Inquisition (22 page)

‘Did you say he hit his head?’ asked Mondino, examining him.

‘Yes. Initially there was a lot of blood and then it stopped. First he fainted and then he came round. He managed to walk all the way here, but he was raving. It was then that he said the things I told you about.’

‘And then what happened?’ asked Mondino, signing to him to help sit Hugues up with his back against the bed head.

‘I told you. At one point he fainted and didn’t come round again. I tried slapping him and throwing water on his face ... Nothing had any effect. He was breathing, but other than that it was as if he were dead.’

‘Whereas now he’s awake, but he isn’t reasoning,’ said Mondino, almost to himself. ‘Let’s look at the wound.’

He moved back the hair, which was clotted with dried blood, to reveal a three-inch cut where the skin was swollen and broken. With a razor, he shaved the hair around the wound, then began to press gently with his fingers as Rogerius advised in his book on surgery. Mondino established that the bone had a fissure. The pus would certainly have entered the brain cavity too.

‘We need to perform a trepanation,’ he said. ‘Help me tie him down.’

Gerardo went to get the cords. He tied Hugues’s hands and feet to the posts of the four-poster, leaving him in a sitting position. Unfortunately Mondino had not brought a somniferous sponge soaked in an analgesic solution to relieve pain and cause a state of stupefaction. So they had to gag the Frenchman to stop him from crying out. He didn’t put up any resistance and probably didn’t even know what was going on. Mondino took a small crown saw out of his bag and asked Gerardo to hold the patient’s head still.

Despite his almost unconscious state, as soon as he saw the trepan, Hugues began to move and pull at the ropes, trying to shout through the gag.

Mondino avoided catching his eye, took a deep breath and made a brief prayer to God, asking him to steady his hand. He had already carried out operations of the sort before and knew that the possibility of it resulting in the death or irreversible paralysis of the patient was very high. It would take only the slightest inattention, once the point of the trepan had gone through the last layer of bone, for it to sink into the cranium itself. Or if he opened the sides of the fracture too far, they might not close properly afterwards. In that case the patient survived, but only bedridden and needing constant care to avoid the miasma in the air getting into the brain. Sooner or later he would contract a high fever and pass away in extreme pain.

Hugues de Narbonne might well be a murderer, but Mondino intended to operate on him with the same precision he would have used if he had to trepan the cranium of Enrico VII himself. Not only because Hugues would have to survive if he was going to tell them everything that he had been keeping to himself until now, but also and above all out of respect for Mondino himself and his profession. These days, the Hippocratic oath seemed to have fallen into disuse, reduced to a mere formality in this degenerate age, but for him it represented the foundation of medicine.

Finally he turned to face the Frenchman. In the unlikely event that Hugues could actually hear or understand him, Mondino forced himself to sound calm and authoritative as he said, ‘We must trepan the cranium in order to purge it of pus. It will be painful, but afterwards you will get better.’

Hugues gave no sign of having heard. His eyes had gone glassy again and he let Gerardo hold his head still without resistance. When the saw began to bite into the bone he struggled and groaned in pain, then he lost consciousness and his head dropped on to his chest, unintentionally helping the operation.

Mondino made four small holes, inserted a spatula between the edges of the opening and widened it so as to place a strip of silk inside to soak up the pus. He repeated the process several times, each time with a clean strip, until there was no pus left. The blood had begun to flow again from the scalp but by now the operation was finished. Mondino cleaned the wound well with a piece of linen and treated it with an unguent made of myrrh and herbs.

‘I’ve done what I can,’ he said, finally. ‘But the damage is serious, I don’t know whether he’ll come round.’

‘You mean he might die?’ asked Gerardo.

‘It depends. If he gets a high fever, he won’t survive. Otherwise he might, but it’s too early to say if he will ever be able to speak or reason in a coherent way again.’ ‘When will we know?’

Mondino shrugged. ‘An hour, a day, a week ... When there is damage to the brain there is no precise timing and you should know that, considering that I gave a lesson on the subject a couple of months ago.’

The young man glanced at him with a guilty look and Mondino gave a bitter smile. Only nine days had passed since he had discovered Gerardo’s true identity and he had thrown himself into finding out the secret of the heart of iron.

However, the time when Mondino had given his lessons with no other thought than that of expressing himself clearly now seemed distant as a dream that faded a bit more every time he woke up.

‘So what shall we do?’ asked Gerardo.

