At dawn, he at last put it away, placing it in a splendid casket that he then wrapped in a piece of purple velvet with golden fringes. No more old cloths or iron boxes. But still the same bag, eaten away by sea salt and yellowed by the dust of the roads, in order not to attract attention. The old master thanked the novice who had assisted him during the night.
“Are you ready to do your duty, Brother Martin?”
“It is too late to turn back.”
“Then all we can do is pray.”
The two men knelt. Ficino turned to Brother Benoît to invite him to join them in this moment of meditation. But the good monk was asleep, snoring like an old cat, arms dangling, lips curled in a blissful smile. He was dreaming of a child who would soon be born in a godforsaken corner of Palestine, a bastard he might never see if his plan failed.
By now the sun had appeared over the line of roofs, tinging the slates with a coppery light, gilding the domes with its fiery halo, striking the glittering pavement as if beating it on an anvil. After that night filled with shadow and mystery, Eviatar and François felt reinvigorated. The glorious weather immediately chased away all doubts and anxieties.
The envoys from the Holy Land donned their patched habits and rope sandals. François carefully wedged the package with pieces of coarse parchment, hardened by time, crumpled and rolled into balls, so that the casket, in being shaken about, should not hurt his loins. Eviatar wondered where François had found these scraps of hide with their faded ink, which gave off a disgusting smell of mildew, At least they were unlikely to attract pickpockets.
Master Ficino walked his guests to the doors of the Academy. The student from the day before appeared, as haughty as ever, looking the monks up and down scornfully.
“Conduct these good souls to the palace. The duke’s men are waiting for them there to take them to Rome.”
The pilgrims resumed their journey. François walked behind Eviatar and the guide, his head up, admiring the flower-filled balconies, the statues embedded in the house fronts, the frescoes adorning the pediments. He strolled like a carefree pedestrian, his bag over his shoulder. After a few steps, he stopped. A shriveled piece of parchment was sticking out of the bag. He stuffed it back in with his hand, making the dried-up material crack. Occupied thus in arranging old pieces of hide that swelled the canvas of his bag, he looked like a beggar adjusting his rags. Ficino watched him from a distance, somewhat put off by these pranks. But it was the sardonic smile that Brother Benoît gave him before disappearing around the corner of the street that completely shook his confidence.
51
Paul II swept majestically across the hall. The cardinals bowed as he passed, the movement of their cassocks forming a purple wave through which his white alb cut like a sail. The Holy Father followed the line of the carpet that led to the dais. Archbishop Angelo stood to one side of the nave, leaning on a pillar. From there, he could see only the tip of the Pope’s miter rising above the skullcaps. He craned his neck to look toward the far end of the basilica, where the benches reserved for important guest were located. As a sign of his disapproval, Pietro de’ Medici was not there. After all, the Pope had forced his hand. Once again, he was represented by his son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was subtler and more diplomatic. Lorenzo was dressed in a glittering doublet, its gold and silver brocade gleaming in the light from the stained-glass windows. He sat with his back straight and his head high, defying the austerity of the place with his ardent beauty, the insolent richness of his attire, the flashy rings, the huge plumed hat placed in full sight on the armrest of a prie-dieu. The two monks who had come with him were sitting behind him, their figures somehow blurred, timid, retiring, askew, as if they were merely the shadow of the dapper young lord. A patched-up bag lay across the knees of one of them. It was still stuffed with the pages that had served as wrapping. Their yellowed, crumpled ends stuck out from the flap, as hard as pigskin, dotted with mold, their sheen diminished by the years. The poor monk was constantly trying to push them back into his bag as if he were ashamed of such a pitiful package. But the recalcitrant leather kept unfolding, embarrassing him even more. Angelo looked at him pensively. His sandals were dusty, the material of his habit dulled by the sun. And yet there was a luminous, almost arrogant quality in his gaze. He might be the only real man of God here.
