The Kingdom of Light (11 page)

The Bargello didn’t say a word.

‘Or,’ Dante continued implacably, ‘have you noticed anything else?’

He stretched his arm out towards the dead man, pointing to something close to the body. The remains of some large sheets of parchment, completely consumed by the flames. Whatever had been written on them was lost.

‘More writing?’ said the Bargello, looking ill. ‘A book?’

The prior shook his head. ‘Too big. And no trace of binding between them,’ he said, picking up one sheet and examining its edge, which crumbled under his fingers. ‘More like drawings of some kind,’ he continued. His thoughts had returned to the big, empty bag in Bigarelli’s room, with its smell of ink.

‘The fourth man? The one who murdered the others? In that case, who killed him?’ the Bargello muttered suddenly, confused. He seemed to be waiting for Dante
to
resolve some inexplicable mystery. But the poet merely reflected, holding his chin between his fingers.

His eyes ceaselessly crossed the space around him, sliding from the burnt remains to the corpse. There had to be a logical connection. He felt he was close to the truth, but it kept slipping through his fingers.

The sun was setting. Soon there would be no point in staying there. After ascertaining that the dead man’s pockets were empty, he ordered the body to be buried in the shade of a pine, away from the burnt area.

No one said a prayer over that wretched corpse.

T
HEY WERE
halfway back to the city when Dante heard the intense sound of galloping horses. He barely had time to order his men to stop before a group of horsemen in hunting attire, carrying quivers and bows, emerged from a thicket.

At the sight of them the newcomers reined in their mounts and stopped a few yards away. The poet was sure he had never seen any of them, apart from the youngest, who seemed to be the leader of the group.

‘Good evening, Messer Alighieri!’ cried the student Franceschino Colonna, ostentatiously removing his cap. ‘And you, pay tribute to the Prior of Florence!’ he called to his companions. The three men bowed their heads slightly in greeting and muttered something inaudible.

‘What brings you to these parts, Colonna? Aren’t you a long way from the road to Rome?’

‘My city has stood solidly on her hills for twenty centuries, and will remain there for many centuries yet to come. There’s no hurry to get there, since your lands are so abundant with game,’ the young man exclaimed, drawing a blood-covered rabbit from his saddlebag.

‘It doesn’t look like much booty for four fat men,’ the prior observed, nodding to Franceschino’s companions, who remained at a distance. ‘Your friends?’

‘Jolly travelling companions. They too are pilgrims for the Jubilee, I met them on the road from Bologna. As we wait to resume our journey, we’re taking occasional rides in the countryside.’

‘Do you know where you are?’

‘Somewhere north of the new walls, I think. But we’ve been wandering about without paying any attention to the road. Have we accidentally trespassed?’

Dante shook his head.

‘Then have a safe journey, Messer Alighieri, and I will see you again when God wills,’ the young man replied, tugging on his bridle and spurring his horse.

Dante watched him take off before disappearing in the direction of the fire. ‘I’ll see you again when Florence wills,’ he murmured.

His instinct told him they were heading straight for the place where Rigo di Cola had been killed. He had heard
that
murderers often return to the scene of the crime, because of that mysterious attraction that binds conscience and the sin committed. But he had always thought it mere foolishness.

And yet those men weren’t there by chance. He had had time to study the prey that Franceschino had shown him. The animal was covered with dried blood, as if it had been dead for many hours. Whatever their intent, those men had not been hunting.

A
S SOON
as they had passed through the city gate, the Bargello came and stood next to him. ‘You know, Prior? I’ve had an idea. I was thinking about that pile of timber that went up in smoke, and the other lot, ready for use. It would take a clever carpenter to put together a piece of work like that. Who knows what a merchant was doing there in the middle of it.’

‘Perhaps he wasn’t a merchant after all. And someone must have helped him. But I’m sure it was only at the moment of death.’

‘Are you thinking of the cloth merchant Fabio dal Pozzo, who’s staying at the Angel Inn?’ he asked the poet, who nodded. He too had been thinking of the dead man’s companion. ‘He’s an outsider. He’s not one of us. And he’s already killed someone, someone close to him.’

