by Giulio Leoni
There was something extraordinary, the poet thought, in that allegory of incomplete resurrection. As if the dead man were refusing to go to the grave and at the same time the lower powers were denying his return, stopping him each time on the threshold of freedom.
‘Why hasn’t it occurred to anyone to stop the mill?’ Dante cried to one of the bargellini, who stood with his arms folded, contemplating the scene.
‘The miller is trying to: he’s detached the connection with the millstone, but the free wheel is still turning. They are trying to brake it from inside with a pole, before anchoring it with hempen ropes.’
For a few moments the enormous wheel, more than twenty feet in diameter, had actually begun to slow down and the dead man’s resurrections had become more sporadic. At last the wheel came to a complete standstill. Two bargellini climbed cautiously along the wooden platform supporting it, until they reached the spot where the corpse was jammed. From there, using ropes, they brought their grim cargo down to a little boat that sat waiting on the river.
Dante was standing on the shore. ‘Get those layabouts away from here!’ he shouted at the bargellini, pointing to the gawping bunch of onlookers. As the soldiers set about clearing the field, using the grips of their lances as truncheons, the boat landed. Dante bent over the corpse, which lay face down, its arms spread in a cross and its head hanging over the edge.
He delicately lifted the head, brushing from its forehead the mass of waterlogged hair. As he did so a flood of water spilled from the dead man’s mouth, as if his body were full of the liquid that had killed him. Dante immediately let the hair fall back, hiding the man’s features once more. He turned round to see whether any of the soldiers showed any signs of recognising the drowned man. But their stupidly curious faces reassured him.
It was the face of Brandano. Or one of his many faces, perhaps, and this time definitely the last. The monk had not had time to assume a studied pose, and now his face betrayed only the anguish of a violent death.
The prior, lifting the body slightly, opened the man’s jacket over his chest to give him a quick examination. The corpse was covered with wounds and bruises. It must have struck the river bed with great violence. On one side two red mouths indicated the spot where something had torn the flesh. Dante looked up at the wheel. The poles were fastened to the load-bearing structure by long carpenter’s nails. It was probably those that had inflicted the deep, narrow gashes.
He went on studying the body: on one shoulder an unusual tattoo attracted his attention. Drawn in a reddish colour, which looked like a bloodstain on the bluish pallor of the skin, there was the shape of an octagon, surrounded by smaller signs. Dante had never seen anything like it: only some of the smaller markings recalled the symbols with which astrologers represented the various combinations of their art. He remained silent for a moment, meditating on what he could see. Then he bestirred himself.
‘Take a cloth, go up to the mill and wrap these poor remains,’ he commanded, rising to his feet. In the meantime he had taken his wax tablet from the bag that he carried on his belt, and with the stylus quickly drew a copy of the tattoo.
It wasn’t very difficult: since his youth he had been an excellent draftsman, and his knowledge of the mixture of colours had helped him considerably when it came to joining the Apothecaries’ Guild. He could have devoted himself successfully to painting, had he wished to do so. His friend Giotto was also convinced of it, and had encouraged him on a number of occasions. Perhaps one day, when he had become something other than he was now …
Soon afterwards one of the bargellini returned with some hempen sacks. These were used to form a makeshift shroud, in which the poet asked for the man to be wrapped, taking care that his face was covered during the operation. He only felt calmer once the corpse was tightly bound with ropes.
News of Brandano’s death would remain secret for at least a few hours. For a while it might prove useful that he alone had recognised the monk.
‘Take him to Santa Maria. The Commune will pay for the burial, if no friend or relative appears to reclaim the body.’
The bargellini walked away. Meanwhile Dante thought about what needed to be done. So, the monk had not survived his escape along the underground passage. For some reason he must have slipped into the river, and there, weighed down by his habit, had ended up in the vortex of the water-mill, trapped between the spokes of the wheel.
