The Kingdom of Light

by Giulio Leoni

  ‘And yet I have seen one.’

  Arnolfo shook his head almost angrily. ‘What you’re saying is impossible. You must have made a mistake. It isn’t possible,’ he repeated. But something in his certainty was crumbling in the face of the prior’s conviction. ‘But you really are sure … I’d give everything I own to see what you describe.’

  The poet didn’t reply, merely staring at the old maestro. ‘I’m not asking much, just your oath. Promise not to tell anyone about what I’m about to show you.’

  Arnolfo’s excitement was mounting. He looked like a mystic contemplating a vision. He fell to his knees in front of the poet. ‘I call the Virgin and all the Saints as my witness. Nothing of what I see shall ever pass my lips.’

  Dante took from his bag the corner of mirror that he had found in the warehouse and held it out to the glassmaker. The man touched the edge of the glass with his fingers to assess its thickness. ‘And you say it comes from a five-foot pane?’ he murmured with disbelief. Then he brought his tongue to it as if to test its flavour. ‘Silver …’ he said almost to himself. ‘Strange.’

  ‘What’s so strange?’

  ‘I would have expected something modern, based on lead. And yet it’s only silver. If it is as you say, its perfection derives entirely from the extraordinary smoothness and transparency of the vitreous paste.’

  ‘Who could have made it?’ the prior asked.

  Arnolfo shrugged and went on looking at the piece of metal. He stroked his bristly chin. ‘It isn’t from here. Greek, perhaps. Or perhaps made in some workshop in the north, in Ravenna, by someone who’s come from far away. I’ve heard that in far-off Persia they have made glass so thin that it was invisible. Or in Venice, if the legend is true …’

  ‘This Maestro Tinca that you mentioned?’

  Arnolfo stared into the void. ‘Perhaps he was a man who never existed. Or perhaps the greatest glass-maker of all time, who knows? A story that the members of our Guild tell one another, a fairy-tale.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The story of the kiln at the town of Canal. There came to that place a certain Maestro Tinca, from the land of the devil, and he began making extraordinary kinds of glass. Huge, flat panes, even more than two ells in length, the like of which no one had ever managed to make before. Maestro Tinca, glass-maker to the Emperor.’

  Dante suddenly shifted his attention from contemplation of his own hand and gripped the man’s arm. ‘Which emperor?’ he asked.

  Arnolfo seemed uncertain at first, then straightened his back. ‘The great and last one. Frederick.’ He had spoken the name clearly as if to challenge him. Perhaps Florence was really full of dormant Ghibellines, as Cecco had implied.

  ‘And what did this Maestro Tinca do for Frederick?’

  ‘They say that two messengers from the Emperor came to his kiln one night. This was at the time of the Council of Lyon, when Frederick was facing his last battle against …’ The man seemed to be seeking the exact term.

  ‘The polemicists of the Curia? The Pope?’ Dante suggested.

  ‘Yes, perhaps the Pope. Or someone even higher up than that,’ Arnolfo suggested enigmatically.

  ‘And who were the messengers? And why at night?’

  ‘Tinca worked by night and vanished by day. He suffered from an eye defect, which meant he couldn’t bear sunlight. He saw too much, so he was able to spot every imperfection in the glass. In the darkness he watched over the kiln, taking care that the fires never went out. He had discovered that the quality of the glass is determined by the constancy of the heat. And as for the two men …’

  Once more Arnolfo stopped, as if uncertain of his own memories. Or uncertain about what to reveal. ‘It is said that they were two very senior court officials. And they say that one of the two was the Emperor in person. Perhaps he too wanted to know the master’s secret …’

  ‘What secret?’ Dante exclaimed, fascinated.

  ‘They say that Tinca, just before his disappearance, had discovered the secret of capturing light in mirrors.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A way of actually capturing the last image reflected inside the mirror. It is said that through alchemy he had discovered a material that reacted to rays of light according to their different sources. The object had to be placed in front of his mirror for a long time – hours, in fact – in bright light, and slowly its image was captured.