A casket adorned with precious stones lay on the Papal throne, its glitter forming a limpid prism. The Pope slowly climbed the steps, hiding now the halo of the emeralds and rock crystals. He took the key handed to him by his secretary then knelt and inserted it in the lock. All present prostrated themselves. He carefully opened the lid, murmured a blessing then, suddenly seeing the faded letters, crossed himself and burst into tears. The silence was so absolute that it was as if the voice of the Lord was rising from the casket. The Holy Father kissed the sacred manuscript with his fingertip, not daring to take it in his hand. The parchment was crumbly. The Vatican archivists had recommended that it not be exposed to the light. One of them began reading the Latin translation that had been made of it by the experts.
Jesus knows that he will soon die. He makes no attempt to conceal his terror. Annas tries to comfort him, assuring him that his sacrifice will not be in vain. But Jesus refuses to be consoled. He is in no way resigned to his fate. Is he not being killed to stop him from speaking, because his confessions disturb Jerusalem as much as Caesar? The Jews are wrong to believe that his execution will assuage the anger of the Romans. Many others will perish, like him. The temple will be destroyed, says Jesus. And Rome will fall.
The interpreter broke off his reading abruptly. Paul II stood up, announcing sternly that the revelations that followed related to future times and that it was not appropriate to divulge then too soon. Spread prematurely, Christ’s last message would be misunderstood by the faithful. Worse still, it would be distorted by the enemies of the faith. The assembled nuncios and legates muttered in frustration and disappointment, but the Holy Father was already closing the casket back up. He gave the key back to his secretary and let a majordomo quickly remove the fabled text to the cellars. That very evening, soldiers of the Vatican guard would round up all the scholars who had had access to Annas’s notes and put them to the sword.
“Write this. There is a beginning and there is an end. The temple will be destroyed. And Rome will fall. In the last resort, God will die with man . . . ”
“You blaspheme!”
“What father would want to survive his child?”
I ask the accused to retract, but to no avail. He remains insistent.
“Write this. There is a before and there is an after. Everything begins and everything ends when the first innocent dies. And God dies with him. It is you who blaspheme by denying him that death, that sorrow.”
“What kind of Jew are you to talk thus?”
Sitting by the fire, Paul II reread the Nazarene’s statement one last time, his diatribe against priests and Caesars alike, his predictions of the atrocities that would be committed in his name, his rejection of any special treatment, any burial, his farewell letter to Mary. When you came down to it, Christ’s reproaches were as harmful to the rabbis as to the priests. The Brotherhood had never had any intention of spreading them. This was simply a settling of accounts between Rome and Jerusalem, which concerned nobody else. The freeing of one of their people was a mere pretext. The book hunters had just been waiting for the convenient moment. And now the times were favorable to them. An insidious wind was blowing through Christendom. That was why they were throwing themselves blindly into the battle at the sides of those they thought they could win over to their wretched cause, in Paris, Florence, and Amsterdam—people who would betray them at the earliest opportunity. They had become much too sure of themselves. Here was the proof. By communicating Annas’s minutes, the Brotherhood was doing a lot more than challenging the Papacy. It was showing its strength, convinced that it had gained its first victo
ry. But it was the Church that would win the war against the Jews and the humanists. Louis XI and the Medicis would sing a different tune when they saw their allies sentenced to burn at the stake.
Paul II thanked the Lord for having entrusted the defense of the faith to him and for having at last restored Christ’s last words to whom they most concerned. He would show himself equal to the task. He summoned his secretary and immediately dictated his instructions to the Inquisition, ordering a hardening of the censorship with regard to heretics and the suppression of the Jews, wherever they were, followed by an appeal to the Catholic kings to support him in his struggle against all these abominable attacks from the enemies of God. All his doubts were gone. He knew now that he had been chosen by Providence to protect the Savior’s message from the folly of men. They were not yet ready to receive so much light. He, Paul II, would be their guide. The Vatican would now keep the truth in its cellars, under seal, until the day of Revelation.
