The Botticelli Secret

43
She smiled at once, but this did not lessen my fear—a friendly expression meant naught with my prism-mother; if she meant to end a life she would smile and smile as she pushed the knife in. I held her eyes like a frighted coney with a fox, willing her not to question why my cloak was readied on the stool. Of course, it was the first place she went, tossing the fur to the ground to sit down. I winced in case the stolen mask fell out, but the bundle remained secure, and my mother never marked it. I thought she would question why I was still dressed, but a couple of moments in that room with its whistling winds would quickly inform the casual visitor why I would not shed one garment.
She sat on my stool in her feast-day finery, looked about her. Once again, she took on a different hue. She looked distressed; her speech was hesitant as I had never known it. She seemed genuinely upset by the conditions in which I had been held. “No bed! Nor panes in the window. I did not . . . I had not guessed . . .” She turned her great green eyes on me, pleading for the first time. “I came to ask you . . .” She seemed to struggle to find words. “Let me protect you. If you try to run, if you disobey, if you try to prevent what is in train, those that I now keep at bay will pursue you again.”
With a chill I knew she spoke of Cyriax Melanchthon, the murderous leper and tool of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whom I had all but forgot during my sojourn in Venice. For the first time I considered how cold it might be outside the strong circle of my mother’s arms.
“I wish you married,” she went on, “and happy, with children growing like vines around your table. I never watched my children grow.” Her voice cracked and she suddenly looked much older.
I did not go to her, did not speak, but behind the mask of my stony expression I was, despite myself, a little touched at all she had lost, for all that she had brought our separation upon herself.
She came close. “I wish the best for you. In that way, I am your Vero Madre.” My arms almost twitched upward. I almost wrapped them around her but did not.
She kissed me once and left.
I was still and stunned for a moment. I was astonished that she had remembered what I had once called her. I had uttered the words Vero Madre to her but once, when I had woken beside her in the gondola in Venice; she had all but laughed at the phrase. I had never used it again, even to myself, my dream of sixteen years shattered, the notion of my warm and loving mother smashed like the false idol that it was.
As she left I heard more footsteps and was instantly on the alert again. It was the cambio di guardia—the changing of the guard. I froze—for although my mother would never have picked out Brother Guido from a battalion of soldiers, surely even she would know him if she passed him, she and he alone, in a narrow passage.
But no, she must have been as affected by her little interview as I, for the guard left, she left, and Brother Guido—I even knew his tread by now—was outside my door again.
I hesitated once as I went to pick up my cloak and mask from the floor—I knew that as soon as the door had opened and I left this room, I was setting myself against my mother and all the rest of the Seven. Forever and ever, amen. Against armies, against fleets of ships, against all the silver in the mountains, against a murderous leper who wanted me dead.
But when the door opened he only had to ask me the question and I knew I would follow him to the ends of the earth, no matter what danger we were placed in. For we would be in it together.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
We took the little stair down and down the tower as we had done the night before. I assumed we would use the covered causeway again to Santa Maria delle Grazie, and then somehow try to get out of the city gates before dawn.
“Too risky,” said Brother Guido. “Fortunately, there is another way.”
We doglegged left and down into a different passage, high and cavernous, an underground thoroughfare. “Why, a whole regiment could pass through here!”
“That’s the idea.”
“Where does it lead? Another church?”
“No. It leads behind the fortress, out into the hunting ground behind the castle.”
“Outside the city gates?”
“Outside the city gates.”
Before he could finish his confirmation I heard stamping footsteps and guttural grunts. Of course the tunnel would be guarded—I stood rooted, knew we were discovered, and hoped Brother Guido could talk fast enough to get us out of this one. From my mother’s demeanor tonight I knew that even she could not protect me if I transgressed again.
“Do not distress yourself. It is only our transportation.”
We rounded a corner and there, oil-black with a gilded coat of torchlight, stood the mountainous horse I had seen between il Moro’s thighs yesterday.
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
“But that’s . . .”
“I know.”
“And you want me to?”
“Yes. I’ll mount first. You get up behind me. The Templars rode two by two for many centuries. ‘Twill not harm you.”
I didn’t give a f*ck about the Templars, whoever they may be, but I did know that I’d never ridden a proper horse in my life. The nearest I’d come was my pony ride from Fiesole to Pisa with Brother Guido, hardly the same thing. Despite my new education into the nobility, riding had not been among my list of lessons; Venetians are not horse people, since the only horses in that entire city are the four bronze ones atop the basilica.
