The Kingdom of Light

by Giulio Leoni

  Dante, at this last remark, suddenly came to. ‘Climbing to God … Yes, that’s the problem …’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The threefold realm of the dead, in darkness and in light. In my mind I have already drawn the first two states, the lost and those who purge their sins in fire. But of the third realm …’

  ‘Paradise? How do you imagine it?’

  ‘That door is still locked to me, Cecco. The realm of Good has still not assumed definitive form in my mind. None of what I have thought so far does justice to the power of God’s throne. Sometimes the vague image of a lake of light floats into my mind, with the souls of the just warming themselves around it …’

  ‘A circle of idiots around a bonfire, like camel-dealers camped out in the desert. And that would be your Paradise? That’s our reward for all the gall and shit that we have to swallow in this life?’ the other man exploded with a snigger. ‘My word, I can understand the faith of the Mohammedans, with their Paradise rich in milk, honey, wine and beautiful women.’

  An expression of nausea appeared on Dante’s face. He waved with his hand, shaking his head as if to expunge what had just been said.

  Meanwhile he went on walking, sidestepping the crowd of men and beasts that sometimes threatened to run him down. Cecco seemed distracted, as if his thoughts had turned to something a long way off.

  Reaching the foot of the steps, Dante stopped, gripping his friend by an arm. ‘Cecco, I am here to perform a very sad duty. To inspect the corpse of a murdered man.’ He moved towards the entrance of the hospital, but after a few steps he stopped, turning towards Cecco. ‘Come inside with me, if you like. For once your cunning and cynicism might be of use to me.’

  Without replying, Cecco followed him.

  THEY WENT down into the cellar where the bodies of the dead were displayed. The air was almost impossible to breathe, poisoned as it was by the smoke from lamps running on stale oil, and the miasmas that rose up from beneath the stained sheets thrown over the corpses. Protecting his face with his veil, Dante approached the last of the plank beds, where the men of the Misericordia had arranged the naked limbs of the dead man. The head had been reconnected to the torso, and only the frayed strip on one side of the neck bore witness to the horror.

  A merciful hand had undressed and washed the body. Dante approached to study that face once more, while Cecco had stopped a certain distance away, his face contorted into a grimace. He observed the heavy features, worn by the abuse of time. And the nose, bent to one side as if broken long ago.

  Dante was struck once more by the same sensation that he had felt at the inn. He had seen that face before, he thought as he stroked the gaunt cheeks. Conquering his horror, he gripped the head, bringing it close to his own face. ‘Who are you?’ he murmured.

  He felt as if he was walking in a circle around the edge of a dark well. Then, suddenly, like a bubble of air rising to the surface of a muddy pond, a name appeared in his mind.

  He had known this man more than twenty years ago, when he had attended the Francescan school at Santa Croce.

  Cecco waited behind him in silence, with a look of nausea on his face. ‘What does it mean?’ he murmured at last, while Dante remained silent.

  By way of reply the poet merely nodded ahead of him, as if indicating something beyond the cellar wall. He moved his finger as if searching in the air for words that his thoughts had left behind. Then his mind returned from the hypothetical landscape that he had been exploring. ‘There, in the church. The reliquary of the virgin. This man is Guido Bigarelli, sculptor of the dead.’

  Cecco looked at the victim with perplexity, as if the name suggested nothing to him. Dante, on the other hand, seemed increasingly prey to uneasy astonishment. Could Bigarelli have come back to Florence to be killed there, when one of his works was reappearing in such a marvellous way? It couldn’t just be a simple coincidence.

  Then his mind returned to the place where they were standing. Cecco continued to stare at the body with an indecipherable expression on his face.

  ‘Bigarelli … Bigarelli seemed to be waiting for them,’ Dante exclaimed all of a sudden, turning towards him. ‘All the others.’

  Cecco had bent low over the body. ‘But how was he killed? It must have taken enormous strength.’

  Now that the wound had been washed of blood and the head put back in its natural position, the trace of the blow that had been delivered looked very impressive. The neck vertebrae gleamed white through the strips of lacerated flesh.

