Authors: Javier Sierra
I had never seen Brother Giovanni so distraught. The young man waved the letter before my eyes and, in a strangled voice, whispered: “It’s incredible, Father. Incredible.”
“What is so incredible, Giovanni?”
Brother Giovanni took a deep breath.
“The letter—this letter—the Soothsayer—Master Torriani asked that you read it at once.”
“Master Torriani?”
The pious Gioacchino Torriani, thirty-fifth successor of Saint Dominic de Guzmán on Earth and the highest authority of our order, had never before taken any of these anonymous messages seriously. He had disposed of them with indifference, and once or twice he had even scolded me for wasting my time on such nonsense. Why had he changed his attitude? Why did he send me this new letter, begging me to study it immediately?
“The Soothsayer—” Brother Giovanni gulped.
“Yes?”
“The Soothsayer has uncovered the plan.”
“What plan?”
Brother Giovanni was still holding the message, trembling with the strain. The letter, consisting of three sheets with the wax seal broken, fell softly onto my desk.
“Ludovico il Moro’s plan,” my secretary whispered, as if freeing himself from a heavy load. “Don’t you understand, Father Agostino? It explains what he really wants to do at Santa Maria delle Grazie. He wants to perform magic!”
“Magic?” I asked, astonished.
“Read it!”
I delved into the letter on the spot. There was no doubt that whoever had written it was the same person responsible for the previous ones: the headings and the handwriting betrayed a common author.
“Father, please read it!” he insisted.
I soon understood his urgency. The Soothsayer was bringing to light once again something that everyone had thought long buried and forgotten, an event that had taken place almost sixty years ago, in the days of Pope Eugene IV, when the Patriarch of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici, later known as the Elder, decided to finance a council that, had it succeeded, might have changed forever the course of Christendom. It was an old story. It appears that Cosimo had arranged for a gathering, which lasted several years and proved to be fruitless, between opposing diplomatic delegations, with the intention of reuniting the Eastern Church and that of Rome. The Turks were then threatening to extend their influence over the whole of the Mediterranean and they had to be stopped at whatever cost. Cosimo, the old banker, had the wild idea of uniting all Christians under the same banner in order to face the enemy with the strength of a common faith. But his plan was unsuccessful.
Or perhaps not entirely.
What the Soothsayer revealed in his message was the existence of a secret purpose behind the council, a hidden objective whose consequences could still be felt in Milan six decades later. According to the Soothsayer, Cosimo de’ Medici, in addition to engaging in the political debates of his day, had spent much of his time negotiating with delegations from Greece and Constantinople for the purchase of old books, optical instruments and even manuscripts attributed to Aristotle and Plato, which had been thought long lost and which he ordered to be translated. In these ancient texts, Cosimo learned astonishing things. He discovered that, already in Athens, people believed in the immortality of the soul and knew that the heavens were responsible for everything that moved on Earth. However, let it be understood: the Athenians did not believe in God, but in the influence of the heavenly bodies. According to those infamous treatises, the stars cast their influence on earthly matter through a “spiritual heat” similar to that which unites body and soul in human beings. Aristotle spoke of this “heat” after having studied the chronicles of the Golden Age, and Cosimo fell under the charm of the philosopher’s teaching.
According to the Soothsayer, the old banker had founded an academy, in the style of the Greek ones, whose sole purpose was to teach these secrets to artists. Through his studies, Cosimo became convinced that the design of works of art was an exact science, and a work created in accordance with certain subtle codes would come to reflect the cosmic forces and might thus be used to protect or to destroy its owner.
“Well? Have you seen, Father Agostino?” Giovanni’s question brought me out of my thoughts. “The Soothsayer says that art can be employed as a weapon!”
Indeed. One paragraph further on, the letter spoke of the power of geometry. Numbers, harmony, sound—all were elements that could be employed in a work of art so as to make it emanate beneficial influences. Pythagoras, one of the Greeks who admired the Golden Age and who had so dazzled Cosimo de’ Medici, had declared that “numbers are the only verifiable gods.” The Soothsayer cursed them all.
