Veritas (Atto Melani) (86 page)

“Trying to stop us ending up in the jaws of some big cat.”

Neither Simonis nor Atto tried to answer this: it was clear that we had to solve the problem of our safe return. We were not very high now. With my hands I tugged at three or four ropes and
released them like hunting bows.

The ship gave a violent start, so that if I had not held on with all my might I would certainly have fallen. Atto and Simonis had crouched down on the floor. We were still heading for the ball
stadium. What a crude and unworthy helmsman, I thought, the Flying Ship had found in me! The sublime Ark of Truth, the noble vessel come from the West to grant the Empire victory in war, the
vehicle whose purpose was to crown the tallest spire of St Stephen with the Golden Apple, was now the victim of my clumsy attempt at sabotage. What a cruel twist of fate for the ship: it saved us
and now we were betraying it by trying to divert the natural course of its flight and force it to the ground. Soaked by the rain, I got to my feet and gave another and harder jerk at the ropes.

This time the oscillation was so violent that I myself fell to the floor and was afraid we would be immediately thrown out. Atto and Simonis both swore. I did not have the courage to check the
direction, fearing that some new, unforeseen lurch of the ship would knock me overboard. Getting up again, I gripped the ropes and pulled again, even harder. Finally it happened.

The stones had stopped humming. I looked up: the fragments of yellowish matter were no longer vibrating spontaneously. It was as if they were dissipating some form of residual
energy. The Flying Ship shook from top to bottom, like an enormous bird struck in a vital organ. It was a painful, convulsive shudder, a prelude to some catastrophe. If we had had gunpowder on
board, I would have sworn that we were all about to be blown to pieces.

“Mamma mia, we’re all dead,” I heard Abbot Melani whisper, clinging to Simonis like a child.

I stood on tiptoes and, swaying as in the midst of an earthquake, I looked outside, towards the prow. At last we had changed direction. After momentarily regaining altitude, the Flying Ship had
started descending again, now heading to the left. It was making for a corner of the plain of Simmering, a grassy expanse north-east of the Place with No Name. There, I thought, we would be thrown
out.

As we braced ourselves for the impact, the simple rain became a violent storm. Perhaps it was better that way, if it meant no one would see our landing. A flash transformed our sail for an
instant into a silver half moon, fallen from its niche in heaven and preparing to settle on the only strip of land willing to receive it. The rain came down in huge heavy drops.

“Hold tight!” I yelled as the belly of the Flying Ship grazed shrubs and tall plants, and I got ready for the crash. Then, as thunder burst nearby, I felt the first contact with the
land and made the sign of the cross.

“What are those pieces of amber for? How do they make that noise? Can one of you explain it to me?”

We had landed soaked through and exhausted but alive. Surprisingly, we had come down with little more than an awkward jolt. The Flying Ship had made contact with the ground without either
breaking up or overturning, and we had only needed to hold tight to avoid being thrown out of the vehicle.

As soon as we had disembarked, the winged ship rose into the air again and headed for the Place with No Name.

“Maybe it’s going back to the ball stadium,” surmised Simonis.

As it sailed away, humbly exposed to the rain, I gave it one last look: would I ever see it again?

We were not far from the buttery of Porta Coeli, and we made our way towards it, trudging laboriously through the muddy fields. We did not know what had happened in the Place with No Name after
our skyward escape; were the lions and tigers still roaming free?

Now we were drying our clothes in the little basement room, near the fireplace. Fortunately, we had met no one on our short walk: what would two chimney-sweeps be doing in the open country, in
the company of a decrepit, bald old man (the Abbot had lost his wig), with a face of patchy white lead and carmine? His expression still showing consternation at the recent events, his clothes dark
and filthy, his back bent and his gait awkward, Atto resembled a battered old elf who had fled from some strange fantasy land.

We now sat half-naked by the fireside, with our clothes laid out to dry, clasping warm cups of mulled wine, and we took stock of the situation. Abbot Melani regained confidence and fired a
number of questions at us.

What was the function of the tubes that constituted the hull, with the noisy flow of air rushing through them? Did they provide the the power necessary for flight? And why did the ship fly a
Portuguese flag?

This barrage of questions merely rebounded off the wall of our ignorance, despite the best efforts of our imagination. The tubes did seem to act as a propellant, even if we had no proof of that.
The flag of the Kingdom of Portugal, however, was connected with the provenance of the ship. The gazette from two years earlier that Frosch had shown us reported that the aerial vessel had arrived
from Portugal. That tallied with the information from Ugonio: the Flying Ship had been sent to Vienna at the behest of the Queen of Portugal, sister of Emperor Joseph I. Its task was to place the
Golden Apple, which had arrived in some mysterious fashion from the East, on the tallest spire of St Stephen’s. Only in this way could the Empire triumph in the great war against France and
its king, Louis XIV.

But the question that most concerned Atto was the first: how the devil had those amber stones performed the sonata for bass solo by Gregorio Strozzi?

“But why does that interest you so much?” asked Simonis.

“And why should you care?” snapped Melani rudely, who was beginning to find the constant presence of my assistant rather irritating.

The Greek was not intimidated.

“Why are you no longer blind?” he retorted, with his most foolish air.

“Listen, boy,” said Atto to me, repressing his annoyance, “I advise you to send your workshop assistant to go and have a look, with due care, at that abandoned hovel –
what’s it called, Neugebäu? We need to know if the situation has calmed down.”

