The Kingdom of Light (10 page)

‘His name was Guido. Guido Bigarelli.’

‘Really?’ The philosopher had maintained his placid attitude, as if the name were completely unknown to him. ‘And are you on the way to finding the guilty man?’ he asked, sitting down in the lee of a low wall.

Dante shrugged and did likewise. ‘Fragments of a plot, signifying nothing. No precise motive, neither a how nor a why. Just a sense that the crime had been planned not far from the victim, perhaps by someone known to him, certainly by someone close to him. The dead man’s travelling companions: that is where I am being taken by my instinct, and by the reason that lies beneath it.’

‘Interrogate them, then, with all the power of your perspicacity.’

‘What would be the point? I’d end up with a sticky mixture of truth and lies, in which the light of the just would be corrupted by the artifice of the guilty. I don’t have the gift of entering their minds.’

‘You seem to have lost all hope.’

‘No,’ replied the poet. ‘I don’t need their words. There’s a logic that governs things, and that logic is supported by necessity. I must discover the necessity that produced the crimes. Then I will have the logic behind them, finally I will have the words I need.’

‘So what’s stopping you?’

‘Something that is making me lose my bearings. The crimes were committed for a motive both contingent and
immediate
. And yet the reason behind them lies in something remote. That’s what disconcerts me: that a single effect should derive from two causes. Aristotle seems to deny this.’

Arrigo shook his head with a smile. ‘I admire your trust in the philosopher. But what do you think of the most modern masters from Paris? Bacon, for example. Does he not teach us that it is the order of nature that gives us the norms for our reasoning? And is Nature not the realm of transformation, and becoming, and contradiction? You have spoken to me of “crimes”: is it not, then, only Guido Bigarelli who has crossed Hades’ threshold before his time?’

‘Not he alone. There was a murder some leagues to the west of the city, perhaps to cover up a single crime. The murderer filled an entire ship with corpses.’

Arrigo opened his mouth to ask a new question, but then clamped his lips shut as if he had changed his mind.

‘What is the “Kingdom of Light”?’ the poet asked him all of a sudden.

Arrigo turned towards him with a stunned expression. ‘A place of the triumph of the spirit, I should imagine. Or, metaphorically, what you call Paradise.’

‘We?’

‘I mean you theologians, who design its appearance, essence and boundaries. Or even you poets, who attempt to clothe them with words. Why do you ask me?’

‘It appears that many people are in search of that place.
And
what if it were in fact a physical location? Or an object with extraordinary properties? The bastards!’

The philosopher gave a start at this unexpected imprecation, as surprised as the other man by a luke-warm flood of golden droplets raining from the sky, along with the tuneless melody of a popular song. Above them, standing on the remains of the crossbeam of the ancient Roman portico, a member of the Donati family had undone his breeches and was urinating down upon his adversaries, making a magnificent triumphal arch with the jet.

Dante jumped away cursing, careless of the stones still falling around him. He threw himself on all fours, frantically searching for something on the ground, then rose to his feet clutching a fragment of brick in his fist. He froze for an instant, making a quick calculation, then hurled the stone at the man who was still singing as he urinated.

Arrigo saw him taking aim at his target, eyes fixed on the projectile as if guiding its trajectory with the force of his thought. He too lowered his head to follow the object, all the way to the crisp smack and the man’s yell as it struck him on the forehead. ‘Heavens above, Prior!’ he yelled in astonishment. ‘A throw of biblical dimensions! You Florentines should have David on your coins, rather than the lily. Or at least erect a statue of him to guard your gates!’

The injured man had fallen to the bottom of the wall, with his face reduced to a mask by the blood that flowed copiously from a gash to his eyebrow. For a moment his cries of pain drowned out the noise of battle.

Arrigo went on staring at the poet with a mixture of surprise and concern. Then he smiled. ‘Luckily our differences are restricted to the spiritual sphere. Come away, Prior. Let like go with like. Share your time with me a little longer, on the way to my lodging at Santa Maria Novella.’

