They went up to the first floor. She took him into her room and offered him the only chair. It was pulled up to the table on which there was a large open book and an unlit candle in an earthenware stick. Mondino only needed a glance to recognise the text.
‘How do you manage to convince people that you are a country sorceress,’ he joked, ‘If you have Averroes’ Destructio Destructionis Philosophorum on your desk?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference what it was,’ she answered, picking up her blackened kettle from the brazier and pouring a cup of atay. ‘None of my customers know how to read.’
While Mondino sipped the amber liquid, Adia pulled a cloth bag out of the enormous sack of straw that did for a bed. She went up to the table, closed the book and laid out the two maps with the directions to the secret cave in spain in front of Mondino.
‘So, it’s about these parchments?’ asked Mondino. ‘But now it’s obvious that they’re fake.’
When Adia had come to his house, he had given her the second map that Fiamma had given to Gerardo in prison. But since Fiamma herself had said that it was useless, he hadn’t expected any great revelations.
‘They say that two wrongs don’t make a right,’ replied Adia.
‘But it’s not always true.’
‘What do you mean?’
She leaned over and pointed at the red circle on the first parchment.
‘This is not the point of departure as I thought, but the point of arrival,’ she said. ‘Fiamma’s father hid his secret well.’
She explained that the words al-hamrã didn’t mean the Alhambra in this case, the red fortress in the Arab city of Granada, but the final phase of an alchemical transformation, called ‘The red one’.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mondino. ‘What does it mean?’
‘That the journey indicated on here is not to be travelled on foot or horseback, it describes the stages to obtain alchemical gold.’
‘How can you be certain of that?’
‘Because the two maps go together. Each is incomprehensible unless it is put next to the other. Do you remember the incomplete verses on the first parchment? Well, the missing words are on the second. What is confusing is that the information is so well disguised that studying the maps one has the impression that they describe real places.’
‘So,’ cut in Mondino, ‘You are telling me that you’ve discovered the secret of alchemical gold that so many scholars have spent centuries searching for?’
‘I’m telling you that, studying these parchments carefully, I’ve discovered one way of obtaining it.’
Remembering the parable of the mountain that she had told him before, Mondino nodded. ‘And not the right one, I imagine.’
‘No.’
‘But nonetheless, the result is the same.’
‘Yes. If you were to scrupulously follow the process, you could, without too much trouble, make alchemical gold, which, as you know, is quite different from normal gold.’
‘If it really does exist,’ murmured Mondino, ‘It would be infinitely more precious than normal gold: an elixir capable of healing any injury, any illness, and of prolonging life for hundreds of years ... It can’t be true. It must be legend.’
Adia shook her head silently. She was remarkably beautiful, but just then Mondino could think only of the secret, the main reason for which he had been running after a murderer and had risked both life and career. In her diary, Fiamma didn’t mention how she had made the powder used to transform veins and blood into iron, and by now Mondino had abandoned the dream of making a complete map of the human vascular system. No one had wanted to touch Remigio Sensi’s body – fearing who knows what evil spell – and the banker had been left where he died. The civic authorities had ordered that access to the underworld be closed and, after chasing out all the beggars who lived there, they had flattened the ruined house, concealing the entrance to it and filling in the gap with tons of bricks and stones. Mondino, relieved to have escaped death and renewed his collaboration at the Studium with Liuzzo, had not wanted to push his luck by asking for permission to study Remigio’s body. He had made himself stop thinking about anything other than work and family responsibilities, particularly since his father had died.
And now Adia had come back to stimulate that part of his soul that was best left dormant.
‘Have you tried it?’ he asked, with a tremor in his voice. He was almost pleased when she answered no. ‘So you don’t know if it really works.’
‘No. And I don’t want to know. There’s been too much blood spilled for this secret.’ ‘However, I do want to know.’
Adia stared at him, horrified. ‘You don’t know what you are saying.’
‘You’re wrong. I understand your speeches about the importance of the manner in which things are done, but think of what a great gift to humanity the elixir would be.’
While he was speaking, Adia had not stopped shaking her head for a second. ‘Think hard about it, please,’ she said then, in a sorrowful tone. ‘Fiamma’s father killed the man who passed the secret on to him, the turk who was found in the port of Gharnata without a heart. Then he in turn was killed and his daughter left scarred in mind and body, all because of that secret. The templars who wanted to get hold of it have committed unspeakable vileness and then ended badly. Fiamma killed them and herself after a life of suffering. Do you really want to end up like them?’ ‘No, but—’
‘But what? Don’t you understand what you would be setting in motion? you would be killed as well. Powerful and greedy men slaughter one another to possess the secret by taking it off others, because for the greedy, power only exists if it is possessed by the few. And if the news got around that the elixir had been found, the deaths would increase. Perhaps there would even be a war, in which the Church would participate, make no mistake. Do you seriously want all this?’
