The Botticelli Secret

20
I sat on the coverlet of my bed then, watching the bay through the window. I must have sat so, not moving, for some time, for the bells rang twice as I sat, motionless, growing cold as the sun went down. I told myself I was thinking about the Primavera and the puzzle hidden in the painting, but in truth I thought of Brother Guido all that time, lying motionless one door away, silently hurting, all because of what I’d done. Could we ever go back to the way we’d been? Or had our relationship suffered a sea change from which it would never recover? Chi-chi, with her confidence and bravado, had deserted me once again and I was just a girl sitting alone with her thoughts: Luciana Vetra, homeless, friendless, and motherless. Never had I needed Vero Madre more; to feel a pair of loving arms around me, and a soft kiss to the top of my head. For once I did not crave the heat of a man’s embrace, but the strong circle of a mother’s arms. Now, you should know, if you have not already guessed, that I never cry; not since I was a baby in a bottle, when the glass sent back my cries to my own ears so magnified that I thought I’d better stop for my own comfort. But now I felt as if the tears may come at last, and even though they did not, it seemed that Bembo’s pearl had traveled from my navel to my throat, there to lodge forever no matter how many times I swallowed.
The glittering diamond necklace of the bay below turned to jet as the vista darkened, and I barely blinked when the slaves returned to light the lamps. As the room warmed to light behind me, I heard a soft voice and turned around at last.
Three ladies stood in my chamber, all in black. Like a murder of crows. But there their funereal likeness ended, for they all had pretty faces and merry eyes and smiled a trio of smiles that were eerily alike. In fact, they reminded me of nothing so much as the three Graces, but alive not dead, clad in black not white, and as dark in countenance and feature as the Graces were fair, just as the bay outside had turned from bright to black with the end of the day. The women introduced themselves as Eulalia Ravignano, Giovanna Caracciola, and Diana Guardato. I instantly forgot which was which, but smiled with a welcome I did not feel.
“And you are the ladies of the bedchamber? Come to dress me? The slaves said you would come.”
One of them smiled wider than the other two. “We are come to dress you indeed,” she said in clear Neapolitan, albeit scattered with Spanish hisses like a basket of snakes. “But we are not tiring women. We are freeborn ladies of the court of Aragon.”
“And we all share a special relationship with Don Ferrente,” put in the second.
“Not unlike the one you enjoy with Lord Niccolò,” added the third.
Now this last I doubted, unless the three ladies were on the run from Florentine assassins after stealing a painting and enlisting the help of a total stranger who was a monk masquerading as a nobleman. But I had the drift of their hints.
“You are his mistress . . . es?”
They nodded as one.
“All of you?” But as I said it, I remembered that Don Ferrente had admitted as much himself, and owned to a wife too. I didn’t need to wait for the nod this time.
The ladies were friendly and full of life—they fluttered around me chirruping in Spanish and lifting my chin and hair, circling my waist with their hands, and discussing, clearly, what I should wear. I knew them then for what they were—not crows but blackbirds, with their beady black eyes, blue-black hair, and their heads cocked to one side as they considered my charms. But their sense of fun was infectious and I felt Chi-chi come home to roost as I joined in their discourse when they reverted to Tuscan. I felt that we were all very much alike, for what were they, in truth, but high-class whores, be they ever so noble? Bawdy and witty, they discussed their bedsport openly and asked me intimate details of my liaisons with my own lord. I could not tell them that we were as chaste as Christmastide, so had to improvise with details of my other professional couplings. They all seemed to share each other’s opinions, and finish each other’s sentences, with a fluency that suggested that they spent all their time in each other’s company. Clearly, from their stories, they shared Don Ferrente’s bed together too, all at once rather than in succession. On the subject of my “master” they were of one mind.
“By the field of stars, he’s a fine gentleman.”
“I have never seen the like.”
“He makes the others here at court look like washerwomen.”
“Excepting our lord Don Ferrente, of course.”
“By Saint Jude, I cannot wait to see him in his hose and codpiece! I’ll wager he has a fine leg, and a fine foot too.”
They cackled together. I smiled but could not confirm their guessings, for of course I had never seen Brother Guido in hose.
