The Name of the Rose (38 page)

“So, then,” William murmured, “he grasped something with his fingers and ingested it. . . . This eliminates the poisons you mentioned before, which kill by penetrating the skin. But it doesn't make our deductions any easier. Because now, for him and for Venantius, we must presume a voluntary act. They grasped something and put it in their mouths, knowing what they were doing. . . .”

“Something to eat? To drink?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps—why not?—a musical instrument, like a flute . . .”

“Absurd,” Severinus said.

“Of course it's absurd. But we mustn't dismiss any hypothesis, no matter how farfetched. Now let's return to the poisonous substance. If someone who knows poisons as you do had broken in here and had used some of these herbs of yours, could he have produced a lethal ointment capable of causing those marks on the fingers and the tongue? Capable of being mixed with food or drink, smeared on a spoon, on something that is put in the mouth?”

“Yes,” Severinus admitted, “but who? And besides, even if we accept this hypothesis, how would he have administered the poison to our two poor brothers?”

Frankly, I myself couldn't imagine Venantius or Berengar letting himself be approached by someone who handed him a mysterious substance and being persuaded to eat it or drink it. But William did not seem upset by this unlikelihood. “We will think about that later,” he said, “because now I would like you to try to remember some event that perhaps you haven't recalled before. Someone who asked you questions about your herbs, for instance; someone who has easy access to the infirmary . . .”

“Just a moment,” Severinus said. “A long time ago, years it was, on one of those shelves I kept a highly powerful substance, given to me by a brother who had traveled in distant lands. He couldn't tell me what it was made of, herbs for sure, but not all of them familiar. To look at, it was slimy and yellowish; but I was advised not to touch it, because if it only came into contact with my lips it would kill me in a short time. The brother told me that, when ingested even in minimal doses, in the space of a half hour it caused a feeling of great weariness, then a slow paralysis of all the limbs, and finally death. He didn't want to carry it with him, and so he presented it to me. I kept it for a long time, because I meant to examine it somehow. Then one day there was a great storm up here. One of my assistants, a novice, had left the infirmary door open, and the hurricane wrought havoc in this room where we are now. Bottles broken, liquids spilled on the floor, herbs and powders scattered. I worked a whole day putting my things back in order, and I accepted help only in sweeping away the broken vessels and the herbs that could not be recovered. At the end I realized that the very ampoule I mentioned to you was missing. At first I was worried, then I decided it had been broken and become confused with the other rubbish. I had the infirmary floor washed carefully, and the shelves. . . .”

“And you had seen the ampoule a few hours before the storm?”

“Yes . . . or, rather, no, now that I think about it. It was behind a row of pots, carefully hidden, and I didn't check it every day. . . .”

“Therefore, as far as you know, it could have been stolen quite a while before the storm, without your finding out?”

“Now that I think about it, yes, unquestionably.”

“And that novice of yours could have stolen it and then could have seized the occasion of the storm deliberately to leave the door open and create confusion among your things?”

Severinus seemed very excited. “Yes, of course. Not only that, but as I recall what happened, I was quite surprised that the hurricane, violent though it was, had upset so many things. It could quite well be that someone took advantage of the storm to devastate the room and produce more damage than the wind could have done!”

“Who was the novice?”

“His name was Augustine. But he died last year, a fall from scaffolding as he and other monks and servants were cleaning the sculptures of the façade of the church. Actually, now that I think about it, he swore up and down that he had not left the door open before the storm. I was the one, in my fury, who held him responsible for the accident. Perhaps he really was not guilty.”

“And so we have a third person, perhaps far more expert than a novice, who knew about your rare poison. Whom had you told about it?”

“That I really don't remember. The abbot, of course, to ask his permission to keep such a dangerous substance. And a few others, perhaps in the library, because I was looking for some herbaria that might give me information.”

“But didn't you tell me you keep here the books that are most useful to your art?”

