The Secret Supper (5 page)

The Master General pointed to a sheet of parchment placed on top of the wad. On it, in large characters written in red ink, was the puzzle with the signature of our correspondent. I had seen the signature many times, since it appeared in Latin at the end of each of the Soothsayer’s letters, but until now I had given it little attention.

I felt my eyes cloud over as they fell on those seven lines, which would henceforth become my principal concern.

They read:

Oculos jus inumera,

ed noli voltum dspicere.

In latere nominis

mei notam rinvenies.

Contemplari et contemplata

aliis radere.

Veritas

Though the text itself was simple, I had no idea what it meant.

Count its eyes

but look not on its face.

The number of my name

you shall find on its side.

Observe and give to others

the result of your observation.

Truth.

7

Of course, I obeyed. What else could I have done?

I arrived in Milan after Twelfth Night. It was one of those January mornings in which the glitter of the snow blinds the eyes and the clean air freezes the innards without pity. To reach my destination, I had ridden almost without stopping, except for three or four hours of sleep in filthy inns, and I was stiff and wet after a three-day journey in the midst of the cruelest winter in memory. But all that was of no importance. Milan, capital of Lombardy, the hub of court intrigues and of territorial squabbles with France and the neighboring counties, the city I had so thoroughly studied, lay now before me.

It was an impressive metropolis. The city of the Sforza, the largest south of the Alps, occupied twice the space of Rome; eight large gates guarded an impenetrable wall around a circular plan that, seen from above, must have resembled the shield of a giant warrior. And yet it was not its defenses that awed me but its newness and cleanliness that gave the city a profound sense of order. Its citizens did not relieve themselves in every corner, as they did in Rome, nor were visitors incessantly assailed by prostitutes. Here, every angle, every house, every public building seemed conceived for some superior function. Even its proud cathedral—in appearance fragile and skeletal, in contrast with the massive bulks of those in the south—poured its soothing influences over the entire valley. Seen from the hills, Milan looked liked the last place on earth to breed sin and disorder.

Some distance before reaching Porta Ticinese, the city’s noblest entrance, a kind merchant offered to accompany me to the Tower of Filarete, the main gate into Ludovico il Moro’s fortress. Built on one of the corners of the urban shield, the Sforza castle seemed like a miniature replica of the city walls. The merchant laughed at the look of surprise on my face. He said he was a tanner from Cremona, and a good Catholic, to boot, who would gladly accompany me into the fortress in exchange for a blessing for himself and his family. I accepted the bargain.

The good man left me by the duke’s castle exactly at the ninth hour. The site was even more magnificent than I had supposed. Banners with the terrible arms of the Sforzas—a sort of giant serpent devouring a poor soul—dropped from the battlements. Thin blue flags waved in the wind while, from somewhere inside the fortress, half a dozen huge chimneys belched big puffs of thick black smoke. The Filarete entrance consisted of a menacing portcullis and two gates studded with bronze. No less than fifteen men kept watch, poking with their pikes the bags of grain that were being unloaded from carts in the vicinity of the kitchens.

One of the soldiers showed me the way. I was to walk to the west end of the tower inside the fortress itself and ask for the visitors’ reception area and the “mourning offices” that had been set up to receive the delegations for the funeral of Donna Beatrice. My Cremona guide had already warned me that the whole city would come to a halt on that day. And indeed, there was not much activity going on, considering the hour. I was surprised that Ludovico’s secretary, a lanky courtier with an expressionless face, received me almost without delay. His name was Marchesino Stanga, and he apologized for being unable to conduct this servant of God unto his master. Even so, he examined my letter of introduction with a skeptical eye, making certain that the pontifical seal was authentic, and returned it to me with a gesture of regret.

“I’m sorry, Father Leyre,” said the courtier, apologizing profusely. “You must understand that my lord is seeing no one after the death of his lady wife. I imagine you realize what a difficult moment we are going through, and the duke’s need to be left alone.”

“Of course,” I agreed with feigned courtesy.

