Inquisition Read online

  Gerardo had decided to go and look for him not long before nones sounded, because the working day was at an end, the shops would soon be closed and a mass of people would be spilling into the streets on their way home. It was the best time of day for anyone living off charity.

  Afraid that the description he had was mistaken, he stopped other beggars and got the same reply from all of them: the maimed beggar was from Ferrara; in fact they called him the Ferrarese as though it were a proper name. They hadn’t seen him around the place for a while and supposed that he had returned to his city. Gerardo asked other questions and with a bit of effort managed to verify that the Ferrarese had disappeared on the day that the German’s corpse had been found. He might easily have gone away by chance on that very day, tramps moved around a lot. But there were beginning to be too many coincidences in the whole affair.

  If the man had taken the trouble to disappear after the murder, he might genuinely know something and not want to run any risks. At this point it was imperative to find him. But the idea of setting off for Ferrara in search of a mendicant with a missing hand seemed ludicrous.

  A crippled boy who was begging for alms on a wheeled board, about fifty yards from Remigio Sensi’s premises, was the only one to give him any new information. He said that perhaps the beggar with the missing hand had not gone away after all, but could be ill. In that case, he could easily be in the underworld.

  ‘What underworld?’ asked Gerardo.

  ‘I’ll show you for a lira,’ answered the boy.

  ‘A lira?’ Gerardo laughed at such an absurd request. ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit much?’

  ‘Not at all. Another person I showed it to gave me that without quibbling.’

  ‘Really?’ smiled Gerardo. ‘Tell me his name and I’ll believe you.’

  The boy’s face grew sullen. ‘No chance. The person gave me that amount so that I would never mention it to anyone.’

  ‘Very convenient,’ replied Gerardo, who began to find the conversation amusing. ‘You can’t tell me who it is and yet you are free to tell me how much money he gave you.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ insisted the boy. ‘Why do you think no one else has told you about the underworld yet?’ ‘They didn’t think that the Ferrarese was ill.’ the boy shook his head, with a serious air. He can’t have been older than eleven or twelve, but he was trying to behave like an adult. The top half of his body was normal, but his legs were two dry sticks folded on to the wheeled cart. ‘They didn’t tell you because it’s the beggars’ secret.’ Gerardo got down on his heels so that his face was level with the boy’s. ‘And you, so respectful of your word given to a stranger. Why are you prepared to betray the secret?’

  The lad looked at him angrily. ‘Because I’ve never promised anyone that I wouldn’t tell!’ He began to manoeuvre himself with his hands on the paving, turning the board and moving away. ‘Anyway, if you are interested in finding out where the underworld is, the price is one lira.’

  Gerardo got up and saw Remigio Sensi looking at him from a distance, standing erect behind his bench. When their eyes met, the banker saluted him with a nod of the head as usual. Gerardo replied in the same way, and then he ran to catch up with the boy and he stopped him by grabbing hold of his shoulder. ‘I’m interested. But I can’t pay you that much. I’ve just taken out a loan, because I had nothing left.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. Let me go.’

  It really did seem as though he had decided to go on his way without bartering. Gerardo put his hand in his purse. As soon as the boy heard the rattle of coins he stopped, and in the end they agreed on ten soldi, a decent labourer’s pay for two weeks’ work.

  ‘I’ll give you five straight away,’ said Gerardo, putting the coins in the boy’s hand, which was so dirty and calloused that it almost couldn’t close, ‘And five after I have seen this famous underworld.’

  ‘Done,’ said the boy. ‘Come with me.’

  He slipped the money into the smaller of two bags that he wore across one shoulder, over his torn coat, and set off on his cart, pushing himself along with his hands.

  Gerardo couldn’t help liking him. He decided that even if the secret of the underworld turned out to be a hoax, he would still let the boy keep the five soldi that he had already given him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Bonagrazia, at your service,’ he replied without turning round. ‘But everyone calls me Bonaga.’

