The Kingdom of Light (20 page)

He left the room and climbed the stairs towards the top of the building. At the end of the stairs a closed trapdoor led out on to the roof. He lifted it and poked his head through the opening.

He felt a great sense of disappointment as he saw that the place was deserted. He lowered the trapdoor, but at that moment his attention was attracted by cries from below. Something dramatic seemed to have happened. He dashed back down again.

The cries came from the other side of the ancient Roman walls, beyond which the countryside began. He passed through an arch to the other side of the wall, reaching a group of people bent over something at the base of the tower.

The mathematician’s body lay shattered on the stones, amidst a pool of blood.

The onlookers included the innkeeper, who recognised him. ‘A terrible business, Prior!’

Dante shooed everyone away from the body and walked over for a closer look. The skull and limbs showed clear signs of the brutal impact against the stone. He looked up towards the distant top of the tower. Fabio must have fallen from the summit, perhaps while intent on his observations.

But when had it happened? The body was still warm, and yet he had not heard the thud of the body, or a cry. Nothing.

‘How did you become aware of what had happened?’ he asked the little crowd around him. They all shrugged and looked at their neighbours.

Then a boy stepped timidly forward. ‘I found him,’ he stammered. ‘I was coming to take the wine order …’

‘Did anyone see him fall?’

A new expression of puzzlement floated amongst the dull-witted faces of the bystanders. Dante leaned over the corpse once more, studying the twisted limbs. He turned
it
delicately over: on its chest, level with the heart, two scarlet-rimmed wounds were clearly visible. One of the two blows must have killed him straight away and, since he had not cried out, this meant it had been the first to be inflicted. The second blow could have been motivated only by the murderer’s ferocity. The victim must have known him, since his killer had been able to launch a surprise attack without provoking any kind of reaction.

The innkeeper had come over, trembling.

‘Who was in the inn?’ the prior asked him, rising to his feet.

Before the innkeeper had a chance to reply Dante had quickly turned towards the door to the tower. The hall was still deserted. He climbed the stairs once more, this time checking each of the cubicles. They were all empty.

The innkeeper had followed his movements. ‘I’m not absolutely sure, but I don’t think there was anyone with the merchant,’ he replied. ‘Or at least that’s how it seemed to me … We could ask the staff …’

Dante gestured to him be quiet. It was pointless now. He thought he had worked out what had happened.

The murderer had approached Fabio at the top of the tower and killed him, before throwing his body down below. Then he had climbed the stairs again, taking refuge in one of the cubicles when he had heard the poet coming up. Finally he had made off during the confusion that followed the discovery of the body, taking advantage of
the
fact that the door to the inn could not be seen from the spot where Fabio’s body had fallen. It would have taken nerves of steel not to give himself away. That and a lot of good fortune.

If only he had arrived a moment before, the prior told himself reproachfully, perhaps all this havoc could have been avoided. Good fortune seemed to have vanished from his horizon, he thought bitterly.

The corpses on that mysterious ship, experts in mechanics. And Guido Bigarelli, the accursed sculptor, Frederick II’s architect. And Rigo the carpenter. And now Fabio, a mathematician. These men must be connected in some way.

Meanwhile he heard a heavy footstep on the stairs. He stepped out on to the landing, to find the massive bulk of Jacques Monerre coming up.

The poet blocked his path. ‘I imagine you know what happened.’

The Frenchman nodded. ‘I saw the body,’ he replied brusquely. ‘An accident?’

Dante said nothing, and only studied Monerre’s reactions very carefully. But the man remained impassive, waiting for a reply. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘A killer’s hand put an end to his life.’

Monerre gave a start, glancing rapidly around as if afraid the murderer might be hidden somewhere. Then he stared at Dante again with his one good eye. ‘Do you know who it was?’

‘No, no more than I know who killed the others.’

‘Do you think there’s a link between the crimes?’

Dante nodded. There was no point discussing the topic with someone who might be the culprit. ‘I need you to tell me something,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘You said you came from Toulouse.’

