‘The light is fine now, mistress, thank you,’ he mumbled, through his swollen lips. ‘Why are you here?’ ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ she asked.
Gerardo shook his head. ‘It’s not that. Of course I’m pleased. But now they know you know me, they could interrogate you and extort information about me from you. I couldn’t bear it if you were hurt because of me.’
In an impulsive gesture, Fiamma stretched a hand out to touch his face, and then she quickly removed it. In that tiny cell they were forced into an inappropriate closeness and despite the pain in his bones and muscles, Gerardo felt a growing sensation that filled him with embarrassment.
The girl had put a small basket down on the floor and now she took out a piece of linen and a jug of water. She dipped the cloth into the water and softly began to clean the dirt and dried blood off Gerardo’s face.
‘They won’t harm me, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Captain of the People had a large debt with Remigio and he was very happy to allow me to visit you in return for a letter certifying the remission of the due sum.’
‘You shouldn’t have!’ exclaimed Gerardo. ‘Your father—’
‘Remigio is not my father!’ interrupted Fiamma, vehemently.
‘I’ve already told you. And anyhow he has disappeared, as you know. When he comes back, if he comes back, he won’t be able to do anything but take note of my decision. I forged his signature so that even he couldn’t tell the difference.’ she paused briefly, then added, ‘I would have done anything to be able to come and see you.’
Gerardo felt his heart beat faster at those words, but he said nothing. He realised with surprise that the idea of breaking his vows didn’t seem so terrible now. Perhaps it was his closeness to death. Fiamma finished washing his face and took her hand away, putting the dirty cloth on the floor. Apart from when she had made the comment about Remigio, she always spoke through the handkerchief.
‘I’ve brought you something to eat and some fresh water to drink,’ she said, putting the basket down beside him. ‘Please, help yourself.’
Gerardo stretched outa hand for a covered bowl of soup that was still warm. He drank it avidly, savouring the rich, salty taste. Then he took a big piece of meat from the bottom of the bowl, put it on a chunk of bread and bit into them. Fiamma watched him eat from behind her handkerchief,with an expression that reminded Gerardo of his mother. Lastly, Gerardo drank half the water in the jug, saving the rest for later.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I truly needed that.’
‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’
Gerardo was about to say no, but now that he had finally had something to eat, he felt stronger and more awake and for the first time he remembered that he had left Hugues de Narbonne lashed to the bed.
‘There is one thing, mistress.’
‘Tell me.’
Without going into too much detail, Gerardo explained that the previous night Hugues had suffered a wound to his head. Mondino had operated on him and to keep him from moving they had had to tie him to the bed and gag him.
‘Then we left him like that, for reasons that I cannot explain,’ he said. ‘I was counting on going back to untie him this afternoon, after speaking to your father. Then I was arrested and I forgot all about him until now.’ ‘Would you like me to go and see how he is?’ Gerardo hesitated. ‘If no one goes, he might die. I was supposed to meet the magister there, but he can’t get in alone. As I was certain I would arrive first, I didn’t tell him where I hid the key.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll go and wait for him.’
Gerardo remembered the looks that Hugues had given the young woman when they had visited Remigio and suddenly the idea of sending her into the lion’s den didn’t seem such a good one, even if the Frenchman was weak and recovering from an operation.
‘Remember,’ he said, with a serious look. ‘Wait for Mondino to get there before you untie the cords. We have reason to believe that Hugues de Narbonne is not who he says he is.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,’ she reassured him. ‘My father’s two servants will accompany me as the bank is closed for the time being anyway.’
So Gerardo told her where the house was and where he had hidden the key. ‘I thank you for your kindness with all my heart, mistress,’ he said, smiling. ‘God knows I need it right now.’
Fiamma nodded, but she didn’t return his smile. She seemed to have something else on her mind. She waited a moment in silence, as though she were deliberating with herself. ‘That’s not the only reason that I came,’ she said, and then after a pause, ‘I must speak to you.’
‘What about?’
‘About me.’
Surprised, Gerardo only managed to say, ‘I’m listening.’ Fiamma was quiet for a long while, then she took a deep breath. ‘This wasn’t done by a physician trying to treat a cataract,’ she said, removing the handkerchief from her mouth and showing him the left side of her face. In the trembling light of the oil lamp, the scar seemed to flash like a little white snake from her eye almost down to her chin. Gerardo was confused. What did the scar have to do with it? the young woman seemed too shaken to speak coherently.
‘That was what I told everyone, even Remigio,’ continued Fiamma. Curled up, with her hands around her knees, she almost seemed a child. ‘I needed to forget.’
She shook her head, almost as if she couldn’t go on, and pressed the linen handkerchief to her mouth again. It looked as though she wanted to weep, but couldn’t. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly beneath her light gown.
‘Mistress, please calm yourself,’ said Gerardo, and on an impulse he moved over and tried to take her in his arms.
Fiamma cried out as though he had bitten her. She moved quickly backwards and put her hand to the sash that she wore round her waist, while Gerardo stared at her aghast, thinking that she was about to pull out a knife. But the girl took out a little embroidered bag. It contained three things: some folded cotton paper, a piece of parchment and a minuscule notebook, the like of which Gerardo had never seen before. She was about to put them in his hands but thought again and laid them on the filthy floor between them.
