The Botticelli Secret

13
Tok led us through the darkening streets, still crowded for the saint’s feast day. I kept my eyes on the burning torch he carried, following it like the star of the Nativity, trying to make sense of what had passed. Brother Guido was taciturn, pressed into silence under the weight of the heavy news he carried. I grabbed a handful of his habit, for the mercenary moved fast in front and I was fearful of being left behind, but still he said nothing. I was anxious to ask for Brother Guido’s interpretation of his uncle’s last words. What was Muda? And how was Brother Guido to “follow the light”? Was the last a blessing for Brother Guido’s chosen path, the holy light of divinity and a life in the church? I dared not ask. For one thing, Brother Guido’s preoccupied countenance forbade speech. And for another, I was not sure how much of what had passed he wished his uncle’s mercenary to hear. So I kept my peace, and at last we reached an odd destination: a matching pair of great houses, connected with an arch set on a bias across a corner, making the two into one. The connecting wall of the house boasted a clock, and I would have stared longer at this rare wonder, but Brother Guido moved swiftly inside. We climbed a dark stair, and then entered a chamber of such opulence that my dark-accustomed eyes blinked and filled with water.
This place, a suite of rooms more elegant than any student surely had a right to inhabit, was almost more sumptuous than the della Torre palazzo itself. The beauties of the room—the plush cushions, the gilt sconces, and the velvet draperies—were the first things I noticed.
Qualcosa Due: a white pasty youth reclining on a golden chaise.
Qualcosa Tre: a small boy, black as ebony, lying atop him, his head bobbing at the older fellow’s groin.
Brother Guido, innocent that he was, did not, I think, know at once what was happening. But I lowered my head to hide a smile, at the same moment that Tok let loose a guttural shout of laughter, which he turned into a cough. It was the first time I had seen a glimmer of humor from the wight, and as we shared an amused look, I began to like him better.
The tableau on the couch rose up and broke apart, and Niccolò Gherardesca della Torre (for it was he) casually tucked his cock back into his hose as he greeted us, as if he had been doing no more than scribbling a late-evening essay. The little negro, who cannot have been more than eight, slid from the room, giving us an evil glance from almond-shaped eyes as he went.
“Well, Guido,” began Niccolò in a nasal pipe. “Or should I say Brother Guido? You have finally come to pay homage to your coz. Tok told me you were visiting our fair city; I had expected your tribute before now.”
Really? I had not seen Tok as a social creature, but apparently he had been running hither and yon, informing his lord’s heir of our doings. Now it does not, as you know, take me long to form an opinion, and I disliked Niccolò on sight. He had the family features, but it was as if an indifferent artist had attempted to set down Brother Guido’s face, and then left his work in the rain. The features were blunted and irregular, the noble nose angular, the chin so weak as to recede into the student’s neck. The lips were an unhealthy purple, permanently wet and formless, and the mouth was surrounded by little white spots that denoted an unhealthy lifestyle. His voice broke when he spoke, changing like a weathercock between boyhood and manhood, and his humor, too, seemed by turns falsely charming and childishly vicious. Shorter than his cousin and younger too, Niccolò nevertheless browbeat the monk with his higher rank, and Brother Guido, mindful of propriety but clearly reluctant, bowed to his relative. However, his words were barbed. “And I, cousin, expected I might see you at the feast at my uncle’s house yester evening.” Brother Guido fairly spat the words that reminded the boy of his duty.
“Ah, the feast. Yes, I was otherwise engaged, I’m afraid.” Niccolò’s pale eyes, weak in color as a winter sky compared to my friend’s summer blue, went to the door through which the catamite had left. “But I hope my absence did not ruin your feast. Nor the tourney that preceded it.” Tok had been busy with his information. “And who is this little poppet? Very pretty.” Niccolò’s eyes flickered over me without interest. I shifted a little, wondering if he could smell the fishy fumes from my oyster-soaked skirt and would mistake the odor for the similar one of sex. He did. “Broken your vows already? Or is she a little gift for my father’s grace, to win yourself some favor?”
Brother Guido flinched at the mention of Lord Silvio, visibly swallowed his dislike, and took his cousin’s hand, a gesture which sent Niccolò’s pale eyebrows right up into his neatly dressed bangs. “I bring grave news, cousin. I’m afraid my lord your father is . . . dead.” The word choked Brother Guido a little and even my stony heart melted, not for the son but for the nephew. Nevertheless, I waited for the tears and lamentations of the della Torre heir: perhaps he would throw himself prostrate and sobbing, over the couch he had recently defiled? I did not expect what came—the smallest ghost of a smile playing at the corners of the weak mouth.
“Dead, you say?” He picked up the jewel he wore about his neck and tapped it on yellow teeth. “Really.”
Brother Guido did a very bad job of hiding his shock and disgust. “There is more. He said”—the monk lowered his voice—“his last word was ‘murder.’ ”
Niccolò seemed intrigued. “Murder? The English word?”
