The Dante Game

by Jane Langton

  On the platform His Holiness smiled politely at the singing children and looked down at his prepared speech and cleared his throat, while two Swiss Guardsmen detached themselves from the ceremonial row, moved up into the doorway of the cathedral and bent down over something on the floor, showing the backs of their shining helmets. Now one of them was outside again, nudging a comrade, and in a moment half a dozen had disappeared inside.

  Leonardo Bindo remained standing beside the archbishop. His face was flushed and smiling, but inwardly he cursed all the theological idealists in the world and Roberto Mori in particular. At least the fool had got what was coming to him.

  Bindo had seen Matteo Luzzi at the window above the loggia of the Bigallo. Well, God be praised for lesser miracles. The wild-eyed idiot from Switzerland had been found wanting—never trust an idealist!—but the thug was worthy of his hire.

  CHAPTER 54

  Too fair to die …

  Paradiso V, 71.

  The Cathedral was nearly empty. The crowds that had filled it during the service had poured out-of-doors onto the north side of the square. This morning even the usual parking spaces for motorbikes had been cleared to make room for the five thousand worshippers as they left the church and came out into the open, to be herded out of the way into the narrow channel of Via de’ Servi.

  The floor of the cathedral was like a marble plain from which rose pillars like mighty towers. The rubber soles of Julia’s shoes made no sound as she fled from Lucretia. Light blazed across the floor in radiant stripes from the narrow windows in the south wall, and hung in dusty shafts in the glowing darkness, flung from the round orifices in the clerestory, making great blobs on the opposite wall. Far away in the east end of the church the soaring banners suspended above the high altar rippled in the little winds that wandered from west to east, zephyrs that rose to circle the inverted bowl of Brunelleschi’s dome, carrying with them the scent of the altar flowers, descending to escape from the cathedral by the Porta del Campanile, the Porta dei Canonici, the Porta della Balla. Even the distant altar boys were phantoms, moving among the candles in a haze of incense.

  Julia ran past the five thousand chairs and the painted horsemen of Castagno and Uccello, blindly she ran past the portrait of Dante Alighieri standing between the city wall of Florence and the gate of Hell. With Lucretia in pursuit Julia ran like a hare, making for the Porta della Mandorla, which stood open on her left hand.

  But there she stopped short. Raffaello Biagi was blundering into the dim cathedral, running toward her. Terrified, she gave one glance over her shoulder at Lucretia, who was after her with Roberto’s gun in her hand, her black gown streaming behind her, her face contorted and streaked with tears.

  There was nowhere to turn. Desperately Julia veered away from the high doorway and bounded up a set of little steps. In an instant she was hidden behind a curving wall, her heart thudding against the cold stone.

  She had fled from Raffaello, but she had not escaped Lucretia, who darted after her up the stairs. Raffaello was not interested in Julia, he was not interested in Lucretia. Artfully he dodged along the north aisle. Catching sight of the Swiss Guards running down the nave, he ambled toward them like an inquisitive tourist, then drifted easily across the floor to vanish through one of the portals on the other side.

  Lucretia had failed to see Raffaello. She failed to see Homer and Zee and Inspector Rossi running after him through the Porta della Mandorla. She had eyes only for Julia Smith. Pursuing her up the circling stairs she could feel the solid weight of the automatic weapon in her hand, ready to destroy the girl who had twice robbed her of Roberto, who had stolen him from her and killed him. Oh, she had warned Roberto, she had begged him not to trust the girl! What good was it, what good, that they had waited so long and worked so hard?

  Lucretia leaped up the stairs, her body limber and strong. Above her she could hear the patter of Julia’s hurrying feet. The climb was long and steep, but sooner or later the stairs would come to an end and the girl would be trapped. Up and up Lucretia ran, her breath coming easily from her lungs, her strong heart powerfully beating.

  Homer and Rossi and Zee saw Julia in her black gown run up through the door in the wall. They saw Lucretia lunge after her with the gun in her hand.

