NIGHT
In which Salvatore allows himself to be discovered wretchedly by Bernard Gui, the girl loved by Adso is arrested as a witch, and all go to bed more unhappy and worried than before.

We were coming back down into the refectory when we heard some loud noises and saw some faint flashes of light from the direction of the kitchen. William promptly blew out his lamp. Clinging to the walls, we approached the door to the kitchen; we realized the sound came from outside, but the door was open. Then the voices and lights moved away, and someone slammed the door violently. There was a great tumult, which heralded something unpleasant. Swiftly we went back through the ossarium, re-emerged in the now deserted church, went out by the south door, and glimpsed a flickering of torches in the cloister.
We approached, and in the confusion we must have rushed outside like the many others already on the spot, who had come from either the dormitory or the pilgrims’ hospice. We saw archers firmly grasping Salvatore, white as the white of his eyes, and a woman, who was crying. My heart contracted: it was she, the girl of my thoughts. As she saw me, she recognized me and cast me a desperate, imploring look. My impulse was to rush and free her, but William restrained me, whispering some far-from-affectionate reproaches. Monks and guests were now rushing in from all sides.
The abbot arrived, as did Bernard Gui, to whom the captain of the archers made a brief report. This is what had happened.
By the inquisitor’s order, they patrolled the whole compound at night, paying special attention to the path that went from the main gate to the church, the gardens, and the fa?ade of the Aedificium. (Why? I wondered. Then I understood: obviously because Bernard had heard from servants or from the cooks rumors about nocturnal movement between the outer walls and the kitchen, perhaps without learning exactly who was responsible; and perhaps the foolish Salvatore, as he had divulged his intentions to me, had already spoken in the kitchen or the barns to some wretch who, intimi?dated by questioning that afternoon, had thrown this rumor as a sop to Bernard.) Moving cautiously and in darkness through the fog, the archers had finally caught Salvatore in the woman’s company, as he was fiddling with the kitchen door.
“A woman in this holy place! And with a monk!” Bernard said sternly, addressing the abbot. “Most mag?nificent lord,” he continued, “if it involved only a violation of the vow of chastity, this man’s punishment would be a matter for your jurisdiction. But since we are not yet sure that the traffickings of these two wretches hasn’t something to do with the well-being of all the guests, we must first cast light on this mystery. Now, you rogue there!” And from Salvatore’s bosom he seized the obvious bundle the poor man was trying to hide. “What’s this you have here?”
I already knew: a knife; a black cat, which, once the bundle was unwrapped, fled with a furious yowl; and two eggs, now broken and slimy, which to everyone else looked like blood, or yellow bile, or some such foul substance. Salvatore was about to enter the kitchen, kill the cat, cut out its eyes; and who knows what promises he had used to induce the girl to follow him. I soon learned what promises. The archers searched the girl, with sly laughter and lascivious words, and they found on her a little dead rooster, still to be plucked. Ill-luck would have it that in the night, when all cats are gray, the cock seemed black, like the cat. I was thinking, however, that it took very little to lure her, poor hungry creature, who the night before had abandoned (and for love of me!) her precious ox heart. ...
“Aha!” Bernard cried, in a tone of great concern. “Black cat and cock ... Ah, I know such paraphernalia. ...” He noticed William among those present. “Do you not also recognize them, Brother William? Were you not inquisitor in Kilkenny three years ago, where that girl had intercourse with a devil who appeared to her in the form of a black cat?”
To me it seemed my master remained silent out of cowardice. I tugged at his sleeve, shook him, whispered to him in despair, “Tell him, tell him it was to eat. ...”
He freed himself from my grip and spoke politely to Bernard: “I do not believe you need my past experi?ences to arrive at your conclusions,” he said.
“Oh, no, there are far more authoritative witnesses.” Bernard smiled. “Stephen of Bourbon, in his treatise on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, tells how Saint Dominic, after preaching at Fanjeaux against the heretics, announced to certain women that they would see the master they had served till then. And suddenly into their midst sprang a frightful cat the size of a large dog, with huge blazing eyes, a bloody tongue that came to its navel, a short tail straight in the air so that however the animal turned it displayed the evil of its behind, more fetid than any other, as is proper for that anus which many devotees of Satan, not least the Knights Templar, have always been accustomed to kiss in the course of their meetings. And after moving about the women for an hour, the cat sprang on the bell rope and climbed up it, leaving his stinking waste behind. And is not the cat the animal beloved by the Catharists, who according to Alanus de Insulis are so called from ‘catus,’ because of this beast whose posterior they kiss, considering it the incarnation of Lucifer? And is this disgusting practice not confirmed also by William of La Verna in the De legibus? And does Albertus Magnus not say that cats are potential devils? And does not my venerable brother Jacques Fournier recall that on the deathbed of the inquisitor Geoffrey of Carcassonne two black cats appeared, who were no other than devils come to taunt those remains?”
A horrified murmur ran through the group of monks, many of whom made the sign of the holy cross.
“My lord abbot, my lord abbot,” Bernard was saying meanwhile, with a virtuous mien, “perhaps Your Mag?nificence does not know what sinners are accustomed to do with these instruments! But I know well, God help me! I have seen most wicked men, in the darkest hours of the night, along with others of their stripe, use black cats to achieve wonders that they could never deny: to straddle certain animals and travel immense spaces under cover of night, dragging their slaves, transformed into lustful incubi. ... And the Devil shows himself to them, or at least so they strongly believe, in the form of a cock, or some other black animal, and with him—do not ask me how—they even lie together. And I know for certain that not long ago, in Avignon itself, with necromancies of this sort philters and oint?ments were prepared to-make attempts on the life of our lord Pope himself, poisoning his foods. The Pope was able to defend himself and identify the toxin only because he was supplied with prodigious jewels in the form of serpents’ tongues, fortified by wondrous emer?alds and rubies that tough divine power were able to reveal the presence of poison in the foods. The King of France had given him eleven of these most precious tongues, thank heaven, and only thus co............