Cloridia had broken off. Cristofano knocked.
"I thought I heard a cry. Is all well with you?" asked the physician, all out of breath from running up the stairs.
"Nothing to worry about. Our poor little prentice has just hurt himself while he was helping me, but it is a mere trifle. Good day to you, Signor Cristofano, and thank you," answered Cloridia with subtle hilarity.
I had cried out. And now I lay, faint with pleasure and shame, sprawled across Cloridia's bed.
I do not know how long afterwards or in what manner I took my leave. I remember only Cloridia's smile and the tender pat on the head which she bestowed on me before closing the door.
Overwhelmed by the most conflicting sentiments, I slipped down to my chamber like lightning and changed my breeches: I could not run the risk that Cristofano might see me so obscenely soiled. It was a fine warm afternoon and, almost without realising it, I fell asleep half-dressed on my couch.
I awoke after an hour or so. I called on Abbot Melani to see whether he needed anything: in reality, recalling his heartbroken singing that morning, I felt sorry for him and did not wish him to feel alone. Instead, I found him in a good mood:
A petto ch 'adora
e solo un bel guardo.
E solo un bel guardo!...
*
* To an adoring bosom, / 'tis but a luscious glance. / 'Tis but a luscious glance...
He warbled joyously by way of a salutation. I looked at him without understanding.
"It seems I heard you in the distance, er, suffering this morning. You scared Cristofano, you know. He was in the doorway with me when we heard, up there in Cloridia's tower..."
"Oh, but you must not think, Signor Atto," I parried, blushing, "that Monna Cloridia..."
"But yes, of course," said the abbot, suddenly looking serious, "the fair Cloridia did nothing. 'To an adoring bosom', a bewitching glance suffices, as my master, Seigneur Luigi, so aptly put it."
I departed, consumed by the blackest shame, detesting Melani with all my heart.
In the kitchen, I found Cristofano pale and overcome by anxiety.
"The Englishman is in a bad way, a very bad way," he whispered upon seeing me.
"But all the cures which you have dispensed..."
"Nothing. A mystery. My prodigious
remedia
: all useless. Understood? And Bedfordi is dying. And we shall never get out from here. Done for. All of us, done for." He spoke in fits and starts and his voice sounded unnatural.
On his face I saw with anxiety a pair of tremendous bags under the eyes and a vacant, bewildered expression. His speech was fragmented and he seemed to have lost the use of verbs.
The Englishman's health had indeed never improved, nor had the patient ever regained consciousness. I looked around me; the kitchen was completely upside down. Vases, flasks, lit ovens, alembics and cups of all sorts invaded every surface: tables, chairs, corners, shelves, passages, even the floor. In the fireplace two cauldrons were boiling, and a fair number of cooking pots. I saw with horror chopped up on the fire our best provisions of lard, meat, fish and dried fruit from the pantry, all horribly mixed with unknown, stinking alchemical preparations. On the great table, on the plate rack, on the dresser, and on the pantry shelves lay an endless range of little pots full of oils and piles of powders of many colours. Next to each little pot or heap of powder was a label: Zedoary, Galangal, Long Peppers, Round Peppers, Juniper Berries, Rind of Lemons and of Oranges, Sage, Basil, Marjoram, Laurel Berries, Penny-royal, Gentian, Calamint, Leaves of Elder, Red Roses and White Roses, Spikenard, Cubeb, Rosemary, Mint, Cinnamon,
Calamatus Odoratus, Chamidrys Stocis, Meleghetta Maris
, Maize,
Thuris Albi
, Hepatic Aloes, Wormwood Seeds, Wood of Aloes, Cardamom, Laurel Oil, Galbanum, Gum of Ivy, Incense, Cloves, Comfrey, Nutmeg, White Burning Bush
(Dictamnus Albus)
, Benzoin, New Yellow Wax, Finest Turpentine and Cinders from the fire.
I turned to the physician to request an explanation, but then I held back: pale and seemingly lost to the world, Cristofano wandered confusedly from one side of the room to the other attending to a thousand operations without completing any.
