A Bad Coin Always Turns Up Read online




  A BAD COIN ALWAYS TURNS UP

  Alberto Guardia

  A bad coin always turns up

  Original title Come una moneta falsa

  Copyright © Alberto Guardia

  English translation Katherine M. Clifton

  All rights reserved 2017

  My special thanks to

  Professor Katherine M. Clifton

  for the superbe revison and translation

  from the original italian text to english

  To Carlo who did not have time to read it

  ********

  This novel was conceived as a light-hearted joke played on a person by the same name as the protagonist who, in my mind, should have received the first copy, reading it and laughing aloud. Unfortunately, an untimely accident took him from us and I am now certain that, using one of those special telescopes they have up there, he was able to look over my shoulder and read it as I wrote.

  Many of the historical events mentioned are real, although freely interpreted. The same is true for the historical characters, who I hope will not be offended.

  ********

  PART ONE

  The Fortress of San Leo – 1625

  Ten months earlier Alfonso Benassi had passed under the portcullis of the imposing fortress perched on the sheer rock-face. Even from a distance, it conveyed the oppressive sensation that it would be impossible to leave or to enter without crossing the drawbridge that isolated it from the world.

  He had been betrayed and doomed by his skill in handling the burins, with which he engraved the steel blanks used to produce coins. His last job, the one that had led to his disagreeable and obligatory sojourn, involved the counterfeiting of papal coins of high value, commissioned by a cardinal from Modena, who to protect himself had not hesitated to place all the blame on Benassi.

  In effect, he was not treated severely, although his health had suffered; but it was still imprisonment and isolation.

  Nonetheless, his singular ability had not escaped the sharp eyes of the rectors of the Banco di Santo Spirito, the exchequer of the Vatican set up by Pope Paul V just a few years earlier. This was why, in exchange for his services, he was guaranteed superior treatment, even though he shared accommodation that had little to do with a jail cell.

  It was not clear whether it was a deliberate choice, or the carelessness of the Vatican guards, but his fellow detainee was one Gregorio Molinazzi, a short, puny, elderly man with rheumy eyes, and a bushy grey beard. He had been imprisoned on a charge of immoral conduct, however, the truth was, that, in addition to being skilled in recognising medicinal herbs, which he used to treat the people, he had a not unwarranted reputation as an alchemist. For this reason, the cardinal (the cardinal who had jailed Benassi) had detained him, nurturing the not particularly secret hope that he would provide him with the formula for lapis philosophorum, the philosopher’s stone: that which, in the cardinal’s dreams, would transform stones into gold.

  During the long evenings spent in incessant conversation, Alfonso spoke nostalgically of his wife and his young son, whom he had been forced to abandon in Guastalla, while Gregorio, a little at a time, began to reveal to his companion his previous experiences in alchemy. Experiments that had begun with a study of curative herbs and minerals and inevitably led to the obsessive search for the first phase of the alchemic process, the Opus Nigrum, through which all the forms are lost and the elements dissociated. The Opus Nigrum gives access to the second phase of alchemic research, called Albedum, which in turn leads to the purification of matter.

  Unfortunately, the long nights that Gregorio had spent seeking the solution had not given tangible results and the only thing he had accumulated was a backlog of lost sleep.During his lengthy and incessant research he had come across anomalous substances, some decidedly useless because they were unstable, others with characteristics so unusual that it was impossible to identify a possible application. So it was that Alfonso became aware of a substance, amongst the many that Gregorio had handled, that struck him for the absolute impossibility of bringing it to melting point. In fact, he had only been able, using a rasp and a pumice stone to obtain a very fine powder. The Spanish, who had brought it from the East Indies, contemptuously called it platina, or ‘little silver’ because it looked like silver and since they had not found any practical uses for it, they valued it so little that it was often thrown away. Alfonso and Gregorio spent long days trying to amalgamate that powder with gold, because Alfonso had suspected that this substance, so heavy and so cheap, could offer particularly interesting opportunities.

  One year after he was captured, Alfonso Benassi received a visit from a young prelate, Monsignor Giulio Gabrielli, who made him a proposal that in effect he could not refuse: he could either work for the church in a more dignified setting, where his family could join him, or to remain in the fortress for the rest of his days.

  It only took Alfonso a few seconds to accept the offer and within a week, just the time it took to journey from Guastalla, his wife and son arrived. He said goodbye to the venerable Gregorio who, on the whole, was content at the fortress, because he could continue his research undisturbed.

  For their protection, but above all to prevent them from trying to flee, Alfonso and his family travelled in a wagon accompanied by a troop of armigers on their journey along the great River Po to Pavia and from there, on mules, they continued to Novara. Later they traversed the territory of the Duke of Milano, reaching their final destination, a pontifical fiefdom raised to the rank of principality: the Principality of Masserano and Crevacuore. The commander of the troops was received by Prince Ferrero to whom he delivered both the travellers and a letter from the Archbishop of Bologna, Cardinal Ludovisi, with all the necessary instructions on how to make the best use of Benassi’s skills.

