The Secret Supper (34 page)

One day, Mario came into my room in a very agitated state and woke me. He asked me to dress in a hurry and then led me down the mountain, to the cobbled road that led to Porta Vercellina. I was intrigued: the young man had made a decision that compromised all his brethren. He would return to the world an inquisitor who had witnessed from within a Cathar community, had been present at their prayers and knew intimately the weaknesses of these last “pure men” of Christendom. And in spite of all this, he was taking the risk of setting me free. Why? And why on this day? And why in such a hurry?

It would not be long before I found out.

As we approached the road that would take us into the duke’s domains, Mario changed the tone of the conversation for the first and last time. He had dressed immaculately in white, with a robe that reached his knees and a ribbon in his curly hair. I felt that he was conducting me to a strange and final rite.

“Father Agostino,” he said in all solemnity, “now you have met the true disciples of Christ. You have seen, with your own eyes, that we don’t carry weapons or offend anything in Nature. For that reason, and because the original followers of Christ would never have accepted that we take away your freedom, we can detain you no longer. You belong to a different world from ours, a world of iron and gold in which men live with their backs turned to God…”

I was about to answer, but Mario did not permit me. He looked at me sadly, as if taking leave of a friend.

“From now on,” he continued, “our destiny is in your hands. Your crusaders had the right words: Deus lo volt! God has willed it! Either you exempt us and join our ranks, becoming yourself a parfait, or you betray us and seek our death and the ruin of our children. But it will be you on your own, a free man, who will choose. We, alas, are accustomed to being persecuted. It’s our fate.”

“You set me free?”

“In truth, Father, you were never a prisoner.”

I looked at him without knowing what to say.

“I only ask you to reflect on one thing before denouncing us to the Holy Office. Remember that Jesus too was a fugitive from justice.”

Mario opened his arms and embraced me. Then, in the faint light before dawn, he gave me a small bag with bread and fruit, and left me on my own on the road to Milan.

“Go back to the refectory,” he said before losing himself in the wooded slopes. “To your refectory. In the time you’ve been away, many things have happened that concern you. Meditate on them and then decide what path to choose. I hope that one day we’ll meet again and that we’ll be able to look into each other’s eyes, like brothers of the same faith.”

I walked for several hours before glimpsing on the horizon the fortified city of Milan. What was this strange test to which Divine Providence submitted me? Was Mario returning me to the duke’s court to eliminate his enemy, Brother Benedetto, or for some other obscure reason?

It was on approaching the sentinel’s box that I realized how much the sojourn at Concorezzo had changed me. In the sentinel’s eyes, I was no longer the respectable Dominican that had vanished into the woods of Santo Stefano a fortnight earlier. I could not blame him. The city believed that Father Agostino Leyre had died in an ambush. No one expected me to return. My aspect was that of a vulgar, dirty peasant, dressed in black pantaloons and a shepherd’s sheepskin coat. My face was covered by a thick black beard and even my tonsure had grown back, hiding my priestly condition.

I passed the box without catching anyone’s eye and I headed down the streets that would lead me to the monastery of Santa Maria. In spite of it being a cloudy Saturday, the atmosphere around me seemed extraordinarily festive. The surroundings of the monastery had been decorated with flags, flowers and ribbons, and there were many groups of people on the streets, chatting. Apparently, the duke had passed by on his way to an important celebration.

It was then that I heard a woman give the reason for so much commotion: Leonardo had finished his Cenacolo, and His Grace, Duke Ludovico il Moro, had hurried to visit it and admire it in all its splendor.

“The Cenacolo?”

The woman looked at me, laughing.

“In what world are you living? The whole city is on its way to see it! Everyone! They say it’s a miracle. That it seems as real as life. The monks are opening their monastery for a month, so that everyone can come and admire it.”

I was gripped by a feeling of unease. Leonardo had finished a masterpiece on which he spent three years of hard labor, but had he also completed the terrible iconographic program that the Soothsayer had tried to stop at all costs? And the Father Prior? Had he too succumbed to the charm of the work? Should I not reveal to him at once the true identity of his personal assistant? And how was I to face him? What was I to say about my captors?

