“And you had seen the ampoule a few hours before the storm?”
“Yes ... or, rather, no, now that I think about it. It was behind a row of pots, carefully hidden, and I didn’t check it every day. ...”
“Therefore, as far as you know, it could have been stolen quite a while before the storm, without your finding out?”
“Now that I think about it, yes, unquestionably.”
“And that novice of yours could have stolen it and, then could have seized the occasion of the storm deliberately to leave the door open and create confusion among your things?”
Severinus seemed very excited. “Yes, of course. Not only that, but as I recall what happened, I was quite surprised that the hurricane, violent though it was, had upset so many things. It could quite well be that someone took advantage of the storm to devastate the room and produce more damage than the wind could have done!”
“Who was the novice?”
“His name was Augustine. But he died last year, a fall from scaffolding as he and other monks and servants were cleaning the sculptures of the façade of the church. Actually, now that I think about it, he swore up and down that he had not left the door open before the storm. I was the one, in my fury, who held him responsible for the accident. Perhaps he really was not guilty.”
“And so we have a third person, perhaps far more expert than a novice, who knew about your rare poison. Whom had you told about it?”
“That I really don’t remember. The abbot, of course, to ask his permission to keep such a dangerous substance. And a few others, perhaps in the library, because I was looking for some herbaria that might give me information.”
“But didn’t you tell me you keep here the books that are most useful to your art?”
“Yes, and many of them,” he said, pointing to a corner of the room where some shelves held dozens of volumes. “But then I was looking for certain books I couldn’t keep here, which Malachi actually was very reluctant to let me see. In fact, I had to ask the abbot’s authorization.” His voice sank, and he was almost shy about letting me hear his words. “You know, in a secret part of the library, they keep books on necromancy, black magic, and recipes for diabolical philters. I was allowed to consult some of these works, of necessity, and I was hoping to find a description of that poison and its functions. In vain.”
“So you spoke about it with Malachi.”
“Of course, with him definitely, and perhaps also with Berengar, who was his assistant. But you mustn’t jump to conclusions: I don’t remember clearly, perhaps other monks were present as I was talking, the scriptorium at times is fairly crowded, you know. …”
“I’m not suspecting anyone. I’m only trying to understand what can have happened. In any event, you tell me this took place some years ago, and it’s odd that anyone would steal a poison and then not use it until so much later. It would suggest a malignant mind brooding for a long time in darkness over a murderous plan.”
Severinus blessed himself, an expression of horror on his face. “God forgive us all!” he said.
There was no further comment to be made. We again covered Berengar’s body, which had to be prepared for the funeral.
PRIME
In which William induces first Salvatore and then the cellarer to confess their past, Severinus finds the stolen lenses, Nicholas brings the new ones, and William, now with six eyes, goes to decipher the manuscript of Venantius.
We were coming out as Malachi entered. He seemed very annoyed to find us there and started to leave again. From inside, Severinus saw him and said, “Were you looking for me? Is it for—” He broke off, glancing at us. Malachi signaled to him, imperceptibly, as if to say, “We’ll talk about it later. …” We were going out as he was entering, and so all three of us were to the doorway.
Malachi said, somewhat redundantly, “I was looking for the brother herbalist. ... I ... I have a headache.” “It must be the enclosed air of the library,” William said to him, in a tone of considerate sympathy. “You should inhale something.”
Malachi’s lips twitched as if he wanted to speak again, but then he gave up the idea, bowed his head, and went on inside, as we moved off.
“What is he seeing Severinus for?” I asked.
“Adso,” my master said to me impatiently, “learn to use your head and think.” Then he changed the subject: “We must question some people now. At least,” he added, as his eyes explored the grounds, “while they’re still alive. By the way: from now on we must be careful about what we eat and drink. Always take your food from the common plate, and your beverage from the pitcher the others have filled their cups from. After Berengar we are the ones who know most. Except, naturally, the murderer.”
“But whom do you want to question now?”
“Adso,” William said, “you will have observed that here the most interesting things happen at night. They die at night, they wander about the scriptorium at night, women are brought at night into the abbey. ... We have a daytime abbey and a nighttime abbey, and the nighttime one seems, unhappily, the more interesting. So, every person who roams about at night interests us, including, for example, the man you saw last night with the girl. Perhaps the business of the girl does not have anything to do with the poisonings, and perhaps it has. In any case, I have my ideas about last night’s man, and he must be one who knows other things about the nocturnal life of this holy place. And, speak of the Devil, here he is, coming this way.”
He pointed to Salvatore, who had also seen us. I notice a slight hesitation in his step, as if, wishing to avoid us, he was about to turn around. But it was only for a moment. Obviously, he realized he couldn’t escape the meeting, and he continued toward us. He greeted us with a broad smile and a fairly unctuous “Benedicite.” My master hardly allowed him to finish and spoke to him sharply.
“You know the Inquisition arrives here tomorrow?” he asked him.
