Not that he had any material fear of me — of course not.
Nevertheless, at the last moment, having accomplished what he had set out to do and fearing that I might have guessed at the truth, he had not felt up to confronting me and answering for his lies and subterfuges.
He had turned up after an absence of seventeen years, asking me to act as the chronicler of his deeds with a view to the forthcoming conclave. Yet, he had not provided me with any further instructions, nor had he subsequently shown any interest in the matter.
The chronicle of those days at Villa Spada had been a mere pretext: the only thing that had mattered to him was that I should look, listen to and report everything that might be of use to him. Whether or not I wrote it down was quite indifferent to him. What had he said to me at the outset? "You will pen for me a chronicle in which you will give a judicious account of all that you see and hear during the coming few days, and you will add thereto whatever I may suggest to you as being desirable and opportune. You will then deliver the manuscript to me." He had persuaded me that I would be acting as a gazetteer. Instead, he had got me to spy. So much so, that he had left like a fly-by-night without even taking delivery of my work.
Nor did he give a fig for the conclave, of which he had initially spoken at such great length. We had seen, discussed and done all manner of things: from the alarums and excursions with Caesar Augustus to the insane climb up into the ball of Saint Peter's, from the ineffable experiences at the Vessel to the final nightmare when we narrowly missed being slaughtered by the cerretani. But we had hardly touched again on the subject of the conclave.
"What a stupid, ingenuous imbecile I have been!" I berated myself, torn between laughter and tears. He had kept me at his service, manipulating me without the slightest regard for my safety, just as he had done seventeen years before. He had pointed out one road to me, urging me on, while he himself tiptoed off in a very different direction.
This time, however, it was far more serious. Now he had played with the future of my little daughters. When I was on the point of withdrawing from his dangerous games, he had envei- gled me with the promise of a dowry for them, and I had fallen for the bait, even risking my life for him. That very afternoon, we had been supposed to go to the notary for the endowment. One moment, however: I did have the document with his written promise.
Stung by a thousand scorpions, I rushed home, grabbed the paper and spurred my mule towards town.
I went from lawyer to lawyer, from notary to notary, in search of someone who might at least give me a glimmer of hope. To no avail. I met invariably with the same question: "Do you by any chance know whether this abbot owns property in the Papal States?" And when I shook my head the sentence was always the same: "Even if you sued and won your case, we would have no means of claiming what is owed you." So, what was to be done? "You should find out whether you can also sue in France. That would be a lengthy and expensive process and, what is more, my good sir, the outcome would be utterly uncertain."
In other words, I had no hope. Now that Atto was on his way to Paris, his promise was not worth the paper it was written on.
Returning to Villa Spada, I was tempted to hit myself with my own whip. I should have insisted on going straight to the notary, or at the very least, I should not have waited so long. The truth is that I had allowed myself to be swept along by events and I had let the Abbot use me like a slave, without any consideration for my family. What would have happened if I had died or become an invalid? Cloridia could not keep our household going on her own. What would have fed and clothed our daughters? Not their work as apprentice midwives. Farewell to those evenings when I had taught them to read and write and they had stared wide-eyed at the fine books bequeathed to me by my late lamented father-in- law. The children would have had to roll up their sleeves at once and slave away as scullery maids, probably in some foul tavern, unless Don Paschatio were magnanimously to find them some place in the Spada household.
I was boiling over with rage. Abbot Melani had deceived me.
He had run off and instead of the promised dowry I was left with nothing. I myself felt like fleeing, leaving that place; indeed, leaving this cruel deceitful world. Had my duties as a husband and father not prevented me, I would have taken flight like some new Daedalus, or become like Icarus, but instead of falling to earth, I would fall into the sky, sucked forever into the azure abyss of the celestial spheres.
As I was cursing to myself, I ran into one last piece of trouble.
"Signor Master of the Fowls! Did you not see what a success our festivities were? And did you hear the enthusiastic comments of our master, Cardinal Spada?"
Don Paschatio had intercepted me at the gate. He wanted to talk about the success of the festivities. No doubt he would point out that if I had not been so frequently distracted by Abbot Melani, and had made myself more available, the triumph would have been even more complete.
This really was not the moment for such things. Anything, anything rather than suffer his logorrhoea.
"Signor Major-Domo," I replied bluntly, "since during the past few days I have absented myself on several occasions, I am sure that you will not be surprised if I interrupt this conversation and ask you to set me some useful task so that I can make up for my past failings and avoid time-wasting."
Don Paschatio faltered, stopped short by so brusque a response.
"Er, well…" he hesitated. "Yes, you could attend to the cleaning and provisioning of the aviary, as I was just about to instruct you to."
"Very well!" I concluded, turning sharply on my heels. "It will be done at once, Signor Major-Domo."
Don Paschatio stared at me, scratching his forehead in perplexity, while I marched nervously towards the kitchens to collect feed for the birds and the necessary to clean the aviary.
I could not know it, but I was never to accomplish that task. Hardly had I opened the big cage when an unusual noise, a sort of furtive fluttering, caught my attention. I looked up towards the cage of Caesar Augustus which had remained empty since the day of his escape, and suddenly, in a bewildering flash of intuition, the bizarre events which had involved the parrot during the past few days became quite clear to me.
As I have had occasion to mention, recently, in other words, just before disappearing with the note addressed to Cardinal Albani, the parrot's mood had been unusually unhappy and agitated. What was more, he would often return with a twig in his claws, for some unknown purpose, something he had never done previously. The bird's nervousness had come to a head with the theft of the note and his long absence. Later, during the course of the hunting party organised for the guests, a badly aimed crossbow shot had brought down from a nest on a pine tree an egg of unidentified provenance. With the oddity I now found staring me in the face, I recalled that another parrot of the same race as Caesar Augustus had recently arrived and came to a quite inconceivable (but correct) conclusion.
"Dismiss him! Dismisssss him!" screeched Caesar Augustus, mocking me from his comfortable perch in the middle of a fine nest of feathers and twigs.
"But you… you are… you have…" I stammered.
I could not even bring myself to say it. No one could easily have accepted, even if they had witnessed it with their own eyes, that Caesar Augustus was really a female parrot… with a nestful of eggs.
I was amazed, almost entranced, watching the new manifestation of that surprising being, by no means accidentally once the property of the mad Capitor: he — she? — had, as a calm spectator, traversed decades and decades of history; he had seen the decline of Mazarin, the advent of the Sun King, and then a succession of no fewer than five popes, and now, with his eternal, unbearable squawking, he was making a triumphal entry into the new century in the sacred guise of a mother.