Authors: Javier Sierra
I smiled. Father Alessandro’s innocence seemed limitless.
“I doubt you’d understand, my brother.”
“Try me,” he said, rocking on his feet to the rhythm of his words. The librarian was standing barely a hand’s width away, observing me with growing interest, his large Adam’s apple rising and falling in his throat. “After all, I’m the monastery’s man of letters…”
I promised to satisfy his curiosity in exchange for something to eat. I had only just realized that I had not even gone down to supper on my first night at Santa Maria. My stomach was making noises under my habit. With solicitude, the librarian led me to the kitchen and managed to rustle up a few scraps from suppertime. Outside the night was pitch-black, while the pale flicker of a candle lit the indoors.
“It’s panzanella, Father,” he explained, helping me to a still-warm bowl that heated my freezing hands.
“Panzanella?”
“Eat. It’s a bread soup, made with cucumber and onion. It will please you.”
The thick and aromatic gruel slid like silk down my innards. I also devoured an excellent nougat confection called torrone, as well as a couple of dried figs. Then, with my stomach satisfied, my reflexes began to respond once again.
“Won’t you eat, Father Alessandro?”
“Oh, no.” The tall man smiled. “The fast forbids me. I’ve been fasting since before you arrived.”
“I understand.”
The truth is that I paid his words no more attention.
So I fell asleep repeating the first verses of the Soothsayer’s message, I reproached myself. It was not surprising. While thanking Father Alessandro for his care and praising the deserved reputation of the kitchen, I remembered that already in Bethany, I had been able to assert that those lines did not belong to any quotation from the Gospels. In fact, neither did they belong to any text by Plato or other known classical authors, nor to the epistles of the Church fathers or to the articles of canonical law. These seven lines disobeyed the most elementary cipher codes employed by cardinals, bishops and abbots, who in those days encrypted almost all their communications with the Papal States, for fear of being spied upon. Rarely were their writings legible: they were translated from official Latin into a jumble of consonants and numbers, thanks to very elaborate substitution charts, cast in bronze by my much admired teacher Father Alberti. In general, these charts consisted of a series of superimposed wheels along whose rim were printed the letters of the alphabet. With skill and a few minimum instructions, the letters on the outside wheel were substituted by those on the inside wheel, turning any message into a cipher.
So much precaution had its reasons. For the papal court, the nightmare of being discovered by noblemen whom they hated or courtiers against whom they plotted had, in a very short time, multiplied the labors of Bethany a hundredfold and had turned us into an indispensable tool for the administration of the Church. But how was I to explain all this to the kind Alessandro? How was I to confess that the clue that tormented me escaped all known methods of encoding and, for that very reason, had become my obsession?
No: oculos ejus dinumera was not the sort of message that one could simply explain to someone uninstructed in secret codes.
“May I ask what you’re thinking, Father Agostino? I’m beginning to believe that you pay me no attention whatsoever.”
Father Alessandro took hold of my sleeve to lead me back to the dormitories through the dark corridors of the monastery.
“Now that you’ve eaten,” he said in a fatherly tone, without however losing the mocking smile he had worn since our first encounter, “it would be best if you rested until the office of lauds. I’ll come and wake you shortly before dawn and you can let me know your business then. Agreed?”
Against my will, I said yes.
At that hour, the cell was frozen, and the very idea of stripping off my habit and slipping into a hard, damp bed terrified me more than staying awake. I asked the librarian to light the candle on the night table, and we agreed to meet at dawn and stroll through the cloister to clarify matters. And yet the idea of sharing details of my work with someone else was far from appealing. In fact, I had not yet paid my respects to the prior of Santa Maria, but something told me that Father Alessandro, in spite of his lack of skill in ciphers, would be of some use to me in this puzzle.
Fully dressed, I lay down on the bed and covered myself with the only blanket at my disposal. In this position, letting my eyes stray over a ceiling of whitewashed beams, I went over once again the problem of the encrypted verses. I had the impression of having overlooked something, an absurd but fundamental “za.” And so, with my eyes wide open, I recalled all I knew about the origin of the lines. If I was not mistaken in my judgment, and the coming dawn was not fogging up my wits, it seemed quite clear that the name of our anonymous informant—or at the very least his number—was hidden in the two first verses.