A miserable end for a man who had made skill and juggling the source of his livelihood. Yet that was what appeared to have happened. And judging from the condition of the corpse, the time of drowning must have been more or less the time of Brandano’s escape from the abbey.
Nonetheless a voice kept murmuring within him, making him uneasy. The two deep wounds in the man’s side might have been caused in the way he had just suggested to himself, but he still couldn’t shake off the impression that they were very similar to those inflicted on the bodies of Guido Bigarelli and Rigo di Cola.
And then there was that tattoo, with its unusual astral connotation. But at least Dante thought he might be able to discover its meaning: old Marcello had revealed that he used astrology in his diagnoses. Perhaps he would be able to provide a meaning for the tattoo.
AT THE inn they told him that Marcello must, in line with his custom, be in San Giovanni for his daily prayer at that time of day.
Dante quickly reached the Baptistery, entering the temple by its southern door. He had to pass through the muddle of slums that had accumulated alongside the majestic building over the decades, almost suffocating it with their embrace, and pass the crowd of salesmen who had come to set up their benches even among the graves of the old cemetery that had survived until the present day.
The old doctor was standing up, in the light of one of the windows. He seemed to be plunged in deep meditation, head bowed and eyes closed.
On his time-ravaged face it looked as if the network of wrinkles had been further accentuated over the past few years, digging furrows almost through to the bone. A grimace of pain altered his expression, which usually showed the serenity that comes from a rich life dedicated to the liberal arts. Dante sensed that the man was in unbearable pain, as if a stitch had suddenly gripped his innards.
At that moment Marcello opened his eyes and recognised him. As if by magic his face relaxed, assuming its familiar expression. ‘What fair wind brings you here, Prior? Are you too in this extraordinary church for the purpose of worshipping God?’
‘No, my reasons for coming here are less noble. I knew I would be able to find you here.’
‘You were looking for me? I am honoured to be the object of the attentions of the Prior of Florence.’
Dante thought he detected a hint of irony in the other man’s voice, but he continued. ‘I appeal to your knowledge of the stars to tell me what this figure represents,’ he said, taking the wax tablet from his bag and showing it to the doctor.
Marcello took it, holding it at a distance away from his eyes. ‘Over time my pupils have lost their ability to see close up, Messer Durante. As if death wanted to be sure to take me by surprise when the time comes,’ he said, forcing himself to focus upon the furrows in the wax. Then all of a sudden he fell silent. ‘Where did you see these signs?’ he asked after a long pause.
‘On a dead man’s body. I thought that knowing their significance might help me to establish his identity.’
Marcello stared at him as if attempting to discover a recondite meaning in his words. He went on clutching the tablet. ‘They really are unusual signs,’ he murmured.
‘Symbols of the stars, it seems to me. But what do they mean?’
‘As you have correctly understood, the signs surrounding the octagon represent the various heavenly bodies. That is the Sun,’ said the doctor, pointing at a little circle. ‘And these are Venus and gloomy Saturn.’
‘But what does the octagon mean? I have seen other representations of the Zodiacal map, all different from this.’
The
old man waited for a moment before replying. He ran his finger along the thin trace left by the stylus on the wax. ‘There are many ways of drawing it, but one thing here is truly unusual. Few know this particular aspect of the angular combinations of the stars. The real aspect of one hundred and thirty-five degrees. Only the Arab astrologers are aware of it, to my knowledge.’
‘Why “real”? What is unusual about that particular combination?’
‘You mean the octagon? It’s the shape that God assumed when he wanted to make himself known to man, according to the tradition of the pagans from beyond the sea. It constitutes the doubling of the Tetragrammaton, the name of the ineffable God, the double cube on which the world rests. This is the form that the ancients conferred upon the buildings destined to contain the light of God.’
‘His light?’
‘Certainly … his spirit. Or the traces of his passing. Is it not written in the works of the poets so dear to you that the Grail itself is kept in a stone octagon?’
Dante looked up at the mosaic that decorated the vault, then turned his head. ‘The Baptistery too is an octagon,’ he remarked.
