Where you enter the building, he discovers a mysterious visitor,
is a secret message with necromantic signs, and
disappears, just found a book that
then be sought for many other chapters, or Last vicissitudes and the theft of valuable lenses
William
The dinner was gloomy and silent. It had been just over twelve hours since he had discovered the body of Venancio. Everyone looked sideways at his empty seat at the table. And when the hour of Compline, the procession that went to choir seemed a funeral procession. Participation in the office being in aisle and keeping an eye on the third chapel. The light was low, and when we saw Malachi emerge from the darkness to reach his stall, we could not figure out exactly where to come out. At any rate it did in the shadows, hiding in the aisle, because no one could see that we stayed there in office ended. I was in my scapular that I had removed the light in the kitchen during dinner. This would then switched to the great bronze tripod that remained alive throughout the night. I had a new wick, and a lot of oil. We would have light for a long time.
I was too excited by what we are going to do to pay attention to the ritual, which ended almost without my noticing. The monks lowered the caps on the face and went out slowly lined up to go to their cells. The church was deserted, lit by the glow of the tripod.
"Ah," William said. "At work."
We approached the third chapel. The base of the altar was really like a charnel house, a series of skulls from the empty eye sockets deep and scary to cover, resting as they appeared in the admirable relief on a pile of bones. William repeated in a low voice the words he had heard from Alinardo (fourth skull on the right, push the eyes). And he put the fingers in the eye of that fleshless face, and immediately we heard a hoarse squeak. The altar is moved by turning on a pin hidden, leaving a glimpse of a dark opening. Light illuminating it with my uplifted we saw the wet steps. Decide to go after discussing if we had to close the passage behind us. Better not, "said William, did not know if we could then reopen it. And as for the risk of detection, if someone came at that hour to operate the same mechanism, it was because he knew how to enter and would not have been arrested by a closed passage.
went down and more than a dozen steps and entered a corridor on either side of which opened the horizontal niches, as later I happened to see many in the catacombs. But it was the first time I got into a charnel house, and I was very scared. The bones of the monks had been collected there over the centuries, dug from the earth, and piled niches without groped to reconstruct the shape of their bodies. However, some niches had only bones minute, others only skulls, almost willing the pyramid, so as not to fall over each other, and it was truly frightening spectacle, especially with the play of light and shadow that the light created on our way. In a niche I saw only hands, many hands, now irrevocably intertwined with each other in a tangle of dead fingers. I let out a scream, in that place of the dead, trying for a moment the impression that there was something alive, a squeak, and a fast-moving shadows.
"Rats," William assured me.
"What are rats here?"
"Past, like us, because the ossuary leads to the building, and then to the kitchen. And the good books of the library. And now you understand why Malachi's face is so austere. His office requires him to come through here twice a day, night and morning. He 'does not have to laugh. "
" But because the gospel never says that Christ laughed? "I asked for no good reason. "It 's really like Jorge says?"
"You have to wonder if Christ has legions rice. The thing does not interest me much. I do not think I ever laughed because, knowing as it must be the son of God, knew what we would do us Christians. But here we are. "
In fact, thanks God, the hall was over, began a new series of steps, paths which we did not have to push a wooden door reinforced with iron hard, and we found ourselves behind the fireplace in the kitchen, right under the spiral staircase which mounted to the scriptorium . As we climbed we thought he heard a noise upstairs. Risto
silent for a moment, then said: "It 's impossible. No one came before us ... "
" Assuming that this was the only way of access to the building. In past centuries this was a fortress, and have more access to what secrets do not know. We climb slowly. But we have little choice. If you turn off the light we do not know where we go, if we keep on the alert to who is in above. The only hope is that, if anyone, has more afraid of us. "
arrived in the scriptorium, emerging from the south tower. The table Venanzio was just the opposite. Moving does not illuminate the wall a few yards at a time, because the room was too broad. Hoping no one was in court and saw the light shine through the windows. The table seems fine, but now William bent to examine the papers on the shelf below, and had an exclamation of disappointment.
"Missing?" I asked.
"Today I saw two books here, and one was in greek. And the latter is missing. Someone has taken away, and in a hurry, because a parchment fell to the ground here. "
" But the table was looked ... "
" Sure. Maybe someone got their hands just a little while ago. Maybe it's still here. "He turned toward the shadows and her voice rang out between the columns:" Are you here looks after you! "It seemed a good idea, as William had already said, it is always better than those who have scary more afraid of us.
William put down his paper he found at the foot of the table and walked over his face. He asked me to give him light. Appressai the light and saw a blank page for the first half, and covered with tiny characters in the second of which barely knew the source.
"E 'greek?" I asked.
