The Secret Supper (27 page)

“These are only circumstantial proofs, Father Agostino,” said Brother Stefano before sitting down again.

“It’s possible. I’m willing to admit that Father Alessandro and Brother Giberto were merely sympathizers waiting for their baptism. However, that does not exempt them from sin. I’m not forgetting either that our librarian wholeheartedly collaborated with Leonardo da Vinci in his Last Supper. He wished to be portrayed as Judas in the middle of a suspicious work, and I think I know why.”

“Tell us,” the brethren asked.

“Because, for the Cathars, Judas Iscariot was a pawn in God’s plan. They believe that he acted well, that he betrayed Jesus in order to fulfill the prophecies, so that Our Lord might give His life for our salvation.”

“Are you suggesting that Leonardo too is a heretic?”

Brother Nicolò di Piadena’s question made Brother Benedetto smile. A moment later, the one-eyed monk left his seat and went out into the courtyard to empty his bladder.

“Judge for yourself, Brother Nicola. Leonardo dresses all in white, eats no meat, would never harm a fly, has had no carnal knowledge as far as we can tell and furthermore, he has omitted the bread of the Eucharist in your Cenacolo, placing a dagger in the hand of Saint Peter, the representative of what the Cathars consider to be the Church of Satan. For a Cathar, only a servant of the Evil One would hold a dagger at the Last Supper.”

“And yet, Leonardo has depicted the wine,” the Father Prior observed.

“Because the Cathars do drink wine! But observe, Father Prior: instead of the Passover lamb that, according to the Gospels, was eaten on that night, Master Leonardo has painted a fish. And do you know why?”

The Father Prior shook his head. I addressed myself to him directly.

“Remember what your nephew heard from the lips of the sexton before his death: that the Cathars don’t accept any nourishment that is born from copulation. In their eyes, fish do not copulate; therefore they can be eaten.”

A murmur of admiration ran through the room. The monks were following my explanations with rapt attention, astonished at not having detected earlier the heresies depicted on their refectory wall.

“Now, my brothers, I need you to answer my questions, one by one,” I said, changing my tone to a more serious one. “Examine your conscience and speak out in front of your brethren: Has any one of you followed, whether by his own will or by that of another, any of the actions that I have described?”

I saw the monks hold their breath.

“Holy Mother Church will be merciful with whoever forswears these practices before leaving the assembly. But after that time, the full weight of the law shall fall upon him.”

37

The Soothsayer acted with spectacular precision.

Someone having the misfortune of crossing his path would have concluded that he moved about the monastery like someone familiar with its innermost reaches. Wrapped in a black cape from head to foot, he moved along the empty rows of pews inside the church, turning left toward the chapel of the Madonna delle Grazie to enter the adjacent sacristy. No one intercepted him. The monks were attending the chapter extraordinary, far from the intruder’s movements.

Satisfied, the Soothsayer left the chapel through the archway leading to the small priory courtyard, which he swiftly crossed. Once in the Cloister of the Dead he left the refectory and ascended the stairs leading to the library, three steps at a time.

The Soothsayer—man or ghost, angel or demon, it hardly mattered—moved nimbly. After inspecting the scriptorium with a professional eye, he walked up to the desk of Father Alessandro. There was no time to lose. He knew that Marco d’Oggiono and Bernardino Luini had just left Leonardo’s house across from Santa Maria and would be in the refectory in just a few moments. He was ignorant of why they were coming, nor did he know that, following the Tuscan’s wishes, they were bringing with them a certain young woman.

Very carefully, the Soothsayer took off his cape and placed it on the dead librarian’s desk. Trying not to make any noise, he felt the tiles on the floor. He tapped them: only two moved ever so slightly. He had found what he was looking for. He bent over to examine them and saw that they were not fixed with mortar, and that their edges were clean and polished, a clear indication that they were handled frequently. He lifted them and recognized, beneath them, the heating vents. He felt satisfied. The Soothsayer knew that this thin layer of masonry ran from wall to wall across the refectory ceiling and that a well-trained ear would be able to hear the slightest word spoken there.

With great precaution, he lay down the full length of his body and placed his ear to the floor, closing his eyes for better concentration.

