The Dante Conspiracy

CHAPTER 12



‘This might sound like a silly idea,’ Lombardi said, somewhat tentatively, ‘but as Dante’s cenotaph has already been broken into, is it worth mounting some kind of watch – either a couple of uniformed officers, or maybe just a surveillance camera – on some of the other sites here in Florence that are associated with the poet?’

Perini thought from moment before he replied.

‘It isn’t a silly idea,’ he replied, ‘and if we were dealing with regular vandalism I’d agree with you. But I doubt if any of them will be targets of these people. I think the cenotaph was a fairly obvious target because it was essentially a locked room, a sealed space in which whatever these people are looking for could conceivably have been hidden. But when you look at the other stuff here in Florence which is related to Dante, as far as I’m aware none of them offer any possible hiding places. I mean, off the top of my head there’s a statue of Dante in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and another one in the Uffizi, a mural in the same place, a fresco in the Palazzo dei Giudici and a few paintings in other museums. But they’re all individual objects, just paintings – which obviously offer no possible hiding places – or statues, and most of those are carved from solid stone. So, again, I think we’d just be wasting our time and resources.’

‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking about those so much as one particular relic which is intimately associated with Dante, and which does seem to me to be a better fit for what is described in those verses than anything else I’m aware of here in Florence. And you could also hide something in it.’

‘Now you’ve certainly got my attention,’ Perini said, swinging his chair around to look at the younger man. ‘What you talking about, exactly?’

Lombardi shook his head and gave a slightly rueful smile.

‘First, let me explain the way I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘The thing that seems perhaps the most unusual about those verses is that reference to the “animal of the Greeks”. When we were talking about it earlier, you said if you asked most people the question, the majority would probably say the animal of the Greeks was either a goat or a donkey, because those are the two creatures which always seem to be most closely associated with that part of the world. And that, as we both agree, doesn’t make any kind of sense in the context of some relic left by Dante. But then I started thinking laterally, and I wondered if we’re looking at that particular aspect of the verses in too narrow a fashion. Because there is one other animal, of a sort, that’s always associated with the Greeks and which seems to me more likely to be the right answer here.’

Lombardi paused and looked at his superior, waiting for him to respond.

Perini nodded encouragingly.

‘Right, I’ll buy it. What you talking about?’

‘Well, it’s not really an animal at all, just a trick.’

‘Of course,’ Perini said, his face lighting up. ‘You’re talking about the Trojan horse.’

‘Got it in one. Now, as far as I know, nothing like the Trojan horse is actually involved here, but it occurred to me that maybe we should be looking at the concept, rather than the actual mechanics of what happened at Troy. We already know that Dante was banished from Florence, from his home, in perpetuity. We also know that he was desperate to get back here, but that he never managed to do this, and that his bones still lie in his tomb in Ravenna. So taking all those facts and putting them together, I wondered if, before he died, he might have asked one of his friends in Ravenna or elsewhere to try to get something of his, something important to him, back into the city of his birth, just as a kind of token, I suppose you could say, after his death. But because he had been sentenced to permanent exile, they couldn’t do this openly, because the city fathers of Florence would almost certainly have refused to accept whatever it was. So the only option would have been to get something sent here that probably would have been accepted, but include something else in the package, just like the Greeks did with the Trojan horse.’

Lombardi paused for a moment, as if marshalling his thoughts. Then he continued.

‘So that’s my theory, if you like. The trouble is that I can’t really make the other cryptic references in the new verses fit the object I think is being referred to, and there’s also another problem. If Dante’s friends were trying to sneak something into Florence in accordance with the poet’s dying wishes, I’m also not sure whether or not the city fathers would have accepted this particular relic.’

‘Don’t keep me in suspense, Cesare. What are you talking about, and where is it?’

‘It’s in the Palazzo Vecchio, and it’s Dante’s death mask.’