“Amen,” all replied, with one voice.
In a line, without a murmur, the monks went off to their pallets. Feeling no desire to speak with one another, the Minorites and the Pope’s men disappeared, longing for solitude and rest. My heart was heavy.
“To bed, Adso,” William said to me, climbing the stairs of the pilgrims’ hospice. “This is not a night for roaming about. Bernard Gui might have the idea of heralding the end of the world by beginning with our carcasses. Tomorrow we must try to be present at matins, because immediately afterward Michael and the other Minorites will leave.”
“Will Bernard leave, too, with his prisoners?” I asked in a faint voice.
“Surely he has nothing more to do here. He will want to precede Michael to Avignon, but in such a way that Michael’s arrival coincides with the trial of the cellarer, a Minorite, heretic, and murderer. The pyre of the cellarer will illuminate, like a propitiatory torch, Michael’s first meeting with the Pope.”
“And what will become of Salvatore and ... the girl?”
“Salvatore will go with the cellarer, because he will have to testify at the trial. Perhaps in exchange for this service Bernard will grant him his life. He may allow him to escape and then have him killed, or he may really let him go, because a man like Salvatore is of no interest to a man like Bernard. Who knows? Perhaps Salvatore will end up a cutthroat bandit in some forest of Languedoc. ...”
“And the girl?”
“I told you: she is burnt flesh. But she will be burned beforehand, along the way, to the edification of some Catharist village along the coast. I have heard it said that Bernard is to meet his colleague Jacques Fournier (remember that name: for the present he is burning Albigensians, but he has higher ambitions), and a beautiful witch to throw on the fire will increase the prestige and the fame of both. ...”
“But can nothing be done to save them?” I cried. “Can’t the abbot intervene?”
“For whom? For the cellarer, a confessed criminal? For a wretch like Salvatore? Or are you thinking of the girl?”
“What if I were?” I made bold to say. ‘After all, of the three she is the only truly innocent one: you know she is not a witch. ...”
“And do you believe that the abbot, after what has happened, wants to risk for a witch what little prestige he has left?”
“But he assumed the responsibility for Ubertino’s escape!”
“Ubertino was one of his monks and was not accused of anything. Besides, what nonsense are you saying? Ubertino is an important man; Bernard could have struck him only from behind.”
“So the cellarer was right: the simple folk always pay for all, even for those who speak in their favor, even for those like Ubertino and Michael, who with their words of penance have driven the simple to rebel!” I was in such despair that I did not consider that the girl was not even a Fraticello, seduced by Ubertino’s mystical vision, but a peasant, paying for something that did not concern her.
“So it is,” William answered me sadly. “And if you are really seeking a glimmer of justice, I will tell you that one day the big dogs, the Pope and the Emperor, in order to make peace, will pass over the corpses of the smaller dogs who bit one another in their service. And Michael or Ubertino will be treated as your girl is being treated today.”
Now I know that William was prophesying—or, rather, syllogizing—on the basis of principles of natural philosophy. But at that moment his prophecies and his syllogisms did not console me in the least. The only sure thing was that the girl would be burned. And I felt responsible, because it was as if she would also expiate on the pyre the sin I had committed with her.
I burst shamefully into sobs and fled to my cell, where all through the night I chewed my pallet and moaned helplessly, for I was not even allowed—as they did in the romances of chivalry I had read with my companions at Melk—to lament and call out the beloved’s name.
This was the only earthly love of my life, and I could not, then or ever after, call that love by name.
SIXTH DAY
MATINS
In which the princes sederunt, and Malachi slumps to the ground.
We went down to matins. That last part of the night, virtually the first part of the imminent new day, was still foggy. As I crossed the cloister the dampness penetrated to my bones, aching after my uneasy sleep. Although the church was cold, I knelt under those vaults with a sigh of relief, sheltered from the elements, comforted by the warmth of other bodies, and by prayer.
The chanting of the psalms had just begun when William pointed to the stalls opposite us: there was an empty place in between Jorge and Pacificus of Tivoli. It was the place of Malachi, who always sat beside the blind man. Nor were we the only ones who had noticed the absence. On one side I caught a worried glance from the abbot, all too well aware, surely, that those vacancies always heralded grim news. And on the other I noticed that old Jorge was unusually agitated. His face, as a rule so inscrutable because of those white, blank eyes, was plunged almost entirely in darkness; but his hands were nervous and restless. In fact, more than once he groped at the seat beside him, as if to see whether it was occupied. He repeated that gesture again and again, at regular intervals, as if hoping that the absent man would appear at any moment but fearing not to find him.
“Where can the librarian be?” I whispered to William.
“Malachi,” William answered, “is by now the sole possessor of the book. If he is not guilty of the crimes, then he may not know the dangers that book involves. ...”
