The Tetrachion. Perhaps she would be surprised, but she would not have me thrown out. She might have thought I was acting on behalf of my master, that my mouth and ears were his.
I began directly, because she perhaps was alone in knowing the truth; and there was little time.
My explanation had not taken more than a few minutes. During all that time, the Connestabilessa did not bat an eyelid. She remained seated, looking fixedly out of the window. She made no comment or gesture. She stayed silent, but hers was a silence that said more than thousands of words.
Here was the mute confirmation that what I was saying was not a figment of my imagination. That silence probably signified that at least a part of my reconstruction was mistaken, perhaps crude and ingenuous. But the kernel of it remained true and vivid, and Maria better than anyone knew how very real the case was. If I had just been raving, or if she had known nothing about all this, I would, at best, have earned myself a reprimand and been asked to leave. Instead, she had remained motionless and heard me out in total silence. She knew well of what I was speaking. It concerned that secret history against which all her hopes of happiness had been dashed and which had condemned her to a life of wanderings and misfortune. Her silence — explicit, yet prudent — was the best possible way of assenting to, confirming and encouraging my view.
I finished what I had to say, allowing the silence to fill the room and the space between us for a few more moments. She kept staring out of the window, as though she were already alone.
There was no more to be said. I took my leave with a bow, accompanying it with the same penetrating absence of words as that with which she had listened to my speech. This was the only possible farewell between persons who know that they will never meet again.
It might have been simply the latest surprise, but I was expecting it: in the street, no one was waiting for me. Neither Atto nor the carriage. By now, I had understood the game.
As I walked towards Villa Spada, the bittersweet impressions of my meeting with Maria Mancini soon gave way to the violent emotion aroused by the letter I had delivered to her.
One single sheet of paper, blank. And in the middle, rather high up, just three words, written in an easy cursive hand: yo el Rey
Even an idiot could understand. Since the Catholic King of Spain was certainly not in Rome, this was a forged signature. And as Charles II was about to die, what document could it be for, if not his will?
The more I thought of it, the more hatred and hilarity came together in my mind. What a fine little game Atto had used me in, without saying a thing to me! And what a fool I had been to suspect nothing…
The last will and testament of Charles II: the document in which the heir to the world's greatest kingdom would be named, the heir whom all Europe awaited.
Under the pretext of his nephew's marriage, Cardinal Spada invites both Atto and Maria to Rome. Atto brings with him the ideal person to forge the signature: a quite unusually refined forger.
After all, what had Abbot Melani said when he introduced Buvat to me? "He is at his best with a pen in his hand; but not like you: you create; he copies. And he does that like no other." At that moment, I had thought that he was referring to his secretary's work copying letters; but no. It was then, in a flash of memory, that I recalled what Atto had told me many years earlier, when first he mentioned his secretary's name. "Every time I leave Paris secretly, he looks after my correspondence. He is a copyist of extraordinary talent, and knows perfectly how to imitate my handwriting."
So that was what I had seen among Atto's secretary's well hidden papers: those strange proofs of e, l, R, o and which I had at first taken for badly performed calligraphic exercises, were in fact part of Buvat's preparations for forging a signature. He was practising to imitate that of Charles II, repeating over and over again the letters contained in the autograph yo el Rey. These exercises he had kept in order to compare them with authentic signatures of the Catholic King and to be able in the end to select the best copy.
I need only have put those letters together in the right order and I would have found out the truth. So that was why Atto kept so carefully concealed in his wig those three incomplete letters bearing the signature of the King of Spain: they were the models on which Buvat was to practise. They were, however, far too confidential to be left in his secretary's hands, and so Melani kept them on his person.
I resumed my reconstruction. Maria, then, had the task of bringing those forged signatures back to Spain, where they would be put to use in due course: when Charles II was dying and his will must be drawn up. A false will would be prepared, the last page of which would be that containing the signature prepared by Buvat. The blank space above would be used to set down the last part of the will. Obviously, a French heir would be appointed. That explained why Atto had never spoken to me of the Spanish succession, instead of which, he kept going on about the conclave! Poor fool that I am, I had not understood the real objective he was so doggedly pursuing.
Had the wait for Maria, then, been nothing but a charade? What a treacherous mise-en-scene, with all those sugary letters in which he spun out his yearning to see her again!
It had all been planned to perfection, so designed as to withstand any attempts at espionage. The Connestabilessa was to arrive at the wedding celebrations as late as possible, just in time to collect the paper with the signature from Atto and Buvat! It was important that she should not in fact attend the festivities: the presence of Maria Mancini, Mazarin's notorious niece who resided in Madrid, would at once have given rise to suspicions of an anti-Spanish plot.
How convenient it had been to make use of me to deliver the paper with the signature to the Connestabilessa! Atto need not even dirty his hands with the chore. He knew perfectly well from the outset that he would never meet her: he had deceived me up to the very last moment, making me think that he was too perturbed to see her after their thirty-year long separation.
The theft of Atto's treatise had been a mere complication which had frightened and impeded him but had only partly distracted him from his prime objective. Once the mystery had been resolved and the stolen good had (once more, thanks to my good offices!) been snatched back from the cerretani, Atto had been able calmly to conclude his shady business of espionage.
Having rapidly made my way back, driven by the force of my anger, I entered Villa Spada, already knowing what awaited me.
When I went to knock at the door, I found it already open. A few articles of clothing remained on the bed, and on the day-bed, a dry inkwell and a few scribbled notes. The scene matched perfectly my poor dismayed and bewildered spirits.
Atto and Buvat had gone.
Doing my best to dissimulate my rage and disappointment, I made a brief investigation, questioning the servants of the villa. I learned that the pair had departed post haste and that their destination was Paris. They had stocked up with provisions, and Atto had left a long letter of thanks for Cardinal Spada, to be delivered by Don Paschatio.
Now I understood why, that morning, he had donned his abbot's mauve-grey soutane and periwig which I knew so welclass="underline" it was his travelling costume!
They had been gone for quite a while by now. They must have packed their bags in extraordinary haste, like refugees fleeing the onset of war. This was no departure; they had fled.
What from? I was quite sure it had nothing to do with fear of any further threats from the cerretani. It was not like Atto to fear what he had already experienced, once he was familiar with its nature. Nor was he fleeing any supposed political threats, as he had put it about earlier. No, it was something else: he was fleeing from me.