The Abbot wanted to get rid of my assistant, whom he did not trust in the least, and especially to be spared his importunate questions.

“It’s pouring down, Signor Atto,” I objected. “And in any case I’d like to know myself how you miraculously recovered your sight on board the Flying
Ship.”

Atto lowered his eyes.

I persisted with my questions. Why on earth had he worn those dark glasses all this time? Was it to cross the border more easily and get into the Caesarean city? On the ship he had mentioned
very vaguely that he had done it to defend himself.

“Well, what am I supposed to do with those bloodsuckers, my relatives?”

“Your relatives?” I said in amazement.

“My nephews and nieces, yes – those profiteers. Don’t get the idea that my sight is good. Quite the opposite: I have advancing cataracts. That’s why my Parisian doctor
advised me always to wear green and black, two colours, he says, that are good for the eyes. And for the same reason I sleep barefoot in winter too: apparently it is very good for your sight. As
for the rest, by the grace of God, I don’t do badly.”

Apart from the piles and gravel sickness, explained Atto, at his venerable age he was still sound of mind and body. The only problem was his nephews and nieces in Pistoia: they did nothing but
ask him for money.

“Money, money, always money! They would like me to buy two smallholdings they have their eyes on, and so they want me to withdraw the savings I have in the Monte del Sale: yes, with the
Germans at the gates I would get three per cent at best! And they want me to put iron hoops on the barrels on the Castel Nuovo estate. Oh, such luxury – do they think I find money under
stones?”

Amazingly, Atto seemed to have already forgotten the feats of the Flying Ship and was now inveighing against his relatives. His nephews and nieces seemed to have no appreciation of what their
old uncle did for the family; each of them was out for what he or she could get.

“They even had the nerve to ask me for money to buy an entire library! To which I answered that I would soon be needing
them
to send
me
money! Result: they all vanished
into thin air. Such gratitude. And to think that I paid an intermediary for four years to find a wife for Luigi, Domenico’s brother, one with the right dowry and lineage. Once I’d found
the right girl, they got back in touch only to ask me, quite shamelessly, to send her a bridal gown from Paris – greedy skinflints! I answered that it wouldn’t be ready in time for the
wedding, and I suggested they should hire the same dressmaker as the Most Serene Princess of Tuscany and her ladies. Then I gave them permission to remove the diamonds from a portrait in my gallery
to make two pendants for her ears and a small cross to hang round her neck on a black silk cord. But that wasn’t enough, no!”

The Abbot was now in full spate. I had the impression that he actually had something else to tell me and was just waiting for Simonis to leave us.

“They insisted on the bridal gown,” Atto continued, “heedless of the fact that the corallines of Oneglia and the armed boats of Finale had raided the galley that brought the
courier of Lyons to Genoa and that sending a Parisian dress to the bride would be throwing money away, as happened to a lady who sent two dresses to the Pope’s niece. I answered very
brusquely, promising that if I could be sure of my income in the Kingdom of France, maybe they would see me in Pistoia before St John’s day, in which case I myself would bring the bride her
gown.”

When the bride had resigned herself to getting married in a Tuscan gown and was pregnant, Atto went on, the nephews and nieces returned to the attack.

“The baby, according to the Connestabilessa who had seen him, was very beautiful. And so I rashly promised to send the mother strings of pearls and some other trinkets. I was waiting for a
good opportunity to send them without any risk of theft, which never came; and I’m sorry that circumstances do not allow me to do all that I would like, but, as I have told you too, in Paris
all we see are currency notes, and if you exchange them you lose half, and these notes have been and are the ruin of France.”

All they were good for, his dear nephews and nieces, was demanding money, Atto said heatedly, every so often casting a sidelong, impatient glance at Simonis. The violent memory of the beasts
appeared to have faded in the thick smoke of his anger against his blood relations. But any good fortune, he said, and any riches that came to them, they took care to keep to themselves.

“They were very quiet, the cunning devils, when last year the Most Serene Grand Duke granted our family access to second-degree nobility, announcing that after five years genuine nobility
would be granted. I only heard about it from other folk of the town.”

Abbot Melani went on to explain that his relatives in Pistoia were always complaining: first they insisted on sending Domenico to Paris, to keep an eye on his wealth, then they even got jealous
and suspicious of one another.

“Domenico is a lawyer, and the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany gave him a post as secretary of the Council of Siena. I didn’t want him to come to Paris, I don’t need anyone.
I said that it was not a good time to travel, with all the widespread poverty and the countless murders, and the countryside rife with malign fevers and petechiae. There are so few of us left now
that we have to be careful to look after ourselves, I wrote to the bloodsuckers, hoping they would leave me in peace. But it was no use: they turned to the Grand Duke, and His Royal Highness wrote
to me that he considered it highly appropriate for Domenico, cadet of the family, to come to Paris: not being the eldest son he had no obligation to look after the interests of the house, and I
need not worry about his position, they would keep it for him for as long as he needed to be away. Domenico was supposed to go back with me to Pistoia, or to set off by himself, but not before
– just listen to this! – he had found out about all my interests! And I even had to reply to the Most Serene Grand Duke offering my humble thanks for the great kindness he had shown me
et cetera et cetera
. . .”