by Giulio Leoni
But beneath the surface of his rational reflections he felt a twinge of disappointment: never again would he see that woman, who had escaped him for ever.
Then he spotted a glimmer of light coming from a little passageway leading to the stairs of the abbey tower. His heart leaped in his throat as he started running again, charging up the narrow stairway towards the top. When he reached the final flight, he stopped, panting, beneath the rough arch leading to the bell-tower, which was lit by a candle in a niche in the wall. The wheels of the old bells still hung from the roof-beams, and beneath them someone had arranged some cushions. In the total silence of the night he could hear the breathing of the figure that lay on that improvised bed under a thin organza veil. The shape of it … At that moment the woman, taking a deeper breath, stirred in her sleep, turning on to one side and revealing her back.
The gentle curve of her hips appeared in all its splendour. She seemed to be dreaming. Her hands, joined in her lap, brushed her private parts with a tender and barely perceptible gesture. As if she were trying to protect herself.
‘Psyche waiting for the hand of Eros,’ Dante thought excitedly, as Amara began stirring in her sleep once more, stretching her legs voluptuously. For the first time he could see, right before his eyes, all the splendour of a body that he had only guessed at before, when it had been hidden by her clothes.
He approached slowly until he could touch the bed. The flickering light of the little flame seemed to bring the thin fabric to life. Trembling, he stretched out a hand, slowly revealing the body. Amara appeared before him as clearly as an ivory statue.
He felt a flame blazing up inside him, and his breath quickened. The woman, moving again, had turned round, revealing her lap, still veiled. Her quivering eyelids revealed that her sleep was coming to an end. Her eyes, which looked as if they were made of clear glass, flashed a few times; then, after a shy gesture of fear at the sight of the man leaning over her, a mysterious, distant smile appeared on her mouth, the like of which Dante had only ever seen on the statues of ancient goddesses.
She stared at him for a few moments, then slowly spread her arms. The prior fell to his knees before her. He felt her hands brushing the back of his neck and drawing him gently towards her half-opened lips.
Her mouth tasted of sleep and honey. Dante abandoned himself voluptuously to the kiss, trying to wipe away the smile that still hovered before his eyes. Breathing in the woman’s breath, he began to peel back the thin cloth that covered her breasts. Freed from their constraints, her erect, excited nipples stretched towards him.
When he began to loosen the sheets around her belly, Amara gripped his hand with unexpected strength and stopped it from going any further. Then she rose slowly to her feet, still keeping him at a distance with her fingertips. He took a step further, trying to grab hold of the creature who went on eluding him, but once again she escaped his grip, taking refuge in a corner of the cell, beside the candle-flame.
At last, with a slow movement, as if she was dancing, she herself shook away the last of the cloths that still covered her belly, displaying herself to his gaze. Dante brought his hand to his mouth, his lips half-open with surprise.
Before him was a being of god-like form, the monster described by Ovid, male and female at the same time, a living hermaphrodite sprung in all its albino glory from a page of the Metamorphoses.
A strange sensation had taken hold of the poet, a mixture of horror and desire. He took a step back towards the door, but stopped on the threshold. The creature had spread its arms, revealing all the pallor of its body. A big featherless bird. That must be what the angels look like, he thought, the ones that form a crown of praise at the summit of the sky.
The creature moved again, beckoning him, approached him in all its dazzling nakedness, and began once again to stroke his face with its hand, as cold and white as snow. Attraction and repulsion alternated within him. The gentleness of the gesture and the sweetness of the facial expression were those of a woman in love. But as Amara began to approach him again, he saw with horror that the creature’s male member was also in a state of excitement.
Unable to react, Dante discovered that he was torn between two desires, like the monster that was stretching its hands towards him. Then, with an effort of will, he gripped the organza veil that lay abandoned on the bed and wrapped it delicately around the ivory body, conquering the desire to press it to him and possess it. Now that it was no longer naked, its duality too had vanished and Amara had become female once again, by the same magic that had made a male of her a moment before.
