The Botticelli Secret

18
My expression of horror did not go unnoticed.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said that graveled voice ironically as he straightened in his seat and spat a couple of teeth over the side. “And I expected at least a thank-you for saving your skin. I realize a kiss may be pushing it; ‘tis true I do not look my best, just now.”
I narrowed my eyes against the sun and him.
“Are you expecting me to believe that you saved us, through the goodness of your soul?”
He smiled a bloody toothless smile. His mouth resembled that of a monstrous toddler who had shed his first teeth but not yet gained his second. He spread his rough hands. “My motives are as lofty as my reward is like to be.”
I had to admire his honesty. “Ohhhhhhhhh. That’s it. You think you can get a good price for us with your patron . . . Don . . .” I struggled to recall the name.
“Ferrente,” he supplied. “Of course. Maybe not so much you, though I must say when you’re bathed and dressed you’ll have no peer. But your boyfriend . . . he’s a noble, so he said.”
“He is not my—” His smile widened and I stopped. “Well, you looked pretty cozy when I pulled you out of the drink.”
“What happened to your crew?” I said, anxious to deflect attention. I looked at Brother Guido, hoping for some support, but he slept on.
“Dead.”
“All of them?”
“I should think so. Ship went down, didn’t it? We got the only longboat.”
His callousness took even my breath away. “Don’t you care?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “The rest of the fleet will be coming—they were too far behind us to be wrecked. And even if they were wrecked I could always pick up another crew. Especially in Naples. Busy seaport, you know. Busy.” He nodded, as if he were discussing the pleasant weather, not the death of his entire crew.
“Hang on. Are you saying they were alive on board, but then you left with us and let them go down with the ship?”
“They weren’t all alive. Some got washed over.”
“Yes, but . . .” I’m not sure why I was arguing with him. “Didn’t you want to bring your first mate, or that fellow that got crabs in Famagusta, or . . .”
“Berello and Cherretti? They’re not going to fetch me any bounty with Don Ferrente. A couple of poxy seamen. No, I’ve done better with the princeling and the mermaid, thank you very much.”
“So you left them to die?”
“Yes.” The Capitano collected my expression. “What do you care? You’re alive, aren’t you? All you knew of Berello was that he hit you round the head.”
“Yes, but . . . he’s your friend—was your friend, wasn’t he?”
“I’ve sailed with him these twenty years. But friends are a luxury for the rich. If Don Ferrente pays out, mayhap I’ll have the money to buy a few.”
“But . . .” I stopped. I looked at Brother Guido where he slept. Although I had barely known him twenty days, let alone twenty years, I knew that I would still never desert him. Yet it was useless to canvass such a subject with the Capitano. Instead, I resolved to find out what he knew. “These ships, brand-new, so many of them, what are they for? D’you know?”
He spat over the side with precision. “No. I was paid to bring a fleet of ‘em to Don Ferrente.”
“And that’s all you know?”
“They don’t pay me to know more. One thing I do know—less you’re told, less trouble you’re in.”
I couldn’t fault him there, but remained silent, frustrated that he could not tell me more of the purpose of the massive fleet. But while the Capitano and I had been busy with our discourse we had drifted much closer to shore, and I could see more detail of our destination—lemon trees with sun-bright fruits and dark glossy leaves, bundles of nets drying in the sun, glittering with dewdrop diamonds of water. I knew that we were no longer in immediate danger, for such an unscrupulous, single-minded man as the Capitano would not only keep us alive but actively protect us until he got his payday. I was almost enjoying myself—the day, and the view, lifted my spirits. But to be perfectly honest, the fire that really warmed my heart was the memory of the kiss I’d shared with Brother Guido. In that moment, even though I’d been on the point of death, I’d been happier than I’d ever been. I knew then that he did not entirely belong to God, not yet; that I had reason to hope. And I realized then, too, that I’d never known what it meant to really want one man and no other. I’m not saying I’ve never enjoyed my work—hell, a good swive is a good swive, but my heart had never been captured before. Last night, I thought my heart was about to stop beating forever. But actually, it had never really begun to beat, not till that moment. Now I was truly alive, and ready for anything that fate might bring, so long as we could be together.
