by Giulio Leoni
Meanwhile the men had uncovered the Virgin’s torso, offering to the eyes of the crowd the limpidity of her waxen skin. After a moment, as if responding to a nod from the monk, the Virgin’s eyelids slowly lifted, revealing first the white of the corneas and then the blue flash of the irises. Dante admiringly observed the perfection of the mechanism that was surely concealed within the head, which could perform such a gentle motion, so similar to the human gesture. If it really had been al-Jazari who had made this marvel, his fame was truly deserved, as indeed was his condemnation for blasphemy.
But there was something new about the statue, he noticed with dismay. Something truly incredible. The delicate line of the breasts was vibrating, as if a hidden bellows were pressing against invisible ribs, lifting the chest. The Virgin really seemed to be breathing feverishly, creating a sense that the eagerness and anxiety of all the onlookers were somehow communicating themselves to her.
‘For too long the Holy Land of Palestine has been oppressed by the pagans,’ she began to declaim. ‘Perhaps you are deaf to the weeping of those people who, like myself, have paid the penalty for being faithful to the one true God?’
Then, suddenly, she began to stare at the bystanders, sweeping her eyes around in a circle and pointing with her hand at the monk who stood mutely beside her. ‘And are you deaf to the call of God himself, who through the voice of holy men like our guide ask you to free the land of His birth and His martyrdom?’
The monk lowered his head in agreement.
‘Give your hearts, your swords, your riches to this enterprise! March under the banner of Christ! Before it is too late and your souls plunge into hell as punishment for your idleness!’ the relic cried, its voice now breaking with the anxiety of this premonition.
Dante conquered his initial impulse to fall to his knees, and stiffened where he stood. He felt as if something had altered in the diaphanous, waxy consistency of the talking torso, as if by the very effort of shouting its cheeks had assumed the colours of life. The movement of the chest was quicker now, too, the breath beginning to falter.
Then the girl opened her mouth. Dante distinctly saw her chest swelling with the act of breathing in, then her high, clear voice rose up once more in the church, ringing out like a song. The harmonious sounds of a Latin psalm spread through the air.
Dante was confused. His initial hypothesis – that he was dealing with a mechanical artifice – seemed to be mistaken. Not even the brilliant al-Jazari could have replicated the image of authentic vitality that the girl exuded.
His eye returned to the little table on which the torso lay, and the slender central foot that supported the tabletop. It was impossible that anyone, however slim, could have hidden from sight behind it. And the chest containing the relic and its support was quite plainly empty. Although he hadn’t noticed, his mouth was half-open with astonishment, like that of the most illiterate peasant. So this was still the age of miracles, God deigned to send baffled humanity a sign of His splendour. He felt an unexpected warmth rising into his heart. All around the prior the crowd was beginning to kneel, and he too felt himself bending at the knee.
The Virgin’s voice had suddenly become sweet and harmonious. She tilted her head slightly upwards as if seeking inspiration among the roof-beams, or as if she didn’t want to contaminate her mind with the sight of the excited crowd.
‘Just one more day, and you will be able to enrol under the sign of the Virgin!’ exclaimed Brandano. ‘Prepare your hearts for a long journey to the lands of the infidel. But trust me, God is with us! On the way to Rome, the Pope’s blessing will descend upon our heads, just as the Spirit descended upon the apostles before they embarked upon their mission. Trust in the Virgin, O people of Florence, most delightful children of the Church triumphant!’
Beside him the girl seemed to agree with a slow oscillation of her head, as her eyes unceasingly cast her icy gaze over the ecstatic crowd. But something within her seemed to accentuate the torment of her extraordinary injury, like a shadow that had slowly begun to settle on her features in a barely perceptible frown. Her previously calm expression was making way for one of anxiety, as if being dropped back into the convulsion of life after her brief sojourn with the angels were filling her with pain.