When I reached the top of Corso Magenta and managed to circumvent the long line that surrounded the monastery, I stood aghast. Ludovico had ordered the erection of an enormous platform on which the duke himself, dressed in black velvet and with a hat with a golden band, stood conversing with several of the city’s dignitaries. Among them, I saw Luca Pacioli, the mathematician, very much at his ease. Someone told me that, barely a few days earlier, he had given the duke his book De Divina Proportione, in which he unveiled the mathematical secrets of Creation. Also Antonio Billi, the court chronicler, who seemed dazzled by what he had just seen.

I also saw Master Leonardo, away in a corner with a small group of admirers. They were all splendidly dressed, but they seemed nervous, casting glances from side to side, as if expecting the arrival of someone or as if aware that something in the ceremony was not going as planned.

So absorbed was I in trying to understand what was happening in that group, that I did not notice that someone had made his way through the crowd and was advancing in my direction.

“Heavens above!” he cried out when he reached me, touching me on the shoulder. “Father Agostino! We all thought you were dead!”

Oliverio Jacaranda, sporting a purple beret embellished with a goose feather, his sword dangling from his belt and riding boots, addressed me in his foreign accent.

“I never forget a face. And far less one like yours!”

“Don Oliverio…”

The Spaniard inspected me from head to foot, wondering what had become of my black and white Dominican habit. He had come to Santa Maria, like everyone else, to see Leonardo’s work. As a merchant in precious objects he had been granted privileged access to the refectory and he proposed to be at the very center of the city’s major social event since Donna Beatrice’s funeral.

“Father…,” he began. “Will you tell me what happened to you? You look ill. What are you doing dressed like that?”

I tried to invent a credible excuse that would not betray my singular situation. I could not tell him that I had spent over two weeks under the roof of the man who was once his prisoner. He would have considered it disloyal and God knows how the Spaniard would react to such an admission.

“Do you recall my fondness for solving Latin conundrums?” I asked him.

Jacaranda nodded.

“I came to Milan to solve one, by order of my superiors. And to succeed, I was obliged to disappear for some time. Now I’m returning under cover to proceed with my investigations. Therefore I ask you to be discreet.”

“Ah, you priests! Always with intrigues and secrets!” He smiled. “So you pretended to disappear in order to investigate the murders at San Francesco il Grande?”

“Whatever makes you think that?” I asked in astonishment.

“The way you look, of course. I told you there are few things in this city that escape my notice. Your clothing reminds me of the poor unfortunates who met their death under the Franciscan Maestà.”

“But—”

“No buts!” He stopped me. “I admire your method, Father. I never would have thought to dress up as a victim in order to discover the murderer.”

I said nothing.

I had imagined so many times that, should we meet again, our conversation would not be pleasant, that now I was surprised to see him concerned about me. After all, I had meddled in his business, I had freed one of his prisoners and I had not paid much attention to his efforts to incriminate Leonardo in the murder of Father Alessandro. It was obvious that Signor Oliverio had other, more important things to concern him. And he did seem worried. He hardly mentioned Forzetta’s escape and merely said that he imagined it had been part of my strategy to investigate the murders. It was as if my parfait costume had obliterated his interest in all the rest.

“Have you been back long in Milan?” I asked to change the subject.

“Some ten days ago. And, to tell the truth, I’ve been looking for you ever since. They told me you’d been killed in an ambush—”

“I’m glad to say it isn’t so.”

“So am I, Father.”

“Tell me then. What did you require me for?”

“For your help,” he said with a sigh. “Do you recall what I said about Leonardo the day we met?”

I turned around, toward where I had last seen the Tuscan. I would not have wanted him to hear a false accusation of murder, such as Jacaranda was surely about to make.

“You know I was in Rome. Well, when I was there, a person close to the Holy Father delivered into my hands the final secret that Master Leonardo wished to conceal in his Last Supper.”

“Final secret?”

Jacaranda frowned.

“The same one that your librarian carried to his grave, Father Agostino. The one he must have taken from the ‘blue book’ that Donna Beatrice ordered me to obtain for her, and that I was never able to deliver. Do you remember now?”

“Yes.”

