by Giulio Leoni
His whole theory was collapsing in the face of the evidence. And yet he was sure that in some way that was what had happened. He struck his forehead with his fists, desperately looking around the cell for something that might suggest a solution. Then an idea came to him.
Nine. The number which, in the view of old Marcello, united their destinies. He began to press the goblet down on the table. At the fifth attempt a barely perceptible crack opened up inside the bowl. That was how the wine, had the cup been full, would have made contact with the poison hidden in the grip. Each time the cup was set down on the table the hidden mechanism brought death a step closer. After the cup had been supped nine times death was a certainty.
That would have deceived even anyone who had noticed the small movement of the stem, apparently a flaw in the casting. And besides, who else would have dared bring the goblet to his lips? It was used only by the Emperor, and he alone could have fallen into the trap. That was how death had struck both the father and the man who thought he was his son. Or desperately wanted to be.
That was how Arrigo had been poisoned by the assassin, who had resorted to a mocking repetition of the ancient crime.
Dante looked anxiously around. Now he knew why the assassin had ripped only the last lines from the Chronicles: in the murder of the heir he wanted the poet to read the proof of Arrigo’s guilt. And if he hadn’t discovered the secret of the goblet, Dante would have fallen into the trap, believing – like the others – in the suicide of a murderous, defeated and desperate pretender.
A crime concealed for half a century was emerging before his eyes. Perhaps the star that marked his birth and governed his path truly was remarkable. Perhaps Marcello was right: there was a route carved through everyone’s life, and life was nothing but blindly walking along that route.
He took from his bag the wrinkled sheet on which the astrologer had traced the boundaries of his fate, the limits of his glory and of his grief. Before his eyes that network of lines and points danced through the flashes of a blinding headache. He began running his index finger along the signs that bound his destiny. All the way to the malign square of Jupiter, in which Marcello had read the augury of his exile. He ran a hand over his forehead, then shook his head.
The plan of the horoscope blazed in front of him, with Marcello’s notes. Those characters, that thin handwriting …
A sudden idea had flooded his mind. He threw himself on the manuscript of the Decem continens, comparing the two scripts. Even by the flickering candle-light the lines of the pen that had drawn the symbols of his destiny were identical to those left by the hand that had jotted down the text, the only one that could really have attempted to complete the Decem continens. That of its author, the greatest astrologer of his day, Guido Bonatti.
Dante shivered at the thought of the person who had prophesied his misfortune. But then he suddenly sat up, banishing the thought from his mind. No, those marks on paper could accomplish nothing. He was sole arbitrator of his own fate.
He gripped the sheet of paper furiously, planning to rip it up. He started tearing the edge, then stopped. In doing so he had turned the piece of paper over and now he noticed something for the first time.
The doctor had sketched his horoscope chart on a sheet taken at random from his bag. In the excited discussion in which they were immersed he hadn’t noticed that he had used the back of one of Bigarelli’s drawings, taken from the sculptor’s studio after his death.
The weight of truth crashed down upon him. He was the murderer. But why? He yelled his question at the deaf stone walls, at Arrigo’s motionless body. Then his attention returned to the drawing that he still clutched in his hand, trembling with excitement.
The poet sat down at the desk and unfolded the paper beneath the light. A large octagon, with other, smaller octagons nestling in its corners. Castel del Monte, with its crown of towers. But there was something else, too, something to do with the maps he had seen at the Builders’ Guild.
Various signs had been added to the diagram of the rooms and corridors: eight lines traced in blood in each of the eight rooms, each one marked with a phrase, ‘lucis imago repercussa’, and an angle measurement. A thin ink-line linked the reddish marks together, as if to indicate a trajectory uniting them in a chain.
‘Reflection of an image in light …’ Dante murmured, biting his lower lip. The discovery seemed to have conquered his pain, as if the excitement of the soul could defeat each of the body’s weaknesses. ‘Eight reflections … in eight mirrors.’
