Finally, seeing that my master appeared seriously determined to look into Venantius’s things, Malachi told him outright that, before rummaging among the dead man’s papers, he ought perhaps to obtain the abbot’s authorization; that he himself, even though he was the librarian, had refrained, out of respect and discipline, from looking; and that in any case, as William had requested, no one had approached that desk, and no one would approach it until the abbot gave instructions. William realized it was not worth engaging in a test of strength with Malachi, though all that stir and those fears about Venantius’s papers had of course increased his desire to become acquainted with them. But he was so determined to get back in there that night, though he still did not know how, that he decided not to create incidents. He was harboring, however, thoughts of retaliation, which, if they had not been inspired as they were by a thirst for truth, would have seemed very stubborn and perhaps reprehensible.
Before entering the refectory, we took another little walk in the cloister, to dispel the mists of sleep in the cold evening air. Some monks were still walking there in meditation. In the garden opening off the cloister we glimpsed old Alinardo of Grottaferrata, who, by now feeble of body, spent a great part of his day among the trees, when he was not in church praying; He seemed not to feel the cold, and he was sitting in the outer porch.
William spoke a few words of greeting to him, and the old man seemed happy that someone should spend time with him.
“A peaceful day,” William said.
“By the grace of God,” the old man answered.
“Peaceful in the heavens, but grim on earth. Did you know Venantius well?”
“Venantius who?” the old man said. Then a light flashed in his eyes. “Ah, the dead boy. The beast is roaming about the abbey. ...”
“What beast?”
“The great beast that comes from the sea ... Seven heads and ten horns and upon his horns ten crowns and upon his heads three names of blasphemy. The beast like unto a leopard, with the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion ... I have seen him.”
“Where have you seen him? In the library?”
“Library? Why there? I have not gone to the scriptorium for years and I have never seen the library. No one goes to the library. I knew those who did go up to the library. ...”
“Who? Malachi? Berengar?”
“Oh, no ...” the old man said, chuckling. “Before. The librarian who came before Malachi, many years ago ...”
“Who was that?”
“I do not remember; he died when Malachi was still young. And the one who came before Malachi’s master, and was a young assistant librarian when I was young ... But I never set foot in the library. Labyrinth ...”
“The library is a labyrinth?”
“Hunc mundum tipice labyrinthus denotat ille,” the old man recited, absently. “Intranti largus, redeunti sed nimis artus. The library is a great labyrinth, sign of the labyrinth of the world. You enter and you do not know whether you will come out. You must not transgress the pillars of Hercules. ...”
“So you don’t know how one enters the library when the Aedificium doors are closed?”
“Oh, yes.” The old man laughed. “Many know. You go by way of the ossarium. You can go through the ossarium, but you do not want to go through the ossarium. The dead monks keep watch.”
“Those dead monks who keep watch—they are not those who move at night through the library with a lamp?”
“With a lamp?” The old man seemed amazed. “I have never heard this story. The dead monks stay in the ossarium, the bones drop gradually from the cemetery and collect there, to guard the passage. Have you never seen the altar of the chapel that leads to the ossarium?”
“It is the third on the left, after the transept, is it not?”
The third? Perhaps. It is the one whose altar stone is carved with a thousand skeletons. The fourth skull on the right: press the eyes ... and you are in the ossarium. But do not go there; I have never gone. The abbot does not wish it.”
“And the beast? Where did you see the beast?”
“The beast? Ah, the Antichrist ... He is about to come, the millennium is past; we await him. ...”
“But the millennium was three hundred years ago, and he did not come then. ...”
“The Antichrist does not come after a thousand ears have passed. When the thousand years have passed, the reign of the just begins; then comes the Antichrist, to confound the just, and then there will be the final battle. …”
“But the just will reign for a thousand years,” William said. “Or else they reigned from the death of Christ to the end of the first millennium, and so the Antichrist should have come then; or else the just have not yet reigned, and the Antichrist is still far off.”
“The millennium is not calculated from the death of Christ but from the donation of Constantine, three centuries later. Now it is a thousand years. ...”
“So the rein of the just is ending?”
“I do not know. ... I do not know any more. I am tired. The calculation is difficult. Beatus of Liébana made it; ask Jorge, he is young, he remembers well. ... But the time is ripe. Did you not hear the seven trumpets?”
“Why the seven trumpets?”
“Did you not hear how the other boy died, the illuminator? The first angel sounded the first trumpet, and hail and fire fell mingled with blood. And the second angel sounded the second trumpet, and the third part of the sea became blood. ... Did the second boy not die in the sea of blood? Watch out for the third trumpet! The third part of the creatures in the sea will die. God punishes us. The world all around the abbey is rank with heresy; they tell me that on the throne of Rome there is a perverse pope who uses hosts for practices of necromancy, and feeds them to his morays. ... And in our midst someone has violated the ban, has broken the seals of the labyrinth. ...”
“Who told you that?”
“I heard it. All were whispering that sin has entered the abbey. Do you have any chickpeas?”
