‘Here we are,’ he said to himself, recognising the place from the description that some of the labourers had given him.
The house had solid walls, albeit a bit lopsided, and outside there was a yard paved with irregular stones, a saddled donkey tied to a post and a cane chicken run, certainly not safe from foxes. A wisp of smoke was rising from the chimney pot, which the wind almost bent into a right angle. The garden was full of plants but invaded by weeds. As a whole, the dwelling produced a strange impression, as if someone knew the proper way to do things, but did not have time to do them. Which was absurd, given that if there were one thing there seemed to be no lack of, in that place miles from the uproar of the city, it was time.
‘Hail!’ shouted Mondino, at the top of his voice. ‘Anyone home?’
He waited, but no one appeared. Only the donkey turned to look at him with mild curiosity, making its wooden saddle shake.
‘I’ve come to speak to mistress Adia!’ he shouted again. He started to go up to the door, but had only taken three or four steps, when from behind the house there appeared two enormous dogs. They had iron-grey coats falling in thick pleats around their eyes and snouts, and they stood watching him in silence with an expression that seemed almost sad. He had seen dogs like them before, during his exile in Faenza, and the owner had explained their origin. They were an ancient breed, descendants of the great Molossers described by Columella in De Re Rustica, and they had spread throughout Europe with the Roman legions, at whose sides they fought. As a result, Mondino did not make the mistake of taking their mild behaviour for tameness, and stayed right where he was. He was sure someone was at home. Apart from the smoke coming out of the chimney, the windows were open and the door ajar. And it was impossible that his shouting had not been heard.
While he reflected on what to do next, he heard a sharp whistle, a few words in an unknown Language, and the dogs turned and trotted off, disappearing behind the house again. ‘Come in, there’s no danger,’ said a woman’s voice, in perfect vernacular.
Mondino went forward, warily. Then out of the house came a woman carrying two empty baskets. She proceeded to hang them from the donkey’s saddle, one on either side, and she turned towards him smiling.
‘I was just going out. What can I do for you?’ Mondino had imagined her old and wrinkled, but she was the opposite. Young, with amber-coloured skin and a lithe body. She wore a white silk veil on her head which, rather than covering it, set off her shiny black hair particularly well. Her shapeliness was clearly outlined by the long indigo gown she wore, and her eyes were two dark wells.
‘An alchemist gave me your name, mistress Adia,’ he said, trying to hide his surprise. ‘He told me that you are Arabic and know how to read.’ ‘So?’
A certain hardness had insinuated itself into her voice. Mondino hurriedly smiled, to placate her. ‘I’d like to show you a map with some sentences written in your tongue,’ he explained. ‘And ask you to translate them.’
‘Are you sure that you don’t want a potion to melt the resistance of a loved one or to increase the power of your loins? Almost all the men who visit my house do.’ ‘No,’ replied Mondino. ‘I came for ...’
‘For the map. There’s no need to repeat yourself, I’m not deaf.’
‘Really?’ said Mondino, who was starting to get irritated.
‘Judging from the way that you didn’t reply to my greeting when I got here, I thought that you might be a little hard of hearing.’
The woman burst into a throaty and melodious laugh. ‘I didn’t answer immediately because I was busy reading a difficult passage,’ she said. ‘And I wanted to finish it before leaving.’
Mondino was annoyed that she didn’t even seem to consider the idea of putting off her departure in order to help him. ‘Naturally I shall pay you for the disturbance, mistress,’ he said. ‘I certainly wouldn’t presume to ask you to do it gratis and for the love of God.’
‘I understand,’ answered Adia. ‘But I have an important meeting in Corticella, and I’m already late. Couldn’t you come back tomorrow?’
Mondino had never met a sorceress before, but he knew for certain that they were highly sensitive to the power of money. Perhaps she was only trying to raise the price.
‘Are you in too much of a hurry to close the door of your house behind you?’ he asked, ironically. He reached to the purse hanging from his belt. ‘Listen, I’ll give you two soldi, no more,’ he said. ‘Now, would you please have a look at this map?’
