Inquisition

by Alfredo Colitto

  Mondino jumped forward, knocking the castle of tableware with the bag that was slung across one shoulder and making the two wooden bowls precariously balanced on top fall off. ‘Don’t you dare liken me to a murdering bastard who happily killed a poor cripple whose only mistake was to want to help you,’ he said, grabbing Gerardo by the folds of his tunic. ‘It is true that I decided to help you that night, that I killed that old hag and that I decided to come with you now, leaving my father on his deathbed. I know very well that I didn’t have to do it, and I take full responsibility.’

  He stared at Gerardo who simply nodded, without trying to free himself. Mondino got his breath back and added, ‘The Inquisitor was very clear: he needs a culprit quickly to use as leverage in the trial against your order. If I don’t accuse you, then he will accuse me of the murders. It was me who paid the grave-diggers to get rid of your confrère’s body. They only saw me, not you. It was me again who first examined the German’s body. It will be easy to deduce that I did it to hide the proof of my guilt. If you believe that I would be prepared to be put to death in order to save you from having to leave the country and being forced to work for a living, you are making a big mistake. Now take me to him.’

  Gerardo gently put the spoon back in the copper basin, took the candle from the shelf and walked out without speaking. As soon as he was outside the kitchen he said, ‘At least promise that you will only denounce me if we don’t find the real murderer.’

  Mondino had no difficulty replying. ‘I promise you. If Hugues de Narbonne is the murderer, as you suspect, your order will suffer anyway, but we’ll both be safe.’

  Gerardo nodded gravely. ‘I understand, magister,’ he said. ‘When one can do no more for others, it would be stupid not to think of saving one’s own skin.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it. Remember that we’ve only got until sunset tomorrow.’

  In the light of the flickering candle, they walked past a small room with a table and chairs. The entire house was in chaos, not only the kitchen.

  They went into the bedroom in which there was a tatty four-poster bed that had lost its curtains. Gerardo put the candle on a poplar chest of drawers and went to open the shutters and pull down the linen blind. The room filled with a milky light.

  Hugues was lying on the bed awake, looking at them. It was strange that he didn’t say anything when he saw them come in, or even acknowledge the fact in his face. Mondino noticed the vitreous expression. He went up to the bed and passed his hand in front of Hugues’ eyes. The templar blinked, but apart from that he didn’t move a muscle. Mondino spoke to him, touched him and even shook him, without managing to wrench him from his vegetative state. The physician tried to prick him on the arm with the point of a surgical knife and Hugues quickly drew his arm way, but without changing his expression. He reacted to stimuli, but was not really present.

  ‘Did you say he hit his head?’ asked Mondino, examining him.

  ‘Yes. Initially there was a lot of blood and then it stopped. First he fainted and then he came round. He managed to walk all the way here, but he was raving. It was then that he said the things I told you about.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ asked Mondino, signing to him to help sit Hugues up with his back against the bed head.

  ‘I told you. At one point he fainted and didn’t come round again. I tried slapping him and throwing water on his face ... Nothing had any effect. He was breathing, but other than that it was as if he were dead.’

  ‘Whereas now he’s awake, but he isn’t reasoning,’ said Mondino, almost to himself. ‘Let’s look at the wound.’

  He moved back the hair, which was clotted with dried blood, to reveal a three-inch cut where the skin was swollen and broken. With a razor, he shaved the hair around the wound, then began to press gently with his fingers as Rogerius advised in his book on surgery. Mondino established that the bone had a fissure. The pus would certainly have entered the brain cavity too.

  ‘We need to perform a trepanation,’ he said. ‘Help me tie him down.’

  Gerardo went to get the cords. He tied Hugues’s hands and feet to the posts of the four-poster, leaving him in a sitting position. Unfortunately Mondino had not brought a somniferous sponge soaked in an analgesic solution to relieve pain and cause a state of stupefaction. So they had to gag the Frenchman to stop him from crying out. He didn’t put up any resistance and probably didn’t even know what was going on. Mondino took a small crown saw out of his bag and asked Gerardo to hold the patient’s head still.

  Despite his almost unconscious state, as soon as he saw the trepan, Hugues began to move and pull at the ropes, trying to shout through the gag.

  Mondino avoided catching his eye, took a deep breath and made a brief prayer to God, asking him to steady his hand. He had already carried out operations of the sort before and knew that the possibility of it resulting in the death or irreversible paralysis of the patient was very high. It would take only the slightest inattention, once the point of the trepan had gone through the last layer of bone, for it to sink into the cranium itself. Or if he opened the sides of the fracture too far, they might not close properly afterwards. In that case the patient survived, but only bedridden and needing constant care to avoid the miasma in the air getting into the brain. Sooner or later he would contract a high fever and pass away in extreme pain.

  Hugues de Narbonne might well be a murderer, but Mondino intended to operate on him with the same precision he would have used if he had to trepan the cranium of Enrico VII himself. Not only because Hugues would have to survive if he was going to tell them everything that he had been keeping to himself until now, but also and above all out of respect for Mondino himself and his profession. These days, the Hippocratic oath seemed to have fallen into disuse, reduced to a mere formality in this degenerate age, but for him it represented the foundation of medicine.

