The Cellars of Notre Dame

by Barbara Frale

  “Two lovers,” he murmured, his eyes still astonished on the paper. “What are you trying to tell me, gypsy?”

  He looked up; but she was gone.

  VI

  In the ashen light of early morning, the slim figure of a young girl walked briskly towards the highest point of the Vatican gardens. At her side, much less cheerful-seeming, walked a twenty-year-old youth with a doubtful expression upon his face.

  “This call to see the Catalan sounds very strange to me,” said Crescenzio.

  “Well it doesn’t to me!” trilled Maddalena.

  She had barely been able to contain herself because of the completely unexpected news brought by one of the Curia servants, who had come to announce to them that Arnaldo wanted to see them at dawn the next day – she hadn’t slept a wink for happiness. Her ingenious little brain had been at work all night long, unravelling a vast tangle of hypotheses, conjectures and possibilities. She didn’t feel at all tired, though – on the contrary, she felt as though she were clad in quicksilver.

  “Slow down!” Crescenzio scolded her. “I’m struggling to keep up with you. What’s the hurry?”

  Maddalena ignored him, and in a flash she had already reached a part of the gardens high enough that she could see the outline of the mountains around Rome in the distance. The icy air had not yet illuminated with heavenly colours those meadows, which in March bloomed with violet crocuses and in April were brilliant with a profusion of golden-coloured daffodils. They were in the highest part of the papal gardens now, from where one could see the snowy profile of Soratte.

  “Look down there!” she exclaimed, spreading her arms like a swallow in flight. “The mountain is covered in snow, just as Horace said. Do you remember?”

  Crescenzio nodded as she recited the verses; despite being proud to have a sister who was so intelligent and already far better educated than many grown men, he was still unsure as to whether it had been wise to send her to study with the nuns.

  “It will be best if you don’t recite Latin elegies when they introduce you to your betrothed,” he admonished. “Many think that a wife is wise enough when she can tell the difference between her tunic and her husband’s shirt.”

  “Thank you, dear brother. I will remember it. But let’s hurry up. I am so excited that maestro Arnaldo has summoned us to give us his precious antidote!”

  Crescenzio thought it appropriate to calm her impetus, and grabbed her by the arm.

  “Listen to me: I know what all this enthusiasm is due to. You’ve got some strange idea into your head, haven’t you? You know very well that the old man has no antidote. You know as much as I know, namely that there is a grave state secret involved. And I bet you are planning to try and convince Arnaldo to reveal it to us. Or am I mistaken?”

  He was not mistaken at all, and the sarcasm of his question made it purely rhetorical, so Maddalena realized that it was pointless trying to deny it. Two days earlier, she had unexpectedly received a letter. The writer had not signed it but had begged her to persuade Arnaldo da Villanova to give the king of France that which so troubled him. “The Catalan has the prescription which can cure the ill of my sovereign,” the letter had specified. She hadn’t needed to think much about it to get to the truth: apart from her and her brothers, and Dante Alighieri who didn’t care about the Catalan, the only person aware of the matter was Matthew of Acquasparta, with whom they had dined.

  The confirmation of her suspicions had come from the last lines of the letter: the anonymous writer said he was convinced that she, Maddalena, would be more able than her brother to touch the old man’s heart, because Arnaldo had left a small daughter in Spain many years before whom he had abandoned to travel around the world in pursuit of his studies. The thought of that little girl who had grown up without a father, and perhaps, a rightful sense of guilt, might bend the Catalan towards her much more than towards Crescenzio. It was the cardinal of Acquasparta who had written to her anonymously, she was certain of it, and obviously, he put his trust in her. Should she tell her brother? She wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, and, undecided, tried to test the ground.

  “Crescenzio, if Arnaldo reveals his secret to someone, then he will no longer be the sole custodian,” she remarked candidly. “We must convince him to confide in the Pope. If the pope knows, he can help the king solve his problem. Thus the Catalan will no longer be forced to leave Rome. Do you not agree?”