It was a curious game. As with certain Hebrew words, there are some that, besides their usual sense, carry a determinative particle that complements their meaning. The two Dominican mottoes indicated that our man was a preacher: of this I was almost certain. But what about the preceding lines?
Count its eyes
but look not on its face.
The number of my name
you shall find on its side.
Eyes, face, name, side…
In the gloom, utterly exhausted, I came upon the answer. Perhaps it was another impasse, but all of a sudden the number of the name no longer seemed absurd. I remembered that the Jews call gematria the discipline that consists of assigning to each letter of the alphabet a numerical value. John, in his Book of Revelation, employed it in a masterly fashion when he wrote, “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” And that 666 corresponded, indeed, to the cruelest man of his time, Nero Caesar, the sum of whose letters added up to the terrible triple number. And if the Soothsayer were a converted Jew? And if, fearing punishment, he had hidden his identity for that very reason? How many monks at Santa Maria would know that Saint John had been initiated to the gematria and had accused Nero in his book without putting his own life at risk?
Had the Soothsayer done likewise?
Before falling asleep, I feverishly transposed that idea to the Roman alphabet. Considering that A (the Hebrew aleph) was equivalent to 1, B (beth) to 2, and so on, it would not be difficult to translate into numbers any given word. Now all I had to do was add up the numbers obtained and the resulting sum would give me the definitive numerical value of the elected name. The number. The Jews, for instance, calculated that the secret and full name of Yahweh added up to the number 72. The kabbalists, those magicians who worked with Hebrew numbers, complicated matters even more by seeking numbers for the 72 names of God. In Bethany, we often made fun of them.
In our case, unfortunately, the question was much bleaker, because we were ignorant even of the numerical value of our correspondent’s name—that is, if he had one. Unless, following point by point the instructions in his verses, we might be able to find it on the side of someone with eyes into whose face we couldn’t look.
And with that riddle worthy of the Sphinx, I allowed myself to be lulled to sleep.
11
Shortly before lauds, Father Alessandro came punctually to my cell, smiling happily like a newly arrived novice. He must have thought that it wasn’t every day that a doctor from Rome was willing to share with him an important secret, and he was preparing to enjoy his moment of glory. And yet he gave me the impression that he wished to proceed gradually, as if fearing that the “revelation” would end too soon and leave him unsatisfied. Therefore, either for reasons of courtesy or in order to prolong the pleasure of having me to himself, the librarian explained that dawn would be a good time to go to confession: that is, after introducing me to the other members of his community.
The clock on Bramante’s dome sounded the hour of five as the librarian began to lead me, pulling me along through fog, toward the church. The building, at the opposite side of the cells, stood close to the library and the refectory, and consisted of a rectangular nave of modest dimensions. Its barrel vault was held up by granite columns stripped from a Roman mausoleum and was covered from foot to ceiling by geometrically designed frescoes, spiked wheels and suns. The ensemble seemed a little overburdened for my taste.
We arrived late. Clustered around the main altar, the brothers of Santa Maria were already chanting the Te Deum under the tenuous light of two enormous candelabra. It was freezing cold, and the misty breath of the friars blurred their faces like a thick and mysterious fog. Alessandro and I stood by one of the church pilasters and watched them from a comfortable distance.
“The one in the corner,” whispered the librarian, pointing toward a puny monk of narrow eyes and curly white hair, “is the Father Prior Vicenzo Bandello. In spite of his frail figure, he’s a scholar among scholars. For years he has been fighting against the Franciscans and their notions about the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. Even though, to tell the truth, many believe he will lose the battle.”
“Is he a doctor of theology?”
“Of course,” he firmly assented. “The swarthy young man to his right, with the long neck, is his nephew, Matteo.”
“Yes, I’ve met him.”
