The Botticelli Secret

5

Florence II



Florence II, July 1482

26
I celebrated my return to Florence by leaning over the Ponte Vecchio and puking into the Arno.
My terror had sat hunched in the pit of my stomach like an ugly little troll ever since we had begun to descend into the valley, but as soon as we crossed the river into my home city I had to beg the king to stop the carriage, and let my fear leap from my mouth to freedom. As I leaned against the balustrade, weak and empty, I noticed three things.
Cosa Uno: everything was still beautiful here, but now it made me afraid. The old bridge was glorious amber in the evening sun, but now I saw only assassins lurking beneath the arches. The copper cup of the Duomo still arched above the city, but now I saw that it was a poisoned chalice, upended to spill its venom and soak every stone in the place with evil. We had been on a grail quest to many lands and had come home to find the vessel tainted. The innocent swallows and gulls that wheeled around the cupola were now kites and daws, searching for carrion.
Cosa Due: the Arno smelled the same, but now I saw that amid the sapphire stream floated the bloated corpses of criminals fresh from the gallows, pitched into the river upstream at Rubaconte, where the guilty were dangled and flayed. One dead fellow rolled in the current, turning his eyeless white face to me as he slipped past. I wondered if I would swim there soon too. Sickened, I turned from the river and noticed:
Cosa Tre: Brother Guido, who had descended from the royal carriage also, in a pantomime of sympathy, was hunched over the next arch along, vomiting too.
We were home.
Spent and hollow-eyed, we regarded each other and turned back to the carriage. Brother Guido handed me in and we endured the kindly, concerned tones of our royal hosts, heard a list of cures for the ague, and politely declined to have a feather burned under our noses. Brother Guido they knew to be ill, of course, for he had not spoken a word or eaten a morsel since we left Rome. The king and queen were sorry to learn that I had caught his complaint, and expressed a hope that I would be better for the wedding tomorrow. At which I almost puked again.
‘Twas fear, plain fear, that gripped my belly; for there was no catching the ague that afflicted my companion. He was suffering the torment of having given his life to the church, given up his worldly life and even his inheritance, only to realize that that body was corrupt, sick and rotting from the head like a stinking fish. Only I knew what ailed him, that when he breathed that sigh in Peter’s Square in Rome, he had breathed out his faith all in one long breath. He had not prayed since Rome, a marked contrast to the constant chatter of catechism on the way into the Eternal City. On the way out he was mum as an oyster and said no more litanies than I did myself. Although I could almost have prayed for him. For God, if there was one, to heal his heart and tell him that the Father of all still sat in his heaven, even if the father of the church had joined this heinous plot.
Once again we were restricted as to speech on our journey by virtue of being forever stuck with the royal couple. On the occasions that we were alone Brother Guido rejected all comfort and barely spoke. He drank little and ate less. The hair grew on his face to give him an unkempt look, but this time he resembled more of a varlet than a hermit, for his aura of sanctity had quite gone. I grieved for his faith but more for ourselves, for without his intelligence and guidance we were well and truly f*cked. What chance could I have, alone, of deciphering the rest of the puzzle?
As we crossed the remainder of the bridge and the Piazza della Signoria closed around us, I looked up at the toothsome tower of the Medici palace and felt we were entering the lion’s den. The arch leading into Florence’s most ancient square was an open mouth waiting hungrily to receive us, the wrestling statues stilled to watch us be devoured.
We knew that the king and queen were to lodge with their newly reconciled friend Lorenzo de’ Medici, but the invitation had not been extended to “Lord Niccolò”; it was assumed that as a Tuscan prince, he would have lodgings in Florence with a retinue waiting—
Christ only knew where we were to conjure these. I looked to Brother Guido, sitting slumped at the window, watching the streets he knew so well with a baleful stare.
“I am a Daniel,” he muttered—his first words since Rome.
I realized what he had said with a shock—our minds trod in step with each other, despite the fact we had not spoken for days. He knew we were entering the lion’s den too.
I stood as the carriage stopped, preparing to descend again, but the queen put out her hand.
“Stay, my dear. Take the carriage to the prince’s lodgings, with our compliments. He is not well enough to change horses. Do you know where his palace stands?”
My heart warmed to the queen with her kindness and nobility. I wished for one crazy moment that she were my Vero Madre and I could press my face into her powdered bosom. I knew not what to say, so, as ever in these situations, I lied.
“Very well, Your Majesty. His house is a little up the hill, toward San Miniato.” I had no time to think, so as they waved farewell with a promise to see us on the morrow at the wedding, I gave directions to Bembo’s house, where, a little above a month ago, I had watched my best client die.
