Messer Niccolò looked up at me. He wore the expression of a boy who has brought a bullfrog to Mass, under his coat, so that it can croak during the homily. “It was not suggested that you had,” he said to Tommaso. “Only that you seemed to know your way here. And took great care to chart and measure your path.”
Silence followed, save for the cawing birds. At last Tommaso spoke, but not to the question Niccolò had raised. “What is in her hand?”
Leonardo again reached into the crypt. His long, elegant fingers appeared to crawl about like the legs of a pale tarantula, unwrapping a red string from a chalky hand that was not as stiff as I expected. The maestro was able to gently open her fingers, almost as if she were sleeping, to reveal the little card resting in her palm. After he had delicately removed this bollettino, he brought it quite close to his eyes.
Almost as if the words he read had disgusted him, Leonardo quickly presented the prayer card to me.
This bollettino was no different than the one the pope had shown me, the cheap, rough paper inscribed in a crude yet legible hand. “Gevol int la carafa,” I recited for all present. This audience did not include the pretty boy, who had suddenly vanished, as if snatched away by wolves. I added, “I presume this is the Romagnolo dialect.”
“ ‘Devil in a jar.’ ” It did not surprise me that the alchemist, Tommaso, knew this phrase. “The Devil appears in the flask of water and conjures images of lost—”
“An imbecilic superstition,” Leonardo blurted out. “Of all the foolish beliefs waved as proud banners by the ignorant herd, the existence of spirits is the most asinine, no less offensive to Nature than it is to science. By the very powers imputed to them, these spirits are incorporeal quantities, which Nature defines as a vacuum—”
“Perhaps this is nonsense, but it does not appear to be some peasant’s superstition.” During Leonardo’s anathema of spirits and those who believe in them, Messer Niccolò had reached up and snatched the bollettino out of my hand. Now he held the little card so that both the maestro and I could see the reverse side, which we had yet to examine.
There, in black Chinese ink, in the same well-lettered hand I had witnessed in the Hall of Saints, was an inscription in Tuscan Italian. I read it aloud, as I had the previous, finding this new message no less obscure: “The circle within the square.”
Messer Niccolò stared into the crypt, puffing out his gaunt cheeks before he blew in weary fashion. Whatever he might have considered saying, he thought better of it.
Leonardo bolted up. “Giacomo! What have you found?”
The pretty boy stood some two dozen braccia distant, on the other side of the parapet, in thick brush up to his waist. He might have been a mile away, his lazy Milanese drawl was so faint. “Something has been up here. There are tracks. Not a man’s.”
“The wolves,” Leonardo said impatiently.
“Not a beast, either.” Giacomo appeared to enjoy this riddle.
“Then what is it, Giacomo?” Leonardo asked this as if his assistant had no more credence than a child.
Against the stiff north wind, Giacomo’s voice now seemed scarcely to reach us; his words wavered. “The Devil has left his footprints up here.”
VII
“Stilts.” Maestro Leonardo stood erect, having bent over to peer at the tracks, which we had followed a short distance through thick, wiry brush that much resembled the shrubs common to the Campagna around Rome, though it had grown in the shadow of enormous oaks. Leading away at a right angle from a snow-covered path pocked by wolves’ paws, these footprints, though paired like a man’s, were considerably smaller, a few of them preserving the distinct impress of a cloven hoof no larger than a goat’s.
“He was walking on stilts,” Leonardo went on to say. “The impressions are entirely uniform in contour, as well as in depth. He carved the ends of his stilts in an imbecilic effort to deceive us.”
“To deceive us?” Niccolò cocked his head. “Possibly he wants the olive harvesters and acorn hunters to credit this crime to the Devil. To keep them away.”
It seemed none of these men intended to make further remark. Thus I offered my proposal. “While we still have the light,” I said, “we must follow these tracks, and see where they lead.”
Messer Niccolò at once started off. But I believe that the maestro, trailed by his reluctant assistants, followed us only because he did not want to risk that we would learn something he would not.