Adia Bintaba stiffened. Then she put a foot into the stirrup, leaped agilely into the saddle and looked down at him from where she sat on the donkey. ‘There’s not much to steal in my house, and anyway I don’t advise trying to enter in my absence,’ she said. ‘My dogs make good guards. As for your request, come back when you have learned some manners.’
She gave a light kick to the donkey’s side with the heel of her leather slipper and rode away without looking back.
Incredulous, Mondino watched her go. Sitting upright astride the donkey, she was even more beautiful, but he certainly hadn’t come all that way to contemplate a fine-looking woman. More time wasted, another blind alley. Perhaps Hugues de Narbonne was right, the trail of alchemy led nowhere. Now, however, it was the only one he had left.
Gerardo looked at Hugues de Narbonne without knowing what to do. The most logical thing would have been to say goodbye and walk away, but he didn’t want to do that. He had never known anyone who had lived and fought in the Holy land apart from a knight from the templar House of Ravenna, where he had taken his vows. His mind was full of stories and legends, and now he had before him the Commander of the Vault of Acre, no less. But what could he do? He could hardly invite the man back to his lodgings and ask to be regaled with tales of bravery and battles. Hugues de Narbonne would simply laugh at him, and with good reason.
It was the Frenchman who saved him from his embarrassment. As though he’d been reading his mind, Hugues said, ‘Why don’t we have supper at my house? then we could have a chat.’ He put his hand on Gerardo’s shoulder. ‘I imagine you’ve got plenty of things to ask me.’
During the meeting with the banker, Hugues had addressed Gerardo in the formal manner but now he used the more familiar second person singular. His rank in the order fully gave him the right, but Gerardo liked to think that it was a sign of intimacy and not superiority. He accepted the invitation with enthusiasm and they set off for the paper-maker’s borough, for a brief stretch walking along the canal that carried the waters of the Savena into the city. Along the way, Hugues showed himself to be an amusing conversationalist, and when they got to his house he laughed with pleasure at Gerardo’s amazement when the young templar saw the disorder that reigned in the kitchen.
‘When I rented the house I decided I didn’t want servants around,’ Hugues said. ‘For reasons of solitude. I tried to cook for myself a couple of times and then I stopped bothering. I eat at the tavern or I get them to bring meals over for me.’
He took a coin out of his bag, went to the door and whistled to two small children playing at jumping puddles at the edge of the street. The larger of the two ran over straight away and pocketed the coin with a wide grin.
‘Tell your mother to bring us something good to eat,’ said Hugues, in a stuttering vernacular, which made the small boy and Gerardo laugh.
The child ran away, while his little brother peed into the puddle he had just jumped over. Hugues closed the door. ‘His mother is the wife of the taverner on the corner,’ he said, leading Gerardo into a small room sparsely decorated with a table, chairs and a long black chest, on which two candelabra sat. ‘Nice-looking woman, very bountiful.’
Gerardo preferred to say nothing and sat down where Hugues indicated, but the Frenchman, after making himself comfortable, went on: ‘You’re thinking, How could this man betray his vows in such a shameless manner? A
m I right?’ ‘Commander, I wouldn’t dream of—’
‘Forget it, I can read your face like a book. The important question is a different one: what is a vow? Answer me.’
‘Well, it’s a solemn commitment that we take on before Christ ...’
‘Before Holy mary.’
Gerardo felt his breath fail him. He thought he had understood perfectly, but wanted confirmation. ‘What did you say?’ ‘I said, “It is a solemn commitment that we take on before Holy mary.”’
Hell’s teeth, thought Gerardo. Among the dozens of imputations against his order, he well remembered that in which the templars put the mother of Christ on a level with her son. For his own part, while honouring mary with due veneration, he had never done that. And he had thought that the accusation, like all the others, was fruit of the warped fantasy of Philip the fair, who had every reason to suppress the Knights of the temple, so as not to have to pay the enormous debts he had contracted with them.
