The Secret Supper (23 page)

“He made it up, then?”

“No. He used a bust. A sculpted bust that he ordered to be brought over from the duke’s castle.”

“There you have it! Father Alessandro’s box!”

“I remember perfectly the summer day on which they brought that marble bust to the monastery,” the Father Prior proceeded unperturbed. “The sun was shining fiercely and the two-horse cart had to make an extraordinary effort to bring the box up the hill. I couldn’t understand why all the trouble. But as they were unloading it, Donna Beatrice arrived.”

“Donna Beatrice?”

“Yes. She looked radiant, her cheeks glowing in the heat. She was wearing one of those elaborate headdresses of which she was so fond. She was accompanied by the duke’s guards, as usual, but she broke away from them to speak to the workmen who were handling the bust. And then, all of a sudden, she lost her temper. She started shouting at the poor men.”

“You mean she shouted orders at them?”

“More than that, Brother Benedetto. She lost all composure. She railed at them. She bombarded them with profanities and threatened to hang them if they as much as made a scratch on the bust of her philosopher.”

“Her…philosopher? But wasn’t it a bust of Saint Simon?”

“You asked me if I remembered something odd. Well, this is the oddest thing I remember.”

“Forgive me, Father Prior. Pray continue.”

“Leonardo set up the bust close to the refectory entrance, on a heap of bags of earth. It was a very old bust, an antique. He moved it around from time to time to see how the various lights of day affected it. And once he’d learned its features by heart, he drew them on the wall. His technique was prodigious.”

“And where had he found that bust?”

“That’s what’s so curious about it. Donna Beatrice had ordered it from Florence at the Master’s request.”

Matteo was bursting to speak, but still he did not dare interrupt the conversation.

“Was Donna Beatrice always as willing to please the Master?” asked Brother Benedetto.

“Certainly. Leonardo was her favorite artist.”

“And do you know why Leonardo was interested in a Saint Simon from Florence?”

“I too thought it strange. To send for a Saint John the Baptist from Florence would have made sense, since he’s the city’s patron. But a Saint Simon—”

“It’s not Simon, Uncle! It’s not Simon!”

Matteo, red in the face, had shouted out at the two men. He knew that he should not have interrupted, but he could not hold himself back any longer.

“Matteo!” The Father Prior was astonished. All of a sudden, his twelve-year-old nephew stood there in front of him, eyes wide open and tears streaming down his face. “What’s happened to you?”

“I know who that apostle is, Uncle, I know! But we must abandon this place at once!” Matteo tried to hide the trembling that shook his entire body. Then he fell senseless to the floor.

33

The Father Prior and his assistant spent a long moment trying to restore the boy. Matteo opened his eyes nervously. He tried to speak, but his body shivered with fear and cold. All he wanted was to leave the refectory as soon as possible. “It’s the work of Satan,” he sobbed, to the great astonishment of both men. Since it was impossible to calm him down, they agreed to his demand and sought refuge in the library. In the warmth of the room, the boy slowly regained his composure.

At first he would not speak. He clung to his uncle’s arm and shook his head every time they addressed him. He did not seem to have any wounds or blows; in spite of the dirt and mud on his clothes, he did not seem to have been hurt. Why then was he afraid? Brother Benedetto went down to the kitchen to get him some warm milk and a piece of Siena almond paste that he kept for special occasions. His stomach full and his body warm again, Matteo broke his silence.

The story he told left them amazed.

As was his wont, Matteo had gone that morning to the Piazza Mercanti to buy some food for the monastery’s pantry. Since Thursdays were the best days to purchase grain and vegetables, the boy took a few coins from Brother Guglielmo’s purse and went off to fulfill his task as quickly as possible. Outside the Palazzo della Ragione, that solemn three-story stone and brick building above the piazza, he ran into a large group of people who seemed to be in a sort of trance. They were listening without blinking an eye to a speaker who had set himself up on a platform just under the portico of the palace. At first, he paid little attention to the scene. And yet, as he was about to walk away, something seemed to draw him back. Matteo felt he knew the preacher.

