“Leonard Kavenaugh poses a grave threat to society. How exactly, we are still determining. But he may well be a murderer. To avoid further tragedies, he is to be found and apprehended. My office is e-mailing to yours his photo and passport number, both US and Italian. He must not leave the country.”
The chief looked nonplussed. Ghedina took him aside, and had a very quiet word with him. He suspected that the American might be linked with the tragedies that had recently befallen the Riviera della Motta family, and explained how. This confidential intelligence won Ghedina the chief’s full collaboration. All measures would be taken nationwide so as to find and arrest Leonard Kavenaugh. The hotel was by now mobbed by police, and carabinieri to boot. They had overflowed the modest lobby and spilled into the street.
A reporter from Il Gazzettino di Venezia, noticing the tumult, realized something was up and ventured inside the hotel, squeezing through the crowd. On the fly, he obtained an interview with the chief himself; then with Inspector Giannelli, as Ghedina huffily declined to comment. Gianelli told him what had been found in room 331 and, without realizing that it was still classified information, what the chief had just told him: that Kavenaugh might well be linked to the kidnapping of the Baronessa. The reporter dashed to the newsroom to put his scoop to use.
TWENTY-TWO
“Could you wait here?” The taxi driver nodded, and Leo got out in the rain. As he stood up, he had to lean on the car so as not to collapse. In a daze, he managed to reach the massive doors, the only breach in the walls. It was very dark, and it took him some time to find the doorbell. It was a chain; he pulled on it. A bell tolled at some distance from the doors as the rain kept pelting down.
After what seemed an interminable wait, he rang again. It was now raining torrentially and, on the exposed top of the hill, the gusts of wind forced him to lean against the wall. He rang again, more feebly, and waited for another age.
Then he concentrated on mustering enough strength to walk back to the taxi. He had no idea where to ask the driver to take him, but it was no use staying there.
He was half way to the car when the door creaked open and a monk thrust his head outside. “Who’s there?”
“I’m a lay brother,” Leo answered in a voice drowned by the rain, and started back towards the door.
“Speak up; what did you say?”
“A lay brother, I’m a Third Order brother.” With this exertion, he staggered and nearly fainted.
“Are you drunk? How dare you interrupt our prayers?”
In an unbidden flash, the twelve labors of Hercules came to Leo’s mind. Cesare’s magical hero was supposed to emulate them; but he, poor fool, could hardly manage to beg for hospitality! He commanded his own body to snap out of it, just for a few seconds, and said, as convincingly as he could: “Padre, I’m a brother of the Third Order of Franciscans. I have come here seeking a time of solitude and peace. And of prayer. Could you host me, please?” Rain was streaking down his face as he said so.
Father Teresio looked at him appraisingly from under his hood, though he could see little in the gathering darkness. “Have you got any luggage?” he asked at length.
“In the taxi.”
“Get it and follow me.”
“Thank you, Father, thank you.” Leo remained by the wall, leaning against it, and beckoned the driver. But the latter merely rolled down his window by a couple of inches. “Please, help me with my luggage, I’ll give you a big tip.”
Father Teresio showed them the way to a cell. A bed was in it, a closet, a writing table, a stool. A bare bulb hanging from the ceiling provided the illumination.
Leo stumbled into the cell and sat down on the bed. He paid the driver, and succeeded in keeping his eyes open as he listened to the instructions the monk was pouring out.
“All the Hours of the Divine Office are said in common in the hermitage church. We rise at half an hour after midnight for Matins, Lauds, and Meditation; these last for an hour and a half. Then we rest till sunrise, when we go again to the church for the Office of Prime, and then return to our oratories to celebrate Mass. A slight collation is then taken, and the time between that and Tierce is spent in spiritual reading. We sing Tierce at nine, and follow it with the conventual Mass. The remainder of the morning till the Office of None, at eleven, is passed in study and manual labor.
“Will you be up at one in the morning for Matins? I will tell you then of the other Offices. Our lay guests are not expected to observe our schedule in its entirety, but this is a place of prayer.”
