The Kingdom of Light (37 page)

‘Do you know this weapon, Messer Alighieri?’ the old man murmured, his voice suddenly calm. ‘Forged in Damascus and tempered in the blood of the prisoners by the caliph’s executioner. A man who had once been a thief, in his first life, mutilated by the butcher’s axe. It was for him that the craftsmen forged this hand, so that he could perform his duties.’

He had brought the two fingertips to his face and studied them carefully, as if he were only now discovering their singularity. ‘Another creation by those demons whose ingenuity you seem to love so much, to blind condemned men with a single blow. Do you see how the distance between these two fingers repeats the precise distance between a man’s eyes?’

He moved the weapon towards Dante’s face as though allowing him to check his words for himself. The poet stepped back once more, until he felt the cold stone of the wall behind him. The blades were approaching him dangerously, those blades that had killed so many men with their parallel jaws.

He lifted his arms in a bid to defend himself somehow. But Bonatti seemed not to want to strike. He stared with fascination at the blades plunged in the flood of light; then he bent over them with a sudden movement, piercing both his eyes. Horrified, Dante watched a scarlet flood pouring from the double wound, as the old man withdrew the blades without so much as a moan, his face reduced to a mask of blood.

‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. So commands the Scripture. And so it is done. Not even the Emperor can defeat the plan of God. There is nothing your magic can do against my science,’ he gurgled, his teeth clenched in spasm.

Then he turned round, letting his arm drop along his side, and staggered forward. Dante ran up to help him, but Bonatti seemed unaware of anything, locked away in his own world of darkness and perfect repetitions. He stoutly brushed away the poet, as if he had sensed his presence through the scarlet veil that had deprived him of his sight.

He advanced towards the centre of the Baptistery. Dante watched after him, paralysed with emotion. He saw Bonatti approaching the baptismal fonts full of water, and stagger on to the edge of one of them. He swayed for a moment, seeking a hold in the void, then fell head-first into the round basin, plunging in to the knees. The water seethed with the old man’s efforts to re-emerge, and his legs waved desperately around. Beneath the shining waters his hands couldn’t find a grip and slipped on the smooth
surface
of the ancient Roman marble.

For a moment Dante didn’t react. He stood motionless, staring at that liquid death that punished the murderer precisely in line with his own premonition. Perhaps it had been right for such a thing to happen, bringing to an end the destiny begun half a century before.

Then a shock of rage dragged him from the torpor that had seized control of him. Bonatti would triumph, even in his despair, if his plan were accomplished. And the water would fill his lungs, passing through the grin of his lips. He would have the death of which his false science assured him. And he would triumph over Dante for ever.

He ran towards the basin, grabbing Bonatti by his ankles and trying to pull him from the water, now reduced to a bloody froth. The man’s body resisted, weighed down by the liquid that had drenched his long garments. Dante set his foot against the font and pulled with all his might. One of the little columns broke beneath the thrust, but the poet managed to maintain his hold until he dragged out the astrologer’s body.

Bonatti was still alive. He saw him propping himself up on his elbows, the mass of wet hair sticking to his head and hiding the mutilation of his face. Beside him, Dante tried to stay upright, his hands resting on his knees, panting with exertion.

They stayed like that for a few moments, before the astrologer suddenly rose to his feet as if some demonic power
had
taken control of him. The poet remembered what he had heard: sometimes dead bodies are possessed by the spirit of hell and brought back to life with its breath.

He saw Bonatti walking slowly towards the still-open door, leaving a bloody trail behind him, and disappearing in the maze of alleyways towards the north.

‘Liquid death refused you, Guido! Your science was inexact, as blind as your spirit!’ he called after him, but Bonatti did not seem to hear him.

All around him the strength of the crown of fire was waning as the phosphorous mixture lost its strength. Now all that remained was a pale shadow of the triumph of light that had illuminated the Baptistery with its splendour.

Dante bent and picked up the weapon, still covered with blood and scraps of bone. Al-Jazari’s machine was coming to rest with a final whirr.

Then he was overcome with emotion. As he slid down the wall, he felt his own senses sinking into the void.

