The Kingdom of Light (33 page)

Trembling uncontrollably, Dante covered his face with his arm. A stormy sea roared in his temples. He had to lean against the roof-beam to stay upright. Beside him Cecco gave a muffled sigh.

It was that wound that brought the prior back to reality. He turned towards his friend, staring in bewilderment at the bloody remains that lay piled up a few feet away from them. ‘Move yourself or you’ll be finished, just like that woman!’ he hissed, shaking him by his arm.

Cecco remained motionless, as if he was deaf. ‘She wasn’t a woman …’ he stammered. He had taken a few steps forward, emerging from his hiding place. He stared at the body, his eyes bright with a strange form of lust.

‘Follow me!’ Dante commanded, pushing him towards the door. ‘But first help me to recover something precious.’

‘Money?’ panted Cecco, suddenly animated again. ‘The
treasure?
So you know it exists!’ he exclaimed.

‘Maybe more than that. The key to a kingdom.’

Cecco stared at him, disconcerted. There really was something precious in the abbey. And something very dangerous. Something that the poet could not abandon at any cost. Al-Jazari’s machine, hidden in the crypt.

When the disorderly troops had overcome the last of the resistance and turned their attention to plunder, it was just a matter of time before they reached the sarcophagi. And the Bargello had seen the machine, albeit in pieces, and would be able to recognise it and denounce Dante as a co-conspirator. It would be like handing the enemy his head on a silver platter. The machine had to disappear.

He stopped on the threshold, holding Cecco still just behind him. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside, the shouts and footsteps were further off now. He slipped silently towards the basement entrance, pulling his friend after him by the hand. In the crypt he lifted the slab and, with Cecco’s help, pulled out the chest. During the operation Cecco had continued to stare greedily at the object, but Dante had ignored all his silent questions.

‘We have to get out along there,’ he said, pointing to the cavity at the end. ‘Help me – two of us will be able to do it.’

Conquering the horror that the fetid opening aroused in him, he slipped into the passageway. There was no time
to
get hold of a torch, and the air was so thick with fumes that a flame would have made it impossible to breathe. At the end he spotted a little tunnel leading from the wall. He began to move forward on his hands and knees, feeling his way along the stone. The vault of the tunnel was so low that it forced him to lower his head until he was almost creeping along.

They proceeded in the most total darkness, trusting their instincts. Cecco followed him as a blind man follows his guide, while the hurrying feet of the soldiers echoed above their heads like a distant tremble. The air was getting hotter and hotter, filled with a powerful stench of burning, indicating that the smoke from the fire must have penetrated all the way down there.

Dante made his way onwards, filled with nausea and a growing sense of vertigo. His guts were getting tighter and tighter. Beneath his fingers he recognised the regular roughness of a brick wall: that meant they were underneath the tower. Followed by Cecco, who was still cursing everyone and everything, he started to climb along the passageway, which was so narrow in places that the chest could hardly pass through.

The air was getting more and more impossible to breathe, and the prior felt anxiety mounting within him. He had set off on this journey with no guarantee of success, and a growing feeling of suffocation was taking hold of him. Behind him he heard his companion’s panting breath.

He was gripped by fear: if the passageway led nowhere, or if it was blocked, would he be able to turn back? If Cecco was exhausted and collapsed, his body would prevent any possibility of reaching safety. Or if the chest got stuck …

The spectre of a horrible death flashed before Dante’s eyes. Ideas became muddled in his air-starved brain. Beginning to panic, he was tempted to turn back. He thought he couldn’t hear Cecco any more. Perhaps he had stayed behind, not daring to carry on. Perhaps the chest whose weight he could still feel was merely a hallucination. And if … if Cecco had followed him into this trap specially to get rid of him? Mightn’t his scoundrelly coarseness, his affable buffoonery, be merely a mask that he wore to conceal the muzzle of a murderous beast?

He was about to lose control of his movements when he started to feel a faint draught on his face, barely perceptible at first, then gradually more apparent. He climbed the short flight of steps and emerged in the Forum well.

