Devil's Lair (5 page)

“You did,” she answered.

“Someone else.”

She shook her head.

“When you were a child,
perhaps. Your mother?”

“She could not even read
Iesus.
She went to Heaven this year, on Saint Alban’s
Day. Now she reads the face of God.”

The pestilence,
thought Giovanni. He, too, had suffered
losses in the great mortality: his father, his stepmother, his Uncle Vanni. In
Florence, four-fifths of the population had died in the past two years. Now his
closest friends were gone: Matteo Frescobaldi, Giovanni Villani, Ventura
Monachi, Bruno Casini, Francesco Albizzi, Capo di Borghese Domenichi.

And Lady Fiammetta, his
little flame. He had met her in the shadows of King Robert’s court, and from
that day the shadows held no fear for him. When darkness fell she came to him,
and he to her. Until the shadows claimed her. Thinking of her now, he felt
blood tremble in the lake of his heart. Everywhere and always, love made way
for grief.

He set these memories aside
and continued his line of questioning. “Your father, then? He read to you?”

Nadja shook her head. “I
never knew him.”

“Someone else?”

“No.”

“Stories from a wandering
preacher, or friends around the campfire?”

“All my friends are here.”

William put a hand on
Giovanni’s arm. “Enough. No need to torture the girl. What do you know of this
demon?”

Giovanni answered, “His name
is Geryon. Dante saw the beast in the abyss, where the river of blood cascades
into the lower pit. Geryon guards the descent into Malebolge, the eighth circle
of Hell, but Virgil tamed him.”

“He has a scorpion’s tail,”
Nadja said.

“Yes. I should have remembered
that.”

“A small matter,” William
said.

“Which may prove deadly,”
Nadja added.

The friar swallowed the last
of his hazelnuts, then inquired of Giovanni, “How did Virgil tame the beast?”

“Dante doesn’t say.”

“What does he say?” Nadja
asked.

Giovanni scratched the nape
of his neck. “Well, let’s see.” He brought the scene to mind. “After meeting
the sodomites in the seventh circle, Virgil talked to Geryon alone, while Dante
spoke to the shades of the dead.”

“Who?” William asked.

“The usurers.”

Giovanni felt a twinge of
shame. His father had been a usurer for the Bardi company, lending money at
interest—merciless loans that ruined many good men. Giovanni had not told
William his dark secret, that he came from a family of merchants and bankers,
that he himself had apprenticed as a usurer. He saw no need to confess it now.

William continued. “So this
demon, Geryon, guards the passage down to the Devil.”

“Yes.”

“But the demon can be
reasoned with.”

“Apparently.”

“How?”

Giovanni shrugged.

“You must have some idea,”
William insisted.

But he didn’t. “You’ll know
when you get there.”

“I hope so,” William said,
and began unloading comestibles from the cart.

Giovanni helped with the
travel bags, most of which were his. Three contained his clothes. One had books
and writing supplies. Another held tools from his father’s estate—hammer,
nails, rope, and the like. He needed to get a few things out: warm clothes; his
ledger, pen, and ink; a trowel to dig a fire pit. Taking the tool bag, he
accidentally knocked it against Marco’s elbow and heard a thump of metal on
bone. The comatose man did not complain.

“Sorry,” Giovanni muttered,
for no reason, then asked William, “What about him?”

The old man set down the
culinary bag. Wood spoons drummed against an iron pot, then settled into
silence. “Leave him be for now, until we get the campfire going.”

Nadja collected deadfall for
the fire.

“We could make more drawing
sticks,” Giovanni suggested. He hoped to occupy the girl’s attention with this
task, then lure William aside for a private conversation.

The girl brightened.
“Hazelwood is best for charcoal.”

“Also used by witches,” said
the friar, casting a glance at Nadja. “For divining water, I believe.”

She shrugged. “There’s never
a witch around when you need one.”

William laughed.

In the tool bag the trowel
was snared by a skein of rope. Giovanni untangled it and began to dig a fire
pit. “Mercury’s caduceus was made from hazelwood. He used it to guide souls
into the underworld.”

“Then we should take some
with us,” said William.

Nadja piled her gleanings on
the ground. Giovanni broke the sticks into flinders, arranged them in a pyre,
then added dry leaves and catkins before striking flint to steel. A hot spark
kindled the leaves. The air roiled with smoke. Giovanni blew into the flamelet
until the larger sticks ignited. The drought had been a curse to the foliage,
but a blessing to the fire.

The three of them took Marco
down from the cart. The knight was heavy, owing to his height. As they
manhandled Marco to the fireside, Giovanni stubbed his toe on a root. He caught
himself before they all fell into the flames, and they managed to set the
knight down with no additional injuries to the patient or the caregivers.

At Nadja’s prompting,
Giovanni dug a kiln for making charcoal. He had learned the collier’s art as a
young boy, and he enjoyed putting his knowledge to use. Explaining the process
to Nadja, he piled nine hazel sticks on a bed of kindling in the pit before
covering the wood with topsoil. He left a small hole in the center for smoke to
escape, and through this opening he lit the kiln with a firebrand. Lacking
sufficient air for a flame, the sticks would burn slow, smolder overnight, and
be reduced to charcoal by noon tomorrow.

Giovanni asked Nadja to
monitor the smoke, then excused himself from the camp. If he guessed right, the
friar would seek him out within the hour.

