She had decided to meet her in the crypt of San Zaccaria, where she would go and pray at the tomb of her beloved sister. Tommaso wouldn’t object and the conversation with Abella would take place away from prying eyes.
Magdalena kneeled and began reciting her prayers.
Gusts of icy wind filtered through the slits, making a gloomy sound, like the screams of the nuns who’d been burned alive down below, during the fire that had destroyed the church several years earlier. The souls of those wretched women were still wandering around in search of some peace.
She turned around when she heard the rustling of footsteps behind her. She thought that, in her scarlet garment, Magister Abella projected a luminous, almost holy aura. For a moment, she regretted having agreed to meet with her.
“My most esteemed lady,” Abella said, “I asked to see you urgently because I cannot ignore the desperate call of my conscience.”
Magdalena interrupted. “Come here and kneel with me at the grave of this innocent.”
Abella obeyed.
“I have the highest esteem for you and I trust your knowledge,” Magdalena continued. “Sometimes, however, there are events and misfortunes that call for definitive, quick choices, and we cannot afford to please our hearts. I promised to follow your instructions to cure the sterility that has taken residence in my womb, and wait. Now I must be honest with you . . . I can’t, and will not . . . since Costanza’s death, my husband has been closer to me with feelings of love I’d thought vanished. I don’t want to disappoint him, nor do I wish to antagonize him.”
The Magister listened without displaying any sign of anxiety.
“Tommaso has assured me that the miraculous medicine arriving from the Orient will enable me to conceive once again. They say many women in those countries have benefitted from it, and I have no reason to doubt my husband’s words. I have therefore decided to make him happy. I wanted to let you know, out of honesty and because I respect you.”
“And I thank you for your consideration and understand your reasons. Even so, please be careful. I know of many cases where, in order to reach their goals, women have undergone treatments that have endangered their very lives.”
“Don’t worry, my husband cares about my health above all else.” Magdalena reached out for her. “Help me stand up, I’m feeling so weak.”
Abella lifted her with a determined gesture. It seemed to her as though that fragile body had been totally drained of the will to live.
“You must eat and go out, you must rebuild your strength.”
“It’s what my husband says. To be reborn, to rise again . . . perhaps if a new life were to blossom inside me . . . ” Her words remained suspended, as though broken off by a premonition.
“Signora, as I was saying, I asked to meet with you because of a question of conscience.” Abella searched for the right words. “I do not claim to cast doubt over the decisions of those who have the authority and skill to make the judgement; and it is precisely because I believe that the government of the city of Venice is recognized in every foreign country for the wisdom with which it administers justice and for the fairness of its trials that I must intercede for the fate of your servant Alvise.” Abella took on a scholarly tone. “The study I conducted on your sister’s body and the investigations on the substance found on her skin have triggered many doubts as to the boy’s guilt.”
Magdalena raised her hand in front of her eyes, as though to stop the sound of these words. “Enough, say no more. It’s all useless. Have no concerns for his fate: Alvise has confessed.”
“Confessed?” Abella repeated, astonished.
“My husband brought me the news a few hours ago. It’s been a heavy blow. We’ve treated that boy like a son. We would never have imagined him capable of such a horrific action.”
“Confessed,” Abella muttered to herself, as though unable to make sense of the word.
“He’ll pay for his crime with his life. He’ll be blinded, hanged and quartered. The execution will take place outside the Doge’s Palace, in the presence of the people of Venice, as soon as the sentence pronounced by the judgement court is confirmed by the Great Council and the Arengo*.”
“So there’s nothing to be done?” Abella asked naively.
“Nothing. Only a new confession could annul the first sentence. God’s will has been done, and Costanza will be avenged. Alvise will pay for his sin.”
“They’ve extorted a confession under torture, I’m certain of it.” Edgardo couldn’t find peace. The news brought by Abella had opened an abyss: there wasn’t much time left, and if they wanted to save the boy, they had to find the real murderer and prove to the judges who was the guilty party.
They didn’t have many tangible elements and could only rely on a few unexplained facts.
“Let’s follow the natron,” Abella suggested. “Costanza’s body was covered in this substance. If we find out who uses it, or where it’s kept, perhaps we’ll discover where the body was hidden. We must track down all the glassmakers who use it, and that won’t be easy.”
“There’s only one person who knows all the secrets and workings of our master glassmakers, and that’s Maestro Tataro,” Edgardo exclaimed. “I don’t suppose he’ll welcome me as a good friend, but we must try. Let’s take a boat to Amurianum and question him.”
Abella was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of futility. Why should she follow the scribe? Why did she always allow herself to get involved? Her mission was to cure the sick, not save those who’d been sentenced to death.
At the same time, she felt she could not leave Edgardo alone in that impossible struggle to save a garzone who had perhaps been chosen by the authorities as a scapegoat. She could smell the stench of injustice and, as a magister mulier sapiens in constant war against superstition and prejudice, she was ready to fight.