Dante thought with a shiver of how justice was done
in
his city. ‘It might be useful to listen to him. I want to question him once we get to Florence. See to it that he doesn’t get away.’

At the priory, early afternoon

H
E MUST
have been dozing for some time, overcome as he was with exhaustion. He got up from the bed with his mind still confused, still prey to the images of his dream. He threw open the door of his cell and emerged on to the portico, taking deep breaths. In the afternoon air a damp night-time smell was slowly becoming noticeable, but it couldn’t yet defeat the fierce heat of the sun, still high in the sky. The usual animation of the streets beyond the monastery wall reached his ears, amplified by the echo of the walls.

He saw that the guards had clustered around the open gate, busy studying something outside. Trying to get his thoughts in order, Dante went down to the cloister. Crowds of men and women could be glimpsed through the portal, walking back from the Oltrarno, passing through the Ponte Vecchio and heading for the northern part of the city. ‘Where are they going?’ he asked one of the soldiers.

But he already knew the answer. ‘Towards the Maddalena. There’s a rumour that the Virgin is going to be exhibited again today.’

The image of Bigarelli’s broken body had never stopped haunting him. Along with his splendid and horrible work, if what he had been told was true. And then the face of that statue and its curious simulacrum of life. His reason drove the prior to seek the guilty man among the guests at the inn, taking refuge from the ambiguous realm of shadows that had been manifested in the abbey. And yet his instinct cried that the miracle was yet another link in the chain of death. ‘Tell the other priors they’ll have to manage without me at the meeting. There’s something that requires my presence,’ was all he managed to convey to the guard.

W
HEN HE
got there, the church was already full to capacity. Once more the poet elbowed his way through the throng, trying to reach his earlier observation point behind the pillar. The canopy designed to receive Bigarelli’s reliquary had already been carried in front of the altar, and someone had drawn the curtains to display it to the view of the faithful. But the monk and the prodigious relic had yet to appear.

Dante took advantage of this to study the mass of humanity all around him. Something had changed since last time: the rumour of the miracle must have spread quickly, reaching the furthest points of the city. Now, apart from the vulgar faces and the coarse greyish clothes of the
rabble
, the nave was animated with patches of colour, the sumptuous clothes of aristocrats and members of the upper classes.

The halt and the lame had managed to grab a place behind the altar. Here and there was the dark clothing of a notary, and in a corner, unsettlingly, the white habits of two Dominicans.

The poet instinctively withdrew behind the pillar: if even the Inquisition had taken the trouble to come, it was a sure sign that news of the miracle had passed beyond the walls of that little monastery.

At that moment the monk Brandano entered through the back door, on slow and majestic footsteps, followed by the two men charged with the duty of carrying the reliquary. The same procedure was repeated, but this time the expectant atmosphere in the auditorium was more palpable, practically frantic. The eagerness of those who had already witnessed the miracle was now joined by the morbid curiosity of those who had heard of its wonders and by the hope of salvation of those who believed that God had really descended to the midst of hell.

Meanwhile the men had uncovered the Virgin’s torso, offering to the eyes of the crowd the limpidity of her waxen skin. After a moment, as if responding to a nod from the monk, the Virgin’s eyelids slowly lifted, revealing first the white of the corneas and then the blue flash of the irises. Dante admiringly observed the
perfection
of the mechanism that was surely concealed within the head, which could perform such a gentle motion, so similar to the human gesture. If it really had been al-Jazari who had made this marvel, his fame was truly deserved, as indeed was his condemnation for blasphemy.

But there was something new about the statue, he noticed with dismay. Something truly incredible. The delicate line of the breasts was vibrating, as if a hidden bellows were pressing against invisible ribs, lifting the chest. The Virgin really seemed to be breathing feverishly, creating a sense that the eagerness and anxiety of all the onlookers were somehow communicating themselves to her.

‘For too long the Holy Land of Palestine has been oppressed by the pagans,’ she began to declaim. ‘Perhaps you are deaf to the weeping of those people who, like myself, have paid the penalty for being faithful to the one true God?’

