A Bad Coin Always Turns Up Read online

  “Were they all there?” asked the captain.

  The two thugs nodded. Then a thin plume of smoke filtered from under the roof and with a sudden rush fire lit up the entire ground floor, spreading immediately to the rest of the building.

  The little group watched the wood burn, helped by the saltpetre they had scattered liberally on the floors: they did not realise that eyes damp with tears of rage were watching them and the terrible scene from behind a nearby hedge.

  In the meantime, the neighbours began to arrive with buckets of water to try to put out the fire. When there was a sufficient crowd, the trio decided to leave their hiding place, mingle with the mob and then disappear.

  The boy who had been watching the group immediately recognised Captain Ardiles, despite his disguise: he had seen him when he came to his father Alfonso to collect the coins.

  That night, young Jacopo Benassi had visited the privy at the back of the house just a few moments before the two ruffians entered. Now, despite his fourteen years of age and the glare of the fire still burning in his eyes, he had taken a ruthless decision that would change his future life: to revenge the deaths of his father and his mother. Not at that precise moment, he would not be able to do it, he would carry out his task in the future, with the calm and patience that his father had taught him to show when he was learning to work with the burin.

  The trio left the town and marched in the pitch dark for at least one mile. For the last ten minutes the two thugs had been demanding their reward and wanted to leave, but the captain insisted that he still needed their assistance.

  When they drew close to an abandoned gravel pit, they did not even have time to see the two pistols that the captain had drawn: two shots were sufficient. He dragged the lifeless bodies for a few metres to the bottom of a pile of gravel. Climbing back to the top of the pit, he took a large fallen branch and used it to sweep the ground until the gravel began to slide downwards covering all traces of his deed.

  Paris – October 1642

  The past year had been particularly difficult for Cardinal Richelieu against whom there were frequent plots designed to free France of his weighty presence.

  The last of these plots, thought up by Gaston d’Orléans, the king’s brother, had involved Henri Coiffier de Ruzé, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, who according to gossip was the lover of King Louis XIII. As a result of the plot, the marquis lost his head (literally) and many other people lost their place at court. The cardinal then insisted that the king should get rid of the captain of the musketeers, but the king was reluctant to do so and promised the captain that sooner or later he would be restored to his rank. Towards the end of November, when the cardinal, whose health was now compromised, heard this news, he had a sort of collapse.

  On the third of December, the cardinal seemed to rally, but even though he felt stronger, he still had the impression that death was near, very near. At that time, he recalled by chance the strange gold coins carried by the Spanish baron. He called over his niece, the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, who had never left his bedside. She came closer and listened to the words her uncle whispered into her ear. Then he gave her the key he kept round his neck and asked her to open the coffer and bring him that curious treasure of which no one had ever heard.

  He told his niece the story of how the coins had come into his possession and entrusted them to hear, leaving her the task of discovering what secret lay behind those mysterious symbols.

  The Cardinal worsened during the night and died around noon the following day, on December 4th 1642.

  Masserano – October 1647

  Ten years had now passed since the last time Baron Guillermo de Ardiles had visited Masserano and he did not have good memories of the place. Not that he was ashamed, heck, he was a soldier of the King of Spain, but it had certainly not been an enterprise of which he would boast.

  He had now returned, after many years, to have medallions made to commemorate his social position.

  The mint of the principality had continued its activities despite the continual problems caused by its doubtful ‘specialisation’ and Baron de Ardiles had continued to use their services, without, as in the past, appearing personally.

  The minter to the Ferrero princes for the last three years was Bernardo Garimondo from Torino, a hard-nosed chap who knew his trade and who had already argued with Prince Ferrero about his inveterate habit of taking more than his due of the precious metals used at the mint.

  Amongst the various workers at the mint was a young man of about twenty, who appeared to have an inherent skill for drawing and engraving.

  Garimondo, after discussing the project with Baron de Ardiles called the young man and ordered him to carry out the noble Spaniard’s commission with particular care.

  While the baron talked, the youth began to sketch his face on a piece of card. The baron watched the young man’s hand moving swiftly over the paper but a thought troubled him.

  “Your face is not new to me. Tell me young man, what is your name and where do you come from?”

  The youth raised his gaze from the drawing and with a humble attitude he said, “My name is Jacopo and I come from Ca’ d’ Fantù, Monsieur le Baron.”

  “Cadfa…?” asked the baron.

  Garimondo, who had overheard the conversation, intervened.

  “I beg you to excuse him, milord. You must know that these villagers think that their home is the centre of the world. Cà d’Fantun, that is Casa Fantone, is a hamlet in a town nearby,” and then, turning to the young man he said in dialect “Jacù date ‘n andit e finis an pres’a al travai par munsù ‘l barun” (Jacopo, hurry up and finish this work for his lordship).

  The baron was leaving in the company of the minter but a doubt continued to nag at him and he turned to look at Jacopo once again.

  “Are your parents still alive?” he asked.

  Jacopo, humbly and reverently answered in a sad tone.

  “I lost them both…”

  The baron’s face hardened.

  “…I lost them both some years ago to a terrible fever. God bless them.”