Panting, his companion emerged behind him. Cecco’s face was a mask of sweat. He looked disorientatedly around as he got his breath back. ‘Where are we?’ he asked in a stunned voice.

Dante had recognised the pool of calm water at his feet. ‘In the old Roman well,’ he said, pointing to the narrow flight of steps that led into the open. ‘We should be safe here.’

‘Damn it …’

‘Who are you angry with, Cecco?’

‘That old hangman – my father. It’s his fault that I’ve ended up like this … Damn it!’ Fear had made Cecco’s voice even shriller than usual. ‘If I ever make it back to Siena, I’ll throw him down the stairs, I swear I will. He’ll give me every last
scudo
, if I have to drag it out of him with my fingernails. I’ll carve him to pieces, I’ll eat him up and then I’ll shit him into the Arno …’

As he said this Cecco waved his arms around, flailing to left and right with his dagger, which he had drawn from his belt. He seemed to be plunged in a battle with the shadows, as his grotesque mask became more and more tragic. His face, too, beneath the waving pennant of his helmet, had grown sombre. He went on trembling, in the grip of an uncontrollable fury. He prodded the poet’s chest several times with his index finger. ‘I’m fed up with the company of Poverty. When will our time come, my friend? And by the way, what’s in there?’ he said, pointing to the chest, suddenly suspicious. ‘You haven’t told me yet. Are you going to keep it all to yourself, are you going to steal from an old companion-at-arms?’

As he spoke, with a rapid movement he gripped the lid of the chest and opened it. An expression of disappointment appeared on his face as he shifted the machine to make sure there was nothing hidden underneath it. ‘A
clock
– all this for a damned clock …’ he mumbled, passing the back of his hand over the cut in his forehead. ‘And … the treasure?’

‘There is no treasure, you idiot!’ Dante cried, exasperated. ‘It doesn’t exist, it has never existed! Only death, the shadows and this inferno. Look!’ he added, gripping him by his tunic and forcing his head all the way round.

Cecco coughed, trying to escape his grip, then sagged as if all his spirits had abandoned him. ‘The treasure … doesn’t exist,’ he said disconsolately. ‘They’ve tricked me. Me, the master.’

Stupefied, he had slumped down on his backside. Dante couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘Head for Pistoia, you fool. For the Eagle Gate,’ he said in a low voice. ‘All the units are assembled around here, and no one will pay you any attention. Wait for night to pass, and at dawn mingle with the peasants leaving for the countryside. You’ll be able to do that if fate’s on your side.’

Suddenly Cecco leaped to his feet, like a cloth puppet pulled by a string. He threw himself on the poet, hugging and kissing him. His eyes were moist with joy, faced with that hope of salvation.

Dante looked away and broke free from his grip. He was suddenly able to express the doubt that had been tormenting him. ‘Why were they killed?’

Cecco stiffened, a grimace of surprise on his face.

‘What did old Bigarelli have to do with your plans?
And
what about those unfortunates on the galley?’ the prior pressed him.

‘Nothing! I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Cecco stammered. He had become circumspect once more. He glanced nervously behind him, as if fearing an ambush.

‘There’s no one here,’ Dante reassured him coldly.

‘I told you, and I swear on the life of that sainted woman Becchina, my lover, and the horns she puts on my head.’

‘Cecco, I know everything. Monerre told me all about the plan. But who did you want to put on the throne? One of those already dead? Or …’

‘So the Frenchman didn’t tell you? And now you want me, your old friend, to show you his cards?’

‘It’s what you’re best at, it seems to me.’

‘Oh, there’s no one better than you at cheating!’

‘Who is it, Cecco?’ the poet yelled, gripping him by the collar and shaking him violently.

‘Arrigo,’ Cecco moaned, trying to break away.

Dante tightened his grip still further. Beneath his hands, his strange friend’s face had begun to redden. On his own face he felt splashes of spittle from a mouth desperately gasping for breath. Then suddenly he let go. ‘Arrigo!’ he spluttered. In the end it was just as he had expected. It had to be that way. According to reason, which is never wrong. The one who had always been in the back of his mind. Arrigo, with his defective leg, the mark left on him by the evil one. Arrigo, the ‘incomplete man’.