“However,” he added, “when the mourning period is over, I will acquaint him with the fact of your presence in the city.”

I would have liked to look Ludovico in the eye to discover, as in the many interrogations I had witnessed, whether or not he hid sinister intentions of heresy or crime. But the clerk, dressed in a velvet doublet and a scarlet robe trimmed with fur, and speaking in a tone of petty superiority, was bent on preventing me from doing so.

“Nor can we provide you with lodging, as is our custom,” he said dryly. “The castle is closed and we are not admitting visitors. I beg you, Father, to pray for the soul of Donna Beatrice and to return after the funeral. Then we will welcome you as you deserve.”

“Requiescat in pace,” I muttered as I crossed myself. “I will do so. And I will also pray for you.”

I was in a peculiar situation. Without being able to set myself up in the vicinity of the duke and his family, and thus prevented from wandering, as I had intended, more or less freely through the castle, my first investigations would be delayed. I had to find discreet lodgings that would grant me a place to study in peace. With Torriani’s documents burning a hole in my bags, I would need a quiet atmosphere, three hot meals a day and a good deal of luck to decipher the secret. Since it was not sensible for a monk to seek a room among the laity, my choices were soon reduced to two: either the venerable monastery of San Eustorgio or the very new one of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where the possibility of crossing paths with the Soothsayer fired my imagination. Then, the question of lodging settled, I would have time enough to concentrate on the clue that Master Torriani had put into my hands in Bethany.

I admit that Divine Providence aided me in this matter. San Eustorgio soon revealed itself to be the worst of the two options. Lying very close to the Cathedral, next to the main market, it was usually full of busybodies who would soon be asking themselves what kind of business could bring a Roman inquisitor to this place. Even though its location would afford me a certain perspective on the Soothsayer’s activities, saving me from the risk of meeting him face-to-face without knowing his identity, it nevertheless offered me more inconveniences than advantages.

As to my other choice, Santa Maria delle Grazie—besides being the presumed hiding place of my quarry—presented a small but solvable disadvantage: that was where the crowded obsequies of Donna Beatrice would take place. Its chapel, recently renovated by Bramante, was about to become the center of everyone’s attention.

Otherwise, Santa Maria had everything I required. Its well-stocked library, lodged on the second story of one of the buildings that opened onto the so-called Cloister of the Dead, held volumes by Suetonius, Philostratus, Plotinus, Xenophon and even Plato himself, purchased in the days of Cosimo the Elder. It stood near the duke’s fortress and at not too great a distance from the Porta Vercellina. It possessed an excellent kitchen, a splendid pastry oven, a well, a vegetable garden, a tailor’s shop and a hospital. And above all, its greatest advantage was this: that, unless Master Torriani was much mistaken, the Soothsayer might well appear to me in one of its corridors without my having the need to solve any riddle whatsoever.

I was naïve.

Except in this latter respect, Providence did its work well. There was one cell still vacant at Santa Maria, which was immediately put at my disposal. It was a tiny room, barely a few feet long, holding a cot with no mattress and a small table set under a window overlooking the street called Magenta. The monks asked no questions. They perused my credentials with the same look of distrust as that of the duke’s secretary, but they relaxed once I assured them that I had come to their house in search of peace for my troubled soul. “Even an inquisitor needs time for recollection,” I explained. They understood.

One single condition was imposed on me. The sexton, a monk with bulging eyes and a strange accent, warned me very sternly:

“Never enter the refectory without permission. Master Leonardo doesn’t want anyone interrupting his work, and the Abbot wishes to please him in every way possible. Do you understand?”

I nodded my assent.

8

The first place I visited was the library of Santa Maria. I was very curious about it. Built over the disputed and now restricted refectory that the Soothsayer had branded the focal point of all evil, it was a vast room with rectangular windows, lined by a dozen small reading tables and the librarian’s large desk. Immediately behind it, protected by a thick locked door, was where the books were kept. What especially drew my attention was the heating: a boiler on the ground floor fed steam into a series of copper pipes that lent warmth to the floor tiles.

