The Secret Supper (15 page)

My mind kept pouring out questions: Where had the librarian been on the previous night? Had he truly met with Master Leonardo? And what for? Had he not openly criticized the Master in our conversations? How did it happen that they were now such friends?

A shiver ran down my spine. The last time I had spoken with Father Alessandro was the day before, at vespers. He had shown me the manuscripts that Leonardo had consulted in the monastery library, while I attempted to find which one of them might be the closed book of Donna Beatrice’s card. The truth is that I had not perceived any change in his mood. I had, however, felt a certain pity for him. This monk who had welcomed me to Santa Maria, who had assisted me from the very first day I set foot in the monastery, was one of the few unaware of what was being plotted under his roof.

Out of guilt, that very afternoon I ended up telling him all I knew about Leonardo and his challenge to decipher the Cenacolo. I owed it to him.

“What I’m about to tell you,” I warned him, “must never pass your lips.”

The librarian looked at me, puzzled.

“Well, do you swear?”

“In Christ’s name.”

I nodded, satisfied.

“Good. The Father Prior believes that Leonardo has hidden a secret message in the refectory mural.”

“In The Last Supper?”

“Exactly. The Father Prior suspects it’s something that may hurt the doctrine of Holy Mother the Church. Something that Master Leonardo may have taken from one of the books you found for him.”

“Which one?” he asked impatiently.

“I thought you might know.”

“I? The Master asked for many titles in our library.”

“Which ones?”

“There were so many…” He sounded doubtful. “I don’t know. Maybe he was especially interested in De Secretis Artis et Naturae Operibus.”

“De Secretis Artis?”

“It’s a rare Franciscan manuscript. If I’m not mistaken, I think Leonardo heard Amadeo of Portugal refer to it. You know him?”

“He’s the author of Apocalipsis Nova.”

“The same. In this book, an English monk called Roger Bacon, a celebrated writer and a heretic imprisoned by the Holy Office, explained the twelve ways in which one can hide a message in a work of art.”

“Is it a religious text?”

“No, rather a technical one.”

“And what other book might have served him as inspiration?” I insisted.

Father Alessandro stroked his chin as he reflected. He seemed neither nervous nor uneasy with my questioning. He was as helpful as ever, as if my confidences about Leonardo had not affected him in the least.

“Let me think,” he said. “Perhaps he made use of the lives of saints compiled by Jacobus de Voragine…the book known as The Golden Legend. Yes, perhaps there you may find what you’re looking for.”

“In the book by the celebrated Bishop of Genoa?” I asked, astonished.

“That was his title, more than three hundred years ago.”

“And what possible connection could there be between The Golden Legend and the message hidden in the Cenacolo?”

“If such a message exists, perhaps his book might hold the key to it,” Father Alessandro said, shutting his eyes as if seeking deeper concentration. “Friar Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican like us, gathered in the East as much information as he could on the lives of the early saints, as well as on Our Lord’s disciples. His discoveries filled Master Leonardo with enthusiasm.”

“He gathered information in the East?” I said, somewhat skeptically.

“Don’t be surprised, Father Agostino. The facts in his book are not precisely canonical. The Church would never accept his argument of the close blood ties between the Twelve Apostles. Did you know, for example, that Simon and Andrew were brothers? Perhaps that is why Leonardo painted them as twins on the refectory wall.”

“Truly?”

“And do you know that Jacobus states that, during his life, many people mistook James the Less for Jesus? And have you noticed the great resemblance between them in the Cenacolo?”

“Then Leonardo must have read his book,” I said, though still uncertain.

“More than that. He must have studied it in depth. And from what you suggest, it seems as if he’s studied it with more interest than Bacon’s book. Believe me.”

And with that, Father Alessandro broke up our last conversation. It was for this reason that, hearing the apprentices say that the librarian had met with Leonardo that same night, I felt suddenly afraid. Their indiscretion confirmed not only that Father Alessandro had hidden from me something as important as his friendship with Leonardo but also that the man I believed to be my only friend in Santa Maria had in all probability betrayed me.

