admire the arch from which one could go out onto the ancient paved road, Via Pergolesi, once the Cardo Massimo of Roman times, later called Via delle Botteghe or Via degli Orefici, for the pre-eminent activities that had taken place there during the various periods. Of the splendid shops of the past, in fact, very few remained. Many of them had shutters that had been lowered for several years, and the open ones showed off goods and services that had little to do with antiquity, with the pomp and splendour of the goldsmiths’ shops of the past. The tourist sign smeared with pigeon shit indicated that the arch of the Verroni’s Palace was not of Roman origin, as appearance might lead one to believe, but had been built in the fifteenth century by Giovanni di Gabriele da Como, an architect who had worked alongside the more famous Francesco di Giorgio Martini in the construction of the nearby Palazzo della Signoria. So much so that someone in the past had also attributed that arch to Di Giorgio Martini. According to Lucia, the Romans must not have been completely unrelated to that work, which overlooked the Cardo Massimo. Perhaps the Renaissance architects had limited themselves to restoring an ancient arch, whose remains had survived the centuries and the ruinous earthquake of the year 848.
A few steps between the austere buildings in the historic centre were enough to make Lucia pass from the shady Via Pergolesi to the bright Piazza Federico II. It was still a few minutes to 8:00 a.m., the time when she had to attack to work. She would have had time to smoke another cigarette before entering the Palace, but her attention was drawn to the four marble statues that supported the balcony on the first floor like caryatids. For a moment, she had the impression that the four “telamons” were animated with their own life, as if they wanted to come towards her to talk to her, to tell her centuries-old stories, whose memory had been lost. It was like a dizziness that made her imagine the balcony, no longer supported by the mighty statues, leaning dangerously towards the ground, and brought to mind the dream that had made her the protagonist of a story that had happened exactly five centuries earlier, in those same days of the year and in those places. The images of dreams flowed through her mind during her sleep like scenes from a serial novel. They were so clear that Lucia impersonated herself in her eponymous ancestor as if she was reliving her past life, both as an interpreter and as a spectator.
Suggestion, just suggestion!, she repeated for the umpteenth time the young woman to herself. All because of the books I’m working on and the missing parts of the History of Jesi. My unconscious makes me invent the missing part of the book!
She took two deep breaths, reached a bench, sat down and observed that the facade of the building was there, intact and unharmed. She decided to cross the square, reach the bar and take a strong espresso before going to work. That diversion would have cost her a few minutes’ delay, but the dean never arrived before nine o’clock. She quickly consumed her coffee and left the Bar Duomo, a few steps away she reached the side of the square where Via Pergolesi converged. On her left was the mouth of Via del Fortino, on his right the beginning of the Costa Lombarda, through which she could reach the lower part of the city. Right under his feet, on a large bronze tile was engraved the map of ancient Aesis. A little further on, the inscription in various languages, including Arabic, on the white tiles along the entire perimeter of the square: “On 26 December 1194 Emperor Frederick the Second of Swabia was born in this square”. Still a dizziness, still a vision. Now the square no longer had its present appearance. The lions’ fountain, with the obelisk, no longer stood in the centre, but the space was completely free. The Cathedral, on the opposite side, was a white building, smaller in size than the recent one, in Gothic style, with spires and pointed arches, a sort of small Cathedral of Milan. The bell tower was to the right of the facade, isolated and in an advanced position on the front of the church. The Baldeschi Palace, on the left of the Cathedral, was different, more massive, more sumptuous; the facade was surmounted, as embellishment, by three stone arches, perhaps taken from an ancient Roman construction and put up there in a false way, as a decorative element, but of no use. The statue of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms was already present in a niche between the windows on the top floor, while there was no trace of the four “telamons” supporting the balcony on the first floor. On the contrary, the balcony, although not completely absent, was very small compared to what it was used to seeing. The entire right side of the square was occupied, in place of the Bishop’s Palace and Palazzo Ripanti, by an enormous fortress, a sort of castle, decorated with typical arches and swallow-tailed Ghibelline merlons. On the left side there were the Church of St. Florian, with its dome and bell tower, and the Ghislieri Palace, not yet finished, surrounded by the bricklayers’ scaffoldings. Lucia looked towards the beginning of Via del Fortino, where there was a dyer’s shop, in front of which the craftsman had lit a fire to boil water in a pot encrusted with carbon black. A little girl had approached the fire dangerously and a strip of her dress had caught fire. In short, the girl found herself wrapped in flames. Lucia wanted to run towards to help her, but she couldn’t take a step. She was horrified, hearing the girl’s desperate cries ringing in her ears. Then one, two raindrops, one roar, the flames were extinguished. The feeling of no longer touching his feet on the ground. Lucia was lying on the pavement. When she opened her eyes again she saw the blue sky, a sky from which not a single drop of rain could have fallen. A distinguished man, elegantly dressed, with a briefcase in his hand, tried to help her get up.
«Are you all right?»
«Yes, yes», and refusing any help, Lucia stood up. «It was just a failure, a pressure surge. Everything’s all right now, thank you!»
She crossed the square, which now had the usual appearance, at a good pace, to try to get to her place of work as soon as possible, before the dean could notice her delay, but with the images she had experienced for a few moments well printed in her mind.
Suggestion, only suggestion, nothing but suggestion. There is no other logical explanation for dreams and now for visions!
Yet, a voice from her subconscious seemed to want to tell her that they were memories, that they were episodes she had lived in another life, in a remote past, as a different person, but always bearing the same name: Lucia.
She entered the building, climbed the staircase leading to the first floor and started the computer at her workstation. The temptation to take a peek at her profiles in the various social networks was made vain by the knowledge that the bastard of the dean was punctually checking, through the server, the log file of her computer and reproached her if she allowed herself to surf the Internet for reasons not strictly related to work. So she opened the Excel worksheet where she went to classify the texts and the Access file where she recorded the data in order to have a complete database of the library. Each text was then scanned and stored in a PDF file, to be uploaded to the foundation’s website for later consultation. The texts she was working on in those days, and which had perhaps been the trigger for her dreams and recent visions, were a “History of Jesi” published by Manuzi, the very Bernardino Manuzi who in the sixteenth century had the printing house in the palace where she had taken up residence, and a booklet, whose author was Lucia Baldeschi, entitled “Principles of natural medicine and healing with herbs”.
Then she had on her table a manuscript of a few pages, according to her, also attributable to Lucia Baldeschi, who was trying to describe the meaning and symbolism of a particular seven-pointed pentacle. All three of them were real puzzles, and Lucia would not give up until she had unravelled the arcana that hid behind each of those texts. “The History of Jesi” was really interesting, a work started by Bernardino Manuzi, printer in Jesi, based on ancient documents and oral traditions, and completed thanks to the contribution of other authors. On his table he had an original copy of the book, printed by Manuzi himself, from which several pages had been torn out, who knows in what remote period, who knows by whom, who knows for what reason. Precisely the pages that referred to a painful period in the history of Jesi, from 1517 to 1521, a period marked by the “sack of Jesi” and the government of Cardinal Baldeschi who, thanks to the fact of being head of the Inquisition Tribunal, had persecuted and had executed many people just because they hindered his power. And Lucia Baldeschi was his niece. An inquisitor uncle and a niece who devoted herself to natural medicine and herbal medicine, considered at that time witchcraft