  ‘If this were true, the art of painting would be dealt a mortal blow,’ Dante observed. Who knew what his friend Giotto would think about it. But might this be the mysterious prize that was being sought so desperately? So much so that people were being killed to get hold of it? And yet this man Tinca had disappeared as well.

  ‘Arnolfo, you swore you would keep all this secret,’ Dante reminded him.

  The glass-maker touched the metal fragment again, as if stroking a dream. Then he nodded. ‘My word is my bond. I respect your will. Perhaps what you have shown me is too precious for a simple craftsman like myself. It could tempt me to emulation, and there is danger in trying to emulate the hand of God.’

  At the Angel Inn

  THE BIG room on the ground floor was almost deserted. There was only Messer Marcello, seated at a long table. Dante walked silently up behind him. The doctor was eating an apple, but in an unusual way: with his left hand he was crushing the fruit against the table, while with his right he was cutting little pieces away with a knife before bringing them to his mouth. Having noticed the poet, he looked up, still chewing.

  ‘What good fortune brought you to this inn, Messer Marcello?’

  ‘The footsteps of man are written in the book of Time, and the road that has brought you here, and the one I have taken, are also precisely recorded. We could not have done otherwise, neither you nor I.’

  ‘You still haven’t answered my question: what has brought you here?’

  Marcello moved his head as if to shake off a memory. Or a dream. ‘Yes, of course. A vow. Fulfilling a promise that I made many years ago. Paying an ancient debt. But it’s also my inexorable fate. It was written that I should be here, now.’

  ‘And the steps that brought Guido Bigarelli to his death were written in his fate as well?’

  The old man waited a moment before replying. He seemed fascinated by the last piece of apple, which he swallowed with his eyes closed as if he wished to discover its secret flavour.

  ‘This apple, too, developed from its flower to get here,’ he went on. ‘Everything is complete in the mind of God. It is only the illusion of our feeble senses that forces us to turn the pages of the book one by one, thus deceiving ourselves that they are not bound in a single indissoluble volume.’

  ‘Certainly the mind of God knows all that happens, and his prescience has wisely imposed repeated and eternal motions upon the universe. But it is his wisdom that has granted our sub-lunar world the infinite variety of becoming, so that we might be free to act and grow. Free to seek goodness. And blind to the things of the future, so that on this ignorance we might base our conscious action.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Certainly Adam would not have sinned had he known the consequences of his error. But neither would many lofty spirits have sought the means of cleansing that guilt by following the path of virtue. Humanity would have been deprived of its greatest gift, the unsatisfied quest for the truth. Which alone redeems it in the terrible eyes of God.’

  The old man exploded in bitter laughter. ‘You should be more careful, Messer Alighieri, in expressing your convictions in such terms. I don’t think that your love of the truth will be seen in a favourable light in the land of the Inquisition.’

  ‘Florence is not a land of the Inquisition, but a free Commune. For the time being. And I hope for a long time to come, at least while I’m capable of action.’

  ‘You put great trust in your abilities, as if you too can really look beyond the wall of time and see what awaits you there.’

  ‘I don’t have the
gift of second sight. My foresight is the child of will and learning alone.’

  The other man stared at him as if touched, as a paternal light illuminated his face. ‘I too have seen spirits like yours – in my youth. Rich in all the gifts that a man might wish for. Strong and ardent in their conviction that they might bend fate to their own will. And yet they were destined to be a source of grief and devastation …’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, a long time ago. An abyss of time. In far-off lands.’

  ‘Did you live in the East for a while?’

  Marcello stared at a point in the void, behind the poet. His face was illuminated, as if those words had evoked in him the light of distant countries. He nodded his head several times.

  ‘And what did you learn over there?’ the poet pressed him. ‘What knowledge, what medicines, what magic? Why is that place the origin of the most awful diseases and also the most extraordinary remedies? Is there really a chance, as they say, of extending life beyond the limit of seventy years, as ordained by God in the Scriptures?’

  ‘Yes, in the city of Sidon I myself once knew a man who claimed to have sat at the table of Charlemagne. And another who had accompanied the last steps of Christ at Golgotha.’

