The Cellars of Notre Dame

by Barbara Frale

  That unicorn that thundered towards Arnaldo in the dream in a furious, desperate race against time was undoubtedly the king who wanted him back by his side in Paris. Because the old man knew, and most importantly had the means to divert that calamity from him and his descendants. And knowing the king, he would be raising hell to succeed in the enterprise.

  But what about the rose?

  What did that luminous flower, that miracle of beauty inside a swamp full of snakes, signify?

  He thought that perhaps he would find the answer in the writings of those who had come before him. He took the key attached to a cord which hung around his neck. He never removed it, not even when he slept, because it opened the iron chest of secret books – the rare texts of astral magic and occult sciences that the sage is obliged to study, without, however, revealing their mysteries to the ignorant. As Aristotle teaches, communicating too many of the arcana of nature and art breaks a heavenly seal, and many evils may follow.

  Unfortunately, the book contained nothing to help him decipher the meaning of the dream. This meant that he would have to go all the way down the difficult path of understanding, careful not to make other mistakes or take false steps. He thought of his ancient master, and that memory gave him courage as it always did when he was in trouble.

  “Kibrit ahmar,” the enlightened one. “You are red sulphur, Arnaldo: and under my guidance you have reached perfection.”

  In the language of the scholars of Al-Andalus, that expression proper to alchemical transmutation indicated a very rare, highly reactive mineral. It also designated some human beings, of whom there were very few on earth and who by nature were able to access the highest level of the initiatory path beyond which there is only the omniscience of God and the sphere of angelic intelligences.

  Red sulphur. Precognition. A sixth sense for the invisible, an ability to perceive the dimension of time as if it were simply a long carpet unrolling into infinity. By virtue of this sensitivity, Arnaldo warned that dangers were looming on the horizon. He felt them looming over him like the steady, heavy breath of the night when a disaster is about to arrive; but he also knew that he would overcome his difficulties in the end.

  The rose was the answer. In the enigma of that pure flower, the old man felt it, there was also the key to his destiny.

  There was a knock at the door. The old man gasped. Who had come to disturb him?

  He didn’t want anyone in his workshop, especially scullery boys or servants, because their vital auras full of ignorance and vulgarity could contaminate the elect atmosphere of the room, which he kept pure with penitential practices, prayers and incense fumigations.

  He pulled shut a curtain to hide his scientific work from the sight of profane eyes and grudgingly opened the door. He found before him the figure of a man in his forties with a pleasant presence, abundant of belly and with a red face, a peaceful bull-like build and sluggish movements. Beneath the uninterrupted ribbon of his eyebrows, which gave him a volitional expression of patriarchal authority, were two eyes of an intense black. He wore a sly smile behind which Arnaldo sensed a first-rate intelligence. Though the man was dressed like a layman, Arnaldo recognized him immediately and removed from his face the hostile scowl which was completely unsuited to receiving Francesco Caetani, nephew of Boniface VII and cardinal deacon of Santa Marie in Cosmedin.

  “Most illustrious sir, you honour me…”

  The cardinal raised his right arm in a broad gesture of blessing which was as studied and theatrical as it was exceedingly solemn. He enjoyed doing it, because it was still something of a novelty for him. He had never suffered from mystical fervour: one fine morning he had awoken as usual in his wife Marie’s bed, and in the evening, dressed in purple silk, he had found himself, as though by magic, part of the Sacred College. Very reluctantly, his wife had been forced to retire to a convent so that he could take this position; despite this, and despite living the sequestered life of the cloister, however, the lady had miraculously given him two lovely children.

  That gesture of solemn blessing, capable of spreading divine benevolence over the world, seduced him in a particular way, almost as though it contained a breath of magic. The priests of the Curia who had so rapidly taught him it were no good at doing it themselves: they did it with a style and manner that he found completely unsuited to his new dignity. Thus he had imitated the manner of his uncle, the Holy Father, who had no equal in showing the world how vast, powerful and superior the earthly and heavenly authority of the Holy Roman Church was.