“That secret, Father, is now in my hands. And it’s another one of those damned conundrums of Leonardo’s. As you’re an expert in deciphering riddles and also, because of your position—you’re above suspicion of being anyone’s accomplice—I thought you might be willing to help me solve it.”

Oliverio said this with barely contained anger. I could guess his desire to avenge his friend Father Alessandro. And, even though he was wrong about his target, I was intrigued by the revelation he might have received from his informer. I could not know then that Bethany too possessed this riddle and had been trying for days to deliver it into my hands.

“Will you show it to me, then?”

“Only in front of the Cenacolo, Father Agostino.”

46

What a strange sensation.

Dressed in the rags Mario Forzetta had given me before setting me on the road to Milan, I crossed the threshold of Santa Maria without being recognized by any of the brothers. The smell of incense gave me misgivings. I felt as if I were setting foot in a church for the first time. The profusion of floral motifs, red and blue tiles and geometrical designs adorning the ceiling seemed to me improper in the House of the Lord. Never until that day had I paid attention to them, but now, suddenly, they offended me.

Oliverio did not notice my discomfort and pulled me toward the apse, forcing me to turn left and overtake the enormous line of the faithful who were praying and singing as they waited to be allowed into the refectory.

Brother Adriano de Treviglio, whom I had not met more than twice during my stay at the monastery, greeted the Spaniard and with a satisfied gesture pocketed the coin that was placed in his hand. He threw me a supercilious glance, but he did not recognize me. It was better that way.

The refectory that I remembered as cold and still was now swarming with people. It was still empty of furniture, but the monks had made it look presentable, airing it and cleaning it thoroughly. No trace of paint fumes was left, and the recently finished mural shone brightly in all its splendor.

“The Secret Supper,” I murmured.

Oliverio did not hear me. He pushed me toward the center of the room and, making his way through the crowd, said something, half in Spanish and half in Lombard, that I did not then fully grasp.

“The mystery of this place is linked to the ancient Egyptians. The disciples are distributed in triads, like the gods of the Nile. Can you see? But the real secret is that each of these characters represents a specific letter.”

“A letter?” The old lessons of the Ars Memoriae returned to me. “What kind of letter?”

“Only one letter stands out clearly, Father. Look at the great A formed by the body of Our Lord. That is the first clue. Together with the rest, concealed in the attributes that Jacobus de Voragine gave to each of the Twelve, it forms a curious hymn, written in ancient Egyptian, that I hope you can translate—”

“A hymn?”

Oliverio nodded, pleased with my surprise.

“Exactly. Gathering the letters that Leonardo attributed to each disciple, you obtain a phrase which was read to me in Rome: Mut, Nem, A, Los, Noc—”

Mut.

Nem.

A.

Los.

Noc.

I repeated the syllables one by one to myself, trying to commit them to memory.

“You say the text is Egyptian?”

“Why, yes! Mut is an Egyptian divinity, the wife of Ammon, ‘the Hidden One,’ the great god of the pharaohs. No doubt Leonardo heard Marsilio Ficino speak of her. Master Leonardo had all his books in his bottega, remember?”

How could I forget? Ficino, Plato, Father Alessandro, the one-eyed monk—they were all there, right in front of my eyes! Staring at one another, as if plotting among themselves to preserve the mystery from those who were not worthy to decipher it. They were all depicted as the true disciples of Christ. As bonshommes, in fact.

“And if the language of the phrase were not Egyptian?”

My doubts exasperated the Spaniard. He put his lips to my ear and, trying to make himself heard above the chatter of the curious and the chants of the faithful, he tried to tell me all he had learned from Annio de Viterbo about these men, here reduced to simple letters. I observed them one by one. They seemed so alive! Bartholomew, his hands on the table, watching over the scene like a sentinel. James the Less was trying to calm Peter’s fiery temper. Andrew, aghast at the revelation that there was a traitor among them, extended his palms to show his innocence. And Judas. And John. And Thomas pointing toward Heaven. Christ’s brother, James the Elder, his arms in the shape of a cross, announcing the Messiah’s approaching Passion. Philip. Matthew. Thaddeus turning his back on Christ. And Simon, at his corner of the table, hands extended, as if inviting us to contemplate the scene once again.