The Medici Seal

by Theresa Breslin

  ‘Indeed, Father Benedict. But death can be delayed. Surely your work in this hospital must show you that?’

  ‘When the Divine Creator calls you to Him, then your time here is done. No mere mortal can change that.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ my master persisted, ‘it cannot but be a good thing to help prolong life.’

  ‘You cannot cheat death. God has ordained the time and the place. The Bible says, You know not the day, nor the hour when thy soul is required of thee.’

  ‘I do not strive to thwart the plans of the great Creator,’ replied the Maestro. ‘Research begets knowledge, and knowledge is beneficial to all.’

  ‘One could say that we are not intended to know too much. Man ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and was banished from the Garden of Eden. Knowledge can be dangerous.’

  Knowledge can be dangerous.

  This was the first time I heard that phrase uttered. I was to think of it again when its truth was proved to me most barbarously.

  My master gestured with his hands but did not reply.

  The monk slowly folded the official documents and handed them back to the Maestro. He took one of the torches from its bracket on the wall and indicated for us to follow him.

  Chapter Nine

  WE ENTERED THE mortuary.

  Along the cloister. Down many steps.

  The room we arrived in was subterranean, with a low arched ceiling and a flagged floor. It was desperately cold. Halfway up the wall was a counter which ran round the room. Under it were brooms, buckets, mops and cleaning materials. Upon it, tidily stacked, were jars of unguents, spice boxes and folded burial cloths. Rough trestles and boards were stacked to one side. Two tables had been made up in the middle of the room. Sheets covered whatever lay on top of these.

  ‘Our recent dead have been collected by their relatives before sunset. Except one man and woman. We believe these two will not be claimed.’

  The linen shroud sheets were newly laundered. Father Benedict was careful of his charges and treated each body with respect. It is clear that the hospitaller monks of the Holy Compassion did not measure out their mercy as some other religious did.

  ‘Here is a female who died after giving birth yesterday.’

  ‘Is it possible to see her?’

  The monk led us to the first table. He uncovered the head. ‘This young woman was a prostitute. She worked the streets by the river, mainly with the traffic passing through, bargemen, muleteers and such.’ He paused. ‘It is very likely she is infected.’

  The Maestro looked at the young woman. Her hair had been combed and now lay loose on each side of her head. But it was still damp, as if matted with the sweat of the labours of childbirth. Her face was thin with starvation.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Her babe, stillborn?’ The monk indicated the little bundle tucked in at the girl’s side.

  My master glanced at me, hesitated, shook his head.

  The monk gently re-covered the girl. He moved to another table.

  ‘A vagrant? Found half dead in the mountains.’

  This old man had been discovered collapsed at the side of the road by a hill shepherd bringing his flock to lower pastures for the winter. The shepherd felt life still flickering in the ancient body and, out of pity, had hoisted the man across his back and carried him six miles to the hospital. The old man had died in his sleep only this morning.

  ‘What illness claimed his life?’

  The monk shrugged. ‘He complained of nothing specific, just a general weakness. His heartbeat was not strong. After a while it stopped altogether. He was very old. It may be that in itself was the cause.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Maestro at once. ‘I would like to examine him. If I may?’

  The monk nodded. He heard the quickening of interest in the Maestro’s voice. There was faint displeasure on his face.

  My master did not seem to notice. It was something I was discovering about him. He could quite quickly become detached from the nuances of common human emotion. Particularly if he was engaged in some aspect of a scientific problem or research. His work excluded any consideration for the feelings of those around him. And he rarely excused himself or justified his behaviour. It was as if he was compelled to focus all his energy on one subject and was unaware that others did not follow his obsession.

  ‘May I begin my work, or is there anything more you have to do to this man?’

  ‘They have all been shriven.’

  ‘And washed?’

  The monk regarded us coldly. ‘In this hospital we do not wait until our patients die before we clean them. The brothers, and the good sisters who help us, wash all sick on arrival, no matter what the disease.’