As the carriage pulled away I shrank back in my seat but could still see the King and Queen of Naples sweep up the steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, accompanied by their retinue, to be greeted by two servants in the black and gold livery of the Medici. My stomach lurched again, with dual horrors—both personal and political. The first, the fact that Brother Guido and I had been hunted for our lives here, and may still be in grave danger. The second—that the young sprig of the Medici family and groom-to-be, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, was plotting a treacherous coup against his uncle, Lorenzo the Magnificent. A coup expressed in paint—writ in riddles and encoded in the figures of the Primavera, a wedding present from Botticelli to his young, soon-to-be-married patron. And now I had to shake my friend from his malaise so that we may save our sorry skins and, perhaps, the city. But, as it happened, I had no need to prise speech from him—for as soon as we were alone he spoke.
“There,” he said, “there it all began.” With no thought for his safety he was craning from the window looking up at the tall blank walls of the palazzo. I saw only the square bitemarks of scaffolding and the pockmarks of the stucco, and one high, high window below the lantern tower.
“What am I looking at?” I was relieved he spoke yet reluctant to emerge from the shadows to look too, lest I was seen by those who knew me.
“There,” he repeated, his voice gravelly from lack of use. “There hung Jacopo de’ Pazzi, head of the Pazzi family, with two of his brethren, for the offense of murdering Giuliano de’ Medici. They slaughtered him, in front of his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent, in the cathedral here.”
Everyone in Florence knew that story, so I waited for the point.
“And beside him swung Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa—a man I knew well, for he gave me my First Communion. Lorenzo the Magnificent escaped that day, but he signed his own death warrant when he hung an archbishop, in full ceremonial robes, for his part in the plot.”
Really, Brother Guido’s mind made some astonishing and frankly irrelevant leaps sometimes. Ironic that he’d just begun to speak again and was already annoying me a bit. “What the blue bollocks have the Pazzis got to do with this?”
Now he turned on me as if he hated me. “Didn’t you hear me? Not the Pazzis. The archbishop.”
Day dawned. In my mind’s eye the guilty prelate bounced on his rope, his guts and gristle streaming to the floor in scarlet cords that matched his holy vestments, his face pulped and bloody as he turned and bashed against the windowless gray walls that were blind to his plight. “So you think the pope is conspiring with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco against his uncle because his uncle had his archbishop hanged?”
“I do.”
Surely this could not be all—I had never heard him answer so briefly. He relented. “Lorenzo the Magnificent and the whole of Florence were excommunicated for the offense. Pope Sixtus’s own nephew Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola, was dispatched to arrest and charge Lorenzo the Magnificent, but the Florentine Signoria were loyal and wouldn’t hand over Lorenzo. Recourse to the law was unsuccessful, so it is my belief that Sixtus has gathered the Seven, with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s connivance, to make an alliance to overturn Lorenzo and place his nephew, a willing tool of the papacy, in his stead. Depend upon it,” he said decidedly, “the pope is at the root of this. The clues are writ in stone.”
I was doubtful. “You sound awfully sure.”
“I am. When I said that the clues are writ in stone, I meant that literally, not metaphorically.”
I was silent. He had lost me. Luckily he continued un-prompted.
“Every clue that has led us forth so far has been literally written in stone. The leaning tower above my door in Santa Croce. The newly carved ship on the Tower of Pisa, depicting the Muda’s flagship. The rood screen in San Lorenzo in Naples, showing the stations of the cross. I am Petrus. The very church itself was writ in stone too, the papacy, the Vatican, the whole holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”
I showed him a blank countenance.
“Peter,” he said simply. “Saint Peter. Petrus. The symbol and saint of the papacy. The gatekeeper, the keyholder. I am the rock.”
“All right,” I said slowly. “Then how does Botticelli come into it? If it was the Pazzis and the pope that kicked this all off?”
Brother Guido’s eyes burned like the damned. “There.” He pointed across the square to the customs house. “There on that very wall, Botticelli was charged by his Medici paymasters to paint the conspirators where they hung, as a warning to others.”
I narrowed my eyes—there on the rough and sun-bleached stones, four faint figures could still be seen; long slashing lines above, straight as Sunday, described the ropes that hung them all.
“So when this plot was engendered, who would they choose to depict this deadly scheme but the favored artist of the Medici court?”
“And the Primavera reveals all?” I questioned. “All the cities that have agreed to join with the pope, make war on Lorenzo the Magnificent and remove him from power?”
“Yes.”
I bought it. “So we know why. But we don’t know when and how the attack will come. Our knowledge has no power unless we know the details. So the question is, what do we do next?”
His lips curled cruelly into a smile that was not a smile. “Nothing. Let them blast each other into hellfire—they are all of them murderers, all of them worthless. They are damned and so are we.”
