The Brotherhood of Book Hunters (24 page)

“For Luke also says: ‘Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?'”

T
heir tasks completed, the clerks had lowered the shop front and returned to the bosoms of their families. Federico, already in his dressing gown, lit two tallow candles and sat down at his desk. For a long time he dipped his quill in the inkpot, unable to make up his mind to take it out, as if he feared using it.

Guillaume Chartier, was furious and had informed him of the fact through the Medicis. The promised books had never arrived. The Bishop of Paris threated to incarcerate Fust and his son-in-law in the Châtelet, regretted having dealt with the Jews, and was speaking of reprisals, even of a crusade. The Brotherhood would have to mount a new expedition as soon as possible. But gathering the volumes required would take time.

Federico had had no news of the convoy dispatched to the court of France. The last to have seen it was a Jew from Valencia, more than a month ago. Since then, no message, apart from a carrier pigeon that had returned to the fold without any note attached to its claw, only a ring indicating that it was one of those supplied to the young book hunters who had set off with Colin. No agent had found a trace of the small detachment. It was as if men and wagons had been swallowed by quicksand.

Federico had waited for a whole month to go by before declaring the mission a failure. Now he could no longer procrastinate. Just as he was at last placing the tip of his quill on the paper, he heard a slight scratching at the shutter of the shop. He tightened the belt of his robe and went to open up.

There in front of him stood a stooped old man in a black caftan holding out his hand, demanding alms. Federico threw him a coin and made to slam the door. But the door was violently thrown back and a fist sliced through the air. Narrowly avoiding it, Federico struck his assailant on the throat with the edge of his hand. The man staggered, choked by the pain. Just as Federico was about to hit him in the groin, three figures appeared, brandishing clubs. Hit on the temple, Federico collapsed. Covered with a canvas sheet, gagged and bound, he felt himself being abruptly lifted by four pairs of arms and transported through the streets like an old eiderdown.

When he recovered consciousness, he was sitting in the middle of a spacious drawing room. His hands were tied behind his back by a chain that held his wrists. Two guards stood on either side of him. Facing him, a short man gave him a bittersweet smile. He had a pale but rather affable face, and was looking at Federico with amused curiosity. When he stood up, Federico realized that it was pointless asking questions. His host was wearing a white tunic with wide sleeves and, on the chest, the scarlet cross of the Inquisition.

Federico quickly examined the room out of the corner of his eye, looking for a way to escape. The doors and windows were bolted. He could dash forward and knock over the two candelabra standing on the massive table that separated him from the prelate. But his gaze suddenly stopped. In a corner, a shadow had just moved. It slowly approached the light. A huge strapping man appeared, dressed in rags, his cheeks covered with a filthy beard, his forehead hidden beneath a moth-eaten hood, pulled down as far as his eyebrows. The light of the candles was briefly reflected in his shadowed eyes, which avoided looking at the prisoner. The man had come and stood beside the Inquisitor and was now whispering a few words in his ear, indicating Federico with his finger. The old man nodded and gave him a buckskin purse. The informer gave a bow and nimbly pocketed his reward. He went around the table to get to the exit. Federico did not even deign to watch him go, even though he had recognized the big brute.

Head bowed, Colin hurtled down the stairs and rushed outside. He started running at top speed through the deserted streets. He had finally had his revenge. It was now the Florentine's turn to learn what prison was like.

A
isha was sad. François was neglecting her, absorbed in his reading for nights on end, composing homilies and fake commentaries all day long, his pen between his teeth. He would wink at her tenderly from time to time, and when he took her, just before dawn, it was with passion, but then he would lie down beside her, exhausted, without a caress, without saying anything. This silence weighed on her. Mute priestess of the desert that she was, she suddenly needed words, soft words. But she hesitated to be the first to speak. For if François's silence upset her so much, it was not because she doubted his love. It was because she knew that he was hiding something from her. And in addition, he had started drinking again.