  ‘Forgive me, Father.’ At last the Maestro caught the tone of the monk’s voice. ‘I did not mean a slur upon your hospital.’

  He lifted the leather bag from my shoulder and rested it on the counter. He opened it up and took out a solid bundle wrapped in chamois leather. He unwrapped it.

  I saw the monk frown.

  As it was laid flat I could see that the length of chamois had been constructed with various-sized pockets stitched inside the roll. Each of these slots contained a knife. I know about knives. I am Gypsy. But knives like this I had never seen. Some were long bladed, some were short. Slender shafts curved away from the handle while others resembled daggers with wicked points. All were sharp, with the keenest cutting edge. The handles were shaped both for those who favoured right and left grip. Specially made for the Maestro’s own fingers to hold. Particular for the purpose. Wrapped in a linen cloth was a small whetstone and beside it a wineskin which held some water.

  The monk cleared his throat. ‘I will have this body removed to another room where you may work undisturbed.’

  ‘Of course.’ The master rolled up the leather knife pouch and tucked it under his arm. ‘Thank you, Father Benedict. May I also have a second table set up there, please?’ He lifted the bag and turned to me. ‘Matteo, bring the lantern and one of those slop pails from under the counter.’

  The monk paused before he left us. ‘The man’s name. You might wish to know. It is Umberto.’

  Two attendants came. They carried the table with the body of the old man, Umberto, still laid upon it, to a nearby smaller room. There they set up another trestle table, with a large candelabra, a basin, a jug of clean water and some cloths. My master gave them a few coins and they left.

  We were alone with the cadaver.

  I was shivering.

  My master bent down. His face was on a level with my own. He put a hand on each of my shoulders.

  ‘Listen to me, Matteo. There is nothing to fear from death. The spirit has departed. This man has been shriven by a holy priest. His soul has gone to meet its Maker. This’ – he indicated the body on the table – ‘is but the husk wherein the spirit dwelled. It is of no use to the man who once lived and breathed within it.’

  My eyes slid sideways from his steady gaze. This did not sound like the true teaching of the Catholic Church. Even I, an ignorant traveller, knew that. The soul is entwined within the body, and though the spirit flees on death, do we not need the body for our resurrection?

  ‘I will not take any human parts away from here,’ the Master reassured me. ‘Umberto will be buried whole, for the Second Coming of Christ.’

  But I could see this man’s hand protruding from under his shroud sheet. And it was not just the spirit world that sent fear shuddering through me. His nails were dirty and long, yellowed and gnarled, like the tusk of an old boar. They reminded me of another, Sandino, who grew his thumbnails long and sharpened them into great horny claws. Earlier this year, in Ferrara, I had seen him use them to gouge a man’s eyes out.

  The Maestro drew back the cover.

  I saw the dead body. All of it.

  The face.

  The chest.

  The torso.

  The tufts of pubic hair. His penis flaccid between his legs.

&n
bsp; The Maestro followed my gaze. ‘Such an insignificant-looking organ. And yet the source of much misery.’ He held his knife in his hand.

  For a moment I thought . . .

  He glanced at my face. ‘Don’t be so worried, Matteo.’ He pulled the sheet back up to the waist. ‘At the moment I am seeking the cause of death in old age. I want to look at the inner workings of his body, those parts close to his heart. I might be able to determine why it ceased to function.’

  The Maestro put his leather satchel on the second table. From this bag he took out many things: another smaller lamp, measuring instruments, paper, chalk.

  He unrolled the pouch of knives.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘USE THE SLOP bucket and piss on this.’

  In the mortuary my master handed me a pad of cloth.

  ‘Soak it, then squeeze it a little so that it is not dripping wet.’

  I stared at him. ‘Why?’

  He put his head on one side. ‘You ask why, Matteo. That’s good. I will tell you. It’s for you to use as a breathing mask.’

  A shock went through me. I managed to stammer, ‘I will find the privy and do it there.’