  They left the piazza, walking past the inn where Wilhelm von Trier had been killed, and entered a maze of alleyways between Santo Stefano and the high street. Bonaga manoeuvred his cart with skill, but in some places piles of rubble and rubbish blocked his way. So as not to lose time, when the going was rough, Gerardo picked him up, trying to ignore the fact that he reeked, and carried him and his wheeled cart together.

  At a certain point the boy stopped in front of the ruins of a house. ‘Here we are,’ he said. He went round a pile of square stones but then he suddenly stopped, making a sign to be silent. From his larger bag he pulled out a rolled up catapult, placed a stone in the piece of concave leather in the centre and a finger in the ring at the other end of the cord. Then, with a rapid movement, he whirled the sling twice above his head and let it fly. Gerardo ran quickly to his side, with a hand on the hilt of his knife, but as soon as he saw the boy’s satisfied smile he relaxed. He followed the direction of his gaze, and on a bit of grass growing between the rubble, at about eight paces distance, he saw a blackbird with its head smashed.

  ‘That’s my supper,’ said Bonaga. ‘A right piece of luck.’

  ‘Yes. It was a long way to have hit it at your first shot.’

  The boy took on an offended air. ‘I could have hit it had it been twice as far away. I meant that it was a piece of luck to find a blackbird. The innkeepers slaughter the things, to serve them warm to their customers, and there are almost none left in the city now.’

  Gerardo went to pick up the dead bird by its tail and handed it to him. Bonaga immediately put it away in the big bag that seemed to be half full of pebbles from the river. Then he pushed off with his board to go into the house, crossed into the entrance hall that no longer had a front door, and went on into the darkness. ‘Come. It’s this way.’

  For prudence’s sake, Gerardo waited until his eyes had become accustomed to the dim light before following him. A strange silence reigned in the ruined house, perhaps due to the fact that the noise from the main streets did not reach such a secluded place. As soon as Gerardo reached him, Bonaga showed the templar a large hole opening out beneath a wall. ‘That is the underworld,’ he said, holding out his hand for the rest of the money.

  ‘One moment.’ Gerardo held him back. ‘You must tell me exactly what this place is and why the man I am looking for should be down there.’

  The boy paused before speaking, then he said, in a low voice, ‘It is the beggars’ secret refuge. I’ve heard that it’s very old and stretches for miles under the city. Lots of beggars come to sleep here at night. Others are there in the day too, when they are too ill to go out.’

  ‘How is it possible that no one knows anything about it?’ asked Gerardo.

  Bonaga explained that one day, before he was born, someone had wanted to add a new floor on to the house and it had collapsed, because the cellar beneath it could not hold its weight. That was how the underworld was discovered. The house was abandoned because, with the hole beneath, it wasn’t worth rebuilding and the underworld was explored and colonised by the beggars. Then the citizens gradually began to forget about its existence.

  ‘I’ve never been down there,’ said Bonaga, gloomily. ‘I can’t get down on my own and no one has ever wanted to take me.’

  His voice had become harder. Perhaps that was the reason that he had decided to betray the secret, more than for the money. He felt his brot
hers in misfortune had left him out. ‘Haven’t you got any friends?’

  The boy shook his head, looking Gerardo in the eye. ‘We poor are all enemies. I have to spend any alms that I receive immediately, otherwise they steal them off me because they know that I can’t run away.’ He sat there in silence for a moment, then added, ‘But if I have time to get out my catapult and can get my back against a wall, they keep their distance.’

  ‘Do you want to see what it’s like down there?’ asked Gerardo, on an impulse.

  Bonaga shrugged his shoulders and dropped his eyes without saying anything. Gerardo bent down, lifted him off the cart and started to carry him down through the rubble. When they got to the tunnel, he set him down on a square-shaped stone and looked around. In the shadowy light that filtered down from above he saw a torch fixed to a wall and looking more closely he noticed that next to it was a piece of steel and a flintstone. He struck the steel and the torch soaked with cheap oil immediately took fire, letting off a dense black smoke.

