The next morning, the morning mist had not yet cleared from the monastery gates.
Giovanni stood with the monks in a line by the entrance to see Brother Matteo off.
Matteo stood beside an old mule.
He hadn’t slept well all night.
Abbot Giovanni’s words in the wine cellar and his compassionate face kept replaying in his mind.
The more he thought about it, the more he felt a devil lurked behind that face.
The other monks felt differently.
The vision Abbot Giovanni had painted in the cellar last night shone like gold in their hearts.
Contests of honor, public blessings and curses—these were things they had never even dreamed of before.
They felt this new abbot was no ordinary man.
He knew so much, saw so far, and possessed a mind completely unlike those of simple country folk like them.
Now, they found Brother Matteo’s stubbornness out of touch, perhaps even a little ridiculous.
Luca led the old mule over and handed the reins to Giovanni.
Luca genuinely idolized the abbot.
He marveled at the abbot’s broadness of mind in instructing him to prepare the beast and rations for this “journey of validation.” It proved the abbot had nothing to hide—he was completely transparent and upright.
Giovanni took the reins from Luca, personally checked the saddle on the mule’s back, and patted the two cloth bags hanging beside it.
One held a waterskin, the other dry rations.
He did all this slowly and meticulously, like an elder brother checking the pack for a younger sibling about to embark on a long journey.
When he was done, he walked over to Matteo and personally placed the reins in his hands.
“Go and return quickly.
The monastery still needs you.” The monks exchanged moved glances.
Look, this was their abbot.
Even though Brother Matteo was stubbornly going to lodge a complaint with the bishop, the abbot still treated him as a brother, still cared for him, and still recognized his value to the monastery.
Who but a saint could possess such magnanimity, such benevolence?
They felt their very souls had been cleansed.
Matteo took the reins.
*Hypocrite.* It was the only word left in his mind.
But he said nothing.
In a scene like this, anything he said would be wrong.
All he could do was silently mount the mule.
The old mule swayed slightly, carrying him step by step down the dirt road leading to Florence.
Giovanni stood at the gateway, his compassionate smile in place as he watched Matteo’s retreating figure until it dwindled to a tiny black speck and vanished into the morning mist around the bend.
The send-off crowd dispersed.
The monks returned inside, preparing to begin their morning prayers.
They felt extraordinarily at peace today, their faith in the Lord strengthened even further.
For they had a good abbot.
*** Matteo rode atop the mule, his body jostling with the beast’s steady gait.
The sun climbed higher, burning off the mist, and the leaves of the roadside olive trees shimmered in the sunlight.
Yet his heart was anything but peaceful.
*He needs me?* *What does he need me for?* *Needs me, his opponent, to go to Florence so His Grace the Bishop can prove Giovanni right, only for me to scuttle back in disgrace as a living prop to showcase his magnanimity?* The more Matteo thought about it, the angrier he grew, veins bulging on the back of his hands gripping the reins.
Feeling a pang of hunger, he reached for the dry rations hanging by the saddle.
But his hand paused in midair.
He recalled a story told by a noblewoman in town.
Her husband had taken a mistress and wanted to get rid of her.
He didn’t beat her or curse her; instead, he cooked her the most delicious stew every single day.
Touched, the woman believed her husband had undergone a change of heart.
She ate it for half a month, then fell ill.
Doctors couldn’t diagnose the illness, and she grew weaker with each passing day.
Until an old servant in her household secretly fed some stew to a dog—and the dog died three days later.
As it turned out, her husband had been lacing the stew daily with a tiny trace of poison extracted from a certain plant.
A single dose did no harm, but accumulated over time, it slowly proved fatal.
Matteo stared at the waterskin and the bag of rations.
He felt that what they contained wasn’t water and bread, but Giovanni’s smile—that lethal, deadly smile.
Untying the ropes with a quick jerk, he cast both bags into the roadside brush.
Only then did his mind feel slightly more at ease.
Reaching into his robe, he pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle.
Unwrapping it revealed a piece of dry, hard black bread.
This he had prepared himself.
Raising it to his lips, he took a hard bite.
Crumbs spilled onto his habit.
Though hard to swallow, he knew that at least this bread was clean.
*** A few miles from the village of Santa Lucia, at a bend in the mountain road, stood a small pine grove.
Jacopo crouched inside this grove.
He held a thick hemp rope tightly in his hands, its other end tied securely to a pine trunk on the far side of the road.
Covered with loose dirt and fallen leaves, the rope lay concealed across the narrow dirt road.
One hard pull from where he hid to snap the rope taut would trip anyone riding past on a horse or mule.
Jacopo was the butcher of Santa Lucia.
He was twenty years old, about the same age as Giovanni.
His father had been a butcher, as had his grandfather.
He had grown up amid the squeals of pigs and the coppery stench of blood.
He had large hands, covered in calluses and scars.
Strong as an ox, he could pin a three-hundred-pound hog to the slaughtering rack all by himself.
He was friends with Giovanni—or rather, the orphan Giovanni who used to run wild in the village.
As boys, they had stolen figs from local orchards and caught fish barehanded in the Arno River.
Jacopo had the brawn; Giovanni had the brains.
Together, none of the other village kids dared mess with them.
Jacopo had always assumed Giovanni would stay in this tiny place called Santa Lucia all his life, just like him.
Or, if he got lucky, go to Florence to become an apprentice in some craft workshop.
Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined this.
Not in the slightest.
That mud-covered boy who stole figs with him had become the abbot of Santa Lucia Monastery overnight.
When Giovanni appeared before the villagers wearing a habit that, though faded from washing, still symbolized supreme authority, holding a letter of appointment purportedly written in the bishop’s own hand, Jacopo’s jaw dropped so wide it could have fit an egg.
He listened to the chatter around him.
“Turns out Giovanni was secretly groomed by His Grace the Bishop.” “I heard he’s of noble birth and only pretended to be an orphan to experience the suffering of the common folk.” “That’s the mark of a true saint!” Hearing all this, Jacopo felt it was utterly surreal.
He remembered the wild boasts Giovanni used to make.
Giovanni had said that one day, he would command everyone’s respect, and even the lord of Florence would have to invite him to dinner.
Back then, Jacopo thought he was talking nonsense and laughed at him.
Looking back now, he hadn’t been talking nonsense at all.
He had been telling the truth.
After his father died, Jacopo naturally inherited the butcher shop, becoming the village’s only butcher.
It was a trade neither great nor terrible.
People couldn’t live without meat, yet they felt he reeked of blood and brought bad luck.
Giovanni had become the abbot.
He had become a butcher.
One was in the clouds, the other in the mud.
Jacopo felt their friendship was probably like the morning dew—gone the moment the sun came up.
Several times, he had seen Giovanni from afar in the village, flanked by monks and villagers like a living deity.
He wanted to step forward and say hello, but his feet refused to move.
He felt the stench of pig blood on his clothes would soil the Lord Abbot’s holy robes.
This sense of loss had lingered until late last night.
Late last night, after the villagers had all fallen asleep and even the dogs stopped barking, Jacopo was in the room behind his butcher shop.
Having finished prepping the meat for the next day and washed his hands, he was getting ready for bed.
There came a sound at the door.
A very soft knock.
Jacopo found it odd; who would come looking for him at this hour?
He opened the door.
Someone stood outside.
It was Giovanni.
It was the Lord Abbot.