The Kingdom of Light (12 page)

He tried to move towards the corner of the church, to ascertain whether his suspicions were well founded. But he immediately froze: behind one of the pillars to the side of the church he saw two men in Dominican habits hiding discreetly, staring intently at the scene. He was particularly struck by one of them, with a skull-like face and a mouth like a razor slash: Noffo Dei, the head of the inquisitors of Florence, the shadow of the Pope’s representative in the city, Cardinal d’Acquasparta.

His ears fleetingly caught a brief laugh and something muttered by two men in front of him, who, judging by their clothes, must have been wealthy merchants. He thought he heard one of them saying the word ‘Toulouse’. He pricked up his ears, but could make out only a few more words before the sounds were drowned out by the excited shouting of the crowds. Had someone seen Brandano in Toulouse?

He turned round in search of a familiar face and noticed Arrigo. The philosopher was standing next to the balustrade, with his usual disenchanted attitude, as if he had only gone there to get a better view. Brandano, meanwhile, rather than moving beyond the little door as he had done the first time, had stopped behind the pulpit and was busy blessing the ecstatic throng. As he did so, he slowly approached the spot where Arrigo was standing and, when
he
was close to him, the poet had a clear sense that the monk, while tracing his signs of the cross in the air, spoke to the philosopher.

A few words exchanged in haste. Furtively. With the swiftness that is the mark of the devil.

Dante was tempted to walk closer, but now the two men were ignoring each other again. He made for the exit.

At the door he was joined by a
bargellino
. ‘Prior, the man you wanted is at the Stinche prison.’

Dante gave a start. What had those idiots done? He had given them an order to find the man for questioning, not to have him dragged to that infernal place. He threw open the door and dashed towards the stairs, dodging the startled guard.

H
E REACHED
the low, narrow door of the Stinche, which opened in the blind wall next to San Simone. At the top, from the little loopholes of the tower, hung like decorations at the May Palio the strings on which the prisoners hoped some merciful soul might hang a piece of bread. At that moment some of the inmates were in the courtyard, washing skins that had just been tanned in a vat whose foul-smelling water flowed liberally on to the ground.

‘A man has been brought here, today. Fabio dal Pozzo, a merchant. Where is he?’ Dante asked anxiously, failing
to
recognise the man among the prisoners. ‘I am the prior of the Commune.’

The guard gave a conniving little smile. ‘Your friend is already downstairs, with the policemen. Tied and bound.’

‘Bring me to him, straight away!’ the poet commanded, his voice stifled with rage. Someone would pay for that disgrace, for which he felt involuntarily responsible.

Confused by this unexpected reaction, the man headed towards a wooden staircase leading to a damp corridor, barely lit by some loopholes high above the courtyard. The dense air, foul with the miasma of excrement, took Dante’s breath away. Conquering his vertigo, he descended towards the dungeons where the most dangerous prisoners were held, until he reached a larger cell. A repeated heart-rending cry had served as his guide along his short journey.

Before his eyes, half-naked, Fabio dal Pozzo was rocking back and forth, bent double with pain, his wrists bound behind his back by a rope that led to a ring fixed in the vaulted ceiling, before falling back into the hands of one of the two enforcers of justice. One man gave another violent tug, extracting another desperate cry from the prisoner, beneath the complacent eye of the Bargello, who leaned against a pillar, studying the scene with his arms folded.

Trying to vanquish his pain, the poor man had bent even further towards the ground, until he was almost touching the floor with his forehead. Dante rushed towards
him
, gripping the rope with all his might to try and prevent the guard from torturing him.

Sensing a presence next to him, the man turned in his direction, his face swollen. ‘Enough … enough … I’ll talk …’ he murmured with the last remnant of his strength.

The prior gestured to the guard to slacken the rope. Fabio fell to his knees, his eyes filled with tears. In his spasms he had bitten his lips until they bled.

Dante drew near to the merchant’s ear. ‘What do you know about your fellow-merchant, Rigo di Cola, and what he has been up to?’ he whispered so that the other men could not hear.

The man trembled and a grimace of terror spread across his distraught features. ‘Nothing, I swear … I barely know him …’ he stammered.

