The Kingdom of Light

by Giulio Leoni

  The sound of the door opening attracted his attention. The Bargello stepped warily forward, peering at the writing desk. ‘Did you call me? Are you drawing spells?’ he exclaimed, pointing at the series of concentric circles that the poet had drawn.

  ‘Equants, Bargello, equants. Punctum aequans, the geometrical centre of the orbital circles …’ the prior replied with disgust. ‘But perhaps the celestial mechanism is not something that interests you. I need an escort.’

  ‘To go where?’ The Bargello took his time. ‘It’s late tonight,’ he added, looking up at the violet sky, where Venus was already shining brightly. Then, chilled by the poet’s eye, he drew his head between his shoulders as if seeking shelter behind the collar of his armour. ‘I need to know, to prepare for action.’

  ‘Tonight. We’ve got to enter a church,’ Dante replied crisply.

  ‘A church?’ the man exclaimed, alarmed. ‘I have no authority to intervene in a sacred place. Neither do you. What are you thinking of?’

  Dante swallowed back a scathing reply. The Bargello’s reluctance was not without foundation. Bursting into consecrated ground could unleash the most unpredictable consequences. And this wasn’t the time to give priests further proof of the instability of the Commune.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  It was better to be alone, at least at the beginning, especially if the Inquisition, as he had seen, was beginning to take an interest in events. They were probably driven solely by the religious aspect of the story, which seemed to be increasing in importance. He wanted to know something else, particularly how a murdered man’s final work had reappeared just in time to act as the background to a miracle. And whether there was a connection between those two facts.

  Because there had to be, of course: there is a necessary weft that connects all things, which have emerged in an ordered fashion from the hand of God.

  Into his bag he put a candle, along with his tinder-box. Then, coming outside, he entered the monastery stables, in search of something useful for what he had in mind.

  He rummaged among the tools until he found one of the pegs that were used to remove worn horseshoes from horses’ hoofs, and set off at a brisk pace.

  THE CURFEW was already in force by the time he reached the abbey. Now darkness had fallen, and the night’s humidity was spreading over everything like a sticky veil. No light shone in that corner of the city, far from the main road. But the full moon cast enough brilliance to enable him to find his bearings.

  The abbey opened on to a narrow street lined on the other side by the blank walls of market gardens. Behind the building the outlines of the houses of the Cavalcanti loomed darkly. Not one of the few windows was lit, as if the houses had been completely abandoned after the death of the head of the family and Guido’s exile.

  Dante approached the portal, pushing it to test its resistance. The solid oak surface didn’t yield an inch. He tried again, this time leaning all his weight against the door. It vibrated slightly. There must have been an iron bar on the other side.

  He rebuked himself for his own impatience. He should have imagined that the miracle would be defended by something better than a mere bolt. The outer wall seemed to be a compact surface, without any handhold all the way up to the narrow windows at the top. The idea of scaling it to reach the rose window above the portal was unthinkable. It would have taken a trick worthy of the great Ulysses to get in there. But even as he paraded through his mind all the books he had ever read, he still couldn’t find anything helpful.

  A wooden horse, that was what he would have needed, or a way of skirting the defences, such as the ploy that had lost Leonidas the battle of Thermopylae, or that had led to Syracuse falling into Roman hands. There had to be another way through which the monks had been able to pass in former times, without opening the portal.

  He walked along the façade and turned into an even narrower alleyway that ran along the side of the building on the right. Here, halfway along the wall, he discovered a small door surrounded by a simple, grey granite frame. This had probably been the original entrance to the building, before the desire for pomp had led to the construction of the new façade.

  That defence seemed solid too, but the wood was in worse condition than that of the other doors. Dante inserted the tip of the peg between the two halves of the door, levering them apart by force. With a muffled snap he heard the bar break as the door yielded.

  THERE DIDN’T seem to be anyone in the nave. The line of the pillars spread within a forest of shadows, in the moonlight that entered by the large windows. He moved silently towards the apse, where the miraculous aedicule stood enthroned against a background of stone walls.

  He lifted the embroidered cloth in which it was wrapped. But beneath it there was still a coil of iron chain. He was already preparing to force it when he stopped, suddenly worried. The incredible spectacle that he had witnessed was still imprinted upon his eyes. He felt as if he were about to confront the divine, and alone, without the comfort of the crowd, by a circuitous route of his own devising.

  But he couldn’t give up now. There was too much to know.

  He attacked the iron links of the chain, which resisted his efforts with unexpected solidity, a sign that the chest was not a simple shelter, but was actually reinforced. Finally one of the rings yielded with a snap. The prior quickly removed the chain and then, conquering his initial hesitation, resolutely threw open the door.

  The interior of the chest was completely empty, apart from the little table with the central foot, which was covered by a cloth. Dante felt a contradictory mixture of relief and disappointment. The relic must have been too precious to have been left unguarded, even in a protected environment like this one.

  He lifted the cloth. Underneath there was a circular hole through which the walls of the chest could be seen. A doubt arose in his mind, a doubt that had haunted him since his first glimpse of the Virgin. Certainly, this opening in the table might explain the apparent miracle: the rest of the body was hidden under the table, passing through the hole. But how could it remain invisible?

