Inquisition (6 page)

‘Please do not put yourself to any inconvenience, mistress,’ replied Gerardo. He went to sit down at the table in the centre of the kitchen and added, ‘Bread and cheese will do very well, if you have any.’

Fiamma immediately sent the girl to fetch some cheese from the larder, and then she herself poured him a tankard of wine from the pitcher on the table.

The little girl walked off sniffling and soon came back with a piece of fresh cheese on a thick slice of bread. Gerardo took the food, thanked them and began to eat in silence. He was ravenous, but tried not to tuck in too voraciously because he was in the presence of a lady.

Fortunately the wine had been diluted with water, but even as it was, perhaps because of his exhaustion after the night’s vigil, it went straight to his head, spreading a pleasant warmth through his body and a sensation of well-being that was most inappropriate in the circumstances. In the meantime the older girl had finished plucking the chicken, had scorched it by passing it over the flames and was now concentrated on gut

Ting it, putting the heart, liver and throat to one side and throwing the rest of the entrails into a wooden pail. ‘Is the fare to your liking, Messer?’ asked Fiamma. Gerardo was lost in thought, and contrary to both good manners and the Code of the templars to which he had sworn obedience, he raised his head and found himself looking her in the eye. The young woman did not avert her gaze, and they remained looking at one another until Gerardo, painfully aware of the impure manner in which he was staring at the woman, managed to utter in a dreamy tone, ‘It is all delicious, mistress.’

He heard a muffled giggle and turned quickly round. The little servant next to the fireplace was facing the other way as she worked, but Gerardo was certain that she had seen everything. He rose to his feet as if the chair were scalding him.

‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything. I haven’t felt like this for a long time.’

And after that strange comment, and a loud sneeze of adieu from the barefoot child, he went out of the kitchen, leaving the three females wondering what on earth he meant. They would have found it difficult to guess, for he didn’t even know himself.

He recovered his cloak from the entrance hall, went out into the street and set off for the seven churches that made up the Benedictine Basilica of Santo Stefano, the fulcrum of the architectonic arrangement commissioned centuries before by Bishop Petronio and known throughout Christendom as Jerusalem Bononiensis.

Following an impulse he went through the spacious doorway of the first church, which went by the name of the Holy Crucifix. He felt ill at ease, and a brief visit to the house of the lord could not but do him good. He walked quickly up the aisle and turned left to enter the church where the Holy sepulchre of Jerusalem had been reproduced. Around the small octagonal sanctuary that held the mortal remains of St Petronio, the main patron saint of Bologna, there were six monks kneeling in prayer. Gerardo stood contempLating the small but important work of architecture. It was said that it perfectly respected the proportions of the original and that under the floor there was a sacred wellspring whose waters were able to heal all illnesses. There was even a rumour of an underground temple predating the church, dedicated in remote times to the cult of the pagan goddess Isis.

And yet, Gerardo derived no relief from his visit to that consecrated place. Afterwards, he felt more worried than ever. Moving quietly so as not to disturb the monks in prayer, he walked out of the right-hand door, crossed the deserted cloisters and went into the Church of the Holy trinity. He was on the point of leaving, when he saw a priest kneeling in a corner. The man had heard his steps and turned to look at him, without saying anything. Gerardo stopped, feeling uncomfortable. While he searched for something to say that would justify his presence there, the words came out spontaneously, as though they were the only appropriate ones for that place and time. ‘Father, I would like to confess.’

The priest nodded, rose and beckoned him over. Gerardo went to kneel before him, waited for the priest to pronounce the customary words and then began to confess all the sins that he could remember, mentally asking God’s pardon because he could not reveal the things that tormented him the most. In theory the lips of the priest were sealed, but he knew well that the superiors usually absolved a priest guilty of vioLating the sacrament of confession, if such a violation was committed for the greater good of the Church. At that moment the Church seemed to consider the elimination of the order of the templars as the greater good, and Gerardo could not take the risk.

While he searched his soul for hidden sins, still in the state of slight inebriation induced by the wine and his nocturnal vigil, at a certain point he heard himself say that he had thought with joy of being able to form a family, with a wife and children, and of dedicating himself to the glory of the lord.

The priest interrupted him, curious. ‘And why do think of that as a sin, my son?’

Gerardo realised his error. The thought was a sin in that it was contrary to his monastic vows, but he couldn’t very well say that.

‘The woman who inspires these thoughts in me is married, father,’ he lied. ‘I am in a state of mortal sin.’

The priest nodded with a serious air, as though expecting that explanation. He asked if Gerardo had anything else to confess, and at his negative reply he imposed a heavy penance on him, then gave him absolution and moved away. Gerardo got up and left. When he found himself outside, he felt all the tiredness of his sleepless night descend heavily on him, as if the confession had emptied him.

The rain had got more intense. He pulled his hood up again, and crossing the piazza with unsteady steps, he took two decisions. First, he would go home and sleep for a bit before going to find the Philomena in Angelo’s message. And second, he would make sure that he didn’t find himself alone with the banker’s daughter again.

The grey light of afternoon entered through an open window of the Liuzzi family home, in a side street to Via San Vitale, and a smell of wet earth rose from the courtyard. Summer was not far off, but the rain gave everything a wintry tinge. For the third time, Mondino took the quill from the table, dipped it into the inkpot, and for the third time he put it back down again. In front of him were a white sheet of paper, a new candle and an entire ream of cotton paper waiting to be filled with anatomical notes. But there was nothing he could do about it. He simply could not concentrate.

That day he had cancelled his lesson at the
Studium
and spent the entire morning speaking to three alchemists. They lived in the Porta Procola area, near the Circla. The Circla was the familiar name for the paling that for the moment constituted Bologna’s third city wall. The work on the actual wall had yet to begin.