“It’s not for the readers,” the monk responsible for the place hastened to explain, seeing me interested in the ingenious contraption. “It’s for the books. We keep volumes that are too valuable to allow them to be ruined by the cold.”

I think that Father Alessandro Trivulzio, the guardian and custodian of the library, was the first monk to regard me not with suspicion but rather with shameless curiosity. Tall, bony, extremely pale and exquisitely mannered, he seemed delighted to see a new face in his realm.

“Not many people come here,” he admitted. “Much less all the way from Rome!”

“Ah. So you’ve already found out I’m Roman?”

“News has wings, Father. Santa Maria is still a small community. I doubt that by now there’s anyone in the community who is not aware of the arrival of an inquisitor in our house.”

The monk winked conspiratorially.

“I’m not here on official business,” I lied. “I’m here because of personal matters.”

“It makes no difference. Inquisitors are men of letters, scholars. And here most of the brothers have difficulties reading or writing. If you stay for a time among us, I think we’ll enjoy each other’s company.”

Then he added:

“Is it true that in Rome you work in the Secretariat of Keys?”

“Yes,” I said doubtfully.

“Wonderful, Father. That’s wonderful. We’ll have much to talk about. I think you’ve chosen the best place in the world to spend some time.”

I found Alessandro agreeable. He was close to fifty years old and appeared wholly at ease, with a hooked nose and the sharpest chin I had ever seen, while his Adam’s apple seemed ready to pop out of his throat. On his desk he kept a pair of thick spectacles, no doubt to magnify the print in those extensive volumes, and the sleeves of his habit bore several impressive ink stains. Though I did not confide in him at once (in fact, I tried not to look at him too closely so as not to become bewitched by his ungainly face), I will say that a heartfelt current of affection flowed immediately between us. It was he who insisted in attending to my needs personally during my stay at the monastery, and he even offered to show me around that splendid building in which everything seemed so new. Furthermore, he promised to protect my peace and quiet so as to allow me to concentrate on my work.

“If your example caught on and more brothers came to our house to study,” he complained, not able to hold back his tongue, “we might soon be able to transform it into a House of General Studies like those in Rome, or even perhaps into a university—”

“Don’t other monks come here to study?”

“Very few for what this place can offer. Even though our library might seem modest to you, it holds one of the most important collections of ancient texts in the entire dukedom.”

“Indeed?”

“Forgive me if I commit the sin of immodesty, but I’ve been working here for a long time now. Perhaps, to a cultured Roman such as yourself, it might seem poor compared to the Vatican Library, but please believe me if I say that we hold books here that even the librarians of His Holiness could not imagine—”

“In that case,” I answered courteously, “it will be a privilege to consult them.”

Father Alessandro bowed his head as if accepting the compliment, and started shuffling his papers around, as if looking for something important.

“First, I need a small favor.” He laughed between his teeth. “In fact, you are a gift from Heaven. For someone like yourself, trained to decipher messages at the Secretariat of Keys, a riddle like this will be child’s play.”

The Dominican extended toward me a piece of paper with a few scrawls. It was a simple drawing. A rough musical scale interrupted by a single misplaced note (“za”) and a hook. Like this:

“Well?” he asked impatiently. “Do you understand the thing? I’ve spent three days trying to solve it in vain.”

“And what are you supposed to be able to read here?”

“A sentence in the Romance tongue.”

I studied the riddle without being able to divine its meaning. Obviously, the clue had to be in that misplaced “za.” Things that were not in their right place always held an answer, but what of the hook? I placed the elements in order in my head, beginning with the scale, and I grinned with amusement.

“It’s a sentence, certainly,” I said at last. “And very simple.”

“Simple?”

“All that’s required is to be able to read, Father Alessandro. See here: if you begin by translating the hook into Romance, that is to say, ‘amo,’ the rest of the drawing becomes clear at once.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s easy. Read amo and then the notes.”

Dubiously, the monk followed the drawing with his finger: