Inside we found the cook, sitting on the floor of the large room that smelled very bad. His hands were tied behind his back at an awkward angle, and there was a rope on a kind of device hanging from the ceiling. Before us stood the inquisitor flanked by two more archers, his face red with anger.
‘What say you, brother Templar, to this interruption!? We have grave matters to attend to here. If you will leave us . . .’
‘I do not mean to interrupt you in your holy work, Rainiero, only that it has been brought to my attention that Brother Setubar remains missing since before the service. I need not mention what this may signal . . .’
The man frowned, a look of alarm crossed his face and then his eyes narrowed. ‘Have you searched the abbey?’
‘We have, but to no avail.’
‘This will have to wait.’ He ordered his two archers out of the room. ‘We may have to add one more carcass to the rest!’ he remarked, in order that all might hear his predictions and so pronounce him wise when they proved to be true. He paused before my master, measuring him with his eyes. ‘I must go and order the captain of the guard to look for the old man, but the inquisitio will continue today even if all the monks of the monastery are found dead.’
With this he left the room, and we were alone with the cook.
The poor man’s face was so disfigured that I found it difficult to recognise his former person. His left eye could not be seen, and his mouth I cannot describe. It will suffice to say that whatever teeth he had had were now gone and that his bruised and battered lips contorted into a hideous smile as he saw us.
My master untied his hands and helped him to stand. Later I was to learn that he had been hung by a rope from his wrists, tied as we saw, behind him. Then he would have been lowered abruptly a little at a time. The aim of such torture was to inflict the most terrible pain in the shortest time, because it did not take much to break both arms and occasion a terrible dislocation of the shoulders.
‘Por favor señor!’ he cried, tears running down the broken bones of his cheeks. ‘Madre mía! Díos mío! I have done nothing . . . nothing! Escape I must! No one is safe! Ohh, miseria, miseria, I have done nothing, you must believe me!’
Was it possible that this was the giant of a man that I had met that first day in the kitchen?
‘If I am to believe you, you must tell me everything!’ my master said.
The man looked up innocently, like a little child. ‘It is my sin that in the kitchen of the popes’ enemy I worked . . . that is true, but I have always been un good católico . . .! Mi único error, señor ...’
‘Indeed, your only error is that you have been a heretic in league with heretics,’ my master said sharply.
‘What is heresy, señor? Is it heresy to do honest work? To think with your cabeza – your head? No . . . no!’ he cried defiantly, shaking his head, and then broke into a sob, the great span of his chest moving rhythmically with his wide and now disfigured shoulders.
‘Perhaps not,’ my master conceded, ‘but that still leaves us with the fact that you have not convinced me sufficiently of your innocence in the terrible matters of these last days.’
‘Por favor . . .’ He came closer and the stench of onion filled my nostrils. ‘You must forgive me . . . I have not been totally sincero . . . is very difficult for me, señor . . .’ he coughed, spitting.
‘Tell me the truth, for Brother Setubar has told me of your secret.’
The man looked aghast. ‘He told you?’
‘He told me you were among those who murdered Piero da Verona.’
There was a terrible silence.
‘You are then not only a murderer,’ my master continued harshly, ‘but also a heretic and an enemy of the church, a man quite capable of killing again to stop his secret from being known.’
He straightened what he could of his back and answered defiantly, ‘Is true, I murdered one filthy inquisitor . . . but never have I killed again. Penance I have done . . . but the others, they are free, Giacopo he is free . . . we were fighting a war, you must understand? You fight wars . . .’
‘I have never brandished a sword against a Christian,’ my master answered calmly, and so I knew him to be agitated.
‘And you think you are better than me!’ the cook said bitterly, ‘I hear what they say about you, you are un infidel, you kill your own kind!’
‘I am a Christian.’
‘You think this makes you a saint because you wear a cross? How does it feel to kill your own blood? You are like me, you kill when it suits you!’ For one moment he raised his chest, like a cock in those seconds before a crow, then he became disheartened, his shoulders drooped, perhaps he realised there was nothing to be gained by arguing with the one man who could help him. ‘I have done penance, I have been absolved, I have come back to the bosom of the mother!’