A minute later, he heard a loud creaking. The bolt of the refectory door was being drawn. Leonardo’s guests were about to enter the room of The Last Supper.

“What do you think that the Master meant when he said that he was the Omega?”

Elena’s question rose to the floor above. The Soothsayer was surprised to hear a woman’s voice.

“The first time I heard him speak of it was in the presence of Sister Veronica, the day of her death,” Marco d’Oggiono answered. The Soothsayer recognized his voice immediately.

“Were you then with Sister Veronica the day her prophecy came to pass?”

Elena spoke admiringly.

The little countess had spent the night awake, listening to the explanations of Leonardo and to the jokes of his apprentices, preparing herself for her sitting. Leonardo had said that he would agree to portray her as John, the Beloved Disciple, if she could show, with the help of her two companions, that she was capable of understanding the importance of the mural.

Leonardo, seduced by Elena’s beauty, had not been able to forget her since coming across her at the Palazzo Vecchio. She was certainly a perfect “John.” But he did not want to make any hasty decisions. He had invited her on a couple of occasions, always accompanied by Master Luini, to his celebrated musical evenings, during which troubadours and poets entertained his guests. He wanted to inspect closely the progress of this unforeseen couple.

The young woman felt under a spell. To see herself in a circle that she knew only through her mother was like entering a world of dreams from which she did not want to be woken. Ever since Lucrezia Crivelli had charmed her nights as a girl with stories of princes and troubadours, knightly combats and wizards’ gatherings, Elena had longed to be there.

“Sister Veronica? Goodness! That nun would fly into a temper at the slightest provocation,” Marco recalled, blowing on his cold hands.

“Truly?”

“Oh, yes. She would always criticize the Master’s eccentric tastes and the fact that he was more familiar with the works of the Greek philosophers than with the Holy Scriptures. The truth is that they didn’t discuss art much, and even less the work of the Master, but on the day she died, Sister Veronica asked him about the work in the refectory.”

“And what has that to do with the Omega?” asked Elena.

“Let me tell you. That day, Leonardo felt offended. Sister Veronica had accused him of having minimized the importance of Christ in the Cenacolo. And the Master lost his temper. He told her that Christ was the only Alpha in the composition.”

“He said that? That Christ was the Alpha of the mural?”

“Christ, he said, was the beginning. The center. The axis of the work.”

“In fact,” Luini observed, trying to make out the figure of Christ in the gloom, “it is true that Christ occupies the dominant position. Moreover, we know that the vanishing point of the whole composition is exactly above His left ear, under His hair. That is where Leonardo placed his compass on the very first day. And from that sacred point he drew the rest.”

The Soothsayer was surprised to hear Luini speak. It was the first time he heard the painter’s voice, though he knew well that Luini shared Leonardo’s heretical subjects in his work, obsessively painting, like his master, scenes from the life of Saint John. John’s encounter with Jesus on the flight to Egypt, the baptism in the Jordan, John’s head on Salome’s silver platter: all these were repeated again and again in painting after painting. All the pilgrims who worshiped Leonardo’s Maestà knew him well. Wolves, he thought as he listened to Luini speak in Leonardo’s refectory, run always in packs.

“Your observation is correct, Master Luini,” said Marco, his eyes on their pretty companion, who was beginning to distinguish the outlines of the apostles illuminated by the faint light of dawn. “If you look at His body, with His arms stretched before Him, you can see that He has the shape of an enormous letter A. He’s the Alpha that rises in the midst of the chosen twelve. Can you make it out?”

“Of course I can. But what about the Omega?” Elena insisted.

“Well, I think the Master said that because he considers himself the last of Christ’s disciples.”

“Who? Leonardo?”

“Yes, Elena. Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Luini and the little countess shrugged their shoulders. The young painter intuited, like Marco, that the mural hid a profound message of initiation. It was evident that if the Master had allowed them to reach this point in their quest, without giving them the key to read the whole, then he was in some obscure manner putting them to the test. They were standing alone in front of the largest riddle ever designed by Leonardo, and their ability to decipher it held the promise of their access to greater secrets. And, above all, the salvation of their souls.

