“Omnis mundi creatura, quasi fiber et scriptura …”I murmured. “But what would that sign be?”
“This is what I do not know. But let us not forget that there are also signs that seem such and are instead without meaning, like blitiri or bu-ba-baff…”
“It would be atrocious,” I said, “to kill a man in order to say bu-ba-baff!”
“It would be atrocious,” William remarked, “to kill a man even to say ‘Credo in unum Deum.’ …”
At that moment Severinus joined us. The corpse had been washed and examined carefully. No wound, no bruise on the head.
“Do you have poisons in your laboratory?” William asked, as we headed for the infirmary.
“Among the other things. But that depends on what you mean by poison. There are substances that in small doses are healthful and in excessive doses cause death. Like every good herbalist I keep them, and I use them with discretion. In my garden I grow, for example, valerian. A few drops in an infusion of other herbs calms the heart if it is beating irregularly. An exaggerated dose brings on drowsiness and death.”
“And you noticed no signs of any particular poison on the corpse?”
“None. But many poisons leave no trace.”
We had reached the infirmary. Venantius’s body, washed in the balneary, had been brought there and was lying on the great table in Severinus’s laboratory; alembics and other instruments of glass and earthenware made me think of an alchemist’s shop (though I knew of such things only by indirect accounts). On some long shelves against the wall by the door was arrayed a vast series of cruets, ampoules, jugs, pots, filled with substances of different colors.
“A fine collection of simples,” William said. “All products of your garden?”
“No,” Severinus said, “many substances, rare, or impossible to grow in this climate, have been brought to me over the years by monks arriving from every part of the world. I have many precious things that cannot be found readily, along with substances easily obtained from the local flora. You see … aghalingho pesto comes from Cathay: I received it from a learned Arab. Indian aloe, excellent cicatricizant. Live arient revives the dead, or, rather, wakes those who have lost their senses. Arsenacho: very dangerous, a mortal poison for anyone who swallows it. Borage, a plant good for ailing lungs. Betony, good for fractures of the head. Mastic: calms pulmonary fluxions and troublesome catarrhs. Myrrh …”
“The gift of the Magi?” I asked.
The same. But now used to prevent miscarriage, gathered from a tree called Balsamodendron myrra. And this is mumia, very rare, produced by the decomposition of mummified cadavers; it is used in the preparation of many almost miraculous medicines. Mandragora officinalis, good for sleep …”
“And to stir desires of the flesh,” my master remarked.
“So they say, but here it is not used for that purpose, as you can imagine.” Severinus smiled. “And look at this,” he said, taking down an ampoule. “Tutty, miraculous for the eyes.”
“And what is this?” William asked in a bright voice, touching a stone lying on a shelf.
“That? It was given to me some time ago. It apparently has therapeutic virtues, but I have not yet discovered what they are. Do you know it?”
“Yes,” William said, “but not as a medicine.” He took from his habit a little knife and slowly held it toward the stone. As the knife, moved by his hand with extreme delicacy, came close to the stone, I saw that the blade made an abrupt movement, as if William had shifted his wrist, which was, however, absolutely still. And the blade stuck to the stone, making a faint metallic sound.
“You see,” William said to me, “it attracts iron.”
“And what is its use?” I asked.
“It has various uses, of which I will tell you. But for the present I would like to know, Severinus, if there is anything here that could kill a man.”
Severinus reflected a moment — too long, I would have said, considering the clarity of his answer: “Many things. As I said, the line between poison and medicine is very fine; the Greeks used the word ‘pharmacon’ for both.”
“And there is nothing that has been removed recently?”
Severinus reflected again, then, as if weighing his words: “Nothing recently.”
“And in the past?”
“Who knows? I don’t recall. I have been in this abbey thirty years, and twenty-five in the infirmary.”
“Too long for a human memory,” William admitted. Then, abruptly, he said, “We were speaking yesterday of plants that can induce visions. Which ones are they?”
Severinus’s actions and the expression on his face indicated an intense desire to avoid that subject. “I would have to think, you know. I have so many miraculous substances here. But let us speak, rather, of Venantius’s death. What do you say about it?”
“I would have to think,” William answered.
PRIME
The horrible event had upset the life of the community. The confusion caused by the discovery of the corpse had interrupted the holy office. The abbot promptly sent the monks back to the choir, to pray for the soul of their brother.
The monks’ voices were broken. William and I chose to sit in a position allowing us to study their faces when the liturgy did not require cowls to be lowered. Immediately we saw Berengar’s face. Pale, drawn, glistening with sweat.
Next to him we noticed Malachi. Dark, frowning, impassive. Beside Malachi, equally impassive, was the face of the blind Jorge. We observe, on the other hand, the nervous movements of Benno of Uppsala, the rhetoric scholar we had men the previous day in the scriptorium; and we caught his rapid glance at Malachi. “Benno is nervous, Berengar is frightened,” William remarked. “They must be questioned right away.”
“Why?” I asked ingenuously.
“Ours is a hard task,” William said. “A hard task, that of the inquisitor, who must strike the weakest, and at their moment of greatest weakness.”
In fact, as soon as the office was over, we caught up with Benno, who was heading for the library. The young man seemed vexed at hearing William call him, and he muttered some faint pretext about work to be done. He seemed in a hurry to get to the scriptorium. But my master reminded him that he was carrying out an inquiry at the abbot’s behest, and led Benno into the cloister. We sat on the inner wall, between two columns. Looking from time to time toward the Aedificium, Benno waited for William to speak.
“Well, then,” William asked, “what was said that day when you were discussing Adelmo’s marginalia with Berengar, Venantius, Malachi, and Jorge?”
“You heard it yesterday. Jorge was saying that it is not licit to use ridiculous images to decorate books that contain the truth. And Venantius observed that Aristotle himself had spoken of witticisms and plays on words as instruments better to reveal the truth, and hence laughter could not be such a bad thing if it could become a vehicle of the truth. Jorge said that, as far as he could recall, Aristotle had spoken of these things in his Poetics, when discussing metaphor. And these were in themselves two disturbing circumstances, first because the book of the Poetics, unknown to the Christian world for such a long time, which was perhaps by divine decree, had come to us through the infidel Moors…”
“But it was translated into Latin by a friend of the angelic doctor of Aquino,” William said.
“That’s what I said to him,” Benno replied, immediately heartened. “I read Greek badly and I could study that great book only, in fact, through the translation of William of Moerbeke. Yes, that’s what I said. But Jorge added that the second cause for uneasiness is that in the book the Stagirite was speaking of poetry, which is infima doctrina and which exists on figments. And Venantius said that the psalms, too, are works of poetry and use metaphors; and Jorge became enraged because he said the psalms are works of divine inspiration and use metaphors to convey the truth, while the works of the pagan poets use metaphors to convey falsehood and for purposes of mere pleasure, a remark that greatly offended me…”