“Yes,” the abbot said, “but at this point we come up against the question raised yesterday. If by tomorrow we have not discovered the person guilty of two, perhaps three, crimes, I must allow Bernard to exercise control over the abbey’s affairs. I cannot conceal from a man invested with the power Bernard will have (and because of our mutual agreement, we must not forget) that here in the abbey inexplicable events have taken place, are still taking place. Otherwise, the moment he finds out, the moment (God forbid) some new mysterious event happens, he will have every right to cry betrayal. . . .”
“True,” William murmured, worried. “But there is nothing to be done. Perhaps it will be a good thing: Bernard occupied with the assassin will have less time to participate in the debate.”
“Bernard occupied with discovering the murderer will be a thorn in the side of my authority; remember that. This murky business obliges me for the first time to surrender a part of my power within these walls, and it is a new turn in the history not only of this abbey but of the Cluniac order itself. I would do anything to avoid it. Where is Berengar? What has happened to him? What are you doing?”
“I am only a monk who, a long time ago, conducted some effective inquisitorial investigations. You know that the truth is not to be found in two days. And after all, what power have you granted me? May I enter the library? May I ask all the questions I wish?”
“I see no connection between the crimes and the library,” the abbot said angrily.
“Adelmo was an illuminator, Venantius a translator, Berengar the assistant librarian . . .” William explained patiently.
“In this sense all sixty monks have something to do with the library, as they have with the church. Why not investigate the church, then? Brother William, you are conducting an inquiry at my behest and within the limits I have established. For the rest, within this girdle of walls I am the only master after God, and by His grace. And this will hold true for Bernard as well. In any event,” he added, in a milder tone, “Bernard may not necessarily be coming here specifically for the meeting. The abbot of Conques writes me that the Pope has asked Cardinal Bertrand del Poggetto to come up from Bologna and assume command of the papal legation. Perhaps Bernard is coming here to meet the cardinal.”
“Which, in a broader perspective, would be worse. Bertrand is the scourge of heretics in central Italy. This encounter between the two champions of the battle against heretics may herald a vaster offensive in the country, eventually against the whole Franciscan movement. . . .”
“And of this we will promptly inform the Emperor,” the abbot said, “but in this case the danger would not be immediate. We will be alert. Good-bye.”
William remained silent a moment as the abbot departed. Then he said to me: “First of all, Adso, we must try not to let ourselves be overcome by haste. Things cannot be solved rapidly when so many small, individual experiences have to be put together. I am going back to the laboratory, because in addition to keeping me from reading the manuscript, being without my lenses also makes it pointless for me to return tonight to the library.”
At that moment Nicholas of Morimondo came running toward us, bearer of very bad tidings. While he was trying to grind more finely the best lens, the one on which William had based such hope, it had broken. And another, which could perhaps have replaced it, had cracked as he was trying to insert it into the fork. Nicholas, disconsolately, pointed to the sky. It was already the hour of vespers, and darkness was falling. For that day no more work could be done. Another day lost, William acknowledged bitterly, suppressing (as he confessed to me afterward) the temptation to strangle the master glazier, though Nicholas was already sufficiently humiliated.
We left him to his humiliation and went to inquire about Berengar. Naturally, no one had found him.
We felt we had reached a dead end. We strolled awhile in the cloister, uncertain what to do next. But soon I saw William was lost in thought, staring into the air, as if he saw nothing. A bit earlier he had taken from his habit a twig of those herbs that I had seen him gather weeks before, and he was chewing it as if it gave him a kind of calm stimulus. In fact, he seemed absent, but every now and then his eyes brightened as if in the vacuum of his mind a new idea had kindled; then he would plunge once more into that singular and active hebetude of his. All of a sudden he said, “Of course, we could . . .”
“What?” I asked.
“I was thinking of a way to get our bearings in the labyrinth. It is not simple, but it would be effective. . . . After all, the exit is in the east tower: this we know. Now, suppose that we had a machine that tells us where north is. What would happen?”
“Naturally, we would have only to turn to our right and we would be heading east. Or else it would suffice to go in the opposite direction and we would know we were going toward the south tower. But, even assuming such magic existed, the labyrinth is in fact a labyrinth, and as soon as we headed east we would come upon a wall that would prevent us from going straight, and we would lose our way again . . .” I observed.
“Yes, but the machine I am talking about would always point north, even if we had changed our route, and at every point it would tell us which way to turn.”
“It would be marvelous. But we would have to have this machine, and it would have to be able to recognize north at night and indoors, without being able to see the sun or the stars. . . . And I believe not even your Bacon possessed such a machine.” I laughed.
“But you are wrong,” William said, “because a machine of the sort has been constructed, and some navigators have used it. It doesn’t need the stars or the sun, because it exploits the power of a marvelous stone, like the one we saw in Severinus’s infirmary, the one that attracts iron. And it was studied by Bacon and by a Picard wizard, Pierre of Maricourt, who described its many uses.”
“But could you construct it?”
“In itself, that wouldn’t be difficult. The stone can be used to produce many wonders, including a machine that moves perpetually without any external power, but the simplest discovery was described also by an Arab, Baylek al-Qabayaki. Take a vessel filled with water and set afloat in it a cork into which you have stuck an iron needle. Then pass the stone over the surface of the water, until the needle has acquired the same properties as the stone.
And at this point the needle—though the stone would also have done it if it had had the capacity to move around a pivot—will turn and point north, and if you move it with the vessel, it will always turn in the direction of the north wind. Obviously, if you bear north in mind and also mark on the edge of the vessel the positions of east, south, and west, you will always know which way to turn in the library to reach the east tower.”
“What a marvel!” I exclaimed. “But why does the needle always point north? The stone attracts iron, I saw that, and I imagine that an immense quantity of iron attracts the stone. But then . . . then in the direction of the polestar, at the extreme confines of the globe, there exist great iron mines!”
“Someone, in fact, has suggested such is the case. Except that the needle doesn’t point precisely in the direction of the daystar, but toward the intersection of the celestial meridians. A sign that, as has been said, ‘hic lapis gerit in se similitudinem coeli,’ and the poles of the magnet receive their inclination from the poles of the sky, not from those of the earth. Which is a fine example of movement provoked at a distance, not by direct material causality: a problem that my friend John of Jandun is studying, when the Emperor does not ask him to make Avignon sink into the bowels of the earth. . . .”
“Let’s go, then, and take Severinus’s stone, and a vessel, and some water, and a cork . . .” I said, excited.
“Wait a moment,” William said. “I do not know why, but I have never seen a machine that, however perfect in the philosophers’ description, is perfect in its mechanical functioning. Whereas a peasant’s billhook, which no philosopher has ever described, always functions as it should. . . . I’m afraid that wandering around the labyrinth with a lamp in one hand, a vessel full of water in the other . . . Wait, though! I have another idea. The machine would point north even if we were outside the labyrinth, would it not?”
“Yes, but at that point it would be of no use