The other man silently concurred with a nod of his head.

‘And in that city did you ever bump into the monk Brandano, the man of God who is preparing to lead a new and glorious crusade?’

Monerre had been listening without any show of emotion, but the scar on his face seemed yet more vivid against his suddenly pale skin. Nonetheless, when he replied he was perfectly calm. ‘No, I don’t really think so. Toulouse is a vast city, full of traffic and pilgrims passing through before crossing the Pyrenees on the way to Santiago de Compostela. It isn’t possible to know them all, even for someone like myself who leads a relatively outgoing life. But a face like the monk’s would be hard to forget.’

Dante nodded, then disappeared into his thoughts.

It was Monerre who broke the silence. ‘But why did you ask me that? What does my far-off city have to do with Brandano?’

‘Apparently nothing. And yet there’s someone who swears he saw him in those places. So I hoped you might be able to confirm this information.’

‘Is it of any importance?’

‘Toulouse isn’t a city like any other. It’s a place of great culture and wealth, but also the centre of all major heresies, and the source of constant disturbances on French soil. If the monk really does come from there, and the matter is known to the Inquisition, we may expect that sooner or later they will intervene to stop this dubious adventure.’

The poet stopped, studying the Frenchman’s reactions, to work out whether he knew about the hoax. Or whether indeed he was a secret accomplice.

Monerre stared at him. ‘What do you think of the miracle we all witnessed, Messer Alighieri?’ he asked suddenly, as if he wanted to reveal the trick.

‘That’s what I’d like to ask you.’

The Frenchman seemed to want to take his time. ‘On my travels I have seen things that might have been stranger. I have seen the shades of the jinns, the devils of the pagans, wandering among their red-hot stones. But certainly nothing as weird as that. Only the mythical Phoenix, which is reborn from its own ashes, could match it for unbelievability.’

‘If it was real,’ Dante murmured.

‘If it was, it would be worthy of inclusion in an emperor’s treasury.’

‘A treasury like Frederick’s?’

Monerre gave a start. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because it is rumoured that the Emperor’s treasure was
hidden
in Toulouse, transported there by his devoted followers after his death, to hide it from the aggression of his enemies and the greed of his heirs. If that is true, the extraordinary relic could come from those very treasure-chests.’

‘And yet, Messer Alighieri, where I come from people say that Frederick’s treasure was hidden somewhere else,’ Monerre replied, glancing at him enigmatically. ‘And it is even suggested that it might be here in Florence. And that this is the true meaning of the
“sub flore”
prophecy that has always been part of Frederick’s legend.’

‘And where might it be hidden?’

‘Better than that,
what
is Frederick’s treasure? Is there anyone who can answer that question?’

6

Morning of 11th August

A
S SOON
as he left the priory, Dante bumped into a group of local guards. Recognising him, the men came towards him excitedly.

‘Prior, we find you at last. A terrible accident has happened, down at the Carraia. A drowned man. We are going to recover the body,’ said one of them, making the sign of the cross.

The poet too felt the instinct to cross himself. Death by water was always a harbinger of misfortune in the popular consciousness. And perhaps there was something in that belief, because earth is the place where the body is supposed to find its eternal repose. There is something unnatural about a burial at sea.

But why should the highest authority of the Commune have to take an interest in such an event, however painful it might be? Drownings in the Arno were not rare events, especially in the summer when many people tested its treacherous beds, trusting in the shallowness of the water.

He was about to tell them to approach someone else when a strange presentiment ran through his mind. He immediately changed his decision. ‘Take me there,’ he called out, following the men.

They moved along the bank of the Arno below the Ponte Vecchio, clambering over the row of water-mills. At that moment the current of the river, almost running dry in the summer shallows, was flowing slowly, often swirling in wide eddies.

On the gravel bed, near the first pillar of the Ponte alla Carraia, a small crowd had formed, all gazing at something and chattering excitedly. Once he had reached the spot, the poet realised the reason for such agitation: stuck in the poles of the last mill he saw a human body, still emerging from the water with each turn of the wheel, like some macabre river god revealing himself in all his dramatic fragility at the top of the circle, drenched with sparkling water, then plunging back into the river once more, immersing itself in its liquid tomb.