A
S HE
came to, the poet found himself submerged in darkness that was barely attenuated by the moonlight flowing in from the windows. Some time must have passed, but how much? He felt a rough hand shaking him, and a harsh voice calling his name.

‘Wake up, Messer Durante! What happened?’

Dark shapes stirred around him, wandering through the
empty
space of the Baptistery. He recognised the squat outline of the Bargello, armoured from head to toe.

‘What happened, Prior?’ he heard him repeat suspiciously. ‘All this blood …’

Dante tried to get back on his feet, summoning the last of his strength.

‘The guard at the Porta ad Aquilonem called for help, thinking a fire had broken out in San Giovanni. When we got here the Baptistery was shining in the night as if a thousand torches were burning inside it. What happened?’ the head of the guards asked for the third time, pointing to the machinery in the corner and the mirrors still resting against the niches in the walls. ‘And who broke the balustrade of the fonts? Was it you? Have you gone mad? You will pay for this,’ he announced, with a hint of satisfaction in his voice.

Dante didn’t hear him. He went on staring at the darkness beyond the wide-open door through which Guido Bonatti had disappeared. Twice he thought he saw his shadow swaying in the distance, among the graves of San Lorenzo.

‘And what is all this?’ the Bargello asked, pointing to the machine and the mirrors.

The prior picked up Elias’ smoking lamp and looked at it carefully. A deep sigh emerged from his chest. ‘Light. The light that dreams are made of,’ he replied.

Then he walked slowly towards the night outside, beneath the stars.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T
HE MACHINE
dreamed up by Michael Scotus and realised by Arab mechanics, although plainly imaginary, is not entirely implausible. It broadly follows the lines of the one made by the Frenchman Armand Fizeau around the middle of the nineteenth century to determine the movement and speed of light.

The device is based on the use of two toothed wheels welded, slightly out of plane with one another, to an axle so that each interval between two teeth of the first wheel corresponds to a tooth of the second. After having set the axle to rotate at high speed, a ray of light is projected against the first wheel: this passes through the slit, is reflected against a mirror placed some distance away, and returns towards the second gear-wheel, which has by now rotated far enough to offer the light a new interval. By calculating the relation between the space travelled by the teeth of the gear-wheel and that passed by the ray of light, it is then possible to establish its speed to a good approximation.

Bearing in mind the relative simplicity of the apparatus,
the
Frenchman’s intuition could have been anticipated by the wise men who made the crown for Frederick the Great. That this did not in fact occur may be a source of regret for the historian, but does not greatly disturb the storyteller.

On the other hand, there is no need for the ray of light to travel along an octagonal trajectory, as imagined in the story: but so fascinated was I by the idea that the mysterious Castel del Monte might have been a kind of thirteenth-century
tokamak
that I risked presenting it as such to the reader.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

T
HE KINGDOM
of Light
, like its predecessor,
The Third Heaven Conspiracy
, is scattered with embedded quotations and references from Dante’s
Divine Comedy
. While many of these would be instantly familiar to Italians – as quotes from Shakespeare might be to us – even the most alert English-speaking readers couldn’t possibly be expected to spot them all. To take a couple of examples: towards the end of
Chapter 1
, Dante says to Lapo: ‘But anyway, in church with the saints and in the inn with the gluttons.’ The phrase comes from
Inferno
, Canto XXII, ll. 15–16:

… ma ne la chiesa

coi santi e in taverna coi ghiottoni
.

In the passage in question, Dante and Virgil are being escorted through Hell by a group of ten demons. Here the church, in Dante’s throwaway proverb, represents heaven, and the tavern hell – a theme that will be picked up in Leoni’s novel.

Perhaps more obviously, in
Chapter 9
Dante finds his way obstructed by three armed men wearing the insignia of a leopard, a lion and a wolf. These are the allegorical beasts which, in Canto I of the
Inferno
, block the poet’s path to salvation, representing (in the poem, not necessarily in the novel) lust, pride and avarice. And towards the end of the same chapter, Dante orders that a funeral be conducted ‘with tapers quenched’; the Italian phrase, ‘
a lume spento
’, is from
Purgatorio
, Canto III.

