I saw Atto's face relax a little. At least there was no danger of Cardinal Albani covering him with infamy, as he had feared.
There remained the unknown factor of Lamberg, and the Grand Legator: why should the cerretani have to go to Albano to deliver the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave to him?
"What will they do with my manuscript at Albano?"
"The vagabond knows nothing of that."
"What else did he say?"
"Besides electing the Maggiorengo-General, the cerretani have to change their way of speaking. But there's a problem. The new secret language appears to have been stolen."
"But by whom?"
"The ragamuffin does not know. If you want, I can read the record of his interrogation to you. As I did with II Roscio, I changed a few dates and names, you know, in order not to run any risks; but the rest is exactly as I said."
"Not now. While we are on the road."
"While we are on the road?" I asked, without grasping what he meant by that.
Geronimo. That was the real name of II Marcio, the cerretano caught by Sfasciamonti. Now we had his words under our eyes, lit by the tremulous flame of a lantern, written in a tiny no-nonsense handwriting of which one could with a little intuition sense that it lent itself readily to lies: the hand of some catchpoll in the habit of falsifying, distorting or cutting statements. As we had been told, the date of the interrogation had been altered for safety, as had already been done with that of II Roscio. Sfasciamonti had back-dated it by more than a century so as to be able to place it in the Governor's archives while making sure that it passed unobserved. So this second record of proceedings was dated 18 March 1595, as ever at the prison of Ponte Sisto.
It was not easy to read. Despite its being summer, the road to Albano was full of potholes and the bumps followed one another without a break. The carriage (despite the fact that it was an excellent vehicle, hired at the last moment at an astronomical cost) shook and jumped because of the road, swinging and sometimes tilting dangerously from side to side; but it kept moving. Atto, who sat to my left, had devoured Geronimo's statement. Now he sat there, silent and deep in thought, with his unmoving gaze fixed on the landscape, as though he were observing the rare lights from farmhouses, whereas his mind was implacably set on his anxieties.
To my right sat Buvat, as stiff as a poker, despite a passing bout of somnolence. Before we mounted the carriage, I saw him briefly confer with Don Paschatio. From their confabulation, we overheard only a few last recommendations which the Major-Domo imparted when Buvat was already on his way to the carriage: "Take care: avoid dampness and excessive movement, and make sure to keep them upright at all times." I had no idea what this was all about, but when Buvat got in, Atto asked him no questions, so I too asked none. On the front seat, there sprawled Sfasciamonti's exorbitant bulk, as though squeezed by force into the tight space. He too was locked in impenetrable silence. A short while before our departure, he had held a long conversation with Atto, probably to agree on the price of his forthcoming services. The journey to Albano by night was no joke. Even less reassuring was the place to which we were headed; the agreed price must have been high. Next to the catchpoll sat the passenger who must, at the time of our departure, have most perplexed our coachman.
As soon as the carriage arrived, Atto had ordered that we first be taken to the Baths of Agrippina. Objective: to pick up Ugonio. It was unthinkable to sneak into the meeting of the cerretani without a guide. As soon as we reached his hide-out, we brought him out simply by shouting his name at the top of our voices. Rather than attract the attention of the neighbourhood (for Ugonio, it was indispensable to have a discreet lair known to no one) the corpisantaro rapidly emerged and agreed to talk with us. At the outset, however, Atto treated him with obvious irritation. When he reported that the treatise on the Secrets of the Conclave was to be brought ad Albanum, Ugonio meant the town towards which we were now heading. If he did not make that clear, it was because, to him, it was perfectly obvious. He could of course have no idea that a certain Cardinal Albani might be involved in Atto's affairs or that this might give rise to confusion on my part and Atto's. He could not be blamed for the misunderstanding, but it had wasted a huge amount of our precious time. To increase Atto's impatience, Ugonio put up a strenuous resistance when he knew for what purpose we meant to recruit him: to guide us to the meeting of the cerretani. Only under the combined pressure of threats and abundant offers of cash did he end up by giving in and accompanying us, bringing with him all that would be needed for the undertaking. Just before the corpisantaro climbed into the carriage, there was, however, one last negotiation. Atto drew the new passenger aside and held an intense discussion with him. Finally, he poured an unusually large number of gold coins — or so they seemed in the darkness that enveloped us — into Ugonio's purse. Last of all, he passed him a book. I tried to ask the Abbot, but he would not tell me what all that business was about.
My thoughts turned once more to the curious meeting between Atto and Lamberg. Until that moment, we had acted on the assumption that the Imperial Ambassador was behind the assault and the theft suffered by Atto. But now we were stumbling in the dark: either Lamberg was a brilliant simulator, or else he really was a pious and fervent Catholic whose moral code had been afflicted by the cruel scourge of disillusionment. If that were the case, our journey to Albano was beset by even more unknown factors: the enemy towards which we were marching was faceless.
I saw that my mind was wandering and broke off from that review of the latest developments to return to my reading.
The record of the cerretano's interrogation, which I was subsequently able to transcribe almost in its entirety, began with the criminal notary's usual forms of words, followed by the arrested man's statement:
DIE 18 MARTIJ
Examinatus fuit in carceribus Pontis Sixti coram magnifico et Excell. ti Dno N… per me notarium infra scriptum Hieronymus quondam Antonij Furnarij Romani annorum 22 in circa, cui delato iuramento etc.
Interrogatus de nomine, patria, aetate et causa suae carcerationis, respondit:
"I was born in Rome, son of the late Antonio Fornaro of the Colonna ward near the Trevi Fountain. My name is Geronimo, I am twenty-two years of age, I have no trade, except that I go and work in the salt pans for four months every year, after which I return to Rome and go begging for alms. As you can see, I am very poor and sick, and for the past ten years I have been without father or mother, an abandoned orphan, trying to live as best I can, and I was arrested in Saint Peter's on Friday last March because I was begging in Church."
Geronimo was then asked what he knew about the mendicants' secrets. Here, the interrogation repeated all twenty-five sects already confessed by his predecessor to which the accused added several others: the Trawlers, the Mountebanks, the Hucksters, the Dormice, the Mandrakes, the ABCs, the Bloodsuckers, the Mumpers, the Itchies, the Palliards, the Marmots, the Bullies, the Sharpers, the Errants and the Sweeps.
"The Trawlers sleep at night and beg by day; the Mountebanks sell fake rings and pieces of earth of Saint Paul's Grace and fool the hicks most wonderfully; the Hucksters are dreadful charlatans, they always have some grubs or crabs with them — that's what they call the youngsters who work with them. They go to market and while they're at their huckstering or shopping, the grubs and crabs go stealing and cutting purse-strings, then in the evening they all share the spoils. They always have boys with them because they're all back-gammon players, which is what we call sodomites. The Dormice are crippled in all four limbs, they don't even have hands and feet, and they beg. The Mandrakes are cripples and get themselves pulled in little packing cases on wheels or carried on someone's shoulders, and they, too, beg. The ABCs are poor blind men, and they beg as well. The Bloodsuckers go from hamlet to hamlet selling chap-books of the lives of the Saints and Orations to Saints, which they sing, and then they all beg together for alms. The Mumpers are those who are well dressed and claim to have formerly been gentlemen or artisans and, with the most courteous, severe mien, off they go a-begging too.