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third time he put it back down again. In front of him were a white sheet of paper, a new candle and an entire ream of cotton paper waiting to be filled with anatomical notes. But there was nothing he could do about it. He simply could not concentrate.
    That day he had cancelled his lesson at the Studium and spent the entire morning speaking to three alchemists. They lived in the Porta Procola area, near the Circla. The Circla was the familiar name for the paling that for the moment constituted Bologna’s third city wall. The work on the actual wall had yet to begin.
    Unfortunately he had gathered nothing of use from any of the three, in part because he had not dared to be too specific in his questions. He did not believe that he was at great risk, because alchemists generally tended to keep their affairs to themselves and to keep away from judges and magistrates, but you could never be too careful. He had been told of another alchemist, who had settled in Bologna not long before, after years of travelling, and he intended to go and question the man soon.
    However, he wasn’t nurturing much hope, because the person who had suggested he try the alchemist had also said that he was given to the use of aqua vitae for more than alchemical and medicinal purposes.
    With an effort of will, Mondino compelled himself to finish a drawing of the articulation of the muscle between the arm and the shoulder. Its form recalled the Greek letter Delta upside down and some medical men had thus begun to call it the deltoid muscle. To the side of the drawing, he noted down advice about how to detach the muscle from the bone and then he moved on to the pectoral muscles. But his thoughts automatically ran on to what the human body kept under those muscles and the thoracic cavity that they covered: the heart. From there to the mystery that he had stumbled on the night before was only a short step, and Mondino found himself once again with his quill poised in mid air, lost in a fascinating and dangerous dream.
    Exasperated, he rose to go and fetch the bundle of pages he had already written. Passing the window he stopped to contemplate the rain. But the monotonous and almost soporific sloshing of the water on the leaves of the apple tree in the garden and on the roofs of the neighbouring houses couldn’t relax him either. Looking towards the Caccianemici Piccoli towers and the bell tower of the Church of San Vitale and Agricola in Arena that rose above the houses round about, he imagined Gerardo fleeing over the rooftops, dragging his friend’s body behind him until he had managed to get down to the ground by traversing a series of terraces that dropped down to a fenced-in orchard. Mondino knew the owner of that house, a Ghibelline like himself who, by the irony of fate, had once saved himself from the reprisals of a Guelph family by taking the opposite route to that of Gerardo. He had clambered up from one terrace to another and then scrambled between the rooftops until he was within shouting distance of some friends’ houses behind Piazza Maggiore. At that point he shouted for help until someone came. The retaliation ended up with three dead and numerous wounded on both sides and Mondino and his Uncle Liuzzo had given aid to everyone without distinguishing between factions.
    Thinking back to that episode, Mondino shook his head.
    Bologna would never return to the splendour of the previous century if the Bolognese continued to tear themselves to pieces from rivalry between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.
    But at the same time he was not disposed to surrender without a fight to the dominion the Church wanted to impose on the comune . The ideal would have been to hold on to freedom, without being accountable either to the Pope or the Emperor. But since this was not possible it was better to be in league with Enrico VII, crowned King of Italy in milan a few months previously. A few days before, Enrico had set off in the direction of Lodi and