Inquisition (25 page)

‘The way back to Bologna is not safe. Those men seemed in too much of a bad way to attempt anything, but they might wait for you in an isolated place, and you wouldn’t have much hope on your own against the three of them, even if they are unarmed now.’

Mondino had been struck by a strange feeling of melancholy when Adia said she was leaving. But what she said now made him cross.

‘If I run that risk, I owe it to you because you let them go,’ he said, dryly.

‘That is exactly what I meant,’ Adia said, without losing her composure. ‘I feel in some way responsible for your safety, so I’m offering you company. If there are two of us and the dogs, we’ll be safe.’

‘But I’m going in the opposite direction.’

She sighed impatiently. ‘Are you really that slow or do you do it on purpose to irritate me? It’s true that you’d have to go slightly out of your way, but at least you won’t be risking your life. At Corticella you can take a boat up the navile to return to Bologna. It won’t take you more than an hour longer. Are you in a great hurry?’

‘No, it was only that your decision surprised me. If I think of my house, my books ... Are you really going to just leave it all like this?’ he asked. ‘Without regret, without thinking about it any more?’

Adia wore a distant look. ‘It’s certainly not the first time. Even though I have converted to the Christian faith, wherever I go I’m barely tolerated, and I’ve already had to run away. Besides,’ she continued, forcing a smile, ‘This way I see new places, get to know the world, and meet lots of people who, like me, are looking for the truth.’

Mondino would have liked to ask which truth she was referring to, but it wasn’t the time or place.

‘I’ll accept with pleasure, mistress,’ he said, warmly. ‘I’ll help you pack, if you’ll allow me.’

Adia’s lips opened in a smile. ‘That’s the first nice thing you’ve said to me since you got here.’

XIII

Gerardo woke to the sound of a key turning in the latch of a door in the distance and opened his eyes, pointlessly as it happened, because it was pitch dark. The kicks and thumps he had been given had swollen his face and every movement he made hurt him.

He didn’t know how much time had passed. There was the acrid smell of excrement that he had noticed when he was first brought into the cell. It came from a pile of dirty straw not far from him. Gerardo had lain down on the bare stone, as far as possible from the pile of dung, and, after a bit, not even horror of his situation had kept him from falling asleep.

He tried to get up, but hit his head. He had forgotten that the ceiling was less than five feet high, which meant that he couldn’t stand up. Air entered through a small window to one side of the door, through which the food was also passed to the prisoner inside. Or so Gerardo supposed, given that since he had arrived, he hadn’t been given anything to eat or drink.

Initially they had shut him in a shared cell with another four or five prisoners. Then, without any explanation, two burly guards had come and moved him to this little room that must once have been a larder, then turned into an isolation cell when the municipal jail had been moved to the
comune
.

From that moment Gerardo had been left in the dark, waiting to be interrogated. All of a sudden, the door opened and two guards appeared on the threshold. They were so tall and broad that they couldn’t get into the room at the same time. One of them grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him out. The sudden light caused him acute pain in his eyes and he shut them quickly. Then the guards picked him up by his armpits and carried him off with his feet hardly touching the ground. They passed some shared cells, from which there came a very strong stench of sweat and excrement, and one that had the smell of a dead body. The youth didn’t ask where they were going. He knew that instead of an answer he’d probably get a thump across the head. They went down a wooden staircase and another made of stone and Gerardo, noticing a decrease in the light, tried opening his eyes again: they were in an underground room, obviously used for torture.

He was very surprised to find that he had been brought in front of the
Podestà
in person, standing next to the Captain of the People. Although he was no expert in matters of prosecution, it was clear to him that something strange was going on. The arrest of a student and arsonist was not important enough to require the
Podestà’s
intervention.

However, Gerardo was determined not to let himself be intimidated. Despite the dazed feeling he’d got from the blows to his head, in the cell he had worked out his defensive strategy, very simple but difficult to refute: he would deny everything.

The fire had happened; there was no getting away from it. But there was no evidence that he had started it. No one had seen him go into the house and no one had seen him escaping over the rooftops. The only proof they could lay at his door was the fact that after the fire he had disappeared. He hadn’t gone to see his landlord to ask for an explanation, or to the judge to ask for compensation, given that all his belongings had been burned in the fire. They would ask him why he had behaved in that way if he were innocent?