Then, suddenly, she began to stare at the bystanders, sweeping her eyes around in a circle and pointing with her hand at the monk who stood mutely beside her. ‘And are you deaf to the call of God himself, who through the voice of holy men like our guide ask you to free the land of His birth and His martyrdom?’

The monk lowered his head in agreement.

‘Give your hearts, your swords, your riches to this enterprise! March under the banner of Christ! Before it is too late and your souls plunge into hell as punishment
for
your idleness!’ the relic cried, its voice now breaking with the anxiety of this premonition.

Dante conquered his initial impulse to fall to his knees, and stiffened where he stood. He felt as if something had altered in the diaphanous, waxy consistency of the talking torso, as if by the very effort of shouting its cheeks had assumed the colours of life. The movement of the chest was quicker now, too, the breath beginning to falter.

Then the girl opened her mouth. Dante distinctly saw her chest swelling with the act of breathing in, then her high, clear voice rose up once more in the church, ringing out like a song. The harmonious sounds of a Latin psalm spread through the air.

Dante was confused. His initial hypothesis – that he was dealing with a mechanical artifice – seemed to be mistaken. Not even the brilliant al-Jazari could have replicated the image of authentic vitality that the girl exuded.

His eye returned to the little table on which the torso lay, and the slender central foot that supported the tabletop. It was impossible that anyone, however slim, could have hidden from sight behind it. And the chest containing the relic and its support was quite plainly empty. Although he hadn’t noticed, his mouth was half-open with astonishment, like that of the most illiterate peasant. So this was still the age of miracles, God deigned to send baffled humanity a sign of His splendour. He felt an unexpected warmth rising into his heart. All around the prior the
crowd
was beginning to kneel, and he too felt himself bending at the knee.

The Virgin’s voice had suddenly become sweet and harmonious. She tilted her head slightly upwards as if seeking inspiration among the roof-beams, or as if she didn’t want to contaminate her mind with the sight of the excited crowd.

‘Just one more day, and you will be able to enrol under the sign of the Virgin!’ exclaimed Brandano. ‘Prepare your hearts for a long journey to the lands of the infidel. But trust me, God is with us! On the way to Rome, the Pope’s blessing will descend upon our heads, just as the Spirit descended upon the apostles before they embarked upon their mission. Trust in the Virgin, O people of Florence, most delightful children of the Church triumphant!’

Beside him the girl seemed to agree with a slow oscillation of her head, as her eyes unceasingly cast her icy gaze over the ecstatic crowd. But something within her seemed to accentuate the torment of her extraordinary injury, like a shadow that had slowly begun to settle on her features in a barely perceptible frown. Her previously calm expression was making way for one of anxiety, as if being dropped back into the convulsion of life after her brief sojourn with the angels were filling her with pain.

The monk too must have noticed those signs of human weariness. He walked over to her and lovingly touched her bare shoulder, as if to ease her fatigue. The relic seemed
to
take the touch of his hand as a precise signal. It immediately plunged into silence, closing its eyes and mouth, and slowly bringing its hands back to its chest, as though protecting its delicate breast in the sleep that it had been waiting for.

Dante had a sense of a flash emanating from its eyes just before its lids fell closed. A gleam of disgust. But he had no time for reflection. The crowd around him seemed to have received the Virgin’s message of reproach, and was growing agitated, prey to a confused desire for redemption. Men and women, excited at the prospect of saving their own souls and with them the Holy Sepulchre, were moving feverishly forward. Shouts and cries mingled with appeals to action, declarations of intent, invitations to join up.

Meanwhile the poet searched for a rational explanation for what he had seen. But he couldn’t find one. Only a faint intuition that perhaps it was nothing more than the simple desire to protect the relic and exalt it in a noble setting?

There was certainly no room in the chest for anything else. Perhaps he should give in and lower his pride before what his senses persisted in confirming to him: it was possible that a woman could manage to survive without half of her organs if God had willed it so. But however much he tried to convince himself, he could not rid himself of the suspicion that the chest was not a purely
ornamental
element, but a device designed to prevent the miracle being observed from the sides.