The monk too must have noticed those signs of human weariness. He walked over to her and lovingly touched her bare shoulder, as if to ease her fatigue. The relic seemed to take the touch of his hand as a precise signal. It immediately plunged into silence, closing its eyes and mouth, and slowly bringing its hands back to its chest, as though protecting its delicate breast in the sleep that it had been waiting for.
Dante had a sense of a flash emanating from its eyes just before its lids fell closed. A gleam of disgust. But he had no time for reflection. The crowd around him seemed to have received the Virgin’s message of reproach, and was growing agitated, prey to a confused desire for redemption. Men and women, excited at the prospect of saving their own souls and with them the Holy Sepulchre, were moving feverishly forward. Shouts and cries mingled with appeals to action, declarations of intent, invitations to join up.
Meanwhile the poet searched for a rational explanation for what he had seen. But he couldn’t find one. Only a faint intuition that perhaps it was nothing more than the simple desire to protect the relic and exalt it in a noble setting?
There was certainly no room in the chest for anything else. Perhaps he should give in and lower his pride before what his senses persisted in confirming to him: it was possible that a woman could manage to survive without half of her organs if God had willed it so. But however much he tried to convince himself, he could not rid himself of the suspicion that the chest was not a purely ornamental element, but a device designed to prevent the miracle being observed from the sides.
He tried to move towards the corner of the church, to ascertain whether his suspicions were well founded. But he immediately froze: behind one of the pillars to the side of the church he saw two men in Dominican habits hiding discreetly, staring intently at the scene. He was particularly struck by one of them, with a skull-like face and a mouth like a razor slash: Noffo Dei, the head of the inquisitors of Florence, the shadow of the Pope’s representative in the city, Cardinal d’Acquasparta.
His ears fleetingly caught a brief laugh and something muttered by two men in front of him, who, judging by their clothes, must have been wealthy merchants. He thought he heard one of them saying the word ‘Toulouse’. He pricked up his ears, but could make out only a few more words before the sounds were drowned out by the excited shouting of the crowds. Had someone seen Brandano in Toulouse?
He turned round in search of a familiar face and noticed Arrigo. The philosopher was standing next to the balustrade, with his usual disenchanted attitude, as if he had only gone there to get a better view. Brandano, meanwhile, rather than moving beyond the little door as he had done the first time, had stopped behind the pulpit and was busy blessing the ecstatic throng. As he did so, he slowly approached the spot where Arrigo was standing and, when he was close to him, the poet had a clear sense that the monk, while tracing his signs of the cross in the air, spoke to the philosopher.
A few words exchanged in haste. Furtively. With the swiftness that is the mark of the devil.
Dante was tempted to walk closer, but now the two men were ignoring each other again. He made for the exit.
At the door he was joined by a bargellino. ‘Prior, the man you wanted is at the Stinche prison.’
Dante gave a start. What had those idiots done? He had given them an order to find the man for questioning, not to have him dragged to that infernal place. He threw open the door and dashed towards the stairs, dodging the startled guard.
HE REACHED the low, narrow door of the Stinche, which opened in the blind wall next to San Simone. At the top, from the little loopholes of the tower, hung like decorations at the May Palio the strings on which the prisoners hoped some merciful soul might hang a piece of bread. At that moment so
me of the inmates were in the courtyard, washing skins that had just been tanned in a vat whose foul-smelling water flowed liberally on to the ground.
‘A man has been brought here, today. Fabio dal Pozzo, a merchant. Where is he?’ Dante asked anxiously, failing to recognise the man among the prisoners. ‘I am the prior of the Commune.’
The guard gave a conniving little smile. ‘Your friend is already downstairs, with the policemen. Tied and bound.’
‘Bring me to him, straight away!’ the poet commanded, his voice stifled with rage. Someone would pay for that disgrace, for which he felt involuntarily responsible.
Confused by this unexpected reaction, the man headed towards a wooden staircase leading to a damp corridor, barely lit by some loopholes high above the courtyard. The dense air, foul with the miasma of excrement, took Dante’s breath away. Conquering his vertigo, he descended towards the dungeons where the most dangerous prisoners were held, until he reached a larger cell. A repeated heart-rending cry had served as his guide along his short journey.
