The Secret Supper (11 page)

I made my decision shortly after returning frozen from our adventure, in search of warmth inside the monastery. Luck had it that as I ventured into the sacristy I happened to come upon the Father Prior. The librarian had left me, with the excuse that he needed to get food in the kitchen for our next working session, and I seized the opportunity.

Father Prior Vicenzo Bandello was a little over sixty, with a face creased like an old sail, a strong chin and a surprising tendency to allow his gestures to betray every one of his emotions. He was even smaller than I thought the night I’d seen him in the church. He was moving nervously between the painted doors of the sacristy cupboards, uncertain as to which to close first.

“Tell me, Father Agostino,” he said while putting away the chalice and paten from the previous Mass. “I’m curious. What exactly do you do in Rome?”

“I’m appointed to the Holy Office.”

“I see, I see…And, if I understand correctly, in the spare time left by your duties, you delight in solving puzzles. That’s splendid.” He smiled. “I’m certain we’ll get along well.”

“It is precisely that subject about which I’d like to speak to you.”

“Is that so?”

I nodded. If the Father Prior was the eminence that the librarian had vaunted, it was probable that the presence of the Soothsayer in Milan would not have escaped his notice. But I had to exercise caution. Perhaps he himself was the author of the letters and was afraid of disclosing his identity until he was sure of my true intentions. Even worse, perhaps he was not aware of the Soothsayer’s existence, but if I revealed it to him, who could prevent him from alerting Ludovico of our plans?

“Tell me this, Father Agostino. As someone who delights in uncovering secrets, you must have heard of the art of memory?”

The Father Prior asked the question nonchalantly while I was trying in vain to determine to what degree he might be involved in the matter of the anonymous correspondence. Perhaps I was being too zealous. It seemed as if every new monk I encountered at Santa Maria became part of my list of suspects. The Father Prior was to be no exception. The truth is that, of all possible alternatives, of the close to thirty friars who lived within these walls, the Father Prior was the man whose profile best fit that of the Soothsayer. I can’t imagine how we did not realize it back in Bethany. Even his first name, Vicenzo, consisted of seven letters, like the seven lines of the infernal Oculos ejus dinumera or the seven windows of the southern façade of the church. It came to me as I watched him opening and closing cupboard doors and secreting away a large bunch of keys under his habit. The Father Prior was one of the few who had access to the budgets and plans of the duke for Santa Maria, and likely the only one who would make use of a safe official courier to send his letters to Rome.

“Well?” he asked, amused to see me so lost in thought. “Have you or have you not heard of this art?”

I shook my head while searching his features for something that would confirm my suspicion.

“That’s too bad!” he continued. “Few are aware that our order boasts several great scholars in this worthy discipline.”

“I never heard of it.”

“And, of course, neither will you have heard that Cicero himself mentions this art in his De Oratore, or that an even earlier treatise, Ad Herennium, describes it in detail and offers us a precise formula to recall whatever we wish—”

“Offers us? The Dominicans?”

“Of course! For the past thirty or forty years, Father Agostino, many of our brethren have been studying this art. You yourself, who work every day with complicated files and documents, have you never dreamt of being able to store away in your mind a text, an image, a name, without having to go over it again because you can be certain it will stay with you forever?”

“Of course. But only the most gifted can—”

“And needing it in your work,” he cut me off, “have you never tried to find the best method to achieve such a miracle? The ancients, who did not possess the same ability to copy books as we have, invented a masterly device: they imagined ‘palaces of memory’ in which to store their knowledge. You haven’t heard of them either, have you?”

I shook my head, astonished into silence.

“The Greeks, for instance, conceived of a large building full of sumptuous galleries and rooms, and then would assign to each window, arch, column, stairs or hall a different meaning. In the entrance they’d ‘store’ their knowledge of grammar, in the main hall that of rhetoric, in the kitchen, oratory. And in order to remember something they’d put away there, all they had to do was go into that corner of their palace with their imagination and extract it in the inverse order in which it had been placed there. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

I looked at the Father Prior without knowing what to say. Was he offering me a clue permitting me to ask him about the letters we had received in Rome? Should I follow Father Alessandro’s advice and consult him about the puzzle without any further hesitation? Fearful of losing his early confidence, I gave him a subtle hint:

“Tell me, Father Prior. And if instead of a ‘palace of memory’ we were to use a ‘church of memory’? Could we, for example, conceal a person’s name in a church of brick and stone?”