For perhaps a mile we followed the tracks toward the distant mountains, always on rolling hills, occasionally crossing a vineyard, the bare grapevines sticking up from the snow like the quills of a porcupine. But mostly we traveled in the darker half-light beneath the ancient oaks. Even where the undergrowth was thick, we did not lose the tracks, our quarry having stayed to the narrow paths made by acorn collectors.
Chastened by what we had seen in the olive grove, we walked silently. After a time I took Messer Niccolò’s arm and drew him back, so that we fell behind Leonardo and his people. “So you believe it is hardly an accident that peasants found the pieces of these bodies,” I whispered to him. “Do you think they were paid to inform the duke’s people?”
“It wouldn’t be difficult to persuade them,” Niccolò said into my ear. “This countryside has suffered terribly, with so many soldiers living off it. A quattrino would be enough.”
“But if the condottieri have done this … I can understand why they might wish to make mischief here, perhaps provoke the pope by murdering a woman connected in some fashion to the assassination of his son.” Again I did not think it wise to reveal that the condottieri had taunted the pope with his dead son’s amulet. Instead I went on: “Presumably that poor woman back there is somehow intended as a similar provocation. But why now, when the condottieri have come to Imola to secure peace?” Indeed I feared I had misjudged this matter entirely.
“I am not certain all the condottieri want this peace, at least under the present terms. The Orsini, yes. The Vitelli …” Messer Niccolò shrugged as if to say “not so much.” He looked at the ground for several paces before he added, “Every day that passes, the condottieri hire more soldiers. And Valentino divests himself of his mercenaries because he cannot rely on them. I believe the Vitelli want to keep the thistle, let us say, up the pope’s ass, hoping that they can delay the signing and continue to improve their position. Their object, I would think, is not to discard the present treaty entirely but to force the duke to make additional concessions.”
“What sort of concess—?” I broke off because we had walked nearly onto the heels of Leonardo’s party.
Giacomo pointed toward a shadowed oak grove off to our left.
“Have you seen him?” Niccolò said.
Giacomo dropped his arm in a weary fashion. “He’s gone now.”
I asked, “Was he on stilts?”
Giacomo shook his head. “He wore a monk’s cowl.”
“Did you see his face?”
Giacomo answered Niccolò with another slight headshake. But then he said, “He had a white beard. Just like a goat.” I would have said Giacomo was fond of these invenzioni, except that he had been correct about the Devil’s footprints, even if they had been a fraud.
“He resembled a goat,” Leonardo said in a fashion more disdainful than affirming, before he started off again.
“Carnival stilts. And a Carnival mask,” Niccolò said, giving Giacomo a favoring nod. “We’ll look out for this false Devil.”
“Yes,” I said. The cold wind blew against my back. “No doubt he is already watching us.”
The Devil’s tracks at last led us to a large farmhouse constructed of pale clay bricks. The stables were on the ground floor, with the farmer’s lodgings above them. This dwelling was perched on top of a hill overlooking the Santerno River, which made a gurgling sound as it flowed swiftly between steep, rocky banks. The farmhouse and several wooden sheds framed the yard, garden, and pigsty, though neither the herbs nor the mud were in evidence beneath
the snow. Nor were any animals present.
The paired “hoofprints” ended where the snow did, at a dirt-floored porch in front of the stables. Niccolò pointed to the names chalked in rough letters on the porch’s squat, square brick columns. “Soldiers were billeted here—the farmer probably carried off all his fodder and the stores in his cellar ahead of them, so the soldiers moved on. But the farmer has not come back.”
I would have been considerably less frightened to learn that the place was occupied.
Giacomo again unsheathed the impressive knife at his belt and blithely wandered into the porch, leaving Leonardo to mouth impotently after him, before he and Tommaso reluctantly followed. Niccolò arched his eyebrows and shrugged. As I joined him, I allowed the butt of the knife I keep within my sleeve to drop into my hand.