"Yes, but I do not understand." He drew from his doublet lenses and put them firmly in the saddle to your nose, then his face went even further.
"E 'greek, written very small, yet inordinately. Even with the slow read with difficulty, should be more light. Come closer ... "She took
sheet by the front of the face, and I stupidly instead of passing it behind his back holding the lamp high over his head, I sat in front of him. He asked me to move to the side, and in doing so touched with the flame on the back of the paper. William I drove with a push, telling me if I wanted to burn the manuscript, then had a cry. I saw clearly that the top the page had appeared some vague signs of a brownish-yellow color. William was forced to give the light and moved him behind the sheet, keeping the flame close enough to the surface of the parchment, so that heat or lapped. Slowly, as if an invisible hand were drawing "Mane, Tekel, Fares," I saw white drawing on the verso of the sheet, one by one, As William moved the lamp, and as the smoke that arose from the height of the flame blackened the obverse of the traits that do not resemble those of any alphabet, except that of the necromancers.
"Great!" William said. "More and more interesting!" He looked around: "But you better not explain this finding with the treachery of our mystery guest, if it is still here ... "She took off her glasses and placed them on the table, then carefully roll up the parchment and hid it in his habit. Still stunned by the sequence of events nothing short of miraculous, I was asking for further explanation, when a sudden noise and we looked away dry. It came from the eastern foot of the stairs leading to the library.
"Our man is there, take it!" William cried and threw us in that direction, he's more quick, more slowly because I was carrying the lamp. I heard a crash of the person who stumbles and falls, I ran, I found William at the foot of the stairs watching a heavy volume covered by the reinforced of metal studs. At the same moment we heard another noise from the direction from which we came. "Fool that I am!" Cried William, "soon, Venancio's table!"
I knew someone who was in the shadows behind us had thrown the book to lure us away.
Once again William was faster than me and reached the table. I follow a shadow glimpsed between the columns fleeing, putting the scale of the west tower.
Taken from warrior zeal, put out the light in the hands of William and threw myself blindly to the ladder from which the fugitive had gone down. At that moment I felt like a soldier of Christ fighting with all the legions of hell, and I burned with the desire to get their hands the stranger to hand it to my teacher. Ruzzolai almost tripping down the spiral staircase in the hem of my dress (that was the only time in my life, I swear, that I regretted having entered a monastic order) but at that moment and was thinking of a flash , I consoled myself with the idea that my opponent had to suffer the same embarrassment. Plus, if you had stolen the book, must have your hands full. Almost ran into the kitchen behind the oven bread, and the light that illuminated the night sky dimly the vast hall, I saw the shadow chasing, which slipped the door of the refectory pulling behind him. I ran with that, labored a few seconds to open it, I came in, I looked around and saw no one. The door was still bolted to the outside. I turned around. Shadow and silence. I saw a glow coming from the kitchen and I addossai a wall. On the threshold of transition between the two environments appeared a figure illuminated by a light. I cried. It was William.
"There's nobody? So provides. He is not out of a door. Has not pushed the passage of the ossuary? "
" No, it's out of here, but I do not know where! "
" I told you, there are other steps, and it is useless to look for them. Maybe our man is emerging somewhere far away. And with him my lenses. "
" Your lenses? "
" Just so. Our friend could not escape the package, but with great presence of mind, going grabbed my glasses off the table. "
" Why? "
" Why not is a fool. I have heard of these notes, he realized they were important, he thought that without the lens will not be able to decipher them and know for sure that I trust to show them to anyone. In fact, now is not as if I had them. "
" But how did he know of your lenses? "
" Come on, apart from the fact that we discussed yesterday with the master glass-maker, this morning in the scriptorium were got on me to rummage through Venanzio cards. So there are many people who could know what those objects were precious. And in fact I might even read a manuscript normal, but not this, "and was unrolling the mysterious parchment again," where the party in greek is too small, too uncertain and the top ... "
He showed me that the mysterious signs had appeared as if by magic to the heat of the flame, "Venancio wanted to conceal an important secret and inks used one of those who write without a trace and reappear in the heat. Or he used the lemon juice. But since I do not know what substance he used and the signs could riscomparire, quickly, that you have good eyes, ricopiali just as faithfully as you can, and maybe a little bigger. "And so I did not know what copiassi. It was a series of four or five lines, indeed, witchcraft, and now only carry the very first signs, to give the reader an idea of \u200b\u200bthe riddle we had before our eyes. When I had copied
William looked at her, unfortunately without lenses, taking my tablet a good distance from the nose. "It 's certainly a secret alphabet that need to be deciphered," he said. "The signs are marked wrong, and maybe you've copied them worse, but it is certainly a zodiacal alphabet. See? In the first line we have ... "yet the paper away from him, narrowed his eyes, with an effort of concentration," Sagittarius, Sun, Mercury, Scorpio ... "
"And what do they mean?"