Salvatore didn’t seem pleased with this news. In a faint voice, he asked, “And me?”
“And you would be wise to tell the truth to me, your friend and a Friar Minor as you once were, rather than have to tell it tomorrow to those whom you know quite well.”
Attacked so brusquely, Salvatore seemed to abandon all resistance. With a meek air he looked at William, as if to indicate he was ready to tell whatever he was asked.
“Last night there was a woman in the kitchen. Who was with her?”
“Oh, a female who sells herself like mercandia cannot be bona or have cortesia,” Salvatore recited.
“I don’t want to know whether the girl is pure. I want to know who was with her!”
“Deu, these evil females are all clever! They think di e noche about how to trap a man. ...”
William seized him roughly by the chest.” Who was with her, you or the cellarer?”
Salvatore realized he couldn’t go on lying. He began to tell a strange story, from which, with great effort, we learned that, to please the cellarer, he procured girls for him in the village, introducing them within the walls at night by paths he would not reveal to us. But he swore he acted out of the sheer goodness of his heart, betraying a comic regret that he could not find a way to enjoy his own pleasure and see that the girl, having satisfied the cellarer, would give something also to him. He said all this with slimy, lubricious smiles and, winks, as if to suggest he was speaking to men made of flesh, accustomed to such practices. He stole glances at me, nor could I check him as I would have liked, because I felt myself bound to him by a common secret, his accomplice and companion in sin.
At this point William decided to stake everything. He asked Salvatore abruptly, “Did you know Remigio before or after you were with Dolcino?”
Salvatore knelt at his feet, begging him, between sobs, not to destroy him, to save him from the Inquisition. William solemnly swore not to tell anyone what he would learn, and Salvatore did not hesitate to deliver the cellarer into our hands. The two men had met on Bald Mountain, both in Dolcino’s band; Salvatore
and the cellarer had fled together and had entered the convent of Casale, and, still together, they had joined the Cluniacs. As he stammered out pleas for forgiveness, it was clear there was nothing further to be learned from him. William decided it was worth taking Remigio by surprise, and he left Salvatore, who ran to seek refuge in the church.
The cellarer was on the opposite side of the abbey, in front of the granaries, bargaining with some peasants from the valley. He looked at us apprehensively and tried to act very busy, but William insisted on speaking with him.
“For reasons connected with your position you are obviously forced to move about the abbey even when the others are asleep, I imagine,” William said.
“That depends,” Remigio answered. “Sometimes there are little matters to deal with, and I have to sacrifice a few hours’ sleep.”
“Has nothing happened to you, in these cases, that might indicate there is someone else roaming about, without your justification, between the kitchen and the library?”
“If I had seen anything, I would have told the abbot.”
“Of course,” William agreed, and abruptly changed the subject: “The village down below is not very rich, is it?”
“Yes and no,” Remigio answered. “Some prebenders live there, abbey dependents, and they share our wealth in the good years. For example, on Saint John’s Day they received twelve bushels of malt, a horse, seven oxen, a bull, four heifers, five calves, twenty sheep, fifteen pigs, fifty chickens, and seventeen hives. Also twenty smoked pigs, twenty-seven tubs of lard, half a measure of honey, three measures of soap, a fishnet ...”
“I understand, I understand,” William interrupted him. “But you must admit that this still tells me nothing of the situation of the village, how many among its inhabitants have prebends, and how much land those who are not prebendaries possess to cultivate on their own. ...”
“Oh, as far as that goes,” Remigio said, “a normal family down there has as much as fifty tablets of land.”
“How much is a tablet?”
“Four square trabucchi, of course.”
“Square trabucchi? How much are they?”
“Thirty-six square feet is a square trabucco. Or, if you prefer, eight hundred linear trabucchi make a Piedmont mile. And calculate that a family—in the lands to the north—can cultivate olives for at least half a sack of oil.”
“Half a sack?”
“Yes, one sack makes five emine, and one emina makes eight cups.”
“I see,” my master said, disheartened. “Every locality has its own measures. Do you measure wine, for example, by the tankard?”
“Or by the rubbio. Six rubbie make one brenta, and eight brente, a keg. If you like, one rubbio is six pints from two tankards.”
“I believe my ideas are clear now,” William said, resigned.
“Do you wish to know anything else?” Remigio asked, with a tone that to me seemed defiant.
“Yes, I was asking you about how they live in the valley, because today in the library I was meditating on the sermons to women by Humbert of Romans, and in particular on that chapter ‘Ad mulieres pauperes in villulis,’ in which he says that they, more than others, are tempted to sins of the flesh because of their poverty, and wisely he says that they commit mortal sin when they sin with a layman, but the mortality of the sin becomes greater when it is committed with a priest, and greatest of all when the sin is with a monk, who is dead to the world. You know better than I that even in holy places such as abbeys the temptations of the noontime Devil are never wanting. I was wondering whether in our contacts with the people of the village you had heard that some monks, God forbid, had induced maidens into fornication.”