“Yes, and many of them,” he said, pointing to a corner of the room where some shelves held dozens of volumes. “But then I was looking for certain books I couldn't keep here, which Malachi actually was very reluctant to let me see. In fact, I had to ask the abbot's authorization.” His voice sank, and he was almost shy about letting me hear his words. “You know, in a secret part of the library, they keep books on necromancy. I was allowed to consult some of these works, of necessity, and I was hoping to find a description of that poison and its functions. In vain.”

“So you spoke about it with Malachi.”

“Of course, with him definitely, and perhaps also with Berengar, who was his assistant. But you mustn't jump to conclusions: I don't remember clearly, perhaps other monks were present as I was talking, the scriptorium at times is fairly crowded, you know. . . .”

“I'm not suspecting anyone. I'm only trying to understand what can have happened. In any event, you tell me this took place some years ago, and it's odd that anyone would steal a poison and then not use it until so much later. It would suggest a malignant mind brooding for a long time in darkness over a murderous plan.”

Severinus blessed himself, an expression of horror on his face. “God forgive us all!” he said.

There was no further comment to be made. We again covered Berengar's body, which had to be prepared for the funeral.

In which William induces first Salvatore and then the cellarer to confess their past, Severinus finds the stolen lenses, Nicholas brings the new ones, and William, now with six eyes, goes to decipher the manuscript of Venantius.

 

We were coming out
as Malachi entered. He seemed very annoyed to find us there and started to leave again. From inside, Severinus saw him and said, “Were you looking for me? Is it for—” He broke off, glancing at us. Malachi signaled to him, imperceptibly, as if to say, “We'll talk about it later. . . .” We were going out as he was entering, and so all three of us were in the doorway.

Malachi said that he was looking for the brother herbalist because he had a headache.

“It must be the enclosed air of the library,” William said to him, in a tone of considerate sympathy. “You should inhale something.”

Malachi's lips twitched as if he wanted to speak again, but then he gave up the idea, bowed his head, and went on inside, as we moved off.

“What is he seeing Severinus for?” I asked.

“Adso,” my master said to me impatiently, “learn to use your head and think.” Then he changed the subject: “We must question some people now. At least,” he added, as his eyes explored the grounds, “while they're still alive. By the way: from now on we must be careful about what we eat and drink. Always take your food from the common plate, and your beverage from the pitcher the others have filled their cups from. After Berengar we are the ones who know most. Except, naturally, the murderer.”

“But whom do you want to question now?”

“Adso,” William said, “you will have observed that here the most interesting things happen at night. They die at night, they wander about the scriptorium at night, women are brought at night into the abbey. . . . We have a daytime abbey and a nighttime abbey, and the nighttime one seems, unhappily, the more interesting. So, every person who roams about at night interests us, including, for example, the man you saw last night with the girl. Perhaps the business of the girl does not have anything to do with the poisonings, and perhaps it has. In any case, someone's coming this way . . . either the man from last night, or someone who knows who he was.”

He pointed to Salvatore, who had also seen us. I noticed a slight hesitation in his step, as if, wishing to avoid us, he was about to turn around. But it was only for a moment. Obviously, he realized he couldn't escape the meeting, and he continued toward us. He greeted us with a broad smile and a fairly unctuous “Benedicite.” My master hardly allowed him to finish and spoke to him sharply.

“You know the Inquisition arrives here tomorrow?” he asked him.

Salvatore didn't seem pleased with this news. In a faint voice, he asked, “And me?”

“And you would be wise to tell the truth to me, your friend and a Friar Minor as you once were, rather than have to tell it tomorrow to those whom you know quite well.”

Attacked so brusquely, Salvatore seemed to abandon all resistance. With a meek air he looked at William, as if to indicate he was ready to tell whatever he was asked.

“Last night there was a woman in the kitchen. Who was with her?”

“Oh, a female who sells herself like mercandia cannot be bona or have cortesia,” Salvatore recited.

“I don't want to know whether the girl is pure. I want to know who was with her!”

“Deu, these evil females are all clever! They think dì e noche about how to trap a man. . . .”

William seized him roughly by the chest. “Who was with her, you or the cellarer?”