Still bewildered, Dante dashed from the cell and ran away without a backward glance. On the stairs he encountered Cecco, standing on the bottom steps with his arms folded. The poet raced past him without saying a word, avoiding the sarcastic glance that the other man darted at him.
He was sure that Cecco knew everything, and that he would make a fool of the prior. But he would have time to settle his accounts, he said to himself, choking back the insults that had risen to his lips.
Different considerations now flooded his mind. His confusion and his impotent rage diluted his arousal, and the voice of reason returned to speak in his ear. Amara was a man … was also a man. And what if in her masculine condition she was really the one who was due to come – Frederick’s heir, the one to restore his throne? Bernardo hadn’t known, or hadn’t wanted to be more precise about the sex of the heir. Perhaps because he didn’t know whether Bianca Lancia had given the Emperor a boy or a girl? Or because it was in a single descendant that the two sexes were united, and the new Emperor would put his dual natures on the throne?
He shook his head to rid it of such an insane idea. Amara didn’t look more than twenty, and she would have had to be at least fifty to have been born of the Emperor’s seed. But Dante didn’t seem certain even of that. Had his own teachers, the great writers of antiquity, not told of fabulous creatures with the gift of immortality?
He ran away, into the street, like a wounded animal in search of its lair.
At the priory
DANTE NERVOUSLY crumpled the sheet on which he had written only a few lines. He looked at the thin ream of pages that lay on the desk: soon it would be finished, and he didn’t know whether he would be able to get hold of another one. He would have to go back to working in his mind alone, exploiting the book of memory.
A violent spasm struck him behind the eyes, with its fiery finger. He closed his eyes tightly, waiting for the cloud of flaming sparks to fade away.
As he held his fists tight against his eyelids, he thought he was aware of a movement behind the door and of a hand touching the latch. But he didn’t have the strength to turn round. When he finally did manage to do so, he saw the visitor who had come in and was waiting motionlessly, leaning against the door-post.
‘Pietra … is it you?’ he murmured, recognising the woman’s slender outline. In the light from the little candle on the desk she barely stood out against the darkness. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Lagia’s women always find open doors. I also have friends among your guards,’ she replied with her vulgar chuckle.
Dante struggled to his feet and walked over to the girl. He stretched out a hand to touch her cheek, but she recoiled, turning her head away.
‘Don’t touch me. You haven’t paid.’
The poet lowered his hand. The girl stared at him with her deep-green eyes. The mass of dark curls, loose on her shoulders, framed her face. He thought there was a slight luminescence to her eyes, which were caught by the flickering light from the candle. For a moment the sweet phantasm of Amara was superimposed over those hard features, hiding them from view.
Pietra carefully studied his feverish face. Then she exploded into coarse laughter. ‘So you tried it on with that woman? Her too?’ She laughed again, scornfully. ‘And did you enjoy yourself?’
‘That’s enough,’ Dante said, feeling sick to his stomach.
‘Wouldn’t you like a real woman,
so you can forget that other one?’ Her feline appearance was accentuated by her short, straight nose and her full lips. She wore a light tunic over her thin body, with the narrow hips and the broad shoulders of an adolescent boy. She leaned against the wall, her body arched, her erect little breasts stretching the cloth of her garment. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she repeated, stretching her hand towards him, as if to establish a boundary between them. Then she looked all round the room, her eyes finally settling on the scattered papers. ‘More words. That’s all you know how to do. Say words.’
‘They are the consolation of the man on his own. His words.’
‘You want to be on your own because you’re afraid of being abandoned,’ Pietra replied mockingly. Dante was about to answer, but she didn’t give him time. ‘Words, on your own.’ She picked up one of the pages and furiously threw it into the air. ‘So many pointless words.’
The burning vice still gripped the poet’s brow. Tottering, he dropped on to the bed.
Pietra had been following his movements. ‘That illness of yours again?’ she asked coldly.