Now this was not helpful. We had switched places, the monk and I—he had given up on the quest and I thirsted for more. I knew that if we knew everything that the painting hid we might just have enough to bargain for our lives.
We were drawing away from the square and the site of that grisly scene—we had to think of something fast, before we were taken all the way out of the city on the fool’s errand to San Miniato. Then I saw the great frontage and round eye of Santa Croce, and Brother Guido’s words from two nights ago echoed in my brain. For matters touching botany, we cannot do better than consult Nicodemus of Padua, the herbalist at Santa Croce. There is no flower in the field, nor herb in the hedgerow, that he does not know by name.
“Might we alight here?” I called, hoping that was the right word for “get down.”
“My lord knows an herbalist within, and we must get a draught for his ague.”
The driver slowed the horses. “Shall I wait, Do?a?” he called, in his thick accent. I already had the door open and heaved Brother Guido to the ground, without waiting for the driver or footman to help us.
“No, do not trouble,” I replied breezily. “The good brothers will send a runner for our own carriage to fetch us.”
The driver exchanged a look with the footman, shrugged in his Spanish fashion, and touched his hand to his hat and his whip to his horse. Our last connection to the Neapolitan court drew away in a cloud of dust. And there we stood, Luciana Vetra and Brother Guido della Torre, a calendar month after we had last been here, at the gates of Santa Croce. There slumped the postern monk Brother Malachi, as ever, in his cups and asleep on the wrought-iron gate.
“Why are we here?” He spoke through tight lips; his clenched jaw white with anger, he looked on the place he had once loved, this tranquil holy haven, with hatred.
“To see Brother Nicodemus, the herbalist, as you yourself suggested.” I hoped the flattery would work. It didn’t.
“I will not go in.”
I had expected this. “But this was your home. These men were your brothers.” I indicated Brother Malachi, who damaged my case by farting noisily. “It is the pope that has betrayed you, not the Franciscan order.”
He set his jaw. “If the pope is corrupt, then so is all the church. My life, theirs”—he pointed to the sleeping monk—“and all this”—his sweeping gesture took in the grand edifice of the monastery—“is a lie.”
This was going to be harder than I thought. I remembered wryly how a sennight ago I would have done anything to prise him from the church like a barnacle from a rock. Now I would give the pearl in my belly to get him inside this monastery so we could talk with its herbalist. “All right. Suppose what you say is true. Why don’t you stop him?”
“Who?”
I sighed. “His Holi-arse the Pope. What he’s doing is wrong, er . . . right?”
He did not answer—we both noted it. “It’s not our war, nor our problem. I care not what happens to the Seven.”
I grabbed the front of his surcoat—it was loose and I noticed how much weight he had lost in the last week. “It is our problem, for our lives will be in danger again the moment your true identity is discovered. Which it will be one day. You cannot live as Niccolò forever—nor would you want to, unless you’re planning a lifetime of shafting catamites.” He winced. “But you must run forever once you are discovered, and I must too. And what of the treacherous Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco? He’s plotting against the father of our great city. We could bring him down, cut out the church’s canker, restore some . . . some purity to the church.” I was laying it on thick, but he didn’t seem to notice. I had seen a gleam in his eye for the first time since we left Rome at the prospect of spoiling the pope’s scheme. I followed up my advantage. “Let’s figure this thing out and crack the riddle, then somehow present the whole thing to Lorenzo the Magnifi-cent himself, just as your uncle said; then we’d have his gratitude, and his protection, and you’d save your skin.”
“I don’t care about my skin.”
“My skin then.”
He was silent, but not from torment this time; he was thinking. He looked at me as if for the first time, and I knew then that he cared about me enough to try to save me. It was a warm night but I suddenly felt hot, as if the sun had waked. And there was something else in his eyes too; he didn’t want to quit and I think I knew why. His brain. The fire of his faith may have died but the flame of his intellect could never be extinguished. I hit him with my best shot.
“Besides, can you really walk away not knowing what it all means? Can you really sleep at night not knowing what secret lies in the flowers? What calamities will come with the spring? Why there are seven conspirators, not eight, as there are in the picture? That you couldn’t work it out, that you let the riddle beat you?”
I had him then, but I couldn’t resist one more, completely practical point. We didn’t actually have a palace to house us, nor a retinue to tend to our needs. I couldn’t go back to my little cot by the Arno, flooded with Enna’s blood. He couldn’t go back to Pisa and his murderous cousin. “After all,” I finished, “where else can we go?”
He knew I was right. He had no choice but to return to the monastery he had once called home. I glanced at the sky—night was falling, the Florentine day was beginning. We moved to the gate and I woke Brother Malachi, as I had done more than a month ago, by shoving my tits in his face.