  Finally he turned to face the Frenchman. In the unlikely event that Hugues could actually hear or understand him, Mondino forced himself to sound calm and authoritative as he said, ‘We must trepan the cranium in order to purge it of pus. It will be painful, but afterwards you will get better.’

  Hugues gave no sign of having heard. His eyes had gone glassy again and he let Gerardo hold his head still without resistance. When the saw began to bite into the bone he struggled and groaned in pain, then he lost consciousness and his head dropped on to his chest, unintentionally helping the operation.

  Mondino made four small holes, inserted a spatula between the edges of the opening and widened it so as to place a strip of silk inside to soak up the pus. He repeated the process several times, each time with a clean strip, until there was no pus left. The blood had begun to flow again from the scalp but by now the operation was finished. Mondino cleaned the wound well with a piece of linen and treated it with an unguent made of myrrh and herbs.

  ‘I’ve done what I can,’ he said, finally. ‘But the damage is serious, I don’t know whether he’ll come round.’

  ‘You mean he might die?’ asked Gerardo.

  ‘It depends. If he gets a high fever, he won’t survive. Otherwise he might, but it’s too early to say if he will ever be able to speak or reason in a coherent way again.’ ‘When will we know?’

  Mondino shrugged. ‘An hour, a day, a week ... When there is damage to the brain there is no precise timing and you should know that, considering that I gave a lesson on the subject a couple of months ago.’

  The young man glanced at him with a guilty look and Mondino gave a bitter smile. Only nine days had passed since he had discovered Gerardo’s true identity and he had thrown himself into finding out the secret of the heart of iron.

  However, the time when Mondino had given his lessons with no other thought than that of expressing himself clearly now seemed distant as a dream that faded a bit more every time he woke up.

  ‘So what shall
we do?’ asked Gerardo.

  The tired sound of his voice caused Mondino to turn round. He looked at the templar closely. In the light of day that now made the candle on the chest of drawers redundant, he could see that the youth was exhausted. Gerardo had come close to being killed that night, had killed someone himself and had watched over a wounded man. He had not closed his eyes once. Much like the physician, as it happened.

  Mondino could not imagine anything more wonderful than lying down on the dirty palliasse that he had spotted in the room next door and slipping into a restorative sleep, forgetting all the problems that were raining down on him for a few hours at least.

  But there was no time to rest.

  ‘I’m going to speak to that Arab sorceress,’ he said. ‘She lives in the country not far from Bova. I want to ask her to translate the verses on the map.’ He pointed to Hugues, who was still tied to the bed and unconscious. ‘I don’t believe what your commander told us.’

  ‘Ex-commander,’ said Gerardo. ‘Killing that poor boy was an act that was entirely contrary to our vows.’

  Mondino nodded. ‘You should carry on looking for the maimed beggar,’ he said. ‘If he told his friends that he was about to become rich, it’s possible that he really does know something. But first I wanted to ask you to go back to Remigio Sensi and get him to give you the names of all the templars who have arrived in the city recently.’ ‘Why?’

  Mondino was surprised by the question. Gerardo was ‘If it’s true that the templars who were killed had been lured into a trap, it might also be the case that the trap was not laid just for two people.’

  ‘One of the new arrivals in the city might be the next victim,’ concluded Gerardo.

  ‘Exactly. We must find out how many and who they are and warn them. We should try to work out who the most likely target is and shadow him discreetly. I can help you with that when I get back, while you look for the beggar.’ ‘Good idea,’ said Gerardo. ‘I’ll go right now.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get a bit of sleep first? It’s still early, you could rest until breakfast time.’

  ‘I’d better not. If I have time, I’ll sleep in the afternoon.’ He turned to Hugues de Narbonne, who might have been asleep or unconscious. Or pretending to be. ‘What should we do with him?’

  All the admiration and respect that Gerardo had shown the Commander in recent days had left his voice.

  ‘I’ll give him a calming potion to make him sleep,’ replied Mondino. ‘Come back later and check on him, but wait for me before you interrogate him. All right?’ ‘All right.’

  Administering a sleeping draught to a man suffering a cerebral trauma was certainly not an ideal therapy, but it was the only way to make sure that Hugues would rest for the whole morning and that even if Gerardo wanted to contravene his orders and interrogate the Frenchman alone, he wouldn’t be able to. Mondino was afraid that the young man lacked the ruthlessness necessary to force his commander to tell the whole truth, or indeed the shrewdness to understand if the man were lying.

  They went into the kitchen. Gerardo lit the fire with the embers from the night before and Mondino prepared the decoction in a pottery saucepan, mixing lavender, passionflower and valerian. When it was ready he gave it to Hugues, who in the meantime had opened his eyes, although he still seemed absent. Then they agreed to meet each other there that afternoon, between noon and early evening, and went out leaving him tied to the bed with his head bent forward and his arms apart like a sitting crucifix.

  Mondino immediately set off in the direction of Piazza Maggiore while Gerardo paused to lock the door. He hid the key in a gap in the wood below the window and left for Trebbo dei Banchi.

