Angers don’t last
E passa il martir
And suffering passes away
Amor sa ferire
Love knows how to wound
Ma poi sa guarire
But it also knows how to heal
Vera fortuna severa
Severe fortune
A’i nostri contenti
To our peace of mind
D’un alma che spera
To a spirit that hopes
Consola il desir
Please bring consolation
Once again, Caterina found herself quoting scripture. “Jesus wept.”
Fifteen
THE REST OF THE AFTERNOON PASSED WITHOUT EVENT. SHE read, she made notes, she transcribed a few passages, all about Steffani’s relatives; aside from Agostino, only a brother and a sister, they also childless, survived to maturity. “Cousin” frequently appeared as a form of address, both in letters to him and letters about him, but she was sufficiently Italian to realize that this was a term with an extralegal meaning. As for testamentary instruction, she might as well have been looking for advertising jingles. She had so far found nothing written by or even containing the name Stievani or Scapinelli or any of the variant spellings of these names.
Among Steffani’s friends and correspondents, the person he seemed most attached to was Sophie Charlotte, the Electress of Brandenburg. Caterina found frequent reference to Sophie Charlotte in letters to Steffani from other people, in which she was referred to as “Your friend the Electress,” “the Electress to whom you so warmly refer,” and “Her Highness Sophie Charlotte, who so honors you with her friendship.” The letters that passed between them showed great warmth and even more openness than could be expected, given the difference in their status.
She wrote to tell him that she was studying counterpoint, the better to prepare herself to begin to compose music, hoping that her duets would be as natural and tender as the ones he wrote. He responded by joking that he hoped she would fail in her endeavor, for should she turn to composing, “the poor abbé will go forgotten.”
At five Caterina got up to turn on a light but resisted the desire to go out to have a coffee, chiefly because she did not want to have to lock everything up and then go through the business of unlocking it and taking it all out again when she came back. At six she went to the storeroom and exchanged packets, pulling out an especially thick one that occupied most of the space on the left side of the trunk. The first letter showed promise, for it was sent by a certain Marc’Antonio Terzago and addressed Steffani as “nephew.” He thanked Agostino for the help he had given in finding a place as a student at the seminary in Padova for a young nephew and for this proof that “familial loyalty was not diminished by the immense distance between Hanover and Padova.”
She registered the man’s name. Steffani’s brother Ventura had been taken in by an uncle and had taken his name, Terzago. So here was an entirely different family of “cousins.” Could they have died out, or were they ancestors of Stievani or Scapinelli? Below it there was a letter in the less well formed hand of the boy himself, Paolo Terzago, thanking his “dear cousin” for his efforts in finding him a place at the seminary, where he was “very happy and warm.” The letter bore the date February 1726. February in northern Italy: no wonder the boy commented on the temperature in the seminary.
At seven-thirty, feeling as though she had not progressed toward any understanding of Steffani as a man, nor of having gained much information about his relatives, she got to her feet, put the unread papers facedown on top of the packet, tied it closed, and locked it in the cupboard.
Before she left, she thought she’d have a look to see if Cristina had overcome her legendary sloth and answered. And indeed the first thing she saw in her inbox was mail from her sister’s personal address.
“Cati Dearest,” she read, “your Abbé Steffani does leave behind him a wake of uncertainty.” Though she knew she had not used his name, Caterina opened her “sent” folder and reread her original email, and indeed she had not used Steffani’s name, only his title of abbé.
“I see you checking the ‘sent’ folder, dear, only to confirm that all you gave me was his title. To spare your suffering or believing that my having crossed over to the Dark Side has endowed me with Dark Powers, I say only that you gave me his dates and the fact that he was a composer, probably Italian (he was a castrato, or so you suspect, and that’s where they came from, alas), who died in Germany.
“You gave me these facts, and the training as a researcher given me at enormous expense by Holy Mother Church, which over the course of many years and countless thousands of hours has honed my mind to razorlike sharpness, gave me the sophisticated skills to put those three pieces of information into Google. Just one name comes up. Perhaps the Church could have saved all the money it spent on me and, as you so often suggest, given it to the poor?
“Indeed, ‘abbé’ was, at the time of your composer’s career, pretty much a courtesy title, and though the documentation is contradictory (I shall spare you the details) it is safe to say that to be an abbé is not necessarily to be a priest. Some were; many were not. There is a subset here of bishops who were not priests, either, and as your composer later became a bishop, I save time by telling you that wearing the miter did not, in those times, require ordination. For more about this see his patron Ernst August, who was also—though married, a father, and never ordained—the Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück. Of course Ernst August was a Protestant (hiss) but they seem to have had the same dodgy rules that allowed men (of course) to become bishops and even create/consecrate other bishops without themselves being ordained. It does make a person think of yogurt, doesn’t it, where all you have to do is add a little to make more.” Here, Caterina marveled, not for the first time, at the lack of seriousness with which Cristina often spoke of the organization to which she had given her life and spirit.
“As to the injunction that a castrato could not and cannot be a priest, your memory is, as is so often the case, Cati dearest, correct. Canon Law 1041, #5 º states clearly that anyone who has gravely and maliciously mutilated himself or another person or who has attempted suicide cannot be ordained. It is also a basic tenet that inadequacy for marriage renders a man similarly inadequate for the priesthood, no doubt an evasive way of speaking of castration or sexual dysfunction.
“Pope Sixtus V, on 27 June 1587 (you might not like us, dear, but you must admit we’re very good at keeping records), made the Church’s position very clear in his Breve Cum frequenter by declaring that castrati are denied the right to marry.
“So there you have it, Baby Sister, and I can add no more until I have further information from two people I’ve asked about this, all of which will come to you in due course. Things here are fine. I’m working on another book, this one about Vatican foreign policy in the last century. It’ll probably get me kicked out or sent to teach third grade in Sicily. Or maybe you could hire me as a full-time researcher? Stay well, Kitty-Cati. Keep an eye on the family for me, please, especially poor sad Claudia, who should have married that nice electrician from Castello instead of that dreadful lawyer. I miss you all terribly. There are times when I want so much to be home that I could walk out the door and start hitchhiking south. Yes, that makes me remember the time we hitchhiked to France and told Mamma and Papà that we were taking the train. Driving into Paris with that man—was he an accountant? I can’t remember anymore—was one of the most thrilling moments in my life. Getting a doctorate or being named full professor were nothing in comparison.