  ‘It cannot be …!’

  ‘And yet that is what I have seen. And is it not said that even the last Emperor, Frederick, is not dead, but is still abroad in Germany, collecting men for his final undertaking?’

  ‘You’ve seen him too? When?’

  ‘Much time has passed since then,’ replied the doctor. ‘During his crusade. When the Emperor tricked them all,’ he added absently.

  ‘Whom did he trick?’

  ‘The pagans. And the bishops in his train. With his allegory. Frederick approached the gate of Damascus, along the stones of the road that leads from Jericho to the city of the hundred towers. Jerusalem the Golden shone in the sun, amongst the jubilant cries of the crowd lined up on the ramparts. Oppressed Christians, insolent pagans, fervent Jews brought together by the same curiosity, seized by the same excitement in the face of the wonder advancing towards them. The Emperor proceeded on foot on his triumphal car yoked to four oxen crowned with laurels. At the four corners of the car walked the same number of chained slaves: a Moor, a Tartar, a white man and the fourth masked as a Triton. Frederick held his golden goblet in his right hand, and in his left he clutched the bridle of a centaur ridden by a man in a two-faced mask that followed the chariot, hammering its hoofs upon the stone paving.’

  ‘A centaur?’ Dante murmured.

  Ignoring the interruption, Marcello went on: ‘The car was preceded by seven girls with lit torches, followed by seven crowned old men in Greek clothing. And then another seven men, with long garments covered in celestial signs, and two horsemen in battle-armour. One carrying in his fist a gleaming sword that reflected the glare of the sun, the other a pile of rope in his arms, tightly twisted into a thousand knots. Bringing up the rear of the procession were five veiled women holding five extinguished lamps, surrounding, as lasciviously as prostitutes, three men, each one holding a book.’

  Marcello ran a hand over his forehead as though to erase that vision. His face had hardened.

  ‘Do you understand the meaning of this appalling allegory?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In that case, your perspicacity and learning are truly admirable.’

  ‘The girls waving the torches are the seven liberal arts, and the seven old men following them are the great sages of the ancient era, of whom the Greeks told tales. And the seven starry men are the heavenly bodies that orbit around the earth, that great car on which Frederick places his foot. The four yoked slaves are the three lands subject to the imperial power, and the Triton, the ocean. The centaur, a fusion of man and beast, is a symbol of wisdom, a synthesis of nature and intellect. The two knights are the power to lock away by law, and to liberate by force. And finally the five foolish virgins with their spent lamps symbolise the refusal of faith, along with the three men of the book. The final allegory and the most terrible.’

  Marcello nodded gravely. ‘So you know who those three men are, that patent mockery of the figure of the magi?’

  ‘I think so. The three masters of the book: Moses, Christ and Mohammed.’

  ‘Surrounded by prostitutes. None other than the Three Impostors, in his heretical philosophy. Frederick entered Jerusalem in perfidy, scoffing with his symbols at the people who lived there,’ Marcello murmured. ‘But you have left out the two-faced man. Does he escape the blade of your intellect?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps …’ Dante began. Then he stopped, seized by the memory of the strange figurehead of the galley. ‘And can you reveal its meaning?’

  ‘Not everything that dwelt in the mind of the Emperor is comprehensible.’

  There was no point asking further questions.

  These were not allegories from fifty years ago, but mysteries from the present day, which he would have to understand to resolve the murder. And Marcello’s mind seemed anchored to the past. If he really did have the experience of centuries, now, in his final days, he was heading backwards, lost in nostalgia.

  DANTE HAD only just stepped out of the inn when he bumped into young Colonna on his way back.

  The student hesitated for a moment, as if he wished to avoid Dante, then continued walking with an arrogant air. ‘So, Prior, what brings you to the Angel Inn? Anyone who was going to be killed is already dead,’ he said mockingly.

  The poet stopped in front of him, blocking his way. ‘The murderer has not been found. And there is nothing to say that you can’t help me.’