  He smiled. ‘Very well. I’ll explain more when you return.’

  My hands were shaking as I held the cloth and tried to piss over it into the drain.

  When the Maestro first took me in and fed me I considered him a kindly person. Now I began to think I had fallen in with a madman. To a true traveller it is grievously impure to touch any kind of human excrement. Body waste is to be disposed of away from the dwelling place, avoiding any contact that might lead you to ingest it, by touch or via the air. House-dwellers might wear expensive clothes but they were wont to use a piss pot, then, directly afterwards, without washing their hands, lift a piece of food to their mouth, eat, and go on to lick their fingers! It made my gorge rise to think about it. He expected me to breathe my own piss through my mouth! I could not do it. In any case my organ would not function properly to wet the pad he had given me.

  I thought again of running away. But how could I manage this? Almost certainly the porter at the gate would not let me pass freely to the street outside the wall. He would question me as to why I was leaving alone, perhaps even alert my master. Then the Maestro would demand an explanation. What excuse could I give that would not make him view me with suspicion? He, with his great learning, might be aware of travellers’ rules regarding body functions and deduce the reason I had acted so strangely.

  In any case, if I did escape from this place I would have to move away from Averno and the surrounding region. And I felt safe here. It was some weeks since my master had plucked me from the waterfall and restored me to life. With each passing day I grew more confident that Sandino had moved out of this area, either thinking that I’d escaped his hand, or, more likely, that I had drowned on the day he had struck me and I had fallen into the river.

  On considering all of this I also saw that I was safer with the household of the Maestro, despite his odd ways. At present he was in the employ of Cesare Borgia and carried his pass. And thus I too was under the protection of the Borgia and residing mainly within his estates. It was, I believed, the one place where Sandino, knowing that I knew he was in the pay of the Borgia, would not look for me. He would think that I would try to put as much distance as possible between myself and any Borgia connection. I was more secure now than if I were out in the hills or the woods, where the brigand leader might be hunting me with men and dogs to retrieve that which I had stolen from him.

  My water splurged out from me in a golden stream onto the cloth. I closed my eyes as I wrung out the extra moisture. With great reluctance I brought the sodden pad back to the Maestro.

  He had been busy while I was gone and had emptied his leather bag and arranged its contents in a methodical line upon the second trestle table. Notebooks, paper, pen, ink, pencil, charcoal, chalks, lengths of cord, bottles and flasks of liquid, powders and ointments. In addition to the knives there were technical instruments, strange-shaped scissors and a small saw.

  I poured clean water from the jug into the bowl, plunged in my hands, then rubbed them furiously on a cloth. I emptied the bowl into the slop bucket. I saw the Maestro watch my actions while he encased the pad in a linen cloth and shaped it to the lower part of my face.

  ‘Breathe in through your nose and then out via your mouth. Your nasal passages help filter impurities from the air.’

  ‘I cannot breathe my own piss!’

  ‘Your urine is clean. It’s your own waste matter. It cannot harm you.’ He laughed. ‘I also find it helps overcome the smell of the dead.’

  ‘Then why do you not wear such a thing?’

  ‘I did in the past, but it hampered my vision. Anyway I find that as I work I forget about the smell. Curious, isn’t it? That your mind can become so occupied with a subject that your senses fail to register its proper effect. But see!’ He opened his mouth and breathed out a huge sigh. A puff of white mist immediately formed in front of his face. ‘It’s so cold in this room that the body will be slow in decomposing. We should not be troubled with rancid smells tonight.’

  He secured the pad around my nose and mouth. I gagged as he did it but he tied it very tightly with cords wound round the back of my head.

  ‘The acid in your urine will help protect you from any ill elements released into the air when I open up this body.’ Then with a gleam of laughter he added, ‘And the sting in your eyes means that you should not faint.’

  I noticed that he had packed his satchel with several candles and had lit these and set them up around the table. They were not cheap tallow candles but ones made from good beeswax, which burned clearer and perfumed the air. The heavier outside lantern he had set down on the floor. The smaller lamp with a glass shield that he had brought with him he passed to me.

