The Kingdom of Light (23 page)

Then at last he seemed to notice the poet. He appeared to have recovered his strength. Bernardo ceremoniously invited Dante to sit down, taking some manuscripts off the only wooden stool.

Once his guest was seated, the
literatus
leaned back on his pillow. ‘What can I do for you, Messer Durante?’

‘There’s something I wanted to ask you, Bernardo. It’s
about
the life of the Emperor Frederick.’

The other man bowed his head slightly, nodding to him to continue.

‘Is it possible that a descendant of his might be alive somewhere?’

The historian shrugged. He seemed suddenly to have noticed an ink-stain on his fingers and began to study it intently, as though it might provide him with the answer. ‘It’s possible,’ he said after a while, finally turning to look at the poet. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because of … some things that have happened recently. Just a sense, some vague clues … I hoped you might know something more.’

‘Frederick was an extraordinary creature, rightly considered the marvel of our times.
Stupor mundi
, as he was called. And there are many uncertainties about him and his life. Many of which I will, I hope, be able to resolve with my writings, but many of which are destined to endure. Even his death was not accepted as a fact for a long time. And not long ago, in Germany, a character appeared claiming to be him, having fled to escape his enemies and returned to save the empire.’

‘And did people believe him?’

‘Yes, and for several years he wandered about those regions, along with an army of followers, who were ready to die for him. But as to your question, my answer is yes and no.’

Dante waited for him to go on, but Bernardo didn’t appear to want to solve the mystery. He went on staring at the poet as if waiting for something. Then he made his mind up. ‘The Swabian dynasty, Frederick’s bloodline, was extinguished with the wretched Conrad. That’s as far as the Emperor’s direct heirs are concerned. But Frederick was a man of many passions …’

‘There is talk of some illegitimate children.’

‘Many of them. And even more imaginary ones. There wasn’t a woman in his harem who didn’t boast of having his child. And the Emperor was not a man to deny certain rumours. He was convinced, in fact, that fertility was one of the attributes of greatness, and that a large number of descendants served to reinforce the dynasty and, at the same time, to placate the appetites and ambitions of the legitimate heirs. He didn’t want to lay down his sceptre before the day established by Mother Nature.’

‘Could there not have been one who had greater cause than the others to claim the succession?’

Bernardo nodded towards the bundle of papers that lay on the desk. ‘Who knows. Maybe one. That’s what I’m trying to work out, by studying my teacher’s writings,’ he replied vaguely.

Dante had a sense that Bernardo knew nothing more on the subject. Or that for some reason he didn’t want to tell him anything else. But one thing in the historian’s words had struck him particularly. That mention of nature.
‘Perhaps
Frederick was afraid of being murdered?’

Bernardo gave him a penetrating glance. ‘The Emperor was murdered, in fact. By a devious hand, which extinguished this world’s greatest hope.’

‘The rumour that Frederick was murdered began to circulate straight away, because of both the manner and the suddenness of his death. But there is no proof, apart from the calumnies of the courtiers accusing the noble Manfred of suffocating his invalid father to take his place.’

‘And yet Mainardino da Imola had no doubts. He was sure that the Emperor had been poisoned by someone very close to him, someone the sovereign trusted.’

‘His doctor, I know, that too has been said.’

‘A doctor did effectively make an attempt on his life, after the battle of Parma. But he was discovered. No, it was someone else. Mainardino was certain that he could prove it, if only …’

‘If only?’

‘He had managed to understand how the poison had been administered. Frederick had grown suspicious, and he never consumed anything without first having it tried by his tasters. And yet somehow he was poisoned.’

‘Did Mainardino never tell you the murderer’s name?’

‘No. But he hated him with all his strength. Not only had that man killed a sovereign, but he had also stubbed out any hope of the emergence of a just order of things.’

Dante leaned towards him. ‘How can you be so sure?
I
too have heard many rumours, but no more, no different from those that always accompany a great man’s death.’