The tired sound of his voice caused Mondino to turn round. He looked at the templar closely. In the light of day that now made the candle on the chest of drawers redundant, he could see that the youth was exhausted. Gerardo had come close to being killed that night, had killed someone himself and had watched over a wounded man. He had not closed his eyes once. Much like the physician, as it happened.

Mondino could not imagine anything more wonderful than lying down on the dirty palliasse that he had spotted in the room next door and slipping into a restorative sleep, forgetting all the problems that were raining down on him for a few hours at least.

But there was no time to rest.

‘I’m going to speak to that Arab sorceress,’ he said. ‘She lives in the country not far from Bova. I want to ask her to translate the verses on the map.’ He pointed to Hugues, who was still tied to the bed and unconscious. ‘I don’t believe what your commander told us.’

‘Ex-commander,’ said Gerardo. ‘Killing that poor boy was an act that was entirely contrary to our vows.’

Mondino nodded. ‘You should carry on looking for the maimed beggar,’ he said. ‘If he told his friends that he was about to become rich, it’s possible that he really does know something. But first I wanted to ask you to go back to Remigio Sensi and get him to give you the names of all the templars who have arrived in the city recently.’ ‘Why?’

Mondino was surprised by the question. Gerardo was ‘If it’s true that the templars who were killed had been lured into a trap, it might also be the case that the trap was not laid just for two people.’

‘One of the new arrivals in the city might be the next victim,’ concluded Gerardo.

‘Exactly. We must find out how many and who they are and warn them. We should try to work out who the most likely target is and shadow him discreetly. I can help you with that when I get back, while you look for the beggar.’ ‘Good idea,’ said Gerardo. ‘I’ll go right now.’

‘Don’t you want to get a bit of sleep first? It’s still early, you could rest until breakfast time.’

‘I’d better not. If I have time, I’ll sleep in the afternoon.’ He turned to Hugues de Narbonne, who might have been asleep or unconscious. Or pretending to be. ‘What should we do with him?’

All the admiration and respect that Gerardo had shown the Commander in recent days had left his voice.

‘I’ll give him a calming potion to make him sleep,’ replied Mondino. ‘Come back later and check on him, but wait for me before you interrogate him. All right?’ ‘All right.’

Administering a sleeping draught to a man suffering a cerebral trauma was certainly not an ideal therapy, but it was the only way to make sure that Hugues would rest for the whole morning and that even if Gerardo wanted to contravene his orders and interrogate the Frenchman alone, he wouldn’t be able to. Mondino was afraid that the young man lacked the ruthlessness necessary to force his commander to tell the whole truth, or indeed the shrewdness to understand if the man were lying.

They went into the kitchen. Gerardo lit the fire with the embers from the night before and Mondino prepared the decoction in a pottery saucepan, mixing lavender, passionflower and valerian. When it was ready he gave it to Hugues, who in the meantime had opened his eyes, although he still seemed absent. Then they agreed to meet each other there that afternoon, between noon and early evening, and went out leaving him tied to the bed with his head bent forward and his arms apart like a sitting crucifix.

Mondino immediately set off in the direction of Piazza Maggiore while Gerardo paused to lock the door. He hid the key in a gap in the wood below the window and left for Trebbo dei Banchi.

Guido Arlotti saw the young man hide the key and hesitated for a moment. The Inquisitor had given him orders to follow Mondino like a shadow, but also to find out where the student arsonist was hiding. Now, it seemed, the student and the young man who Mondino was addressing as Gerardo were almost certainly the same person. So which of the two should he follow? What’s more, he would have liked to go into the house and have a look around. Judging from what he had heard as he eavesdropped from outside the window, something very strange had been going on in there.

He regretted not bringing any men with him. He had done it so as not to have to split the lucre with anyone. But if his friends had been there to share the work, he would have been able to ask double the money from Uberto da Rimini. And that didn’t include the plenary indulgence for his sins that he had been accumuLating for a year now, since the last time he’d earned one for a crime of a certain gravity.

Guido had been a monk and he believed in hell and eternal damnation, but some time before he had accepted that he was too weak to resist his passions. So whenever he found himself doing a job for some powerful ecclesiastic, he took the opportunity to ask for forgiveness and the remission of his sins in exchange for light penances. Once he had only had to spend the night on a bed of nettles to be pardoned for murder, a sin that he had committed at the order of the very prelate who had granted him absolution. So it was that Guido remained convinced that he could carry on leading the life he wanted while not paying the penalty. The only thing that terrorised him was the idea of dying in a state of mortal sin. That is, without obtaining forgiveness and being able to repent. But for the moment the possibility of death seemed remote.