  The boy exclaimed in thrilled astonishment. They were in what must have been an ancient Roman sewer pipe, with a drainage canal in the centre, now dry, and a narrow passageway leading off on the left-hand side. There was a slight breeze in the tunnel. Obviously other ways down there existed and a circulation of air was created, but the smell carried by the wind was anything but pleasant. The bottom of the canal, dry for centuries, was studded with rubbish, through which rats scurried.

  ‘Over there it goes underneath the Church of Santo Sepolcro,’ said Bonaga, pointing to a stretch of tunnel to their right. ‘No one goes there any more, they say that it has a curse on it.’

  Gerardo peered into the darkness of the tunnel. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that such a spooky place caused people to believe in the supernatural. ‘A curse? What sort of curse?’

  ‘I don’t know. As I told you, no one speaks to me much. I only heard that some vagrants disappeared and were later found down there. Dead.’

  ‘I see. And where does the other tunnel lead?’

  ‘If you go down that tunnel, at a certain point you get to an enormous room,’ replied Bonaga, who was staring at the squalid sight as though it were one of the seven Wonders of the World. ‘They told me that all the walls are painted, like in a church. I know that the Ferrarese sleeps there.’

  ‘I’m going to find him,’ said Gerardo. ‘You wait for me here, I’ll carry you back up when I get back.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed the boy, terrified. ‘We’ve got to leave immediately.’

  In an agitated voice he explained that if Gerardo entered the underworld dressed like that, he wouldn’t get out alive. And if he himself were left abandoned on that stone without being able to get away, he would soon meet the same end.

  Gerardo hesitated. He wanted to get the thing over with and speak to the Ferrarese in order to find out if he knew anything useful about the death of the German templar. But the urgency in Bonaga’s voice and above all, his expression, made Gerardo take the threat seriously. He put out the torch, took the little mendicant into his arms again and went back up to the ruined house.

  Without saying a word he deposited the boy on his cart, gave him the other five coins that he had promised him and they began to retrace their steps. As soon as they were back in Piazza di Santo Stefano, Gerardo said goodbye to the boy and set off towards Via San Vitale, where he had a meeting with Mondino. He looked skyward. The sun was hidden behind a thick cloak of clouds and the afternoon promised rain.

  As he was in a hurry, he took the main street and found himself walking past Remigio’s counter almost without realising it. The banker had already told his servants to raise the wooden hatch and was waiting for them to close and bolt it from the inside. In the few seconds in which he could still see in, Gerardo saw Fiamma raise her head and stare straight at him.

  Incapable of going a step further, he stood looking back at her and, without thinking, waved a hand by way of greeting. The hatch closed with a dry crash and Gerardo had the impression that a second later Fiamma would have smiled at him.

  Somewhat annoyed, Uberto da Rimini walked out of the street door and headed for Trebbo dei Banchi. The two young priests that he had decided to take along with him followed a few paces behind, with heads down, not daring to disturb him while he was thinking.

  He had just been to see the owner of the house where the arsonist-cum-student had lived. However, the wool merchant hadn’t seemed particularly pleased that the Inquisition was taking his interests to heart. On hearing that the officers of the comune had obtained no results as yet, he became reluctant to collaborate. Uberto couldn’t work out whether this was because he was a stupid Ghibelline or because he had something to hide. Perhaps both.

  However, at least he had been respectful, not so much towards him, but towards his office. This was one of the reasons why Uberto took pleasure in the job of Inquisitor. He would not have liked to belong to an order lacking in notoriety and celebrity like the Augustinians or the hermitical monks of San Girolamo, for example. He enjoyed the fear that the Dominicans’ black and white habit inspired in people. The populace was wicked by nature, and the one thing capable of keeping the people in line was a healthy fear of God. Something that the Inquisition, through its work, continued to nurture. Uberto was convinced that sooner or later the privilege of investigating heresy and behaviour that was contrary to the faith would be entrusted entirely to his order, removing power from the franciscans who often showed themselves to be too weak.