Leo had exhausted his strength. He could only sit on the bed and stare at the monk speechlessly. “You seem very tired, brother. Rest well, and Heaven bless you.” Father Teresio left him alone. As Leo laid himself down on the bed, he passed out.
He woke late in the morning, still in his damp clothes, realizing that he had skipped many of the prescribed prayers. He must get well, as quickly as possible. He got up from the bed, and fell to the stone floor, passing out again.
Discovering him before too long, the monks understood that their brother was sick, and tended to him as they tend to their vegetable gardens.
Within a few days, they witnessed his recovery. Father Teresio had judged that their guest was not really ill, but worn out. He was not the first to reach the monastery in such a state. Stress was a demon capable of vanquishing even the strongest in the mundane world. All they knew about him was his name: Leonardo, he had said. That seemed to suffice, along with his unspoken but evident gratitude.
Back on his feet, Leo had begun to attend Mass and some of the Offices, to give the impression that he was there to seek spiritual healing, not to hide from his pursuers. For he must be a wanted man by now. He had left his hotel room looking like a slaughterhouse. They had his name, his passport details. Surely the manager had called the police, and they were looking for him.
When Leo had finally been able to reach the light switch in his dark hotel room, he had lifted his hands to his eyes and rubbed them. They felt sticky, both hands and face, but his eyes opened. He blinked, and to his immense relief, he could see. The first thing he made out was a pair of bloody hands. Next, he saw a pool of blood on the table before him. He looked around, moving his neck cautiously, as though it might break, or else in terror of what he might see next. There was a pool of blood on the gray carpet, too. Blood was dripping from around his fingernails. He could feel it squishing in his shoes. To his horror, he saw blood oozing through the pores of his skin. As he lay on the floor, outspent, motionless, he recalled the interview with Dr. Elander, and wondered whether this was reality, or a new phase of his vision.
After some time, he concluded that this was reality, and he was still alive. He slowly and painfully raised himself to his feet and staggered to the bathroom. The mirror showed him his face: blood smeared on his cheeks, still oozing from the corners of his eyes, and dripping from his nose. He turned on the shower. Unable to stand up, he squatted in a corner, and let the water cleanse him. His breathing was irregular and labored. He vomited repeatedly, observing the bile gather with the red water by the drain hole.
As the shower washed his blood away, the pain gradually diminished. His fingers and toes had stopped bleeding and felt only raw, while his face and the skin all over his body felt no worse than after a bad sunburn.
So this was not death yet, but what happened when you “vaticinated” as an uninitiate. He managed to crawl out of the shower. Sitting on the floor in the bathroom, leaning his back on the wall, he looked across the room at the blood-soaked carpet. Some light was beginning to creep in from the window. He could only move in slow motion, and had to concentrate on his every action. He wanted desperately to fall into bed and sleep, but he knew he must not do that. From the closet he took out the plastic laundry bag, and put his bloodied clothes and shoes in it. Then he slowly dressed. His watch told him that it was eight in the morning.
Leo was lying on the bed in his cell, going back over all these details in his mind
, when a young monk knocked and entered, carrying a tray. “Pasta e fasoi, Brother Leonardo! That should put some strength into you. And there’s plenty of rye bread and butter. I hope we’ll see you in chapel soon.”
As Leo gratefully ate the beans and pasta, he continued his reminiscing, deliberately retracing every detail. He felt that his quest now hung by a hair, and that his every action from now on must be disciplined and calculated.
With a series of supreme efforts, he had packed his suitcase, sticking the laundry bag in it; put the ancient manuscript in his backpack; dragged his feet downstairs; settled the bill; gone to the nearest bar and drunk a quart of milk with many espressos in between. Then, at a snail’s pace, he had walked to the bookshop the concierge had told him was nearby, and found what he needed: a book for tourists on a tight budget called Lodging in Italy’s Monasteries. Yet he had not bought it.
