'Where are we going?'
'We must return down below, we did not search properly last time.'
We again entered the closet, where the little door opened up behind the sideboard. I felt the damp on my face. I leaned over unwillingly, illuminating the mouth of the well with my lantern.
'Why not wait until nightfall? The others may discover us,' I protested feebly.
The abbot did not reply. From his pocket he drew forth a ring, which he placed in the palm of my hand, closing my fingers around the jewel, as though to stress the importance of what he was giving me. I nodded my consent and began the downward journey.
We had only just reached the brick platform when I gave a start. In the darkness, a hand had clasped my right shoulder. Terror prevented me from either screaming or turning around. Obscurely, I understood that the abbot was telling me to remain calm. Overcoming with great difficulty the paralysis which gripped me, I turned to discover the face of the third explorer.
'Remember to honour the dead.'
It was Signor Pellegrino, who with suffering mien was so solemnly warning me. I could find no words to express my discomfiture: who then was it that I had left sleeping in his bed? How had Pellegrino been able to transport himself instantly from our sunny chamber to this dark, damp tunnel? While these thoughts were forming in my mind, Pellegrino spoke again.
'I want more light.'
I felt myself suddenly sliding backwards: the surface of the bricks was slimy and irresistibly slippery; I had lost my balance, perhaps when turning towards Pellegrino. I fell slowly, but with all my weight, towards the stairwell, with my back to the ground and my belly turned skywards (although down there, no sky seemed ever to have existed). I slid miraculously down the steps without meeting any resistance, although I felt as though I weighed more than a marble statue. The last thing that I saw was Atto Melani and Pellegrino watching my disappearance with phlegmatic indifference, almost as though life and death were the same to them. I fell, overcome by stupor and by desperation, as a lost soul falling into the Abyss becomes aware at last of his damnation.
What saved me was a scream that seemed to come from some unknowable fold in the Creation and awoke me, tearing me from my nightmare.
I had dreamed and, dreaming, I had screamed. I was in my bed and I turned towards that of my master who had clearly remained all the time just where I left him. Through the window came no fine white sunbeams, but that brightness tinged with red and blue which heralds sunrise. The sharp air of the early morning had chilled me and I covered myself, although I knew that I would not regain sleep easily. From the stairs came a distant sound of footsteps, and 1 listened intently, in case someone was approaching the door of the closet. I understood clearly that it was a group of guests, making their way down to the kitchen or to the first floor. In the distance, I could make out the voices of Stilone Priaso and Padre Robleda, who were asking Cristofano for news of Signor Pellegrino's health. I rose, foreseeing that the doctor would soon be arriving to visit my master. The first person to knock at my door was, however, Bedfordi.
On opening, I found myself looking into a pale face with great dark half-moons under the eyes. On his shoulders Bedfordi wore a warm cape. He was fully dressed, and yet he shivered, his whole back and his head convulsed by great trembling fits, which he strove fruitlessly to suppress. He at once begged me to let him in, almost certainly so as not to be seen by the other guests. I offered him a little water and the pills which Cristofano had given us. The Englishman declined the offer, being concerned (so he said) that there existed pills capable of driving a patient to his death. That reply took me by surprise; nevertheless, I felt bound to insist.
'Yet I tell you,' said he in a voice suddenly grown feverish, 'that opium and purgatives for the various humours can even cause death, and never forget that negroes keep hidden beneath their fingernails a poison that kills with a single scratch; and then there are rattlesnakes, yes, and I have read of a spider which squirts into the eye of its persecutor a poison so potent that for a long time it deprives him of his sight…'
He seemed delirious.
'But Doctor Cristofano will do nothing of the sort,' I protested.
'… and these substances,' he continued, almost as though he had not heard me, 'act by occult virtues, but those occult virtues are none other than the mirror of our ignorance.'
I noticed that his legs were trembling, and to retain his footing, he had to lean against the doorpost. His very words were a sign of delirium. Bedfordi sat on the bed and smiled sadly at me.
'Excrement desiccates the cornea,' he recited, raising his index finger severely, like a master admonishing his pupils. 'Worn around the neck, the groundsel herb is good for curing tertian fevers. But for hysteria, one must needs apply salt poultices several times to the feet. And to learn the art of medicine, tell this to Signor Cristofano when you call him, instead of Galen and Paracelsus, he should read Don Quixote.'
Then he lay down, closed his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest to cover himself and began to tremble slightly. I rushed down the stairs to call for help.
The great bubo under his groin, together with another smaller one under the right armpit left few doubts in Cristofano's mind. This time, we were clearly faced with the pestilential distemper; and that inevitably cast dark shadows once more, both over the death of Signor di Mourai and the singular torpor which had overcome my master. I felt myself utterly at a loss: was there a skilled and obscure assassin at large in the hostelry or, more likely, the all-too notorious pestilence?
The news of Bedfordi's illness threw the whole company into the deepest disarray. Only one day remained to us before the return of the Bargello's men for the next roll-call. I noticed that many were avoiding me, since I was the first to have come into contact with Bedfordi when the distemper assailed him. Cristofano, however, pointed out that every one of us had spoken, eaten and even played cards with the Englishman the day before. None, therefore, could feel safe. Owing perhaps to a good dose of juvenile temerity, I was the only one not to give way at once to fear. However, I saw the most fearful of all, namely Padre Robleda and Stilone Priaso, run and gather a few victuals which I had left out in the kitchen, returning thus laden to their apartments. I stopped them, having remembered then that Extreme Unction should be administered to Bedfordi. This time, however, Padre Robleda would not hear reason: 'He is English and I know that he is of the reformed religion; he is excommunicated, unbaptised,' he replied excitedly, adding that the oil for the sick was reserved for baptised adults and was not to be administered to infants, madmen, those denounced as excommunicated, impenitent public sinners, those condemned to life imprisonment, or to mothers in childbirth; nor might it be offered to soldiers deployed in battle against the enemy or to sailors in danger of shipwreck.
Stilone Priaso, too, inveighed against me: 'Did you not know that holy oil accelerates death, causes the hair to fall out, makes childbirth more painful and gives infants jaundice, kills bees flying around the sick man's house, and that all those who have received it will die if they dance during the remaining months of the year; that it is a sin to spin in the sickroom because the patient will die if one leaves off spinning or if the yarn breaks, nor can one wash one's feet until long after receiving Extreme Unction, and one must always keep a lamp or a candle burning in the sickroom for as long as the distemper lasts, otherwise the poor man may die?'
And leaving me standing there, both ran to lock themselves into their apartments.
Thus, about half an hour later, I returned to the small chamber on the first floor where Bedfordi lay, to see in what state he was. I thought that Cristofano, too, had returned there, for the unfortunate
Englishman was talking and appeared to be in company. I at once perceived, however, that I and the sick man were alone together and that he was in fact delirious. I found him terribly pale, a lock of hair glued to his perspiring forehead and his lips abnormally cracked, suggesting a burning, painful throat.
'In the tower… it is in the tower,' he babbled hoarsely, turning his tired gaze towards me. He was talking nonsense.
Without any apparent reason, he listed a series of names unknown to me and these I was able to commit to memory only because he repeated them so many times, larded with incomprehensible expressions in his native language. He was constantly sighing the name of one William, a native of the city of Orange, whom I imagined to be a friend or acquaintance of his.
I was about to call Cristofano, fearing that the distemper might abruptly worsen and come to a fatal conclusion, when the physician arrived, drawn by the sick man's moans. He was accompanied by Brenozzi and Devize, who maintained a respectful distance.
Poor Bedfordi continued his mad monologue, mentioning the name of one Charles, whom Brenozzi later