Tommaso remained in the porch, to keep watch, while the rest of us walked directly into the livestock stables; perhaps the gate had been removed to serve as firewood. We found nothing but a dirt floor that might have been picked over by a plague of locusts, though the place still smelled of the animals. Niccolò, Leonardo, and Giacomo began inspecting the bare plank ceiling, which was supported by heavy crossbeams. I presumed they were looking for the trapdoor, which usually opens from the farmer’s bedroom on the floor above, so that he can quickly look over his stock if he hears some sort of noise in the middle of the night.
“Maestro!” Tommaso called from his post on the porch. “We’ve been followed.”
I looked out and saw the three men standing just beyond the porch. In Imola I had been struck by the handsome faces and proud bearing of many of the Romagnole peasants. But these three, attired in horsehair capes, their legs bare, were so miserably afflicted that they more resembled beasts: One had skin like an elephant on his cheek and neck, all weeping pus—what they call Job’s disease—while another had replaced his nose with a scrap of leather shaped into a semblance of the missing item, though it had been painted much whiter than his ruddy skin. The third man’s black teeth were as jagged as a lamprey’s. He carried a sickle, while his companions were armed with a baker’s forchetta and a pitchfork. None of them, however, had a white beard or in any fashion appeared to be a goat.
No sooner had I observed these arrivals, than behind me Giacomo said, “I wager he’s up there.” I turned to find him pointing at the ceiling.
Coming to Giacomo’s side, Messer Niccolò squinted through the shaded porch at the three beasts, who were brightly lit by the snow-reflected sun. “Lift me up now,” he said, “before they decide to come in here.”
Leonardo himself wrapped his arms around Messer Niccolò’s knees and lifted him as if he were a child. The secretary pounded the palms of his hands against the seam on either side of the trapdoor but effected nothing; no doubt the latch could only be opened from the room above.
“They are coming!” Tommaso called from the porch, his growl pitched urgently higher. Indeed the three men had spread out; crouching slightly, they crept warily toward the alchemist like a wolf pack.
With quite a calm demeanor, Messer Niccolò said, “We had better make our numbers known.” As soon as Leonardo had put him back on the ground, the two of them, followed by Giacomo and his stiletto, rushed out to the porch. “You stay out of sight,” Niccolò instructed me.
The two factions faced each other at a distance of several paces, theirs having superiority in arms, while we were favored by number and stature. The three interlopers looked among one another, shaking their heads, conversing in the belching diction of the Romagna, so that I could understand nothing. But they did not seem inclined to withdraw.
“Are they waiting to be reinforced?” Niccolò asked.
The sound was behind me, but it was as if a great heap of snow had slid off the roof and struck the ground. Just then something dark flew by the corner of my eye and I imagined the ceiling had begun to fall down around me.
I turned to see the trapdoor hanging from its hinges, swinging back and forth like a banner in a breeze. With a gasp I looked up into the dark, rectangular aperture in the plank ceiling.
I ran out to the porch. Here I witnessed the similarly abrupt flight of the three visitors, no doubt also prompted by the noise of the trapdoor. Indeed the Devil might have been their pursuer, so quickly did they vanish around the far end of the farmhouse.
Messer Niccolò shot back into the stables. In a moment all the gentlemen present had assembled to stare at the hanging trapdoor, a construction of wooden slats and cross braces that creaked only slightly before it became entirely still.
You could not hear even a breath, only the sibilance of the wind outside and the rushing river, which now sounded more like a low, rasping sigh.
Messer Niccolò advanced directly beneath the aperture and looked into the darkness above him. He stood there, evidently listening, perhaps waiting for the face—or mask—of a goat to appear. At last he issued a resigned exhalation. “Lift me up again.”
Leonardo’s mouth turned down like a sour old man’s. But after a moment’s pause he hoisted Messer Niccolò, who got a handhold on either side of the opening and hauled himself into the room above.
We could see him stand up and look around. Then he vanished into the darkness; soon we could not even hear his feet padding over the floorboards. Giacomo held up his knife, as if he should be sent to Niccolò’s aid. But the maestro quickly placed a restraining hand on his arm.
For my part, I silently recited an Ave Maria on Messer Niccolò’s behalf. I might well have recited several Paternosters while we continued to wait, ever more anxiously. Now and then I heard dull thuds, yet I could not say if these were blows, someone moving things about, or merely muffled steps.