CHAPTER 6

Giovanni took his ledger
with him. His quill and inkpot he carried in a holder on his belt, in the
fashion of a Florentine merchant. He climbed to a rise above the road and
settled in a hassock of dry grass on the brink of the canyon, where he could
sit and watch the play of sunset in the clouds: clusters of lemons and oranges
that ripened with color before decaying into darkness. Shadows poured like honey
into the ravine. The gorge was narrow, less than a bowshot at the widest. A
fierce wind skirled below, in fits and starts, though Giovanni, above the howl,
felt only a slight breeze that tickled the hairs on his arms. As the wind
lulled in the canyon, he heard the purl of a river sounding in the deep.

From somewhere distant a
church bell rang vespers, calling all good Christians to their evening prayers.
The somber knell echoed through the hills. Giovanni did not know from which
town or village the bell chimed, nor how many Christians yet lived to hear it,
but the ringing reassured him that someone survived out there in the dark, if
only a lone bellringer in a desolate village, one last soul pealing a lament
for the world that was.

As the angelus rang out, the
poet took his rosary from the relic pouch on his belt and raised himself to his
knees, his head bowed. The ten ave beads were small, round, and made of horn.
The paternoster bead was square and made of ivory: it had once been a gambler’s
die, which had devoured much of Giovanni’s youth. The gaud was a cameo: Saint
David of Wales, patron saint of poetry. Giovanni fingered the beads, recited
Saint Julian’s paternoster, and prayed for the safety of his children. When the
angelus died with the light of day, Giovanni returned to sitting with the
ledger in his lap.

William approached. The old
friar huffed and wheezed as he climbed barefoot. His walking stick dislodged a
stream of rocks which tumbled down behind him. His cowl was pulled back,
exposing his tonsure. His mottled scalp reflected moonlight.

The friar looked up and gave
a smile. “Writing?”

“Thinking.”

Giovanni set his ledger
aside, unused.

When William reached the
shelf where Giovanni sat, he leaned heavily against his staff. He examined his
right foot and plucked a thorn from his unshod heel.

Giovanni said, “If we’d
gotten there sooner, I might have found you some boots.”

“I would not have worn them.
But I thank you for the thought.”

“In Florence, even the
Franciscans wear sandals.”

“They abandon Saint Francis
for Saint Crispin.”

“You still consider yourself
a Franciscan?”

“A Spiritual.”

Giovanni had guessed as
much. The Franciscan order was at war with itself: the Spirituals held fast to
the ways of Saint Francis and the imitation of Christ; the Conventuals allowed
the ownership of property and the accumulation of wealth. One of the Spiritual
groups, the Fraticelli, castigated the Conventuals as agents of the Devil. The
Conventuals, with the aid of the pope and the Inquisition, had purged them from
the order. In Marseille four Fraticelli were burned at the stake. William had
fled Avignon to avoid a similar fate.

“Saint Francis earned a
pontifical blessing,” Giovanni said. “You were excommunicated.”

“By a false and lying pope.”

Giovanni stretched out his
legs. “No love lost for Avignon?”

“I took my vows in England.”

“And forgot them in Italy.”

“Have I?”

“Jesus said, ‘
nihil
tuleritis in via neque virgam neque peram
’—and yet you carry a walking stick.”

William tossed his staff
into the canyon. It struck an outcrop and bounced into oblivion. “Please
forgive me.”

Giovanni felt a nattering of
guilt for depriving an old man of his appendage, but answered with a shrug. “A
waste of a fine stick. You could have given it to me.”

“I give it to you now. Shall
I send you after it?”

“You might enjoy that.”

“I’ve been tempted to
worse.”

“And resisted?”

“So far.”

Giovanni laughed and leaned
back on his arms. “There was a Fraticello in Naples. Brother Matteo of Amalfi.
He went barefoot, like Saint Francis, preaching the poverty of Christ. He once
quoted something you wrote.”

“What was that?”

“On the law of parsimony.”

“‘
Frustra fit per plura
quod potest fieri per pauciora,
’” William guessed.

Giovanni nodded. “‘It is
pointless to do with more what can be done with less.’”

William sat down and rubbed
his heel. “A rule I endeavor to live by.”

“Brother Matteo was burned
as a heretic.”

The old man let that pass
without comment.

Giovanni said, “He was a
good man.”

“These are evil days,” said
William, “when sinners burn saints and call it righteousness.”

“In that case, Father, I
recommend you put on some shoes. Walking barefoot for Christ may set you on the
road to martyrdom.”

“I know the road I’ve
chosen.”

“A dead end.”

William stared at him. “Is
that a joke?”

“Apparently not.”

“You don’t believe in
Nadja’s visions.”

“No, Father.”

“But she found the Knight
Templar.”

“Did she?”

“You saw her drawing of the
demon. Geryon, you said. Nadja sees things others cannot.”

“It’s not Geryon in the
picture.”

“You said it was.”

“I was thinking of Dante,
and made the wrong connection.”

“Then who is this demon?”

Giovanni quoted scripture:
“‘
et habebant caudus similes scorpionum, et aculei erant in caudis earum: et
potestas earum nocere hominibus.
’”

“John’s Apocalypse.”

“She must have heard it from
a preacher.”

“You have the faith of Saint
Thomas.”

“I’ve been to Lake Avernus,”
Giovanni said. “I’ve explored the Cave of the Sibyl. There is no gateway to the
realm of Orcas.”

“I suspect you may be
wrong.”

“If I’m right, what will you
do then?”

“I make no plans for the
future.”

“How is that possible?”

“I follow God. Today, He
calls me to the cave. Tomorrow, we will see what we will see.”

Giovanni knew what tomorrow
would bring.

The end of all flesh.

To William he said, “If you
don’t find what you’re looking for, will you come with me to Naples?”

“If I do find what I’m
looking for, will you come with me to Hell?”