“Everyone believes that one day he will become a celebrated author. And a little further back, next to the door of the sacristy, are the brothers Andrea, Giuseppe, Luca and Jacopo. They are not only brothers in Christ; they are also sons of the same mother.”
I looked at their faces one by one, trying to memorize their names.
“You told me that only a few are capable of reading and writing fluently. Is that right?” I asked.
Father Alessandro was not able to guess the reason for my question. If he could answer me precisely, I might be able to discard at once a fair number of suspects. The Soothsayer’s profile corresponded to a cultured man, learned in many disciplines and well placed in the duke’s entourage. At that point, I still believed that the probability of failing to unravel the enigma was high (I was still smarting from the clumsiness with which I had first examined Leonardo’s musical riddle) and that, if everything else failed, I would have to resort to mere deduction in order to identify the Soothsayer. Or to entrust myself to luck.
The librarian cast a glance over the congregation, trying to recall their skill with words.
“Let’s see,” he muttered. “Brother Guglielmo, the cook, reads and recites poetry. Benedetto, the one-eyed monk, worked for many years as a scribe. The good man lost an eye trying to escape from an assault on his previous monastery, in Castelnuovo, while protecting a copy of the Book of Hours. Since then, he’s always in a foul humor. He complains about everything, and nothing we do for him seems satisfactory.”
“And the boy?”
“Matteo, as I told you, writes like an angel. He’s only twelve years old, but he’s a very alert and curious youngster…And now, let me see.” The librarian hesitated once more. “Adriano, Stefano, Nicola and Giorgio learned to read with me. Andrea and Giuseppe as well.”
In barely a few seconds, the list of candidates had grown to enormous proportions. I had to attempt another strategy.
“And tell me, who is that handsome friar, that tall, strong fellow on the left?” I asked with great curiosity.
“Ah! That is Mauro Sforza, the gravedigger. He’s always hiding behind one of the brothers, as if he were afraid of being recognized.”
“Sforza?”
“Well, he’s a distant cousin of Ludovico. Some time ago the duke asked us, as a favor, to admit him into the monastery and treat him as one of us. He almost never speaks a word. That frightened look is always on his face, and wicked tongues say that it’s because of what happened to his maternal uncle Gian Galeazzo.”
I started. “Gian Galeazzo Sforza?”
“Yes, the legitimate Duke of Milan, who died three years ago. The same one whom Ludovico poisoned in order to gain the throne. Poor Brother Mauro was in charge of looking after Gian Galeazzo before being sent here to us, and no doubt it was his hand that served the beverage of hot milk, wine, beer and arsenic that burned up his uncle’s stomach and killed him after three days of agony.”
“He killed him?”
“Let us say that he was the instrument of the crime. But that,” he said blowing through his teeth, happy for having surprised me, “is a secret of the confessional. You understand.”
Guardedly, I observed Mauro Sforza and took pity on his melancholy fate. To be forced to abandon court life in exchange for one in which his only possessions were a cloak of coarse wool and a pair of sandals must have been for the youngster a hard blow to take.
“And he writes?”
Alessandro gave no answer. Shivering with cold, he pushed me toward the congregation, not only to take part in the prayers but also to benefit from the body warmth of the group. As soon as he saw me, the Father Prior, beaked as an eagle and quite as vigilant, welcomed me with a nod and carried on with his devotions, which lasted until the first ray of the sun flooded through the rose window of brick and glass above the main entrance. I cannot say that my arrival caused any excitement in the community since, other than the prior, I doubt whether any of the brothers took heed of my presence. I did notice, however, that the Father Prior gestured sternly toward my guide, who then awkwardly moved to the other side.
Not only that: as soon as the prior had given us his benediction, Father Alessandro urged me to leave the company and follow him into the hospital ward.
In those early hours, the few sick who had spent the night there were still asleep, lending the red brick courtyard a lugubrious aspect.
“Yesterday you said that you knew Master Leonardo quite well…,” I began. I was certain that the truce he had allowed me before showering me with questions was about to come to an end.