“Here, in this very same place, a true believer gave up his life for God’s sake! A good man, who sacrificed himself for you and for his faith! Like Jesus Christ Himself! And what for? For nothing! You are not at all moved by his memory! Can’t you see that more and more we’re becoming like the beasts in the field? Can’t you see that with your cursed passivity you’re turning your back on God?”

The Father Prior and his assistant listened in astonishment. The portico Matteo was describing was the same one under which Father Alessandro had been found hanged. Sipping his milk, the boy continued with his story. When he came to the identity of the preacher, their astonishment increased even further: the man who accused the passers-by of having lost their souls for not having recognized God’s envoy was, apparently, Brother Giberto. The Germanic sexton with his red hair, the keeper of Santa Maria’s gates, had seemingly abandoned his functions that very morning and set himself up to preach in the same place where the librarian had met his end. But why?

However, the strangest part of the story was yet to come.

“You’ll all be condemned unless you renounce the Church of Satan and return to the true religion!” the sexton had howled as if possessed. “Eat nothing that proceeds from copulation! Reject the flesh of animals! Abominate eggs and milk! Keep away from false sacraments! Do not take communion from nor be christened by false hands! Disobey Rome and revise your faith, if you wish to be saved!”

Brother Benedetto shook his head. “Brother Giberto said these things?”

Edged on by the Father Prior, Matteo, a little calmer, continued. When the sexton had seen him among the people below, he had jumped down from his improvised pulpit and, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck, had held him up to the crowd.

“Do you see this wretch?” he had said, shaking him as if he were a sack of stones. “He’s the nephew of the Prior of Santa Maria delle Grazie. If now, when he’s still a child, no one teaches him the true faith, what will become of him? I’ll tell you what!” he had shouted. “He’ll become a servant of Satan, just like his uncle! A damned renegade from God! And he’ll drag hundreds of fools like you to eternal damnation!”

The Father Prior’s face became creased with angry lines.

“He said that? Are you certain, my boy?”

Matteo nodded.

“And then he stripped me naked.”

“He stripped you?”

“And lifted me up in the air for everyone to see.”

“But why, Matteo? Why?”

The boy’s eyes filled with tears as he recalled the scene.

“I don’t know, Uncle, I don’t know. I—I only heard him tell the people not to believe that a child is pure just because he hasn’t lost his innocence. That we all come into the world to expiate our sins and that, if we don’t accomplish it in this life, we’ll return to that vale of tears, to a life worse than the first.”

“Reincarnation is not a Christian doctrine!” Brother Benedetto protested.

“But it’s a Cathar belief,” the Father Prior interrupted. “Let him continue.”

Matteo dried his eyes and carried on.

“Then—then he said that, even though the monks of this monastery worship in the Church of Satan and follow a Pope who venerates ancient gods, he promised it would not be long before this house would become a beacon that would guide the world to its salvation.”

Brother Benedetto grimaced. “And did he say why?”

“Don’t hurry him, Brother.”

The adolescent grabbed hold of his uncle once again.

“It isn’t true, is it?” he whimpered. “We’re not the Church of Satan, are we?”

“Of course not, Matteo.” The Father Prior patted him on the head.

“It’s that—Brother Giberto got very angry when I told him it wasn’t true. He slapped me in the face and shouted that only when we’ve been hounded out of the Cenacolo’s presence and the painting is open to contemplation by the entire world, will the true Church shine again.”

A growing feeling of rage filled the Father Prior.

“How dare he slap you!”

Matteo seemed not to hear and continued his story.

“Brother Giberto said that the more we studied the Cenacolo, the closer we’d be to his Church. That Master Leonardo’s mural contained the secret of eternal salvation. That this was the reason why he and Father Alessandro accepted being portrayed next to Christ.”

“He said that?”

“Yes.” He sniffled. “Painted on that wall they had already earned their place in Heaven.”

The boy looked up inquisitively at the stern faces of his elders.

It was Brother Benedetto who explained: not only had the father librarian sat for Judas but other brothers as well had served as models for the apostles. Brother Giberto was Philip; and Bartholomew, the two Jameses and Andrew all had features lent by the monks of Santa Maria. Even Benedetto himself had allowed himself to be portrayed as Thomas. “I’m shown from the side, so that the eye I lost is not apparent,” he explained.