Adia looked at him with an intensity that was almost frightening. Mondino sensed that she would judge his worth as a human being by the reply that he gave her. He wanted to please her at all costs. And yet his scientific mind wouldn’t let him. Her tale of the mountain was suggestive, but not very credible. When a physician operated on a patient, what mattered was how the operation turned out. If it went well, the patient got better even if the physician were a murderer and a contemptible creature.
‘What would you do, then?’ he said, finally, preferring to answer the question with another question.
‘I would destroy these maps,’ she said. ‘But they are not mine to destroy. I need your permission.’
Mondino was silent for a long time, aware of the implications of what he was about to say, but incapable of holding his tongue.
‘I would like to see alchemical gold, at least once,’ he said, in a low voice. ‘If you don’t want to help me, tell me what I must do. I’ll try it on my own.’
Adia stared at him with an indefinable expression. ‘Only you can decide your fate,’ she said, pointing to the pen and ink on the table. ‘Write.’
Mondino could hear the hostility in her voice, but nonetheless he picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink and began to note down on the back of one of the maps all the steps that Adia was dictating to him. When there was no room left he wrote on the second map, filling half the page. ‘That’s it?’ he asked.
‘There’s something else. The most important thing.’
‘What?’
Adia turned to the brazier, where the embers could just be seen glowing red beneath a layer of ash. She sighed, and when she turned back towards him she held in her hand a small knife with an inlaid wooden handle that she must have taken out from beneath her gown. Mondino looked at her in amazement, too surprised even to react. Adia came towards him with the knife in her hand, and held it out with the handle facing him. Her eyes were moist with tears, but she wore a decided expr
ession.
‘Show me,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘That you are prepared to do it alone.’
Stupor twisted Mondino’s lips into a nervous laugh. ‘Please, put that knife away.’
‘If you want to obtain the elixir following the system I dictated to you,’ said Adia, deeply serious, ‘You need a human heart that is still palpitating. Take mine.’
Mondino didn’t know what to think. He was convinced it was a joke and was trying to work it out, but couldn’t. She continued to gaze at him holding out the knife by its blade. ‘Adia, I could never hurt you—’
‘Whereas you could hurt someone else?’ she broke in, aggressively. ‘If an unknown woman was standing in front of you now, would you kill her to make your dream come true?’
‘You mean that you can’t obtain the elixir without murder?’
‘To obtain it in this way, no,’ said Adia, without dropping her gaze. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you from the beginning, but you don’t want to listen.’
‘I didn’t understand,’ said Mondino, softly.
‘Liar.’ Adia’s expression was implacable. ‘You understood perfectly, but you didn’t want to think about it. That’s how the worst atrocities are committed: without thinking. Now make up your mind.’
Mondino bent his head. It was pointless to reply. Now there was only room for decisive action. He would show Adia, but above all he would show himself what stuff he was made of.
How much he really was prepared to risk in the name of science.
Without hesitating, he took the knife she was holding out to him and put it on the table, next to the book by Averroes. Then he put an arm round her shoulders and with his free hand threw the maps on to the glowing embers.
Turning to kiss her, while the parchments with the secret of immortality curled at their edges and became ash without producing a single lick of flame, Mondino was stunned by how all the rest counted for nothing at all.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all those who have helped me in the various phases of drafting this novel. My friends, the writers Silvia Torrealta and Matteo Bortolotti for being patient readers and giving their advice. Piero P. Giorgi, Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland, for details concerning the life and work of Mondino; Professor Rolando Dondarini, medievalist in the Department of History at the University of Bologna, for reading the book from the point of view of historical and urban reconstruction. All the staff at Piemme, who have the gift of making every working discussion feel like an enjoyable chat, and in particular the editorial director Maria Giulia Castagnone, for believing in this story from its first synopsis, and my editor Francesca Lang. My thanks also go to my agent Roberta Oliva, and to Giancarlo Narciso, without whom I might not have become a writer.
Deepest thanks go to my wife Ana Luz for believing in my work from the very beginning, and often more than I have myself.
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