"Move aside, boy."
I was at once roused from such ephemeral impressions by that firm and impatient voice ordering me to stand aside. Making their way between the hedges of the little drive were two valets escorting a third person: in lay apparel His Eminence Cardinal Spada was advancing, his expression even more livid than the day before.
I bowed respectfully while the trio passed me and proceeded towards the gates of the villa. When I rose and dusted down my breeches, I seemed again to hear rustling and once more had the indefinable impression that I was being watched by malign and inquiring eyes. I looked all around me, but without catching sight even vaguely of the dark silhouette which I could have sworn I had seen only moments before, moving behind the surrounding hedges. While at the end of the drive Cardinal Spada disappeared from sight with his two escorts, above their heads I saw instead Caesar Augustus fluttering silently.
Once I had finished my work trimming the hedge and accomplished my duties at the aviary, I realised that no little time remained to me before my appointment with Abbot Melani after Vespers.
I decided to make a quick visit home. There, alas, I found the same painful chaos to which, only a few hours before, I had awoken. For a few moments I fell a prey to anguish as I saw with what rabid fury those faceless strangers had with impunity disrupted the fine order of Cloridia's and my alcove.
When I had rearranged everything properly, I returned to the Villa Spada. There, in the garden, the heat was rather oppressive. I took off my shirt and curled up in the shade of a tall beech, in a little secret place on the heights, under the outer wall, where I and Cloridia were wont to meet during brief pauses in our work, away from curious glances. From that point, one looked out over the drive below, but, concealed by the leaves, it was almost impossible to be seen. The act of putting our possessions back in order after the devastation wrought by the vandals had made the absence of my sweet wife all the more bitter. And as I sighed and moaned with nostalgia and impatience at the thought of her, 1 found myself thinking of the amours of the Sun King with Maria Mancini, and of the strange passion which seemed to unite Maria and Atto who, after thirty years in voluminous and secret epistolary correspondence, had still never again seen one another.
In truth everything surrounding Atto was bizarre, unusual, arcane. What could one say of the strange phenomena at the Vessel? And was there a connection between the death of the bookbinder, Atto's wounding and the strange circumstances in which this had taken place? On top of all that, there was the extremely troubling fact of the double raid on Buvat and myself, after we had both been safely drugged.
Again, I felt confusion, even desperation clutching at my breast. The languor of love for my Cloridia had given way to fear.
What was really happening? Were we perhaps the victims, as Melani had written to the Connestabilessa, of some pro-imperial plot? Or was this to do with the cerretani, as Sfasciamonti maintained? Or both things at once?
I began once more to reprove myself for having let myself get caught up again in the Abbot's webs. This time, in truth, even he seemed to be groping in the dark. What was more, I had seen him confused and upset during our strange visit to the Vessel. My thoughts then returned confusedly to Maria, and I recalled that she now seemed to be residing in Madrid. In Spain, the very place where, as I had learned from the letters between the two, the fate of the world was now being played out…
Suddenly, a sensation of warm silk enveloped my naked back and drew me softly from the grey torpor into which I had slipped unawares. A murmur soothed my ears:
"Is there room for me?"
I opened my eyes: my Cloridia had returned.
When we were sated with silent kisses and by our embrace in the warm light of sunset, Cloridia began.
"You haven't asked me how it went. If you only knew what an adventure it has been!"
For days and days, my wife who, as I have said, had for years been exercising the profession of midwife, had stayed far from me and from our conjugal bed in order to assist an expectant mother. Now she had returned and I could not wait to tell her everything and to receive comfort and counsel from her. She, however, seemed as impatient as I to tell me her latest news. So I considered that it would be better to let her speak first. Once the natural womanly loquacity of my Cloridia had been placated, I would have all the time I needed to tell her of the sudden reappearance of Abbot Melani and of my torments.
"The little ones?" I asked before all else, for our two daugh ters had gone with their mother to assist her.
"Have no fear, they're down below snoring happily with the other servant girls."
"Then," I said with feigned enthusiasm, "tell me all!"
"The factor of the Barberini farm is now the father of a fine, plump and well-formed infant. Healthy and with everything in the right place just as God ordered!" she murmured proudly. "Only…"
"Yes," said I, hoping that she would not prolong her account.
"Er, he was born after five months."
"What, that's not possible!" I exclaimed in a strangulated voice, pretending surprise, although I knew full well what she was leading up to.
"Those were the very words which the factor cried out when his poor wife was in the travails of childbirth. And yet, it is possible, my love. I spent hours and hours calming down that great ignorant beast and convincing him that, while it is true that the time assigned for a human birth is normally nine months, there are, however, cases of births in the fifth month, just as, on the other hand, there are births that take place only in the twelfth month…"
I freed myself from my wife's embrace and looked her in the eyes.
"… Pliny bore witness before a tribunal in defence of a woman," Cloridia continued candidly, "whose consort had returned from the wars only five months previously, and swore that it was possible to give birth after only five months. It is, moreover, true that, according to Massurius, under the Praetorship of Lucius Papirius, a sentence was pronounced against someone in a certain controversy concerning heredity, because his mother attested that she had been pregnant for thirteen months; but it is also incontrovertible that the great Avicenna saved a mother from stoning by giving testimony before a judge that it is also possible to give birth after fourteen months."
I was trembling from my anxiety to speak to her.
"Cloridia, listen, I have so many things to tell you…"
But she was not listening. The air was still warm and my beautiful spouse, after all those days of absence, seemed no less so.
"I was good, was I not?" she interrupted me as though she had not heard me, pressing her cool bosom against my chest. "I explained to that madman that, among all animals, man is the only one to have an indeterminate period before coming into this world. Beasts all have a fixed time: the elephant always gives birth in the second year, the cow in the first, the horse and the donkey in the eleventh month and the pig and the dog in the fourth, the cat in the third, while the hen always hatches her chicks after twenty days' brooding, and finally, the sheep and the goat drop their young in the fifth month…"
Indeed, their husbands — I commented to myself — Master Ram and Master Billygoat, both have a fine pair of horns on their heads.
My Cloridia was utterly incorrigible. I had lost all count of the number of cases of dubious paternity resolved by the midwife's skills of my consort. In her love for children (whoever their father might be) and their mothers (whatever the fidelity of which they were capable), Cloridia did everything possible, swearing and forswearing, in order to convince suspicious husbands. She would stop at nothing. With a ready tongue, a smile on her lips and the most open expression in the world, she would furnish clarifications and examples in abundance for all husbands: from the freshly discharged soldier to the shepherd who had been absent for the transhumance, to the travelling vendor, even the grim mother-in-law or the meddlesome sister-in-law. And she was invariably believed, in despite of the sage's law that one should not believe all that is said by someone who talks much, for in many arguments one can almost always find lies.