  Arnaldo da Villanova shook his head, disgusted by the age-old customs that afflicted the clergy. It seemed paradoxical to him to be blessed with such a solemn gesture by a man dressed as a knight, with his sword at his side to boot. And he had to admit that Francesco Caetani wasn’t even one of the worst: as a cardinal deacon, he had never taken vows and remained a layman, and entertained carnal trade with a single woman, the one he had married. Others of the church were stained daily with far more execrable faults, and therefore he bowed his head and made the sign of the cross.

  “Maestro,” said Francesco Caetani. “You already know Crescenzio. And also Maddalena.”

  Somewhat intimidated, Maddalena emerged from behind the cardinal’s great bulk. Arnaldo nodded. He knew the little one all too well. By now he had grown accustomed to her presence, and had grown fond of it. He often happened to come upon her outside the palisade that closed off his fortress-garden, a priceless privilege that Boniface had granted him in order to let him carry out his experiments in peace. The girl would hide herself so as to spy on Arnaldo while he tended to his rare exotic plants, full of healing virtues and of poisons. She had a morbid curiosity about the old man and his vast knowledge.

  “Of course, your worship,” replied Arnaldo. “I have had the opportunity to talk to her. It Is not often one meets such a well-educated girl.”

  Francesco Caetani sighed, almost as though Arnaldo had pointed out a fault.

  “Yes, of course…” he observed a little uncomfortably. “We made the mistake of sending her to study with the nuns in Salerno. We thought that they would teach her doctrine, instead they had her copying manuscripts. Who knows what she read in those books! My brother Crescenzio is afraid that Maddalena even understands Greek…”

  “And what would be wrong with that?” asked Arnaldo, immediately earning himself a censorious look.

  “What is wrong with it is that Maddalena is a noblewoman and must marry,” Francesco objected. “Where will we find her a husband if people find out she is more learned than a boy? All those things she read seem to have disturbed her mind – she behaves strangely, and we be grateful if you would heal her.”

  Arnaldo stared intently at the girl who, her face lowered modestly, was spying on him furtively despite everything. Francesco Caetani was not wrong – there was really something special about her. She gave off that delicate warmth that emanates from the souls worthy of being loved.

  She seemed almost to disappear inside that expensive dress which was still slightly too large for her, especially on the bust. It was dark red and as bright as a ruby, its neckline embroidered with a festoon of seven white flowers that seemed to radiate from a single trunk in the centre of the bust, around which a gold viper wrapped itself. One would have said they were white roses, and very much in keeping with the impression of inner cleanliness the girl emanated.

  “Maestro Arnaldo,” resumed Francesco Caetani. “We have received a visit from Cardinal Matthew of Acquasparta. He has come down from Paris, with troubling news. They have reason to fear that a terrible epidemic will soon break out up there.”

  The cardinal broke off and gave him a strange look which made it blatantly clear that he was trying to allude to something, but was too vague for the old man to grasp his meaning, so Arnaldo gave him the answer that he felt was most appropriate: one which was purely scientific.

  “There will be no epidemics in the near future, your worship. The movements of the stars predict
the arrival of a frightening scourge, it is true. But the rotation of the spheres is such that it will not be able to happen except towards the middle of this century.”

  Francesco Caetani shot a disappointed look at his brother Crescenzio, who came to his assistance.

  “Maestro, the king of France puts his hopes in you,” said the boy in a conciliatory tone. “His Majesty knows that you have a drug that can ward off the plague. Or are perhaps able to produce one.”

  The Catalan frowned and his bushy eyebrows became a single white arc.

  “Of course I can make drugs against deadly fevers,” he confirmed. “But I’ll be gone by the time it happens. I told you: the plague will come in the middle of this century, and by then, I will surely be dust.”