I looked back to my sleeping love and suddenly felt afraid of his waking. Would he remember that he had kissed me? What would he say? As if I had bidden him, he stirred, groaned, and sat straight, blinking in the light. His eyes were as burning blue as the high curve of the sky, his pupils tiny pinpricks, and when he looked at me I knew he remembered because he was instantly scarlet, as if dipped in boiling oil. And I knew my face burned too.
The Capitano looked amused, missing nothing. “Good morrow, Brother,” he said with emphasis.
Brother Guido winced. “Where are we?”
The Capitano waved his hand. “Very nearly at the port of Naples. My hometown, actually. Now you’re awake, I thought I might prevail on you for a little rowing, since you gave such sterling strokes last night. I would’ve asked your girlfriend, but we were having such a pleasant chat, and besides, she doesn’t look too strong. We’d have gone round in circles.”
I began to get the measure of the man. He was not without humor, but he was utterly without compassion. In his battered face his eyes were as little and cold as a fish’s. I felt a shiver despite the warm sun, for I knew that the moment we ceased to be of use to him, or if he did not get the expected price for us, our lives would be straw to him.
Brother Guido did not rise to the Capitano’s jibes; in fact, his face was inscrutable as he took up the oar and rowed silently. He said so little on the way into the bay—and then only inquiries as to direction or speed of his stroke, all addressed to the Capitano—that I knew something was badly amiss. He would neither address me nor look at me. I sighed. That was the worst of these religious types, and I should have expected it from him tenfold, knowing him as I did.
Guilt.
We pulled into the bay and I could see on closer inspection that Naples was a pretty shabby place close up—the houses not so white, the aspect not so fair. A dwarf trotted along the harbor and tied up our boat for us, biting the coin that the Capitano flipped him. The midget handed us all out of the boat, and as I set foot on land for the first time in days I could have dropped to the ground and kissed the filthy sand, so glad was I. In fact, I nearly did take a tumble, as my legs felt most peculiar—the ground underfoot felt insubstantial and uneven, and my body wavered as if it were still at sea. All this was not helped by the manacle on my left foot, for Brother Guido and I had to shuffle along with an odd gait, bound together in an awkward fashion as if we took part in a May Day caper. Yet my “friend” made no attempt to steady me; it was the Capitano who grasped my elbow. “Landsickness,” he said, “it’ll pass.” And together we made our way up the wharf into the town, and the streets closed around us.
I was struck by a wall of noise. I was confounded by a rainbow of colors. I breathed a hundred different smells. My senses were assaulted all at once. Naples was like nowhere I had ever been. I had stumbled into an Arabian bazaar.
From our first steps we were constantly harassed by Gypsies and locals alike. The streets were a casbah of yelling hawkers, selling their bright wares—food, beads, fishes. I even saw a collection of human skulls for sale, staring ghoulishly from their stall. I saw, too, shuffling lines of slaves manacled just like us, pretty girls in a string, or strong men, or house maids, all tied together like chattel. I knew this would be our fate if we did not please Don Ferrente. The place was lawless, noisy, confusing, menacing, a city of thieves. Yet we were embraced by the residents as they waved us into their shops and even homes. Once the Capitano led us into a dark doorway and bought a skin of wine for a coin. As we drank in turn (Brother Guido refused as I knew he would), I looked about me. The whole family, six of them and a babe, were there in one room—bed, earthpit, cooking pot, everything. ‘Twas so dingy it was a relief to get outside. “Do they all live there?” I bawled at the Capitano, above the noise of the populace. “Yes,” he bellowed. “It’s called a basso. The whole house in one chamber.”
Madonna. To cook, shit, f*ck, and sleep in one room, with the babes looking on? Even Enna and I had lived better. I strove for something nice to say, remembering that he was a local. “Good wine though.”