Although my master said these things in an almost absent tone, my reader can imagine how the words upset the poor cellarer. I cannot say he blanched, but I will say that I was so expecting him to turn pale that I saw him look whiter.
“You ask me about things that I would already have told the abbot if I knew them,” he answered humbly. “In any case, if, as I imagine, this information serves for your investigation, I will not keep silent about anything I may learn. Indeed, now that you remind me, with regard to your first question ... The night poor Adelmo died, I was stirring about the yard ... a question of the hens, you know ... I had heard rumors that one of the blacksmiths was stealing from the chicken coops at night. ... Yes, that night I did happen to see—from the distance, I couldn’t swear to it—Berengar going back into the dormitory, moving along the choir, as if he had come from the Aedificium. ... I wasn’t surprised; there had been whispering about Berengar among the monks for some time. Perhaps you’ve heard …”
“No. Tell me.”
“Well ... how can I say it? Berengar was suspected of harboring passions that ... that are not proper for a monk. ...”
“Are you perhaps trying to tell me he had relations with village girls, as I was asking you?”
The cellarer coughed, embarrassed, and flashed a somewhat obscene smile. “Oh, no ... even less proper passions ...”
“Then a monk who enjoys carnal satisfaction with a village maid is indulging in passions, on the other hand, that are somehow proper?”
“I didn’t say that, but you’ll agree that there is a hierarchy of depravity as there is of virtue. ... The flesh can be tempted according to nature and ... against nature.”
“You’re telling me that Berengar was impelled by carnal desires for those of his own sex?”
“I’m saying that such were the whisperings. ... I’m informing you of these things as proof of my sincerity and my good will. ...”
“And I thank you. And I agree with you that the sin of sodomy is far worse than other forms of lust, which, frankly, I am not inclined to investigate. ...”
“Sad, wretched things, even if they prove to have taken place,” the cellarer said philosophically:
“Yes, Remigio. We are all wretched sinners. I would never seek the mote in a brother’s eye, since I am so afraid of having a great beam in my own. But I will be grateful to you for any beams you may mention to me in the future. So we will talk great, sturdy trunks of wood and we will allow the motes to swirl in the air. How much did you say a square trabucco was?”
“Thirty-six square feet. But you mustn’t waste your time. When you wish to know something specific, come to me. Consider me a faithful friend.”
“I do consider you as such,” William said warmly. “Ubertino told me that you once belonged to my own order. I would never betray a former brother, especially in these days when we are awaiting the arrival of a papal legation led by a grand inquisitor, famous for having burned many Dolcinians. You said a square trabucco equals thirty-six square feet?”
The cellarer was no fool. He decided it was no longer worthwhile playing at cat and mouse, particularly since he realized he was the mouse.
“Brother William,” he said, “I see you know many more things than I imagined. Help me, and I’ll help you. It’s true, I am a poor man of flesh, and I succumb to the lures of the flesh. Salvatore told me that you or your novice caught them last night in the kitchen. You have traveled widely, William; you know that not even the cardinals in Avignon are models of virtue. I know you are not questioning me because of these wretched little sins. But I also realize you have learned something of my past. I have had a strange life, like many of us Minorites. Years ago I believed in the ideal of poverty, and I abandoned the community to live as a vagabond. I believed in Dolcino’s preaching, as many others like me did. I’m not an educated man; I’ve been ordained, but I can barely say Mass. I know little of theology. And perhaps I’m not really moved by ideas. You see, I once tried to rebel against the overlords; now I serve them, and for the sake of the lord of these lands I give orders to men like myself. Betray or rebel: we simple folk have little choice.”
“Sometimes the simple understand things better than the learned,” William said.
“Perhaps,” the cellarer said with a shrug. “But I don’t even
know why I did what I did, then. You see, for Salvatore it was comprehensible: his parents were serfs, he came from a childhood of hardship and illness. ... Dolcino represented rebellion, the destruction of the lords. For me it was different: I came from a city family, I wasn’t running away from hunger. It was—I don’t know how to say it—a feast of fools, a magnificent carnival. ... On the mountains with Dolcino, before we were reduced to eating the flesh of our companions killed in battle, before so many died of hardship that we couldn’t eat them all, and they were thrown to the birds and the wild animals on the slopes of Rebello ... or maybe in those moments, too ... there was an atmosphere ... can I say of freedom? I didn’t know, before, what freedom was; the preachers said to us, ‘The truth will make you free.’ We felt free, we thought that was the truth. We thought everything we were doing was right. ...”
And there you took ... to uniting yourself freely with women?” I asked, and I don’t even know why, but since the night before, Ubertino’s words had been haunting me, along with what I had read in the scriptorium and the events that had befallen me. William looked at me, curious; he had probably not expected me to be so bold and outspoken. The cellarer stared at me as if I were a strange animal.
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