He spoke in a loud voice so that all those present could hear (and the room had meanwhile filled up, people crowding into every corner, looking at the things scattered and destroyed, pointing to the corpse and commenting in low voices on the crime), and, as he spoke, I glimpsed Malachi in the little crowd, grimly observing the scene. The cellarer, about to be dragged away, also glimpsed him. He wrested himself from the archer’s grasp and flung himself on his brother, grabbing him by the habit and speaking to him briefly and desperately, his face close to the other man’s, until the archers seized him again. But, as he was being led off roughly, he turned again toward Malachi and shouted at him, “You swear, and I swear!”
Malachi did not answer at once, as if he were seeking the most suitable words. Then, as the cellarer was being pulled across the threshold, he said, “I will do nothing to harm you.”
William and I looked at each other, wondering what was the meaning of this scene. Bernard had also observed it, but did not appear upset by it; rather, he smiled at Malachi, as if to approve his words and to seal with him a sinister bargain. Then he announced that immediately after our meal a first court would meet in the chapter hall to open this investigation publicly. And he went out, ordering the cellarer to be taken to the forges, but not allowed to speak with Salvatore.
At that moment we heard Benno calling us, at our back. “I came in right after you,” he said in a whisper, “when the room was still half empty, and Malachi was not here.”
“He must have entered afterward,” William said.
“No,” Benno insisted, “I was near the door, I saw the people come in. I tell you, Malachi was already inside … before.”
“Before what?”
“Before the cellarer entered. I cannot swear it, but I believe he came from behind that curtain, when there were already many of us in here.” And he nodded toward an ample hanging that concealed the bed where Severinus had usually made anyone who had been given some medication lie down and rest.
“Are you insinuating he killed Severinus and hid there when the cellarer came in?” William asked.
“Or else from behind the curtain he witnessed what happened out here. Why, otherwise, would the cellarer have implored him not to harm him, promising in return not to do him harm, either?”
“That is possible,” William said. “In any case, there was a book here and it should still be here, because both the cellarer and Malachi went out empty-handed.” William knew from my report that Benno knew; and at that moment he needed help. He went over to the abbot, who was sadly observing Severinus’s corpse; William asked him to make everyone leave, because he wanted to examine the place more closely. The abbot consented and then left, not without giving William a skeptical look, as if reproaching him for always arriving too late. Malachi tried to remain, inventing various reasons, all quite vague; William pointed out that this was not the library, and that here Malachi could claim no rights. William was polite but inflexible, and he got his revenge for the time when Malachi had not allowed him to examine Venantius’s desk.
When only three of us were left, William cleared the rubble and papers away from one of the tables and told me to hand him, one after another, the books in Severinus’s collection. A small collection, compared with the immense one of the labyrinth, but still there were dozens and dozens of volumes, of various sizes, which had formerly stood neatly on the shelves and now lay in disorder on the ground among other objects, already disturbed by the cellarer’s frantic hands, some even torn, as if he were seeking not a book but something that could be placed between the pages of a book. Some had been ripped violently, separated from their binding. To collect them, rapidly ascertain their subject, and pile them up on the table was no easy undertaking; and everything had to be done in haste, because the abbot had given us little time: the monks had to come in and lay out Severinus’s battered body and prepare it for burial. We also had to move about, search under the tables, behind the shelves, in the cupboards, to see whether anything had escaped the first inspection. William would not let Benno help me and allowed him only to stand guard at the door. Despite the abbot’s orders, many were pressing to enter: servants terrified by the news, monks mourning their brother, novices carrying clean cloths and basins of water to wash and enshroud the corpse…
So we had to act fast. I grabbed the books and handed them to William, who examined them and set them on the table. Then we realized it was a long job, and we proceeded together: I would pick up a book, smooth it out if it was ruffled, read its title, and set it down. In many cases there were only scattered pages.
“De plantis libri tres. Damnation, that’s not it,” William said, slamming the book on the table.
“Thesaurus herbarum,” I said, and William snapped, “Drop it; we’re looking for a Greek book!”
“This?” I asked, showing him a work whose pages were covered with abstruse letters. And William said, “No, that’s Arabic, idiot! Bacon was right: the scholar’s first duty is to learn languages!”
“But you don’t know Arabic, either!” I replied, irked, to which William answered, “At least I understand when it is Arabic!” And I blushed, because I could hear Benno snickering behind my back.
There were many books, and even more notes, scrolls with drawings of the heavenly vault, catalogues of strange plants, written on scattered pages, probably by the dead man. We worked a long time, exploring every corner of the laboratory. William, with great coldness, even shifted the corpse to see whether there was anything beneath it, and he rummaged inside the habit. Nothing.
“It has to be done,” he said. “Severinus locked himself in here with a book. The cellarer didn’t have it…”
“Can he have hidden it inside his habit?” I asked. “No, the book I saw the other morning under Venantius’s desk was big, and we would have noticed.”
“How was it bound?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It was lying open, and I saw it only for a few seconds, just long enough to realize it was in Greek, but I remember nothing else. Let us continue; the cellarer didn’t take it, nor, I believe, did Malachi.”
“Absolutely not,” Benno confirmed. “When the cellarer grabbed him by the chest, it was obvious he could have nothing under his scapular.”
“Good. Or, rather, bad. If the book is not in this room, obviously someone else, besides Malachi and the cellarer, had come in here before.”
“A third person, then, who killed Severinus?”
“Too many people,” William said.
“But anyway,” I asked, “who could have known the book was here?”
“Jorge, for example, if he overheard us.”
“Yes,” I said, “but Jorge couldn’t have killed a strong man like Severinus, and with such violence.”
“No, certainly not. Besides, you saw him going toward the Aedificium, and the archers found him in the kitchen shortly before they found the cellarer. So he wouldn’t have had time to come here and then go back to the kitchen.”
“Let me think with my own head,” I said, aiming at emulating my master. “Alinardo was moving around in the vicinity, but he, too, can hardly stand, and he couldn’t have overpowered Severinus. The cellarer was here, but the time between his leaving the kitchen and the arrival of the archers was so short that I think it would have been difficult for him to make Severinus open the door, to attack and kill him, and then to make all this mess. Malachi could have come before them alclass="underline" Jorge hears us in the narthex, he goes to the scriptorium to tell Malachi that a book from the library is in Severinus’s laboratory, Malachi comes here, persuades Severinus to open the door, and kills him, God knows why. But if he was looking for the book, he should have recognized it, without all this ransacking, because he’s the librarian! So who’s left?”