Hugues de Narbonne seemed amused at his bewilderment. ‘Now you’re thinking that the accusations against us, which you had thought false, are in fact true.’
Gerardo shook his head, confused. ‘What am I supposed to think, Commander? to consider the Virgin mary to be equal to Christ is heresy.’
‘I was not referring to the Virgin mary. And I do not consider her equal to Christ, but above him,’ the Frenchman said, without losing his composure.
By now Gerardo had only one wish: to walk out of that house and leave the man to his heresies. The position of responsibility the Commander held, or rather, had held, given that Acre had been in the hands of the saracens for more than twenty years now, forbid Gerard from openly criticising him, but he wanted nothing more to do with him.
Hugues de Narbonne burst into a cheerful laugh. ‘Forgive me for pulling your leg,’ he said. ‘Right now your face is priceless.’
Gerardo breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I knew that you couldn’t be serious, but for a second I believed you.’
‘But I’ve never been more serious. I wasn’t apologising for what I said, but the manner in which I said it. I could have introduced the subject a little at a time, sounding you out, preparing you ... Instead I wanted to do what my master did to me, a long time ago. Now I understand why he laughed so much.’
Gerardo couldn’t make sense of his own reactions. He knew that he should get up and leave, and yet he just sat there, paralysed by the mass of questions that filled his mind. If not for the mother of Christ, for whom did the Commander reserve the title of Holy mary? Why did he speak of a master, as if those heresies were a recognised practice within the order? During his training and the preparation of his vows, Gerardo had never heard of such things. Was this secret knowledge? And if so, why had Hugues de Narbonne decided to communicate it to him, without even knowing him properly? But one issue tormented him above all the rest: did listening to this without opposing him constitute a mortal sin?
‘Listening isn’t a sin,’ said Hugues, showing once again that he could read the young man like an open book. ‘If what I’m telling you seems a heresy, incompatible with the truths of the Christian faith, you can leave and not come back. I shall still stand surety for you, and I consider you released from the obligation of obedience that you owe me in so far as I am your superior. Which do you choose?’
Gerardo had already chosen and Hugues’ words only acted as the spur that he needed to give voice to his burning desire to understand.
‘Go on,’ he finally managed to say.
‘I imagine you will have heard of Baphomet, the demoniacal idol that we are accused of worshipping,’ began the Frenchman.
‘You don’t mean to tell me that is true too?’ murmured Gerardo in a reed-like voice. All his convictions were shaken to their foundations.
Hugues made a slight movement with his hand, as if calming a nervous filly. ‘It is true that some of us, the better part, I would presume to say, venerate something that we call Baphomet. But it is false to call him an idol, much less demoniacal. Everything lies in the meaning of the words.’
He got to his feet, went into the kitchen and returned with a pitcher of white wine, without tankards. He took a long draught and then offered it to Gerardo. ‘Drink, you look as though you need it.’
The young man obeyed mechanically and then he put the pitcher down on the table between them, without saying anything.
‘Do you know the Language of the Jews?’ Hugues asked him.
‘Certainly not!’ responded Gerardo, indignantly. The mere idea of having anything in common with Christ’s murderers horrified him.
‘Neither do I. But I know its alphabet. The Jews, like the saracens, reject Christ’s message and for this reason they are damned for eternity. But that doesn’t mean that they are stupid or ignorant. The knowledge of the infidels can be profound.’
‘And what has this got to do with the Hebrew alphabet?’
Hugues smiled at his impatience. ‘I’m getting there.’ He stretched out an arm to open the piece of furniture behind him, and took a piece of notepaper and something to write with. After which he started drawing two rows of mysterious signs on the page, one above the other, while Gerardo watched him in silence. When he had finished, he turned the page towards Gerardo, showing him the two sequences of letters:
ת ש ר ק צ פ ע ס נ מ ל כ י ט ח ז ו ה ד ג ב א א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת
‘They are the opposite of each other,’ said Gerardo, having examined them.