The question, addressed to me, surprised me. “No, I have no chickpeas,” I said, confused.
“Next time, bring me some chickpeas. I hold them in my mouth—you see my poor toothless mouth?—until they are soft. They stimulate saliva, aqua fons vitae. Will you bring me some chickpeas tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I will bring you some chickpeas,” I said to him. But he had dozed off. We left him and went to the refectory.
COMPLINE
In which the Aedificium is entered, a mysterious visitor is discovered, a secret message with necromantic signs is found, and also a book is found, but then promptly vanishes, to be sought through many subsequent chapters; nor is the theft of William’s precious lenses the last of the vicissitudes.
The supper was joyless and silent. It had been just over twelve ours since the discovery of Venantius’s co r se. All the others stole glimpses at his empty place at table. When it was the hour for compline, the procession that marched into the choir seemed a funeral cortège. We followed the office standing in the nave and keeping an eye on the third chapel. The light was scant, and when we saw Malachi emerge from the darkness to reach his stall, we could not tell exactly where he had come from. We moved into the shadows, hiding in the side nave, so that no one would see us stay behind when the office was over. Under my scapular I had the lamp I had purloined in the kitchen during supper. We would light it later at the great bronze tripod that burned all night. I had procured a new wick and ample oil. We would have light for a long time.
I was too excited about our imminent venture to pay attention to the service, which ended almost without my noticing. The monks lowered their cowls over their faces and slowly filed out, to go to their cells. The church remained deserted, illuminated by the glow of the tripod.
“Now,” William said, “to work.”
We approached the third chapel. The base of the altar was really like an ossarium, a series of skulls with deep hollow eyesockets, which filled those who looked at them with t
error, set on a pile of what, in the admirable relief, appeared to be tibias. William repeated in a low voice the words he had heard from Alinardo (fourth skull on the right, press the eyes). He stuck his fingers into the sockets of that fleshless face, and at once we heard a kind of hoarse creak. The altar moved, turning on a hidden pivot, allowing a glimpse of a dark aperture. As I shed light on it with my raised lamp, we made out some damp steps. We decided to go down them, after debating whether to close off the passage again behind us. Better not, William said; we did not know whether we would be able to reopen it afterward. And as for the risk of being discovered, if anyone came at that hour to operate the same mechanism, that meant he knew how to enter, and a closed passage would not deter him.
We descended perhaps a dozen steps and came into a corridor on whose sides there were some horizontal niches, such as I was later to see in many catacombs. But now I was entering an ossarium for the first time, and I was very much afraid. The monks’ bones had been collected there over the centuries, dug from the earth and piled in the niches with no attempt to recompose the forms of their bodies. Some niches had only tiny bones, others only skulls, neatly arranged in a kind of pyramid, so that one would not roll over another; and it was a truly terrifying sight, especially in the play of shadows the lamp created as we walked on. In one niche I saw only hands, many hands, now irrevocably interlaced in a tangle of dead fingers. I let out a cry in that place of the dead, for a moment sensing some presence above, a squeaking, a rapid movement in the dark.
“Mice,” William said, to reassure me.
“What are mice doing here?”
“Passing through, like us: because the ossarium leads to the Aedificium, and then to the kitchen. And to the tasty books of the library. And now you understand why Malachi’s face is so austere. His duties oblige him to come through here twice daily, morning and evening. Truly he has nothing to laugh about.”
“But why doesn’t the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?” I asked, for no good reason. “Is Jorge right?”
“Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn’t interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. But here we are.”
And, in fact, the corridor was ending, thank God; new steps began. After climbing them, we would have only to push an ironclad wooden door and we would find ourselves behind the fireplace of the kitchen, just below the circular staircase leading to the scriptorium. As we went up, we thought we heard a noise above us.
We remained a moment in silence; then I said, “It’s impossible. No one came in before us. ...”
“Assuming this is the only way into the Aedificium. In centuries past this was a fortress, and it must have more secret entrances than we know of. We’ll go up slowly. But we have little choice. If we put out the light we can’t see where we are going; if we leave it burning we. give anyone upstairs the alarm. Our only hope is that if someone really is there, he will be afraid of us.”
We reached the scriptorium, emerging from the south tower. Venantius’s desk was directly opposite. The room was so vast that, as we moved, we illuminated only a few yards of wall at a time. We hoped no one was in the court, to see the light through the windows. The desk appeared to be in order, but William bent at once to examine the pages on the shelf below, and he cried out in dismay.
“Is something missing?” I asked.
“Today I saw two books here, one of them in Greek. And that’s the one missing. Somebody has taken it, and in great haste, because one page fell on the floor here.”
“But the desk was watched. …”
“Of course. Perhaps somebody grabbed it just a short while ago. Perhaps he’s still here.” He turned toward the shadows and his voice echoed among the columns. “If you are here, beware!” It seemed to me a good idea as William had said before, it is always better when the person who frightens us is also afraid of us.