  The Principality of Masserano boasted the ancient privilege, later confirmed by the Pope, of being allowed to mint coins, a dispensation that was exploited in a manner somewhat less than crystal clear, since that letter with the order to utilise ‘shrewdly’ the talents of Benassi seemed to Prince Ferrero a gift from heaven.

  Masserano – 1636

  The burin skimmed the coin as Alfonso Benassi, engraver and minter to the Prince Paolo Besso Ferrero worked with his usual dexterity.

  Alfonso cost the prince little or nothing in wages, since the well-deserved compensation for his craftsmanship came from another source – a percentage, agreed with the Prince, of the precious metal that he was able to save when minting the coins for the Principality.

  It was a strange story, that of the Principality of Masserano: a diminutive state, situated on the border between the Dukedoms of Milano and of Savoy. By a strange twist of fate, in the distant twelfth century, it had been authorised by the Emperor Federico I Barbarossa to mint coins and years later had continued to maintain this privilege thanks to a papal bull, which also transformed the Principality into a papal feud.

  The coinage of Masserano, let’s take a gold florin as an example, was essentially correct, since it was legal issue of the Principality and it could be exchanged with other florins, but these coins had the curious characteristic of weighing less than the florins generally circulating, either because they were smaller, or because they were thinner.

  An imprudent merchant who accepted them in payment for goods, soon found it necessary to pass them on (and this was truly at his own risk) when making purchases or worse still in exchange for other currency.

  In fact, the moneychangers were known for their lack of a sense of humour, and while their bodyguards were much more inclined to joking, they preferred practical jokes and were heavy-handed, above all in the case of anyone coming to their empl
oyer with counterfeit money.

  The Fieschi princes first, and later the Ferrero, had been specialising in this curious form of legal fraud for centuries and they proclaimed their innocence, declaring that their coins had precisely these characteristics and not others. They also insisted that, after all, it was the duty of the person who received them to ascertain whether there were any differences and finally to decide whether to accept them or not.

  In any case, the coins, despite the bad reputation that accompanied them, were not strictly speaking counterfeits. They did not copy, using false metal, those of other states, they simply reproduced their appearance and their most characteristic traits, taking great care, however, that every word, every symbol they carried, even the portrait on the obverse of the coins referred to the prince of Masserano. The quantity of precious metal in them was not declared, so that, although it was always less than that of the similar coins that inspired them, it could not be seen as an irregularity.

  Alfonso Benassi was working in a little room in a niche of the castle tower housing the mint. He had created the room himself, with the help of his son Jacopo; it was hidden behind a fake wall to form a room that only they knew about. Even the Prince ignored its existence.

  He had created that refuge for his personal jobs. Other minters were content to earn their wages by saving gold or silver that they later sold on, Benassi on the other hand used that metal to produce, limited editions of coins or medals of very high value, perfect in form, but defective in the gold content. Thanks to the knowledge he had gained years earlier from the alchemist Gregorio Molinazzi, while they were imprisoned in the fortress of San Leo, he was able to mix with the gold and the copper a third mineral which, being particularly heavy, allowed the metal to maintain the appearance and the weight of pure gold; despite the fact that the quantity of gold used was in truth barely seventy per cent.

  Using that process, he had melted and then scraped to the correct weight the blanks necessary for the next stage of minting the coins. For the first tests, he had minted florins, which he had then exchanged, with the help of an innocent accomplice, for silver coins at the exchange bank of Moìsè Benin, who was considered by all the Lombardy merchants to be one of the most ‘troublesome’ moneychangers in Milano.

  Having passed this test, he undertook the most ambitious phase of his project, the realisation of a work commissioned by an important personage; don Guillermo Ardiles, captain of the Spanish Armada in Milano, who often came to Masserano to do business directly with Prince Besso Ferrero.

  Captain Ardiles was the head of a special spy corps that aimed to harm the enemy by introducing counterfeit coins into their territories. The coins were made at the various mints with a poor reputation, which abounded in the plains of the Po Valley, and amongst them was the mint of the Principality of Masserano.

  Unknown to prince Ferrero, the captain had asked Alfonso Benassi to reproduce the gold ten scudi coin of the Duke Vittorio Amedeo of Savoy. This was a special, uncirculated coin, since its value was too high to be normally used for commercial exchanges. Like other coins or medallions of similar prestige, the ten scudi coin was destined to be used in exchanges of gifts between the ambassadors of the reigning courts.

  The peculiarity of the reproduction, of which only ten pieces were to be made, was that they would be similar to the original, at least in appearance. The diversity would lie in the addition of small details, difficult for anyone to see, unless they had the attentive and well-trained eye of the Holy Inquisition. These minute details consisted of miniscule alchemic references that would, in the intention of the Spanish court, discredit or at least misrepresent the Duke of Savoy before the Pope.

  Alfonso Benassi had never handled the prestigious ten gold scudi coin and Captain Ardiles procured a copy for him, in the form of a wax mould: there was good reason why he was the head of the secret services of the Dukedom of Milano.

  Alfonso had meticulously reproduced the designs taken from the wax mould on two steel blanks and then he had added to the Duke’s collar and inside his crest, the minute signs that Captain Ardiles had requested.