  With his index finger the poet touched the edges of the severed neck. ‘It’s strange …’ he murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are signs here of two deep blows. The tip of the blade ran through the neck. Then the murderer moved it to the right, ripping through flesh and bone. Twice, in the same way. Two blows, similar, but clearly different, as if …’ He broke off.

  ‘As if there were two murderers?’ asked Cecco.

  Dante shook his head. A sudden idea had come to him. He looked again at the naked body lying in front of him, then turned round in search of something. ‘Where are his clothes?’

  Cecco looked round as well. In a corner of the room, in a wicker basket, blood-stained clothes were heaped in disarray.

  Dante quickly walked over and began to examine them. As he was carefully touching the fabric, beneath his hands he noticed something soft in an inside pocket. It was a folded sheet, with a few signs marked on it. He recognised an octagon, rapidly sketched in pen, with little crosses on some of the vertices. And next to it some words: ‘Templum lucis, haec arca thesauri Federici.’

  ‘This is the temple of light, the casket of the treasure of Frederick.’ And then a quick phrase in the common tongue: ‘Here opens the door to the realm of darkness.’ Those words again, the same as in the message he had hidden in the sixth canto. Something flashed through the poet’s mind. Again he examined the dead man’s clothes, oriental in style. ‘People from beyond the sea’ were the words in the galley’s log. The corpse that lay here before him – could he be the missing fourth man?

  Dante turned towards his friend, who had come over to take a closer look, his face blank.

  ‘Cecco, what brought you here to Florence? I mean – your real reason.’

  His friend stared him in the eye. ‘To renew my acquaintance with love,’ he exclaimed, with his usual mocking air.

  Dante shrugged impatiently. He knew that phrase very well, the password of the Fedeli d’Amore.

  ‘But a bit of money wouldn’t come amiss, either!’ the Sienese concluded.

  Midday

  THE PRIOR took his leave of his friend. He was uncertain what to do, divided between his desire to deepen the investigation and his need to return to San Piero. The sun beat down on the cobblestones, raising spirals of scorching dust. He noticed the sting of the fine powder in his eye, and without thinking he moved towards the middle of the street to reach an area of shade on the other side. A shout behind him made him start, just in time to keep from being run over by a cart that had appeared out of nowhere. He flattened himself against the wall, cursing the driver who went on urging his horses on without so much as a thought for him.

  ‘Out of the way, villain!’ he heard the man cry. Dante was about to run after him, but the cart hurtled violently over a stone, coming perilously close to crashing into him.

  ‘Careful, Messere!’ someone yelled at him from the other side. A tall old man, dressed in dark clothes.

  Dante shielded his face against the glare with his hand, trying to make out his face. It was the man whom the innkeeper had identified, among the guests, as Marcello, the doctor. He suddenly forgot his rage. ‘Thanks for the warning,’ he replied, moving towards him. He had a sense that in some way the man was waiting for him. ‘I think I know you,’ he said when he had reached Marcello, greeting him with a slight bow.

  ‘I know you too, Messer Alighieri. By reputation, if not in person,’ the old man replied, bowing hi
s head in turn.

  ‘One’s reputation sometimes runs faster than one’s feet. And what brings your own feet to these parts?’

  ‘If you know of me, then you also know my art. The study of the tribulations of the body, and of the movements of the stars that determine or cure them. I planned to visit the hospital, to see if my art might be of any use to my unfortunate companion, at the inn. But it would appear that there is nothing more that medical science can do for him, other than confirm his departure from the land of the living.’

  ‘Even with the greatest art imaginable, you could have done nothing for him. He must have died immediately. Did you know him? Was he your friend?’

  Marcello remained silent for a moment, as if meditating on his reply. ‘Do we not in the end all know each other, everyone on earth?’ he asked at last. ‘Are we not, by virtue of our humanity, all part of a single family? It seemed to me that it was my duty to go with this man as he took his first steps into eternity.’

  ‘But you knew who he was?’ Dante insisted.