"You must help me. We shall risk all. Bedfordi's accursed tokens have not opened. The disgusting things have not even matured. And so we... we shall slice them clean off!"
"Oh no!" I exclaimed, for I knew well that to cut off tokens before they have matured can be lethal for he sufferer from the pestilence.
"If the worst comes to the worst, he'll die anyway," he cut me short with unusual harshness. "And here is the plan: first, he must puke. But enough of the imperial musk. Something stronger will be needed, for instance, my diaromatic: for distempers both intrinsic and extrinsic. Two drachms on an empty stomach and out with the vomit. It salves the body. It unburdens the head; and it provokes sputum, a sign that it kills all maladies.
Recipe!"
Cristofano screamed suddenly, causing me to jump. "Fine sugar, ground pearls, musk, saffron, wood of aloes, cinnamon and the philosopher's stone: one mixes all and reduces it to tablets, which are incorruptible. These are miraculous against the pestilence. They refine the gross, corrupted humours which generate the tokens. They comfort the stomach; and they cheer the heart."
Bedfordi was in for trouble, I thought. Yet, on the other hand, what choice had we? Every hope of salvation was vested in Cristofano, and in the Lord God.
The doctor, exhausted by so much agitation, issued repeated commands without giving me the time to execute them, and repeated mechanically the recipes which he must have read in the medical texts.
"Point the second:
elixir vitae
in order to restore the patient. That enjoyed great success here in Rome in the visitation of '56. It possesses so many virtues: it cures many sorts of grave and malignant infirmities. It is by nature most penetrative. Its virtue is desiccating and it comforts all the places offended by any malady. It preserves all things corruptible, salving catarrh, coughs and tightness of the chest, and other similar complaints. It cures and heals all crude sorts of putrid ulcers and resolves all aches and pains caused by frigidity
et cetera."
For a moment, he seemed to vacillate, with his gaze lost in the void. I made to succour him, but suddenly he reprised: "Point the third: pills against the pestilence of Mastro Alessandro Cospio da Bolsena, Imola, 1527: great success. Armenian bolus,
terra sigillata,
camphor, tormentil, aloes hepatick: four drachms of each; the whole spread with juice of cabbages. And, a scruple of saffron. Point the fourth: medicine for buccal administration of Mastro Roberto Coccalino da Formagine; a great physician in the kingdom of Lombardy, 1500.
Recipe!
" he again screamed in strangled tones.
Thus, he commanded me to prepare a decoction of black hellebore, sienna, colocynth and rhubarb.
"The buccal medicine of Mastro Coccalino, we shall administer to him up his arse. Thus, it will encounter Mastro Cospio's pills half -way, and together they will get the better of that disgusting plague. And we shall win, yes, we shall win!"
We then ascended to the chamber where Bedfordi lay more dead than alive; and there I collaborated, not without horror, in putting into practice all that Cristofano had excogitated.
At the end of the cruel operation, the chamber resembled a knacker's yard: vomit, blood and excrement, all mixed in puddles, in itself the most disgusting and foul-smelling of spectacles. We proceeded to excise the tokens, spreading on the wounds vinegary syrup with
oleum philosophorum,
which, according to the doctor, would relieve the pain.
"And last, we bandage the wounds with wax plaster
gratia dei,"
concluded Cristofano, panting rhythmically.
And I indeed prayed that we should be aided
gratia Dei,
by the grace of God, which we so dearly needed. The young Englishman had in no way reacted to the therapy. Indifferent to everything, he had not even been moved to groan with pain. We stared at him, awaiting some sign, whether good or bad.
With clenched fists, Cristofano gestured that I should hasten with him to the kitchen. All bathed in sweat and muttering to himself, he began roughly to pound a great quantity of aromas. He mixed them all and put them to boil in the finest aqua vitae in a retort, over a wind furnace which gave a very slow fire."Now, we shall have water, oil and phlegm. And all separated the one from the other!" he announced emphatically.