‘The first is a letter for you,’ she said. ‘The notebook is a diary that I wrote many years ago and the piece of parchment is a useless thing, but I know you are looking for it. Please read the letter and the diary. I would like you to understand me, if not forgive me.’
Then she called the guard to open the door, took up the basket with the crockery and went out without turning back or saying goodbye. She was visibly agitated.
Gerardo found himself alone. All the well-being he had felt after finally being able to eat and drink had vanished and he felt his stomach clench like a vice. He took the letter, which was very short, and had only just had time to read it when he heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. He hurriedly wet his fingers and pinched the flame to put it out. Then he hid everything in the only possible place: under the pile of dirty straw.
‘Come out, so we don’t have to come in and get you,’ said one of the guards, running the bolt across. ‘The Inquisitor’s waiting.’
Gerardo crawled out of the cell on all fours and then slowly got to his feet. This time the two giants let him walk between them without dragging him along.
Opening his eyes in the dark, Hugues de Narbonne began to feel afraid. When he had come round, he remembered everything, although in a slightly bleary fashion as though in a dream. Gerardo had brought him home and then left him alone and come back with the physician. Hugues recalled a terrible pain in his head and then a strange feeling, as if air had entered his skull. The physician must have trepanned his cranium, and he had lost consciousness.
Given that he was now lucid, the operation had been successful despite the constant throbbing pain in his head. But why didn’t they untie h
im before they left? Was it possible that they had discovered his secret?
In his mind’s eye, Hugues ran over every corner of the house in search of clues that Gerardo and Mondino might have found, but he was certain that there was nothing. Nothing at all. Books, documents and objects that might have compromised him had all been well hidden in toledo, where he had moved after leaving the templar House at Tortosa.
Unfortunately he had succumbed to nature’s call and the smell coming from his own excrement made him nauseous.
From the change in the light filtering through the shutters he thought it must already be afternoon. Why did no one come? Could they have left him there to die of hunger and thirst? no, it didn’t make any sense. They had no reason to kill him and if they had wanted to, they would have found a quicker way. And they wouldn’t have wasted time operating on his head. No, they were obviously coming back, but something must have happened.
Again he tried to loosen the cords that held him to the bedposts in the sitting position. There was nothing he could do, the knots were too tight. The gag was also well tied around his head, tight enough to force his lips open. Hugues had already tried shouting with all his might, but he’d only managed to produce a low and indistinct growl that it would be difficult to hear outside because of the closed shutters.
Besides, every time he struggled and tried to shout, the pain in his head became intolerable.
He flopped back against the bedhead, exhausted. He tried to sleep in order to build up his strength, but in that position it was almost impossible. As well as the continuous sharp pain above the nape of his neck, he also felt pain in his wrists, ankles and shoulders. As soon as his head began to nod, he would wake up, only to fall back into a light and agitated sleep and then wake again.
At one point when he was slipping between sleep and wakefulness, he thought he heard a sound. Suddenly he was awake and alert, with all his senses straining. Another sound. A door closed.
Someone had come into the house. Gerardo or Mondino, or perhaps both of them. It was the moment that Hugues had been waiting for, and yet he wasn’t ready to tell them the truth. First of all he had to convince them to untie him.
Perhaps, if they found him asleep, they would undo the knots, at least so he hoped. And until he knew their intentions, he would continue to pretend to be unconscious. Hearing the sound of steps, he closed his eyes and dropped his head on to his chest.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said a woman.
Surprised, Hugues forgot his plan and looked up sharply. Standing before him, with a candle in one hand and a cloth bag in the other, was Fiamma, the banker’s daughter. They had sent her to help him. At last Hugues de Narbonne felt relief flood through his veins.
‘When I heard you were hurt I came as quickly as I could,’ said the girl. ‘It’s lucky that you are still alive.’
It was kind of her to take such trouble over him. Looking at her closely, Hugues had the feeling that she reminded him of someone. Who knows, perhaps he had known her mother in Tortosa. He had had dozens of amorous adventures in the lands of Aragon. Although he would surely have remembered a beautiful woman as Fiamma’s mother certainly would have been.
The young woman took the candle over to another in an earthenware stick on the chest and lit the wick. Then she spilt some drops of wax on to the wood and pressed the candle into it, so that the two candles stood side by side. Finally she pushed the chest over to the bed.
‘Better to see well,’ she explained. ‘I wouldn’t want to cut in the wrong places.’
Now that it was lighter, Hugues felt a mortifying shame at the stains of excrement on the mattress. It certainly wasn’t the ideal situation in which to meet a woman. As soon as she freed him, he would open the window to get rid of the smell and go and wash.