  The old man hesitated, as if he could not find words to express what he had in mind. ‘No, I didn’t know him. Except for that brief time when we shared lodgings, in the inn. And yet I had the impression that he knew me. That in fact …’

  ‘What?’ the poet said by way of encouragement.

  ‘That he had gone to that inn deliberately. To wait for me. As if he knew I would be turning up there,’ the other man murmured.

  ‘Explain what you mean.’

  ‘It was something in his manner – the confidential tone with which he addressed me from the evening of our arrival. He was constantly asking me questions, as if he expected me to ask questions of him. He did the same with Bernardo.’

  ‘The literatus?’

  ‘He knew of Bernardo’s research, and talked to him for a long time, about the past.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He spoke of his passion, the life of Emperor Frederick. They debated whether the Emperor had ever been to Florence. And now this … But it’s too late for anything now.’

  ‘A man’s death closes his accounts with the art of medicine. But not with justice,’ Dante replied, staring at Marcello.

  The man nodded. ‘It’s true. In fact, justice is infinitely more powerful than my humble knowledge.’

  Meanwhile Dante had drawn level with the old man, until he could touch his right arm. Beneath his clothes he could feel the solid resistance of his muscles, as if his body were younger than it really was.

  Marcello had instinctively recoiled, as if to escape the poet’s touch. ‘Forgive me, Messere,’ he said quickly as he caught the prior’s startled expression. ‘It’s an old habit of mine, contracted when I was healing lepers, beyond the sea.’

  ‘Did you plan to return to your lodgings?’ Dante asked him.

  ‘Yes … but your city has changed a great deal since I was here last, many years ago now,’ the old man replied, glancing at the buildings around him. ‘Would you mind accompanying me a little way?’

  Without speaking, the prior took his arm, walking slowly towards the ruins of the old baths, along the street that led to the inn.

  ‘What set you on the road to Rome?’ asked the poet.

  The other man stopped and turned to face him. ‘As a man grows older, the time comes to settle his accounts with God and pay off his outstanding bills. I am close now to the redde rationem, when Saint Peter will weigh out the debits and credits on his scales. And for that day I want my soul to be washed clean. I am going to Rome to fulfil an old vow and beg forgiveness for the sins I have committed on my long journey through this vale of tears.’

  ‘And how heavy is your burden?’

  ‘What man does not bear one so heavy, especially if, like myself, he has reached a great old age? A long life is a life of many sins.’

  Afternoon, outside Santa Croce

  IF WHAT he had learned at the inn was true, Bernardo Rinuccio must have been spending almost all his time in the library of the Franciscans. Dante waited outside the door of the scriptorium for the monks to come out once their work was over. Finally Bernardo’s bloodless, hollow face appeared on the threshold.

  Dante saw him coming, carrying a bundle of parchments and his writing case. Bernardo looked ill and tired, and his step was slow and difficult. And yet he did not seem to be suffering from the heat. From time to time he stopped, leaning his foot on a stone, and took his wax tablets from his bag, writing something on them with a piece of pointed metal.

  At a public fountain he avidly approached the bronze pipe, and drank in great gulps. He seemed prey to an insatiable thirst. Dante drew up beside him, greeting him politely. Bernardo returned the greeting, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

  ‘I have been wanting to speak to you for some time,’ the poet said.

  ‘I know your task, Messer Durante. And I know your voice as a poet. I imagine you want to know the facts related to the horrible death of the painter, Brunetto. But I cannot help you. I only met him at the inn and glimpsed him a few times during meals. My research often takes me outside in search for information. Or closed away in my cubicle, setting down on paper what I have learned,’ he added, nodding towards the parchments.

  Dante, his curiosity aroused, came closer to him. ‘What is the nature of your research?’

  ‘I am attempting to finish the third part of a piece of writing, the Res gestae Svevorum. The history of those great Swabian emperors. And particularly of the greatest of them, Frederick. The facts of his life and his death.’

  ‘And what have you found that was useful here in Florence? My city never received the Emperor, to my knowledge.’