  His tone was so firm and so beyond suspicion that the two became discouraged. The old man clearly did not understand, and furthermore quite clearly had no intention of collaborating. For a few moments the two brothers stood looking at each other in perplexity, silently wondering what the right move at that point was. But, perhaps because she alone had been listening to the old man’s words without ulterior motives, Maddalena noticed a detail that had eluded them.

  “Your medicines are a gift from God,” she said firmly, even though her voice trembled slightly. “You cannot take to the grave with you something that could save so many people. You must talk about it with someone, pass on the secret of its manufacture…”

  Arnaldo stared at her with a strange expression halfway between annoyance and esteem. She had guts, this little girl, and her words resonated with the universal force of the good which has kept the human race alive since the dawn of the world.

  “You’re right, child. I shall pass the secret to someone else. You, perhaps? The procedure is written in Kufic characters – but I suppose you can read Arabic, can’t you?”

  The question was a tangibly provoking one, but she did not let herself be intimidated and stared at the old man almost defiantly. Alarmed by this strange duel that the two of them suddenly seemed to have undertaken, Francesco Caetani feared that his sister’s impertinence might upset the old lunatic; that would mean goodbye to all their hopes!

  “Forgive her, . My sister can sometimes be a little difficult. At home we are all used to her, but she should have the prudence to keep her mouth shut in front of other people. When she was little she suffered a serious accident, poor thing, and since then has suffered from moodiness and visions.”

  Intrigued, Arnaldo kept his unblinking eyes, as piercing as those of a hawk, trained upon the girl. He studied her carefully.

  “What visions?”

  Francesco Caetani shuddered with impatience, but held himself in check. The conversation was now pointlessly moving on to Maddalena, like a ship turning away from its course, while he instead had hoped to conclude the whole thing quickly and in the best possible way: by either convincing Arnaldo to give them whatever it was he had or to go to the kingdom of Naples. And instead …!

  He decided, however, to satisfy the old man’s curiosity, in the hope of currying his sympathies.

  “Well, you see, , my sister dreams of the dead. These dead are mostly people that she doesn’t know, and they visit her in dreams to tell her their stories. You can see the gravity of the problem, I’m sure?”

  It seemed to Maddalena that the old man was not judging her at all because of her inclination – on the contrary, he was looking at her with indulgence, as though trying to understand if she possessed some secret and precious gift enclosed within her. For years she had kept quiet to everyone about her strange dreams, having learned the virtue of silence by dint of penances and days spent on her knees on pebbles that cut her flesh and other mortifications to sap her will. “Vitanda,” the abbess of San Giorgio had repeated to her sorrowfully, “vitanda, my child – they could put you to the stake!”

  Arnaldo da Villanova, however, was different from the others: deeper, an ocean capable of touching remote shores where no river could ever lead. Possibly he could understand and help her.

  “When did these dreams begin?” asked the old man.

  Maddalena’s oddities, the cardinal explained, went back to an awful accident which had nearly cost her her life years before. His father Roffredo Caetani, the Count of Caserta, had died suddenly. The castle had been full of important people and foreigners who had come to pay their respects to the great lord. Even the king of Naples had gone up to Gaeta, weeping over the loss of a faithful vassal who was also his true friend. On the day of the funeral, a bustle of unknown faces had crowded the rooms – knights with swords at their sides, priests murmuring paternosters and clerics carrying incense censers.

  She was only seven years old, and she wandered lost around the great house, looking up at all those strangers with her pallid little face like an orphan and stumbling on the hem of the smart dress they had made her wear for the occasion, which was far too long for her. At one point, her family had lost sight of her, and a man grabbed hold of her and dragged her to a room upstairs. He wanted to do her violence, but the little one escaped his grasp and jumped up onto the windowsill. She stood there looking down… But only for a moment.