The Capitano nodded. “White wine, called Lacrimae Christi, tears of Christ. The grapes are grown in the shade of the volcano”—he pointed up to the hunched blue mountain above us—“and the precious salts that come from its belly flavor the wine.” I had heard, of course, of such mountains that breathe fire and molten rocks. I cast a nervous glance at it, but the volcano was a sleeping dragon today, smoking calmly into the blue sky.
Down below, there was no such peace. There was noise everywhere; music could be heard constantly, in a cacophany of styles. With every step we heard the drone of popular songs, sung in nasal tones. One particular song I heard everywhere, perhaps a dozen times on our short journey.
Jesce, jesce, corna;
Ca mammata te scorna,
Te scorna ‘ncoppa lastrico,
Che fa lo figlio mascolo.

Peer out, peer out!
Put forth your horns!
At you your mother mocks and scorns;
Another son is on the stocks,
At you she scorns, At you she mocks.
The Neapolitan tongue was near incomprehensible to me, especially as ortolans and gaudy parrots screeched from the eaves in competition. The song seemed to be about snails—that couldn’t be right. “What are they singing about?” I asked our captor.
“Cuckold,” he said briefly. (I knew what that meant—it was when a woman f*cks another man behind her husband’s back.) The Capitano made an odd symbol with his hand, with the first and little fingers extended like horns while the middle pair of fingers were held down by the thumb. “Here, we make the sign of the Devil’s horns. It wards off bad luck,” he said.
I began to look, and I saw the symbol being made everywhere, all around me—by the black-clad widows who sat three-deep on a crumbled wall, to the olive-eyed babes spinning their tops in the dust. I noticed Brother Guido saw it too, and he crossed himself in reply. Thus the sign of God negated the sign of the Devil, as if to ward off such heathen beliefs. I smiled at him but got nothing in return, so turned again to the Capitano. “Why, what bad luck are you expecting?”
“I’m hoping that when I marry, my wife won’t cuckold me.”
I could not wish him joy in any future union, but since Brother Guido was not speaking to me, I carried the conversation on. “You’re not married then?” said I, trying to sound surprised.
“No, but I’ll take you, honey tits, if you’re asking. If Don Ferrente doesn’t want to suck on them himself, that is.”
I shot him a look of loathing, sorry I had bothered to converse with him, but he merely laughed.
“Come on. You can’t hate me that much. You woke first in the boat, did you not? You could have tipped me over the side while I slumbered, and been rid of me for good.”
Damnation, that’s what I should have done! F*ck, f*ck, f*ck!
He saw my expression and his grin widened. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t think of it in time,” I admitted stiffly.
He laughed again. “Well, at least you’re honest.”
I looked to Brother Guido to see how he would react to this exchange—the casual contemplation of murder. But he had drawn into his shell as completely as the snail of the song. I saw him telling his rosary beads through busy fingers as we walked, his mouth moving constantly in prayer. Huh, I thought. Probably trying to pray the taste of me away from his lips. Good luck. A kiss from Chi-chi is not so easily forgot. I felt sad though—in our time of danger we had never been closer, and now, even though we were shackled together, we could not have been further apart.
We pushed our way through the maelstrom of hurrying citizens and I reflected on how little the people were. They seemed no bigger than the midget on the wharf who had tied our boat, and were swarthy and saturnine, not like the tall, willowy blondes of the north. It was hard to see how the pearl-pale lady from the Primavera would find a home among such a people; she was as different from them as a greyhound from a pack of curs. Like myself. I looked down on them, in many senses.
Yet the place was clearly a mass of contradictions. For as many walls that were daubed with crude drawings like a cave of the ancients or painted with slogans that even made me blanch, there were niches with Madonnas and saints everywhere. At every street corner was a shrine of devotion, each clean and well respected, with well-tended flowers or neatly trimmed candles. I noticed, too, that among the varied merchandise on sale in the streets, the apothecary drugs and the body parts and the stolen wares, were hundreds of scenes of the Nativity, carved from wood, some painted, some plain, and all exquisite, clearly a local specialty. Naples was a place of contrasts, a city crammed with the filth and the faith in equal measure. Like Brother Guido and me: the faithful and the filthy, joined by accident, and rubbing along together as best we could.