Gerardo would maintain that he hadn’t gone home that evening, and once he found out about the fire he had decided to hide for fear of being unjustly accused.

It wasn’t a very solid defence, but neither was it very easy to prove the contrary. And anyway he had to do everything he could to avoid a sentence. Arson was considered a crime against the city and the punishment was severe. Only a few months earlier, an arsonist had had his eyes put out after boiling lead was poured down his back.

However, Gerardo’s strategy depended entirely on the fact that he would be interrogated without torture, while the place where he found himself now seemed to deny that basic premise.

He stood in silence and stared at the floor in front of him as behoves a prisoner, observing the
Podestà
out of the corner of his eye. Enrico Bernadazzi from Lucca was
Podestà
in charge for that quarter. He was a bearded man with a large face, who just then was looking at a spot somewhere above Gerardo’s head, as though deep in thought. Over his yellow, fine wool tunic, which reached his feet, he was wearing a sky blue, sleeveless surcoat and a cloth cap of the same colour that vaguely recalled a helmet. His elegant appearance was decidedly out of place in that damp, dirty room full of machines and gruesome devices.

There was a heavy silence, but Gerardo waited patiently, head down, until the
Podestà
asked him, in his soft tuscan accent: ‘Are you Francesco Salimbene from Imola, medical student?’

Gerardo tried not to show his relief. They hadn’t found out his real name.

‘Yes, your excellency.’

‘Do you know why you have been arrested?’

‘Yes, your excellency. For a fire that they say I started, but I’m innocent.’

The Captain of the People, PantaLeone Buzacarini, exchanged looks with the
Podestà
, and then he took over.

‘You are not innocent. A witness saw you go into the house on the night of the fire, but no one saw you come out again.’ He sighed, as though tired of having to continually convince stubborn criminals of their wrong-headedness. ‘Your fate is decided, Messer. We can easily find other witnesses to testify against you, and furthermore I am certain that, under torture, you would confess.’ He was a man with an angular face and athletic body, of about Gerardo’s height. With a circular gesture of his arm, he indicated all the instruments of torture dotted around the room. The action was accompanied by the rustle of the dark surcoat that he wore over his short military style tunic and striped red and black breeches. There was the pendulum, the torture most regularly used because it was among the blandest, in that it only caused the dislocation of the limbs. There was also a breaking wheel and a furnace to heat irons and pincers, which, fortunately, was not lit just then. Gerardo shivered involuntarily, which did not escape the captain’s attention.

‘But this is a civil trial!’ he protested. ‘The use of torture is not allowed.’

‘The fire in that house in the parish of sant’Antonino is the last of your problems, believe me,’ intervened the
Podestà
, touching his beard. ‘When the Inquisitor, Uberto da Rimini, was informed of your arrest, he asked that you be transferred to the Dominican prison, near the Basilica of San Domenico. But he was somewhat mysterious about the motives for his request. Before deciding whether to consent to it or not, I would like to know from you what you are accused of by the Inquisition. You can tell us of your own free will, or under torture. The decision is yours.’

Gerardo stood in silence. His mind was racing, but despite all his efforts he couldn’t work out what he should say. Mondino had explained that the Inquisitor’s accusation towards him would be the murders of Wilhelm von Trier and Angelo da Piczano using black magic and a pact with the Devil. But it wasn’t in his interest to tell them that, even if he were innocent, because it was a much more serious crime than arson. Besides, any admission he made on the subject would implicate Mondino and that was a thing he should avoid at all costs. Apart from the moral considerations, just then the physician represented his only hope of salvation. Gerardo would only be exonerated if Mondino could find the real murderer. The chances of him convincing the
Podestà
or the Inquisitor of his innocence were precisely none, unless a culprit were found.

He had to play for time by continuing to deny everything. ‘I have nothing to say,’ he said, first looking the
Podestà
in the eyes, then the Captain of the People. ‘Other than that I declare myself innocent of the crime of which you accuse me.’ the two exchanged looks. With a finger, PantaLeone Buzacarini scratched at a white mark on one of the black stripes of his breeches.

‘As you will have noticed, Messer,’ he said, raising his eyes to stare Gerardo hard in the face, ‘We have had you brought here without the presence of a judge or an executioner. We were hoping to resolve the matter in a friendly manner. You tell us what we want to know, and we will offer you the guarantee of a just trial and a sentence that is not too excessive. I am asking you for the last time: why is the Inquisitor so keen to see you?’