They found Tataro at work in his foundry. Bare-chested, bathed in sweat, he was blowing through the pipe, swelling his chest like the belly of a pregnant cow. Edgardo thought he looked even more gaunt and tired, his rough skin burned by the heat. He sneered as soon as he saw them.
“You make a lovely couple. The fat woman and the cripple.” His laugh was now even more like a rattle. “So, scribe, have you decided how much you want for revealing the formula of pure glass?”
Edgardo did not answer and addressed Abella instead. “Maestro Tataro is obsessed with the notion that I possess the formula for perfect crystalline glass.”
“And isn’t that the case?” Tataro replied.
“I tell you once again, I remember nothing of the formula Segrado dictated to me.”
“Then where do those pure glass chalices you brought me come from?” Tataro insisted with an arrogant tone.
“I can’t explain that.”
The glassmaker spat in the furnace, wiped his mouth, and went to sit on a chair. He was panting. “What do you want?’
Tired of skirmishes that did not concern her, Abella stepped forward. “We want to know which glassmakers in Venice still use natron for making glass.” Her tone was determined.
“And what would you know about natron?” Tataro asked, looking at her with contempt. “Didn’t you say you were a physician? Or are you thinking of changing profession?”
“Remember the missing girl? She was found dead and covered in natron,” Edgardo explained.
The old man closed his eyes, and Edgardo thought he detected a wince of compassion.
“So that’s how they murdered her.” His voice was almost gentle. “This city is sinking, it will be submerged by evil. I wonder if Giacomo, my garzone, met the same end.”
“So what can you tell us?” Abella said.
“By the devil’s tail, even children know that no glassmaker in Venice uses natron anymore, that it’s too expensive. Ever since antiquity, it used to come from the dried up lakes in Egypt, near Alexandria, and it cost a fortune to bring it over. Nowadays, everyone in Venice uses cathine alum.”
“So it’s impossible to find natron in a foundry?”
Tataro shrugged.
“And where else would you find natron in Venice? Who uses it?” Edgardo asked.
“I’m a glassmaker. How am I supposed to know who uses certain substances? Ask an apothecary, he’ll certainly have some in his shop.”
Egypt, Alexandria, natron, transparent glass: all these tiles were forming in Edgardo’s mind a precious mosaic that, once again, took him back to the same image, the one of the mysterious merchant from Alexandria and his palazzo in San Lorenzo.
“We’ll go to the Crowned Wolf, the best-supplied shop in the city,” Abella said. “I know Sabbatai, the apothecary, well. I get my medicines from him.”
Edgardo too knew Sabbatai well, although for different reasons, but he chose not to say anything.
“We’re grateful for the information.” Abella even managed to produce a smile and Tataro seemed pleased.
Old age softens muscles and feelings, Edgardo thought.
They were already on their way out of the foundry when they heard Tataro’s voice, loud, behind them. “Scribe!”
Edgardo turned and saw him just a few steps away. A stench of rotting teeth and putrefied mussels swept over him.
“An odd fellow, short, stocky, with a goatee, came to see me.” Tataro came close to Edgardo’s ear, as though not to divulge the secret to too many people. “He asked if I wanted to sell the Luprio foundry, the one where Segrado worked in, remember? He said he was the steward of a merchant . . . ” He paused, watching the scribe’s reaction.
“Who could possibly be interested in those ruins?” Edgardo asked with false naivety.
“I was hoping you’d have the answer to that question,” Tataro replied. “You have a deep connection with that place, so it might be someone you know.”
There was no doubt about it. The description corresponded to Lippomano, the steward of the merchant from Alexandria, but Edgardo took care not to reveal that to the glassmaker. “There’s a hopeless mess in my wretched mind; recollections, images, names, all over the place, tossed in a corner, covered in dust and cobwebs. Give me time. I’ll come back when I’ve put some order in this cesspool,” Edgardo said, hitting his head with his fist several times.
At the end of the bank, Abella stood firmly rooted, waiting for him. She exuded a primordial strength. It occurred to Edgardo that he was lucky to have met her.
When Edgardo and Abella reached the Crowned Wolf, daylight was about to fall into a thicket of darkness. The clear sky was invaded by an army of ashen clouds that were advancing fast and relentless, heavy with storms.
Sabbatai’s warty face was peering from behind the counter, lit up by a lipless sneer that tried, in vain, to look like a welcoming smile.
In front of him, a poor woman, still young but consumed by tiredness and salt, was accompanying a girl so skinny that her bones were sticking out through her scarce flesh. Her wan face damp with sweat, her lips cracked, and she had thin straw-colored hair hanging behind elephant-like ears that were red like embers.
Around her neck, hanging from a ribbon, was the heart of a small animal, dripping with blood.
“She’s had quartan fever for two new moons now,” the woman explained. “A crone told me to hang the heart of a hare around her neck.” She pointed at the bleeding organ that still seemed to throb. “But the fever isn’t dropping. The poor thing is suffering so much.”