  Guido Arlotti saw the young man hide the key and hesitated for a moment. The Inquisitor had given him orders to follow Mondino like a shadow, but also to find out where the student arsonist was hiding. Now, it seemed, the student and the young man who Mondino was addressing as Gerardo were almost certainly the same person. So which of the two should he follow? What’s more, he would have liked to go into the house and have a look around. Judging from what he had heard as he eavesdropped from outside the window, something very strange had been going on in there.

  He regretted not bringing any men with him. He had done it so as not to have to split the lucre with anyone. But if his friends had been there to share the work, he would have been able to ask double the money from Uberto da Rimini. And that didn’t include the plenary indulgence for his sins that he had been accumuLating for a year now, since the last time he’d earned one for a crime of a certain gravity.

  Guido had been a monk and he believed in hell and eternal damnation, but some time before he had accepted that he was too weak to resist his passions. So whenever he found himself doing a job for some powerful ecclesiastic, he took the opportunity to ask for forgiveness and the remission of his sins in exchange for light penances. Once he had only had to spend the night on a bed of nettles to be pardoned for murder, a sin that he had committed at the order of the very prelate who had granted him absolution. So it was that Guido remained convinced that he could carry on leading the life he wanted while not paying the penalty. The only thing that terrorised him was the idea of dying in a state of mortal sin. That is, without obtaining forgiveness and being able to repent. But for the moment the possibility of death seemed remote.

  In the end he decided to keep to the original plan and follow Mondino. In any case the two of them were to meet again in the afternoon. In the meantime he would try to find a way to get hold of a pair of trusted men who could stick to the templar and the physician like shadows. In that way he would have time to go and have a look in the house. Then once he had gathered all the information, he would be able to go and report to the Inquisitor.

  As the young man walked away in the direction of Santo Stefano, Guido came out from behind the column of the arcade where he had been hiding and set off after Mondino. He had lost sight of the physician, but had heard where he was going so he would have no trouble finding him.

  Usually so quick. Tiredness must have dulled his intuitive capacities.

  XI

  Gerardo left the paper-maker’s borough and then passed the Basilica of Santo Stefano and headed for Trebbo dei Banchi. He walked along in a dreamlike state rather than fully awake and he was finding it difficult to think coherently. Particulars of the night before kept coming back to him: the underworld, the beggars and their narrow escape ... At times he saw Bonaga’s pained smile transforming itself into a mask of horror seconds before Hugues de Narbonne split his head open like a mature melon.

  All of a sudden, he felt a violent shock and heard a shout and a string of curses. Only then did he realise that he had been walking with his eyes closed like a sleepwalker and had bumped into the wheel of a vegetable cart, knocking over the costermonger pulling it along. He apologised and quickly moved on before the man’s shouts began to attract attention. He was ready to drop from exhaustion but he had to make it through the afternoon. There were still too many loose ends to tie up, time was short, and the enigmas were growing in number rather than diminishing. It was now clear that Hugues de Narbonne might be a murderer and a traitor to his order. Gerardo still had to find the beggar with a missing hand and he hoped that the great effort of tracking the man down would be worth it. He had to identify the templars who had arrived in the city and find out which of them might be the next victim.

  And then, as if all that weren’t enough, there was a worrying problem about which he and Mondino had hardly spoken because they didn’t have enough information to form even a vague hypothesis. But the problem remained: who were the archers who had been waiting for him and Hugues de Narbonne outside the underworld? Why did they want to kill them? Who had sent them?

  Gerardo had no idea. He imagined that it was Bonaga who had told them they were in the underworld, and this was why he had conf
essed to betraying them. Shame that he hadn’t had time to say more.

  There was the strong possibility that once they heard about the abortive assassination attempt, whoever had sent those three men would dispatch others to finish the job off. And all he could do was ask himself when and where the next attack would happen, without being able to do a thing to stop it.

  Walking into Piazza di Santo Stefano, Gerardo stopped short when he saw a group of guards emerging from one of the foul-smelling lanes that led to the beggar’s tunnel. Behind the guards were two grave-diggers pulling a cart on which lay a pile of corpses. Although he knew that the wisest thing he could do would be to walk away fast, Gerardo was rooted to the spot. He stayed to watch while the little cortège passed not far from him.

  The archers had been well dressed, with short, light wool tunics over their shirts, wool breeches, good quality shoes and light cloaks that were obviously being used to hide the weapons they’d carried. One of the three, a young man with long dark-brown hair, had been dressed more elegantly than the other two, with a mail and tooled leather jerkin under his cloak. It hadn’t however saved him from Bonaga’s stone, which had broken his nose, or from Hugues’ cracking blow that had almost taken his head off. The passers-by were exchanging shocked expressions, as though they knew them, but Gerardo didn’t dare ask who they were.

  Catching sight of Bonaga’s slight body and bony legs sticking out from under the other corpses, he looked away, deeply shaken. One of the onlookers next to him misinterpreted his gesture and said, ‘This city is no longer safe. It’s all the fault of the foreign students who come here and behave as if they owned the place.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gerardo dryly, without looking at him.

  ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’ said the man, as though he regretted his comment. ‘I didn’t mean to offend, it’s only that ...’