The Kingdom of Light

by Giulio Leoni

  The poet’s certainties were beginning to waver. Perhaps the Templars and the Republic of Venice, which seemed to be behind the plot, really had a plan even greater than the sacking of the holy city.

  ‘That great project has come to nothing,’ Monerre continued. ‘Broken like the spine of the imperial family. But it is now possible that it will be repeated and taken to its conclusion, and that the legitimate Roman emperor, Frederick’s heir, will return to the throne of Rome. Come with us,’ he added sorrowfully.

  ‘Frederick’s heir … You’re imagining things.’ Involuntarily Dante heard the firmness of his own voice faltering. A doubt was beginning to form in his mind. A hope …

  ‘No, he exists. He is alive and ready to reveal himself to the world by guiding this enterprise and celebrating the glory of his ancestor by bringing Frederick’s greatest project to its conclusion: fixing the boundaries of the world.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘His great unfinished work.’

  ‘But who is the man you are talking about?’

  Monerre opened his mouth for a moment, but then said nothing. He took a step backwards, as if preparing to say goodbye. A moment later, though, he began talking again. ‘A man whose identity we have all sworn on our own lives to protect. The last son of Bianca Lancia, the only woman the Emperor loved. Brought up far from the court and then locked away in a monastery, with monks loyal to the Emperor, to save him from the hands of the Pope and then those of Manfred, his ambitious half-brother.’

  Dante thought for a moment about what he had just heard. ‘The heir referred to in Mainardino’s Chronicles, the proof of whose existence Bernardo came looking for in Florence?’ The other man stared at him impassively, his lips pressed tightly together. ‘Is he the one you want to put on the throne? And is he what you’re killing for?’

  The Frenchman remained silent as he stepped back. ‘Come with us,’ he said once more. ‘You still have time!’

  After Monerre had disappeared around the corner of the Baptistery, Dante sat down on one of the sarcophagi that lay next to the southern portal of the church. The stone still held the warmth of the blazing sun.

  He tried to give meaning to what he had just heard. Monerre had struck him as sincere when he outlined his plan and sought his complicity. And yet there was something about it that did not completely convince him. A faint tremor in the voice, every now and again, as if his words were marked by a hint of desperation.

  Something must have put a stop to that perfect plan. The murderer’s hand had begun to strike the pillars of the future edifice, unpicking the weft of the scheme. But if the murderer’s intention was to shatter the dream of the supporters of empire, it was not impossible that Boniface lay behind his bloody hand.

  A shiver ran down Dante’s spine. Then he thought he heard footsteps behind him and turned his head.

  Something dark enfolded him, blinding him. For a moment he was aware of a sharp stench of mildew, as a hand pressed the cloth against his mouth. He tried to jump to his feet and free himself. He distinctly felt the mass of a body behind him and instinctively swerved to the right, trying to escape its clutches.

  From behind, a blade sliced at the makeshift hood and slipped around his shoulder. He felt the cold steel brushing his neck and a sharp pain rising from the base of his throat. Then his assailant drew the weapon back to strike again.

  Meanwhile the poet had managed to tug himself free; he blindly flailed his arms in front of him, trying somehow to strike his attacker. But his hands met only air. The man must still be behind him, he thought with terror, and went on clutching at the cloth that blinded him.

  He threw himself forward, trying to break free. But fear made his movements slow and clumsy, so he merely pulled like a yoked beast, sure that in a moment he would once again feel the bite of metal. And this time the wound would be fatal. But all of a sudden he felt a weakening in the grip that held him, as if his enemy’s fingers had suddenly been forced open. Carried on by the impetus, he staggered blindly forward for a few paces before stumbling and falling. When he was on the ground he turned convulsively on to his back.

  By now he had finally managed to shake away the cloth. For a moment the external darkness prolonged his sense of impotent blindness, then his eyes slowly regained their sight. Standing in front of him he recognised the imposing figure of Arrigo.