  Down in the street below, the great funeral procession was waiting for the nobles on their mounts, the musicians, and the paid mourners who tore their hair and screamed in pain to line up. Directly beneath that window was the enormous mortuary chariot clad in dark vestments. The count’s body lay there, composed and looking up at her from the coffin left open for the people to throw him roses. His eyes were closed, and yet he seemed to be waiting for her. The little girl threw herself down, a small innocent flower torn from the branch, a swallow in the wind. She wanted to reach her father in the grave, to die with him and escape the violence at which her chaste and defenceless little soul could only guess. That place in death was hers by right, and she went to claim it.

  The coachman had collapsed in terror at the sound of the frightening thud. They had found her all wrapped up in the silk of black veils, like the larva of a crepuscular butterfly. She was still breathing. The flesh of the corpse had absorbed the impact, though the Count had been slightly deformed, losing the blissful composure the gravediggers had imposed on him. His stiff, livid lips had opened, revealing his teeth in a sort of mocking sneer that seemed laden with hatred and oaths.

  “May God curse you, mangy dogs! May you be consumed by cankers and by worms,” he seemed to want to say to his relatives. “Even dead I take better care of her than you do!”

  The girl had a huge bump on her forehead and looked lifeless. Her uncle the pope sent the best doctors in the world to cure her, and for seven whole days they remained at her bedside trying every kind of treatment. They made her drink theriacs and applied poultices, but she remained insensible, her eyes glassy and motionless with no glimmer of life in them.

  On the eighth day, a Jewish scholar who until then had not dared to speak, leaving his Christian colleagues the honour of serving the Pope in that painful situation, came forward. The man bent over the bed and dipped the nail of his little finger in a strange ink whose secret he alone possessed. He drew symbols on the child’s forehead, and bent over her mouth and breathed into it with a strange word. Maddalena awoke from her lethargy, coughed, and asked for water.

  She had survived, but no longer seemed the same. For example, she had never wanted even to change the dress she had been wearing that day, and it had been necessary to have another two identical ones made for her. She said that somehow it had become one with her person, a sort of second skin: because inside that dress she had died and been reborn.

  The Catalan listened attentively, and a suspicion began to take shape within him.

  “So the Jew drew symbols on her forehead?” he asked Crescenzio.

  “Yes, Master,” he confirmed. “Three symbols, but they disappeared immediately. It was as though my sister’s head had swallowed them up.”

  “Do you remember the shape? Were they letters?”

  “I
don’t know.”

  “I do,” Maddalena said firmly. “I’ve seen them in my dreams so many times. I will show you them.”

  She took a piece of chalk and on the wood of the table drew this:

  אמה

  “Is everything all right?” asked Francesco Caetani, disturbed by the way the old man had suddenly started staring into space.

  “Yes, of course,” said Arnaldo, distractedly. “Tell me, girl. You said the Jew also spoke a word above your mouth. Do you remember that word?”

  Maddalena nodded.

  “Neshamah,” she murmured without hesitation.

  There was an instant of absolute silence. Arnaldo’s disbelieving face had gone as white as a bleached cloth.

  “Neshamah…” he murmured with difficulty. “Are you sure? Perhaps you’re mistaken!”

  “No, master. That was what he said. I remember the other words too. There were ten of them. They appear in my dreams along with this one, like the branches of a tree reaching out to touch the sun.”

  Arnaldo swallowed hard. Was it possible? , the highest of the parts of the soul that awakens in those who are ready to hear God and to count the secret bricks with which the universe was built.

  “Ten words,” he murmured. “Can you tell them to me?”

  “Of course. The first sounds like this: . The second, I think, is . And then . …”

  “See maestro?” exclaimed the agitated cardinal. “Do you hear? She comes out with these foolish things – , – and none of us has the faintest clue what they mean. And we can’t marry her off, in case her husband gets scared and sends her back!”

  The old man covered his eyes with his hand. He absolutely must try and control of himself, but it was hard to remain calm and keep your nerve after what he had just discovered.

  “It’s nothing serious,” he said. “Your sister suffers from a slight case of juvenile hysteria. I’ll make a sedative for her. Everything will be all right.”