  ‘It never welcomed him in his lifetime because he was often hostile to the city, in spite of the presence of many loyal Ghibellines within its walls. But also because the Emperor feared the Scot’s prophecy: You will die sub flore. But perhaps something of him came here after his death.’

  ‘After his death? What do you mean?’

  The historian shrugged and clamped his lips tight shut as if he was afraid of having said too much. ‘I found something in the pages of Mainardino’s Chronicles, and it was that that brought me here.’

  ‘Mainardino da Imola? The bishop loyal to the Emperor, who is said to have spent his last years writing a life of Frederick? But his work is lost, as far as anyone knows. Or perhaps it was never written!’

  The other man half-closed his eyelids, glancing cryptically at the poet. Then he looked quickly around, as though to check that no one was listening.

  Dante instinctively did the same, but saw no one paying them any attention. Meanwhile Bernardo had pulled a long twig from a bush, and was busy tracing signs in the dust in the road.

  ‘So if that text exists,’ the poet pressed, ‘and you have been able to read it, what have you learned from it that brings you here? And what if the Emperor came here after his death?’

  Bernardo did not reply immediately, trying to find the right words. ‘Mainardino wrote something about a treasure belonging to the Emperor. This is how my master put it: ‘Thesaurus Federici in Florentia ex oblivione resurget,’ ‘Frederick’s treasure will emerge from oblivion in Florence.’

  ‘And that’s what you’re looking for?’

  Bernardo firmly shook his head. ‘It isn’t wealth that I desire. On the margins of life, gold is the most useless of materials. However, I would like my humble work to respond to the question to which even my master could not give a reply. But I want to ask Arrigo da Jesi. I learned that he too is from your city.’

  ‘Why the philosopher?’ Dante asked, startled.

  ‘It’s in Mainardino’s papers. Arrigo was a novice with Elias of Cortona, Frederick’s Franciscan friend. And he is said to be very rich. Like Elias. Of whom it was said that he had learned the alchemical secret for making gold. Or perhaps he had found the imperial treasure.’ Bernardo seemed to be thinking out loud. ‘But perhaps everything is lost,’ he said then, shaking h
is head sadly. ‘Everything has vanished into dust with the death of Frederick.’

  ‘And the proof is thought to be here in Florence? Along with his treasure?’

  ‘Mainardino was sure of it. I’m trying to check that certainty. Before death takes me and freezes my lips as it has frozen my master’s.’

  Dante gripped the man by an arm. ‘Do you think you’re in danger? Tell me who is threatening you, and all my authority will rise up to shield you!’

  The other man smiled sadly. ‘Not even all the legions of ancient Rome could come to my aid, Messere. For some time now my piss has smelt of honey and a fire within me is devouring my innards. I only pray to God that he will grant me time to bring my work to its end,’ he concluded, bending once more to drink from the fountain.

  The prior waited until Bernardo had more or less quenched his burning thirst.

  Then the man stood up straight, licking his lips as if to drink every last drop. He seemed to feel better. ‘I too should have drawn up the Treaty of Jerusalem,’ he murmured.

  Dante darted him a quizzical glance, and saw a faint smile lighting up his face. ‘In Jerusalem, during his crusade, it is said that Frederick concluded a treaty with the infidels, who in return revealed to him the secret of the panacea, the drug that cures all ills and sends death back beyond the borders of the realm of darkness. Because of this legend, it is believed that Frederick never died, and that he is waiting to come back in the turning of fifty suns since his decease. Just think, Messer Durante: the return of the Antichrist in the year of the Jubilee. Wouldn’t it be a terrible joke on Boniface?’

  ‘It occurs to me that the Pope declared his Centesimus specifically to exorcise that possibility,’ Dante murmured.

  *

  A LITTLE later Bernardo took his leave and walked wearily away.

  For a moment the poet thought of following him, then decided to return to Maestro Alberto. Perhaps there had been some news about the mechanism. And then that book, the Mi’raj, kept popping up in his thoughts. The tormented faces of the dead alternated in his mind with the confused image of the heavens in his future work. As if the form of Paradise, still not found, and the dark form of the crime were merging into a single blindness.