‘Perhaps not all of him would have been burned,’ answered Gerardo, without turning round. ‘And what remained would have gravely damaged our order. The accusation of adoring the Devil that has been levelled against us would have been well substantiated.’
It was the second time that he had referred to witchcraft, but the corpse spread out on the table had nothing strange about it, apart from the amputated hands. The face conveyed an expression of stupor more than horror. Some dried blood in the short hair at the nape of the neck suggested that he had been attacked from behind.
‘So,’ said Mondino, ‘You found this man murdered and left naked in your house. You dressed him, set fire to the house and fled. How were you thinking of getting rid of his body?’ Gerardo opened his mouth wide, surprised. ‘How did you know that he was naked?’ then he nodded. ‘Oh, I understand, the tunic.’
The fact that his surprise lasted so short a time slightly annoyed the doctor. But it was not the moment to worry about such nonsense. He had to carry on talking and hope that the grave-diggers would be there soon.
‘Exactly, the tunic,’ said Mondino. ‘It is stained with blood and yet there are no holes, a sign that the wound to the chest was inflicted on this man when he was undressed. And perhaps,’ he continued, moving to the side to get a better view, ‘When he was already dead or had fainted due to the blow to his head.’
‘Your perspicacity is worthy of your fame,’ said Gerardo.
‘You already know everything before you’ve even examined him.’
Despite himself, Mondino felt pleasure at a compliment that he sensed was sincere and he rebuked himself silently. Vanity was one of his greatest defects.
‘You have referred to devilry more than once,’ he said.
‘What is so strange about that wound?’
Gerardo turned to look at him, with an expression that was both fearful and resolved. ‘See for yourself, magister,’ he said. Quickly but respectfully he lifted up the dead man’s chest and pulled the tunic over his head. As soon as Mondino saw the chest wound his interest grew tenfold. He asked Gerardo to step back and stand between the benches of the lecture hall and, without losing sight of the templar, he approached the table and ran a finger of his free hand along the cold skin at the edge of the wound.
‘The person who did this knows how to cut flesh and bone,’ he said with assurance. ‘It took me months of practice to make such precise incisions.’
Under the livid skin, the sternum had been sawn lengthways and the ribs broken at the sides. To the left, there was a small triangular hole. Having stunned him with the blow to his head, the murderer must have stabbed the heart with an awl or stiletto, then got down to producing his work of art. It looked as though the man’s chest had been turned into a small casket and one had only to open the door to see what it contained.
‘I closed it,’ said Gerardo, confirming his thoughts. ‘When I found him, stretched out on my bed, his chest was wide open like an obscene mouth. And inside ...’
He stopped short, won over by an emotion that could have been horror or pain. Mondino was no longer thinking of the grave-diggers who were about to arrive, or the fact that Gerardo might be a dangerous criminal on the loose. Now he only wanted to know the secret of the dead templar. He rolled his sleeves up to the elbows and put his fingers between the edges of the wound. The idea of a tabernacle came to mind. He banished the thought as sacrilegious, but then it came to him with lightning intuition that perhaps this was the mysterious murderer’s very intention. To make a mockery of religion by building a tabernacle out of flesh and bone in the chest of his victim.
However, he couldn’t waste any more time. In the room, there fell an unnatural silence in which any tiny movement sounded like the crack of a whip. With the greatest care, he moved the sides of the wound apart and opened the two strips of flesh in the chest.
He instinctively jumped backwards, giving a cry of horror that sounded all the more anguished in the empty hall.
Looking round, he stared at Gerardo, who was standing behind the bench almost as if it were a normal anatomy lesson, but there was no sign of surprise or derision in his blue eyes. Just an attentive look, as though he knew exactly what the other man was feeling.
Mondino wanted to say something but abhorrence silenced him. Taking control of himself, he went back to the table and looked at the tormented breast again, without giving in to the impulse to turn away. What he saw, between the dried blood and the broken bones, took his breath away, but in a certain sense calmed him down somewhat. It was ghastly, yet perfectly explicable.
‘Someone wanted to have some cruel fun with this poor fellow,’ he said, in a strained tone that was meant to sound relaxed. ‘And I agree with you that to desecrate a human body in this way makes one think of trade with the Devil. The murderer wanted to transform the chest into a blasphemous tabernacle, sculpting a heart of iron to substitute the one of flesh and putting it in the place of the holy pyx with the communion wafers.’
‘It’s not a sculpture,’ said Gerardo, in a voice so low that Mondino thought he hadn’t heard properly. ‘What?’
‘The heart. It’s not a sculpture. Have a better look.’ Mondino looked again at the man’s gaping breast and saw clearly what in reality he had noticed before but had blotted out because he couldn’t justify it.
The heart in Angelo da Piczano’s breast was a real human heart, transformed into a block of metal.
It couldn’t be otherwise, given the precision with which it was welded to the veins and arteries connecting it to the other organs. There was absolute continuity, with no joins to be seen. It was a work of art that reflected a perfection more divine than human, but twisted and oriented towards death rather than life. At that moment Mondino did not doubt that he was contempLating the work of the evil one.