  ‘I know nothing useful. But if I were you, I would search among the priests. Brunetto did not appear to be on good terms with the cowled brethren, and it wouldn’t surprise me if your friend Boniface had been pushing him to the other side.’

  ‘Your words suggest that you aren’t on the best of terms with the Curia, either.’

  The young man assumed a contemptuous air. ‘Don’t be hypocritical, like everyone in this false city. You know my name. And if you’ve forgotten it, I’m here to remind you,’ he said, lifting to the poet’s eye his right index finger, decorated with a big signet ring with a Roman column carved in the seal. ‘For years my family has been at war with the Caetani. And the fact that Boniface now wears the papal mitre is certainly not going to improve matters. If he could, he would have exterminated us already. And only the fear of our armies and our fortresses keeps him away from our door. But perhaps …’

  ‘Perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps this time we’ll get there first,’ Franceschino went on, intoxicated by his spite. ‘When we’re all there together!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the poet asked.

  But the other man seemed to have realised he had said too much. ‘You’ll see when the time comes,’ he shot back, walking away under the prior’s inquisitorial gaze.

  At the priory, around midday

  DANTE EMERGED from his cell and walked along the loggia. The doors of the other priors’ cells were open, too. His colleagues were gathered in an animated huddle. As they saw him, they fell suddenly silent, staring at him with embarrassment. One of them above all, a short man with a thief’s grim face, seemed to be hiding something.

  Dante walked firmly over. ‘What troubles you so, Lapo?’

  Lapo arrogantly jutted his chin. ‘You do! Apparently you have no time for the Council now, but stroll calmly about the city at all hours of the day and night, in defiance of the rules and regulations. Or have you forgotten that priors are forbidden to leave their rooms for the duration of their term? Do you think that laws apply only to everyone else, the honest sons of the people who elected you as their representative … for only another few days?’

  ‘For only another few days, you are quite right,’ the poet replied. ‘But for those few days the people give me the force and authority to keep the chariot of state on a straight path, and to see off the
manoeuvres of the plotters and the wheeler-dealers. The ones who manage to weasel their way into the secret rooms,’ he added, looking the other man up and down.

  Lapo blushed. He clenched his fists and moved closer, until he could touch him. Dante felt he was about to butt him in the face and jerked backwards.

  One of the other priors anxiously interposed himself between the two men, resting a hand on Lapo’s shoulder and drawing him back. ‘Stop. Let us calm down and establish a date for the next Council meeting, given that we have had the good fortune to run into Messer Alighieri.’

  ‘Tell me, Antonio, what is so urgent that it makes you concerned about my movements?’ the poet replied with a hint of irony.

  ‘Cardinal d’Acquasparta …’

  ‘The Papal Nuncio? What does Boniface’s man want from me?’ Dante interrupted, suddenly alarmed. Ever since the Pope’s emissary had come to Florence in the spring, and had based himself next to Santa Croce, it was as if Boniface’s claw had pierced the city’s living flesh.

  ‘The Pope, our benefactor and the high protector of the City of the Flower, is asking for the Commune’s help in his enterprise, in return for his vote. And he wishes us to place his apparent and hidden enemies under our surveillance.’

  ‘Speak clearly. Is Pope Caetani after money? Or something bigger?’

  Antonio looked around, hoping for the solidarity of his companions. But apart from Lapo, who continued to scowl at Dante, the other three priors were embarrassed and tried to look away. Antonio cleared his throat several times. ‘All right, it’s a delicate matter. Not to be discussed here in the open, where the ears of strangers might be listening. As a long-standing member, I propose that we call a meeting of the Council for the morning of the fourteenth, the last day of our mandate.’

  They all nodded. Dante merely grunted. The decision was easy to interpret: on the last day they would only have to postpone the meeting to grant the Council full responsibility for any resolution, thus sparing those frail shoulders the burden of deciding anything. Idleness was branded on all those faces, like the brand seared into the flesh of thieves. Apart from Lapo, in whom the seed of corruption had come to fruition, turning him into a kind of disgraceful satyr, the perfect allegory for his fellowcitizens.