In the end he decided to keep to the original plan and follow Mondino. In any case the two of them were to meet again in the afternoon. In the meantime he would try to find a way to get hold of a pair of trusted men who could stick to the templar and the physician like shadows. In that way he would have time to go and have a look in the house. Then once he had gathered all the information, he would be able to go and report to the Inquisitor.

As the young man walked away in the direction of Santo Stefano, Guido came out from behind the column of the arcade where he had been hiding and set off after Mondino. He had lost sight of the physician, but had heard where he was going so he would have no trouble finding him.

Usually so quick. Tiredness must have dulled his intuitive capacities.

XI

Gerardo left the paper-maker’s borough and then passed the Basilica of Santo Stefano and headed for Trebbo dei Banchi. He walked along in a dreamlike state rather than fully awake and he was finding it difficult to think coherently. Particulars of the night before kept coming back to him: the underworld, the beggars and their narrow escape ... At times he saw Bonaga’s pained smile transforming itself into a mask of horror seconds before Hugues de Narbonne split his head open like a mature melon.

All of a sudden, he felt a violent shock and heard a shout and a string of curses. Only then did he realise that he had been walking with his eyes closed like a sleepwalker and had bumped into the wheel of a vegetable cart, knocking over the costermonger pulling it along. He apologised and quickly moved on before the man’s shouts began to attract attention. He was ready to drop from exhaustion but he had to make it through the afternoon. There were still too many loose ends to tie up, time was short, and the enigmas were growing in number rather than diminishing. It was now clear that Hugues de Narbonne might be a murderer and a traitor to his order. Gerardo still had to find the beggar with a missing hand and he hoped that the great effort of tracking the man down would be worth it. He had to identify the templars who had arrived in the city and find out which of them might be the next victim.

And then, as if all that weren’t enough, there was a worrying problem about which he and Mondino had hardly spoken because they didn’t have enough information to form even a vague hypothesis. But the problem remained: who were the archers who had been waiting for him and Hugues de Narbonne outside the underworld? Why did they want to kill them? Who had sent them?

Gerardo had no idea. He imagined that it was Bonaga who had told them they were in the underworld, and this was why he had confessed to betraying them. Shame that he hadn’t had time to say more.

There was the strong possibility that once they heard about the abortive assassination attempt, whoever had sent those three men would dispatch others to finish the job off. And all he could do was ask himself when and where the next attack would happen, without being able to do a thing to stop it.

Walking into Piazza di Santo Stefano, Gerardo stopped short when he saw a group of guards emerging from one of the foul-smelling lanes that led to the beggar’s tunnel. Behind the guards were two grave-diggers pulling a cart on which lay a pile of corpses. Although he knew that the wisest thing he could do would be to walk away fast, Gerardo was rooted to the spot. He stayed to watch while the little cortège passed not far from him.

The archers had been well dressed, with short, light wool tunics over their shirts, wool breeches, good quality shoes and light cloaks that were obviously being used to hide the weapons they’d carried. One of the three, a young man with long dark-brown hair, had been dressed more elegantly than the other two, with a mail and tooled leather jerkin under his cloak. It hadn’t however saved him from Bonaga’s stone, which had broken his nose, or from Hugues’ cracking blow that had almost taken his head off. The passers-by were exchanging shocked expressions, as though they knew them, but Gerardo didn’t dare ask who they were.

Catching sight of Bonaga’s slight body and bony legs sticking out from under the other corpses, he looked away, deeply shaken. One of the onlookers next to him misinterpreted his gesture and said, ‘This city is no longer safe. It’s all the fault of the foreign students who come here and behave as if they owned the place.’

‘Ah,’ said Gerardo dryly, without looking at him.

‘You’re not one of them, are you?’ said the man, as though he regretted his comment. ‘I didn’t mean to offend, it’s only that ...’

Gerardo reassured him with a wave of his hand and moved hurriedly on. Despite all the confusion in his mind, he asked himself if he hadn’t quickened his pace simply to bring the job to an end and finally get some sleep. However, he had to admit that, above all, what made him hurry was the hope of seeing Fiamma again while he spoke to the banker.

