When the abbot and the other monks had left, the herbalist and my master studied the corpse at length, with the cold detachment of men of medicine.
“He died by drowning,” Severinus said, “there’s no doubt. The face is swollen, the belly taut. ...”
“But he was not drowned by another’s hands,” William observed, “for in that case he would have reacted against the murderer’s violence, whereas everything was neat and clean, as if Berengar had heated the water, filled the bath, and lain in it of his own free will.”
“This doesn’t surprise me,” Severinus said. “Berengar suffered from convulsions, and I myself had often told him that warm baths serve to calm agitation of the body and the spirit. On several occasions he asked me leave to light the balneary fire. So he may have done last night. …”
“Night before last,” William said, “because this body—as you see—has remained in the water at least one day.
William informed him of some of the events of that night. He did not tell him we had been in the scriptorium furtively, but, concealing various circumstances, he told him that we had pursued a mysterious figure who had taken a book from us. Severinus realized William was telling him only a part of the truth, but he asked no further questions. He observed that the agitation of Berengar, if he had been the mysterious thief, could have led him then to seek calm in a refreshing bath. Berengar, he said, was of a very sensitive nature, and sometimes a vexation or an emotion brought on his trembling and cold sweats and made his eyes bulge, and he would fall to the ground, spitting out a whitish slime.
“In any case,” William said, “before coming here he went somewhere else, because in the balneary I didn’t see the book he stole. So he had been somewhere else, and afterward, we’ll assume that, to calm his emotion and perhaps to elude our search, he slipped into the balneary and immersed himself in the water. Severinus, do you believe his illness could make him lose consciousness and drown?”
“That’s possible,” Severinus said, dubiously. For some moments he had been examining the hands of the corpse. “Here’s a curious thing ...” he said.
“What?”
“The other day I observed Venantius’s hands, when the blood had been washed off, and I noticed a detail to which I attached little importance. The tips of two fingers of Venantius’s right hand were dark, as if blackened by some dark substance.. Exactly—you see?—like two fingertips of Berengar now. In fact, here we have a trace also on the third finger. At the time I thought that Venantius had handled some inks in the scriptorium. ...”
“Interesting,” William said pensively, taking a closer look at Berengar’s fingers. Dawn was breaking, the light indoors was still faint, and my master was obviously suffering the lack of his lenses. “Interesting,” he repeated. “But there are fainter traces also on the left hand, at least on the thumb and index.”
“If it were only the right hand, they would be the fingers of someone who grasps something small, or long and thin. …”
“Like a stylus. Or some food. Or an insect. Or a serpent. Or a monstrance. Or a stick. Too many things. But if there are signs also on the other hand, it could also be a goblet; the right hand holds it firmly and the left helps, exerting less strength. ...”
Severinus was now gently rubbing the dead man’s fingers, but the dark color did not disappear. I noticed he had put on a pair of gloves, which he probably used when he handled poisonous substances. He sniffed, but without receiving any sensation. “I could cite for you many vegetable (and also mineral) substances that leave traces of this sort. Some lethal, others not. The illuminators sometimes have gold dust on their fingers. ...”
“Adelmo was an illuminator,” William said. “I imagine that, shattered as his body was, you didn’t think of examining the fingers. But these others may have touched something that had belonged to Adelmo.”
“I really don’t know,” Severinus said. “Two dead men, both with blackened fingers. What do you deduce from that?”
“I deduce nothing: nihil sequitur geminis ex particularibus unquam. Both cases would have to conform to a rule. For example: a substance exists that blackens the fingers of those who touch it. ...”
Triumphantly, I completed the syllogism: “… Venantius and Berengar have blackened fingers, ergo they touched this substance!”