There was nothing further to be said. We could only wait. And we waited: William and I, the abbot, who continued to stare at the empty place, and Jorge, who never stopped questioning the darkness with his hands.
When we reached the end of the office, the abbot reminded monks and novices that it was necessary to prepare for the Christmas High Mass; therefore, as was the custom, the time before lauds would be spent assaying the accord of the whole community in the performance of some chants prescribed for the occasion. That assembly of devout men was in effect trained as a single body, a single harmonious voice; through a process that had gone on for years, they acknowledged their unification, into a single soul, in their singing.
The abbot invited them to chant the “Sederunt”:
Sederunt principes
et adversus me
loquebantur, iniqui
persecuti sunt me.
Adiuva me, Domine
Deus meus, salvum me
fac propter magnam misericordiam tuam.
I asked myself whether the abbot had not chosen deliberately that gradual to be chanted on that particular night, the cry to God of the persecuted, imploring help against wicked princes. And there, the princes’ envoys were still present at the service, to be reminded of how for centuries our order had been prompt to resist the persecution of the powerful, thanks to its special bond with the Lord, God of hosts. And indeed the beginning of the chant created an impression of great power.
On the first syllable, a slow and solemn chorus began, dozens and dozens of voices, whose bass sound filled the naves and floated over our heads and yet seemed to rise from the heart of the earth. Nor did it break off, because as other voices began to weave, over that deep and continuing line, a series of vocalises and melismas, it—telluric—continued to dominate and did not cease for the whole time that it took a speaker to repeat twelve “Ave Maria”s in a slow and cadenced voice. And as if released from every fear by the confidence that the prolonged syllable, allegory of the duration of eternity, gave to those praying, the other voices (and especially the novices’) on that rock-solid base raised cusps; columns, pinnacles of liquescent and underscored neumae. And as my heart was dazed with sweetness at the vibration of a climacus or a porrectus, a torculus or a salicus, those voices seemed to say to me that the soul (of those praying, and my own as I listened to them), unable to bear the exuberance of feeling, was lacerated through them to express joy, grief, praise, love, in an impetus of swee
t sounds. Meanwhile, the obstinate insistence of the chthonian voices did not let up, as if the threatening presence of enemies, of the powerful who persecuted the people of the Lord, remained unresolved. Until that Neptunian roiling of a single note seemed overcome, or at least convinced and enfolded, by the rejoicing hallelujahs of those who opposed it, and all dissolved on a majestic and perfect chord and on a resupine neuma.
Once the “sederunt” had been uttered with a kind of stubborn difficulty, the “principes” rose in the air with grand and seraphic calm. I no longer asked myself who were the mighty who spoke against me (against us); the shadow of that seated, menacing ghost had dissolved, had disappeared.
And other ghosts, I also believed, dissolved at that point, because on looking again at Malachi’s stall, after my attention had been absorbed by the chant, I saw the figure of the librarian among the others in prayer, as if he had never been missing. I looked at William and saw a hint of relief in his eyes, the same relief that I noted from the distance in the eyes of the abbot. As for Jorge, he had once more extended his hands and, encountering his neighbor’s body, had withdrawn them promptly. But I could not say what feelings stirred him.
Now the choir was festively chanting the “Adiuva me,” whose bright a swelled happily through the church, and even the u did not seem grim as that to “sederunt,” but full of holy vigor. The monks and the novices sang, as the rule of chant requires, with body erect, throat free, head looking up, the book almost at shoulder height so they could read without having to lower their heads and thus causing the breath to come from the chest with less force. But it was still night, and though the trumpets of rejoicing blared, the haze of sleep trapped many of the singers, who, lost perhaps in the production of a long note, trusting the very wave of the chant, nodded at times, drawn by sleepiness. Then the wakers, even in that situation, explored the faces with a light, one by one, to bring them back to wakefulness of body and of soul.
So it was a waker who first noticed Malachi sway in a curious fashion, as if he had suddenly plunged back into the Cimmerian fog of a sleep that he had probably not enjoyed during the night. The waker went over to him with the lamp, illuminating his face and so attracting my attention. The librarian had no reaction. The man touched him, and Malachi slumped forward heavily. The waker barely had time to catch him before he fell.
The chanting slowed down, the voices died, there was brief bewilderment. William had jumped immediately from his seat and rushed to the place where Pacificus of Tivoli and the waker were now laying Malachi on the ground, unconscious.
