In the abbey library, Lisa crosses a threshold that separates care from domination, knowledge from guilt. Among worn volumes and guarded silences, an ancient text emerges that teaches not formulas, but a vision of power: making death invisible.
The past insinuates itself into the present like a voice that asks not to be heard, but to be acknowledged. Every page suggests that the true crime is not the act, but the method. Meanwhile, Lucia observes, measures, notes, aware that certain places react when read correctly. Between paper, fragments, and seemingly innocuous gestures, the investigation takes a darker turn. Nothing screams, nothing bleeds. And precisely for this reason, everything becomes more dangerous.
Ancient Pharmacology, Forbidden Knowledge, and Silent Investigations in the Abbey
Detective Novel. The Secrets of Piona Abbey. Chapter 10: The Shadow Manual
Lisa moved from the “medicine” section to what, in that monastic order, was treated with a different kind of reverence: the pharmacy. Not the pharmacy as a shop of remedies for fevers, but the pharmacy as the point where knowledge stopped being care and became power.
The shelves were lower, the volumes smaller, often bound in dark leather, as if their contents demanded to be hidden and guarded. Lisa leafed through them carefully, one after another, holding her breath so the pages wouldn’t tremble. Ten books. Ten different hands. Ten different eras.
The monk behind her did not speak. He was a shadow in a habit.
Lisa imposed a rhythm on herself: open, observe, read a few lines, feel the paper. It was a way to tell whether a volume had been consulted recently. Old paper tells everything. It lightens in some places, darkens in others, and keeps scents that time cannot erase.
The tenth book stopped her.
Small. Leather-bound, worn at the corners. The title, traced in ink now dulled, was in Latin: LETIONES DE PHARMACOLOGIA.
The handwriting was not the elegant hand of court scribes; it was practical, the hand of someone who writes so as not to forget.
Lisa took it in both hands and carried it to the lectern. The moment she opened it, she felt that shiver she always got when a book carried something particular within it.
The first pages were dense with notes: not chapters, not sermons, but observations. The annotations felt dictated. In the margins were reference marks, small drawn hands, circles, repeated words. In some places, the ink was more recent than the rest, as if someone had gone over important lines.
Lisa began to read.
The Latin was harsh, not scholastic. It was “working” Latin, with terms that smelled of laboratories and cold corridors.Then he saw the date: Anno Domini 1379.
The page trembled slightly between her fingers. It wasn’t fear. It was the feeling that, if she kept reading, she would no longer remain in the library.
The monk coughed softly, as if to remind her she wasn’t alone. Lisa didn’t look up. She had already crossed that point. The room, with its painted vaults, drifted away. The figures of saints and martyrs became blotches of color. The sounds of the monastery fell silent....
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