  The philosopher was bending over him. He looked as if he was about to start attacking him again. Kicking out desperately, Dante dragged himself along the ground, retreating a few feet. Then he managed to spring up and unsheathe his dagger.

  But Arrigo didn’t seem to want to threaten him. He stretched his hand out towards the poet, showing him that he was unarmed, and addressed him calmly. ‘Do not fear, Messer Alighieri. Your assailant has fled. He made off in that direction,’ he said, pointing towards the dense network of alleyways behind the Baptistery. ‘How do you feel?’ he went on, staring at the wound.

  Dante touched the source of the pain at the base of his throat and, drawing back his fingers, saw they were covered with blood. Holding his hand over the cut, he took a step backwards until he stood at a distance from the other man, who seemed to want to help him.

  Arrigo understood and stopped. A smile passed across his lips. He spread his arms again. ‘I’m not the one who was trying to kill you.’

  ‘Someone was. And you’re the only person I can see.’

  The philosopher’s mouth tightened for a moment, and then his features relaxed. A shrewd light flashed in his eyes. ‘That’s true, but go back to what you know: the world is full of things that we can see and which have no bodily form. The rainbow that colours the sky, the wind that fills the sail, the song that touches the soul with its sweetness. And also things that exist and which we cannot see, like the network of infinitesimal particles that makes up our bodies, the earth and the whole of the universe.’

  The poet, after a moment’s uncertainty, lowered his weapon. ‘The atoms of which you speak are unfeeling grains of sand, fragments of a mindless void. But the blade that tried to kill me is sensitive enough.’

  Arrigo had pulled a piece of linen from his bag. He took a step forward and held it out to the poet.

  ‘So tell me what you were doing here, since I am prepared to believe that you did not come here to attack me,’ Dante went on, bandaging his wound as best he could. ‘At this time of night, in defiance of the curfew … and of prudence.’

  ‘You will have noticed how the same forms change as they are filled with the breath of light, or as shadows cast their veil over them.’

  ‘It is a common experience.’

  ‘And yet I wanted to see what shape your Baptistery would assume when the shadows fell upon it.’

  Dante stared at him in surprise, then glanced back at the dark, imposing mass behind them. The big stone octagon towered over the shacks that spread out from its northern side. ‘And what did you learn?’

  ‘That this one, like so many of your religion’s monuments, is far more useful in the darkness.’

  The prior was not sure that he had understood. But he was overcome with emotion, and reached out a hand towards the old teacher’s shoulder. ‘Our religion, Arrigo? I thought your speculation had stopped on the threshold of apostasy. I thought you were not lost.’

  Arrigo smiled again, but his expression had turned cold. ‘There is nothing inside that stone drum, nothing but the darkness it contains. But it might be precious for that very reason.’

  ‘How can I help you in this madness, whatever you mean?’ Dante said.

  But Arrigo seemed not to have understood. He gripped the poet tightly by the arm. ‘You have the key to that door!’ he shouted. He looked desperate. ‘Give it to me, and I will let you have some of my glory!’

  For a moment Dante thought the philosopher had gone mad. His eyes were wide. He jerked away from his grip and took a step back. The other man did not try to follow him, but kept his hand stretched out as if he could still cl
asp him in his arms.

  Suddenly he stirred himself. Dante saw him moving his head around, confused, as if he had just emerged from a dream and was trying to regain his bearings. Then he turned round to face the Baptistery. The prior saw him walking with his shuffling gait to the bottom of the wall, where he stopped and spread his arms out wide. Arrigo remained motionless for a few moments, a theatrical parody of the crucifix that he had been mocking a moment before. Finally he slipped off to the side, disappearing round the corner, in the same direction as Monerre.

  Dante leaped after him, trying to catch up with him. But when he turned the corner, there wasn’t a trace of the philosopher.

  9

  Afternoon of 14th August, at the priory

  THE LAST meeting of the Council of Priors had been called for the third hour. Sitting at the long table in the hall, Dante wasn’t listening to the low murmur of words that the others were exchanging under their breath, as if afraid that he could hear them. Several times he had caught a meaningful look between them, but his thoughts were too wrapped up in the events of the previous night. He was beginning to pursue the trace of an idea that had flashed through his mind, but the line suddenly dissolved in a thicket of inconclusive hypotheses.