‘It was Mainardino who told me in person, on his deathbed. And he told me he had never had any doubts about who it was that poured the poison. He disdainfully called him “the incomplete man”.’

‘The incomplete man? What did that mean?’

‘Perhaps it referred to a physical imperfection. Or a moral defect, a
vulnus
in his conscience.’

‘And why wasn’t the man brought to justice, if his identity was known?’

‘That’s what I asked my teacher. He told me that his suspicions had run up against an insurmountable barrier: he hadn’t been able to work out how the poisoning could have been accomplished.
Certus quis, quomodo incertus
, he wrote. Certain the murder, uncertain the method. Frederick, already ill, had been put on a diet of nothing but fruit. And he drank nothing but watered-down Pugliese wine – all, as I have said, after having everything tried by his tasters, men of his Saracen guard, extremely loyal men. And yet someone managed to pour
acqua tofana
into his cup without their noticing, and without their suffering any harm.’

Bernardo broke off. Dante thought he saw a tear shining in his myopic eye.

‘Then, when the Emperor was already in his final convulsions, and his reign was coming to an end, in the agitation of those hours, and as rivalries and hatreds flared up,
Mainardino
decided to put off the accusation for a while.’

‘And where did that cup end up?’

‘I don’t know. It disappeared in the confusion that followed the Emperor’s death. Mainardino was sure that the murderer had taken it away, to hide the proof, fearing that one day it might be the very thing that revealed the how, the certainty of the who.’

Throughout the morning

Y
ET THERE
was another clue enigmatically linked to the crime. The prior quickly made for Santa Croce, and the workshop of Alberto the Lombard.

In his laboratory on the first floor he found the
mechanicus
still at work on the contraption that he had discovered on the galley. He immediately noticed with satisfaction that what lay on the bench was no longer a confusion of brass cogs like the innards of some mysterious animal. They must have regained their position inside the machine; but, far from giving them a recognisable appearance, that made them look even more peculiar.

‘You seem to have achieved your goal, Maestro Alberto. Tell me what you have discovered.’

The man turned towards him with a discontented expression. ‘I have succeeded in setting the parts back in their places, according to their logical relations. There is
a
principle of necessity that governs machines, just as there is without a doubt in nature. But if nature is the child of the unfathomable will of God, the possibilities of machines, which are born of the limited human mind, operate according to a more restricted number of combinations. This enables us to go from the parts to the whole, something that would be impossible with a living body once it had been dismembered. But …’

‘But,’ the poet pressed him anxiously.

‘But even though the machine has been reassembled and is now able to move, I still can’t work out its secret function.’

The instrument consisted of a wooden cube about a foot across, which held the complicated arrangement of wheels. Some lighter parts revealed the damaged areas, which the craftsman had replaced. Over the box, connected by one last toothed wheel to the internal mechanism, lay a long horizontal bronze bar at whose extremities were fixed two balanced semicircles a span in diameter.

‘It makes no sense,’ Alberto decreed.

Young Hamid had approached too, and watched in silence. ‘The will of Allah is also veiled in clouds,’ he murmured.

Dante shrugged. ‘You said it worked. Show me how.’

The other man nodded, then ran his hand behind the contraption. Underneath, at a point unseen by the poet, a crank-shaped lever protruded from the machine. Alberto
gripped
it and began to turn it, provoking a metallic whirring sound.

‘This crank tenses a steel spiral. Wait.’

He turned the crank a dozen times. Dante had a sense that the resistance of the steel was becoming greater with each turn. At last Alberto seemed satisfied.

On the opposite side from the crank there was a kind of metal butterfly. The
mechanicus
adjusted it by the fraction of a turn, and something inside went off with a ticking noise. Now the upper bar had begun to turn, progressively accelerating the speed of rotation.

Dante watched with agonised interest. The whir of the two semicircles had become intense, like the wings of a gigantic insect about to rise up from the bench. The machine was vibrating slightly, but the weights of the rotating parts must have been measured with extreme care, because the vibration did not alter the balance of the rotation.