  Crescenzio grew so worried that he took her firmly by the shoulders.

  “Maddalena, do you realize what you are saying? If Arnaldo knows a secret which could ruin Philip IV, then as far as the King of France is concerned, the Pope is precisely the person in the world who must know it! He went as far as having a bishop arrested to keep him in check; and we ought only to God that the old man has kept his mouth shut! Whatever it is, it is extremely dangerous. Do not meddle, do you understand me?”

  “But Crescenzio, I only wanted to…”

  “Little sister, I know you are truly fond of Arnaldo, but he is a man full of shadows. Many swear that he is a magician and a sorcerer. I don’t believe it myself, but you must admit that he is of no use to us, given that he is reluctant to teach the greater part of his art and is always alone, closed up in himself like an oyster. Now because of that secret he has even become a thorn in the Pope’s side. Perhaps His Holiness does not even realize the danger, perhaps his combative temperament is seduced by the idea of ​​hosting the old man here to keep the king of France on tenterhooks. In any case, Arnaldo’s stay in the Vatican carries great risks, and getting him out of the way can only be for the good!”

  With an angry gesture, she wriggled out of his grasp.

  “You are horrible, Crescenzio! And envious, because the Catalan is sympathetic towards me. Instead, you inspire suspicion. You treat him with such diffidence and you look at him as if he were some poor man suffering from senile dementia…”

  Crescenzio did not reply, but his arched eyebrow spoke clearly. Arnaldo da Villanova had a disturbing aspect to say the least. He wore only un-dyed linen, like the ascetic followers of Muhammad, his hair and even his beard were gathered in braids and he walked leaning on a long ebony stick studded with strange insignia and, what was worse, surmounted by a jackal head that resembled some fearsome pagan idol. Looking at the old man, it was hard to say whether he was a Saracen ascetic or perhaps one of those ministers who surround the Great Khan of the Mongols which one saw in the miniatures brought by missionaries returning from China. He certainly did not have the composed, trustworthy air of a university professor.

  “Come on!” he ordered his sister. “And watch yourself, Maddalena. A single wrong word and I swear I’ll send you back to Salerno to study in the convent!”

  She turned away from him in annoyance. Once Arnaldo had gone, she would feel no regret at the idea of leaving Rome, where she had no friends or distractions. In Salerno there were the other daughters of St. George, who teased her unsparingly, but at least there the nuns treated her like a princess because she was the niece of His Holiness. And above all, there was Gaita.

  In Salerno, Maddalena wore the chaste dress of the lady doctor with her hair wrapped in a turban and a strip of veil drawn over her face in the manner of the Saracen women; in that disguise, she followed Gaita and the other disciples in her periodic trips towards the port. That was where the boats loaded with fragrant spices arrived and where the merchants with oriental accents explained to them how to use the best drugs, the ones which were rarest and hardest to find.

  Thanks to her teachings, Maddalena could recognize every species of medicinal herb both cultivated and wild, and she knew how to arrange them in concentric rings in the garden according to their virtues and the order of climates. Because the onion is moist and warm and the garlic hot and dry, while the jasmine flowers should be picked in the middle of the night, because the glow of the day weakens their scent. Gaita was a small, modest, industrious woman. She had a reassuring smell of beeswax, olive oil
and silver fir resin, the ingredients of a pomade that she constantly put on the cracked skin of his hands, which were never idle for a minute at a time. She did not merely instruct her: she had inculcated in her the gift of modesty and of tenderness towards those who suffer, initiating her into the religious custody of the dearest memories.

  In Rome, though, Maddalena had nothing that gave her joy except for that strange old man who was so grumpy with everyone, yet who, when he looked stealthily at her, seemed to be filled with tenderness. Perhaps it was because he considered her a kind of – a page that was still white and unspoiled upon which a teacher is free to write what he wants. Virgin wax to shape in one’s hands to one’s own liking.