Soon we began to climb a hill away from the harbor and I noticed, as in Florence, that when the ground rises, the ruffians fall away and the district gets a little nicer. The heat, however, was oppressive when we climbed out of the shade of the streets and the market awnings. I began to sweat freely. Now I could see our destination looming over the town—a red castle, grand and spreading, with twin turreted towers joined by a grand white marble arch. As we drew closer, I knew it was time for action—we would never get out of this pass if Brother Guido remained as mum as an oyster. As we reached the castle gates, and the Capitano stepped forward to bribe the guards that crossed their halberds in our faces, I pinched his arm. At last he looked at me, but like a mortal who looked upon the demon who had damned him.
I got mad.
“Look,” I said. “Wake up and act like a man. Whatever happened on that ship, we’re alive and we have the cartone. Use your wits and look about you. We need to charm this man, Don Ferrente, or the quest ends here. Act as if you are a person of consequence, for pity’s sake, for you’ve been as dull as Doomsday since we landed on this rock.”
In reply he merely shook his head.
I gave up. “You’re pathetic,” I spat. “All right, fine. Act like a mewling milksop. I couldn’t expect any action from you. Why you can’t take charge of the situation I don’t know. I suppose it will be up to me to save our skins, as usual.” And I swept along in the Capitano’s wake. I knew the last swipe was unfair, for Brother Guido had saved our bacon more than once on our travels, but I wanted to say anything that would shake him out of his guilty torpor. Not that it worked.
As always when I am about to meet a new and powerful man, I worry about my appearance. My skin felt tight from the sun, and dry from the water, and when I licked my lips I tasted salt. My hair still fell in salty ropes that whispered as I shook them back, and had dried almost white blond in the fierce heat. I was soon to feel even more of a peasant, as the Capitano led us through room after room of the most sumptuous chambers I had ever seen. Everywhere there were courtiers milling in their gorgeous costumes, but strangely, all the clothes and jewels, and the decorations of the walls, were only in black and white. By the time we had passed through the third or fourth antechamber, filled with haughty black-and-white courtiers who stared down their noses at us as if we were driftwood that had washed up on the beach (which we were), I had begun to think that my sun-dazzled eyes had lost their ability to see color. The hues of the rainbow were completely absent from this place. Without knowing I was doing it I was looking at every lady for a resemblance to the right-hand Grace, the fair lady we had identified as “Naples.” Even though I knew that the dame had to be dead according to our deductions, still I looked for her spectral spirit walking among these courtiers. But all the ladies at this court were dark-haired, black-eyed Spaniards, and none of these magpie ladies came close to the moon-pale delicacy of the right-hand Grace. “Why are they in black and white? Did somebody die?” I whispered to the Capitano.
He shook his grizzled head. “ ‘Tis not mourning but fashion,” said he. “You are in the court of the Aragonese, and they think it becoming to wear only black or white.”
Madonna. “And . . . Don Ferrente, he is one of the nobles at this court?”
“Hardly.” The Capitano’s sneer was unpleasant. “Don Ferrente is Ferdinand the Sixth and First, King of Aragon and Naples.”
A king. Shit. Typical, that once again I was destined to meet a great man when stinking like a ferret and looking like a porcupine in a thunderstorm.
At last we passed through an immense pair of doors to the grandest room of all—a long gallery with walls of intricate carvings—tiny pieces of ivory set into dark ebony to make the most fantastical shapes and patterns. Neither the bone nor wood were of any great value, but the workmanship that had gone into the panels, which stretched as far as the eye could see, made them priceless. In the center of the gallery stood an imposing figure, dressed all in white, leaning on a vast black fireplace in a noble attitude. The huge grate was empty on this burning day, and in the embers of the last fire crouched a man in simple black, on a three-legged milking stool, whittling a block of white wood so the snowy curls sprang from his fingers into the grate.