‘Watch carefully now,’ said Alberto, moving the butterfly again. He nudged it another quarter-turn and the rotation of the bar grew even faster.

‘The key acts on the internal brake, making it possible to regulate the speed of rotation.’

Carried along by their whirling motion, the two opposing semicircles formed in the poet’s eye the image of a complete circle of solid brass.

‘But what’s it for?’ Dante asked. After a moment Alberto
turned
the butterfly slowly back, extinguishing the life of the contraption, which came to rest with one final jerk of its hidden gears.

‘As I said, I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘It doesn’t seem to have any practical use. It just makes those two wing-like objects spin.’

Dante went on studying the object, trying to find a possible answer. ‘It couldn’t be part of a larger apparatus?’

‘I thought of that, too. But it isn’t. The whole chain of the internal gears is perfectly arranged to obtain that one effect, and there is no other opening on the box that would enable it to be connected to any other mechanism. And in turn, the moving external part presents nothing that would encourage us to think that anything is missing. No, everything you brought me is here, in front of your eyes.’

Dante had dropped on to a stool. With his elbows on the bench and his chin in his hands, which were clenched to fists, he went on studying the wooden cube. ‘And yet the existence of a regulator for the rotation would lead us to suspect some kind of moderation,’ he said after a while. ‘But are you sure you rule out the possibility that it might be some kind of time-keeper?’

‘Prior, no human time could be measured by this machine. Perhaps it really is a spherical astrolabe, but one dreamed up for other heavens, and for other worlds.’

Dante nodded, slowly. He looked up once more, then
stared
at Hamid, in the faint hope that the Arab might have something to add. But the boy remained mute, staring suspiciously at the machine. Behind him the curtain that concealed his bed was half-open. Through the chink the poet’s eye fell on the manuscript of the
Mi’raj
, open on the humble rug. He sighed. ‘And yet I thank you, Maestro Alberto, for what you have done.’

In a corner there was a chest. With the help of the
mechanicus
, the poet rested the machine in it. ‘Cover the chest with a sack,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful to you, and soon I will ensure that your work is compensated.’

He hadn’t the slightest idea how he would justify that expense to the Communal clerk, but he would sort it out in some way or other. And he didn’t even have a clear idea what to do with that mysterious contraption. But instinctively he felt he had to take it away with him. Too many people knew it was here.

‘Don’t trouble yourself, Prior. Your city welcomed me when I fled from the persecutions against the Waldensians. See my work as a gift.’

As he was leaving, Dante looked back at the young slave. ‘Help me transport the chest,’ he ordered brusquely, after asking permission from the
mechanicus
with a nod of his head. Suddenly he had thought of a possible hiding place.

What better refuge than the abbey of the Maddalena? Many things had already been hidden there, both men and
objects
. If that church was destined to be a receptacle of secrets, he would hide his own there, too.

H
E QUICKLY
made for the abbey, followed by the Arab with his burden on his shoulders. The machine wasn’t especially heavy, but in the terrible heat the boy was soon drenched in sweat. But he went on following the poet without a word of complaint.

On one side of the street the awning of a workshop cast a shadow on the scorching pavement. Dante nodded to the boy to stop, then sat down on the chest that he had set on the ground.

‘So in your book, God takes care of the just, seated on his throne. And the unworthy?’

‘When he reached the third heaven, the abyss of sins was opened up, and he saw the horrible funnel of the perverted, and the seven steps of their perdition.’

‘Seven? According to their sins?’

‘And punished according to their crime, with a contrary punishment.’

‘A talion. That too you have stolen from Aristotle,’ the poet smiled ironically. ‘And how did your prophet ascend to the heavens?’

‘He was accompanied by the archangel Gabriel,’ the boy replied, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

Dante considered the reply for a moment, pinching
his
lower lip with his fingers. ‘And why did he need an archangel to support him? Why couldn’t he have gone there alone?’

Hamid looked at him quizzically. ‘Alone you would burn your wings,’ he replied after a while, shaking his head. ‘Only a celestial spirit can endure the sight of His Terrible Majesty.’