  The meeting had been dragging on for hours now, scattered over an apparently endless multiplicity of meaningless by-laws. For a few moments, though, something had begun to irritate him, piercing his reflections with a shrill noise.

  ‘And now we come to signing the minutes …’ The words rang in his ears. One of the priors had come over to him, holding out an ink-well and a quill.

  ‘I have no time for your papers!’ Dante exclaimed.

  ‘But it’s the administration’s bimonthly report,’ Antonio, of the Cloth Merchants’ Guild, stammered from the other side of the table. ‘It is your explicit duty to sign it, as a member of our assembly. We can’t pass on the file unverified to the next group of priors …’

  Lapo Salterello defiantly held the ink-well out to him. Dante leaped to his feet, striking his hand against the little receptacle and spilling its contents in a dark pool on the table. Then, to everyone’s bewilderment, he suddenly turned and headed towards the door without a word.

  Baffled, the five men stared at one another. Then Lapo picked up the quill and dipped it in the spilt ink. After taking one last look at the others, he made a few jottings at the foot of the page, at the point where the poet’s name appeared. ‘Not a word,’ he laughed, turning towards the door. ‘You all saw him sign.’

  The shadow of embarrassment on the faces of the other four melted into smiles.

  DANTE HAD left the hall in exasperation. On the stairs he was almost knocked over by a breathless messenger running towards the door. Dante gripped him by the arm and stopped him.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  The other man must have recognised the prior, because he bowed. Then he glanced anxiously towards the door, from which the excited voices of the other priors could still be heard. ‘I’ve been sent by the Bargello; I have a message of the greatest importance to pass on to the Council,’ he said with great agitation, and made as if to set off running once more.

  Dante gripped his arm again, holding him back. ‘First tell me what your message is.’

  ‘The Bargello has sent me to say that his men have surrounded a group of rebels, Ghibelline heretics, at their hide-out at the Maddalena. He’s about to smash his way into their den and take them all prisoner. He asks to have reinforcements ready in case of an emergency, sounding the martinella bell to summon the forces from the Oltrarno.’

  The poet bit his lips, trying to conceal his anxiety, and let go of the man’s arm. ‘Return to your tasks immediately. I will pass your message on to the Council. Don’t worry about anything else.’

  Unconvinced, the messenger glanced nervously at the door. For a moment he looked as if he was going to insist, but in the end he decided to turn on his heels and go back whence he had come. Dante paused, worried that someone might have heard his words. But the priors were all immersed in their meeting, which continued amidst jests and laughter. Trying to pass unobserved, he made for the stairs, looking straight ahead and avoiding the eyes of the guards who had witnessed the scene from the courtyard.

  In the cloister he bumped into the secretary of the Commune, who seemed to be looking for something.

  ‘Messer Alighieri, the very man. I thought you would want to know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You asked me to find out about the pilgrims in the Angel Inn. One of them, Messer Marcello, has been seen preparing to leave. He requested a mule from the stables at the Porta Romana, and some strong men to carry his luggage.’

  ‘Has he already left?’ Dante asked, disappointed. ‘I’d given orders that no one should be allowed to go.

  The secretary shrugged. ‘He hadn’t been accused of anything.’

  For a moment the prior assessed the chances of ordering someone to be sent in hot pursuit of the old doctor. He couldn’t have got far. But what would have been the point? For him finally to expiate his guilt in Rome, and bring all his fancy notions with him. Events at the abbey were far more important.

  Outside San Piero he didn’t notice anything different about the normal comings and goings of merchants and craftsmen on their way to the Ponte Vecchio. Luckily the news did not yet seem to have spread. Perhaps he still had time to take control of the situation, in the last hours of his authority. Yes, he would try to stop the Bargello by appealing to the higher interests of the Commune.

  So he would gain time to allow Cecco and Amara to get to safety.