For a moment Dante was tempted to order another pull on the rope. But something about the man suggested that he was telling the truth. ‘And what about the building on the Cavalcantis’ lands? It’s your work, isn’t it?’ he ventured.

A twitch running through the man’s body told him that his first guess had been correct. ‘No … the big circle – they were talking about it …’ the poor man said quickly. He seemed glad to have something to confess at last. ‘It was them,’ he repeated.

‘Why that construction – and why in that place? For what purpose?’

The prisoner was seized by an uncontrollable tremor. ‘I
don’t
know … I heard them talking about it, him and the
maestro
. Rigo must have been helping them get a building erected. A circle, that was what they were saying to each other. He was very old and could no longer climb on to the scaffolding or hold the plumb-lines. Then he was killed, and I didn’t know what to do. Ask Rigo, he knows everything. I expected someone would come looking for me. And then … this …’

‘Rigo is dead. Murdered, just like the old architect.’

Fabio’s face contracted into a grimace of terror. ‘But I … I don’t know anything. In Venice they told me to travel to Florence and stay at the Angel Inn. There someone would make use of my work. I have always travelled under escort.’

Dante studied him carefully. ‘You were escorted? By whom?’

‘As far as the border with the Piave by servants of
La Serenissima
. Entering the lands of Padua, I had to join a caravan of merchants who were going all the way to Florence. It was there that I met Rigo di Cola. But they weren’t merchants, I worked that out straight away.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘Very sure. Even if they were trying to pass themselves off as members of that class. They seemed more like men-at-arms. And their cargoes, too … Bales of wool, apparently, but underneath …’

‘What did you see?’

‘At the ford across the Reno, just south of Bologna, one
of
the mules slipped and fell, shedding its load. It wasn’t just wool. There were iron blades, and pointed staves.’

‘And where did these fake merchants end up?’

‘I don’t know. We parted near the walls of Florence. Only Rigo came with me. My instructions were to stay at the Angel Inn, and then I would have to seek out a monk – Brandano. And help him.’

‘Help him do what?’ Dante cried, his voice filled with surprise.

‘I don’t know. They would tell me when I got there,’ the other man stammered, stifling a groan. ‘I was to work for him …’

‘Work for him?’ the prior asked again, pausing a moment for reflection. ‘Do you have any experience of mechanics? Did you put together the trick with the Virgin?’

Fabio looked surprised. ‘No … why? My skills are of a quite different order. I too am a man of science, as you are,’ he added in a respectful tone. ‘I am a mathematician. My specialisation is the calculation of fractional relations, on the basis of the studies of the great Fibonacci.’

‘Leonardo Fibonacci, the man who taught the Emperor Frederick the secret of Indian calculation?’

‘The very same.’ Fabio had broken off. His voice was that of someone terrified of not being believed. He moved his head like a crazed animal, in search of something that might satisfy his interrogator. ‘Only once did he confide in me. He told me that our circle would conceal a treasure.’

Dante looked away, thoughtfully. Perhaps, if a treasure really was hidden in Florence, complex calculations were required to find it? He looked the mathematician menacingly up and down.

‘Yes, that’s exactly what he said!’ Fabio repeated, encouraged by the poet’s attention. ‘A treasure. Bound between felt and felt.’

‘Between felt and felt?’ Puzzled, Dante pinched his lower lip. Meanwhile the other man tried to lift his head to discover some clue to his own fate in the poet’s expression. Then Dante stirred. ‘What else do you know? Tell me everything!’

‘Nothing more, Signore, I swear! I … just stole …’

‘What?’

‘From Brunetto’s room … When I saw he had been killed, I couldn’t resist the temptation. He had marvellous instruments, a compass and a massive gold plumb-line – very old things …’

‘But his papers, the plans for the construction, where are they?’

‘I don’t know … When I walked into his cubicle everything was in confusion – and then that horrible sight … But there was nothing apart from his instruments, I swear!’

Dante felt inclined to believe him. The murderer had left behind valuable objects and taken nothing but paper. But perhaps that paper was even more valuable. A treasure, between felt and felt. ‘Release this man,’ he commanded.