Dante cast a last grim glance at the square, then turned towards the philosopher, as the wrinkles on his forehead slowly faded away. ‘Yes, perhaps it is best to leave this pack of dogs to bite each other as they wish. Let’s go,’ he replied, setting off at a good pace.

4

Dawn of 9th August, at the priory

D
ANTE NOTICED
a certain amount of agitation in the courtyard. In one corner, a horse, still saddled and drenched in sweat, struck its hoof against the paving stones. A man in armour was deep in excited conversation with the Bargello. Around them, other soldiers were following their words with interest.

His curiosity aroused, the poet approached the group. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, following from the corner of his eye the courier who had leaped back into the saddle and spurred his horse, before passing through the cloister portal at a gallop.

‘News has reached us of a fire on the Pisa road. Something has been burned on the lands of the Cavalcanti.’

‘Something? What do you mean?’

‘My men couldn’t say. Perhaps a barn. Something big, though. All in ashes.’

The inn where the crime had been committed also belonged to the Cavalcanti, the prior remembered. Perhaps
it
was a simple coincidence. And yet his mind was uneasy. Like a drawing that has been erased, yet begins to reappear on the page. ‘How far away is the fire?’

‘A few leagues, just beyond the new city walls.’

Dante remained silent for a while, biting his lips. ‘Order an escort of
bargellini
to saddle up two horses for us straight away. I want to go and see.’

‘But the fire has been extinguished, there is no danger now,’ the other man tried to object.

‘It isn’t fires that worry me,’ Dante replied brusquely.

I
T WAS
almost an hour before the horses were ready. It was some time past midday when Dante and the Bargello, followed by another six armed men, headed eastwards.

Beyond the fields of Santa Maria Novella loomed the reddish mass of bricks of the walls that the Commune was building to contain the mass of new constructions that had recently risen up around the old city. The stretches of wall were interrupted here and there without any apparent logic, as if they had been built by a capricious giant at play. It looked as if the architects had taken it into their heads to emulate the ancient Romans, scattering the countryside with fresh ruins.

Past the future gate, little of which had been built beyond its foundation, they rode a short way along the beaten path before turning northwards along a country
lane
that continued on between gorges and brushwood, climbing slightly along some low hills. As they emerged from a small oak forest, their goal finally appeared against the backdrop of a little valley: a large area surrounded by burnt vegetation with the carbonised remains of poles and beams sticking out of it. The building was razed to its foundations.

Whatever it had been, it must have been really imposing. All around, the air was still impregnated by a sharp smell of burning, more intense each time a gust of hot wind returned to raise thin coils of smoke. A certain distance away, untouched by the fire, stood some impressive piles of carpenters’ planks.

As he came close to the fire, Dante got down from his mount, approaching the burnt area. Behind him, the Bargello had also clumsily dismounted, with a sigh of impatience that was imitated by the soldiers.

‘Have you discovered who built this … thing?’ asked the prior.

‘No, not yet. These are the lands of the Cavalcanti, I told you, they have lain fallow for years, no income for the harvest land register, they’re not even taxed. There’s only one farmhouse around here, but it’s more than two leagues away. It was the farmer who alerted the city guards about the fire.’

‘And he didn’t know anything more than that? Who was working here?’

The Bargello shrugged. ‘These people are crude and primitive. Real animals, barely capable of expressing themselves; not like us city-dwellers. All the farmer was able to say was that there were devils here, and that they were working on the construction of “Satan’s ring”. He must have come over to spy, but something frightened him and from that moment onwards he kept his distance, until the night of the fire.’

Dante was puzzled. Satan’s ring … He went back over to study the forest of charred poles that rose around him. An infernal forest struck by the wrath of God. ‘Scatter yourselves around,’ he called to the men, who stood waiting. ‘And search.’

‘What are we supposed to be searching for?’ asked one of them.

‘I don’t know. Anything. Anything unusual.’