Aisha had the feeling she had failed in her mission. She was to have been the rope that kept François tied. With Colin gone, she should have become his confidante. That was what Gamliel had been counting on anyway. In return for her services, he had promised to set her free. The fact was, she was as much of a hostage here as François. But he had never been a slave. So why was he working so hard and so unflinchingly for the Brotherhood?

Every Monday, a messenger took away the drafts. He would return the following Monday, out of breath from riding, with Gamliel's comments and corrections, the passages to be refined or rewritten. The rabbi crossed out words, deleted passages, scrawled over the pages, and François grumbled, his nostrils flaring. He had always spoken frankly, always said what he had on his mind. But Gamliel was trying to teach him the magic of what was not said, the power of insinuation, the secret sword thrusts of rhetoric. François was trying hard to learn how to use them, because it was with their own weapons that he hoped to vanquish his enemies. Those here, and those in Rome and Paris, all the zealots and schemers who thought they could make him bow down before them. So, in his writings against dogma, he now refrained from asserting anything specific, giving the censors nothing to grab hold of. He sowed doubt, implied, made conjectures, retracted them, attempted a brief attack then again beat a retreat, leaving the reader puzzled, dissatisfied, but forever shaken in his most deeply held convictions. A doubt sowed on the wind bears more seed in men's minds than a truth dug in the ground. That at least was what Gamliel believed—and what he should be left to believe.

Whatever Jerusalem and the Medicis might think, it was the poets who would bring about change, not the scholars and the metaphysicians. The humanists were merely popes of a new kind, pontificating just as much, just as eager as the clergy to obtain faculty chairs and incomes for life. Master Villon could not say if the times to come would be better or worse, just that they would be lacking in shadowy corners in which to take shelter from the excess of light, and therefore lacking in poetry. No rosy future would bring salvation other than the one it was enough to grasp right now.

So if he wanted to save poetry, it was now that he must act.

 

Aisha put a platter of almonds and dried fruits down on the table. A thin ray of sunlight penetrated the cave. Eviatar was nervously pacing up and down. The Frenchman was drunk again. He had emptied two gourds of date wine. Eviatar brusquely pulled a half-empty jar from François's hands, tipping over the platter of fruit. François leapt to his feet, his face red with anger, forcing Eviatar to take a step back. As if by magic, a knife appeared in the young man's hand. Eviatar did not carry this weapon in a sheath but at the top of his sleeve, just inside the elbow. All he had to do was shake his forearm for it to slide down to his wrist. François knew well the piercing glare his rival now threw at him. He had seen that gleam in the eyes of more than one adversary. After all this dissecting of ancient texts and old parchments with him, he had forgotten that this studious young man was an accomplished warrior, always on the alert. The whistle of air brushed against his cheek. The knife came to rest in a hanging gourd. A stream of fermented nectar immediately gushed out and dripped down the wall. François turned. The gourd was bleeding like a gutted rabbit. Aisha, who had feared the worst, laughed nervously and applauded. François had drunk enough for today.

Eviatar sat down, a calm smile on his lips. He was delighted that François had finally lost his temper. It was not pernicious commentaries on the Gospels or nicely written pamphlets that the book hunters hoped to obtain from Villon by keeping him so conspicuously on a leash. They expected him to champ at the bit, to defy them. Unlike Fust or Chartier, Ficino or Gamliel, Villon had no ties. He was the only one who could play the game as an irregular. Sooner or later, he would strike out on his own. The head of the Brotherhood was counting on his impetuous nature, certain that, when the moment came, Villon would release an arrow that could come from no other bow than his own. A solitary arrow that Rome could not trace back to its origins as easily as a mass volley from Florence or Jerusalem.

Eviatar feared that this stratagem might blow up in the faces of those who had devised it. Above all, although he found it hard to admit this, he felt pity for this poor fellow whom everyone was manipulating for their own ends. If he disappointed, nobody would come to his rescue. And as for Aisha, what would become of her once her services were no longer needed?

The sound of footsteps cut these questions short. Eviatar ran to the cave entrance. The Essene shepherd from Qumran was clambering up the slope with the help of his crook. As soon as he reached the threshold, he began talking and gesticulating excitedly. Eviatar translated, informing François of Federico's arrest. He added that the news had taken more than three weeks to arrive, brought in relays by carrier pigeon. Federico may already have succumbed to the torture.