Before his eyes, half-naked, Fabio dal Pozzo was rocking back and forth, bent double with pain, his wrists bound behind his back by a rope that led to a ring fixed in the vaulted ceiling, before falling back into the hands of one of the two enforcers of justice. One man gave another violent tug, extracting another desperate cry from the prisoner, beneath the complacent eye of the Bargello, who leaned against a pillar, studying the scene with his arms folded.
Trying to vanquish his pain, the poor man had bent even further towards the ground, until he was almost touching the floor with his forehead. Dante rushed towards him, gripping the rope with all his might to try and prevent the guard from torturing him.
Sensing a presence next to him, the man turned in his direction, his face swollen. ‘Enough … enough … I’ll talk …’ he murmured with the last remnant of his strength.
The prior gestured to the guard to slacken the rope. Fabio fell to his knees, his eyes filled with tears. In his spasms he had bitten his lips until they bled.
Dante drew near to the merchant’s ear. ‘What do you know about your fellow-merchant, Rigo di Cola, and what he has been up to?’ he whispered so that the other men could not hear.
The man trembled and a grimace of terror spread across his distraught features. ‘Nothing, I swear … I barely know him …’ he stammered.
For a moment Dante was tempted to order another pull on the rope. But something about the man suggested that he was telling the truth. ‘And what about the building on the Cavalcantis’ lands? It’s your work, isn’t it?’ he ventured.
A twitch running through the man’s body told him that his first guess had been correct. ‘No … the big circle – they were talking about it …’ the poor man said quickly. He seemed glad to have something to confess at last. ‘It was them,’ he repeated.
‘Why that construction – and why in that place? For what purpose?’
The prisoner was seized by an uncontrollable tremor. ‘I don’t know … I heard them talking about it, him and the maestro. Rigo must have been helping them get a building erected. A circle, that was what they were saying to each other. He was very old and could no longer climb on to the scaffolding or hold the plumb-lines. Then he was killed, and I didn’t know what to do. Ask Rigo, he knows everything. I expected someone would come looking for me. And then … this …’
‘Rigo is dead. Murdered, just like the old architect.’
Fabio’s face contracted into a grimace of terror. ‘But I … I don’t know anything. In Venice they told me to travel to Florence and stay at the Angel Inn. There someone would make use of my work. I have always travelled under escort.’
Dante studied him carefully. ‘You were escorted? By whom?’
‘As far as the border with the Piave by servants of La Serenissima. Entering the lands of Padua, I had to join a caravan of merchants who were going all the way to Florence. It was there that I met Rigo di Cola. But they weren’t merchants, I worked that out straight away.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Very sure. Even if they were trying to pass themselves off as members of that class. They seemed more like men-at-arms. And their cargoes, too … Bales of wool, apparently, but underneath …’
‘What did you see?’
‘At the ford across the Reno, just south of Bologna, one of the mules slipped and fell, shedding its load. It wasn’t just wool. There were iron blades, and pointed staves.’
‘And where did these fake merchants end up?’
‘I don’t know. We parted near the walls of Florence. Only Rigo came with me. My instructions were to stay at the Angel Inn, and then I would have to seek out a monk – Brandano. And help him.’
‘Help him do what?’ Dante cried, his voice filled with surprise.
‘I don’t know. They would tell me when I got there,’ the other man stammered, stifling a groan. ‘I was to work for him …’
‘Work for him?’ the prior asked again, pausing a moment for reflection. ‘Do you have any experience of mechanics? Did you put together the trick with the Virgin?’
Fabio looked surprised. ‘No … why? My skills are of a quite different order. I too am a man of science, as you are,’ he added in a respectful tone. ‘I am a mathematician. My specialisation is the calculation of fractional relations, on the basis of the studies of the great Fibonacci.’
‘Leonardo Fibonacci, the man who taught the Emperor Frederick the secret of Indian calculation?’