  He dropped the cloth into the opening and saw it vanishing, as if swallowed by an invisible mouth.

  And yet it had to be there, before him, even if some kind of spell had rendered it invisible. Perhaps it was only his eyes that had been bewitched, he thought. Suddenly a superstitious terror gripped him. Might not the dominion of appearance be the realm of diabolical power? Banished from the luminous reality of the heavens, Lucifer had been relegated to the inferior realms of uncertain visions. Dante thrust his arm under the table and encountered an invisible obstacle. There was something hidden under there, he thought with horror, recoiling from whatever it was that had touched his fingers.

  He suddenly withdrew, afraid that the mysterious creature might want to grab him.

  In front of him the miracle of Narcissus seemed to be repeating itself: his face was coming towards him out of the darkness like an apparition.

  He touched the cold surface. A mirror. And on the other side a second mirror, forming a right angle, its vertex hidden by the foot of the table.

  After a moment’s reflection he smiled. It was simple, like all good tricks. Put in that position, the mirrors created a niche protected from everyone’s eyes, inside which there was room for a woman’s body. On the outside, the mirrors showed the faithful not the image of the depths of the case, as they had all believed, but of its identical side-walls.

  That was why the Virgin was exposed to veneration inside the case: not to protect its great value, as the ceremony suggested, but to conceal from view the sides of the table, which would have given the trick away.

  His smile had now turned into irrepressible laughter. However much he tried to restrain himself, his eyes were filled with tears. He recalled the noble face of Arrigo: he, too, had been hoodwinked like the most gullible hayseed by that vulture Brandano.

  SUDDENLY HE thought he heard a noise. He tur
ned to look towards the door of the sacristy, which was now open. A shadow had entered, and was slipping silently through the church.

  The new arrival did not even seem to have noticed his presence. Dante crouched even lower behind the aedicule, but the other man had made straight for him. A faint light issued from the door: perhaps there was someone else, the poet thought uneasily.

  He decided to try a surprise tactic. Tightly clutching the peg he had used to force the door, he leaped out in front of the man. ‘Stop right there, not so much as a breath, or I’ll crush your head like a walnut!’

  The stranger gave a start and a groan. He grabbed his hood from behind his shoulders and pulled it over his head, attempting to hide his features with his other hand. Dante hurled himself at him, uncovering the man. In the darkness he saw the face of the monk Brandano gleam for a second, before it began to distort in front of his eyes.

  Stunned, he realised that he had also pulled away Brandano’s noble brow, which was nothing but a piece of painted parchment. Freed from its prison, a lock of hair had suddenly fallen to conceal the man’s forehead, as low and receding as that of any common fellow.

  Brandano too seemed bewildered, but an incredible spectacle had begun to appear upon his face, like something the poet had read in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A sequence of masks flashed across his features, as if his soul were the arena of some demonic battle, as if different creatures were trying to take control of him in turn. A surprised wayfarer, a pious old hermit, a grim abbot, a dull courtier, a tough bodyguard, a wealthy merchant – all passed quickly past Dante’s eyes. It looked as if Brandano, having lost the majestic identity that he showed to everyone, was in desperate search of the identity best suited to this unexpected event.

  Meanwhile he had begun to retreat towards the door of the sacristy. Dante leaped sideways, blocking his escape route. With a disappointed gesture the monk looked round, in search of an alternative, retreated again until he was almost behind the altar, and then with a sudden movement knocked to the ground one of the tall iron torch-holders in an attempt to hit Dante, who dodged the blow and tried in turn to strike one of the monk’s legs with the peg. Simultaneously he watched the door from the corner of his eye, for fear of seeing other adversaries appearing. In the gloom Dante thought he could see a second shadow peering in at him. Suddenly he straightened up and turned in that direction. Meanwhile Brandano had dived backwards.

  The outline of a woman had appeared in the door frame, lit by a ray of moonlight. Dante could clearly see her hair, long and loose on her shoulders, as white as a cascade of ice on the crest of a mountain.

  Brandano had now run behind the altar, rather than escaping towards the sacristy. There was no way out in that direction, the prior thought, approaching in his turn, careful to cut off the possibility of the man escaping through the side-door.

  But the monk was hiding. Dante thought he had crouched down behind the altar, but when he too arrived behind the big stone cube, he discovered with astonishment that Brandano had disappeared. The air still rang with the echo of quick footsteps whose source he could not identify.

  Disconcerted, Dante looked round in search of some kind of explanation, but it was clear that the monk had not disappeared by the only visible route, the side-door by the altar. At the end of the apse a narrow scaffold had been erected, which almost reached the top windows. Two of the frames had already been filled with multicoloured stained glass, but the third was still vacant. The rogue must have climbed up there to try and escape across the roof.

  Reacting with a moment’s delay to this unexpected movement, the poet in turn ran towards the scaffolding. Brandano was trying to escape across the roofs, rather than the streets of Florence, where one of the patrols might have seen him.