  The finishing touch, which obviously was not communicated to the captain, was his own. Rather than using twenty-two carat gold, he used his own special mixture, which contained less, much less, gold.

  “Jacopo,” he said to his son, “take the silver blanks, the big ones.”

  He had already tested the accuracy of the coinage using lead blanks, but now he wanted to check the result on a more noble material.

  He set the silver disc on the lower die that acted as an anvil and then placed the second die precisely and carefully on top of it. This acted as the stamp and would soon receive the hammer blow.

  “Watch the hand that holds the pieces still: it must not move!” he said to Jacopo, who was observing and memorising his father’s every single movement.

  “Then hold your breath and raise the hammer: you must give a single blow, with no hesitation, like this!”

  The hammer fell with a sharp crack.

  He separated the dies, took out the coin and they both examined it carefully.

  “What do you think?” asked Alfonso.

  “The sign you have added to the crest looks a bit too obvious, don’t you think?” asked Jacopo after a moment’s hesitation.

  “No, no… or rather, yes, you are right. If you look at it from the side, it is too evident. Go on, correct it.”

  “M…me?” asked Jacopo amazed.

  “Yes, you. At fourteen your eyes are better than mine and it’s about time you began to earn your daily bread,” answered his father, ruffling his son’s hair affectionately.

  After an hour’s work, Jacopo said he thought he was satisfied.

  Alfonso set up the dies again and gave a blow with the hammer. After a good half hour spent turning and twisting the coin, observing it from all angles and in all lights, they concluded that they had done an excellent job.

  Alfonso asked his son to bring him the good blanks, the special ones, those with his personal gold mixture and he began patiently and carefully to beat them with his mallet: after making eleven coins he stopped.

  They were both very tense; Jacopo had almost reverently picked up each newly minted piece and wrapped it in a clean cloth. They placed the eleven coins in a row and repeated the ceremonial examination: they were perfect, beautiful. They wrapped them in a cloth and placed them in the coffer; then they left the little room, carefully closing the door.

  The door was clad with brick on the outside and once it was closed, anyone standing before it would see only a smooth wall.

  A few days later, Captain Ardiles arrived to commission more silver coins from Prince Ferrero: and with the excuse of checking that the mint was in order, he asked Alfonso to give him the ten coins he had ordered.

  Alfonso kept the eleventh coin for himself.

  Liguria – 1636

  Captain Guillermo Ardiles had secretly placed the ten coins in the coffers of the governor of Milano, Don Diego Felipe de Guzman. The time had come to play the hand so meticulously prepared and, if all went as he had planned, it would raise him to the rank of baron.

  At that time, the Duke Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy openly supported the French, also because his wife was Madama Reale, the regent, and the sister of King Louis XIII of France. Despite this the Savoy’s ability to swiftly change their allegiances and punctually find themselves on the side of the winners was known to both the Spanish and the French and the future baron Guillermo de Ardiles y Bertrams intended to play his cards by taking advantage of this widespread belief.

  As we said, the coins he had commissioned were not ordinary currency, they were intended as gifts to be exchanged at meetings between ambassadors.

  From Milano he travelled in great pomp to Alessandria, escorted by a patrol of twenty faithful mounted dragoons and he continued to the Margravate of Finale, which was an enclave of the Dukedom of Milano within the Genovese Rep
ublic.

  At Finale, he dismissed the dragoons, who no longer served his purpose and dressed in a manner as humble as he could bear. Then, after choosing as an escort a troop of minor soldiers of little military value, he set off towards Ventimiglia, remaining within the territory of the Genovese Republic.

  When he neared the border, he deliberately took a route that would lead him across the frontier with the Principality of Monaco, so that he would necessarily meet the French troops at the border crossing. As soon as they appeared before his vacillating escort, he attacked, taking care to be captured… although without getting himself wounded.

  The clash with the musketeers of King Louis XIII was swift and cruel and when Captain Ardiles had checked that he was the only survivor and without ammunition – in fact he had carefully thrown away his gunpowder – he feinted an attack with his sword.

  This noble gesture was noticed by the captain of the musketeers Philippe de Salinelles who immediately ordered his men to cease firing and advanced alone, his sword in his hand, to offer his valorous adversary the possibility of an honourable surrender.

  Our future baron accepted this proposal of surrender with the honour of war, saluted the enemy soldiers and ostentatiously replaced his sword in its scabbard.

  Mounting his horse, he rode beside the French captain towards their camp.

  In the meantime, the musketeers had found the little chest that Captain Ardiles had pretended to hide and carried it to their commander, Captain Philippe de Salinelles.

  It was at this point that our hero, having received authorisation from the Governor Don Felipe de Guzman declared himself to be Baron de Ardiles y Bertrams and claimed all the honours and respect that his birth guaranteed.

  “Sir,” answered the captain of the musketeers, “I am honoured to have you, even against your will, as my guest and I assure you that you shall come to no harm. I will escort you personally to Aix en Provence, where I will deliver you into the custody of one of your peers.”