Brother Guido nodded. “Yes. For remember that we had an English confessor, some years back, Brother Giles of Cambridge? He taught my uncle the language, to further his business dealings, and taught us English in the schoolroom too? I’m convinced that my uncle spoke English as a code at the last, so that others might not know his meaning. He was telling us he was killed by another’s hand.” Ah, that’s why I didn’t have a clue what he meant, for I have less English than a Scotsman. But as Brother Guido slid his blue eyes to the door, where Tok lounged in the doorframe, I suddenly knew that it was not from myself that Lord Silvio wished to hide the meaning of his final words. “And then,” Brother Guido continued, “then he told me to ‘follow the light.’ ”
I waited for Brother Guido to mention the gold thumb ring that Lord Silvio bequeathed to his nephew at his last, but nothing more was said. Now I thought about it, Brother Guido kept his left hand beneath the voluminous sleeves of his habit—well out of sight. I shrugged mentally—mayhap the monk wished to hold on to this keepsake of his uncle’s and feared that to reveal it would be to lose it. (Fair enough.) My thoughts were rudely interrupted as the new head of the della Torre family laughed in earnest, an unpleasant honking sound that would have sat better in the throat of a Christmas goose than a new-dubbed lord. “Murder? How priceless! My father murdered! Perhaps I did it, did I?”
We were silent as he enjoyed his own wit.
“No, I’m afraid I did not, though ofttimes I thought of it.” Niccolò coughed twice to collect himself, and wiped his streaming eyes. “Now, cousin, I am going to give you an object lesson in why I am the intellectual of the family, with an academic education, and you are fit for nothing but wearing out your sandal leather pacing the cloister.”
I felt stung to retort that Brother Guido had read more books than any fellow I had ever met, but Niccolò seemed absorbed in his own rhetoric. He fitted his thumbs in the facings of his gown like an attorney-at-law. “What did my father actually say with his last, unlamented breath?”
Brother Guido shifted his feet. “I told you, he grabbed my cowl, pulled me close, and said, ‘Murder.’ He said it twice, and then said, ‘Follow the light.’ ”
“Murder?” said Niccolò, still playing the lawyer’s part. “Or Muda?”
Brother Guido’s dark eyebrows drew together “It . . . I suppose . . . he may have said that word.”
I hated to agree with Niccolò, but his rendering of his father’s last word did sound more authentic.
“It did sound more like ‘Muda,’ “ I put in. “I mean, I have no English to speak of, unless you count curse words I learned from the merchants I’ve screwed, but . . .” I trailed off.
The cousins still locked eyes as if I had not spoken and Brother Guido filled the silence. “Why would he say ‘Muda’? What does it mean? I have never heard the word.”
Niccolò smiled grimly. “My dear coz. Just because you have not heard a word, does not call its existence into question. It is a word, and a place too. This is the Muda.” He gestured outward and circled his weak wrists to encompass the chamber.
“This room?” Brother Guido’s confusion was apparent.
“This building, this house, this tower in which we stand. It is named the Muda.” A hateful smile played on Niccolò’s lips.
“I don’t understand,” Brother Guido faltered.
Nor did I.
Niccolò flourished his surcoat like an attorney, enjoying himself. “Let me furnish you with a little local history, since you have clearly been gone too long. This tower was the very place where our distant ancestor, Ugolino della Gherardesca, was imprisoned for treason with his two nephews. In this very room they were starved for ninety days, in a state of desperate gnawing hunger.” Niccolò moved closer, his voice heavy with threat. “You must remember the tale, cousin. The eldest of his nephews”—he gave the word a deadly emphasis—“feeling himself near death, begged his uncle to gnaw on his flesh to sustain himself. And so here, in this very room, Ugolino ate his beloved nephew alive.”
There was no mistaking the malice now. I shivered as in my mind’s eye the finery melted away and the tower was once again a cold stone prison where such unspeakable things came to pass. Niccolò’s pale eyes glittered, enjoying the vision, and I felt my friend to be in danger and thanked the stars for the presence of Tok.
But Brother Guido met his cousin’s gaze unwaveringly, with a courage that made me like him even better. “Of course I know of the tale. Ugolino’s atrocity was well documented in the Thirteenth Canto of Dante’s Inferno, when he meets the poet in the seventh circle of hell.” I could have cheered as Brother Guido won the book-learning contest. “I merely did not know that this place was named Muda.”
Niccolò, discomfited, broke his gaze and turned away, and the company relaxed somewhat. “Well, now you do,” he rejoined weakly. “I am glad to have been the instrument for your instruction. And now that you have been enlightened, even a person of your limited faculties must see that my father merely meant that you must come to the tower of Muda to tell me of his passing.”
“And the light?” Brother Guido fought back. “Perhaps in your august knowledge, you have a notion of what my uncle meant by ‘follow the light’?”
Niccolò had lost interest. He waved the question away. “Tok’s torch guided you here, did it not? I don’t know. Now, I have matters to attend to. Fabrizio!”
The black child came back into the room so quickly I knew he had been listening at the door. I regarded him with contempt. An accomplished door-listener, like myself, knows well enough to leave it a few heartbeats before entering the room when summoned; it’s much less obvious.
Brother Guido took the hint. “I will leave you alone with your grief,” he said with emphasis, and bowed with barely concealed disgust.
We were halfway out the door, and Niccolò had already begun to stroke the boy’s hair when he fired his parting shot. “Oh, and coz? Do stay at the palazzo—as my guest—for we have much to discuss. Family matters, you understand. Don’t go anywhere, will you? Tok, see that he doesn’t.”
Brother Guido and I both saw the look that passed between Tok and his new master as the door closed. The king is dead, long live the king. We both knew that the old order was gone and the new regime was in place; the favorite nephew was now cast down and the black sheep of the family exalted.
I knew as well as Brother Guido that Tok had been assigned to kill him.