Salvatore realized he couldn't go on lying. He began to tell a strange story, from which, with great effort, we learned that, to please the cellarer, he procured girls for him in the village, introducing them within the walls at night by paths he would not reveal to us. But he swore he acted out of the sheer goodness of his heart, betraying a comic regret that he could not find a way to enjoy his own pleasure and see that the girl, having satisfied the cellarer, would give something also to him. He said all this with slimy, lubricious smiles and winks, as if to suggest he was speaking to men made of flesh, accustomed to such practices. He peered at me out of the corner of his eye.

At this point William decided to stake everything. He asked Salvatore abruptly, “Did you know Remigio before or after you were with Dolcino?”

Salvatore knelt at his feet, begging him, between sobs, not to destroy him, to save him from the Inquisition. William solemnly swore not to tell anyone what he would learn, and Salvatore did not hesitate to deliver the cellarer into our hands. The two men had met on Bald Mountain, both in Dolcino's band; Salvatore and the cellarer had fled together and had entered the convent of Casale, and, still together, they had joined the Cluniacs. As he stammered out pleas for forgiveness, it was clear there was nothing further to be learned from him. William decided it was worth taking Remigio by surprise, and he left Salvatore, who ran to seek refuge in the church.

The cellarer was on the opposite side of the abbey, in front of the granaries, bargaining with some peasants from the valley. He looked at us apprehensively and tried to act very busy, but William insisted on speaking with him.

“For reasons connected with your position you are obviously forced to move about the abbey even when the others are asleep, I imagine,” William said.

“That depends,” Remigio answered. “Sometimes there are little matters to deal with, and I have to sacrifice a few hours' sleep.”

“Has nothing happened to you, in these cases, that might indicate there is someone else roaming about, without your justification, between the kitchen and the library?”

“If I had seen anything, I would have told the abbot.”

“Of course,” William agreed, and abruptly changed the subject: “The village down below is not very rich, is it?”

“Yes and no,” Remigio answered. “Some prebenders live there, abbey dependents, and they share our wealth in the good years. For example, on Saint John's Day they received twelve bushels of malt, a horse, seven oxen, a bull, four heifers, five calves, twenty sheep, fifteen pigs, fifty chickens, and seventeen hives. Also twenty smoked pigs, twenty-seven tubs of lard, half a measure of honey, three measures of soap, a fishnet . . .”

“I understand, I understand,” William interrupted him. “But you must admit that this still tells me nothing of the situation of the village, how many among its inhabitants have prebends, and how much land those who are not prebendaries possess to cultivate on their own. . . .”

“Oh, as far as that goes,” Remigio said, “a normal family down there has as much as fifty tablets of land.”

“How much is a tablet?”

“Four square trabucchi, of course.”

“Square trabucchi? How much are they?”

“Thirty-six square feet is a square trabucco. Or, if you prefer, eight hundred linear trabucchi make a Piedmont mile. And calculate that a family—in the lands to the north—can cultivate olives for at least half a sack of oil.”

“Half a sack?”

“Yes, one sack makes five emine, and one emina makes eight cups.”

“I see,” my master said, disheartened. “Every locality has its own measures. Do you measure wine, for example, by the tankard?”

“Or by the rubbio. Six rubbie make one brenta, and eight brente, a keg. If you like, one rubbio is six pints from two tankards.”

“I believe my ideas are clear now,” William said, resigned.

“Do you wish to know anything else?” Remigio asked, with a tone that to me seemed defiant.

“Yes, I was asking you about how they live in the valley, because today in the library I was meditating on the sermons to women by Humbert of Romans, and in particular on that chapter ‘Ad mulieres pauperes in villulis,' in which he says that they, more than others, are tempted to sins of the flesh because of their poverty, and wisely he says that they commit mortal sin when they sin with a layman, but the mortality of the sin becomes greater when it is committed with a priest, and greatest of all when the sin is with a monk, who is dead to the world. You know better than I that even in holy places such as abbeys the temptations of the noontime Devil are never wanting. I was wondering whether in your contacts with the people of the village you had heard that some monks, God forbid, had induced maidens into fornication.”