The Bargello had been listening, perplexed. With a nod of the head he ordered the prior’s demand to be carried out. As the
bargellini
released the wretched man from the ropes, he walked over to Dante. ‘But that rogue has confessed to a theft. And besides … Besides, he seems to know about a treasure,’ he hissed with a flash of greed in his eyes. ‘Perhaps it would be better to give him a few more tugs on the rope and make him spill the beans completely …’

Dante glared at him, furious that the head of the guards had managed to hear so much. He was sure the Bargello was groping in total darkness, worse than the darkness with which he himself was struggling. But it was still better for that oaf to know as little as possible about what had happened.

Meanwhile, freed from the ropes, Fabio dal Pozzo had dropped to the ground. Disgust for what he had witnessed merged in the poet’s soul with sadness at having seen the degraded application of justice, which should have been the highest aspiration of any human community and the prime concern of anyone in government. What was the sense in having a confession extracted with iron and fire, apart from the interrogator’s inability to reach the truth via the logic of reason and the indisputability of the facts? To reduce a human being to this state, guilty or innocent, meant only defeat for those inflicting the violence.

‘Set this man free,’ the poet commanded. ‘And you, go back to the inn and don’t move from there for any reason.
You
will donate the precious objects that you have stolen to the cathedral works, and you will only leave the territory of the Commune after I have issued the order. But first I want to know one thing from you,’ he added, pulling up the man who had fallen at his feet and was trying to kiss them. Fabio managed to stumble to his feet again. Dante took from his bag a folded sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal. He spread the sheet out on a table and handed the man the little stick. ‘Summon all your strength, if you can still use your right hand. I want you to reproduce the plan of the thing that Rigo and Brunetti were building.’

The mathematician fixed his swollen eyes on the paper. With an obvious effort he managed to get the image in focus, and then, his hand trembling, he began to trace lines that slowly assumed a shape.

Beneath Dante’s eyes, a strange octagonal wheel appeared, surrounded at the vertices by other, smaller octagons.

Curfew

D
ANTE POINTED
the compass again, tracing the ninth circumference. ‘And then the Primo Mobile, which instils motion in the heavenly machine,’ he murmured to himself. ‘As the Greek puts it. And further away …’

He lifted up the drawing, bringing it closer to his
face
. The diagram of the heavens, Ptolemy’s admirable construction, appeared in all its geometrical perfection. ‘And further off …’ he repeated, biting his lower lip. He felt his thoughts growing confused, as if all of the day’s exhaustion had fallen upon him all at once. He tensed the muscles in his neck and violently rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off his torpor.

The sound of the door opening attracted his attention. The Bargello stepped warily forward, peering at the writing desk. ‘Did you call me? Are you drawing spells?’ he exclaimed, pointing at the series of concentric circles that the poet had drawn.

‘Equants, Bargello, equants.
Punctum aequans
, the geometrical centre of the orbital circles …’ the prior replied with disgust. ‘But perhaps the celestial mechanism is not something that interests you. I need an escort.’

‘To go where?’ The Bargello took his time. ‘It’s late tonight,’ he added, looking up at the violet sky, where Venus was already shining brightly. Then, chilled by the poet’s eye, he drew his head between his shoulders as if seeking shelter behind the collar of his armour. ‘I need to know, to prepare for action.’

‘Tonight. We’ve got to enter a church,’ Dante replied crisply.

‘A church?’ the man exclaimed, alarmed. ‘I have no authority to intervene in a sacred place. Neither do you. What are you thinking of?’

Dante swallowed back a scathing reply. The Bargello’s reluctance was not without foundation. Bursting into consecrated ground could unleash the most unpredictable consequences. And this wasn’t the time to give priests further proof of the instability of the Commune.

‘Perhaps you’re right. I’ll think about it,’ he said.

It was better to be alone, at least at the beginning, especially if the Inquisition, as he had seen, was beginning to take an interest in events. They were probably driven solely by the religious aspect of the story, which seemed to be increasing in importance. He wanted to know something else, particularly how a murdered man’s final work had reappeared just in time to act as the background to a miracle. And whether there was a connection between those two facts.