He went on studying Bigarelli’s drawing, fascinated by the perfect geometry of the lines that crossed the plan, indicating strange positions of objects and the relationships between them. If truth is revealed in the beauty and harmony of the figure, then that drawing, in its symmetry, must contain a truth similar to beauty.
There was a note in characters so small as to be almost invisible. Even Dante’s eagle eye was strained to the utmost as he tried to decipher it. The figures seemed to relate to the construction. He tried to follow the line traced by the pen. It was as if Bigarelli had been trying to indicate the wild path of a force, an image repeated from mirror to mirror in the great blind drum of the castle, until with one final deviation it reached the centre of the construction, in what must have been the inner courtyard. Here, suggested with a few lines, was the diagram of an object, some wheels. And then a particular detail, out of scale and circled by a red line: an axle with two half-moons facing one another and a human eye observing one of the two ends.
Lucis imago repercussa … An idea was forming in Dante’s mind. Something he had read in the Chronicles when scanning their pages in Bernardo’s cell. Something that was now rising to the surface of the prodigious lake of his memory: ‘It reached the Emperor on the threshold of the great proofs. And wise Michael it was who found the way, contrary to the opinion of his astrologer …’
Then his face brightened, as he suddenly raised his head. Lucis imago repercussa. What Frederick the Great hadn’t lived long enough to find out. Now the door of that awareness was right in front of him, and it was about to close.
So his eye moved to the still-locked cabinet, covered by piles of precious books. He forced the lock with the tip of his dagger. Elias of Cortona’s lamp. Now he understood the meaning of it all. That was why the copy of Castel del Monte had been made, why the mathematician Fabio dal Pozzo had been called in to perform the calculations …
That was what Arrigo had been trying to tell him, by the walls of the Baptistery, precious to him only because of the darkness that lay beneath its vault. A great black lake of darkness that the philosopher needed in order to realise the father’s ancient dream.
Not the rebirth of the empire, wrecked in the storm of time. That was the plan of the men from the north, from Venice, the Templars. Arrigo had only been helping. Generously, he had invested his heart in the bid. But his mind was elsewhere, lost behind another dream. A dream that even Dante was only now beginning to understand.
He was filled with sudden anxiety. Penetrating that secret – was it not the same as penetrating the secret of God? He felt his eyes welling up, and a knot tightened his throat like an iron hand. He burst into tears, defeated by his grief.
‘And is this what you wanted?’ he asked with a sob, turning towards Arrigo.
‘What’s going on, Maestro? Are you unwell?’ he heard a voice say on the other side of the door. With a massive effort of will, Dante restrained his weeping. ‘Nothing!’ he answered abruptly. ‘Just a bad dream,’ he added, hoping the nuisance would go away. But then he saw the door half-opening.
A monk clutching a lantern had appeared in the doorway. He peered innocently in, glancing back and forth between Dante and the corpse. ‘But … Prior, what are you doing here? And Messer Arrigo …’
‘Is dead, Brother. Sed non a Deo advocatus. He chose, with unhappy hand, to rejoin the spirit of his ancestors before his time. He took his own life,’ the prior concluded, seeing that the other man
was still staring at him in disbelief.
At these words the monk brought his hand to his mouth in a gesture of horror. ‘A suicide, here, in a sacred place … I will have to alert the abbot,’ he stammered, staring at the dead man.
‘Do that. But later. First send for someone from the Misericordia, with the dead-cart.’
The monk stared at him in alarm.
‘The funeral must be held straight away,’ the poet explained to him. ‘It would not be good for your monastery to be dragged into a scandal. I want the body to be taken outside the walls, with tapers quenched.’
The monk nodded and disappeared.
PERHAPS AN hour had passed by the time the announcement was made that the people Dante had called for were at the door. The abbot himself had come, with a worried expression on his face, to bring him the news. He glanced rapidly at the dead man, then suddenly looked away as if he feared being contaminated by the sight of it. Behind him a little group of friars crowded into the doorway, craning their necks to see.
‘Wrap the body in a canvas and take it below,’ ordered Dante.