Very soon the vessel began to fill with a milky distillate, which then turned smoky and light yellow. Cristofano then changed receptacles, pouring this white water into a well-plugged iron vase.
"First, water of balsam!" he exclaimed, shaking the vase with exaggerated and grotesque joy.
He increased the fire under the retort, in which there had remained a boiling liquid which turned into an oil as black as ink.
"Mother of balsam!" announced Cristofano, pouring the fluid into a flask.
He then augmented the fire to the maximum, until all the substance came out from the retort. "Liquor of balsam: miraculous!" he rejoiced savagely, handing it to me in a bottle, together with the two other remedies.
"Shall I bring it to Bedfordi?"
"No!" he screamed, outrageously, pointing his index finger upwards as one might with a dog or a small child, and inspecting me from head to toe.
His eyes were narrowed and bloodshot: "No, my boy, this is not for Bedfordi. It is for us. All of us. Three excellent aquae vitae. The finest!"
In my hand, he placed the twisted flask, still hot, and with rustic frenzy poured himself a glass of the first liquor.
"But what are these for?" I asked, intimidated.
His sole response was to refill his glass and again pour it down his throat.
"For buggering fear, ah, ah!" swallowing a cup of the third aqua vitae and filling it for the fourth time.
He then forced me to make a mad toast with the empty retort which I held in my hand.
"Thus, when they bear us all off to die in the pest-house, we shall not even realise it, ah, ah, ah!"
Having said which, he threw the glass over his shoulder and emitted a couple of vigorous belches. He endeavoured to walk, but his legs became entangled. He fell to the ground, horribly white in the face, and at last lost his senses.Seized by terror, I was about to call for help, when I restrained myself. If panic were to spread, the situation in the hostelry would descend into chaos; and we should then run the risk of being discovered by the watchman on guard. So I ran to enlist the help of Abbot Melani. With great care (and great effort) we succeeded in carrying the doctor up to his own chamber on the first floor almost without making any noise. I told the abbot of the young Englishman's agony and of the state of confusion into which Cristofano had fallen before collapsing.
The doctor meanwhile lay pale and inert on his bed, panting noisily.
"Is it the death rattle, Signor Atto?" I asked with a knot in my throat.
Abbot Melani leaned over and studied the patient's countenance.
"No: he is snoring," he replied amusedly. "Besides, I have always suspected that Bacchus had a hand in physicians' nasty mixtures. What's more, he has been working too hard. Let him sleep, but we shall keep an eye on him. One can never be too prudent."
We sat beside the bed. Speaking under his breath, Melani again asked after Bedfordi. He seemed very worried. The horrendous prospect of the pest-house was becoming ever more tangible. We reviewed, and rejected, the possibility of escaping through the underground galleries. Sooner or later, we would be recaptured.
Disconsolate, I tried to think about something else. So it was that I remembered that Bedfordi's chamber had still to be cleaned of the sick man's filth. I signalled to Atto that he could find me in the Englishman's chamber, next door, and went there to fulfil my unpleasant task. When I returned, I found Atto blissfully dozing in his chair. He slept with folded arms and his legs stretched out onto the chair which I had left vacant. I leaned over Cristofano. He was sleeping heavily and his face seemed already to have recovered a little colour.
Somewhat reassured, I had just squatted on a corner of the bed when I heard a sound of muttering. It was Atto. Uncomfortably installed on two chairs, his sleep was agitated. His hanging head oscillated rhythmically. With his fists folded against his chest he tugged at the lace of his cuffs, while his insistent moaning reminded one of an angry little boy facing a parent's reproof.
I listened intently: with his breathing troubled and uncertain, almost as though he were on the point of sobbing, Atto was speaking in French.
"Les barricades, les barricades..?
he moaned softly in his sleep.
I recalled that Atto, when he was barely twenty, had fled Paris during the tumults of the Fronde with the royal family and his master, Le Seigneur Luigi Rossi. Now he babbled of barricades: perhaps in his sleep he was reliving the rebellion of those days.