  The baron relaxed and he said, “Do a good job, I pray you. I have seen that you have a skilled hand!”

  “Thank you, sir, you are very kind,” answered the youth in a low voice.

  The neighbours had assumed that Jacopo Benassi was burned alive with his parents in the fire at their house ten years earlier. However, after living in the woods for a month, he had turned up in the nearby village of Mortigliengo, where he was treated as a vagabond orphan. Shortly afterwards, the curate of the village, who had seen him to be willing and good-natured, had entrusted him to a childless couple who lived in the nearby hamlet called Fantone and they had welcomed him as their son. Thus, he became for everyone, Jacopo Fantone.

  A week later Baron Ardiles returned to see and approve the design of the medallion he had ordered.

  For seven days, Jacopo had worked with his burin and his chisel to make two dies, the two iron dies that would impress the metal disks, ten in gold and fifty in silver, as requested by the baron, with the definitive forms of the medallion.

  The baron had asked, in order to give final approval of the work, for a test piece in pure gold, the others would be in a lower carat. Jacopo wanted to mint this medallion personally and after adjusting the tiniest defects and carefully polishing it, he rinsed it and dried it with a chamois cloth. Then he put on gloves of the finest cotton and held it out to the baron so that he could examine it.

  The baron took the coin, turned it in his fingers and with a sly look stared at Jacopo, narrowing his eyes, then he asked,

  “You are not, by chance, trying to cheat me once again and you have added something… like ten years ago?”

  Jacopo did not answer; he simply gazed at him absently.

  The baron put the medallion to his mouth and tested it by biting into it.

  This was the moment that Jacopo had waited ten years for. The final
polishing of the medallion had been carried out with a solution of arsenic and the chamois cloth was also soaked in the poison.

  The baron felt a strange taste on his tongue. He placed the coin on the table and turned to Jacopo with a doleful smile.

  “I must say that unlike ten years ago, this time the gold is pure. However, there is, as always, something strange and I think it is a matter of… arsenic, that is the substance you put in the water you used to rinse the medal before you handed it to me wearing gloves: what care!”

  Jacopo glared at him, but he was worried about the baron’s reaction. Arsenic did not have either odour or taste, how had he realised? What would he do now? The poison would not take effect for hours: would he kill him with his sword? Would he be thrown into prison and tortured?

  The baron stared at him challengingly and asked,

  “Do you know who Mithridates was?”

  “No… I don’t know.”

  “I thought not. Well, he was a king who lived many centuries ago. He was an enemy of the Romans.”

  “Of the Pope…?”

  “No! No! He lived a very long time before Our Lord was born. He was a courageous king who fought against Rome and had many enemies who wanted to kill him both by the sword and by poison. He was not afraid of the sword because he was valorous and could defend himself. However, he was afraid of poison and so he began taking small quantities of arsenic, quantities that increased until he became immune.”

  Jacopo stared at him and his mouth fell open, but he could not say a word, while the baron continued.

  “Like many soldiers, I am also very good with my sword and so anyone who did not dare to attack me with a sword has often tried to kill me using poison. I have been forced to take my precautions, like the ancient king: arsenic makes me ill, very ill, but it does not kill me. I am sorry to tell you.”

  Jacopo was truly afraid and expecting the baron to attack him, he had grabbed the mallet he used to mint the coins.

  “Put it down,” ordered the baron calmly, “it would do you no good: you would not even have the time to lift it.”

  He walked towards the young man and said,

  “I am not angry, you tried to do what you could to revenge your honour and I cannot blame you: I would have done the same.”

  Jacopo had put down the mallet and now he flopped to the floor with his head lowered, staring at the ground.

  The baron stood before him, he took a huge pistol from his belt and used the muzzle to lift the lad’s chin, saying,

  “You are much more use to me alive than dead. Finish the job that Garimondo gave you and do it well: because they are my medallions! Remember that we are now equal.”

  He returned his pistol to his belt and turned to leave the room.

  On the threshold, he stopped, turned and said, “In a month’s time I will return to collect the medallions… and you.”

  “M… me?” stuttered Jacopo.

  “Yes! You will be my personal minter: you’ll see, you’ll be content.”

  Sabbioneta – 1693

  Jacopo had arrived in Sabbioneta almost fifty years ago with Baron Ardiles, who had had moved there from Milano when the king of Spain granted the house of Guzmàn, of which the baron was a vassal, the governance of the city.

  There had been a mint at Sabbioneta for more than a hundred years and the baron settled Jacopo there in the position of official engraver, but also and above all, in the less well-known function of counterfeiter serving His Royal Highness and personal maker of medallions for the baron.

  Jacopo’s skill had increased over the years, not only in the art of engraving, but also in the field of alchemy, a world of light and shadows, where his father Alfonso had spent much of his time.

  He still jealously guarded the first coin he had struck, having recovered it from its hiding place before he left Masserano. That eleventh coin, in what was to be a series of ten, which the baron had commissioned from his father almost sixty years earlier.