Gerardo finally began to understand. The
comune
of Bologna, although it was part Guelph and therefore favourable to the papacy, disliked the Inquisition’s tendency to meddle in the administration of justice. The killing of the German templar was first and foremost a penal crime, and hence fell into the jurisdiction of the
Podestà
. The Captain of the People had allowed Mondino to go and examine the German’s corpse because he was irritated by the fact that the Inquisition had claimed the right to investigate the murder.

They had had him brought down there to frighten him with the sight of the instruments of torture and now they were soothing him with the promise of a mild punishment. They could sense that something was afoot that was much bigger than mere arson, and they wanted to know what it was in order to be able to take the necessary countermeasures and to protect themselves from an eventual usurpation of their powers.

And yet, he couldn’t trust a verbal promise. The two notables would be able to go back on it without a second thought as soon as they found out what they wanted to know. And the stakes were too high. It wasn’t just a question of his personal safety, but of the survival of one of the most glorious ecclesiastical orders. If he agreed to the Captain of the People’s proposal, everything he had done up to that moment would lose its justification. The fire, the hiding of Angelo da Piczano’s body, the death of that poor crippled boy, the lies, his escape ... There would no longer be a superior motive. Gerardo would become, in his own eyes more than in those of secular justice, a common criminal.

‘I have nothing to say,’ he repeated.

PantaLeone Buzacarini came a step forward and punched him full in the face. Gerardo, already weakened by the beating-up before his arrest and from lying in the cell, dropped limply to the floor like an empty sack, bringing his hands to his face. He felt warm blood flowing from his nose through his fingers, staining his tunic that was already in a sorry state.

‘Don’t you understand that you’ve got no way out?’ exclaimed PantaLeone, in an angry voice. ‘Well then, we’ll have to make you understand. I’m going to call the executioner and the notary. You will tell us what we want to know. I can guarantee that.’

He turned to go, but the
Podestà
raised his arm to stop. He seemed to be thinking. For a second no one moved and a silence fell in the underground room, through which they could hear, albeit from a distance, the noises of life on the upper floors of the building. Exclamations, slammed doors, bolts sliding across.

‘We cannot directly challenge the Inquisitor,’ said Enrico Bernadazzi, with an astute smile. ‘But I’ve just thought of a way to find out what we want to know without colliding with the Church. Take the prisoner back to his cell.’

The Captain of the People opened the door and a second later the two massive guards came in. Gerardo was dragged out. He didn’t have time to hear the
Podestà’s
idea. But it didn’t make much difference. In the hands of a lay executioner or a cleric the suffering would be much the same.

Straight after the midday meal, Uberto da Rimini joined the prior outside the basilica. Putting on a show of cordiality, he interested himself in the work on the new bell tower that had just started again after a month’s interruption due to financial difficulties. There were unlikely to be any more problems now and the prior was confident that the bell tower would be inaugurated within a couple of years: in the year of our lord, 1313.

The walls of the building were teeming with day workers and labourers dressed in sackcloth, among whom the more comfortable and elegant clothing of the master builders stood out. As did the black and white robes of some Dominicans who drifted among the stones carrying out various jobs.

‘It will be magnificent,’ said the prior, with an ingenuous smile. He was a vastly fat man, taller than Uberto by a head, but decidedly stupid. The only thing that interested him in life was to be remembered in the basilica registers as the originator of the new bell tower. ‘It was the only thing missing from our church.’

‘I agree,’ said Uberto. To avoid the dust, they were standing a convenient distance from the site, at the point where a low wall marked the edge of the churchyard, paved in cobblestones, and the cemetery behind the basilica. ‘I’m sure that the Archbishop will be most impressed when he sees it.’

The prior’s face was instantly diffused with a guilty red. ‘How did you know he was coming?’ he asked, without bothering to deny the fact.

That morning Uberto had overheard a snippet of conversation between two confrères, the bursar and the cook. They had been talking about there being various guests to supper and he had worked out the rest for himself. But he didn’t waste time in explanations and simply answered the question with another.

‘Why wasn’t I told?’

‘The messenger only got here this morning,’ replied the big man, without looking at him. ‘And we have been caught unawares. In the rush of preparations it must have slipped my mind.’