“Never mind him for now,” said the one who I think was called Eulalia. “Let us dress this dove as our master commanded, to equal the beauties of her lord.”
“Shall not be difficult, for she is favored like an angel.”
If they but knew. “Ladies,” I began, “there is no need to assist me. I can dress myself, if you give me a gown.”
They laughed again. “La, no, my dear!”
“ ‘Tis true it is below our place to dress you . . .”
“But our lord Don Ferrente knew we would welcome the chance to adorn such a beautiful bird. ‘Tis a project we would enjoy.”
“For believe me”—they spoke still in strict turn—“this court has few enough beauties, for most are old widows with swollen bellies and slack cunnies.”
I could well believe it. For even this trio of attractive women were of a variety of shapes and forms, and each had their failings. One had thick wrists, another snag teeth, and the third, as she bent close, had bad breath that copious use of oil of cloves had failed to cover. I could only assume she did her lord Ferrente’s service below the covers, and not face-to-face. All, too, were well into their middle years.
“For the queen likes her own beauties to shine forth, undiminished by those of others,” they explained.
Now I was curious. “She is very fair, then, the queen?”
“Yes, indeed. Giovanna of Aragon is a great beauty,” said Diana generously, with the others nodding agreement.
I was curious as to their relationship with the queen, for although I had been betraying noblewomen by f*cking their husbands for a good few years now, I had never actually known the ladies. What was it like to live under the eye of the woman who knew you were warming her husband’s bed?
“Oh, we like her.”
“She is lovely.”
“I am proud to bear her name,” said the one who was clearly Giovanna. “On our shared saint’s day she gave me a rosary for my missal.”
I was curious. “And she is faithful, to Don Ferrente?”
“Oh, yes. Without question. He is not a man to be trifled with, for he can show great cruelty and violence to those who betray him. Certain of his rebellious barons have been recently murdered on his orders, some of them friends since the cradle. And for women it is even worse.”
“In Sicily, my dear, if you betray your husband with another, your husband can beat you to death with the full support of the law.”
I swallowed. The strains of the Neapolitan song drifted back to me from this morning, carried on the chimes of Vespers. “Jesce jesce corno,” indeed. If a man strayed, he was a horned snail in a comic song. If a woman strayed, here in the hot and passionate south, she was as good as dead. The king slept with three different dames every night right under his wife’s nose, but a queen had to be beyond reproach. I thought hard on this as the ladies fluttered around me once more, pulling and pushing me, twisting strands of hair, applying ribbon and jewels, lacing my bodice. I had ever lived outside this law, outside the strictures and proprieties that governed other women. I had been turning tricks since I was old enough to bleed. Could I ever live this way, as a “decent” woman, so strictly policed in all her behavior? And what of love? Did that simplest and strongest of feelings have a place in the noble world of court? Did the king truly love the queen; could he love her, when he shared his favors so widely? And yet if he did not, why would he care if she took another lover? It was all most confusing. It was fortunate, really, that I was not a noble-woman.
I was so deep in thought that I barely noted what I was being dressed in until they pulled me to the looking glass. I gasped.
Once again, as in Pisa, I was transformed. But they had made me into a dove among the blackbirds—I was dressed from head to foot in white. My dress was stiff with a thousand seed pearls and stood out from my waist in a hugely full skirt like a bell. A delicate ruff of lace adorned my shoulders and framed my face, now pale again from days belowdecks. My hair was more blond than ever, bleached of its color by the sea salt and sun, twisted up into ripples by the ladies with the same pearls pinned into my locks. My skin was as pale as the gems that adorned me. I had been transformed into the very Grace whose identity we sought here in Naples. And then the notion chimed; in Florence I had been Flora. Here I was one of the Graces. Was I destined to inhabit all the ladies of the painting in turn?
Despite my spectral beauty, however, I knew, too, that the Chi-chi glitter in my eyes was back. I was a honeypot, a walking temptation for all the men of this court. Why, then, was I not excited? Why did I not plan, as I usually did, for some hot and licentious union with a random fellow this night?
I knew, of course. Jesce jesce corno. As I followed the ladies to dinner, an alien thought struck me. I had ever been a faithless slut, but I knew now that there was only one man I wanted, and if I could but marry him, then I would never stray.