The man in white was speaking a language foreign to me, presumably Aragonese, but as my ear attuned I could make out a couple of words and could tell that Spanish was none too distant a cousin to Tuscan. The white man’s serf grunted in reply, but did not look up from his carving, a breach of manners that would have had him beaten in Florence.
We walked down the gallery softly, ignored by the black and white pair, but the white lord turned as we drew close.
“Capitano Ferregamo,” he said, teaching us the Capitano’s name for the first time. “I see you survived the recent storms. Congratulations. Can the same be said for the fleet of the Muda?”
Ferregamo bowed low and spoke in a voice so humble I scarce recognized it. “Only the flagship lost, as far as I know, Excellency. The others will follow today or tomorrow, for we were a good league ahead. We had to put to sea early, for reason of these intruders you see.”
“You have brought some bounty for Our Grace?” The white-clad monarch had an odd quality to his voice, a strange sibilant hiss like a snake.
“Indeed. The man is a noble from Pisa. The woman his doxy, but a beauty that I thought might please His Majesty?”
His Majesty? Was this white fellow not Don Ferrente? Were there yet more chambers to traverse before we reached the room of the throne? The snake man spoke again. “But your ‘nobleman’ wears a monk’s robes,” said he, circling us with interest, holding a white pomade to his nose as if we smelled (which we probably did).
“He is no monk, Excellency. I caught him embracing this woman aboard ship.”
I flashed a look to Brother Guido and saw him hang his head in shame. The black-clad servant in the fireplace carved away, his knife whistling through the air, the shavings jumping away from his fingers, chip, chip, chip.
“Hmmm.” Snake-tongue smiled. “But he did not take her virginity?”
“Not aboard,” asserted the Capitano with conviction. “I’m sure of it. They were watched constantly.”
This gave me a jolt. Watched? Had the Capitano seen us take out the cartone and heard our council on the painting’s meaning? No; I willed my heart to slow. The Capitano would not have undertaken such a watch himself, and all other hands were dead. I vowed, though, to tell Brother Guido to have a care of the painting when we were next alone—if we lost that, we were done for.
Snake-tongue looked at me speculatively. “All right. She may do. What say you, Majesty?”
The man crouching in the fireplace spoke with unexpected command. “Let me see her.”
I turned astonished eyes on him. He? He was Don Ferrente, the King of Aragon and Naples? He was dressed in a simple black gown without ornament, and he hunched like a serf over his horny, carving hands. But his gaze was gray steel and his nose had a noble hook—not a man to be trifled with.
If this was unexpected, then what happened next was more so—the man in white neatly ripped my gown from my shoulders. Caked with salt and dried stiff, it tore easily to expose my chest to my waist. I thanked Vero Madre that I had passed the Primavera to Brother Guido; otherwise it would have been lost. I stood still as three men gazed at my naked charms, Brother Guido averting his eyes. I knew how to work such a situation, though; I arched my back and wet my lips, and wished for a colder chamber to harden my nipples. If my breasts were the only way to save us, then fair enough; they were equal to the task.
“All right,” said the king. “I’ll take her. Not the man, though. I’ve enough nobles in this place, and most of them are a nuisance.”
I turned horrified eyes on my friend as the white man motioned to me to cover up. Surely we were not to be divided!
The Capitano was wheedling now. “I thought, my lord, that there might be a ransom.”
The king regarded Brother Guido, who looked like a beaten man. “I think not. Just sell him, Ferregamo. You are not usually so fastidious.”
The Capitano sank down to our feet to unlock us. Our feet were parted, but I clung to Brother Guido’s habit. If only he would speak.
“No!” I begged. “You can’t take him. He’s important!” I felt ridiculous. And I love him! I added under my breath.