We reached them almost at the same time as the abbot, and in the light of the lamp we saw the poor man’s face. I have already described Malachi’s countenance, but that night, in that glow, it was the very image of death: the sharp nose, the hollow eyes, the sunken temples, the white, wrinkled ears with lobes turned outward, the skin of the face now rigid, taut, and dry; the color of the cheeks yellowish and suffused with a dark shadow. The eyes were still open and a labored breathing escaped those parched lips. He opened his mouth, and as I stooped behind William, who had bent over him, I saw a now blackish tongue stir within the cloister of his teeth. William, his arm around Malachi’s shoulders, raised him, wiping away with his free hand a film of sweat that blanche his brow. Malachi felt a touch, a presence; he stared straight ahead, surely not seeing, certainly not recognizing who was before him. He raised a trembling hand, grasped William by the chest, drawing his face down until they almost touched, then faintly and hoarsely he uttered some words: “He told me ... truly. ... It had the power of a thousand scorpions. …”
“Who told you?” William asked him. “Who?”
Malachi tried again to speak. But he was seized by a great trembling and his head fell backward. His face lost all color, all semblance of life. He was dead.
William stood up. He noticed the abbot- beside him, but did not say a word to him. Then, behind the abbot, he saw Bernard Gui.
“My lord Bernard,” William asked, “who killed this man, after you so cleverly found and confined the murderers?”
“Do not ask me,” Bernard said. “I have never said I had consigned to the law all the criminals loose in this abbey. I would have done so gladly, had I been able.” He looked at William. “But the others I now leave to the severity-or the excessive indulgence of my lord abbot.” The abbot blanched and remained silent. Then Bernard left.
At that moment we heard a kind of whimpering, a choked sob. It was Jorge, on his kneeling bench, supported by a monk who must have described to him what had happened.
“It will never end ...” he said in a broken voice. “O Lord, forgive us all!”
William bent over the corpse for another moment. He grasped the wrists, turned the palms of the hands toward the light. The pads of the first three fingers of the right hand were darkened.
LAUDS
In which a new cellarer is chosen, but not a new librarian.
Was it time for lauds already? Was it earlier or later? From that point on I lost all temporal sense. Perhaps hours went by, perhaps less, in which Malachi’s body was laid out in church on a catafalque, while the brothers formed a semicircle around it. The abbot issued instructions for a prompt funeral. I heard him summon Benno and Nicholas of Morimondo. In less than a day, he said, the abbey had been deprived of its librarian and its cellarer. “You,” he said to Nicholas, “will take over the duties of Remigio. You know the jobs of many, here in the abbey. Name someone to take your place in charge of the forges, and provide for today’s immediate necessities in the kitchen, the refectory. You are excused from offices. Go.” Then to Benno he said, “Only yesterday evening you were named Malachi’s assistant. Provide for the opening of the scriptorium and make sure no one goes up into the library alone.” Shyly, Benno pointed out that he had not yet been initiated into the secrets of that place. The abbot glared at him sternly. “No one has said you will be. You see that work goes on and is offered as a prayer for our dead brothers ... and for those who will yet die. Each monk will work only on the books already given him. Those who wish may consult the catalogue. Nothing else. You are excused from vespers, because at that hour you will lock up everything.”
“But how will I come out?” Benno asked.
“Good question. I will lock the lower doors after supper. Go.”
He went out with them, avoiding William, who wanted to talk to him. In the choir, a little group remained: Alinardo, Pacificus of Tivoli, Aymaro of Alessandria, and Peter of Sant’Albano. Aymaro was sneering.
“Let us thank the Lord,” he said. “With the German dead, there was the risk of having a new librarian even more barbarous.”
“Who do you think will be named in his place?” William asked.
Peter of Sant’Albano smiled enigmatically. “After everything that has happened these past few days, the problem is no longer the librarian, but the abbot. ...”
“Hush,” Pacificus said to him. And Alinardo, with his usual pensive look, said, “They will commit another injustice ... as in my day. They must be stopped”
“Who?” William asked. Pacificus took him confidentially by the arm and led him a distance from the old man, toward the door.
“Alinardo ... as you know ... we love him very much. For us he represents the old tradition and the finest days of the abbey. ... But sometimes he speaks without knowing what he says. We are all worried about the new librarian. The man must be worthy, and mature, and wise. ... That is all there is to it.”
“Must he know Greek?” William asked.
“And Arabic, as tradition has it: his office requires it. But there are many among us with these gifts. I, if I may say so, and Peter, and Aymaro …”
“Benno knows Greek.”
“Benno is too young. I do not know why Malachi chose him as his assistant yesterday, but ...”
“Did Adelmo know Greek?”
“I believe not. No, surely not.”
“But Venantius knew it. And Berengar. Very well, I
thank you.”
We left, to go and get something in the kitchen.
“Why did you want to find out who knew Greek?” I asked.
“Because all those who die with blackened fingers know Greek. Therefore it would be well to expect the next corpse among those who know Greek. Including me. You are safe.”
“And what do you think of Malachi’s last words?”
“You heard them. Scorpions. The fifth trumpet announces, among other thins, the coming of locusts that will torment men with a sting like a scorpion’s. And Malachi informed us that someone had forewarned him.”
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