William set down the page he had found under the desk and bent his face toward it. He asked me for more light. I held the lamp closer and saw a page, the first half of it blank, the second covered with tiny characters whose origin I recognized with some difficulty.
“Is it Greek?” I asked.
“Yes, but I don’t understand clearly.” He took his lenses from his habit and set them firmly astride his nose, then bent his head again.
“It’s Greek, written in a very fine hand, and yet in a disorderly way. Even with my lenses I have trouble reading it. I need still more light. Come closer. ...”
He had picked up the sheet of parchment, holding it to his face; and instead of stepping behind him and holding the lamp high over his head, I foolishly stood directly in front of him. He asked me to move aside, and as I did, I grazed the back of the page with the flame. William pushed me away, asking me whether I wanted to burn the manuscript for him. Then he cried out. I saw clearly that some vague signs, in a yellow-brown color, had appeared on the upper part of the page. William made me give him the lamp and moved it behind the page, holding the flame fairly close to the surface of the parchment, which he heated without setting it afire. Slowly, as if an invisible hand were writing “Mane, Tekel, Peres,” I saw some marks emerge one by one on the white side of the sheet as William moved the lamp, and as the smoke that rose from the top of the flame blackened the recto; the marks did not resemble those of any alphabet, except that of necromancers.
“Fantastic!” William said. “More and more interesting!” He looked around. “But it would be better not to expose this discovery to the tricks of our mysterious companion, if he is still here. ...” He took off his lenses, set them on the desk, then carefully rolled up the parchment and hid it inside his habit. Still amazed by this sequence of events, which were nothing if not miraculous, I was about to ask further explanations when all of a sudden a sharp sound distracted us. It came from the foot of the east stairway, leading to the library.
“Our man is there! After him!” William shouted, and we flung ourselves in that direction, he moving faster, I more slowly, for I was carrying the lamp. I heard the clatter of someone stumbling and falling. I ran, and found William at the foot of the steps, observing a heavy volume, its binding reinforced with metal studs. At that same moment we heard another noise, in the direction from which we had come. “Fool that I am!” William cried. “Hurry! To Venantius’s desk!”
I understood: somebody, from the shadows behind us, had thrown the volume to send us far away.
Once again William was faster than I and reached the desk first. Following him, I glimpsed among the columns a fleeing shadow, taking the stairway of the west tower.
Seized with warlike ardor, I thrust the lamp into William’s hand and dashed blindly off toward the stairs where the fugitive had descended. At that moment I felt like a soldier of Christ fighting all the legions of hell, and I burned with the desire to lay my hands on the stranger, to turn him over to my master. I tumbled down almost the whole stairway, tripping over the hem of my habit (that was the only moment of my life, I swear, when I regretted having entered a monastic order!); but at that same instant—and it was the thought of an instant—I consoled myself with the idea that my adversary was suffering the same impediment. And, further, if he had taken the book, he would have his hands full. From behind the bread oven I almost dived into the kitchen, and in the starry light that faintly illuminated the vast entrance, I saw the shadow I was pursuing as it slipped past the refectory door, then pulled this shut. I rushed toward the door, I labored a few seconds opening it, entered, looked around, and saw no one. The outside door was still barred. I turned. Shadows and silence. I noticed a glow advancing from the kitchen and I flattened myself against a wall. On the threshold of the passage between the two rooms a figure appeared, illuminated by a lamp. I cried out. It was William.
“Nobody around? I foresaw that. He didn’t go out through a door? He didn’t take the passage through the ossarium?”
&nbs
p; “No, he went out through here, but I don’t know where!”
“I told you: there are other passages, and it’s useless for us to look for them. Perhaps our man is emerging at some distant spot. And with him my lenses.”
“Your lenses?”
“Yes. Our friend could not take the page away from me, but with great presence of mind, as he rushed past, he snatched my glasses from the desk.”
“Why?”
“Because he is no fool. He heard me speak of these notes, he realized they were important, he assumed that without my lenses I would be unable to decipher them, and he knows for sure that I would not entrust them to anyone else. In fact, now it’s as if I didn’t have them.”
“But how did he know about your lenses?”
“Come, come. Apart from the fact that we spoke about them yesterday with the master glazier, this morning in the scriptorium I put them on to search among Venantius’s papers. So there are many people who could know how valuable those objects are to me. Actually, I could read a normal manuscript, but not this one.” And he was again unrolling the mysterious parchment. “The part in Greek is written too fine and the upper part is too hazy. …”
He showed me the mysterious signs that had appeared as if by magic in the heat of the flame. “Venantius wanted to conceal an important secret, and he used one of those inks that leave no trace when written but reappear when warmed. Or else he used lemon juice. But since I don’t know what substance he used and the signs could disappear again: quickly, you who have good eyes, copy them at once as faithfully as you can, perhaps enlarging them a bit.” And so I did, without knowing what I was copying. It was a series of four or five lines, really necromantic, and I will reproduce only the very first signs, to give the reader an idea of the puzzle I had before my eyes:
The name of the rose Page 18