Veritas (Atto Melani) by Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti

the
     planet Moon there is not a single house, nor a castle. According to him, if the Kingdom of the Moon were attacked with forty or fifty Flying Ships like the one he had invented, each with four
     or five armed men, it could be conquered with great ease, and without encountering great resistance. It will be seen later whether His Royal Majesty of Portugal will wish to undertake such a
     conquest.
    I will make known with the next courier what else I can find out about this new Theseus. His Machine has been taken to the arsenal.
    P.S.
    I have just been informed that the so-called Flying Navigator has been incarcerated, as a Magician and Sorcerer of the first rank, and it appears that he will be burned with great
     urgency together with his Pegasus; this is perhaps to keep his art secret, since if it became common knowledge it could cause great trouble in the world.
    I asked him if the winged sailing ship which lay abandoned in the Place with No Name was really the glying ship spoken of in the dispatch. By way of answer Frosch handed me
another piece of paper. This time it was an illustration taken from an old issue of the Diary of Vienna.
     

     
    There was not the shadow of a doubt: it was a faithful drawing of the ship. It was accompanied by a short account dated 1st June 1709:
    There has arrived here at the Caesarean Court from Portugal a courier with letters of 4th May and the present illustration of a device for flying, capable of
     travelling two hundred miles in twenty-four hours and with which war troops, letters, reinforcements, provisions and money could be sent even to the farthest lands, and in addition places
     under siege could be supplied with all necessities, including goods and commerce. A document has been shown which was presented to His Majesty the King of Portugal by a Brazilian priest,
     inventor of the aircraft. On 24th June next a trial flight will be essayed in Lisbon.
    I felt a jolt in my heart: had that sailing ship really flown, as I had believed it to be doing in my desperate agitation?
    It was no surprise that the ship had come from Portugal, Frosch went on to explain: just a year earlier, in 1708, the king of that country had married one of Joseph’s sisters, Anna Maria.
The ship had remained for a few months in the city arsenal, until the emotions aroused by its arrival had calmed down. Meanwhile the city authorities, as was reported in the gazette, had done all
they could to hush the matter up. Nothing had been recounted to the Emperor: Joseph was very young, lively in spirit and enterprising; he had already become overexcited at the sight of the drawings
brought to him by the Portuguese courier. He would certainly have wanted to see and study the diabolical invention, and this, in the opinion of the old ministers, was to be avoided at all costs. No
one must know. The Flying Ship was dangerous, and could provoke turmoil and disorder.
    I was amazed at these words: had not man dreamt for centuries of cleaving the air like a bird? It was no surprise that Frosch’s gazette compared the Flying Ship to the mythical Pegasus,
the winged ship from the ancient Greek sagas, and its pilot to the heroic Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur. Nonetheless, the gazette openly condemned the poor aerial wayfarer, who had even been
incarcerated. I myself would have given my own soul to find out how he had flown, and where he had obtained his knowledge. I asked the keeper if he knew anything. He shook his head.
    Once the matter had been hushed up, he continued, the caravel of the air was secretly transported outside Vienna, to the abandoned castle. Nobody was likely to go snooping around there. And if
it were to be needed one day, it could always be salvaged.
    I walked around the boat, and then boarded it, clambering up on one of the wings, which were carved in wood like the tail and the bird’s head, and which served almost as gangplanks.
    Overhead were ropes supported by four poles, two at the prow and