He turned to Gerardo. All the certainty he had felt before deserted him, leaving a sense of parching thirst that prevented him from speaking. Hurriedly, he brought the four pedestals with the lamps closer to the table. He had to see more clearly. He had to know. To think. He was no longer interested in keeping an eye on Gerardo. He only had eyes for that open thorax, full of dried blood, the now motionless organs devoid of the glimmer of life, and that heart converted into an abomination.
The perpetrator of the revolting spectacle was human, of that Mondino had no doubt. You could see the marks left by the teeth of the saw on the bones of the thorax, and the Devil, as far as he knew, wouldn’t use such crude instruments. But the murderer had certainly acted from an evil impulse. Why? What did he hope to accomplish?
All of a sudden he looked up, fearing that Gerardo would take advantage of his inattention to try to overpower him. But the young man hadn’t moved. He was staring at him with his hands resting on the sloping surface of the desk where Mondino usually put his study books and the sheets of paper on which he made notes.
‘I won’t do anything to harm you, Master,’ Gerardo said, reading his thoughts. ‘If I had wanted to, I would already have disarmed you.’
‘Try, and you’ll get a surprise,’ countered Mondino, but without hostility in his voice.
He was distracted by a thought that made his insides vibrate with curiosity and fear. It was clear to his scientific mind that the transformation of Angelo da Piczano’s heart was not the result of the shadowy spell of a witch, but the much more concrete art of alchemy. Although a distorted alchemy, it was true. None of the treatises that he had read during his medical studies had referred to the possibility of converting human blood into metal. At the time, Mondino had even got hold of a copy of Liber Aneguemis, the Latin translation of an Arabic manuscript on the dark side of alchemy, but not even that made mention of such a horrible thing.
And yet, if he could only lay his hands on the formula and apply it to a corpse, the entire vascular system passing through the organs and muscles of
the human body, which stubbornly escaped his every effort with the dissecting knife, would be revealed with complete clarity, like a map, down to the smallest detail. And he would be able to copy it into the anatomical treatise that he was preparing, for the benefit of medical science and all physicians of the present and future.
He turned to the templar, who had not moved and was peering at him intensely. Mondino had the distinct sensation that he was in front of another person, someone very different from the absent-minded student whom he had known from the first.
‘What would you do if I decided not to denounce you?’ he asked.
The young man allowed himself a slight smile. It was clear that he had understood Mondino’s interest in the corpse and the secret that it contained, and thought he could turn this to his advantage. ‘Magister, help me to get rid of Angelo’s body. I will have a mass said for his soul, then I will dedicate myself completely to finding his murderer,’ he said, firmly, as if Mondino had already made his decision.
And in a sense, thought the scientist with amazement, that was exactly how it was. He continued to tell himself that it was ignoble and dangerous to conceal a murder, but given that Gerardo meant to catch the perpetrator anyway, justice would be done in the end. He thought of the dangers to which he would be exposing himself and perhaps his family if he were caught. He thought of the office of magister of the Studium that he held, for which he had made so many sacrifices. But every objection melted away like snow before a fire. For the dream had taken possession of his mind.
Suddenly, without thinking about it too much but in the full knowledge that they were rash words that he would later regret, he looked Gerardo in the eye, laid down the knife on the table and said, ‘Very well, I’ll help you.’
Before he could add anything else there were two loud knocks at the door. A coarse voice shouted, ‘Open up, in the name of the Holy Inquisition!’
Gerardo looked at him, afraid but motionless, waiting to see what happened.
ContempLating the man at the other end of the long oak table that almost divided the room in two, Remigio Sensi felt himself transported back into the distant past, to a time when he had not yet returned to Bologna from the Kingdom of Aragon, and was not yet an established banker.
He had first met Hugues de Narbonne in the city of Tortosa, on an occasion that he did not like to remember. Then as now, the Knights of the temple were among his best clients. They often needed money to buy a new horse or a present for a lover, and they certainly couldn’t sign a letter of credit to their order for loans of that nature.
Remigio charged them a low rate of interest so as not to provoke the wrath of the Archbishop of Tarragona. In fact any loan with interest was defined usury, but the Church knew that the templars were necessary to wrench the south of spain away from the moors, so closed its eyes to the activities of the moneylenders.
Nonetheless, Hugues de Narbonne had never had need of Remigio’s services. He had been Commander of the Vault of Acre, responsible for the templars’ vessels and all the merchandise carried in them, and even after the fall of Acre in 1291, he held important offices within the order. He was not lacking in money, or lovers either it seemed, despite his vow of poverty and chastity. As far as that of obedience was concerned, Remigio suspected that the Frenchman had made the vow to obey himself alone.