The Capitano dragged Brother Guido to the door, and I watched, appalled, as I looked my last on him. In despair, willing him to speak, I crossed myself, speaking the only language he heeded now—the sign of God, his God whom he had wronged by kissing me. God whom he returned to like a lost sheep. At last, at last, he acknowledged me, and replied to my gesture with one of his own, a most extraordinary thing—he made the Neapolitan sign of the horns, the gesture we had seen all morning, to ward bad luck away from me, wherever I would end up. His uncle’s thumb ring flashed gold and I turned away, sick with fear of being alone in this court of chess pieces without him. But as the great door opened the king stood for the first time. “Wait!”
It was a command. The king strode down the black-and-white gallery, took Brother Guido’s left hand, and looked closely at the thumb ring. He studied the bright gold band, with the nine gold balls encircling it. The king raised his own left hand, where the twin of Brother Guido’s ring rode on the thumb. My eyes widened. Another ring! Don Ferrente looked my friend in the face. “Who are you?”
Brother Guido’s reticence fell away like a mask, and I saw him draw himself up so he looked the king full in the eye, at that moment a king himself. Fixing Don Ferrente of Aragon with the truth of his blue gaze, he said clearly, “I am Niccolò della Torre, heir to the states and dominions of the city of Pisa.”
The extraordinary king shook his head as if he had just received a stinging blow, then smiled a smile that transformed his face.
“My lord! Forgive me. I did not know that you were coming yourself!”
“I thought it best, especially at this time,” replied “Lord Niccolo,” feeling his way.
The king nodded. “Indeed. Indeed. He did not say . . .”
“He does not know. I thought to surprise him at the coming event.”
Another nod. “Of course. Of course. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive my treatment of your person, of your consort.” This with a smile at me. “But why these holy weeds?”
I could see Brother Guido thinking fast and admired him greatly. “You perhaps have not heard of my father’s untimely death. Foul play it was, and I left the city as soon as I could, under the cover of night and in the habit of a simple monk.”
“Your father is gone? I am so very sorry. Lord Silvio was a fine man, and truly, you have the look of your father. His bearing, his looks.”
It was true, Brother Guido did resemble his uncle more closely than did his cousin—the man he was pretending to be. But what did he mean by this deception? What benefit could there be of pretending to be what we were not?
The king went on. “Your father told you everything, I suppose?”
“Of course. I am his heir in all things.” Brother Guido spoke with heavy significance.
“Then the players have changed, but the game is still on,” said the king, calling chess to my mind once again. My head spinning with this web of deception, I had to concede that the tactic was working, for the room was suddenly full of servants who were being given orders to see to our comfort. A gaggle of handmaidens led me from the room, and a group of menservants did the same for Brother Guido. The Capitano was dismissed with orders to see to his fleet, given a heavy purse by the man in white. He left without a backward glance, his transaction complete, no more sorry to leave our company than we were to lose him. Then I forgot him at once, for I heard the king say, “You will have the best chambers that my castle can offer, my lord. Your consort will be in an adjoining solar for your comfort and pleasure. Please forgive my major-domo for touching your property.”
“ ‘Tis already forgot, Your Highness,” said Brother Guido, inclining his head in forgiveness at the white-clad minister.
“You are most gracious. Although, in truth, I have three mistresses myself, and a wife too, and if someone would take one off my hands ‘twould be a blessing.”
The two “nobles” guffawed, like men, and I noted that Brother Guido was a gifted actor. I marveled at this new fellow; could it be only a few moments ago that I had berated him for his inaction, for his uselessness, for his lack of invention?
“Perhaps you will do me the honor of traveling north with my court tomorrow? Since we are both invited to the great occasion ‘twould be foolishness not to go together.”
Brother Guido, though he must have been as confused as I, played along. He inclined his head. “I’d be delighted. Of course, my retinue will be waiting for me there.”
The king personally saw us to the door; his majordomo, now wearing a smug smear of a smile, took my arm as if I were a queen. I looked at him snootily—I would not forget he had ripped my dress.
One thing more would confound my ears before we left that chamber. For as we took our leave, Don Ferrente said to his majordomo, nice and loud so we could hear, “Santiago, I charge you to look after this my most honored guest. For Lord della Torre here is, like myself, one of the Seven.”