He arrived at Remigio Sensi’s house and immediately saw that something was wrong. The hatch that opened onto the street was closed but that was normal given the hour. Less normal was the fact that the front door of the house was open, while the two armed retainers usually posted there were nowhere to be seen. Then he saw one of them come out of a narrow lane that ran adjacent to the internal courtyard of the house. The other immediately followed and they both appeared worried.

Gerardo stopped them and asked what was going on. ‘There’s a dead man back there,’ said one.

‘A vagabond,’ added the other. ‘The women are very shaken. But that’s not the real problem.’ ‘What is it then?’

The man was about to reply, but his colleague nudged him, pointing to the entrance of the lane with his chin, and he suddenly went silent. Fiamma was coming out of the little lane dressed in her indoor clothes, with her blonde hair escaping from her linen cap on all sides. The white scar on her cheek showed up more than usual in her flushed face.

‘Messer Gerardo, thank God you are here,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘What’s happened? I heard someone had died.’ In the heat of the moment, Gerardo put a hand on her shoulder to calm her. Fiamma blushed even redder and looked at him hard before stepping away.

‘Come and see,’ she said, and began to walk towards the lane. Gerardo hurriedly followed her. The alley was unpaved and on top of the dried mud were layers of rubbish that someone had pushed up against the walls so as to be able to get past. On top of one of the piles lay the body of a human being.

Fiamma stood aside to let him past and Gerardo went forward to have a better look. He immediately recognised the pilgrim’s ash wood walking stick and the black cleric’s cassock, greasy and frayed. When he saw the left wrist ending in a stump, there was no more room for doubt. It was the Ferrarese. The man was holding his bloody hand tight against his stomach, where he had been stabbed by a knife or short sword. His eyes were open and his teeth bared in a grimace of pain. ‘Who killed him?’ asked Gerardo.

Fiamma looked at him as though deciding whether she could trust him. ‘I have no idea,’ she said, dropping her gaze. ‘Have you called the guards yet?’

‘For a dead vagrant? they wouldn’t come. I’ve sent for the grave-diggers. Why are you so concerned about this man?’

‘Me? you seemed to be the ones who are concerned. There is great distress at your house.’

Fiamma put both hands to her face in a gesture of desperation as though she had just remembered something terrible. When she took them away, there was a resolute expression in her eyes. Gerardo thought that perhaps she had decided to trust him after all.

‘The distress you noticed is not for the death of this man,’ said the young woman, on the verge of tears. ‘Why is it, then?’

‘Remigio has disappeared.’

In order to get to Bova, Mondino had decided to take a barge up the Cavadizzo canal so as to make the journey quicker. He patted the pocket in which he kept the map, keenly hoping that his meeting with the sorceress would not turn out to be a waste of time. He tried not to give in to despair, but could not avoid thinking that his life was plunging towards a chasm. And he couldn’t even count on the support of his family. On the contrary, he had to put up with their disapproval in silence, as well as hiding all the anxiety that came from knowing that he deserved it.

It must have been shortly before daybreak and the city was waking up. Mondino could hear the characteristic morning sounds of spitting and the clearing of throats that had always turned his stomach in the past. Now they only reminded him of his father’s painful condition. Rainerio suffered from prolonged coughing fits and spat out enormous quantities of mucus that the handkerchiefs on his beside table weren’t large enough to contain.

Mondino reached the iron gate in front of the chapel that housed the Apostle’s Cross, one of the four placed there by St Ambrose to protect the city almost a thousand years before. Then, following an impulse, he turned sharply into the little chapel. As he went in, he saw someone dash behind a pillar about ten yards off. The person seemed strangely familiar but Mondino didn’t take much notice and knelt down to pray. He addressed the most Holy Apostles of Christ, to whom the cross was dedicated, asking them to help his father to pass away and to forgive his own guilty absence at the bedside. Then he asked St Ambrose to give him the strength necessary to come out of this battle victorious and to protect him from his enemies.

Mondino knew and loved the power of prayer, but he would have wanted a Church that was closer to Christ’s teachings and not obsessed with temporal power. This too was probably a dream, like the idea of discovering the secret of the circulation of the blood. Perhaps it was normal for a scientist to be a dreamer; the point was to give the right direction to the dreams. He had let himself be dragged into a mistaken dream and now things were getting out of hand and threatening to overwhelm him completely. He absolutely had to find the murderer of the two templars. Only then would he be able to avert, at least in part, the misfortunes that were raining down on him. And he had very little time left.