He smiled at the recollection. Had the police questioned the bookseller, she could have shown them from the register exactly what books had been bought early in the morning. That would have given them a clue, however vague, that he couldn’t afford, as he didn’t know how long he would feel so terribly weak, and unable to survive on the run. So he had copied a single suitable address. He had then managed to reach the railway station, and get on the first train to Padua.
Once there, he had dragged his feet to a café in a daze, barely able to keep his eyes open. Much as he wanted to leave immediately, he just did not have enough strength even to push himself up from the table. He sat there for hours, drinking caffelatte, coffee with milk, three cups of it. Eventually he gathered enough energy to find a taxi to take him to the Camaldolese hermitage in the Euganean Hills. He had hoped that in a monastery he would not be asked for identification and, mercifully, had not been.
“So, here I am,” he thought as he took his empty soup bowl back to the kitchen, caressing his fast-growing beard. “What can I do next? Where is Orsina? How can I save her?” He felt ominously that she needed him, and that only he could save her. For all his success in stealing the forbidden book and then taking a bite at one of the fruits from the Second Tree of Life, the vaticination had failed: he had learned about Angela’s fate, but nothing about Orsina’s. He had burst the barriers of time and space, but only in regard to the past. Unlike a dream, he found that he had total recall of the experience, but how could he be certain that he had seen what really happened? Could his dislike of the Baron and his own fantasy have scripted a completely fictitious scenario? Had he hallucinated?
No, he said to himself. That was as real as his blood. The forbidden book was unspeakably powerful, and dangerous, especially in the Baron’s hands. And it left him no choice: he must return to the exercise, and force it to reveal what he needed to know, no matter what the cost to his own health and sanity. But what if he died, this time?
Leo asked himself the question again as he walked back to his cell. He was past caring for his own life: if necessary he would open the book at the same page, and go through the whole agonizing process again. Yet he realized that he mustn’t do this. If he died, Orsina would be left to herself, to her kidnappers, and, assuming she was released, to whatever her uncle had in mind for her. Leo had read in the papers of his despair over the death of his niece, had seen the photographs of his weeping at the funeral—yet he had killed her, he, her uncle and guardian. Nigel, financial genius though he might be, would be no match for that brilliant, arrogant, twisted monster if it came to a battle for Orsina’s soul.
Should he call the police? No. They might give him a hard time explaining the blood bath, but far worse, they might detain him, thus neutralizing Orsina’s only potential rescuer, while the Baron could continue in his pursuits, whatever they might be. Who would believe Leo? What proof did he have? He had seen Angela’s death at the Baron’s hands in a vaticination. The police would laugh in his face, and at best have a hack psychiatrist assess his sanity.
Why had the Baron acted so ruthlessly? What was he trying to achieve through poor Angela, apart from magical ecstasy? And why did he need her for that? Wasn’t he a Della Riviera? Leo did wonder how he himself had been able to achieve vaticination at all. Cesare Della Riviera had clearly stated that “underprivileged aspirants perform vaticination through the art of necromancy,” and he certainly had done nothing of the sort. Was he to infer that, although a beginner, he was not an underprivileged aspirant? How could that be?
Another knock on the door interrupted his train of thought. It was Father Giacinto, who lived in the cell next door.
“Brother Leonardo,” he said, “I’ll be working in the garden. Some fresh air would do you good. Would you like to join me?”
“Gladly.”
Outdoors, Father Giacinto said: “Winter is approaching. I’m only looking after artichokes here in the open. Could you help me weed around the edges?”
After about half an hour’s work, Father Giacinto invited “Leonardo” to take a walk in the garden, all contained inside the monastery’s cloistered walls.
“Look at this tree,” Father Giacinto said. They were now standing a few paces away from an age-old matriarch of a yew tree. Her crown was irregular, with many dried twigs and branchlets, while her higher boughs were a cascade of foliage—thick and luxuriant—dark green when seen from the sky and of a pale lemon color from beneath. Bright red berries punctuated it to the joy of many visiting birds. Sizeable burls and knots had grown over the scars from many storms. The massive trunk, of a reddish-purple hue, was hollow. And inviting. Padre said: “Shall we step inside?”
