The Kingdom of Light (14 page)

He started carefully climbing down. When he had reached
the
ground he ran towards the door and entered the sacristy, but it too was deserted. On one side of the room a stone staircase ran up the wall, apparently leading to the monks’ old cells. He hurried up the steps, from where a gleam of light seemed to issue. A torch or candle must have been lit on the upper floor.

He walked down the corridor, casting a quick glance into each of the empty cells, then ventured into the last, still clutching his dagger.

The cell was not deserted. Leaning against the end wall, the woman he had glimpsed in the church was standing motionless, staring at him, a flash of fear in her eyes, wiping her hands. She was panting, as if short of breath.

Dante stopped on the threshold, he too breathless from his pursuit. He lowered his weapon, disconcerted by the creature he found before him. She was as tall as he, her intense pallor illuminated by two big, sky-blue eyes.

That face was the same as the one that had appeared in the church, covered by a veil of shiny make-up that was plainly supposed to imitate wax. He raised his hand towards her until his fingers touched her throat. She was not wearing a mask.

Her slender body was covered to below the waist by a cascade of white hair that at first impression suggested a very great age. But this, too, was an illusion. Her hair was flowing and splendid, a snowy torrent worthy of an adolescent angel. There was something unnatural in
that
beauty, the poet felt, something that could enter the mind and bind it like a subtle poison. He felt the same unease that had taken hold of his mind when he had witnessed the fake miracle for the first time.

The woman had remained impassive. Only in her dilated eyes could he read the terror that still gripped her. A few times she opened and closed her mouth, as if on the point of saying something.

Dante looked around. A thousand questions rose to his lips, now that the very heart of the trick was within his grasp. But he would need time and a more suitable location to interrogate her. Meanwhile he looked round for something to tie her up with, before she disappeared as the monk had done. But the woman didn’t seem to want to escape.

‘Where have you come from?’ he asked her, gasping to get his breath back. She shook her head. ‘What is your name?’ Again the woman moved her head, this time bringing her hand to her throat. ‘You don’t want to tell me? Well, you’re going to have to.’

She opened her mouth and no articulate sound came out. Just a groan, as she shook her head once more. At last she suddenly gripped the poet’s wrist and began drumming with her fingers on his palm.

After a moment of puzzlement Dante thought he understood. He knew of a way with which those without voices communicated among themselves by a system of signs. A
code
invented by the Gypsies, who often gave those unfortunates shelter in their tribes so that they could exploit them as beggars.

‘You’re … you’re mute?’ he murmured in bewilderment. ‘Then how …’

And yet he had heard her incredible song during the display to the people. Unless that, too, was part of a trick. Like the pleading he thought he had heard on the scaffolding. An act of ventriloquism – that could be the only explanation.

He gently released her hand from his grip. An idea had occurred to him. ‘Cover your face and come with me,’ he instructed her.

He walked towards the door. After a moment’s uncertainty the woman followed him. Now her initial fear had vanished from her face, making way for the bewilderment of an animal in a trap. With trembling hands she wrapped round her head the veil that she wore over her shoulders, then unexpectedly held out her hand to him, seeking his guidance.

Dante stepped cautiously outside, making sure there was no one around who might recognise them. Outside, the city was in darkness, but the moon, high in the sky, gave off sufficient light to guide their footsteps, in spite of the damp haze that rose from the banks of the Arno.

The place they were making for was some distance away. They had to pass through the city walls beyond the
meadows
of Santa Maria Novella. At that hour of night the gates were closed, but the guards wouldn’t make much of a fuss, particularly with the encouragement of a few coins.

Dante turned towards the woman to gauge her strength. She was slender and seemed to be in good physical condition, capable of a long walk. But then he remembered a cart, sometimes used by the Bargello, which was kept in the stable of San Piero.

He beckoned to her to follow him and set off towards the priory. He turned right into a side-street, in the direction of the river. Ahead of them, in the distance, he began to glimpse the torches of the Ponte Vecchio. At a crossroads he thought he could see shadows darting along the walls of the building in front of them. But no one seemed to pay the two of them any attention. He was exhausted, his clothes drenched in sickly sweat. They continued on for one final stretch, until they reached the San Piero gate.