“I see that you’re clever, Father Agostino.” He winked at me sarcastically. “And practical. What the Greeks applied to imaginary palaces, the Romans and even the Egyptians tried out on real buildings. If those who entered them knew the precise ‘memory code,’ they could wander through the rooms and at the same time receive valuable information.”

“And using a church?” I insisted.

“Yes, a church could also be used,” he conceded. “But before explaining how one of these mechanisms would work, allow me first to show you something. As I mentioned, in the past few years, Dominican brothers from Ravenna, Florence, Basel, Milan or Freiburg have been working on a mnemonic method based on images or architectural structures especially designed for this purpose.”

“Designed?”

“Yes. Adapted, retouched, embellished with decorative details that seem superfluous to the profane eye but are essential for those who know the secret vocabulary behind them. You’ll understand if I give you an example, Father Agostino.”

The Father Prior produced from inside his habit a sheet of paper that he smoothed out on the offering table. It was no larger than the palm of his hand, white, with wax seal stains on one corner. Someone had printed on it a female figure with her left foot resting on a ladder. She was surrounded by birds and bore on her breast a number of strange objects. At her feet, an inscription in Latin that identified her clearly as “Lady Grammar.” Her eyes were fixed on no place in particular and had an absent look.

“We are currently putting the finishing touches on one of these images, which, from here onward, will help us recall the different parts of the art of grammar. Here it is,” he said, pointing at the extravagant figure. “Do you wish to see how it works?”

I nodded.

“Look carefully,” the Father Prior urged me. “If someone were to ask us at this very moment what are the terms on which grammar is based, and we happened to have this print before us, we’d be able to answer without the slightest hesitation.”

“Truly?”

The Father Prior enjoyed my disbelief.

“Our answer would be precise: praedicatio, applicatio and continentia. And do you know why? In all simplicity: because I’ve ‘read’ it in this image.”

The Father Prior bent over the page and drew imaginary circles with his finger around different parts of the image.

“See here: praedicatio, or ‘preaching,’ is indicated by the bird in her right hand, which in Latin, passer, begins with the letter P, and also by the banner in her left hand in the shape of that same letter. Preaching is Grammar’s most important attribute, which is why it’s indicated with two elements. Also, it’s the mark of our order. After all, we are all preachers, aren’t we?”

I observed the graceful banner that Lady Grammar was holding, folded over itself in the shape of the letter P, just as the Father Prior had described.

“The next attribute,” he continued, “applicatio, or ‘dedication,’ is represented by aquila, the eagle, which Grammar bears on her arm. Aquila, like applicatio, begins with the letter A, so that the mind of someone initiated in the Ars Memoriae will establish the connection immediately. And as to continentia, ‘containment,’ you’ll see it written on the woman’s breast. If you look at the shape of those objects—the bow, the wheel, the plow and the hammer—as if they were the shape of letters, you’d read at once the word: c-o-n-t…continentia!”

It was amazing. In a seemingly innocent image, someone had managed to enclose a complete theory of grammar. Suddenly it occurred to me that the books being printed by the hundreds in workshops in Venice, Rome or Turin included engraved frontispieces that might hide secret messages that we scholars were incapable of seeing. At the Secretariat of Keys, we had never been taught anything like it.

“And what about the objects that the birds are holding? Do they also have a meaning?” I wondered, still astonished at the unexpected revelation.

“My dear brother: everything, absolutely everything, has a meaning. In these times in which every lord, every prince, every cardinal has so many things to hide from the others, every one of his actions, as well as the works of art for which he pays or the writings he patronizes, has a hidden meaning.”

The Father Prior concluded with an enigmatic smile. I seized on the opportunity.

“And you?” I asked. “Are you hiding something too?”

The Father Prior looked at me with the same ironic expression. He passed a hand over his perfect tonsure and distractedly smoothed the hair around it.