‘The very same.’ Fabio had broken off. His voice was that of someone terrified of not being believed. He moved his head like a crazed animal, in search of something that might satisfy his interrogator. ‘Only once did he confide in me. He told me that our circle would conceal a treasure.’
Dante looked away, thoughtfully. Perhaps, if a treasure really was hidden in Florence, complex calculations were required to find it? He looked the mathematician menacingly up and down.
‘Yes, that’s exactly what he said!’ Fabio repeated, encouraged by the poet’s attention. ‘A treasure. Bound between felt and felt.’
‘Between felt and felt?’ Puzzled, Dante pinched his lower lip. Meanwhile the other man tried to lift his head to discover some clue to his own fate in the poet’s expression. Then Dante stirred. ‘What else do you know? Tell me everything!’
‘Nothing more, Signore, I swear! I … just stole …’
‘What?’
‘From Brunetto’s room … When I saw he had been killed, I couldn’t resist the temptation. He had marvellous instruments, a compass and a massive gold plumb-line – very old things …’
‘But his papers, the plans for the construction, where are they?’
‘I don’t know … When I walked into his cubicle everything was in confusion – and then that horrible sight … But there was nothing apart from his instruments, I swear!’
Dante felt inclined to believe him. The murderer had left behind valuable objects and taken nothing but paper. But perhaps that paper was even more valuable. A treasure, between felt and felt. ‘Release this man,’ he commanded.
The Bargello had been listening, perplexed. With a nod of the head he ordered the prior’s demand to be carried out. As the bargellini released the wretched man from the ropes, he walked over to Dante. ‘But that rogue has confessed to a theft. And besides … Besides, he seems to know about a treasure,’ he hissed with a flash of greed in his eyes. ‘Perhaps it would be better to give him a few more tugs on the rope and make him spill the beans completely …’
Dante glared at him, furious that the head of the guards had managed to hear so much. He was sure the Bargello was groping in total darkness, worse than the darkness with which he himself was struggling. But it was still better for that oaf to know as little as possible about what had happened.
Meanwhile, freed from the ropes, Fabio dal Pozzo had dropped to the ground. Disgust for what he had witnessed merged in the poet’s soul with sadness at having seen the degraded appli
cation of justice, which should have been the highest aspiration of any human community and the prime concern of anyone in government. What was the sense in having a confession extracted with iron and fire, apart from the interrogator’s inability to reach the truth via the logic of reason and the indisputability of the facts? To reduce a human being to this state, guilty or innocent, meant only defeat for those inflicting the violence.
‘Set this man free,’ the poet commanded. ‘And you, go back to the inn and don’t move from there for any reason. You will donate the precious objects that you have stolen to the cathedral works, and you will only leave the territory of the Commune after I have issued the order. But first I want to know one thing from you,’ he added, pulling up the man who had fallen at his feet and was trying to kiss them. Fabio managed to stumble to his feet again. Dante took from his bag a folded sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal. He spread the sheet out on a table and handed the man the little stick. ‘Summon all your strength, if you can still use your right hand. I want you to reproduce the plan of the thing that Rigo and Brunetti were building.’
The mathematician fixed his swollen eyes on the paper. With an obvious effort he managed to get the image in focus, and then, his hand trembling, he began to trace lines that slowly assumed a shape.
Beneath Dante’s eyes, a strange octagonal wheel appeared, surrounded at the vertices by other, smaller octagons.
Curfew
DANTE POINTED the compass again, tracing the ninth circumference. ‘And then the Primo Mobile, which instils motion in the heavenly machine,’ he murmured to himself. ‘As the Greek puts it. And further away …’
He lifted up the drawing, bringing it closer to his face. The diagram of the heavens, Ptolemy’s admirable construction, appeared in all its geometrical perfection. ‘And further off …’ he repeated, biting his lower lip. He felt his thoughts growing confused, as if all of the day’s exhaustion had fallen upon him all at once. He tensed the muscles in his neck and violently rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off his torpor.