Immortal (15 page)

“The city must be desperate for ufficiali if they’re making magistrates of scum like you,” I sneered.

“There is witchcraft about you, Bastardo,” Nicolo hissed. “I’m telling people about you, and we’re watching you!” He dug his heels into his horse and trotted off with the other ufficiali close behind him. Furious, I picked up a stone and flung it after him.

“Beware, Luca,” Rosso warned. “You’ve an enemy in Silvano. Fear runs alongside the plague, and people are quick to kill what makes them uneasy.” I shrugged, stifling my anger. We each took a bubboni-spattered body by its armpits, lugging it to the ubiquitous heaps of the dead.

OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS,
my days fell into a rhythm. Rachel woke me before dawn and taught me letters, or rather, attempted to. I possessed the gift of auditory recall and verbal mimicry, and I never forgot a painting or a sculpture that I saw even once, but the meanings of the little squiggles she drew eluded me. It made no sense to me that those scratches cut into wax meant something. Rachel took to pinching me with her elegant, strong fingers when I forgot how to form a letter or drew it backward—which was almost always.

I escaped her schooling as soon as I could, ran from the barn to the house, bade the other Sfornos and the Wanderer good morning, and then took some bread dipped in olive oil and a chunk of cheese with me to meet Rosso at the Piazza del Capitano del Popolo. While we collected bodies, he would tell me stories about his wife and children. I liked hearing how his oldest son had copied him, how his second son had teased him, and how his daughter with the pretty hands used to help her mother sew his lucco. Once the girl had sewn his hose closed as a joke, and laughed until she wept when he hopped around on one foot trying to get his other foot in. When Rosso went to rest and take his midday meal, I ran off to see Geber.

One day Geber met me at the door laughing. “At this rate, you’ll never learn to read, my fine ignorant sorcerer,” he said. His face and black tunic were smudged with grainy ocher powder and he emitted the scent of salt and wet leather. Behind him, tendrils of dun-colored smoke scrolled about his room, weaving through the plethora of strange objects. “I’ll give you a lesson as well, perhaps spare your arm some pinching!”

“How do you know so much about me?” I demanded. In truth, the inside of my upper arm was black-and-blue because of Rachel’s slim strong fingers.

“The philosopher’s stone tells me,” he said mysteriously, chuckling. He gestured me in impatiently and set about giving me a second lesson. From then on, we would stand at the end of the table where his three-beakered still bubbled as he painted letters, and then combinations of them, onto small linen squares. When I read the square correctly seven times in a row, he let me toss it into the fireplace and watch the ink, like magic, paint the flames purple and green.

Despite myself, after a few months, as Florence baked in the natural oven of the Arno valley and then cooled again, and the number of corpses swelled like the tide and then finally began to wane, the double lessons began to work. Through no merit of my own, letters surrendered their mystery and spoke to me, first in whispers and then in clear, reasonable tones. As I read first syllables and then whole words, Rachel began to scribble numbers and sums alongside sentences. Before the plague, and hopefully again after, Florence with its banks and merchants abounded with people who could cipher well. As Silvano had told me, this skill was called abbaco, it was much valued in commerce, and I was pleased to learn it.

As my reading skills quickened, Geber spoke of other things. He showed me weights and measures, demonstrated the properties of metals and herbs, lectured on the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and the four qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry, and explained how all ores come from mercury and sulfur. He discussed with me the transformation of matter, such as when water, through evaporation, becomes air, and through condensation becomes water again. He instructed me in the difference between the purely mimetic art, which copies nature, and the perfective art, which improves upon it.

“The alchemist must use what nature uses, and restrict himself to that; the naturalness of his products depends on his imitating the workings of nature whenever possible!” he insisted as if I were arguing with him—which I was not. I had the sense of an old argument that persisted in his head. He ranted on about the need for experimentation, for a consistent witnessing of the alchemical art without taking anything for granted beforehand. “Not all alchemists agree with me. But I write down my observations, all of them, in detail,” he confided. “I have made a great book of them, the
Summa Perfectionis.
” Then he gave me a sad look, and I saw his sadness as an opening to ask him again about the Cathars.