Fiamma took a knife out of her cloth bag and came towards him. Hugues felt a second of panic seeing her point it at his chest and not at the stout cords binding his wrists, but he relaxed when she began to cut his tunic. She obviously wouldn’t want to touch his clothes as they were dirtied by blood and shit. She’d cut them and leave them on the bed. In that way she would see him naked, but if it didn’t matter to her, Hugues had no objection either. Despite his age, his body was still firm and muscular; nothing to be ashamed of. It was a pity about the bed being reduced to a pigsty and the piercing pain in his head. Otherwise as soon as he was free, he would have pulled her towards him. But then again he might have waited until he had washed and eaten, he thought with a slight smile. Fiamma bared his solid chest to reveal a coat of blond hair sprinkled with white. Then she carried on down, opening the whole tunic, without touching his breeches. As she moved his clothes, the smell got stronger, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was concentrating hard, careful only to cut the material and not to nick his skin. Hugues was thinking that she really was very beautiful, with her silky tallow-coloured hair, intense expression and breasts straining against her white tunic. Even the scar that disfigured her cheek couldn’t diminish her beauty. The girl moved away from him and emptied her cloth bag on to the chest. Some metal objects rattled on to its wooden lid. Why didn’t she cut the cords at his wrist? Hugues tried to speak, but the gag transformed his words into an incomprehensible mumble.
Fiamma turned and looked him long in the eyes without speaking. Then she said, ‘I had to knock the others out and then immobilise them with a potion that paralyses the limbs. You have had the decency to be waiting for me already bound and gagged.’
Hugues finally understood. With the clarity of mind that often precedes death, a memory came to him of the little girl with the slashed face. He hadn’t recognised her until then because he had thought her dead and because the woman before him retained very little of the delicate appearance of the child. Now, however, he had no doubts. She was the one who had killed Angelo da Piczano and Wilhelm von Trier and now it was his turn.
As Fiamma came back towards him with the knife and started to cut his skin, he yelled with all the breath he had in his lungs, but through the gag there only came a pathetic whine.
When she had finished her job, Fiamma went into the kitchen, took off her bloody clothes and washed carefully in the basin that she had prepared on her arrival. Her revenge was almost complete and yet she felt no satisfaction. She was tired and much sadder than she had thought she would be over the years in which she had planned it all.
She dried herself with a piece of hemp hanging from a hook above the fire. Then she took her clean clothes out of the bag and put them on. A dark brown shirt and gown and a white cap; anonymous clothes that would allow her to blend into the crowd, once she had given the alarm. Before she left, she went back to the door of the bedroom and stood for a moment contempLating her handiwork. Hugues de Narbonne had been the leader without whom the other two might not have gone so far. He deserved to suffer the most. Before she had killed him, she had told him who she was and his eyes had filled with terror as she made her incisions in his skin, marking the edges of the cuts that she would then sever with the saw. She had even shown him the worms that she would put in his brain. Hugues was still tied to the bed in the same position in which she had found him. The room was crimson with blood. The heart of iron stuck out of his chest like a malignant flower, and his skullcap – with what remained of his blond curly hair – lay on his genitals. The head had been opened, sawn just above his eyebrows, and was full of whitish larvae, of the type that form in the scavenged morsels found by stray dogs. Fiamma had spent years planning how she would kill them.
All three knights had their heart turned into iron to signify the absence of mercy and compassion, as well as a symbol for each one’s specific crime. Angelo, who had wanted to stop the violence but hadn’t, would have his hands amputated as a sign of a lack of action. Wilhelm, the old man who had cut her face, would be paid back in kind with a cross carved into his face. And Hugues, whose rotten brain had been behi
nd the massacre, now had a head full of worms.
In her mind she had nicknamed them Pilate, Longinus and Caiaphas, after Christ’s killers. The first had washed his hands of the Redeemer’s blood. The second had pierced His side with a lance, and the third had been the principal schemer for His death. And, though well aware that she could hardly liken herself to the son of God, she didn’t think she was so dissimilar in her violated innocence; a sacrificial lamb who was powerless to escape her fate.
Without further ado, she turned away from the cadaver and walked out of the house, leaving the door open. The street was full of people and the afternoon sun flooded everything in a warm golden colour. She took a deep breath and let out a terrified cry. Then she began to run, shouting that there was a dead man lying there dismembered with his heart turned into a block of iron. In an instant there was mayhem and the street turned into an ant’s nest disturbed with a stick. People were running all over the place. Many tore into their houses, the shopkeepers began to shut their shops; the paper-makers tried to put away their piles of paper and notebooks before the crowd trampled them, the women screamed and shouted, passing on the horrifying news.
Fiamma walked away undisturbed with her bag over her shoulder. She still had one more person to kill, but she had done enough for one day.
XIV
Uberto da Rimini looked at the young man in front of him with ill-concealed satisfaction. First he had found the missing corpse and now the person who had stolen it, after committing murder and setting fire to the house. Soon the Archbishop would have all the proof he needed. But there still had to be a confession.
With a flash of irritation, Uberto imagined Rinaldo da Concorezzo’s ascetic face as he said, ‘We have a corpse and we have an arsonist. But where is the proof that the corpse was really in that house and that the arsonist is also an assassin?’
Rinaldo’s obsession with respecting the law was bordering on ingenuity, to say the least. Who would spontaneously admit to being the author of a crime that would take them straight to meet the executioner?
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