They did.
“Isn’t this a beautiful little house? The yew is known as l’albero della morte, the tree of death, because all his parts except the flesh of the berries are poisonous, and because it is often found in cemeteries, especially in the north. But I call it the tree of life.” His words were echoed by the cavernous trunk. “We have some time between prayers and manual work, here. So I’ve studied botany. Well, it appears that the yew is technically immortal.”
Leo looked baffled.
“Yes,” the monk continued, “if no external agent intervened, no overwhelming windstorm and above all no chainsaw, it seems that a yew would go on living forever. It simply refuses to die. In time, after centuries of life, if left to itself it sends some branches down to the ground, and from it they sprout up again, as new trees.
“I’ve also learned that this tree was growing on Earth long before the dinosaurs. Fossils have been exhumed, and dated. Could the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, have placed it on Earth as a reminder to us? As the second tree of life?”
Leo was listening keenly. Father Giacinto elaborated. “Yes, we were sent off from the Garden of Eden; yet the Creator left us with trees and fruits and vegetables and herbs to remember it by. If we ignored them, if we ignored His gifts to us, wouldn’t that be sin?” He smiled, then said: “Follow me, some more fresh air will do you good.” They ambled to the monastery’s kitchen garden. A section of it was inside a hothouse. They entered it, and Leo instinctively unbuttoned his jacket.
“You see,” the monk said, “we grow all sorts of herbs here. The elixir you’ve been drinking since you arrived has been made with some of them for centuries. Doesn’t it work like magic? I can’t tell you the recipe—you know, it’s one of those secrets that if I told you I’d have to kill you.” He winked, smiling. “These are God’s gifts, brother, and we should cherish them. The prophet Ezekiel says that after our fall from grace we were catapulted into the world of reality. It is true, but in it there are vestiges of what the Garden of Earthly Delights used to be like, and it is our duty to try and recapture it.”
It was almost sunset, time for the monks to go and sing Vespers. Leo excused himself.
****
On the way back to his cell Leo chanced on another guest. They were the only two guests, he was told. Rafael—who looked uncannily like Christ in a famous painting by Mantegna—spoke briefly. He was just out of rehab, he said straightforwardly,
not trusting himself to reenter the real world just yet. “And you?” he asked quietly, “are you also out of rehab?”
Leo, very thin and emaciated, realized that he looked the part, but said, “No, I was under a lot of stress, couldn’t cope anymore. I’m here to recover.”
The only link Rafael kept with the outside world—the monks had not objected—consisted of a few newspapers. Every morning the owner of a newsstand from nearby Abano Terme delivered to him Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s leading financial daily, Il Corriere delle Sera, La Repubblica and Il Gazzettino di Venezia. “Never gave a damn about the real world, so I thought I might try to read about it, for a start. I have a whole stack of newspapers, the last ten days’ worth. You’re welcome to look at them.”
Leo spent the evening going through the newspapers, starting from the earliest date. He learned that there had been quite a development in Nigel’s predicament.
As a probatory device, Avvocato Alemanni had requested the PM urgently to subpoena the chambermaid employed at Villa Riviera. Apparently Mr. MacPherson himself, on hearing the news of his wife’s kidnapping, had insisted with his lawyer that he take this step. The PM had yielded, for the assunzione di testimonianza could not be denied, as per article 194 of the Code of Penal Procedure. Both the PM and the GIP, the judge in charge of the preliminary investigation, had wondered about this tardy request: why hadn’t Mr. MacPherson asked for her testimony weeks before; as soon, in fact, as he had been detained?
The answer came in court, to the delight of the media, which gloated over every detail. A somewhat garishly dressed Samanta was being questioned both by the PM and Inspector Ghedina. With candor, she confessed to a relationship with signor MacPherson. When pressed by the PM, she admitted to having had sex repeatedly with the guest of the family, the husband of her employer’s niece.
The Forbidden Book: A Novel Page 22