“A weapon,” I hissed. “A weapon that Ludovico wants to conceal inside Santa Maria delle Grazie.”
“Exactly!” Giovanni seemed full of pride. “That is precisely what he says. Can it be possible?”
I was beginning to understand the sudden interest of Master General Torriani in the matter. Years ago, our beloved superior had condemned the work of the artist Sandro Botticelli because of a similar suspicion. Torriani accused him of using images inspired by pagan cults to illustrate works destined for the Church. But his denunciation also contained more serious matter. Thanks to Bethany’s informers, Torriani had learned that Botticelli had, in the Medici’s Villa di Castello, depicted the arrival of spring using a “magic” technique. The dancing nymphs had been placed in the painting like the sections of a gigantic talisman. Later, Torriani discovered that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, Botticelli’s patron, had requested an amulet against aging, and the resulting painting was the magical remedy. In fact, Botticelli’s picture concealed an entire treatise against the onslaught of time which included half the divinities of Olympus dancing against the advance of Chronos. And they had pretended to pass off a work like this as something devout, proposing it as a decoration for a Florentine chapel!
Our Master General had managed to discover the infamy in time. His clue was Chloris, one of the Primavera nymphs, painted with a sprig of bindweed sprouting from her mouth. This was the unmistakable symbol of the “green tongue” of the alchemists, those searchers of eternal youth, drunk with false ideas that the Holy Office was obliged to persecute wherever they emerged. Even though we in Bethany never managed to decipher the details of that mysterious language, the suspicion was enough for the painting never to be displayed within the walls of a church.
But now, if the Soothsayer was right, the story was threatening to repeat itself in Milan.
“Tell me, Brother Giovanni, do you know why Master Torriani asks me to study this message?”
My assistant had sat down at a nearby desk and was leafing through a recently illuminated book of hours. He made a grimace as if he had not understood my question.
“What? Have you not read the letter to the end?”
I once again turned my eyes to the pages. In the final paragraph, the Soothsayer spoke of Beatrice d’Este’s death and how this would speed up the success of Ludovico il Moro’s magic plan.
“I see nothing particular here, dear Giovannino,” I protested.
“Does it not surprise you that he refers to the duchess’s death in such explicit terms?”
“Why should that surprise me?”
Brother Giovanni sniggered:
“Because the Soothsayer dated and sent this letter off on December thirtieth. Three days before Donna Beatrice’s stillbirth.”
5
“So you’re willing to swear that you’ve hidden a secret in this wall?”
Perplexed, Marco d’Oggiono stood scratching his chin, as he once again cast his eyes over the mural the Master was painting. Leonardo da Vinci amused himself with such games. When he was in a good humor (and on that day his humor was excellent), it was hard to see in him the celebrated artist, inventor, builder of musical instruments and engineer, favorite of Ludovico il Moro and the toast of half of Italy. On that cold morning, the Master bore the expression of a mischievous child. Knowing full well that his behavior upset the friars, he had taken advantage of the strained calm that had settled on Milan after the death of the duchess to inspect his work in the refectory of the Dominican fathers. He stood high above, content among his apostles, upon a six-meter scaffolding, leaping from board to board like a young boy.
“Of course there’s a secret!” he cried. His contagious laughter echoed in the empty vaults of Santa Maria delle Grazie. “You need only look at my work attentively and take into account the numbers. Count them! Go ahead, count!” He laughed.
“But, Master—”
“All right.” Leonardo shook his head condescendingly, stretching out the last word in protest. “I see that it will be difficult to teach you. Why don’t you pick up the Bible there below, next to the box with brushes, and read out John 13, beginning with the twenty-first verse? Perhaps you’ll find illumination.”