“We were a group of worshippers devoted to God. We believed not in faith but in direct access to God, without the intervention of clergy.”

“And?” I prompted him slyly.

“And because we were devoted, we had access to the indivisible point within, the grain of mustard seed like a radiant blue pearl….” Geber’s voice softened and his eyes grew distant.

“Where did the Cathars come from?” I persisted.

“Directly from Lord Jesus,” he said sharply. “Our teachings are pure and perfect and come from Him. We knew, for example, that there is a feminine component of God in the soul of the world, that this material world was created by an evil God and that it is our task to escape material trappings through following the star within! That Judas Iscariot was no traitor, but was a beloved intimate of Christ and did only as the Lord asked in order to fulfill His mission on earth, that Judas was the only one to possess full knowledge of the truth of the God within—”

“Judas betrayed Christ, even I know that, and I have no catechism!” I argued.

“If Judas hadn’t handed over our Lord, would there be salvation?” Geber snapped.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But I meant what place did the Cathars come from?”

“Woolly-headed boys don’t think much.” Geber gave me a piercing look over the rims of his spectacles. “Cathars have been in all places and all times. We were intimates of the Sethian race before we received Christ. The Sethian race is the secret, incorruptible race of man, who carry the great knowledge and hide—”

“Am I of that Sethian race?” I interrupted, excited. “What does it mean, if I am? Do they have marks on their chests, and should I have one, too?”

Geber’s face smoothed suddenly. “I am not the one to reveal these things to you, boy.”

“Then at least teach me how to turn base metal into gold!”

“Not today.” He shook his head. “You will learn, eventually.” It was a promise he dangled before me, and with gold as the goal, Geber found me a willing student. He covered many subjects. He unrolled a great map on one of his long tables and showed me the Republic of Florence’s position on the boot of land extending into the Mediterranean, with the Tyrrhenian Sea on the east and the Adriatic Sea on the west. When I came to him with news of how a roving band of soldiers had killed three men and raped their women in the countryside and nothing was done about it by the city fathers, who had been decimated by the plague, he explained the city government and its history, how the nine-man
Signoria
which led the city was now jeopardized by the plague.

“Even the great Florentine
casate
are foundering, which is a measure of the plague’s devastation,” Geber said. “The casate originated hundreds of years ago. These ruling families are the Uberti, the Visdomini, the Buondelmonti, the Scali, the Medici, the Malespini, the Giandonati, most of whom had moved into the city but maintained their country lands with their patronage rights in their ancestral zones. They also nurtured a spirit of vendetta, which has haunted Florence, and which erupted into violence at a wedding banquet in 1216. There, a Buondelmonti wounded one of the Uberti with a knife. A marriage was proposed as reconciliation, but Buondelmonti chose vendetta. He was ambushed, and ended up a bloody corpse on the street by the statue of Mars.”

“The Uberti had their vengeance, problem solved,” I noted.

“It was the beginning of more than a century of problems!” Geber snapped. Everyone in Florence took sides, and the city was torn apart. Those who supported the Buondelmonti became Guelfs, supporters of the Pope, while Uberti supporters were Ghibellines, who supported the emperor. The two vied cruelly for power until the Ghibellines were finally broken.

“Which led to the Neri-Bianchi struggles in this century,” Geber continued. He looked up as if preparing his thoughts, and I saw the small black spot on his throat. I made a small sound, pointing, and he nodded. “The plague has marked me. Now let me tell you about the Donati….”

THAT NIGHT I WAS IN THE BARN
scrubbing the stink of plague off me, listening with only half an ear to the Wanderer. He was prattling on about how the universe was a balance of light and dark forces that seemed to be separate but were really all a part of the great formless Oneness. I drifted into my own thoughts because, after all, the Wanderer couldn’t teach me how to make gold and wouldn’t pinch my arm if he caught me daydreaming.

“I have been out tending to the ill. I hear your name being spoken in the city, Luca,” Sforno said seriously, as he came in and took the strong lye soap from me. I knew now from Geber’s lessons that the soap contained potash for the cleansing.