“Good, Adso,” William said, “a pity that your syllogism is not valid, because aut semel aut iterum medium generaliter esto, and in this syllogism the middle term never appears as general. A sign that we haven’t chosen the major premise well. I shouldn’t have said that all those who touch a certain substance have black fingers, because there could also be people with black fingers who have not touched the substance. I should have said that all those and only all those who have black fingers have certainly touched a given substance. Venantius and Berengar, etc. With which we would have a Darii, an excellent third mode of the first syllogistic figure.” “Then we have the answer,” I said, delighted.
“Alas, Adso, you have too much faith in syllogisms! What we have, once again, is simply the question. That is: we have ventured the hypothesis that Venantius and Berengar touched the same thing, an unquestionably reasonable hypothesis. But when we have imagined a substance that, alone among all substances, causes this result (which is still to be established), we still don’t know what it is or where they found it, or why they touched it. And, mind you, we don’t even know if it’s the substance they touched that brought them to their death. Imagine a madman who wants to kill all those who touch gold dust. Would we say it’s gold dust that kills?”
I was upset. I had always believed logic was a universal weapon, and now I realized how its validity depended on the way it was employed. Further, since I had been with my master I had become aware, and was to become even more aware in the days that followed, that logic could be especially useful when you entered it but then left it.
Severinus, who was surely not a logician, was meanwhile reflecting on the basis of his own experience. “The universe of poisons is various as the mysteries of nature are various,” he said. He pointed to a series of pots and ampoules, which we had already admired, neatly arranged on shelves along the walls, together with many volumes. “As I told you before, many of these herbs, duly compounded and administered in the proper dosage, could be used for lethal beverages and ointments. Over there, datura stramonium, belladonna, hemlock: they can bring on drowsiness, stimulation, or both; taken with due care they are excellent medicines, but in excess doses they bring on death.”
“But none of these substances would leave marks on the fingers?”
“None, I believe. Then there are substances that become dangerous only if ingested, whereas others act instead on the skin. And hellebore can cause vomiting in a person who grasps it to uproot it. Dittany and fraxinella, when in flower, bring on intoxication in gardeners who touch them, as if the gardeners had drunk wine. Black hellebore, merely at the touch, provokes diarrhea. Other plants cause palpitations of the heart, others of the head, still others silence the voice. But viper’s venom, applied to the skin and not allowed to enter the blood, produces only a slight irritation. ... And once I was shown a compound that, when applied to the inside of a dog’s thighs, near the genitalia, causes the animal to die in a short time in horrible convulsions, as the limbs gradually grow rigid. ...”
“You know many things about poisons,” William said with what sounded like admiration in his voice.
Severinus looked hard into his eyes for a few moments. “I know what a physician, an herbalist, a student of the sciences of human health must know.”
William remained thoughtful for some time. Then he asked Severinus to open the corpse’s mouth and observe the tongue. Severinus, his curiosity aroused, took a thin spatula, one of the instruments of his medical art, and obeyed. He uttered a cry of amazement: “The tongue is black!”
“So, then,” William murmured, “he grasped something with his fingers and ingested it. ... This eliminates the pois
ons you mentioned before, which kill by penetrating the skin. But it doesn’t make our deductions any easier. Because now, for him and for Venantius, we must presume a voluntary act. They rasped something and put it in their mouths, knowing what they were doing. ...”
“Something to eat? To drink?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps—why not?—a musical instrument, like a flute ...”
“Absurd,” Severinus said.
“Of course it’s absurd. But we mustn’t dismiss any hypothesis, no matter how farfetched. Now let’s return to the poisonous substance. If someone who knows poisons as you do had broken in here and had used some of these herbs of yours, could he have produced a lethal ointment capable of causing those marks on the fingers and the tongue? Capable of being mixed with food or drink, smeared on a spoon, on something that is put in the mouth?”
“Yes,” Severinus admitted, “but who? And besides, even if we accept this hypothesis, how would he have administered the poison to our two poor brothers?”
Frankly, I myself couldn’t imagine Venantius or Berengar letting himself be approached by someone who handed him a mysterious substance and being persuaded to eat it or drink it. But William did not seem upset by this unlikelihood. “We will think about that later,” he said, “because now I would like you to try to remember some event that perhaps you haven’t recalled before. Someone who asked you questions about your herbs, for instance; someone who has easy access to the infirmary …”
“Just a moment,” Severinus said. “A long time ago, years it was, on one of those shelves I kept a highly powerful substance, given to me by a brother who had traveled in distant lands. He couldn’t tell me what it was made of, herbs for sure, but not all of them familiar. To look at, it was slimy and yellowish; but I was advised not to touch it, because if it only came into contact with my lips it would kill me in a short time. The brother told me that, when ingested even in minimal doses, in the space of a half hour it caused a feeling of great weariness, then a slow paralysis of all the limbs, and finally death. He didn’t want to carry it with him, and so he presented it to me. I kept it for a long time, because I meant to examine it somehow. Then one day there was a great storm up here. One of my assistants, a novice, had left the infirmary door open, and the hurricane, wrought havoc in this room where we are now. Bottles broken, liquids spilled on the floor, herbs and powders scattered. I worked a whole day putting my things back in order, and I accepted help only in sweeping away the broken vessels and the herbs that could not be recovered. At the end I realized that the very ampoule I mentioned to you was missing. At first I was worried, then I decided it had been broken and become confused with the other rubbish. I had the infirmary floor washed carefully, and the shelves. ...”
“And you had seen the ampoule a few hours before the storm?”
“Yes ... or, rather, no, now that I think about it. It was behind a row of pots, carefully hidden, and I didn’t check it every day. ...”
“Therefore, as far as you know, it could have been stolen quite a while before the storm, without your finding out?”
“Now that I think about it, yes, unquestionably.”
“And that novice of yours could have stolen it and, then could have seized the occasion of the storm deliberately to leave the door open and create confusion among your things?”
Severinus seemed very excited. “Yes, of course. Not only that, but as I recall what happened, I was quite surprised that the hurricane, violent though it was, had upset so many things. It could quite well be that someone took advantage of the storm to devastate the room and produce more damage than the wind could have done!”
“Who was the novice?”
“His name was Augustine. But he died last year, a fall from scaffolding as he and other monks and servants were cleaning the sculptures of the façade of the church. Actually, now that I think about it, he swore up and down that he had not left the door open before the storm. I was the one, in my fury, who held him responsible for the accident. Perhaps he really was not guilty.”
“And so we have a third person, perhaps far more expert than a novice, who knew about your rare poison. Whom had you told about it?”
“That I really don’t remember. The abbot, of course, to ask his permission to keep such a dangerous substance. And a few others, perhaps in the library, because I was looking for some herbaria that might give me information.”
“But didn’t you tell me you keep here the books that are most useful to your art?”
“Yes, and many of them,” he said, pointing to a corner of the room where some shelves held dozens of volumes. “But then I was looking for certain books I couldn’t keep here, which Malachi actually was very reluctant to let me see. In fact, I had to ask the abbot’s authorization.” His voice sank, and he was almost shy about letting me hear his words. “You know, in a secret part of the library, they keep books on necromancy, black magic, and recipes for diabolical philters. I was allowed to consult some of these works, of necessity, and I was hoping to find a description of that poison and its functions. In vain.”
“So you spoke about it with Malachi.”
“Of course, with him definitely, and perhaps also with Berengar, who was his assistant. But you mustn’t jump to conclusions: I don’t remember clearly, perhaps other monks were present as I was talking, the scriptorium at times is fairly crowded, you know. …”
“I’m not suspecting anyone. I’m only trying to understand what can have happened. In any event, you tell me this took place some years ago, and it’s odd that anyone would steal a poison and then not use it until so much later. It would suggest a malignant mind brooding for a long time in darkness over a murderous plan.”
Severinus blessed himself, an expression of horror on his face. “God forgive us all!” he said.
There was no further comment to be made. We again covered Berengar’s body, which had to be prepared for the funeral.
PRIME
In which William induces first Salvatore and then the cellarer to confess their past, Severinus finds the stolen lenses, Nicholas brings the new ones, and William, now with six eyes, goes to decipher the manuscript of Venantius.
We were coming out as Malachi entered. He seemed very annoyed to find us there and started to leave again. From inside, Severinus saw him and said, “Were you looking for me? Is it for—” He broke off, glancing at us. Malachi signaled to him, imperceptibly, as if to say, “We’ll talk about it later. …” We were going out as he was entering, and so all three of us were to the doorway.
Malachi said, somewhat redundantly, “I was looking for the brother herbalist. ... I ... I have a headache.” “It must be the enclosed air of the library,” William said to him, in a tone of considerate sympathy. “You should inhale something.”
Malachi’s lips twitched as if he wanted to speak again, but then he gave up the idea, bowed his head, and went on inside, as we moved off.
“What is he seeing Severinus for?” I asked.
“Adso,” my master said to me impatiently, “learn to use your head and think.” Then he changed the subject: “We must question some people now. At least,” he added, as his eyes explored the grounds, “while they’re still alive. By the way: from now on we must be careful about what we eat and drink. Always take your food from the common plate, and your beverage from the pitcher the others have filled their cups from. After Berengar we are the ones who know most. Except, naturally, the murderer.”
“But whom do you want to question now?”
“Adso,” William said, “you will have observed that here the most interesting things happen at night. They die at night, they wander about the scriptorium at night, women are brought at night into the abbey. ... We have a daytime abbey and a nighttime abbey, and the nighttime one seems, unhappily, the more interesting. So, every person who roams about at night interests us, including, for example, the man you saw last night with the girl. Perhaps the business of the girl does not have anything to do with the poisonings
, and perhaps it has. In any case, I have my ideas about last night’s man, and he must be one who knows other things about the nocturnal life of this holy place. And, speak of the Devil, here he is, coming this way.”
He pointed to Salvatore, who had also seen us. I notice a slight hesitation in his step, as if, wishing to avoid us, he was about to turn around. But it was only for a moment. Obviously, he realized he couldn’t escape the meeting, and he continued toward us. He greeted us with a broad smile and a fairly unctuous “Benedicite.” My master hardly allowed him to finish and spoke to him sharply.
“You know the Inquisition arrives here tomorrow?” he asked him.
Salvatore didn’t seem pleased with this news. In a faint voice, he asked, “And me?”
“And you would be wise to tell the truth to me, your friend and a Friar Minor as you once were, rather than have to tell it tomorrow to those whom you know quite well.”
Attacked so brusquely, Salvatore seemed to abandon all resistance. With a meek air he looked at William, as if to indicate he was ready to tell whatever he was asked.
“Last night there was a woman in the kitchen. Who was with her?”
“Oh, a female who sells herself like mercandia cannot be bona or have cortesia,” Salvatore recited.
“I don’t want to know whether the girl is pure. I want to know who was with her!”
“Deu, these evil females are all clever! They think di e noche about how to trap a man. ...”
William seized him roughly by the chest.” Who was with her, you or the cellarer?”
Salvatore realized he couldn’t go on lying. He began to tell a strange story, from which, with great effort, we learned that, to please the cellarer, he procured girls for him in the village, introducing them within the walls at night by paths he would not reveal to us. But he swore he acted out of the sheer goodness of his heart, betraying a comic regret that he could not find a way to enjoy his own pleasure and see that the girl, having satisfied the cellarer, would give something also to him. He said all this with slimy, lubricious smiles and, winks, as if to suggest he was speaking to men made of flesh, accustomed to such practices. He stole glances at me, nor could I check him as I would have liked, because I felt myself bound to him by a common secret, his accomplice and companion in sin.
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