  He ran along the road leading to the church, guided by a buzz of conversation that was growing more and more intense.

  At a bottleneck in the street he had to stop, his way blocked by an old woman with a bundle of wood on her bent back, hobbling slowly in the same direction. He tried to slip between her burden and the wall to get past her, but without success. After his second failed attempt he panted, exasperated, ‘Let me pass, old woman! To hell with your wood!’

  Instead of stepping aside, the woman turned round to look him in the face. ‘Why do you insult me, Prior? I’m helping the good people of Florence. There’s going to be a pyre of heretics, down by the Cavalcanti Tower. It’s my seasoned wood, good for making white smoke!’

  ‘Who do you want to burn, you witch? Think of your soul instead!’

  ‘Why don’t you think of yours!’ she retorted, showing no wish to move. ‘Or are you running to their aid?’ she added, a flash of malice lighting up her cataract-clouded eyes.

  Dante furiously pushed the bundle aside. The woman fell on her backside with a flurry of curses. ‘Damn you to hell!’ she cried as he began running once more.

  He had run almost two hundred yards when he was forced to fall on his knees and gasp for breath. In front of him, at the end of the alleyway, he saw a whirl of torches outside the door of the church. Vespers had been rung shortly before, and it was still light enough to see. Those flames had a more sinister purpose, he thought as he began running again.

  The road outside the portal of the abbey had been filled by a crowd of armed men. It looked as if a sample of the whole of Christendom had assembled in the churchyard, ready to set off on the crusade. Looking quickly around, Dante recognised the livery of the French pikemen of Acquasparta’s guard, and of the Genoese crossbowmen, as well as the bargellini and the district guard. The heavy armour of some Teutonic mercenaries also peeped out here and there, along with the rough garments of peasants armed with pitchforks.

  Blood-soaked bodies lay on the cobbles. As he ran, he passed one of them, gaunt and in the grip of death. He was lying open-mouthed, his face in the road.

  Suppressing a groan, Dante leaned over him. Bernardo the historian had been struck in the back, and there were two bloody gashes just below the base of his throat. Dante quickly made the sign of the cross, before closing Bernardo’s eyes. So he too was part of the conspiracy, even if his
time was running out.

  Or had Bernardo become involved in the clash by accident? Heedless of the risks, Dante headed on towards the open portal. Spotting him, some of the men had dashed towards him, swords drawn. Over their chain-mail they wore tunics in various colours, different from those of the other soldiers. Dante dodged the first of them, who wore a leopard’s head on his chest. Then, bending down, he managed to escape the grip of a giant with a lion’s head embroidered on his jacket. He was about to pass through the portal when he bumped into the chest of a third armed man who had emerged from the shadows. Dante slipped to the floor, just in time to see with terror that the man had bared his sword and was preparing to strike him. He just noticed the wolf’s head that he wore on his helmet, before instinctively shutting his eyes.

  He was saved by a familiar voice. ‘Messer Durante, have you come to see justice at work?’ croaked the Bargello in an ironic voice, restraining the guard’s arm. ‘It does you an honour: true to your duty until the final hour. But you could have saved your strength. The Council has already elected your successor.’

  Dante had regained control of himself, even if his heart was still pounding with emotion. He got rapidly to his feet and brushed the dust from his clothes. ‘My mandate ends at midnight. Like my authority. Tell me what’s happening, straight away. Why are these forces being deployed without an order from me?’ he asked, pointing at the crossbowmen who were furiously operating the cranks of their weapons, which rested on forks held by their fellow-soldiers.

  ‘A plot to endanger the security of Florence has been discovered … Prior. Under the appearance of proclaiming a crusade, the Ghibelline leaders have assembled men-at-arms, certainly to overturn the Commune and the laws of the people. The leader seems to have been that man Brandano, a false monk and a heretic. And as for the Virgin …’

  ‘Who gave the order to intervene?’ Dante interrupted angrily. ‘The secular arm is subject to the authority of the priory. No one can usurp its rights!’