The men cautiously entered the area of the fire, careful not to stand on any still-glowing embers. It was impossible to imagine, by looking around, what the burnt-down building might have been. Judging by the remains of the beams still wedged in the ground, it looked like some kind of pavilion, or a big barn. Or perhaps a stable, but of a very unusual shape. And had the wood that escaped the fire been destined for storage in the building? Or was it supposed to be used for its as-yet-unfinished construction?

Dante went on walking slowly towards the middle of
the
hypothetical building. After ten paces or so he noticed how the blackened tips suddenly stopped emerging from the ground, producing a broad, empty space in the middle.

It really did look a ring. Satan’s ring. He irritably repressed that fantastical idea. He had to proceed with the comfort of reason and science. ‘Have you got any ropes with you?’ he asked the Bargello.

‘Each man has a few yards, in his saddlebag.’

‘Let’s try and get a more precise idea of the shape of this thing,’ Dante murmured. ‘The shape would normally be irrelevant, but in this instance there might be some substance to it,’ he added almost to himself. The Bargello had listened to the last words with puzzlement and was about to reply, but the prior had already darted back outside.

He had noticed that there were some spots among the remains where the beams had been both thicker and more numerous, as though they were a kind of buttress, or elements with a particular function.

‘Look along the perimeter of the fire for remains similar to this, and stop beside them. Give me one end of your ropes and stretch them out between you,’ he ordered the men.

They all started wandering around among the charred remains, pulling the ropes tied between them. One after another they stopped, raising the ropes to make them more visible.

The shape of a perfect octagon had formed before the poet’s eyes.

D
ANTE WENT
on looking for a possible meaning in what he was seeing. Around him the comments of the
bargellini
mingled together, as they shouted to each other from the corners of the building. Dante was growing increasingly puzzled. Suddenly he heard one of the
bargellini
calling to him in a loud voice.

‘Here, Prior. This might be something!’

He stepped towards the man who had called to him. He seemed intent on looking for something among the blackened wood and was becoming frantically agitated as he went on shouting.

There really was something there. At first it looked like some kind of burnt plant. Five jointed sticks pointing towards the sky. A charred human hand.

The body lay supine, reduced to a carbon statue. The terrible heat that must have been imprisoned in that spot had dried all fluid from the body, turning it into a fragile mummy. But it hadn’t altered the general lines of the body. Perhaps its clothing, apparently a leather jerkin, had melted with the body and protected its shape. The head too was intact, still wrapped in what remained of a strip of fabric.

Dante studied that face, which now looked as if it were
made
of black glass. Rigo di Cola, one of the two wool merchants staying at the Angel Inn.

In the end the devil really had appeared in his ring, he thought. And something along those lines must have passed through the minds of the men who had been drawn by his cries. He saw more than one of them making the sign of the cross, certainly to invoke protection for himself, and certainly not in honour of the deceased.

Beside the corpse there were fragments of glass, again covered with what looked like a dark shadow. Dante picked up a piece of the substance on the tip of his finger. ‘Lampoil,’ he said to the Bargello, who had joined him.

‘Clear as day,’ the man exclaimed, sniffing a piece of glass. ‘Our friend set light to the oil to start the fire. But he must have miscalculated. Something went wrong and he fell victim to his own plan. The justice of God has many eyes – it comes when we think it furthest off.’

The poet leaned over the body again, staring at the sharp features of the face, which seemed to have preserved a terrible expression of wonder in the dark cavities left empty by the melting of the eyeballs. Then he turned the body over and went on examining it.

‘I’m sure it happened as I told you, Prior,’ exclaimed the chief of the guards, in a loud voice so that his men could hear.

Dante pointed his index finger against Rigo’s back, at a
level
with the heart, showing the Bargello something. Two deep parallel cuts in the burnt jerkin. He drew the dagger from the inside pocket of his habit and delicately inserted the blade into one of the two cuts. The steel entered without encountering any resistance in the lacerated tissue.

Still in silence, he tested the other wound as well, with identical results. Then he turned to stare disdainfully at the Bargello. ‘So he was caught up in the torment of the flames, and out of remorse for the crime he had committed he stabbed himself in the back?’