Cecco seemed about to add something. He stood there rubbing his neck, trying to get his breath back. But all of a sudden he turned round and made off in the direction indicated by Dante, who saw him vanish in swirls of acrid smoke.

After a moment the poet stirred. With one final effort he hoisted the chest on to his shoulders and headed for his destination. There, in Arrigo’s cell, he would find all his answers.

He looked around: the whole area was swarming with armed men, but no one noticed him. Pressing his face against the chest, he headed onwards, hoping that no one would recognise him. In all likelihood he would be mistaken for one of the looting assailants.

At that moment, in the distance, the roof of the flaming tower bent beneath its own weight and fell in on itself, taking with it the floors in between. Dante instinctively looked round, just in time to see a mass of incandescent beams collapsing, sending intermittent flashes of light through the loopholes in the wall, as if a crowd armed with torches was dashing down the stairs. All that remained at the top was the circle of charred crenellations, an enormous fireplace belching smoke and red flashes, like the jaws of a dragon trying to bite the sky.

Sensing the impending collapse, the besieging forces had already retreated, leaving their victims’ bodies scattered in the courtyard to await the devastation of the fire
and
raining masonry. There were no enemies left to kill now, and the fire put a stop to any opportunities for looting. Without waiting for an order, the regular units were assembling, while the volunteers had already dispersed.

Some groups of soldiers passed by, ignoring him. They were making excited comments about what had happened, like a hunting party returning from the chase. Dante had gloomily sat down on an old Roman stone to get his breath back, and meanwhile he listened to the horrible boasts and jokes of the mob, still delighted with their slaughter. All that remained all around was the agitated motion of the local
vigiles
, who had come with pumps and buckets to keep the flames from spreading to the neighbouring houses.

After getting his breath back, Dante set off quickly on his way. When he reached Santa Maria Novella the main portal to the church was barred. Only a little torch beside the arch had been lit against the coming night. But one of the side-doors was still open, and the prior slipped inside, walking quickly down the deserted nave.

From the church he passed into the cloister, and from there to the corridor with the cells along it. Arrigo’s cell was barred from inside. He knocked without receiving a reply. He put the chest on the ground and tried to shake the door, hoping it would open. From the other side he heard the metallic sound of the latch, refusing to budge.

He was gripped by fear that Arrigo might have escaped. Perhaps he sensed that he had been discovered. Or, having
learned
of the destruction of the Maddalena, perhaps he had decided to make his getaway to save any aspects of his plan that could still be rescued. Or perhaps he was in search of some other victims, to finish his plot once and for all, Dante thought with a shiver.

But where could Arrigo be? He leaned against the door again, pushing harder at it. As he crashed into it for the second time he felt the latch yielding and entered.

The cell was plunged in darkness, barely attenuated by the faint gloom that filtered through the closed shutter over the loophole. He paused for a moment on the threshold, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves.

‘Arrigo, I come with the authority of Florence to make you account for your crimes,’ he announced, his hand raised like the statue of a classical figure of justice.

After a while he was able to see more clearly. He made out the profile of the philosopher sitting on the little stool by his desk and could just make out the whiteness of the paper. The man seemed to be busy writing something, in spite of the lack of light.

‘Arrigo, justify yourself,’ he added, walking towards him. His resolute tone was crumbling. The absolute certainty of Arrigo’s guilt that had held him in its sway and brought him here was wavering in the face of the enormity of what he was about to do.

Perhaps he had been wrong to have blind faith in Mainardino’s writings.

If Arrigo really was the natural son of Frederick, then his veins flowed with the most noble blood that the world had known since Charlemagne. Was it right to apply, to a being privileged by God’s design, rules created to hold together a clutch of merchants and peasants? Was it right to consign to the noose a man within whom dwelt the hopes of the restoration of the empire, the supreme construction of the human spirit, an earthly mirror of the divine order?

And what if the
Chronicle
had been right and Arrigo really was an impostor? Might he not have derived a dream of peace and grandeur from that very imposture? Might he not have been a great emperor in any case? The long-awaited greyhound coming down to administer justice to the wolves?