  Or perhaps, the weakness that Arnaldo had for her was due to something else. At heart, Maddalena was just like him: it was demonstrated by the fact that for years she had experienced all those strange dreams where she was visited by people with lost expressions on their faces, looking like tortured souls seeking someone to help them obtain justice. And often she discovered that they truly were unquiet souls, men and women who had died a violent death and were unable to completely leave behind this vale of tears.

  Arnaldo da Villanova had perhaps sensed that she possessed a kind of small secret window through which she communicated with the invisible.

  Now her brothers were trying to send the Catalan to Salerno; well so be it! Maddalena was determined to follow the old man. To hell with the prospect of getting married: she would find a way to be sent back there.

  They stopped. They had arrived in front of the palisade, as high as three men standing on one another’s shoulders, which Arnaldo had built to protect his garden, making it impassable and inaccessible to all. The first time she had found herself in front of this formidable bulwark, Maddalena had judged it to be a genuine folly to build such a barricade for plants; now she knew the old scientist’s reasons, though, and found herself perfectly in agreement with him. Most of the rare species grown there contained miraculous therapeutic qualities, but very little of them was needed – a smidgeon more than necessary and they could cause death.

  “We understand each other, then,” said Crescenzio, with a vaguely threatening tone, “keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking!”

  VII

  Arnaldo da Villanova had not slept a wink that night. Or the night before, nor yet the night before that. Those three Hebrew letters tormented him and gave him no respite. Now a new day was dawning and perhaps the light would bring him the gift of second sight. He took a firebrand from the hearth and with it lit three lamps, burning grains of incense and filling the air with the vibrations of that blue smoke, the mystical odour that carries the soul towards spiritual heights and captures divine benevolence. He opened the chest of secret books – the ones containing the wisdom of David and Solomon.

  That young girl and her strange story. Those three mysterious letters that the wise Jew called to hear her had written on her forehead. They formed a certain word: , the Truth. And how could he ignore the mystical sense of that word?

  The divine Abulafia, the rabbi Giuda Barzilli, Eleazar of Worms, the entire tradition of the Kabbalists agreed on the power of that sequence of letters, the heart of the ritual with which a living being is evoked from death and from the mud which is called Golem. It was necessary to dig a hole in the ground which must be filled with virgin earth that had never been turned by the plow, and that land must then be levelled and the three sacred letters traced over it. inscribed upon the forehead of those obedient statues shaped into human form to serve the wise. The Truth, the , that Supreme Word with which the Almighty, following infinite combinations, had created the universe. All it took was for the rabbi to remove the first letter, the , to change the word into , which means dead. The statue suddenly loses its vital breath, crumbles, and returns to the brute clay from which it was made.

  Thus at least the ancient scriptures claim, but it was necessary to verify that the creation of the Golem from the earth was not in reality a metaphor, an allegory for the manner in which the wise man can restore life to the dying using the invisible forces of God, or perhaps those of darkness.

  That must have been what happened with the little girl; an expert Kabbalist had awakened the pope’s niece from a near-death state. By tearing away what the Kabbalists called ‘the Three Veils of Negative Existence’, he had merged his will with the divine intellect. That explained why the girl had received a visit from the dead in a dream: in its abrupt return to this earth, her soul had not entirely detached from the afterlife, and some small passage remained open. That was why she knew the names of the ten Sephirot, the omnipotent words with which God had built the universe out of nothing.

  She couldn’t understand their meaning, of course, but she pronounced them perfectly, because the Sephirot dwelled in her soul.

  Discovering this had been traumatic for Arnaldo. He had a spiritual treasure in front of him – a continent that overflowed with wealth, where man had never set foot. Maddalena Caetani was like virgin wax that he could mould at will – the perfect apprentice, the perfect vase into which he could pour all his knowledge.

  But she was female, damn it!

  The old man shook his head bitterly. Nothing happens by chance: there was a reason why this had happened. But he had no idea what it was. In front of him was exactly what he had been seeking in vain, a pupil of pure and worthy spirit; but that chosen spirit had been given to a woman, who by her very nature was inferior to the male and therefore undeserving of completing the initiatory journey.