On the day that Hugues de Narbonne first came to see Remigio, he made it quite clear that he knew all about the banker and his affairs although they had never set eyes on one another before. Hugues had then asked Remigio in no uncertain terms to violate the confidential agreements on which he based his credibility as a money-changer and moneylender, by revealing to Hugues the names and extent of the debts of some of his clients. Naturally Remigio had refused, and Hugues had shown no scruples about beating him up in his own office and giving him a split lip. After which Hugues had explained that, if Remigio didn’t talk, a hired killer would finish him off that very night or perhaps the following. If that happened, the King’s soldiers would search his office in an effort to shed light on his death and Hugues would find a way to assist the soldiers in their investigation. So he would find out what he wanted to know in any case, and the banker would have lost his life unnecessarily. Remigio went to fetch his ledgers and showed them to Hugues.
Soon afterwards it became apparent that Hugues was using the information to reveal the Knights’ violation of their vows. Thanks to the evidence, they were found guilty of serious crimes, judged unfit to serve in the order and condemned to years of rowing in spanish galleys.
It may be that the verdict was correct or that Hugues had manipulated the whole thing to free himself of inconvenient adversaries. The point was that, due to those indiscretions, Remigio’s business underwent a collapse from which it never recovered, until he decided to return to his homeland and open a bank in Bologna.
Nowadays his clients were above all scholars at the Studium, but he had maintained contact with the Knights templar and had continued to deal with them even after their order was put on trial. The templars of Bologna who had avoided arrest came to him for loans and to negotiate in secret the sale of properties that the Church had not already confiscated. They recommended him to confrères from other cities too.
That evening, after supper, when the office had already been closed for some time, one of the two armed retainers, whom the banker employed for security purposes, had come to tell him that a traveller from Tortosa wished to see him urgently. Remigio had gone down to the hall imagining that he would find a Knight of the temple but seeing that it was Hugues de Narbonne waiting for him in the corridor he suddenly felt faint and nearly collapsed.
The Frenchman was dressed with his habitual elegance. He wore a sky-blue tunic that went down to just below the knee, following the new mode which tended continually to shorten men’s clothing, metal-grey stockings and black ankle boots. He had aged, and the curls poking out from under his floppy cap were more white than blond, but his presence was still intimidating. He was tall and robust, with a square head and cruel mouth. His forearms and hands, protruding from the sleeves of his tunic and covered in a thick fuzz of blond, recalled lion’s paws. Remigio quickly decided that it would be better to receive him and talk in private, rather than to try to send him away by force. But he told the two retainers to wait behind the door and come in quickly if he called them.
As soon as they were alone in his office, not bothering with pleasantries, Remigio said harshly, ‘Whatever the motive that has brought you this far, Messer, I will do nothing for you. Absolutely nothing.’
This time he was sure that he had the upper hand, but when the Frenchman got up, putting his fists on the table and leaning towards him, Remigio Sensi felt his breath fail him.
‘I do not need to remind you of what happened last time you denied me a favour,’ said Hugues de Narbonne, pinning him to his seat with hard grey eyes.
‘Times have changed,’ retorted Remigio, forcing himself not to show his fear. ‘Your order is on trial, your Grand Master de Molay is in prison and risks being sent to the stake, the Inquisition is looking for you. I’d only have to shout and you’d have every guard in the city on to you.’ ‘So why don’t you shout?’ challenged the Frenchman. Remigio simply looked at him, without replying. ‘I’ll tell you why you don’t,’ continued Hugues de Narbonne. ‘Even if the order of the Knights templar is on trial, the templars remain your best clients, and if it got around that you had betrayed the Commander of the Vault of Acre and had him arrested, you would lose them all. Furthermore, if you sold me to the Dominicans, I could reveal that you act as inter
Mediary in various business affairs conducted by templars who are avoiding arrest, that you know many of their hiding places and that your house is a point of reference for members of the order who are passing through the city. How do you think they would react?’
‘You would never do such a thing
to your own confrères,’ answered Remigio, in a voice now deprived of any strength whatever.
This time it was the Frenchman who looked at him without speaking and that look was more eloquent than an entire discourse. It was clear that Hugues de Narbonne was ready to sacrifice anybody in order to achieve his aims.
At that moment there was a knock at the door. Remigio said, ‘Come in’ and Fiamma entered. She had heard that he had a client with him and, despite the late hour, had come to take dictation from him, as always.
She was dressed in the inconspicuous manner that befitted a girl of her age. She wore house slippers and a simple gown of light wool that disguised her curves. But she must have already undone her hair for the night and not had time to comb it again, as her blonde locks, held only by a hair band, floated free around her shoulders. She held her head partially turned away from them, in such a way that the visitor could only see the healthy side, and Remigio did not miss the look that Hugues de Narbonne gave her.
‘I do not need your help, my child,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘And anyway, we have nearly finished.’
Fiamma seemed surprised. Her dark eyes, made all the deeper by the contrast with her blonde hair, turned to the visitor with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Remigio almost physically perceived the excitement that such a direct glance provoked in Hugues de Narbonne, and his disgust for the Frenchman, buried by the years of separation, returned to break open like an egg brooded over for a long time.
‘I said, you may leave us,’ reiterated the banker, abruptly turning to Fiamma.
‘As you please,’ she answered, in a compliant tone that both her demeanour and her look fully contradicted. She made a slight curtsey in the direction of the guest, showing her full face for a second, and then left, closing the door silently.
Inquisition Page 2