The Kingdom of Light Read Online Free Page B

space of the choir, obstructing the view from the apse like the wings of a theatre.
    Beyond the chain, beside the altar, a wooden chest had been placed, almost as tall as a man, covered by a white linen sheet embroidered with a large scarlet cross. Dante had the sense of having seen that strange object before. He was trying to remember where when he was pushed towards the barrier by a shove from behind. Next to him, a young man wearing student clothes had forced his way to the front, and came and stood next to Dante with a swift word of apology.
    Dante turned back in search of Messer Duccio, but the man had disappeared behind the sea of heads. He heard a hum of voices starting up among the crowd.
    Another figure had appeared from behind the altar, dressed from head to toe in the coarse cloth tunic of the Holy Land pilgrims, tied around his waist by a hempen rope that held a big wooden cross. All that was could be seen of the man was the part of his face left uncovered by his hood, with a flowing, jet-black beard that reached halfway down his chest. His hands were hidden by the wide sleeves.
    He was the monk seen at the head of the unusual crowd of pilgrims, at the city gate. Dante was sure of it. And the chest was the same one he had seen at the Porta al Prato. But now, standing before the altar, the monk’s face had nothing of the gaunt obsessiveness that had appeared before Dante in the uncertain light of dawn.
    With a dramatic gesture the man threw back his hood, uncovering a completely bald skull and a majestic brow. It looked as if the marble statue of an ancient Roman had emerged from the earth to walk again among men. There was nothing humble about him, Dante thought, observing him carefully. He represented the perfect icon of the warrior monk, with his big wrestler’s shoulders, his imposing stature and, above all, the erect position of someone who comes more to challenge than to ask.
    Without a word the man approached the chest and pulled away the cloth, revealing a richly decorated aedicule, like those little portable chapels that Dante had seen being used by itinerant preachers. Then he opened its doors.
    Inside, on a table with a central pediment, lay a bronze reliquary almost three feet high. The image, finely chiselled and decorated with a large number of multicoloured stones, reproduced the bust of a woman. The poet had seen something similar before, works of art born to preserve the remains of saints. Coverings for legs, hands, sometimes heads. But this one was big enough to hold an entire human bust.
    The strangeness of the face that was represented disconcerted him. The artist had bestowed upon it lineaments of the most unbridled lust and perfidy. Along with an intense pain, in the twisted mouth from which mother-of-pearl teeth gleamed. The hand that carved this must have been extraordinarily skilful, to have evoked so perfectly in metal a goddess from hell. Dante looked round, studying the reaction of the crowd, but it seemed that no one around him was shocked by this indecent object in a holy place.
    After waiting for the crowd to absorb the emotion of the moment, the monk approached the reliquary, touching it with his hands as if to warm the cold bronze. First he appeared to undo a buckle that must have secured the base to the bust. Then, manipulating invisible fastenings, he opened an orifice in the head, making part of the sculpted head vibrate. Inside the cavity something white gleamed. The skull of some saint or martyr, Dante thought, irritably. He had never appreciated that custom of breaking bodies apart, rather than leaving them to wait in their entirety for the trump of the Day of Judgement. But perhaps it was only an ivory statue, like those of ancient gods.
    Meanwhile the monk had stretched out his arms, to ask the crowd for silence. Then he brought his hand to the reliquary, activating a kind of little handle that protruded from the bust. He drew it to himself, opening it up and putting its