The hill's soothsayer

Leonardo had settled in the "Vātēs", on that hill of ruins that overlooked the Tiber. It was said that there had been there, in ancient times, on this hill, a kind of sacred city. There were, indeed, still some charred ruins, remains of walls, squares and large spaces now covered by vegetation. 

Leonardo was an orphan. He had come to live there because he felt good. He had found a bit of security there, in the middle of the small community that had settled there. All these people, simple and poor, lived a little away from the river and the activity that was developing in the valley below. 

Leonardo was a dreamer, a bit simple, thin and anemic. He didn't work and he smelled a bit bad. But he was well liked and was fed because he had visions, and offerings were received from people who wished to see him. It is true that he predicted the future of the people who came to consult him all day with astonishing accuracy. As he became more and more famous, men and women came from far away to see him. 

He often told intimate details about his visitors without batting an eye. This is why people preferred to visit him alone. 

During his trances, he also recounted events and named people with strange names, such as Liutprand, the king of the Lombards, Agrippina or the emperor Caligula. He also spoke of "popes" and consecrated virgins that no one had ever heard of. He also told of terrible things that had happened in the palaces that once stood there. He told of scenes of sodomy and lust, of rapes and child sacrifices, of secret and frightful rites. He cried and screamed with fear, seeing things that made his listeners shudder. He could also be heard screaming in his nightmares at night.

The people around him were simple and superstitious. They did not want sadness and dark stories in their already precarious world, but they were fascinated by these fantastic and peculiar tales. Their imaginations were excited by the intricacies and Machiavellian machinations that Leonardo spoke of. How could he imagine such things, he who seemed so naive?

One also liked to laugh to see him strolling naked while laughing like a child, masturbating sometimes, when the desire took him. Leonardo was a character, an attraction and a source of barter for these survivors of the apocalypse.