curiosity was too strong. She thought that if those ravines, that were now tunnels, galleries and cellars, had once been inhabited, the spirits of the ancient inhabitants could talk to her, tell her stories, confide their fears and feelings. Basically, Palazzo Baldeschi stood at what was the acropolis, the forum, the commercial and political centre of the city in Roman times. There were the temples, Baths, a little further away, where now stood the brand new Government Palace, there was a huge amphitheatre; closer, near the western walls of the city, the large cistern for water supply.
It’ll be dark soon down there, thought Lucia. I’ll need a light source.
She went into the barn and gave Morocco a little talk, and claimed the carrot the girl used to bring him as a gift. Lucia pulled it out of her pockets and the animal was quick to take it gently with his lips from her hands. She caressed the horse on the back of his nose, looking for a lantern. She saw it, unhooked it from the nail to which it was attached, checked that it was loaded with oil, then concentrated her gaze on the wick, which in a few moments caught fire. Lucia regulated the flame to the minimum, came out of the stable and ventured down the uneven stairs towards the bowels of the earth. Although Earth was one of the elements she had control over, she was a little afraid of it at the time. It almost seemed as if that ladder should never end, because it was so long. But maybe it was just Lucia’s impression. She finally left the last step with her foot. The humidity was strong down there, the girl was freezing the sweat on her, and her breath condensed into little clouds of steam. She raised the lantern flame. There were several corridors, bordered by ancient stone walls and rough bricks. One, very long, was lost in the darkness ahead. Grandmother had told her that there was a long passageway that could be used during sieges, to cross enemy lines and provide supplies for the besieged people and weapons for the city’s defenders. This passage even came out at the country residence of the Baldeschi family, at the beginning of the road to Monsano, a small town located a few leagues away from Jesi, and always a historical ally of our city. On its right, a tunnel would certainly have quickly reached the underground of the cathedral, perhaps even the crypt that housed the relics of St. Septimius. The tunnel on its left could have led to the base of the church of St. Florian, like the ancient Roman cistern. Who knows if the latter was still full of water, Lucia wondered. She decided to go to her right, towards the basement of the Cathedral and, in short, she found herself in a small square chapel. Four white marble statues, without the head, like columns, supported the cross vault of the chapel. Probably, they were statues that had once adorned the Roman baths. Without the heads, which lay piled up in a hidden dark corner, they were used by those who had once designed the cathedral as columns. In the centre of the chapel, under the vault supported by Gothic arches, a small stone altar framed a shrine containing the relics of the first Bishop of Jesi, Septimius. The Saint, like many Christians of the time, had been martyred at the behest of the Roman authorities. The Roman dean who governed the city of Jesi had ordered its beheading, after Septimius had converted to Christianity a large part of the population, including the governor’s daughter. Septimius had been considered a dangerous enemy of the Roman Empire and executed. The bones had been stolen by the first Christians to save them from the desecration of the pagans, and hidden so well that for centuries and centuries no one knew where they were. The Saint was beheaded in 304 and his mortal remains were found only after 1,165 years in Germany. Therefore they had been brought back to that place of worship only about fifty years earlier.
How strange humanity! Lucia said to herself. The same treatment that the Romans gave to the first Christians, who were persecuted, now the Catholic Church seems to give it to those people who do not think like her: who deviate from the official doctrine are accused of heresy and may end up killed in the public square. Witches, heretics, Jews... are tried and burned at the stake, just because they have the courage to express their ideas and knowledge. Well, now the Church takes it out on heretics, tomorrow, in the future, some other faction will take over and perhaps Christians will be persecuted again. Why should there not be justice in this world? What is this God who allows so much evil to exist in the world, but especially in the heart of man?
As she followed the course of her thoughts, a blade of light generated by a setting sun managed to filter through a small mullioned window at the top, at the apse of the cathedral above, illuminating the area where the heads of the Roman statues were piled up. Lucia’s attention was focused on some details that she had not been able to notice before, there near those heads carved in stone so many centuries earlier. A kind of pentacle had been drawn on the beaten earth floor, different from the one she used to see drawn on the cover of the family diary given to her by her grandmother some time before. The design seemed asymmetrical, representing a seven-pointed star carved out by drawing a continuous line within a circle. Each point of the star intersected a point on the circumference, at each of which there were Hebrew inscriptions, whose meaning Lucia did not know. At each of the seven points, the trace of wax cast, left by a candle that had been lit there, was visible. In the centre of the figure were two rag dolls, made of straw around which miniature clothes had been wrapped. They represented an old woman and a girl: the old woman’s clothes were burnt, while the young woman had a brooch fixed to her chest. Lucia gasped, her heart started beating wildly, and in a flash she understood everything. Some black magic rituals had been performed there, and the dolls represented her and her grandmother. It was clear that someone wanted to see them suffer, if not even die. Who? Who could it have been? Only one person could have gone down there. The church above was now closed, forbidden to the faithful for more than a year, so the crypt could not be reached from the cathedral. The passage you had walked through was closed by a constantly barred door, and only her uncle, the Cardinal, the Chief Inquisitor Artemio Baldeschi, had the key. Certainly, it had been too long since there had been no executions in Jesi, the last fire had been lit six years earlier, the one in which Lodomilla had lost her life. Now the Cardinal had to quench his thirst, his desire for victims, his desire to witness suffering and death directly before his eyes, under his gaze. Yes, because unlike the majority of the inquisitors who, once the sentence had been pronounced, handed the victim over to the secular arm of the Law, avoiding witnessing the torment of those they had condemned, Artemio used to attend the execution, in the front row, sometimes holding the torch and setting fire to the stack. He seemed to have a sadistic taste in seeing his victim writhing in the flames, he kept staring at her with his eyes until the end, and for a precise reason: to capture the soul of the condemned man the very moment he left his mortal body.
Emaciated by these reflections, frightened by what she had seen, Lucia grabbed the lantern and rushed up the stairs, her mind occupied by a single fear. Would she find the door open again? What if Uncle had remembered not to lock it and returned to close it? Or what if he did it on purpose, to induce her to go down there and bury her alive? No, it wouldn’t have been enough for Artemio, he had to see his victim’s suffering in the face, it wouldn’t have been like him to let her die there. He just wanted to scare her, and he succeeded. The little wooden door was open, Lucia went out into the hall, rested the lantern where he had taken it, she didn’t even look at Morocco and rushed into the open air, into the Square, still with the heart in her throat.
It was almost the sunset of a warm day at the end of May and the reddish light of the sun gave spectacular colours to the beautiful square where, more than three centuries earlier, Emperor Frederick II of Swabia was born. She said to herself that she should research the meaning of the symbols found in the crypt in the family diary, in the precious manuscript that her grandmother had given her. But now she had to calm down, and decided to take a walk around the city. She crossed the square, reaching the opposite side, turned left and went down to the Longobards’ Coast, to reach the lower part of the town, where merchants and craftsmen lived. The palaces were less sumptuous than those in the upper part of the city, but they were nevertheless enriched with decorative elements, with finished portals and frames around the windows. The facades were almost all embellished with plaster, painted in pastel colours, such as light blue, yellow, ochre, soft orange; it was difficult to leave bricks face to face, as it was for the stately palaces up in the centre. As a reminder that those residences had been built thanks to the money earned by those who lived there, often on the lintels of the portals or windows of the first floor there were inscriptions such as “De sua pecunia” or “Suum lucro condita - Ingenio non sorte”.