“Perhaps Marco is right and the whole Cenacolo hides a sort of visual alphabet.”

At these words, the Soothsayer started.

“A visual alphabet?”

“I know that the Master studied with the Dominicans in Florence the art of memory. His teacher, Verrocchio, practiced it as well and taught it to Leonardo when he was only a child.”

“He never mentioned it,” said Marco, somewhat disappointed.

“Maybe he didn’t consider it essential for your education. After all, it is only a question of mental exercises, designed to retain a great deal of information or place it according to the characteristics of certain buildings or works of art. The information is open to everyone, but it remains invisible to the uninitiated.”

“And where do you see that alphabet?” said Marco.

“You’ve said that the body of Jesus is in the shape of an A, which, for Leonardo, is the Alpha of the composition. If he said that he himself is the Omega, we should look in the portrait of Judas Thaddeus for something resembling an O.”

The three glanced at one another and approached the mural in silence. The figure of Thaddeus was easily recognizable, turning his back upon the scene where the action was unfolding. Leaning forward, both his arms crossed in an X, palms lifted toward Heaven, he was dressed in a red tunic, with no clasp. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the figure to allow one to imagine an Omega.

“Alpha and Omega may also be related in some way to Saint John and Mary Magdalene,” Luini murmured, trying to mask his disappointment.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s easy, Marco. You and I know that the mural is secretly dedicated to Mary Magdalene.”

“The knot!” Marco recalled. “Of course! The knot at the end of the table!”

“I think Leonardo has wanted to send us off on a wrong track. For some time now, the Master has been spreading the rumor that the knot is his own way of signing his work. In the Romance tongue, Vinci comes from the Latin word vinculum, that is to say, knot or link. However, its hidden meaning can’t be all that obvious. Necessarily it must relate to Jesus’ favorite companion.”

The Soothsayer stirred uncomfortably in his hiding place.

“Not so fast!” Elena complained. “What has this to do with the Alpha and the Omega?”

“It’s in the Scriptures. If you read the Gospels, you will see that John the Baptist had a fundamental role to play at the beginning of the Messiah’s public life. John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. John was His starting point, His Alpha, in His mission on Earth. Mary Magdalene, however, belongs to His end. She was present when He emerged from His tomb. And, in her own way, she also baptized Him, anointing Him with scented oil, only a few days before the Last Supper, in the presence of the disciples. Don’t you remember Mary of Bethany, in the episode of the washing of Christ’s feet? She acted then like a true Omega.”

“Magdalene, Omega—”

The explanation did not fully convince the young girl. John and Thaddeus did not, as far as she could see, have much in common, except that neither of them was looking at Christ. She spent a long moment trying to find an alternative interpretation for the mysterious O, casting her eyes from left to right over the mural, attempting to disentangle the riddle. It would soon be light, and they had to hurry if they wanted to fulfill the test before the monks arrived. If there was something to be “read” in the Cenacolo, they had better discover it quickly.

“I think the solutions you propose are too far-fetched,” she said at last. “And the Master, from the little I know him, is a great lover of simplicity.”

Marco and Luini turned toward the little countess.

“If he has so obviously knotted one of the ends of the cloth, leaving the other smooth, it’s because he wishes to draw the viewer’s attention to that particular side of the table. There must be something there, in that section where he’s portrayed himself, that he wants us to see.”

Luini raised a hand toward the knot and caressed it with his fingertips. The cloth was painted with great mastery, and each fold in the fabric lent it an uncanny illusion of reality.

“I believe that Elena is right,” he admitted.

“Right? How is she right?”

“Look carefully, Marco. The area around the knot is that in which the light is most intense. Observe here the shadows on the apostles’ faces. See? They’re stronger, more pronounced than the rest.”

Marco’s eyes swept across the wall, comparing the wide range of chiaroscuros in the clothing and faces of the Twelve.

“Perhaps it makes sense,” Luini continued, as if he were thinking out loud. “This area appears to be better lit than the rest because, for Leonardo, Plato represents the light of reason. He’s the sun shining upon our rationality. And therefore, the most brilliantly lit of the disciples is Saint Simon, with his Greek profile and the only white robes in the scene—”