These are just a few of the allusions buried in the book – and if readers are tempted to track down others by returning to Dante’s great work, that may well be part of the author’s intention.

GLOSSARY

al-Jazari (1133–1206) – the greatest machine-maker and inventor of a famous Persian family who made automata; he is best known for writing the
Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices
, in which he described how to construct fifty mechanical objects

al-Kindi (c.801–73) – Islamic philosopher, scientist, astronomer and physician, known for trying to introduce Greek and Hellenistic philosophy to the Arab world and considered one of the greatest philosophers of Arab descent

Cecco Angiolieri (1260–c.1312) – a dissolute poet from Siena, born into a wealthy Guelph banking family and an acquaintance of Dante – they fought together at the battle of Campaldino (see below), where Angiolieri did not distinguish himself; he addressed various bantering sonnets to Dante, but their relationship subsequently deteriorated as his life became ever more turbulent

astrolabe – an instrument used by classical astronomers and navigators to predict the position of the sun, moon, stars and planets and to measure local latitude and longitude; it consisted of a disc marked in degrees along the edge, a pivoted pointer (alidade), a pierced rotating disc (rete) with a projection of the ecliptic plane, and various ‘flames’ showing the position of the stars

bargellini
– armed guards (of which the Bargello was the head) responsible for maintaining order in the Republic of Florence

Beatrice/Bice dei Portinari – the woman who takes over from the poet Virgil as guide in Dante’s
Divine Comedy
and also appears in his
La Vita Nuova;
Dante met and fell in love with the real Beatrice in Florence, and although she died in 1290 (three years after marrying the banker Simone dei Bardi), continued to dedicate work to her throughout his life

Guido Bigarelli – thirteenth-century sculptor. He is known chiefly for the font in the baptistery of Pisa

Guido Bonatti – thirteenth-century Italian astronomer from Forlì, astrologer to the court of Frederick II and the most famous astronomer of his time throughout Europe; he was mentioned in Dante’s
Inferno
and wrote
The
Book of Astronomy
, offering rare glimpses into the working life of a medieval astrologer

Boniface VIII (c. 1235–1303) – Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1294 until 1303; born Benedetto Caetani, he was elected Pope after Celestine V renounced the papacy, and pushed papal supremacy to the limit, leading to bitter quarrels with Philip IV of France and, indeed, with Dante, who portrayed him in the
Inferno
as being destined for hell

Campaldino – a battle on the banks of the River Arno between the Guelphs (led by Florence) and the Ghibellines (led by the commune of Arezzo) on 11th June, 1289, in which the twenty-four-year old Dante fought for the victorious Guelphs (see below)

Castel del Monte – a thirteenth-century castle in Puglia, built by Frederick II between 1240 and 1250 in the shape of an octagonal prism (possibly as an intermediate symbol between the square – representing the earth – and a circle – representing the sky); it is now a World Heritage Site

Cavalcanti – a prominent Florentine Guelph family, of which the poet Guido Cavalcanti (c.1255–1300) was a friend of Dante, but had to be exiled by him for factionalism; Guido is celebrated for his poetry exploring the philosophy of love, written in the
dolce stil nuovo
(‘sweet new style’)
Cerchi
and Donati – the Cerchi were a leading Florentine banking family, head of a Guelph consortium, who were increasingly at odds with the Donati family, leading to virtual civil war between the rival ‘Whites’ and ‘Blacks’; this ended in victory for the Blacks and exile for many Whites, including the Prior of the Republic of Florence, Dante Alighieri

Council of Lyon (1245) – the Thirteenth Ecumenical Council, at which Pope Innocent IV announced the deposition of the Emperor Frederick II, although he did not have the means to enforce it

Elias of Cortona (c.1180–1253) – Minister General of the Franciscans and a disciple of Saint Francis of Assisi, to whom various alchemical manuscripts have been attributed

Fedeli d’Amore (The Faithful of Love) – a secret sect of poets, led by Guido Cavalcanti (see above), struggling against the despotism of the popes and devoted to
Sapienta
(wisdom); Dante tried to contact them in 1283 by writing a poem to them and was eventually invited to join the group