  Homer was nearest. With a shout he changed direction and hurled himself up the steps and through the door. Inspector Rossi came leaping up behind him, and Homer shrank to the side to let him by. Zee too shoved Homer aside, then thrust past Rossi, mounting the stairs two at a time, sailing upward like an arrow from the bow, calling on a strength that did not come from the muscles in his legs or the breath in his lungs.

  Behind them bounded the first of the Swiss Guardsmen, shouting, hampered in his ascent by the weight of helmet and breastplate, the awkwardness of running in pleated pantaloons. Once again Homer had to pull over and cling to the wall.

  The stairs were steep and narrow, worn by thousands and thousands of climbing feet. Homer had climbed them before, last September, last October, in the company of Zee and the rest of the Dante class. They had been playing the Dante Game, accepting the athletic challenge of ascending to the very top of the dome, enjoying at the same time the playful notion of mounting through all the realms of Paradise from one heaven to another. But, oh God,—Homer collapsed on a stone windowsill to catch his breath—the play was deadlier this time. Had Zee seen the gun in Lucretia’s hand? God help the man! No amount of loving fervor could balance Lucretia’s unfair advantage in this last round of the Dante Game.

  Up and up, keep going. Homer struggled to lift one foot and then another. Clinging to the railing, he brushed his shoulder against the herringbone bricks of the inner wall, which curved farther and farther inward as he climbed higher and higher toward the pinnacle of the dome.

  The last flight of stairs no longer spiraled in a rising curve—it went straight up. The challenge to Homer’s exhausted lungs was intolerable. Grasping the two railings he heaved himself from step to step with the feeble strength remaining in his arms.

  Far below the dome at the west front of the cathedral His Holiness began to read the last page of his speech in honor of the seven hundredth anniversary of the great church of Santa Maria del Fiore—that sacred edifice which is itself the very heart of this historic city, dear to all Florentines, dear to Christians throughout the world.

  Loudspeakers carried his voice to the thousands of listeners gathered in the square and thronging the side streets. As Julia tumbled out onto the platform at the top of the dome the booming amplified syllables filled the air around her—precious to God himself.

  Lucretia was right behind her. Gasping, the two of them stood alone on the platform, here where there could be no more running away. Caught, exhausted with climbing, Julia remembered a television image of a monkey in frantic flight turning at the last instant to face a lioness. Setting her back against the railing, she faced Lucretia.

  Seven hundred years, seven hundred years since Dante Alighieri witnessed the foundation of this cathedral—

  Lucretia’s drawn cheeks were grey, her eyes were terrible. Cautiously Julia moved away from her to lean against the marble wall of the lantern, which rose from the platform like a little church. She whispered to Lucretia, “He shouldn’t have trusted me.”

  His Holiness had finished speaking. Once again the children began to sing. Their massed voices overloaded the speaker, and five thousand people covered their ears. “What did you say?” said Lucretia.

  “I said, he shouldn’t have trusted me.”

  “I told him so, I told him so.” Lucretia could hear Zee shouting, she could hear his footsteps on the last steep flight of stairs. “But it isn’t only that.” Moving closer to Julia she pointed the gun at her face. “We were married in the sight of God.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry,” murmured Julia. Turning her head away, she closed her eyes and put her hands over her face.

  Lucretia said something else, and fired past Julia’s
head at the wall. The shot pierced an ancient hole, a narrow cavity drilled long ago for the insertion of rods and pulleys, for the ratchets and gears that lifted the marble blocks from the ground and hoisted them high in the air—carved stones with shell-like niches and flowers and scrolls like unfolding ferns.

  Half-fainting, Julia slumped to her knees. But Zee was there, his arms gathered her up and held her, while Inspector Rossi grasped the gun and wrenched it from Lucretia’s hand. When the guardsman burst lustily onto the platform, ready for combat, he was astonished to see one tall black-gowned woman in the custody of a police officer and the other in a man’s embrace. What sort of craziness was this?