A pale face floated above us. I let out a little cry and even Leonardo drew a sharp breath in the heartbeat before we recognized Messer Niccolò.
“Nothing,” he reported. “There is not a stick of furniture up here, not a piss pot or a grindstone. Nothing except this.” Messer Niccolò sat on the edge of the opening, his legs dangling, and reached down to us, holding in his hand a plain clay butter pot.
For some reason the maestro and his people were reluctant to accept this offering. I took it, wishing I hadn’t as soon as I smelled the contents. This little pot was half filled with the sort of unguent that ladies in Rome usually obtain from the old women of Israel, whose concoctions of myrrh, sulfur, and hog lard are intended to preserve the skin. But there were other scents in this particular recipe: the foul bitterness of belladonna when it is first crushed and also mandrake, perhaps with henbane and hellebore.
For a strange moment, every foreboding I have ever had in my life seemed to revisit me.
Messer Niccolò dropped almost silently to the ground. When he had straightened up and dusted the sleeves of his jacket, he said to me, “Allow the maestro to smell it. He will recognize the scent.”
The breath caught in my throat. Both Messer Niccolò and Maestro Leonardo had sniffed their fingertips after running them across the flesh of that poor, butchered woman. And now I understood Leonardo’s apparent indifference to this discovery; he had already known what he would smell in that pot.
“This unguent was smeared over her body, wasn’t it?” I offered this more as a plaint than a question. “And it was found on the remains of the first woman as well.”
Leonardo nodded in a palsied fashion, his nostrils fairly twitching. “Yes.” His tenor was slightly hoarse. “Both of them.”
Messer Niccolò cast his eyes up at the darkness he had just explored. “Then I am certain,” he said, “this is where they were both butchered.”
VIII
All five of us arrived back in Imola at dusk, having returned briefly to the olive grove to replace the planks over the little crypt, to keep the wolves at bay until Leonardo could send soldiers to retrieve the human fragment. I could not make myself go close to the grave. But even as I stood some distance away, I felt a vague yet increasingly heavy presence, until all at once I shuddered.
I ran to Messer Niccolò. “He is watching us right now.”
Niccolò looked at me in a piercing fashion, as if I had claimed to see the Virgin.
I pressed my argument. “He was waiting for us at that farmhouse, wasn’t he? He had to have gone out a window just before you went up there. Do you think those men came to help him escape?”
“They were looking for him,” Niccolò answered. “For what purpose I am not certain. Neither am I certain he was up there. The latch was broken. Perhaps I jarred the trapdoor loose, only to have it fall when our backs were turned.” He elevated his gaze as if peering into the dark copse behind me. A moment later his eyes fell to me, almost reluctantly.
I know when a man is drawn to me, even if he hopes to conceal this attraction. That element was present in Messer Niccolò’s stare—as indeed in any number of glances throughout that day. Yet there was something else, to which he gave voice. “You should consider leaving Imola.”
I wondered if he hoped to cast himself as my protector; perhaps he imagined I would offer him a grateful farewell before I returned to Rome. “Why do you say so?”
“Because I, too, am certain that the Devil has seen us.” Of course, I took this to mean a man disguised as the Devil. “And now he knows who we are.”
Niccolò and I parted with Leonardo and his people as we entered the Via Emilia. I continued my fraud, telling the maestro, “I will write His Holiness at once and inform him that there has been another murder.” Though Leonardo did not say so, I had little doubt he would quickly inform Duke Valentino that I had brazenly followed his engineer general into the countryside and insinuated myself into his inquiry.
The street was raucous with tradesmen and candle-shop girls, the latter calling out, “Take a bite of this chestnut!” “No French pox here!” This cacophony was the greatest in front of the Inn of the Cap, where so many of the streetwalkers had gathered in order to solicit the travelers and couriers going in and out of the stables. Once we had passed and could talk without shouting, Messer Niccolò looked sideways at me and said, “Leonardo is involved in this.”
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