To calm the distress that had taken hold of him, he quietly intoned the hymn
Te lucis ante terminum
that was normally sung at compline, after sunset. It was the only hymn composed by St Ambrose that he knew, and he found it appropriate to the situation. A dark night full of horrors was about to submerge him, even if it was early morning.

When he left the chapel he felt much better. The sun filled the street and the heaviness that had weighed on his soul just before seemed to have vanished. Mondino leaned on one of the stone griffins at the corner of the railings and breathed deeply, mentally thanking the apostles and St Ambrose. At that moment he noticed a man standing in front of a fruit seller.

He had his back to Mondino and seemed to be negotiating the purchase of a punnet of cherries. From his stocky build, Mondino recognised the man that he had seen drinking alone in the tavern the night before. In a flash, he remembered the shape that he had noticed behind him when he came out of the hostelry, and that of the man who had disappeared behind a pillar just before he turned to go into the Chapel of the Cross. It was the same person every time.

He made himself pretend indifference and walked towards the Torresotto at Porta Govese. He was bewildered. The man was definitely following him and almost certainly by order of the Inquisitor. He might have seen him speaking to Gerardo after Mondino had told Uberto da Rimini that he didn’t know him. On no account should he see him speaking to the sorceress as well. What to do?

Without stopping, Mondino began to look around him, searching for a way to give the man the slip. When he got to the moline canal, just beyond Porta Govese, he should have turned left towards the Cavadizzo, but there was no sense in taking a barge now. It would be too easy to follow him. On an impulse he turned right and followed the canal in the opposite direction, towards the windmills that gave the canal its name.

The closer he got to the market square, the more crowded it became. There were men, women, children and animals clogging up every road leading to the piazza. It was saturday and the weekly livestock sale was in full flow. Many farmers and shepherds had arrived the night before and slept beside their animals to protect them from thieves. As far as they were concerned there was no reason not to begin buying and selling, so they went ahead without waiting for the official opening of the fair. In any case, the presence of notaries and bankers only served for the more important deals; for one or two beasts it was much easier to agree with a shake of the hand.

Mondino saw a jurist whom he knew walking past, followed by a train of assistants in clerks’ clothing, and he stopped to exchange a word or two, taking the opportunity to check on his stalker. He didn’t see the man this time, but knew he was there. Then Mondino said goodbye to the jurist and mixed in with the crowd. Now, as often happened with him, fear gave place to anger.

Then it occurred to him that running away was not the only solution. He had not had much time to observe the man following him but he was sure that he was smaller than him, although possibly broader. Perhaps he could get the better of the stalker after all.

Looking around for a suitable place for a fight, he left the busy road and went as close as possible to the edge of the canal, beneath the jerking and screeching of the blades that turned the grain milling machines. There was no one around. When he reached the fifth windmill, familiarly referred to as ‘Fantulino, the little mill’, he noticed a large recess behind a tiled wall. He took a step to the side and hid in the shadows. The only noise he could hear was the roar produced from the vertical wheel in the centre of the canal, held up by a wooden truss stretching between two identical cabins on either bank. With his heart in tumult, he waited for what seemed like an age, but was in reality not much longer than that needed to recite a Pater Noster. Then he heard a footstep close by and a second later his pursuer appeared. Mondino didn’t give him time to think. He stuck out a foot and tripped him up. While the man was stumbling and trying to keep his balance, Mondino grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him over to the shelter of the wall. Before he could interrogate him he had to immobilise the man somehow, but from the way the man was struggling he realised that he had underestimated him. He was short, but extremely strong.

Fortunately the man didn’t seem to want to attract attention either. He didn’t shout or call for help. Snorting like a bull, he pivoted on one of his stumpy legs and, freeing himself from Mondino’s hold, he turned and charged at the physician with his head down. Mondino received a headbutt full in the chest and fell back against the wall. He managed to get out of the way before the man could seize hold round the waist and thumped him on the nape of his neck. They grappled in silence, putting as much force as possible into their punches, both aware that they needed to hurry before someone came along. Suddenly Mondino felt himself being bitten on the neck, then he gradually began to run out of steam. Somehow, in the midst of the struggle, without intending to, he planted a finger in the other man’s eye. His aggressor let out a strangled cry and let go, covering his face with both hands. Mondino took a run up and bundled him like a sack to the edge of the canal.