  On the steps of the cathedral the children had finished singing. There was a massive burst of applause, rising to the top of the dome and dissipating around the lantern like a dissolving cloud.

  “The van from the Questura is parked beside the Campanile,” said Inspector Rossi to the Swiss Guardsman. “Turn this lady over to Agent Piro.”

  Then Rossi grinned as Homer Kelly staggered up beside him and clung to the railing.

  “Oh, my God, Lucretia,” wheezed Homer, moving out of the way as she was herded down the stairs. He gaped at the spectacle of Zee and Julia locked tenderly together. “Rossi, is it all over? What the hell happened?”

  The inspector took him by the arm. “Come, my friend. We will wait for them below.”

  “But—” Homer stared greedily at the broad view of the city of Florence beyond the railing, once again he gawked at Zee and Julia, and then he turned to look with horror at the stairway he had just ascended. “Oh, well, what the hell,” he said, starting down again like a good sport, his knees buckling beneath him.

  Zee and Julia were left alone at the top of the cathedral. Around them stretched the city in a wide circle to the horizon of green hills, like the great wheel of eternity whose center they knew themselves to be, at least for this moment. Below them rose the domes and towers of the city of Florence, a thousand red rooftops cocked at every angle, with television aerials leaning insanely and drainage pipes wandering from building to building, and pocket-sized terraces with lawn chairs and potted shrubbery. Under the tile roofs the women of Florence were preparing their Easter dinners, roasting the lambs butchered earlier in Holy Week, now to be resurrected in glory, flavored with garlic and rosemary, garnished with onions and new potatoes and tiny wedges of lemon.

  A wind rushing down over the countryside from the Italian Alps had cleared the air, and the bells in the Campanile began to ring. Julia and Zee stopped clinging to one another and turned to see them tossing in the bell chamber, and soon the bells of Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito were all joining in the jangle, clashing in the brazen harmonics of bells, neither major nor minor but half savage.

  Far below them the pope and the Cardinal Prefect stepped lightly into the Vatican helicopter on the south side of the cathedral. As it rose, tipping slightly forward, its rotary blades beating the air, His Holiness had a momentary glimpse of a pair of lovers on the platform at the top of the dome, and he smiled at them and waved his hand.

  But they were aware only of the light of morning pouring down on them on every side, flooding them with the love that moves the sun and the other stars.

  CHAPTER 55

  I … begged her draw the shuttle’s thread

  Right through, and all the patterned web unmask.

  Paradiso III, 95, 96.

  Lucretia turned her face away from Zee. She would not speak to Inspector Rossi or Homer Kelly.

  Luckily Mary Kelly had come back to Florence. When Homer brought her to the women’s prison, Lucretia was glad to see her. She gripped Mary’s hand and talked feverishly. She couldn’t stop. Homer waited for hours in the visitors’ room, where he had nothing to do but study a torn poster from the first year of the Vatican’s great anti-drug crusade.

  They had borrowed Zee’s car. On the way back to Florence from the prison, Mary took the wheel. Moving in and out of the rapid flow of traffic on the highway, she whizzed around rotaries and dodged into the fast lane and ducked back.

  “You’ve got to keep up with everybody else,” she told Homer. “Italians aren’t bad drivers. They’re terrifically skillful, so they go a lot faster than we do at home.”

  “Oh, is that it?” said Homer, cringing and closing his eyes in terror.

  “Lucretia was a nun. I’m surprised we didn’t guess it. Since girlhood she had been a member of a Catholic order in Amsterdam. She met Roberto Mori when she went to study in Rome as a graduate student. He was a priest from Switzerland, teaching Christian archeology at the same university. Pretty soon teacher and student fell in love, and wanted to marry.”

  “A priest and a nun?”

  “Oh, of course they knew it would be difficult. It wasn’t so hard for Lucretia. The Mother General of her Dutch order recommended to her bishop that she be released, and that was all there was to it. But Roberto had to ask to be dispensed from his vows by one of those big important Vatican congregations, I forget which one.”