Marco, one of the young, handsome apprentices of Leonardo, ran in search of the holy book. He lifted it from the lectern in a corner by the door and held it in the palm of his hand. It must have weighed at least several pounds. With an effort, Marco leafed through the volume printed in Venice and bound in the blackest leather with copper corners, until the Gospel According to John lay before him. It was a beautiful edition, with large black Gothic letters and floral engravings in each incipit.
“When Jesus had thus said,” he read out, “he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake. Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake.”
“Enough! Quite enough!” thundered Leonardo from high up on the scaffolding. “Now look up here and tell me: have you not yet unraveled my secret?”
The disciple shook his head. Marco knew that the Master had a trick up his sleeve.
“Master Leonardo,” he said, lending a tone of clear disappointment to his reproach, “I know that you are working on this passage in the Gospels. You teach me nothing new instructing me to read the Bible. What I want to know is the truth.”
“The truth? What truth, Marco?”
“It is rumored in the city that you are taking so long to finish this work because you want to hide in it something important. You have abandoned the fresco technique and have chosen instead another one, much slower. And why? I’ll tell you why: so you can reflect at your leisure on that which you want to transmit.”
Leonardo remained impassive.
“They know all about your taste for mysteries, Master, and I too wish I could learn them all! Three years by your side, preparing concoctions and assisting your hands in tracing the sketches and cartoons. That should give me some advantage over those outsiders, don’t you think?”
“Of course, of course. But who is saying all these things, if one may know?”
“Who, Master? Everyone! Even the monks in this holy place often stop your apprentices and question them.”
“And what do they say, Marco?” he bellowed again from on high, with growing amusement.
“That maybe your Twelve are not the true portraits of the Apostles, like Filippo Lippi or Crivelli would have painted them, that maybe they depict the twelve constellations of the zodiac, that you may have hidden in the gestures of their hands the notes of one of your musical compositions for Ludovico il Moro…They say all sorts of things, Master.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, indeed, you.” Another mischievous smile lit up Leonardo’s face. “Having me so close by, working every day in such a splendid room, what conclusions have you reached?”
Marco lifted his eyes toward the northern wall where Leonardo was giving a few last touches with a brush of very fine hairs. On that wall was depicted the most extraordinary Last Supper Marco had ever seen. There was Jesus, present in the flesh, in the exact center of the composition. His look was languorous and his arms outstretched, as if he were watching from the corners of his eyes the reactions of his disciples to the revelation he had just made to them. Close by his side was John, the beloved, listening to Peter’s urgent whisper. If one sharpened one’s senses, one could almost see them move their lips, they looked so real.
But John was no longer leaning on Jesus’ bosom, as the Gospel said. Indeed, he gave the impression of never having done so. On the other side of Christ, Philip, the giant, was standing with his hands digging into his chest. He seemed to be asking the Messiah: “Am I the traitor, Lord?” Or James the Elder, puffing up his chest like a bodyguard, swearing everlasting loyalty. “None will harm you while I am near,” he seemed to boast.
“Well then, Marco. You have not yet answered me.”
“I don’t know, Master…” He hesitated. “This work of yours has something that bewilders me. It is so, so—”
“So?”
“So close, so human, that it leaves me speechless.”
“Good!” Leonardo applauded, then dried his hands on his apron. “You see? Without knowing, you are already closer to my secret.”
“I don’t understand you, Master.”
“And perhaps you never will.” He smiled. “But listen to what I’m about to tell you: everything in Nature holds a mystery of some kind. The birds hide from us the clues to their flight, the water has locked away the cause of its extraordinary strength. And if we ever succeeded to make painting a mirror of that nature, would it not be right to have it embody that same vast capability of guarding information? Every time you admire a painting, remember that you are entering the most sublime of all arts. Never remain on the surface: enter the scene, move among its elements, uncover its unknown details, prowl its recesses—and in that way you’ll grasp its true meaning. But let me warn you: you need courage for the task. Many times, what we find in a mural like this one is far removed from what we expected to find. Bear that in mind.”
6
Without delay, Brother Giovanni fulfilled the second part of the mission entrusted to him by the Master General.