Brother Benedetto patted the boy in a kindly gesture.

“You’re a brave young man,” he said. “You did well in urging us to leave that place. Evil can cause us to lose our wits, as the serpent did with Eve.”

Suddenly, Brother Benedetto asked Matteo a question that surprised even the Father Prior.

“A while ago you said that you knew who the model for the Apostle Simon really was. Did you hear the sexton say so?”

The boy looked away toward the empty desks of the scriptorium and nodded.

“While he had me there, hanging naked for everyone to see, he told the story of a man who had lived before Christ and who had preached the immortality of the soul.”

“Is that so?”

“He said that this man had studied with the ancient wise men of the world. He also said that he preached things concerning fasting and prayer and cold.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“That these three things help us leave the body behind, since in the body reside all the sins and all the weaknesses, and then we can identify only with our soul. And he also said that, in the Cenacolo, all dressed in white, that man keeps offering his teaching to us.”

“Only one of the thirteen is dressed all in white in the mural,” observed the Father Prior. “And that is Simon.”

“And did he give a name to that great man?” Brother Benedetto insisted.

“Yes. He called him Plato.”

Benedetto leaped up in excitement. “Of course! Donna Beatrice’s philosopher! The bust she ordered to be brought from Florence was of him!”

The Father Prior scratched his head.

“And why would Leonardo want to portray himself attending to Plato instead of to Our Lord?”

“What! Don’t you understand, Father Prior? It’s all so clear! Leonardo is telling us, in his mural, the source of his knowledge. Leonardo, like Brother Giberto and the late Father Alessandro, is a Cathar. You said it before. And you were right. Plato, like the Cathars later on, defended the thesis that true human knowledge is obtained directly from the spiritual world, without mediators, without the Church, without Masses. He called this knowledge gnosis, which is the worst of all possible heresies.”

“How can you be so sure? What you’re saying will not be enough to accuse him of heresy.”

“Won’t it? Don’t you see that Leonardo always dresses in white, like Simon in the Cenacolo? Don’t you know that he refuses to eat meat and that he practices celibacy? Have you ever known him to have had a woman?”

“We too wear white habits and we fast, Brother Benedetto. Also, it is said that Leonardo fancies men, which would make him not as celibate as you assert,” the Father Prior added, while Matteo looked at him, somewhat bewildered.

“It is said!—And who says so, Father Prior? Those are nothing but rumors. Leonardo is a solitary soul. He steers away from the idea of forming a couple as if it were the plague. I am willing to wager that he’s as celibate as the parfaits of the Cathar heresy! Everything fits!”

The Father Prior looked distraught.

“Let us suppose you are right. What then should we do?”

“First of all,” Brother Benedetto continued, “we must convince Father Agostino that Leonardo is a heretic. He is the inquisitor, and he’s here by God’s grace. No doubt he’ll know more about the Cathars than we do.”

“And then?”

“We must arrest Brother Giberto and interrogate him, of course,” was the answer.

“That will not be possible…”

Matteo whispered these words as if fearing to interrupt. He was feeling comforted and more at peace, but he had not finished telling what he had seen in the Piazza Mercanti.

“What did you say?”

“I said that you won’t be able to arrest him.”

“And why not, Matteo?”

“Because…,” he said haltingly. “Because after finishing the sermon, Brother Giberto set fire to his habit and burned to death before everyone’s eyes.”

“My God!” Brother Benedetto covered his mouth in horror. “You see, Father Prior? There’s no doubt about it. The sexton preferred submitting to the endura than to our judgment—”

“The endura?”

Matteo’s question was left to float off in the rarefied atmosphere of the library while Brother Benedetto begged leave to retire and meditate on the problem, and having been granted it, went out of the room in a hurry. That very morning, overwhelmed by Matteo’s revelations, he came to tell me that in Santa Maria delle Grazie there were at least two bonshommes, the name the ancient Cathars gave themselves. As an inquisitor, he thought I should know about it.

But Brother Benedetto insisted on a second point that, he felt, concerned me more deeply. He had identified the sitter for the apostle with whom Leonardo was conversing in The Last Supper; he knew the name of the man in the white robe who distracts the attention of at least two of Christ’s disciples: the philosopher Plato.