  ‘You must hold this lamp near to my hands, Matteo. You’re exactly the right height for this. It’s important that I have light when I work. It’s not an accident that I asked you to accompany me tonight. I chose you because I have seen that you are capable and strong minded. Hold it close and steady. I know you can do this.’

  Thus with praise and trust he bound me to him, tightly, as the cords bound the pad around my face.

  He pulled the stopper from a little bottle and dripped some sharp-smelling liquid onto a cloth. With this he swabbed down the man’s chest.

  Then he selected a knife.

  With force he cut into the man’s skin. First he made two cuts in a V-shape. He did this by inserting his blade into the front of each side of the man’s shoulder and carving down and into the centre so that these two cuts met at the base of his neck.

  The skin opened quite easily, which did not surprise me. As soon as he began I could tell that this was not the first time he had done this. There is an artistry to this type of work that is part technical, part intuitive. My grandmother could skin a rabbit in half a minute. And the skin of this man, Umberto, was old, with a consistency more like parchment than vellum. It split easily under the knife.

  Next the Maestro made a long incision from the point of the V. He sliced right down to the man’s navel. Then, selecting a different tool, he began to cut away the skin from the flesh to peel it back on each side.

  Not so long ago I had been in the marketplace of a town near Imola when a man was brought there to be flayed. He’d been implicated in some resistance when Cesare Borgia had swept into Urbino and sent Duke Guidobaldo running for his life. Il Valentino had captured Urbino, and anybody thought to be helping Duke Guidobaldo must be punished. As an example to others this prisoner was to be publicly executed. But in the way of the governor of the Romagna, Remiro de Lorqua, it was decided that he should be tortured first. The streets around the market were so crammed with people I had been unable to avoid the sight of the man’s body being stripped back to reveal the living flesh beneath. His screams and cries for mercy penetrated above the noise of the crowds. In contrast the old man,
Umberto, lay here on the table unprotesting, dignified in death.

  I saw then, suddenly, that this was why Father Benedict, the mortuary monk, had told us the man’s name. It was so that we would be respectful to the person of Umberto, who, although dead, occupied his own place in creation.

  I watched my master work. He peeled back the skin on both sides, and the ribs with their coating of human tissues lay revealed. Again he used a swab, this time to wipe down these exposed parts. Then he took a little saw and attacked the ribcage. It might seem a paradox, for to dissect a man is indeed an act of butchery, but the Maestro did this with grace and consideration.

  There was noise when he began to saw through the bones at each side. It was unlike any I had ever heard before. More cruel, it seemed, than when a dog tears at a hunk of meat, more visceral than the sound of a hungry man ripping the limbs from a chicken.

  Blood.

  My head swam. I gasped. The acrid smell of my own piss caught the back of my throat and I coughed and regained my senses.

  My master smiled at me and looked directly into my eyes. ‘The dizziness will pass,’ he whispered. ‘Be steady.’

  I held fast.

  He reached into the well of the body. Then he became quite still. He was staring at something he held in his hand. A pulpy brownish organ, heavy and plump.

  It was Umberto’s heart. The flesh quivered. My own heart trembled in response.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look, Matteo.’

  I swayed, but he did not notice.

  ‘This is the heart. Only hours ago it was pulsing as ours is now.’

  I nodded to show I understood.

  ‘It is not so great, is it?’

  ‘But it is,’ I said, voice muffled by the mask.

  ‘And yet, without it a man cannot live.’ He continued as if he had not heard my response.

  I saw that he was not really talking to me, more musing aloud.

  ‘Yes, it is vital, because injuring it means death, whereas losing a limb can be survived . . .’

  I knew this. A man can exist without an arm or a leg. I saw a man once with neither arms nor legs. He made his living telling stories. Propped up in a chair and wrapped in an old blanket, he would tell tales at dusk beside the great fountain in the public gardens of Bologna.