Capture of Salvatore and the Girl

On the night of the fourth day, the inquisitor Bernard Gui, who had arrived that afternoon with the papal legation, orchestrated a decisive blow against the abbey's fragile order. Acting on his orders, the captain of the archers and his men, who had been patrolling the compound, caught Salvatore and a young peasant girl in the act of trying to enter the kitchen. The capture was a calculated move, designed not merely to catch a pair of nocturnal trespassers but to provide Bernard with the evidence he needed to link the abbey's recent murders to the heresy he had come to root out.

The Arrest and the Paraphernalia

The archers, moving cautiously through the fog, surprised Salvatore as he fumbled with the kitchen door, the girl at his side. From Salvatore's bosom, Bernard seized a bundle containing a knife, a black cat, and two broken, slimy eggs. To the assembled monks and guests, the objects appeared as the unmistakable tools of black magic. Bernard, with theatrical gravity, declared the find proof of a diabolical ritual. He invoked the authority of Stephen of Bourbon, Albertus Magnus, and other learned men to argue that the black cat was a familiar of the Devil, used by heretics and witches to travel great distances and perform necromancy. The girl, he asserted, was a witch, and the cock she had brought, a small dead rooster, was further evidence of her infernal commerce. The abbot, horrified and powerless, could only offer the use of the smithy's basement cells for the prisoners.

Bernard's Inquisitorial Strategy

Bernard's true target was not the wretched Salvatore or the terrified girl, but the Franciscan legation that had arrived that same day. By framing the capture as a discovery of witchcraft, he could insinuate that the abbey was a nest of heretics, thereby discrediting the Franciscan position on poverty before the formal debate even began. He ordered Salvatore to be taken to a separate cell, where he would be questioned that very night, confident that fear and torture would yield a confession implicating others. The girl, he declared, was clearly a witch and would be burned, her fate sealed. William of Baskerville, watching the scene, understood the trap but could do nothing to prevent it. He warned Michael of Cesena that Bernard now had a weapon, however ambiguous, to use against them.

Adso's Despair and the Girl's Fate

For Adso of Melk, the capture was a personal catastrophe. The girl was the same one with whom he had sinned the previous night, and he was consumed by guilt and a desperate, futile desire to save her. He implored William to intervene, but William coldly told him the girl was "burnt flesh." Ubertino of Casale, sensing Adso's anguish, warned him that the girl's beauty was a snare of the Devil, a temptation that had already led him into sin. The girl, unable to speak the language of power, was dragged away, her cries unheard. The event marked the definitive failure of William's investigation and the triumph of Bernard's ruthless pragmatism, setting the stage for the trial of Remigio of Varagine the following day.