just about anything. Add to that the fact that our dearly beloved tomb robber Ugonio, alias the powerful German, who is in cahoots with the cerretani, also happens to come from Vienna. And this brings us to the next stage. Since the move against the bookbinder failed, Ugonio came to look for my treatise at Villa Spada. And this time, they found it."
"And the wound to your arm?" I asked, already guessing at the explanation.
"Easy. Lamberg wanted to intimidate me; and seriously. He hoped that I'd take fright and run away."