Outside the monastery, leaning against the columns of the entrance, two
bargellini
were snoozing. They gave a start at the sound of footsteps and came out in a state of alarm, lances at the ready.

‘I am the prior of the Commune,’ Dante said brusquely, showing himself in the light of the torch carried by one of the men. ‘Step aside!’

The men, after a moment’s uncertainty, did as he asked. The poet distinctly saw the irony with which they looked
his
female companion up and down. But they didn’t seem too surprised, as if this only confirmed the frequency with which women were brought into the priory at night.

Having passed through the cloister, Dante walked to a side-arcade. There, as he had remembered, he found the two-wheeled cart, and a horse standing beside it. He roused the beast, which consented to be hitched to the cart without too much protest.

They set off again, once more under the startled and ironic eyes of the
bargellini
. The woman sat on the box next to him, motionless. A new twinge of pain pierced Dante’s neck. His old enemy had been revived by the tension and effort of his nocturnal venture. He suddenly felt all the effects of the fight and its aftermath. He headed towards the walls, hoping that he might be allowed through without difficulty.

S
OON AFTERWARDS
he stopped the cart beside Paradise Gate, in the realm of Monna Lagia. The old Roman villa had once stood in open countryside, but the new buildings now encroached upon it. The reddish mass of the third circle of walls, whose construction was proceeding at a frantic pace, could be seen not far away.

But once they had passed through the villa’s arch the atmosphere was as silent as ever, interrupted only by laughter that came at intervals from the cubicles on the first floor.
After
making sure that his veiled companion was unrecognisable, Dante entered the courtyard, heading towards the
impluvium
, now transformed into a drinking trough for the horses of the clients. The ancient mosaic in the floor, a ship surrounded by dolphins, was being steadily destroyed by the hoofs of the animals, in an endless shipwreck. By now only the shadow of the ancient forms appeared here and there, amongst depressions and bare patches where weeds grew uncontrolled.

They had almost reached the steps on the other side when a mocking voice thundered in his ears. ‘Oh, Prior! Now you’re coming to bring me women rather than find them? Or isn’t little Pietra enough for you any more?’

Dante turned round with a start, red in the face. A woman with an impudent expression had appeared from beneath the portico, wearing bright colours.

‘Lagia, I’m here for other reasons. There’s a mute among your women, if I remember correctly. A girl who knows sign language. This woman …’ he went on, nodding towards the silent, veiled presence, ‘is unable to speak. I need someone to help me talk to her. And I want it to be done with absolute discretion, given her aristocratic standing.’

‘And why do you bring her to me covered up like that, as if she were a leper?’ Monna Lagia replied suspiciously, taking a step back.

‘She’s not ill. Do as I ask, and quickly.’

The woman waited for a moment. Then, turning towards the women’s rooms, she cried, ‘Pietra!’ Then, with a half-smile, she added, ‘You’re a good customer, after all.’

A girl’s face appeared on the balcony. Recognising Dante, she grimaced.

‘Go and find the mute girl, and bring her to my room,’ Lagia ordered. The girl merely nodded before disappearing again. ‘You follow me, you … and the noblewoman,’ she said to Dante, glancing ironically at him. ‘You always turn up at night, Prior. Your wife Gemma can’t be getting much nuptial bliss, even if you have given her children. But in my Paradiso, the beds are sweeter than the houses of Florence, at least that’s what everyone tells me.’

‘Shut up, woman,’ the poet hissed angrily.

Lagia exploded with laughter, slapping her thighs with her hands. ‘They tell me you’ve written love poems to sixteen beauties, but none to her,’ she continued shamelessly. Then she pointed her index finger at him. ‘People like you would be better off not getting wed at all, if you can’t keep your dicky-bird in its cage,’ she added, quickly retreating from the prior, who had stepped menacingly towards her.

At that moment Pietra appeared from behind the curtain, and came in followed by a frightened-looking girl, as white as if she had never stepped outside the brothel. As she passed by Dante, she ostentatiously avoided looking in his direction, turning instead towards Lagia. ‘This is Martina, the deaf-mute.’