  He knew the secret of that coin, the fact that it contained a heavy powder rather than gold, but he had never used this artifice: he wanted it to remain his father’s masterpiece.

  In the year 1689 the Duke Nicola Maria de Guzmàn Carafa, the last descendent of the house of Gonzaga, died without heirs and thus the city passed under the direct control of the Spanish crown, which in effect made it part of the dukedom of Milano.

  Jacopo was now seventy years old, he had three children and five grandchildren and he lived a tranquil life. Only one of his sons, Secondino, had inherited his father’s talent, but when the mint of Sabbioneta closed down, he was unable to find work and accepted a post at a smaller mint in a town on the Lake Maggiore, Maccagno. Secondino moved there with his family and never returned to Sabbioneta.

  Before he left, his father Jacopo gave Secondino the famous coin. He had told his son the story a thousand times, insisting that he should leave it to his son, who would in turn leave it to his and so on forever.

  Secondino settled in Angera, where he worked for the Marquis Carlo Borromeo, merely a namesake for the more famous Saint Carlo, who had recently purchased the fiefdom with the intention of reviving the neglected imperial concession to mint coins.

  Secondino’s story was much less adventurous than that of his father and his grandfather, also because the figure of the counterfeiters disappeared since the new states that were establishing themselves in northern Italy were much more attentive and rigorous in defending the good name of their currencies.

  Secondino continued the tradition begun by his grandfather Alfonso, keeping a log of their activities. In addition to this diary, he wrote an account of his family based on the stories that he had heard as a child and which his father had repeated constantly. Now that he had left Sabbioneta, on hearing the news of his father’s death, he missed him and felt a burning homesickness.

  PART TWO

  Locarno – early April 1929

  Carlo Fantone had risen early that morning, at least, early with respect to his usual habits. After shaving and after checking meticulously that his moustaches were of the same length – two fine, squared black moustaches – he swiftly left the house, without even preparing his usual coffee or saying goodbye to his father Siro, who in any case was still sleeping, then he almost ran down the staircase of his house in Piazza San Francesco.

  Carlo was tall, slim, with dark chestnut hair threatened by encroaching baldness at the temples and wide dark eyes, inherited from his mother.

  He strode towards Piazza Grande, crossing it without stopping, but not without nodding at his friend Eugenio, who was standing at the door of his shop. He turned his steps towards the post office, which faced onto the square, hoping to be able to finally collect the parcel he had been awaiting impatiently for days: the latest edition of the Gazette de L’hôtel Drouot. This was the newspaper, or rather the newsletter, printed in Paris and considered of vital importance for any antiquarian worthy of that name, since three times a week it reported the dates of the objets d’art and collector’s items to be held in France, and the results of the past auctions.

  He went to the “parcels” counter and collected an envelope that he tore open without even sitting down. He put on his spectacles and began excitedly turning the pages until he found the news and the date he had been awaiting for some time: ‘Paris, 13th April, 15:00 hours, Hôtel Drouot, Hall 12!’

  He sighed with satisfaction, replaced his spectacles in the pocket of his jacket, left the post office and with a sprightly step approached the glassware shop of his friend Eugenio Fantone with whom he shared a surname, but no kinship.

  Carlo, thirty years old, like his friend Eugenio, came from a family that had settled in Angera, a small town on the southern Lombardy bank of Lake Maggiore, in the sixteen hundreds. His ancestors had worked for centuries as engravers of medallions and coins, but this ancient and noble tradition was now lost and Carlo, like his father before him, had become a respected ant
iques dealer.

  His father Siro, who had moved to Switzerland in the mid-nineteenth century, thanks to his work and the contacts he had made, had gained Swiss citizenship but for the Ticinese of good and ancient families, those who pompously called themselves the patricians, Siro obviously remained an italianasc. He certainly did not care about this snobbery, and had even taken pleasure when these self-nominated patricians came into his shop, with their noses in the air, to ask the price of items that they could often not afford to buy.

  Apart from the shared surname, which was the reason they first met, Carlo and Eugenio came from the same village in Piemonte, between Biella and Novara: Masserano.

  Stefano Fantone, Eugenio’s father, had left the town where he was born around the second half of the nineteenth century, just before his twentieth birthday, carrying a basket of pottery on his back and he had stopped in Locarno determined to make his fortune.

  Just before an illness took him, he proudly told the story of how he placed his basket on a stone standing to one side of Piazza Grande like a stool and decided that sooner or later he would open a shop in that very square.

  He began as a travelling salesman and after only ten years, he married and Eugenio and other children were born. He rented a shop in Piazza Grande, then he bought it, then he bought the entire building and finally, he asked the Locarno town council for permission to move the famous stone, the one from which his story was born, to a position beside the door to his shop.

  Eugenio, whose father had sent him to study at the lyceum in the German canton, spoke three languages fluently and successfully, managed the business he had inherited; in fact, he had also opened a second shop in Bellinzona.

  Eugenio was waiting for his friend on the threshold of the shop.

  “This is it, this is it… mid-month in Paris!” said Carlo, his big dark eyes wide with excitement while he held the open newsletter in his left hand and tapped the item with the fox head on his walking stick.