  “And I suppose he ran into trouble? His request was denied?”

  “That’s right. He couldn’t simply ask to be released because he wanted to get married. He had to claim that he had serious doubts about his vocation. But his desire to marry was common knowledge in Rome, and it wasn’t considered a sufficient reason. And then he was told that he had to remove himself from temptation by living in a different city from Lucretia.”

  “And they couldn’t bear it?”

  “Oh, they tried. Lucretia was hired by the University of Florence, Roberto went on teaching in Rome. But it was no good. Pretty soon they were meeting in Siena, in Viterbo, in Assisi. So he applied a second time and a third time, but the answer was always the same. So at last they got mad, and then both of them began to work for liberalization within the church—for easier dissolution of marriages, for optional celibacy for the clergy, for the acceptance of birth control, for the ordination of women.”

  Homer whistled. “Pretty strong stuff.”

  “Too strong for their own good. Before long Roberto was officially silenced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That meant he couldn’t write or speak in public anymore.”

  “So he had to stop teaching?”

  “Yes, and for a respected scholar like Roberto it was a terrible blow. By this time Lucretia and Roberto had long since regarded themselves as man and wife. So in order to be near her Roberto moved to Florence and got a job in the Department of City Museums.”

  “City museums? Oh, I see, because he was a specialist in Christian archeology.” Then Homer threw up his hands in understanding. “That explains how he was able to lay his hands on Michelangelo’s compass and the reliquary of the True Cross. Does Lucretia know where it is, the missing reliquary?”

  “I didn’t ask her. Pay attention, Homer, I’m just getting to the important part.” Mary swerved to avoid a DONALD DUK ice-cream cart. “It was around this time that they began to fear for the future of the Catholic church, the whole church—they weren’t just thinking about their own problems anymore. They were worried that the trend of new papal appointments in the College of Cardinals would change the balance, making it more conservative. Thus the popes elected by the college in the future would also be more conservative, far into the next century. Whoops! What’s that kid doing?”

  Homer gripped the dashboard as a boy on a noisy Vespa swooped in front of them. “Ah, I see. So they began to think about violent action. It seems so insane. There they were, a couple of unworldly scholars, turning criminal. Well, it’s just like Dante again. They lost the good of intellect.”

  “They what?”

  “Inferno, canto three. You remember—the ones who lay down all hope as they enter the gate of Hell, those who have lost the good of intellect.”

  Mary laughed, and darted into the fast lane to pass a truck loaded with wobbling tanks of compressed air. “It’s what my grandmother
used to tell me, Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever.”

  They were entering the outskirts of the city, moving along broad avenues lined with trees and apartment houses where middle-class families lived above shop fronts. The traffic was fast and thick.

  “I can see how they might vaguely decide something had to be done,” said Homer. “But how did they go on from there? I mean, how did they get down to actually doing it?”

  “It was Matteo Luzzi. Julia told us, remember, he was one of the men whojddnapped her from the school. Lucretia said he was in collusion with Roberto almost from the beginning. He turned up in Roberto’s neighborhood and introduced himself. He had heard of Roberto’s situation, he said. He had been a seminarian himself, and he shared Roberto’s views. And then he told Roberto that there were powerful forces in the Vatican who felt the same way, who were looking for an agent of change—”

  “An agent of change? That’s what Lucretia called it? A murderer, in point of fact?”

  “Well, of course they didn’t call it that. But pretty soon these great cardinals, these anonymous liberal forces in the Vatican, had presented them with a working plan, to be put into action on Easter Sunday in Florence during the old ceremony of the Explosion of the Cart.”

  “Well, I must say, it wasn’t a bad plan. It very nearly worked. What I don’t understand is how Roberto thought they would get away afterward. Did he accept the fact that they would all be shot? I mean, good lord, you should have seen the armies of soldiers and Swiss Guards, and all the policemen collected by Inspector Rossi. They were all over the place.”