In the gaps between one piece of wreckage and the next, and between these and the undulations in the terrain, sprawling on heaps of rags and quilts, one could make out the silhouettes of sleeping bodies.
"Cerretani and vagrants: they are scattered all over the place," murmured Sfasciamonti.
"How are we to find those two," I replied in a similarly light whisper, "what were their names… Il Roscio and Il Marcio?"
Instead of answering, the catchpoll broke away from Atto and me and moved towards a mound, behind which one could see a sort of architrave, so gently sunken into the ground that it seemed to have gone to sleep there after centuries of vainly awaiting the return of imperial glories.
For a while, he looked around, searching for some objective, until he found his next victim: a wretched vagabond who lay sleeping at his feet. The latter, however, inured to scenting danger, was not unaware of the catchpoll's threatening presence. He turned once or twice in his sleep and then gave a violent start.
Just before the vagabond could change position, I almost stopped breathing for surprise. Sfasciamonti had sat on the unfortunate fellow. We drew near, looking over our shoulders in fear of some reprisal on the part of the vagabond's companions. Nothing happened; Sfasciamonti had conducted his assault so discreetly that no one, among all those sleeping in the great arena, seemed to have realised a thing.
With one knee, the catchpoll had immobilised his victim's arm. Then he had sat down, planting his massive posterior on the adversary's belly, while with both hands he kept his mouth and eyes closed, thus preventing him from uttering the faintest whimper and from seeing who it was that had overwhelmed him. From the ease with which he had accomplished all this, it was plain that he must have made use of the same technique on previous occasions.
"Il Roscio and Il Marcio — two cerretani — do you know where they are?" he ordered, whispering in the man's ear.
Slowly he raised his hand from a corner of the poor wretch's mouth, allowing him to whisper something.
"Ask that one, under the striped blanket," said he, pointing to someone sleeping not far off.
Sfasciamonti passed rapidly to the other, on whom he practised the same interrogation technique.
"I've not seen them for days," rasped this man, of whose youthful face I caught a glimpse when the catchpoll raised his huge hands. "I don't know whether they're sleeping here tonight. Look over there, beyond the ditch."
He had pointed at a sort of ditch from which a strong stench of urine arose. That was probably where the vagabonds relieved themselves by night. Sfasciamonti loosened his grip, not without warning the young man with a last threatening look. He then moved off towards the ditch. He took one step, two, three. He was already some way off when we heard the scream.
"Roscio, the saffrons! Buy the violets!"
It was the young man whom Sfasciamonti had just interrogated. After crying out, he fled in the direction we had come from, towards the great expanse of Termine.
"Get him!" Sfasciamonti yelled at me, who, having remained a little behind, was closer to the young man.
Meanwhile, other bodies all around me, wrapped in rags and wretched greatcoats, awoke and returned to life. I felt the blood pumping hard in my veins while the air thickened in my throat. That barren space barely lit by the moon teemed with poor beggars, but also with cutthroats. Hunter and prey could exchange their roles at any moment; I began to follow the young man more from the desire to get away than that of catching him.
Sfasciamonti and I had just launched ourselves on the heels of the fugitive, and Atto in turn had got moving, when another shadow rushed forth from the darkness. He was running with some difficulty across the rough terrain towards the main door.
Thanks to the advantage gained by surprise, the pair had soon put no mean distance between us and themselves; once out in the vast space of Termine, I was already making my way towards our horses when I heard Sfasciamonti's voice.
"No, not the horses — on foot!"
He was right. The young man had run immediately to the left, towards the wall behind which, to the east, stretched the immense and grandiose Villa Peretti Montalto.
In a trice, he had already reached the corner between the wall of the villa, Piazza di Termine and the road descending towards Via Felice, and was climbing the boundary wall. Sfasciamonti and I reached the spot a few moments after the youth had jumped down the other side.
"Here, here, there are breaches that they've made!" gasped the catchpoll, pointing out a whole series of holes to me, apparently distributed at random along the surface of the wall, which made it possible to find footholds and thus to scale it rapidly.
So we imitated the fugitive's clever stratagem and in a few moments we were straddling the top of the wall. We looked down: if we were to go any further we should have to jump down no less than twelve feet, in other words, nearly twice Sfasciamonti's height. Meanwhile, in the distance, we could hear the cerretano' s footsteps receding fast down the neighbouring avenue.
With our feet dangling down the wall, like two anglers happily waiting for a pull on the line, we looked impotently at one another. We had lost.
"Curse it," rasped Sfasciamonti, prodding the wall in vain in search of more footholds. "He knows by heart where the breaches are to get down the other side. He had no need to jump."
Once we had got back, we took a look at the great roofless space in which we had carried out our nocturnal ambush on the sleeping beggars. All was quiet; the place was deserted.
"We shall find no one here for months," announced Sfasciamonti.
"Where is Abbot Melani?" I asked.
"He must have followed the other one. But if we had no luck, you can just imagine how he got on…"
"Teehereteeamteeaye!" we then heard chanted by a mellifluous and satisfied-sounding voice.
It was Atto, and he was on horseback. In one hand he held his pistol, in the other, the reins and a tether, which ended around the neck of the person whom we had seen escaping at the moment when the young man had cried out. Sfasciamonti's jaw fell. He had returned empty-handed, while Atto had succeeded.
"Il Roscio," exclaimed the catchpoll, pointing incredulously at the prisoner.
"Gentlemen, may I present you Pompeo di Trevi, alias Il Roscio. He is a cerretano and he is now at our disposal."
"By all the bolted visors, you may say that again!" exclaimed Sfasciamonti approvingly. "We shall now make our way to the prison of Ponte Sisto, where we shall get him to talk. Just one question: what the Devil did you say just now, when you greeted us?"
"That strange word? That's a long story. Now take this wretch and let us tie him up better, then be on our way."
Atto had chosen, as was his wont, to go against the rules and against the dictates of good sense. Instead of following the cerretano on foot, as Sfasciamonti wanted, he had mounted a horse, with difficulty and without any help. Before mounting, however, he had taken care to see which route the fugitive had taken: to the left of the other; in other words, moving north, in the direction of the clear, sweet-smelling countryside of the Castro Pretorio. Spurring on his modest mount, Atto had then set out on the traces of the cerretano. At length he had caught sight of him, by now exhausted by his exertions, in the process of scaling a wall towards citrus groves and vineyards in which he would find easy refuge.
"Another moment and i 'd have lost him. i was too far off to threaten him with the pistol. So I thought I'd yell something at him."
"What?"