William had spoken in such a meek tone, he had expressed his certainties in such a hesitant way, that none of those present was able to stand up, and rebut. This does not mean that all were convinced of what he had said. The Avignonese were now writhing, frowning, and muttering comments among themselves, and even the abbot seemed unfavorably impressed by those words, as if he were thinking this was not the relationship he had desired between his order and the empire. And as for the Minorites, Michael of Cesena was puzzled, Jerome aghast, Ubertino pensive.
The silence was broken by Cardinal del Poggetto, still smiling and relaxed as he politely asked William whether he would go to Avignon to say these same thins to the lord Pope. William asked the opinion of the cardinal, who said that the Pope had heard many debatable opinions uttered during his life and was a most loving father toward all his sons, but surely these propositions would grieve him very much.
Bernard Gui, who until then had not opened his mouth, now spoke up: “I would be very happy if Brother William, so skilled and eloquent in expounding his own ideas, were to submit them to the judgment of the Pontiff…”
“You have convinced me, my lord Bernard,” William said. “I will not come.” Then, addressing the cardinal, in an apologetic tone: “You know, this fluxion that is affecting my chest dissuades me from undertaking such a long journey in this season…”
“Then why did you speak at such length?” the cardinal asked.
“To bear witness to the truth,” William said humbly. “The truth shall make us free.”
“Ah, no!” Jean de Baune exploded at this point. “Here we are not talking about the truth that makes us free, but about excessive freedom that wants to set itself up as truth!”
“That is also possible,” William admitted sweetly.
My intuition suddenly warned me that another tempest of hearts and tongues was about to burst, far more furious than, the earlier one. But nothing happened. While de Baune was still speaking, the captain of the archers entered and went to whisper something into Bernard’s ear. Bernard rose abruptly and held up his hand to speak.
“Brothers,” he said, “it is possible this profitable discussion may be resumed, but for the moment an event of tremendous gravity obliges us to suspend our session, with the abbot’s permission. Something has happened there…” He pointed vaguely outside, then strode through the hall and went out. Many followed him, William among the first, and I with him.
My master looked at me and said, “I fear something has happened to Severinus.”
SEXT
We crossed the grounds with a rapid step, in anguish. The captain of the archers led us toward the infirmary, and as we arrived there we glimpsed in the thick grayness a stirring of shadows: monks and servants were rushing about, archers were standing outside the door to prevent access.
“Those guards were sent by me, to seek a man who could shed light on many mysteries,” Bernard said.
“The brother herbalist?” the abbot asked, dumbfounded.
“No. You will see now,” Bernard said, making his way inside.
We entered Severinus’s laboratory, and here a painful sight greeted our eyes. The unfortunate herbalist lay, a corpse, in a pool of blood, his head bashed in. On every side the shelves seemed to have been devastated by a storm: pots, bottles, books, documents lay all around in great disorder, ruined. Beside the body was an armillary sphere at least twice the size of a man’s head, of finely worked metal, surmounted by a gold cross, and set on a short, decorated tripod. On other occasions I had noticed it on the table to the left of the front door.
At the other end of the room two archers were holding the cellarer fast, though he wriggled and proclaimed his innocence, increasing his noise when he saw the abbot enter. “My lord!” he cried out. “Appearances are against me! Severinus was already dead when I came in, and they found me staring at this massacre, speechless!”
The archers’ captain went over to Bernard, and with his permission made a report, in front of everyone. The archers had been ordered to find the cellarer and arrest him, and for over two hours they had searched for him throughout the abbey. This, I thought, must have been the command Bernard had given before entering the hall; and the soldiers, foreigners in this place, had probably pursued their search in the wrong places, without realizing that the cellarer, unaware of his fate, was with the others in the narthex; the fog had also made their hunt more difficult. In any case, from the captain’s words it emerged that Remigio, after I left him, went toward the kitchen, where someone saw him and informed the archers, who reached the Aedificium after Remigio had left it again, missing them only by a moment. In the kitchen was Jorge, who declared he had just finished speaking with the cellarer. The archers then explored the grounds in the direction of the gardens, and there, emerging from the mist like a ghost, they found old Alinardo, who seemed lost. It was Alinardo who said he had seen the cellarer, a short while before, going into the infirmary. The archers went there and found the door open. Once inside, they discovered Severinus lifeless and the cellarer furiously rummaging over the shelves, flinging everything on the floor, as if he were hunting for something. It was easy to see what had happened, the captain concluded. Remigio had entered, had attacked the herbalist and killed him, and then was seeking the thing for which he had killed.
An archer picked the armillary sphere up from the floor and handed it to Bernard. The elegant architecture of brass and silver circles, held together by a stronger frame of bronze rings grasped by the stem of the tripod, had been brought down heavily on the victim’s skull, and at the impact many of the finer circles had shattered or bent to one side. This side was the one brought down on Severinus’s head, as was revealed by traces of blood and even tufts of hair and horrible gobbets of cerebral matter.
William bent over Severinus to verify his death. The poor man’s eyes, veiled by the streams of blood from his head, were fixed, and I wondered if it were ever possible to read in the stiffened pupil, as it has been said in some cases, the image of the murderer, the last vestige of the victim’s perception. I saw that William sought the dead man’s hands, to see if he had black stains on his fingers, even though, this time, the cause of death was obviously quite different: but Severinus was wearing the same leather gloves with which I had occasionally seen him handling dangerous herbs, lizards, and unfamiliar insects.
Meanwhile, Bernard Gui was addressing the cellarer: “Remigio of Varagine — that is your name, is it not? I had sent my men after you on the basis of other accusations and to confirm other suspicions. Now I see that I acted properly, although, to my regret, too slowly. My lord,” he said to the abbot, “I hold myself virtually responsible for this last crime, because I have known since this morning that this man should be taken into custody, after I heard the revelations of that other wretch, arrested last night. But as you saw for yourself, during the morning I was occupied with other duties, and my men did their best…”