He didn’t reply. The girl stepped forward until her breasts brushed his forehead. Then she passed a hand behind the back of his neck, pressing his face delicately against her own body and gently stroking the tendons on his neck. Dante caught the perfume of her skin, a mixture of cheap essences from the other side of the Arno and a hidden, subtle stench that rose up from her belly. He closed his eyes, surrendering like a child in his mother’s arms. He felt his eyes filling with tears, and sobs shook his chest. Then he felt a feeling of warmth stirring within him.
He looked up. Pietra, ceasing her caresses, brought her lips down towards his. Then she caught his mouth in an endless kiss as his hands rose up her legs, raising her tunic to her belly. He kissed her taut, freckled skin, then drew her on to his bed, tore off her clothes and plunged into her body as if entering a dark sea.
HE REMAINED motionless for an incalculable length of time. The girl, lying next to him propped up on her elbow, studied him with an enigmatic expression.
‘Pietra, I …’
‘Don’t say anything,’ the prostitute broke in, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t keep ruining everything with your words. Don’t say anything more,’ she murmured, kissing him again. But now her mouth was cold. He thought she was only obeying the rules of her profession, when the time came to say goodbye.
‘Why did you come?’ he asked in a low voice.
She didn’t reply, merely shrugging. ‘Who knows. Perhaps I felt like seeing you.’ She was hurriedly getting dressed, her thoughts already elsewhere. In the doorway she turned towards him again. ‘You are in danger. You and the other people involved in this business of yours.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know. Lagia told the Inquisition everything. They talked about you.’
‘What did you find out?’
‘I only heard a few words. But you’ve got to get away from here,’ the girl said again with an unexpected flash of tenderness in her eyes. ‘They were saying that your plan had been discovered. They talked about an “accursed son”.’
Dante ran over to her and grabbed her by an arm. ‘Are you sure? Is that what they said?’
She pulled away from him and escaped along the portico.
Left on his own, the prior began thinking furiously. So Acquasparta knew about the plot to restore the imperial dynasty. But did he also know the name of the “accursed son”? Perhaps not, given that he expected a confession from Dante: he seemed sure that the poet was in on the secret. Could it be that in the recesses of his mind he held all parts of the secret, and just hadn’t noticed yet? Was he really a victim of a joke played by fate?
8
After midday, 13th August
HE MUST have fallen asleep without noticing. And yet he felt as if he had closed his eyes only for a few moments, yielding to the confused hubbub of sounds and images that seemed to rise up from the wooden floor. He felt as if the ancient, uncovered tombs of the dead buried in the church lay beneath his feet, as if their shades had risen up to him, to watch him and spur him on to action. When he opened his eyes again, the cell was flooded with light. He looked around, his mind still fogged, trying to calculate from the height of the sun how much time had passed. That star had already passed its zenith and was beginning to fall towards the west. He leaped to his feet, trying to impose some order on his thoughts.
Meanwhile the sounds and voices around him were becoming more clearly defined. There was a frenetic coming and going under the portico. Dante walked to the door and threw it open.
One of the Bargello’s men appeared breathlessly in the doorway. ‘Please come! There’s been another murder!’
‘Where?’ Dante asked, alarmed, dashing outside.
‘In Santa Croce. At the house of the Lombard, Maestro Alberto.’
‘What happened?’
‘Maestro Alberto … He’s been murdered in his workshop – come!’
The prior set off, fury poisoning his blood. The bargellini tried to escort him, opening up a path through the crowd, but their long lances were too cumbersome for the job, so he reached the door of the workshop on his own. The man lay on the floor, drenched in blood, beside the tools of his trade still neatly arranged on his workbench. As far as Dante could tell, nothing had been touched. The cases and cabinets had not been forced, as if the murderer hadn’t been interested in their contents. It seemed that whoever had killed the man had taken nothing away.
‘Where is Hamid, his servant?’ he asked the Bargello, who was standing in the doorway.