But why?

22

I looked everywhere for the librarian. On his desk lay the two volumes of Bishop Jacobus de Voragine, which Father Alessandro had shown me on the previous afternoon. In large embossed letters, they displayed the name of the author and the Italian title of the book: Legendi di Sancti Vulgari Storiado. Of the other book, of Father Bacon’s treatise on the secret arts, there was no trace. If Father Alessandro had it in his collection, he must have kept it somewhere safely inaccessible.

Was I imagining things, or had the librarian tried to steer my attention away from that book? And if so, why?

The questions kept piling up. I needed Father Alessandro to explain certain things. But even though I asked for him in the church, the kitchens and the dormitory, no one could tell me where to find him. Nor could I insist too much. In the growing tide of visitors to Santa Maria to see the funeral procession from close quarters, it was easy to lose sight of an elderly librarian. I knew that sooner or later I would run into him and he would then inform me what in Heaven’s name was going on.

At about ten in the morning, the square in front of the church and the entire length of the road from Santa Maria to the castle were full of a silent crowd. All the people were wearing their finest garments and they carried candles and dry palm leaves to wave as the duchess’s coffin went by. There was hardly room to breathe. In the church, however, only the ambassadors and selected visitors were allowed, by express orders of the duke himself. Beneath the gallery, a platform had been erected, covered in velvet and crossed with tasseled ropes of gold, from which Ludovico il Moro and his closest men would say their prayers. The whole area was under the protection of the duke’s private guards and only we, the monks of Santa Maria, enjoyed a certain freedom of movement to enter and leave the church.

I headed toward the nave of the church, not so much with the hope of coming across Father Alessandro as with the notion of meeting Leonardo for the first time. If his helpers had opened the refectory that morning, it was likely that their master would not be too far away.

My instinct failed me.

At the stroke of eleven, a sudden turmoil broke the peace of Santa Maria. The main door, beneath the largest round window, opened with a great noise. The trumpets outside sounded to announce the arrival of Ludovico il Moro and his retinue. The announcement drew the silent attention of the faithful who had been allowed in. It was then that a dozen men with somber faces and vacant looks, their garments covered in long cloaks trimmed with black fur, entered the church with a martial step in the direction of the tribune. And that is when I saw him. Even though he was the last in the procession, Leonardo stood out like Goliath among the Philistines. But it was not only his stature that attracted my notice. Instead of the embroidered silk and precious stones that adorned the other men’s garments, Leonardo was dressed from head to foot in white. His blond beard, carefully trimmed, fell straight down over his breast, and he walked turning from side to side, as if looking for familiar faces in the audience. He gave the impression of being a ghost from the past, in stark contrast with the duke himself, who, several steps ahead of the procession, wore his black hair cut round in the modern style, as a frame for his dark features. All eyes were on Leonardo. Even the pages and standard-bearers from the several various households attending the funeral noticed his presence before that of the duke. Leonardo, however, seemed aloof from it all.

“Welcome to the House of the Lord,” the Father Prior exclaimed when they reached the altar. He was surrounded by the brethren, who were dressed as befitted the occasion, and accompanied by the Archbishop of Milan, the head of the Franciscan Order and a dozen court clerics.

Ludovico il Moro and his retinue crossed themselves and occupied the places reserved for them. At the same time, a group of musicians displaying the Sforza coat of arms entered the church announcing the arrival of the coffin.

Master Leonardo, standing in the third row of the platform, kept a keen eye on everything and, from time to time, scribbled mysterious jottings in one of the notebooks he always carried with him. It seemed to me that he paid the same attention to the faces in the crowd as he did to the sound of Santa Maria’s organ, or to fluttering banners of the different groups in attendance. Someone had told me that the previous afternoon he had fallen into ecstatic contemplation over the flight of four hundred pigeons released in the Piazza del Duomo, and that he had listened with rapt delight to the cannon blasts from the city walls that the papal nuncio had ordered in honor of the late duchess. For Leonardo, everything merited attention, everything held within itself traces of the secret science of life.