François found it hard to imagine the dapper merchant chained to some horrible instrument of torture. He would surely find a way out.

“That rascal has more than one trick up his sleeve. And he's a damn good liar.”

Eviatar repeated François's words to the Essene, thinking they might calm him. But the shepherd responded curtly, throwing a stern glance at François. Eviatar turned pale. He was so disconcerted that he could not immediately translate. When he spoke at last, he himself seemed incredulous. The guardian of Qumran knew Federico well. He had often given him shelter. He came here to study the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts hidden in the surrounding caves. Every morning, he got up for prayer, wearing a large shawl and phylacteries, then went to purify himself in the
wadis
that lined the Dead Sea, as ordered by the Holy Torah.

B
ent over his desk, his nose almost touching the paper, a scribe transcribed each of the questions asked by the inquisitors. Ignoring the tortured man's screams, he scribbled a little cross to note that no reply had been forthcoming. Three priests were present at the interrogation, observing the prisoner's reactions with a resigned air: they were going to have to be patient. After each cry or contortion, they conferred briefly in low voices, then signaled to the torturer whether he should inflict more pain or observe a pause.

Federico was tied to a rough wooden chair. Facing him, in full sight, a panoply of pliers, mallets, needles glittered in the torchlight. Hot coals were burning inside an iron cauldron supported by a tripod. The torturer moved slowly. He heated a pair of pincers until they were white-hot, calmly contemplating the dancing flame that caressed the metal. When he took them out, they were steaming. He brandished them for a moment in the air as if he were undecided, then, taking his time, examined the different parts of the body. Each of the limbs he looked at in turn was already burning with anguish. Then for a long time he trailed the pincers over his victim's skin, without touching it completely, moving from the thighs toward the chest, then, all at once, closed the instrument over the right nipple and squeezed tightly, without moving or batting an eyelid, his eyes aimed vaguely at the far end of the cell. The flesh immediately melted with a great hiss. Galvanized by the pain, Federico began shaking compulsively. A hot current ran through his veins. His brain was about to explode. In spite of the terrifying smell of burning flesh, he could smell the stronger stench of alcohol emanating from his torturer's toothless mouth, the only sign that the man was even human. Even in the throes of torment, his body arched, his head thrown back, Federico tried to stay fixed on the brute, to look into his glassy eyes and curl his lips in a kind of complicit smile, as if both of them were on the same side. The torturer gently released his grip then disappeared from his field of vision. He returned with a bucket and planted himself in front of Federico, awaiting further instructions. After a moment, a jet of icy water struck the prisoner's face to stop him fainting. Federico knew that the sufferings he was enduring at present were only a prelude. He tried to draw strength from every spasm of his muscles, to find courage in the most secret crannies of his soul.

One of the inquisitors stood up. He was holding a thick volume, which he leafed through distractedly as he approached. Reaching the wooden chair, he slammed the book shut and showed it to his colleagues, by the light of the cauldron, then to Federico. The binding bore the Medici coat of arms surrounded by a motto in Hebrew. The gilding on the arms shone in the middle of the cover. Its familiar glitter comforted him, and he clung to it like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam. The monk spat on the emblem. As Federico was laboriously getting his breath back, he heard a metallic sound. A bar ending in a stamp in the shape of a cross was being dipped in the coals.

A
rchbishop Angelo reached out his hand so that his visitor could kiss the huge sapphire he wore on his finger, then languidly put his arm back on the embroidered cushion that lay on the armrest. Having muttered the appropriate blessing, he inquired after the health of Pietro de' Medici, expressing surprise that he should have sent his son rather than handling such an important matter in person. Lorenzo professed some feeble excuses, explaining that, following the death of Francesco Sforza, his father had to ensure the rapid transmission of powers in order to safeguard the interests of the two families, the Sforzas and the Medicis, especially as regarded the maritime trade in Genoa, the factories in Milan, and the various trading posts they ran together.