“What name do they call him?” the Wanderer asked. He sat on the tripod stool and stroked the fat gray barn cat. “Ah, but the question really is, and the right question is everything, do they give him a name or take away from him a name? Because to lose his name is perhaps the first step in the long climb up the tree of life to its Source.”

“I don’t want anyone to take away my name,” I said stubbornly. “Luca Bastardo may make me less than other people, but it’s mine. I intend to do great things with it!”

“The ultimate essence isn’t limited by name,” the Wanderer commented, “though for our convenience it is referred to as the
Ein Sof,
and one who contemplates it is annihilated in a sea of light and passes beyond control of his natural mind.”

“They call him ‘sorcerer,’” Sforno answered.

“Divine names unfold in accordance with a law of their own.” The Wanderer shrugged, combing his great gray beard with his meaty fingers. The warm-blooded animals in the candlelit barn swayed and uttered their moos and clucks and whinnies, and the gray cat even mewled, as if in response to his words.

Sforno dipped the scrub brush in the trough of water. “They say he practices black magic to remain youthful and beautiful, that no ordinary boy could have killed eight men in one night.”

“Do they say he kills Christian babies and drinks their blood, as they do about us? Do they give you satanic horns, too?” the Wanderer crowed. “Welcome to the tribe, wolf cub! God has chosen you, too, and tribulations and struggle await you!” He clapped me on the shoulder.

Sforno shrugged. “Silvano’s son is telling tales. Those left alive in Florence are listening. Florence is a meddlesome place. People are quick to believe nonsense when they’re afraid.”

“They can’t do much now, it’s hard enough to clear the bodies of the dead,” I said. Sforno shucked off his tunic and camicia and lathered himself with the soap. His broad chest was solid and covered with hair, and though I had seen many men unclothed, I turned away.

“It’s best for you to avoid groups of people,” Sforno said. “A crowd can turn murderous.”

“Ten men turn into a community of God,” the Wanderer said.

“There aren’t ten people who would gather together,” I noted. “They fear the plague. Half the city is dead. Signore Sforno, there’s a man I know who needs a doctor. Will you come?”

“I’ll come,” the Wanderer said, yawning. “I need a diversion, and I hear the sound of chariot wheels turning. Moshe, do you think your pretty wife made lamb for dinner?”

“I don’t know what she found at the butcher shop today.” Sforno frowned. “Or if she found any meat. She trades with the other women and the one Hebrew butcher still working.”

“Jews are lucky they have each other to trade with. There’s little food,” I said. “You can comb the whole city and not find three eggs. No one’s coming in from the contado with new food and meat. The markets are deserted. People are hungry.”

“There’ll be problems when plague survivors begin to die of starvation,” Sforno said. He and the Wanderer exchanged a grim look.

“Jews are the scapegoats of the world,” the Wanderer said wearily, his mirth dissipated in an instant. His face seemed to melt like wax held above a flame, and he looked old, impossibly old, centuries old; he looked as if he’d seen more pain and suffering than any man could possibly observe and remain sane. Then his face reassembled itself into its usual ironic lines. “Think what a service we provide for those who must have someone to blame! They ought to thank us while they burn us.”

“Jews aren’t the only scapegoats,” I said. “Witches are blamed and killed. Cathars, too.”

“Cathars? There’s a name I haven’t heard in many turns of the wheel,” the Wanderer boomed. “They might as well have been Jews, for all the kindness they received at the hands of their fellow Christians. Indeed, they were friends to Jews. They lived alongside us in France!”

“Do you know where they came from before that?” I asked.

“They wandered the earth, seeking safe haven, even as we Jews do,” the Wanderer said. “Centuries ago there were Jews among the Cathars, though the Cathars called themselves by other names then. There aren’t many of them left.”

“The ones who are left have secrets,” I said. “And treasures.”

“Don’t we all?” asked the Wanderer. “The Cathars made no secret of their belief that the material world was evil, ruled by an evil God, while heaven and souls were the good God’s domain. They split in two what we Jews believe is one: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one.’”

I was uninterested in abstruse matters of philosophy. “We all have secrets, yes, treasures, not necessarily,” I said, then remembered that I, too, had a treasure: Giotto’s panel.