The other man had followed his eyes. ‘It is indeed,’ he said.
‘In your opinion, why should someone seek to construct a large octagonal building today, on our lands? There is no Grail to guard, after all.’
Marcello turned to look at him in surprise. ‘Who is building the thing you describe? And where?’ he asked after a brief pause.
‘To the north of the city. Something inexplicable.’
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did you make of it?’
‘Little or nothing apart from a general idea of its shape. Apart from …’
‘What?’
‘It was built on the road of death. And death has paid it a visit. Perhaps it was another stage on death’s journey, after the Angel Inn. And the marsh.’
‘The marsh? What do you mean, Messer Alighieri?’
‘The Styx is closer than you think,’ the poet said, walking away as Marcello gazed after him.
At the Builders’ Guild
DANTE HANDED the piece of paper on which Rigo had sketched his plan for the incinerated construction to Manoello, the prior of the Guild. He was sitting behind his imposing drawing board, which rested on an oak pedestal carved with the symbols of the corporation.
Manoello let a few moments pass with a puzzled expression on his face. He looked suspicious. Then he turned his eyes towards the other two elderly maestri, who had risen from their seats to get a better look, as if seeking their agreement. ‘What is it?’
‘That’s what I’d like you to tell me. It’s the plan for some kind of building, on which construction was under way. Could you tell me, with your experience, what these drawings refer to? Or what function such an edifice might be designed to fulfil?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
Dante took a step towards the desk. He was very familiar with the cloak of secrecy that covered the activities of the Builders’ Guild, and the absolute prohibition on revealing anything about those activities to outsiders. But now it was the Commune of Florence that spoke through his lips. ‘Because I have reason to believe that this building is linked to a crime. And it is my duty to travel the path of truth, while your duty is to assist me along the way,’ he hissed, tapping his finger against the sheet that the maestro continued to ignore.
The man looked alarmed. He beckoned the two men over, before finally bending over the drawing. ‘An unusual construction. A tower?’ he muttered, indicating the outline of the perimeter wall to the first man who had come over.
‘Too big,’ the other man replied after a brief mental calculation. ‘Perhaps … it could be a spinning mill. I know they’re building huge ones in the north at the moment. Or a drying house for dyed cloths. Or tanned hides.’
‘No … I know what it is,’ a tremulous voice murmured.
The third maestro, the oldest, had until that moment remained apart from the others, after darting only a quick glance at the drawings. Dante turned towards him. On his face, as white as a bleached sheet, death had already left its unmistakeable mark. One of his eyes had been blinded by a wound, while the other was barely visible behind its half-closed lid, veiled by a cataract. But now it seemed to blaze with sudden fire. ‘A long, long time ago …’
‘Maestro Matteo, please don’t exert yourself,’ Manoello interrupted him smugly.
But Dante stopped him with an imperious gesture. ‘Where?’
‘You see those buttresses fixed on the outside wall, repeating the same figure on a reduced scale? You see the splendid perfection of the crown thus formed?’ the old man continued with mounting excitement. ‘This building was not conceived for the human race, but as a dwelling for the gods. When Bigarelli …’
‘Bigarelli?’ said Dante. ‘He’s the one who …’
But the other man didn’t seem to have heard him. Lost in some inner vision, he kept his claw-like hand on the drawing. ‘More than fifty winters now … The whole of my life.’
He bent over the papers again, concentrating the last vestiges of his eyesight on the drawings. ‘Yes, I saw Guido Bigarelli drawing the plans of the castle, on the Emperor’s orders.’
Dante was starting to understand. ‘Is it one of Frederick’s castles? One of the strongholds with which he marked the frontiers of his kingdom?’
‘No, not on the frontiers, but in the centre of the Capitanata, so high up that from it the sea could be seen in the distance. In the bright Mediterranean light. The castle of Santa Maria al Monte.’
Trembling, the old man had risen to his feet, with all eyes upon him. He stopped by the wall at the end of the room, where shelves were lined up, full of rolled-up papers and trunks reinforced with iron bands. After springing open the lock of one of these, he looked inside it for a long time, before standing up again with a triumphant expression, brandishing a bundle of dusty parchments.
‘Here it is! My eyes may be weary, but my memory is still intact. I knew they must be here.’ He untied the sheets in front of their eyes. ‘A copy that I made myself, when I was a colleague of Bigarelli’s. In secret,’ he added with a shiver, as if fearing that his former teacher might still be able to take his revenge.
Dante bent over the drawings. So, this was the plan for Frederick’s masterpiece, the work marvelled at by the pilgrims who returned from beyond the sea, if fortune led them to the Stone Crown, as that mysterious castle was known to the people, a perfect octagon surrounded by the same number of identically shaped towers. A geometrical triumph that was proudly believed to repeat the plan of the ancient Temple of Solomon. And it had been designed by Guido Bigarelli.
‘I … I saw it,’ the old man murmured again.
‘You saw Bigarelli drawing on these papers? Are you sure of that?’
‘He was the architect who made the designs. But the idea had come to him from someone else. A friar.’
‘A friar? Who?’ asked Dante.
Rather than replying, the old man bent over the papers once more. He seemed to be looking for something among the faded marks indicating doors and walls. One of the drawings showed the section of a vertical embankment. ‘Yes, this is what the great Bigarelli imagined … not as it later became.’
The prior gripped the parchment. ‘So this plan is different from the real building? In what way?’
‘Here, on the ground floor. This continuous wall. That was how the master imagined it, without the windows that were added later. As you see, the ground floor is an unbroken, uninterrupted sequence, without the partition walls that were added later to form a series of halls.’
The prior of the Guild nodded in agreement. ‘That’s certainly so. The castle would have been better armed and better defended without those apertures. The wall would have been more solid to keep out hostile forces.’
Dante set the paper down on the desk, after looking at it one last time. A sudden intuiti
on had occurred to him. ‘Keep them out, you say, Messer Manoello? Frederick was the lord of the earth, of men, of their minds, their souls. His walls were the chests of his guards, the blades of the Arabs of Lucera. He could have slept all by himself in the middle of a field anywhere in his domains, and he would have been safer there than in a room in his palace in Palermo. No, this big blind wall was not designed to keep anyone out.’ The poet had risen to his feet, watched with puzzlement by the others. ‘Its purpose was to contain something, to hold something that must under no circumstances be allowed to get out.’
Manoello shook his head. ‘A prison? No, it was too rich in marble and mosaics for a jail. Besides, Frederick already had prisons in each of his cities.’
‘It’s too big, one single circular cell,’ Matteo added. ‘That wasn’t what it was for,’ he murmured. ‘A dark arch, an endless communication trench …’
‘But what if it was supposed to contain something vast?’ Dante pressed, following the thread of his hypotheses. ‘A continuous circle, the secret lair not of the Minotaur, but an Ouroboros, the great serpent of time that bites its own tail for all eternity?’
Manoello shook his head disdainfully. ‘Frederick certainly wasn’t a master of virtue. And all we good sons of the Church share this judgement: that he was the very figure of the Antichrist, sent by Satan to torment us. But you actually see him as a new Minos! What would that stone ring have held captive? Do you believe that the heretic brought back the terrible Minotaur from his expedition to the East?’
‘No. But there is something else that needs to be closed away behind massive walls, away from human eyes. Something beyond the measure of man, just as the limbs of that monster, half-man, half-bull, far exceeded even those of a wild beast.’
‘What might that be?’
‘Knowledge. And I am sure that you will agree, Matteo,’ the poet replied, turning to the old maestro, who nodded. ‘I need one last favour from you,’ Dante continued. ‘A quick diagram of the plan of Frederick’s castle in its original form, as it has remained in your memory.’