If the infidels in Palestine had not grasped the deep meaning of the Nazarene’s words, it was because they had not read them as believers, as followers. Annas had been mistaken. Christ had not blasphemed. God did indeed bleed with the blood of man and weep with his tears. “He dies,” as Jesus had said so eloquently, in spite of the high priest’s outraged protests. Those who rejected this teaching of Our Lord were therefore denying the suffering of God. Well, they would now have to be taught that suffering.
52
I see neither title nor signature.”
“Nevertheless, this is the manuscript of the Testament.”
“A worthless testament, basically.”
“Worthless?”
“Villon isn’t dead, as far as I know!”
Fust refrained from responding. He himself had no idea what had become of the poet. Chartier gave back the bundle of pages. He was firmly opposed to the publication of Master François’s ballads. There were already enough copies in circulation. Sadly, Fust put the collection back in a drawer.
The two men bent over the desk laden with books. Chartier was quite inflexible. He quickly sorted through the volumes, rejecting most of the works proposed. Not that Fust was intimidated by the bishop’s threatening looks. After all, Louis XI, satisfied with the first editions produced in Paris, continued to protect the printers. He was even sponsoring two faculties devoted to humanistic studies, one in Valencia, the other in Bourges, since the Sorbonne was still firmly opposed to accommodating such centers of intellectual debauchery. It was hardly surprising that Chartier was in such bad humor. He knew that many university scholars visited the booksellers in secret. So it hardly mattered if he allowed or banned this or that publication. It would get to them one way or another anyway. Guillaume Chartier remembered having shown Villon a truncated edition of Plato’s Republic, badly bound, full of mistakes, which was then being sold clandestinely. Right there in his cell, two steps from the gallows, Villon had immediately grasped the significance of such a text. As it happened, the king had become so enamored of the idea of res publica, or “commonwealth,” that he was trying to take it up on his own account. It was for him that Marsilio Ficino had just translated into French Nicolas of Cusa’s notes putting forward the principle of a government “by the people and for the people.” Louis XI was so delighted, he had asserted that he had found the recent works submitted by the book hunters for the approval of the crown “truly fine.” Ever since he had said that, courtiers and scholars alike had started talking about “fine writing” and “fine arts.” Curiously, nobody ever spoke of “fine science.”
As the bishop pushed the rejected volumes—treatises by Lucretius, Neapolitan madrigals, maps of the heavenly vault, amorous tales—to the end of the table, Fust meekly piled them willy-nilly at the bottom of a crate.
When Guillaume Chartier finally left, Fust collapsed on his chair. He opened the drawer of his desk, took out Villon’s Testament, and read a few lines at random. Whores and noble ladies, bandits and notaries, lords and laborers, some touching, some grotesque, paraded through the stanzas, all more concerned with love and good food than with knowing if the earth was flat, round or quadrangular.
For Villon was not only the herald of a new age. He was the pallbearer of this one. He drew a tender line under an era that was dying. But he refused to die with it. He had vanished, leaving priests and men-at-arms, ambitious kings and corrupt bishops in the lurch, bequeathing his legend, his melody, to whoever might want it. To the men of tomorrow, he had addressed no fine speech or proclamation, just a gentle wink.
53
The rain rattled deafeningly on the slate roof and the shutters banged. The howling of the north wind was trying to get in through the chimney, but by the time it reached the hearth, choked by the smoke and the soot, it emitted only a dull moan. Tuscan peasants in rags and Florentine burghers wrapped in their cloaks sat huddled on the benches. An icy cold lashed their cheeks whenever the door of the inn burst open. The candles flickered, threatening to go out. A tall strapping man appeared in the doorway. He was so big, and made all the bigger by his thick leather cape, that he took up the whole doorframe, barring the wind from entering. He peered into the gloom, looking the drinkers up and down, as if he were searching for someone. The innkeeper was about to reprimand him, but changed his mind when the brute turned toward him. His grimacing smile, lost amid the cuts and scars that crisscrossed his face, had all the seduction of an open wound. So it was with a keen sense of relief that the innkeeper saw the rogue at last close the door and go straight to the far end of the room.