  Why was God so cruel? Why did he taunt him so?

  Someone was knocking on the door. The Catalan peeked through the peephole to see if it was the two of them: yes, it was.

  Soon the anxiety his doubts provoked would finally be given an answer.

  “Arnaldo, Averroè claims that burning a plague doctor’s mask in the streets of a stricken city can drive the disease out of the air. What do you think?”

  There was a strangely skeptical fervour in the tone with which Crescenzio Caetani had asked that question. The boy was clearly trying to provoke him. Arnaldo da Villanova looked at him askance.

  “I know that theory,” he replied in a neutral tone. “There are many of them, to tell the truth.”

  The boy cleared his throat, and so doing removed all his doubts. Yes, the question had been rhetorical.

  “And do you know a safe remedy against crippling diseases? I am thinking in particular of those which are handed down from father to son. Just in the way a throne is handed down. These hereditary evils are a drama for anyone, but for a ruling house they are truly catastrophic.”

  Arnaldo stared at him in astonishment and said nothing. Crescenzio decided that the old man must want to hear more, before coming to the matter that interested him.

  “Maestro Arnaldo, your cures have restored my uncle the Pope to health. He is infinitely grateful. Unfortunately, the king of France is stubbornly demanding your return to Paris, and in order to secure it has even arrested the bishop of Pamiers. I’m afraid you understand.”

  “Of course I understand! The king of France is shamefully blackmailing His Holiness. And using me to do it.”

  Crescenzio nodded with sincere regret.

  “I am glad you have intuited this,” he murmured. “And you will understand the unfortunate situation in which the Pope now finds himself. His Holiness is very grateful to you, as he has never received better care than from you, but the situation has become rather difficult for him. By staying in the Vatican, you will damage him.”

  “And so what should I do, in your opinion? Let’s hear it!”

  Crescenzio furrowed his brow. Whatever it was that the king of France wanted, Arnaldo had no intention of giving him it. The old man seemed absolutely immune to his cautious approach, so at that point, the boy thought, he had better try the second way.

  “Maybe you should go to Salerno, ,” he suggested. “The king of Naples begged my brother Francesco to ask
you for this favour. It would only be for a certain period, of course.”

  The old man’s face grew dark with disdain.

  “I knew it right away,” he said bitterly. “When you came here to my house that day with that laughable lie about the drug for the king of France! The truth is that your brother wants to get me away from the Curia, and I know very well where the idea came from! Cardinal Caetani has been persuaded by requests from the papal doctors. They detest me because my cures have succeeded where theirs have failed, and for that they cannot forgive me. But what can I do if they are a bunch of scoundrels?”

  Crescenzio took a deep breath. It was a sacrosanct truth that the doctors of the Pontifical College hated Catalan and continually sought ways to push him away from the Pope, but it was necessary to play both ends against the middle.

  “Master, I have only the greatest respect for your medical ability. You will admit, however, that there is something rather… in the therapies you apply.”

  “Unusual? There is nothing unusual about the cures with which I freed His Holiness from the terrible pains that afflicted him. You study medicine, you should know! The Pope’s kidney had moved from its natural location. I built him a leather belt containing a large piece of gold, and when the belt is fastened up, the golden block brings the kidney back to its position and restores its function.”

  “Certainly, but…” Crescenzio hesitated. “That golden block, as you called it, was engraved with strange symbols and written in an unknown language. It is an astrological seal and heals by harnessing the power of the sun. Giovanni da Capua, who is a converted Jew, claims those signs are symbols of the Kabbalah. The same ones that certain Andalusian Jews use.”

  Arnaldo was red with anger.

  “Giovanni da Capua is an ignorant fool!” He thundered. “Anyway, I see that I was not mistaken: the papal doctors have instigated Francesco Caetani against me, and now he will convince the pope to chase me away. I am to become a hostage of the King of Naples.”