‘He made off after murdering his boss. The whole of the local guard is on his tail. He won’t get away for long,’ the head of the guards replied triumphantly. ‘We’ve checked, but nothing’s missing. Upstairs in the bedroom there’s a little coffer full of florins. It was not a thief, but the vengeful hand of his servant that killed him.’
Dante grimaced with disappointment. If the bargellini got their hands on that innocent boy, nothing could save him, he thought bitterly. Not even his own authority as a prior, which would shortly expire. In a corner he saw that poor wretch’s prayer-rug, and on it the book.
He picked up the volume and went on looking inside it. Whoever it was that had killed the mechanicus with two knife-blows to the neck must have been looking for something else. He congratulated himself on his farsightedness in putting the device in a safe place.
At the same time he went on thinking furiously. Maestro Alberto hadn’t been part of the conspiracy, and yet his death was plainly linked to the strange plot that was unfolding in Florence, something to do with the great Emperor. And clearly to do with the mechanism that the victim had reconstructed.
But the murderer hadn’t looked for anything in the workshop, a sign that he knew the machine was no longer there. So why had he killed? There was only one logical answer: he wanted to ensure that the only man capable of constructing a similar mechanism lost his life. It was the secret that he had wanted to snuff out, rather than Alberto’s life.
The murderer? Dante suddenly thought back to the mechanic’s wounds, so similar to the ones that had killed the others. Why one murderer? The same pattern seemed to be repeated in all the corpses: two blows a short distance apart, only one of them fatal. And what if two people were in fact responsible for the crime? Two men accustomed to fighting and striking in pairs, capable of attacking from both directions, leaving the victim unable to defend himself. Accustomed to sharing death as they were prepared to share everything: bread, their horse, a woman … A sudden idea flashed into the poet’s mind. The crazed fragments of the plan seemed to assume a definite shape: in his memory he ran through the dialogue on the bridge. Of course, that must be it. The statue of Janus reappeared before his eyes.
But if that was so, perhaps there was still a chance of interrupting that chain of horrors. He leaped to his feet, passing before the disconcerted eyes of the Bargello.
He reac
hed the Angel Inn. On the ground floor he met the landlord, who was busy decanting wine from a big jar.
‘Is Messer Bernardo upstairs?’ Dante asked as he passed, making for the stairs.
‘No, Prior, he went out a short while ago. I think someone was waiting for him outside.’
‘You didn’t see who it was?’
‘No. Messer Bernardo seemed to be ill. He asked me if anyone had come looking for him. I told him they hadn’t and he sat down and asked for something to drink. But he was obviously waiting for someone. Every now and again he got up and went to the door to look outside. Then, the last time, he waved his hand and left. But I didn’t see who was with him.’
Dante nodded, then headed for the little room on the first floor. The door was unlocked, as if Bernardo was not afraid for his possessions. Perhaps he thought no thief could be interested in written pages, or that in a city of thieves no one would bother to appropriate knowledge, Dante thought bitterly.
There was really nothing in the room that anyone could have stolen. Just a modest chest at the foot of the bed, with a few rough items of clothing. Bernardo must have been in a hurry when he abandoned the work he was busy with: the Res gestae Svevorum. Open on the desk was a thin, bound volume and beside it some sheets of cloth-paper and an ink-well.
He started reading out loud: ‘The name of this book is the Cronica federiciana, and concerns the affairs of my sovereign, the wonder of the world …’ Dante looked up for a moment, then back down to the parchment. ‘… whom I, Bishop Mainardino, saw, and whose memory I leave to the just: compilation commenced in the year of Our Lord Christ MCCLV.’
Startled, he raised his eyes. ‘The Chronicles of Mainardino,’ he murmured. ‘Frederick’s great biographer. So it really does exist. Bernardo wasn’t lying.’
He quickly scanned the pages, frantically running through years of exploits and glory. The almost miraculous birth at Jesi, the struggle for the crown. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the hundred towers, the triumphs and the defeats, the insatiable desire for knowledge and the splendour of Frederick’s court. His poems …