There was something extraordinary, the poet thought, in that allegory of incomplete resurrection. As if the dead man were refusing to go to the grave and at the same time the lower powers were denying his return, stopping him each time on the threshold of freedom.

‘Why hasn’t it occurred to anyone to stop the mill?’ Dante cried to one of the
bargellini
, who stood with his arms folded, contemplating the scene.

‘The miller is trying to: he’s detached the connection with the millstone, but the free wheel is still turning. They are trying to brake it from inside with a pole, before anchoring it with hempen ropes.’

For a few moments the enormous wheel, more than twenty feet in diameter, had actually begun to slow down and the dead man’s resurrections had become more sporadic. At last the wheel came to a complete standstill. Two
bargellini
climbed cautiously along the wooden platform supporting it, until they reached the spot where the corpse was jammed. From there, using ropes, they brought their grim cargo down to a little boat that sat waiting on the river.

Dante was standing on the shore. ‘Get those layabouts away from here!’ he shouted at the
bargellini
, pointing to the gawping bunch of onlookers. As the soldiers set about clearing the field, using the grips of their lances as truncheons, the boat landed. Dante bent over the corpse, which lay face down, its arms spread in a cross and its head hanging over the edge.

He delicately lifted the head, brushing from its forehead the mass of waterlogged hair. As he did so a flood of water spilled from the dead man’s mouth, as if his body were full of the liquid that had killed him. Dante immediately let the hair fall back, hiding the man’s features once more. He turned round to see whether any of the soldiers showed any signs of recognising the drowned man. But
their
stupidly curious faces reassured him.

It was the face of Brandano. Or one of his many faces, perhaps, and this time definitely the last. The monk had not had time to assume a studied pose, and now his face betrayed only the anguish of a violent death.

The prior, lifting the body slightly, opened the man’s jacket over his chest to give him a quick examination. The corpse was covered with wounds and bruises. It must have struck the river bed with great violence. On one side two red mouths indicated the spot where something had torn the flesh. Dante looked up at the wheel. The poles were fastened to the load-bearing structure by long carpenter’s nails. It was probably those that had inflicted the deep, narrow gashes.

He went on studying the body: on one shoulder an unusual tattoo attracted his attention. Drawn in a reddish colour, which looked like a bloodstain on the bluish pallor of the skin, there was the shape of an octagon, surrounded by smaller signs. Dante had never seen anything like it: only some of the smaller markings recalled the symbols with which astrologers represented the various combinations of their art. He remained silent for a moment, meditating on what he could see. Then he bestirred himself.

‘Take a cloth, go up to the mill and wrap these poor remains,’ he commanded, rising to his feet. In the meantime he had taken his wax tablet from the bag that he
carried
on his belt, and with the stylus quickly drew a copy of the tattoo.

It wasn’t very difficult: since his youth he had been an excellent draftsman, and his knowledge of the mixture of colours had helped him considerably when it came to joining the Apothecaries’ Guild. He could have devoted himself successfully to painting, had he wished to do so. His friend Giotto was also convinced of it, and had encouraged him on a number of occasions. Perhaps one day, when he had become something other than he was now …

Soon afterwards one of the
bargellini
returned with some hempen sacks. These were used to form a makeshift shroud, in which the poet asked for the man to be wrapped, taking care that his face was covered during the operation. He only felt calmer once the corpse was tightly bound with ropes.

News of Brandano’s death would remain secret for at least a few hours. For a while it might prove useful that he alone had recognised the monk.

‘Take him to Santa Maria. The Commune will pay for the burial, if no friend or relative appears to reclaim the body.’

The
bargellini
walked away. Meanwhile Dante thought about what needed to be done. So, the monk had not survived his escape along the underground passage. For some reason he must have slipped into the river, and there, weighed down by his habit, had ended up in the vortex of
the
water-mill, trapped between the spokes of the wheel.