A hooded monk was sitting in a corner, holding a bowl of hot cider in his cracked hands to warm them. He did not move when the giant shadow of the man in the cape loomed on the wall.
“Brother Benoît?”
The monk nodded.
The ogre immediately sat down and poured himself a drink. “What news do you bring from Galilee?”
The monk’s only response was to raise his bowl, take a decent swig of cider, then wipe his lips with his sleeve. The hood left the features of his face obscured. Only his chin protruded. His lips, though, could vaguely be made out in the red glow from the hearth. They were slightly twisted, the corners lifted toward the cheeks in a disconcerting grin. “Hello, Colin,” he said at last.
Colin lost his balance, his bench fell backwards, and he ended up lying full-length on the filthy flagstones of the tavern, much to the amusement of the customers. Colin stood up again, groaning, ready to strike those who were mocking him, but then he merely threw them a scornful glance, turned his back on them, threw himself on François, and gave him an almighty hug. The audience looked on speechless, unable to decide if the monster was going to devour the prey he was crushing in his arms or if the monk would brandish his wooden cross and repulse this attack with a quick “Vade retro, Satanas!”
Colin at last relaxed his embrace and quietly sat down again, his cheeks red with emotion. Disappointed, the gallery lost all interest. The two men decided nevertheless to speak in low voices, leaning toward each other across the table.
“You’re looking well for a priest,” Colin said
“The book hunters have taken good care of me.”
François was amused to see the lines of bewilderment that furrowed his old companion’s brow. Whenever Colin thought hard about something, his features became twisted and his veins stood out, as if he were lifting a tree trunk.
“You made yourself the accomplice of those unbelievers!”
“To each his own treachery . . . ”
“That’s rich, coming from you!” Colin replied, offended. After his convoy had been ambushed and he had escaped by a miracle, he had hurried to Italy to inform Federico and claim the payment that was due to him. In order not to die of starvation, he had committed a few thefts on the way, and had been caught by the constabulary not far from Parma. It was to save his skin that he had denounced the bookseller. He had merely paid the Flor
entine back in his own coin.
“Whereas you set about getting him released. And at what a price! By selling off the words of our Lord Christ!”
François shrugged. He knocked back what remained in his tankard, avoiding his friend’s angry glare. After a moment, he even seemed to forget his presence, and sat lost in thought, gazing at the reflections of the fire dancing on the wall. Outraged, Colin grunted and stood up, throwing a couple of coins on the table for his cider. François held him back by his sleeve. He held out his bag, the flap open.
Colin, still standing, took the bag and felt the weight of it. There were no crowns or ingots in it. He fingered the outside of it with an expert hand—the hand of an experienced brigand.
He distrusted François’s tricks. Head thrown back, holding the thing at arm’s length, he gently moved the canvas sides apart. All he could see was a package rolled up into a ball. Making up his mind, he took the package out, turned it in every direction, then peeled it like an onion, throwing off one by one the crumpled scraps that surrounded it. All he found in it was a hunk of dry bread. Annoyed, he abruptly thrust his hand back into the bag, touched the rough bottom with his fingernails, even looked for a secret pocket, while François bent down to pick up the fragments that had fallen to the floor. Suddenly he brandished a whole bundle of them.
“These are the words of Jesus.”
The dim lighting in the tavern made the pages look even more pitiful. The faded ink and soiled parchment gave them an ashen hue. The letters were barely visible amid the folds in the hide and the patches of mold. There were no illuminations, not even any margins, just spidery scribbles covering almost the whole page. Colin wondered if François was making fun of him That would have been sacrilege.
The Brotherhood of Book Hunters Page 21