"If he were a naive Venanzio would use the most common astrological alphabet: A equals the Sun, Jupiter equal to B ... The first line would read then ... try to transcribe: RAIQASVL ... "He paused. "No, it does not mean anything, and Venancio was not naive. Has reformulated the alphabet according to another key. I'll have to discover it. "
" It 's possible? "Asked admiringly.
"Yes, if you know a little about the wisdom of the Arabs. Best of cryptography are handled by knowledgeable infidels, and in Oxford I could do with someone to read. Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of knowledge through the knowledge of languages. Abu Bakr Ahmad ben Ali an-well Washiyya Nabati centuries ago wrote a book devoted to the frantic desire to learn the mysteries of ancient writings and has set many rules for composing and decipher mysterious alphabets, good for practice of magic, but also for the correspondence between the armies, or between a king and his ambassadors. I have seen other books that list a number of Arab rather ingenious artifice. You can for example replace a letter with another, you can type a word backwards, you can put the letters in reverse order, but takes a yes and no, and then begins again, as in this case you can replace the letters with signs Zodiac, but giving the hidden letters to their numeric value and then, according to a another alphabet, convert the numbers into other letters ... "
" And which of these systems will be used Venanzio? "
" We should try them all, and more. But the first rule in deciphering a message is to guess what it means. "
" But then there is no need to decipher it! "I laughed.
"Not in this sense. You can, however, make hypotheses about what might be the first words of the message, and then see if the rule infers that if true for the rest of the script. For example, here Venanzio has certainly noted the key to enter the finis Africae. If I try to think that the message of this talk, here are lit suddenly from a rhythm ... Try to watch the first three words, do not consider the letters, only considers the number of signs ... lllll lllllll llllllll ... Now try to divide into syllables at least two signs each, and reads aloud: ta-ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta-ta ... Do not think of anything? "
" I do not. "
" And I do. Secretum finis Africae ... But if that was the last word should have the first and the sixth letter of the same, and so in fact, that's twice the symbol of the Earth. And the first letter of the first word, the S should be equal to the last second: here and in fact repeated the sign of Virgo. Perhaps it is the good way. But this may only a series of coincidences. We need to find a matching rule ... "
" Finding where? "
" In the head. Invent it. And then see if that is true. But in a test period, the game may take away a whole day. No more so - remember this - there is no secret writing that can not be deciphered with a little 'patience. But now could be late and want to visit the library. Especially since without lenses I will never read the second part of the message, and you can not help me because these signs in your eyes ... "
" graecum est, non legitur, "I completed humiliated.
"Exactly, you see that Bacon was right. Study! But do not lose heart. We place the parchment, and your notes, and we go to the library. Why is this night even ten legions of hell could not hold back. ".
I crossed. "But who could have been here before them? Benno? "
" Benno burned by the desire to know what was among the papers of Venancio, but did not seem in the spirit of playing pitches as malicious. In the end we had proposed an alliance, and then I seemed to not have the courage to enter at night in the building. "
" Then Berengar? Malachi O?
"Berengar I seem to have the courage to do things like that. After all, it shares responsibility for the library, is gnawed by remorse of having betrayed a secret, he claimed that he had stolen Venanzio that book and may have wished to return to the place from which it comes. He failed to rise, the volume is now hiding somewhere, and we catch him, if God helps us, when they attempt to replace it. "
" But it could also be Malachi, moved by the same intentions. "
" I would say no. Malachi had all the time who wanted to poke in the table Venanzio when left alone to close the building. I knew very well and I had no way to avoid it. Now we know that he did not. And if you think well, we have no reason to suspect that he knew that Malachi Venanzio had entered the library by subtracting something. Berengar knows this and although you and I and we know it. Following the confession of Adelmo might know Jorge, but he was not the man who fell with such fervor by the spiral staircase ... "
" Then either Berengar or Benno ... "
" Why not Pacific Tivoli or another of the monks we saw here today? O Nicholas the glazier, who knows of my glasses? Or the bizarre character of the Savior, they told us that the rolling of the night to who knows what matters? We must be careful not to narrow down the suspects because of the revelations Although there are oriented in one direction. Although perhaps he wanted to confuse us. "
" But there seemed sincere. "
" Sure. But remember that the first duty of a good interrogator is to first suspect to those who you seem sincere. "
" the inquisitor bad job, "I said.
"That's why I left. And as you can see I have to take it back. But Alas, the library. "
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