Unfortunately he had gathered nothing of use from any of the three, in part because he had not dared to be too specific in his questions. He did not believe that he was at great risk, because alchemists generally tended to keep their affairs to themselves and to keep away from judges and magistrates, but you could never be too careful. He had been told of another alchemist, who had settled in Bologna not long before, after years of travelling, and he intended to go and question the man soon.

However, he wasn’t nurturing much hope, because the person who had suggested he try the alchemist had also said that he was given to the use of aqua vitae for more than alchemical and medicinal purposes.

With an effort of will, Mondino compelled himself to finish a drawing of the articulation of the muscle between the arm and the shoulder. Its form recalled the Greek letter Delta upside down and some medical men had thus begun to call it the deltoid muscle. To the side of the drawing, he noted down advice about how to detach the muscle from the bone and then he moved on to the pectoral muscles. But his thoughts automatically ran on to what the human body kept under those muscles and the thoracic cavity that they covered: the heart. From there to the mystery that he had stumbled on the night before was only a short step, and Mondino found himself once again with his quill poised in mid air, lost in a fascinating and dangerous dream.

Exasperated, he rose to go and fetch the bundle of pages he had already written. Passing the window he stopped to contemplate the rain. But the monotonous and almost soporific sloshing of the water on the leaves of the apple tree in the garden and on the roofs of the neighbouring houses couldn’t relax him either. Looking towards the Caccianemici Piccoli towers and the bell tower of the Church of San Vitale and Agricola in Arena that rose above the houses round about, he imagined Gerardo fleeing over the rooftops, dragging his friend’s body behind him until he had managed to get down to the ground by traversing a series of terraces that dropped down to a fenced-in orchard. Mondino knew the owner of that house, a Ghibelline like himself who, by the irony of fate, had once saved himself from the reprisals of a Guelph family by taking the opposite route to that of Gerardo. He had clambered up from one terrace to another and then scrambled between the rooftops until he was within shouting distance of some friends’ houses behind Piazza Maggiore. At that point he shouted for help until someone came. The retaliation ended up with three dead and numerous wounded on both sides and Mondino and his Uncle Liuzzo had given aid to everyone without distinguishing between factions.

Thinking back to that episode, Mondino shook his head.

Bologna would never return to the splendour of the previous century if the Bolognese continued to tear themselves to pieces from rivalry between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

But at the same time he was not disposed to surrender without a fight to the dominion the Church wanted to impose on the
comune
. The ideal would have been to hold on to freedom, without being accountable either to the Pope or the Emperor. But since this was not possible it was better to be in league with Enrico VII, crowned King of Italy in milan a few months previously. A few days before, Enrico had set off in the direction of Lodi and Cremona. If he managed to subdue them, his reign would acquire solidity. Mondino thought of what he would do if the sovereign turned up at the gates of Bologna, as Barbarossa had done so long ago. His Ghibelline faith encouraged him to negotiate an honourable peace, but if the city decided to take up arms and fight, he would fight. In such an uncertain world, the freedom of the
comune
came before every other consideration.

A clap of thunder shook him out of his daydream, and he remembered the reason that he had got up from his writing table. He went to fetch the bundle of notes for his book from a shelf. There were hundreds of leaves, thick with notes and drawings,where the structure of the human body was described point by point and organ by organ. Mondino loved to imagine his treatise finished and bound in leather as a great book, with its simple title stamped in gold:
Anothomia
. A book that physicians in years to come would study with a respect equal to that which the jurists reserved for the work of the great Irnerius. And that, like the work of Irnerius, would be integrated and improved with the advance of human knowledge, while nonetheless remaining the discipline’s essential foundation.

For the moment, however, the treatise consisted more than anything else of an accumulation of notes that Mondino continually revised, and that he did not yet dare to write down in fair copy. He needed to discover more and explore further before offering his findings to the world like a map to be followed without risk of getting lost.

Thus, to unearth the secret that enabled blood to be changed into iron could represent a step forward of enormous importance. It was risky, certainly, but the gift of never running risks belonged to Liuzzo, not to him. His uncle was an excellent physician, but he lacked the desire to go forward. He restricted himself to applying rules decided on by others, and perhaps precisely because of that he had managed to make his way rapidly in the
Studium
.

Liuzzo prized results,but was not prepared to expose himself in any way to obtain them. Mondino had decided not to say anything at all to him about current events. His uncle would take fright and try to stop him, making his life impossible.

As though conjured up by his thoughts, Liuzzo appeared on the threshold.

‘Good evening, Uncle. I didn’t know you were here.’

‘You too could go down and visit your father, from time to time,’ said Liuzzo, in a reproachful tone. ‘He told me that he hasn’t seen you yet today.’

‘That’s not fair. I went down not long ago. He was asleep and I didn’t want to wake him.’

His father was ill. Mondino was sure that he had a carcinoma, or a sarcoma, as Galen defined it, in his left lung. Sure enough, if he turned on to his right side he couldn’t breathe, because his good lung was compressed by the weight of his body and the left, overcome by the tumour, didn’t inflate properly. It was incurable and there was nothing they could do but make the old man as comfortable as possible in the last months of his life. Mondino and his three sons, Gabardino, Ludovico and Leone, took turns sitting with the old man whenever they had a bit of free time.

Liuzzo came into the study and went over to the writing table, which was strewn with papers. ‘All your time is taken up with making these notes,’ he said, sighing. ‘When you’re not giving a lesson, you write. And at night, instead of going to sleep like any other good Christian, you dissect corpses. It’s not only your father who never sees you any more. Even your children know that they can’t rely on you nowadays. When Leone needs advice, he turns to Pietro and Lorenza.’