“A prior also has his secrets, indeed.”

“And would he hide them in a church that has already been built?” I pressed.

“Oh!” he said, startled. “That would be very easy. First, I’d count everything in it: walls, windows, towers, bells…The numbers are what’s most important! Then, once the whole church is reduced to numbers, I’d see which of them can be paired with the appropriate letters or words. And I’d compare both the number of letters in a word and the value of that word when translated into numbers.”

“That is gematria, Father Prior! The secret science of the Jews!”

“It is gematria, yes. But it is not a negligible branch of knowledge, as your scandalized attitude seems to assume. Christ was a Jew and he learned gematria in the temple. How else would we know that ‘Abraham’ and ‘Mercy’ are two numerically twinned words? Or that ‘Jacob’s ladder’ and ‘Mount Sinai’ when added up, in Hebrew, are 130, which tells us that they’re both places by which to ascend to God’s chosen heavens?”

“That is to say,” I interrupted, “that if you had to hide your Christian name, Vicenzo, in the Church of Santa Maria, you’d find a particular characteristic of the building that would add up to seven, like the seven letters in your name.”

“Exactly.”

“Like, for example…seven windows?”

“That would be a good choice. Though I’d probably choose one of the frescoes that decorate the church. It would allow me to add more nuances than a simple succession of windows. The more elements you add to a given space, the more versatility you grant the art of memory. And, truthfully, the façade of Santa Maria is somewhat too simple for such a purpose.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, I do. Also, seven is a number subject to too many interpretations. It is the sacred number above all others. The Bible makes use of it constantly. I don’t think I’d choose such an ambiguous number to conceal my name.”

The Father Prior seemed sincere.

“Let’s make an agreement,” he said all of a sudden. “I’ll let you have the puzzle our community is now working on, and you let me have yours. I’m certain that we’ll be able to help one another.”

Naturally, I accepted.

18

Delighted, the Father Prior asked me to accompany him to the far end of the monastery. He wanted to show me something. At once.

Quickly we passed the central altar, leaving behind the choir and the gallery, which were receiving the finishing touches for Donna Beatrice’s funeral, and entered the long passageway that led to the Cloister of the Dead. The monastery was a place of great sobriety, with visible brick walls and granite columns in impeccable order set along carefully paved corridors. On the way to our mysterious destination, the Father Prior nodded to Brother Benedetto, the one-eyed scribe whose custom it was to stroll aimlessly under the arches, his single eye lost in a breviary that I was not able to identify.

“Well?” he growled, feeling himself addressed by his superior. “Once again going to visit the Opus Diaboli? It would be better if you buried it under a load of quicklime!”

“Brother, please! I need you to come with us,” the Father Prior commanded. “Our guest needs someone who can tell him the stories related to this place, and there’s no one better suited than you. You’re the oldest friar in our community, older still than the walls of this house.”

“Stories, eh?”

The old man’s single eye glittered with emotion at my interest. I myself was bewitched by the sight of this man who seemed to enjoy showing his wound to the world, as if boasting of the scar the missing eye had left on his face.

“Many stories are told in this house, of course. For instance, you don’t know why we call this courtyard the Cloister of the Dead?” he asked as he joined us on our excursion. “That is easy: because here is where we bury our brethren so that they return to the earth in the same way they arrived, with no commemoratory plaques or honors. No vanity here. Only the habit of our order. The day will come when the entire courtyard will be full of bones.”

“Is this your cemetery?”

“Much more than a cemetery. It is our waiting room before entering Heaven.”

The Father Prior had reached a large double-paneled door. It was a sturdy-looking piece of wood with a strong iron lock into which he fitted one of the keys he was carrying. Brother Benedetto and I looked at each other. My pulse quickened: I guessed what it was that the Father Prior wanted to show me. Father Alessandro had intimated as much, and naturally I had prepared myself for the grand moment. There, in a large room exactly below the library, was the famous refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie to which Leonardo had restricted the monks’ access. Unless I was mistaken, this was the true reason for my presence in Milan and why the Soothsayer had written his threatening letters to Bethany.