The curls of Sabbatai’s beard quivered as he leaned forward as though to check the state of the hare’s heart, then he shook his huge head, looked up at Abella and Edgardo, and nodded, satisfied.
“For the quartan fever, I have a miraculous herb that heals the body totally. Unfortunately for you, it’s a very, very expensive herb.”
Sabbatai opened his arms like a helpless sparrow, seeking approval from the Magister, who had stepped forward to look at the girl.
Without saying a word, Abella rubbed two fingers on the girl’s clammy forehead, brought them up to her lips, and tasted them with the regulation clicking of the tongue.
“It’s malaria,” she said, addressing Sabbatai. “Give her quinine and molasses. Make an infusion. She has to drink it at dawn and at sunset.” She gave the woman a piercing look of stern disapproval and tapped the hare’s heart. “And take this rubbish off her neck and give it to the cat!” she boomed.
The woman muttered a few words of thanks, took the herbs, and slipped out of the shop. Edgardo smiled, proud to have such a talented physician for an ally.
“Illustrious Magister, how can I serve you?” Sabbatai said sentimentally, giving Edgardo astonished looks, trying to understand the odd pair.
Abella approached the shelf and examined the jars full of spices, powders, animal, mineral, and vegetable remedies, plain and mixed.
“Tell me, apothecary, among these substances, do you have a particularly rare one called natron?”
As though stung by a tarantula, the dwarf leaped out of his shelter and improvised an involuntary dance, skipping and shaking his enormous hump.
“I trade in alum, borax, chalcedony, quartz, sapphire, and saltpeter, I sell aloe vera, poppy, plantain, liquorice, gentian, and saffron, and I’m not above using duck meat, dog testicles, billy-goat bile, fly ash, snake broth, mouse ears, and a hoist of cicada powder . . . but of this natron you’re asking about, I know absolutely nothing,” he said, repeating like a refrain, “Natrum no, natrum nunca, natrum usquam vidi.”
“It’s a fine, whitish powder that tastes sour but has no smell, and that was once used by glassmakers,” Edgardo added. “Have you ever heard of it?”
“Usquam no, nunca none, substantia ignota est.”
“We understand, we understand, you know nothing about it,” Abella said, staring into the apothecary’s slug eyes.
“And do you know anybody who could tell us who uses it?”
At Edgardo’s question, the apothecary produced the sweet expression of someone who has long forgotten his earthly worries.
Not intending to waste any more time asking questions that brought no answers, the two associates left the shop.
An increasingly strong breeze was blowing along the canals.
“Did he look sincere to you?” Abella asked.
“It’s hard to tell, since I don’t believe the concept of sincerity is something he’s familiar with. Rather, he looked unhealthily agitated.
“This natron isn’t leading us anywhere,” Edgardo continued. “I keep thinking about those stitches . . . What reason would the murderer have had to close the orifice with such care? It must have been at least a barber or a surgeon,” he added, and Abella darted him a black look suggesting he had offended her personally.
“If we rule out glassmakers,” Abella was now following her own thread of thought, “who else could be using natron? Tataro said the Egyptians had been gathering it from the Nile Valley since antiquity. What did they do with it?” Abella wrinkled the tip of her nose. “You were a cleric, do you perhaps know someone who studies Egyptian customs and professions?”
“No,” Edgardo replied. Then he suddenly spread open his arms, as though to take flight. “Or rather yes, I do!” he exclaimed, excited.
“And could we meet with him?”
“I fear not. He departed this world before Our Lord was born. But he left some extraordinary writings.” Abella looked at him, exhausted. “Herodotus . . . Herodotus of Halicarnassus. In his Histories, an entire volume is devoted to Egyptian customs. I remember copying it many years ago, when I was still living in Bobbio Abbey.”
“And you don’t recall if it says anything about natron or what?”
“You expect too much from my memory.”
“So we’re back at the beginning.”
“No,” Edgardo replied. “There’s always a copy of Herodotus’s Histories in every important library. It’s not easy to access the parchments but I know someone who could help us. He’s a talented translator. He knows Spanish, Arabic, Latin, and Greek. In other words, he’s a great scholar. His name is Ermanno d’Istria.” Edgardo’s face clouded over. “And perhaps he’s the only one in there who harbors no hatred or resentment toward me.”
“Good. Go and talk to him.” Abella had recovered her usual energy and was walking briskly.
“I’d rather keep away from that place.”
“Unhappy memories?” the Magister carelessly asked.
“Memories, always memories . . . I’m tired of living besieged by the past. In any case, I think I know where to find him. I’ve already seen him a few times near the brolo, all engrossed in his favorite activity.”
“Didn’t you say that this monk drank only human knowledge?”
Edgardo laughed. “You’re right . . . but even more than knowledge, he drinks something that’s much more pleasant to the palate. You’ll see for yourself. Come with me.”