  In any case, he had managed to get a physical description of the young man from the merchant, since his research on the basis of his name had led nowhere. By this time he was certain that Francesco Salimbene was a false identity. This, more than anything else, indicated that he was guilty. It wasn’t quite legal proof, thought Uberto with a rush of irritation as he was reminded of his recent meeting with the Archbishop, but it was more than enough to convince him that he was on the right path.

  If they could find the young man who had vanished and who was almost certainly a Knight templar in disguise, he was convinced that a great deal would become clear and the Archbishop would no longer be able to get out of taking the decisions that his cowardice had stopped him confronting until now.

  Another lead he wanted to follow was that of Mondino de Liuzzi. Uberto had been livid with rage when he had found out that the physician had been the first person to examine the corpse of the German templar in Santo Stefano. But then he realised that that too was an important pointer. Mondino’s presence at the scene of the crime was suspicious. Since the evening of the fire at sant’Antonino, it became increasingly clear that Mondino had something to hide.

  Uberto keenly hoped that Guido Arlotti had managed to discover something useful too. The former priest had not yet reported back, but time was tight and he didn’t intend to sit around waiting for him to do things at his leisure. He had decided to go and speak to Arlotti in the tavern that he used as a base for his nefarious trade. Guido had promised results and the time had come to make him understand that he should never make vain promises.

  Walking with rapid steps, Uberto soon arrived at Porta Ravegnana, followed the road to the Mercato di Mezzo as far as the bridge over the Aposa, then turned right into the blacksmiths’ neighbourhood, still followed by the two friars, who were now chatting among themselves. The noise of hammering on anvils and the acrid smell of steel tempered in water surrounded him like a cloak. He picked his way along the road, walking on the dry mud in the centre of the street, passing the array of swords, metal cauldrons, knives and other wares displayed outside the workshops.

  The members of the populace whom they happened to notice turned away with a hostile air. Uberto knew why: a rumour was spreading through the streets that the rise in the price of bread was the fault of the Church.

  A boy with thick blond straw-like hair, busy polishing a breastplate
with a cloth, spat on the ground as they passed. Uberto stopped, turned and looked at him in silence until the boy got down on his knees, offering a stream of excuses in an almost incomprehensible dialect. The spit had not been a gesture of disrespect towards them, it had been by chance, and he had not seen them, no one would dare to spit in the path of the Dominican Inquisitor ...

  Uberto, mollified by the terror of a rat in a trap that he had seen in the boy’s eyes, and content to have been recognised even by an ignorant peasant such as he, told him to be more careful in future and went on his way. His companions had witnessed the scene with expressionless faces, and they carried on walking behind him without breathing a word. They were both bright boys whom Uberto had picked out to be his personal assistants in order to prepare for the job of Inquisitor. It was above all the smaller of the two, a friar by the name of Antonio, who knew the value of obedience.

  So he had decided to take them to Guido Arlotti’s den. They had to begin to learn that one could not always do everything according to the rules, and that to combat the Devil it was sometimes necessary to get one’s hands dirty.

  Once they had left the blacksmith’s borough, with their ears ringing from the clamour of the hammering, it took him a moment to hear the normal noises of the street. He turned to check that the two novices were still behind him and led the way along a route made circuitous by the necessity to avoid dangerous roads and at the same time not be seen by too many people. They finally reached Torresotto di Galliera. Not far ahead, in a street without a name, they stopped in front of the door of a tavern.

  Uberto ordered friar Antonio to go in, find Guido and bring him out. If possible, the Inquisitor preferred to save himself the sight of what he imagined would be inside. Scantily dressed women, depraved men, dirt and the stink of sweat. The young man nodded and went in without hesitating, a determined expression in his eyes and his jaw set. But he came straight out again, visibly shocked. He said that Guido Arlotti was not in a condition to come outside and perhaps not even to speak. The publican had told him that he was in bed in the room upstairs, still drunk from the night before.