With a nod of his head the abbot did as he asked. The brothers seemed eager to free themselves of the inconvenient presence of the corpse, and quickly disappeared with the body.
The poet hoisted the chest with the mechanism on to his shoulder and followed them in turn, after picking up Elias’ lamp wrapped in a cloth.
Outside the monastery he saw the dark outlines of two members of the brotherhood hidden by their cowls. One of them held the poles of a cart with large wheels, covered by a black canvas under which the monks had already placed Arrigo’s body.
‘We’re here, Brother,’ said the other man, who was holding a small oil-lamp. ‘What are those?’ he asked in a puzzled voice, staring at the chest and the bundle.
Without replying, Dante put his load on the back of the cart, beside the feet of the corpse. ‘Follow me. To the abbey of the Maddalena.’
‘That’s where we’ve just come from. The war has lately been putting a great strain on our resources,’ the other man replied, perplexed.
The prior took the oil-lamp from his hand. ‘Come, I’ll take you there. First we have to load up a few things,’ he said as they set off. Behind him he heard a puzzled murmur.
At last the taller of the two men steeled himself. ‘Messere, what’s going on, is this a joke? Have you swapped a hearse for a rubbish-cart?’
‘Do as I say, and have no fear. I am the Prior of Florence and there is a logic to my actions. Nothing of what you see contravenes the rules of your order.’
He quickly made for the wool warehouse, along with his grim-faced followers. In the lodge beside the barred door, the guard had been asleep for a while. He dozily emerged, with an irritable expression that quickly turned to alarm when he saw who it was that had interrupted his slumbers.
‘What … what do you want?’ he stammered in terror. He looked as if he was about to faint from the horror inspired in him by this procession of ghosts. His trembling subsided only once he had recognised the poet.
‘The cloths of the merchant Fabio dal Pozzo. I have to confiscate them. Stand aside, I know the way.’
Then, without waiting for any reaction from the still-confused man, Dante stepped into the labyrinth of heavy oak tables, guiding the dead-cart down the narrow passageways until he reached the spot where he had deposited the Venetian’s felt fabrics. In the storehouse, filled to the rafters, the air was so hot it was almost impossible to breathe.
‘Help me bring these bales down. Be very careful, they contain something fragile and precious. Take care not to drop them.’
Now that he had the slabs in front of him again he realised quite how big they were. They wouldn’t fit on the cart. Quickly, and beneath the eyes of the two monks who looked on in alarm, he gripped Arrigo’s body under the arms and lifted it into a sitting position. Then he pointed to the slabs wrapped in the felt, ordering them to be placed edgeways next to the corpse.
The brothers of the Misericordia were growing more and more startled. Beneath the weight, the axle of the cart groaned dangerously. ‘They’re as heavy as marble!’ exclaimed one of the two, sweat-drenched beneath his cowl, while the other, assisted by Dante, began to push the cart. ‘What on earth is in there?’
‘A dream,’ the prior said quietly, wiping his brow. ‘A dream dreamed by a great man.’
‘We’ll have to inform the captain of the Misericordia about all this.’
‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll have time for everything.’
The little funeral cortège re-emerged from the portal of the warehouse, passing once more in front of the trembling guard.
Outside, the darkness was softened by the moonlight. Dante pointed towards the Baptistery. With a jerk, the cart set off behind him.
At a turning in the street ahead of them a district patrol appeared. At the sight of the hooded figures they quickly stepped aside, making the sign of the cross. The prior passed by them without so much as a glance. For a moment he thought the two monks were about to turn to the armed men and tell them everything, but instead they said nothing and went on pushing the cart.
In the distance the road opened up towards Santa Reparata. In the background the great marble drum of the Baptistery stood out against the black sky like an imperial crown wrapped in a starry cloak. Dante anxiously quickened his pace.
They stepped out into the deserted square, amidst piles of building material. Further on, a corner of the walls of the future Duomo was already beginning to rise from the earth.
He walked resolutely towards the side of the Baptistery. There was someone in front of him.