‘Exactly. It’s a Hebrew code, called the Atbash, from the name of the first and last two letters of their alphabet. The letters are written from right to left, then from left to right. Then you take a word and substitute each letter with the corresponding letter in the row beneath.’
‘The result is a completely different word,’ interjected Gerardo. ‘Comprehensible only to those who know the code.’ ‘What intellectual promptitude,’ said Hugues, smiling with approval. ‘As you say, it’s easy to decipher but you have to know the original Language. And this is a secret that none of us will ever reveal to the Inquisitors, even under the worst torture.’
‘Why?’
‘Let’s take the word Baphomet,’ said Hugues, indicating some symbols on the top row. ‘In Hebrew it is made up of five letters: Tav, Mem, Vav, Pei and Beit.’ He pointed to the letters and copied them below.
ב פ ו מ ת
‘Reading from right to left, as the Jews do, we have BA.PH.O.ME.T. Now, let’s take these letters and substitute them with the corresponding letters on the row below. He joined the letters with little dashes of the pen, and then copied them down beneath the first five.
ש ו פ י א
He looked at them a moment with a strange respect and read, ‘Alef, Yud, Pei, Vav and Shin. Or rather, from right to left, S.O.PH.I.A.’
‘The goddess of wisdom!’ exclaimed Gerardo, surprised.
‘Exactly. Now tell me, in what way could honouring wisdom be a heresy?’
‘But why didn’t you say!’ demanded Gerardo. He was angry and his face burned as though he had a fever. ‘We should reveal the code to the Inquisitors and show them that there is nothing wrong in it.’
Hugues shook his head, with a sad look in his grey eyes. ‘Our order is condemned, make no mistake about it. We have become too powerful for our own good. We cannot say or do anything to change our fate, but we can safeguard the knowledge that has been handed down to us.’
On an impulse Gerardo seized the pitcher and took a long draught of wine. Hugues did the same and then he started a complex discourse, punctuating it with intense looks and quick drinks. He spoke of the Greek goddess sophia, derived from the World soul of the Gnostics, the Great mother who gave life to the world and who is higher than the Redeemer himself, because without her there would be no world to redee
m, and therefore no Redeemer. And he concluded by saying that the female divine principle was incarnated in the Christian religion in the figure of mary magdalene, the wife of Christ.
‘But Christ was celibate!’ shouted Gerardo, thumping the table with his fist and leaping to his feet, quite beside himself. ‘And mary magdalene was a—’
‘Do not say that word!’ In a sudden bound Hugues had jumped round the table and grabbed hold of him by the neck. ‘Do not take her name in vain.’
Gerardo was struck dumb, not so much because of the strength or the speed of the Frenchman’s reaction, as for the passion in his words, unexpected after the cynicism with which he had expressed himself until then.
At that moment someone knocked at the door. Hugues let go of Gerardo’s throat and went to go and open it. Voices and laughing were heard coming from the kitchen, then the Commander returned to the room in the company of a woman in her thirties. She was dressed in a grey sleeveless surcoat on top of a décolleté linen tunic. Her auburn hair was gathered into a white cap. In one hand she carried an earthenware pot, with two thick slices of bread balanced on top, from which came a good smell of stew. She leaned over to put it on the table, showing her breasts and giving Gerardo a lascivious smile.
‘Gianna doesn’t have much time, or her husband will begin to suspect something and come looking for her,’ said Hugues. ‘I told her that I have a guest and she is disposed to satisfy both of us for a bit more, but together, not one at a time.’
Hugues was obviously quite able to make himself understood even by those who spoke no Latin, when he wanted to. Gerardo merely shook his head. They both laughed at his blushing face and went off to the bedroom. On the threshold the woman turned to look at him with an expression of nostalgia, and then blew him a kiss from the tips of her fingers.
‘If you change your mind, come and find me later,’ she said. Hugues murmured something in her ear and she laughed in a coarse manner, then they closed the door.
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