Of course, I was not the only one to watch his movements during the ceremony. All around me, Leonardo was the main subject of conversation. The more I observed his blue eyes and his majestic demeanor the more I felt the need to know him. The Soothsayer first, and then the Father Prior had provoked in me what was now a burning thirst.

The guests at the ceremony did nothing to extinguish it. They whispered like lovebirds, commenting on the Tuscan’s latest eccentricity: the completion of a treatise on painting in which he maligned most other artists in order to sing his own praises. His privileged mind was employed in myriad endeavors, from easing the duke’s sorrow with ingenious entertainments to designing impossible drawbridges, assault towers that would move without the aid of horses, and cranes to help unload woolsacks from the ships in the canals.

Leonardo, lost in thought, seemed unaware of the passions he provoked. Now he was sketching in his notebook the strange costume the duke was wearing: a cape of beautiful black silk, ripped open in various places, as if the widower himself had torn it with his bare hands.

Little did I suspect how close I was to speaking with the Master.

It was Brother Giberto, Santa Maria’s sexton, who gave me the chance of first meeting the painter, during an occasion both dramatic and unexpected.

It happened while the Father Prior was pronouncing words of the consecration. The young man from the North, all pink cheeks and carrot-colored hair, walked up to me from behind and pulled roughly at my cloak.

“Father Agostino! Listen!” he cried with an anguished voice, his bloodshot eyes opened wide. “Something terrible has happened in the city! You must know at once!”

“Something terrible?”

Brother Giberto’s hands trembled.

“It’s God’s punishment! God’s punishment to those who dare defy Him!”

The sexton was not allowed to finish. Brother Benedetto, the one-eyed monk, and Father Andrea de Inveruno, with his delicate manners, approached us with urgent gestures.

“We must go at once! Quickly!”

“Will you come with us, Father Agostino?” the sexton asked, panting for breath. “I think we’ll need as much help as we can get.”

Their urgency convinced me. I did not know where I was to accompany them nor why; but when I saw one of the duke’s pages approach Leonardo to whisper in his ear and a look of alarm spread over Leonardo’s face, I hastily accepted. Something strange had taken place. Something serious. And I wanted to know what it was.

23

The duke’s two men could hardly believe their eyes. Dangling in front of them from a portico in the Piazza Mercanti, a thick rope fastened tightly about his neck, was the lifeless body of a monk.

The captain of the guard, Andrea Rho, had not yet had his breakfast. In fact, he had only just finished buttoning up his uniform when the news came to break the peace of his Sunday morning. His white hair disheveled, his belly uncovered, his whole body reeking like a newly awakened bear, Captain Rho approached the scene reluctantly to see what had happened. There was little he could do. The poor soul’s skin was cold and bluish, the veins in the face were swollen, the open eyes dry. The terror apparent in their look suggested a cruel and painful death. The man had suffered a long agony before breathing his last. The arms fell limp at both sides of the Dominican habit; the well-cared-for hands, thin and stiff, were barely visible beneath the sleeves. A soft stench of death reached the captain’s nostrils.

“Well?” The captain cast a long glance over the sensation-seeking crowd. Many were on their way back home, frustrated because they had not managed to catch a glimpse of the duchess’s sumptuous funeral carriage, and the sudden commotion now promised them some sort of compensation. The captain distrusted them all. He looked for a guilty face, a glint of murderous pride.

“What have we here?” he asked.

“A priest, sir. A friar,” his companion answered respectfully as he tried to keep the crowd at bay with his arms spread out and his pike stuck in the ground.

“I can see that, Massimo. I was awakened with the news.”

“Well, sir.” The soldier hesitated. “It seems like the man must have been hanged this very morning. And as no shops or stores are open today, no one seems to have seen anything.”

“Have you searched him?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not? Then you can’t tell if they robbed him before killing him?”

Massimo shook his head warily. It was obvious that he had never before touched a corpse. The captain gave him a scornful look before turning his attention to the crowd.

“No one knows anything, eh?” he shouted at them. “You’re a bunch of cowards! Vermin is what you are!”