‘Greetings, Messer Alighieri,’ he heard a voice say from the shadows. ‘I knew your obstinacy would bring you here sooner or later. The exact hour of your madness was indicated in the stars.’
The man was sitting on one of the Roman sarcophagi that leaned against the Baptistery wall. His face was hidden by the hood of his travelling clothes, but Dante had recognised him straight away. He took a few steps towards the doctor.
‘Greetings, Messer Marcello. I too knew that we would meet one day. Or perhaps I should call you by your true, ancient and famous name.’
His words had provoked no reaction in the man.
‘Guido,’ Dante continued. ‘Guido Bonatti. Astrologer to kings and emperors. A man who knows the path of the stars – and a murderer.’
Still the old man did not reply. He merely looked up as though seeking in the darkness the stars that the poet had mentioned. ‘Its form is perfect,’ he murmured, nodding towards the drum of the dome that loomed above him. ‘A pointless perfection, as always when the acts of men seek to ape nature,’ he added.
Dante had caught up with him now. With a nod of his head he ordered the two monks to stop. The cart came to a halt by the sarcophagus.
The astrologer lifted a corner of the cloth and looked carefully inside. His eye stopped first on the severe face of Arrigo, then on the chest at his feet. He turned to the poet. ‘So it was in your hands. I should have known,’ he said, pointing at the bag containing the machine. ‘I was sure I had destroyed it.’
‘Alberto the mechanicus put it back together … before you dispatched him to the afterlife.’
Guido Bonatti nodded. ‘He was good at his job. I saw what he did, in his workshop. As good as the devils who made this,’ he said, pointing once more to the machine.
‘Like that man from the East, the one you murdered after being welcomed on to the galley. Was it in Malta that you boarded it? Or had you mingled amongst the passengers since the vessel’s departure, far beyond the sea?’
‘I was in Sidon when word reached me that the vile plan was once more under way. I persuaded those men that I could be useful.’
‘You carried out a massacre just to kill one man.’
‘His mind had to be obliterated. And his memory. Nothing else mattered.’
‘Not even the lives of all those innocent men that you
wiped out with your terrible poison, the same one that you used to kill the father and the son?’
‘No one is innocent,’ Bonatti said with a disdainful shrug. ‘Arrigo wasn’t Frederick’s son. Only in his insane pride had he been able to imagine such a thing.’
‘Arrigo wasn’t the Emperor’s son by blood, but he was a worthy son of his intellect, and for that reason alone he would have deserved to live and rule. For his devotion to Frederick’s mind. A devotion that you exploited by flattering him, making him believe that his imperial destiny was confirmed in the stars. That was why you showed him your treatise on divination. And then you made him toast his enterprise with the marvellous goblet that had belonged to his father. The one that killed him, in the same way as it had killed Frederick.’
‘My treatise … a life’s work,’ Bonatti said, his voice thick with sadness. ‘Lost.’ But then he shrugged, and returned to his mocking tone. ‘And why did I do it? I loved my Emperor. Can you tell me, Alighieri?’
‘Yes. I know now. I know everything now,’ the poet exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Because Frederick was launching an enterprise that would have destroyed all your certainty.’
‘And is that why you’re here?’ Bonatti asked. ‘With him,’ he added, pointing at Arrigo’s body without looking at it.
‘Yes. He too has the right to see what I will see.’
The old man shrank at these words, as if struck by a sudden gust of wind. ‘And what do you think you will see?’ he asked angrily after a moment.
‘Frederick’s dream. The Kingdom of Light. He summoned the best minds of his court to prepare the enterprise. Elias of Cortona to use his alchemy to create a light that would match the light on the day of Creation. Michael Scotus to study how it might be done, and Leonardo Fibonacci to measure the result with his calculations. And Tinca the maestro, with his admirable glass. And from the East al-Jazari with his machines, and Guido Bigarelli, to erect the testing ground. To discover how far light travelled during the six days of Creation. He wanted to know the width of the universe, to measure the realm of God.’