  The scaffolding, made of poles tied together with hemp, swayed violently beneath the weight of the shadow that was quickly climbing up the wall of the apse. The last boards at the top ended in the frame of one of the windows of the nave, which gave access to the roof. Dante ran towards the opposite side, attempting to cut the monk off, and in turn began climbing breathlessly. Up there, towards the roof-trusses, every sound was amplified by the church’s echo, and he felt as if he was surrounded by moving bodies, even though he couldn’t see anyone.

  He peered through the darkness in search of his adversary. As he did so, the scaffolding swayed again, threatening to crash to the ground. Dante cursed the carelessness with which the work had been carried out, and clutched with all his might at a hempen rope. Then, with one final effort, he reached the top. He ran along the boards to grab the man before he plunged into the void. He couldn’t see the monk, but he knew he must be there since the windows – although it appeared differently from below – were a long way from the end of the scaffolding, and only with a superhuman leap could Brandano have got to the nearest one.

  Dante thought he could see a vague shadow and stopped, clutching the top of one of the poles. All of a sudden he felt exhausted. Until that moment he had been sustained by nervous tension, but now he felt breathless and his legs weak. The pole went on swaying and a sudden dizziness forced him to close his eyes, while a phantasmagoria of sparks exploded in his brain. He felt lost: if he didn’t fall, the stranger’s blade would finish him off.

  He slowly caught his breath. His strength was gradually returning, too. The monk must have hidden at the end of the planks, ready to hurl himself at the prior in an all-out attack if he revealed himself. That was certainly the case. Trusting in his superior strength, Brantano wanted Dante to reveal himself. Only then did the prior realise that, in the excitement of the chase, he had left his iron peg on the ground. He drew his dagger from the pocket hidden in his robes, and waved it in front of him like a recruit on his first day in the Campo di Marte. ‘Throw away your sword or you’re finished!’ he shouted.

  The other man remained motionless. Suddenly the poet heard a voice.

  ‘Messere, please, spare this man.’

  Dante gave a start. Behind him, as though coming from a long distance away, a melodious voice had rung out, one that he had heard before. The voice of the Virgin of Antioch. He darted round, his heart pounding in his throat. But there was no one there, no one pleading with him.

  Quivering with rage, he realised he had fallen into a trap, and that the ventriloquist monk had tricked him. A shadow crossed his field of vision and a heavy blow to the back of his neck knocked him down. A flash exploded in his head, as if he had been struck by lightning, and dizziness took hold of him again.

  For a few moments he held his eyelids tight shut, before finally conquering his unease. By the time he opened his eyes again the monk had disappeared.

  Then he got back to his feet, summoning all his strength, looking furiously around. But his adversary really had disappeared, as if by magic. He must have fled through the window, but how had he managed to do that? The opening in the wall gleamed in the moonlight several yards away from him. It wasn’t possible for a man to make a leap like that. For a moment the idea that Brandano was a shape-shifting demon took hold of his brain once more.

  And what if it had all been an illusion? What had he actually seen? At no moment could he have been certain that he had really seen the silhouette of the monk on the scaffolding. He had climbed up there, guided by vague noises and echoes, and above all by his reason, which had summoned the man’s image. What if Brandano had never climbed up there, but had instead in some mysterious way – using a trick like the brazen one he employed with the Virgin – deceived him?

  He started carefully climbing down. When he had reached the ground he ran towards the door and entered the sacristy, but it too was deserted. On one side of the room a stone staircase ran up the wall, apparently leading to the monks’ old cells. He hurried up the steps, from where a gleam of light seemed to issue. A torch or candle must have been lit on the upper floor.

  He walked down the corridor, casting a quick glance into each of the empty cells, then ventured into the last, stil
l clutching his dagger.

  The cell was not deserted. Leaning against the end wall, the woman he had glimpsed in the church was standing motionless, staring at him, a flash of fear in her eyes, wiping her hands. She was panting, as if short of breath.

  Dante stopped on the threshold, he too breathless from his pursuit. He lowered his weapon, disconcerted by the creature he found before him. She was as tall as he, her intense pallor illuminated by two big, sky-blue eyes.

  That face was the same as the one that had appeared in the church, covered by a veil of shiny make-up that was plainly supposed to imitate wax. He raised his hand towards her until his fingers touched her throat. She was not wearing a mask.

  Her slender body was covered to below the waist by a cascade of white hair that at first impression suggested a very great age. But this, too, was an illusion. Her hair was flowing and splendid, a snowy torrent worthy of an adolescent angel. There was something unnatural in that beauty, the poet felt, something that could enter the mind and bind it like a subtle poison. He felt the same unease that had taken hold of his mind when he had witnessed the fake miracle for the first time.

  The woman had remained impassive. Only in her dilated eyes could he read the terror that still gripped her. A few times she opened and closed her mouth, as if on the point of saying something.

  Dante looked around. A thousand questions rose to his lips, now that the very heart of the trick was within his grasp. But he would need time and a more suitable location to interrogate her. Meanwhile he looked round for something to tie her up with, before she disappeared as the monk had done. But the woman didn’t seem to want to escape.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked her, gasping to get his breath back. She shook her head. ‘What is your name?’ Again the woman moved her head, this time bringing her hand to her throat. ‘You don’t want to tell me? Well, you’re going to have to.’