The brothel-keeper raised her chin towards the prior and waited.

‘Tell her to ask the woman who she is, and why she has come to Florence,’ he began.

Lagia repeated the question to the pale girl, standing in front of her and pronouncing the words clearly. The young woman must have deduced something from the movement of her lips, because she nodded in agreement. Then she gripped the hand of the veiled woman, opening her palm, and began tapping out a mysterious rhythm with her fingertips.

Dante watched, struck by the scene. Meanwhile his mind was wandering in a forest of analogies. He felt a sense of embarrassment welling up in him, as if he were spying on a kind of secret femininity that was gradually being unveiled through this strange colloquium. Perhaps the same embarrassment as Paris felt, he thought, when he was called to settle the dispute between the goddesses.

Pietra too seemed attentive, but although she tried to look away, the poet noticed that her eye, apparently fixed straight ahead of her, was occasionally straying and often settling on him.

The veiled woman had in turn begun to touch the other girl’s hand, again with incomprehensible movements. Finally the young prostitute stopped and turned towards Pietra, uttering a series of stifled moans.

‘What’s she saying?’ exclaimed Dante impatiently.

Pietra pulled a contemptuous little face. ‘Your friend doesn’t seem all that special, Prior. Niece of a monk, if I’ve understood. She’s called Amara. French, from Toulouse.’

‘Did your friend ask her why they have come here?’

Pietra hesitated. ‘Martina isn’t quite sure she understood. She seems to have said it’s “for the Emperor’s dream”. His “last” dream, in fact.’

Lagia intervened, alarmed. ‘Emperor? What have emperors got to do with anything? Who have you brought to my house?’

The prior ignored her, absorbed in what he had just heard. Then, turning towards Pietra, he said, ‘Ask her about the mirrors.’ The girl, after a moment’s bafflement, translated the question into that primitive language, which the pale girl hurried to reformulate for the mute. Again Dante witnessed that strange finger-ballet.

‘She says that along the way, in Venice, someone taught them magic,’ Pietra said, after listening once again to her friend’s strange grunts of reply. But her face was uncertain.

Beside him Lagia seemed to be growing increasingly uneasy. ‘Magic?’ she exclaimed, crossing herself. Dante bade her be silent with an imperious gesture, then Martina moaned again in Pietra’s direction.

‘What else did she say?’ the poet pressed her.

‘Nothing,’ replied the girl, half-closing her eyes with weariness. But through a narrow gap in her eyelids she
continued
to stare at him with her bright-green eyes. ‘Nothing else. She speaks a strange language, it’s impossible to understand it all,’ she said abruptly.

He shrugged. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he took the mute woman by the hand and set off. Behind him he heard the murmurs of the other women fading away as they walked back across the portico.

Amara looked exhausted. She tried to hoist herself on to the cart by gripping the rim, but stumbled backwards. Dante held her from behind by the hips, keeping her upright, then lifted her on to the box. For a moment the sweet softness of her back pressed against his lips, as a subtle perfume invaded his nostrils. A quiver ran through him.

She had slumped against the back of the seat. Her veil had come away, revealing her alabaster face, which seemed even paler in the moonlight. Her reclining body, unexpectedly full, perspired beneath the light fabric of her dress. Dante was fascinated by the curve of her hips, her long, nervous legs, her half-open mouth, with a drip of saliva gleaming faintly at the corner of her lips.

Dante suddenly withdrew the hand with which he had supported the woman. Was a physical image enough to throw an orderly mind into confusion? And how extraordinarily powerful must Eros be, if the mere vision of his delights was enough to overwhelm all other considerations.

Greatly disturbed, he was about to whip his horse when
he
heard the sound of hurried steps beside the cart. Pietra was running silently towards them, looking behind her as if afraid that someone might see her.

He clutched the reins tightly to halt the animal that had just begun to move.

Pietra gripped the edge of the cart as if to hold it back, and was looking at the mute covered by the veil. Then she turned to the poet, after glancing round once more. ‘Beware of that woman,’ she murmured to him, leaning into his ear.