Madonna.
Brother Guido vaulted expertly onto the black mountain and heaved me up after him. The horse stood stock-still, surprising me, as I expected him to rear and skitter.
“Do not worry,” said Brother Guido, sensing my fear. “He is well used to battle and is steady as a rock. Hold on, though.”
I barely had time to wrap my arms about his waist before he dug heels into the beast and it took off. I was bounced about like a sack of polenta, until I caught the rhythm, but my haunchbones would be sore for a sennight, I was sure. Brother Guido, apparently, was taught horse manship in his noble education, for he rode fluidly, his hands light on the reins, his weight shifting expertly. We thundered along the torchlit passage, until I saw the last obstacle in our way, twin guards between us and the night sky beyond the walls. Without stopping, Brother Guido took out the snake plaque once more.
“Way in the name of il Moro! I must get the dogaressa to safety!”
The guards hesitated, then separated their pikes—they had little choice for the night-black charger had not been told to stop and would have barreled through both of them, taking them with us if need be.
We burst out into the starlit night and thundered across the barco, crossing the hunting plains as if we, too, were quarry.
We rode on without looking back for perhaps an hour, for the distant bells rang behind us as the ground began to climb. The horse, battle hardened and supremely fit, never slackened pace until we reached a wooded hill with a silver stream, and Brother Guido stopped to let the stallion drink. He slid expertly to the ground, lifted me down, and let the creature dip its head with a grateful whicker. I looked back on the city we’d left, still not far enough away.
“Where are we going?”
“At the moment?”
“No, I meant—”
“I know what you meant. Genoa, that’s the last city.”
“All right, then shouldn’t we be going west?”
He turned to look at me properly.
“Because if you look,” I babbled, “see, there’s Polaris, the North Star, and in the compass rose, well, we should be heading north by northwest.”
He was clearly surprised. But smiled. “You’re right. But it was imperative to get away from the city, for to steal il Moro’s horse alone would mean death, even without our other transgressions. Now that there seems to be no immediate danger of pursuit, we will bear west.”
We sat side by side on the freezing turf, gazing back on Milan together. The city walls, silver in the moonlight, snaked around the city in a jealous coil, keeping the citizens in and the world out.
“It even looks like a serpent, doesn’t it?” I ventured to my silent companion.
“Yes. Nehushtan. Or Aaron’s rod, which—”
He stopped, as if struck. Drew in his breath.
“What?”
‘Jesu.’
“What?”
“I know what they’re up to.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? The Seven, of course. Blessed Mary and all the saints . . .” He was shocked back into old speech patterns.
“Could we hold the Scripture for a moment? What are they planning?”
“Aaron’s rod. I was right about that at least.”
“Come on!”
“Aaron’s rod became a serpent. At the Day of Judgment it would crawl back to the valley of Josaphat.”
“I said hold the Scripture.”
“But that’s it. In Joel 3, Verse 2, we read: “I will gather together all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat.” I will gather together all nations.”
“Sorry, you lost me.”
He took me by the shoulders and fixed me with those eyes. “Do you remember, when we were in the Pantheon in Rome, just before the eclipse, and we were admiring the marble floor? The marble came from all over the Roman empire, set into one floor. I told Don Ferrente it was a statement of imperium writ in marble.”
“So?”
“So, this, this.” Without asking, he shoved his hand down my bodice and pulled out the cartone and shook it in my face. “This, the Primavera, is a statement of imperium writ in paint.”
“I still don’t get you.”
“Lorenzo and the Seven plan to build an empire. Just like the Romans did. They plan to bring back those days when our peninsula was one, and the peninsula went on to rule the world from west to east. I will gather together all nations. They have an army, a fleet, a bottomless bank. They plan to overrun the whole peninsula, bring their nations together and build a new Italia.”
“That was it!” The word burst upon me like a sunbeam.
“What?” Now it was Brother Guido’s turn to be confused.
I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The silver angel. The coin I found in the mine in Bolzano. The one I dropped and my mother found in the carriage. On the reverse. Sol Invictus and Lorenzo on one side. And on the other—one word. Italia.”
“There it is. Writ in silver. Judas’s metal for seven treacherous villains.” He shook his head, then, “What’s the date?” he demanded urgently.
This sudden change of tack threw me, but I tried to answer as best I could. “I left Venice at the beginning of March, but then we were in Bolzano, then traveled here, so . . . middle of March, I’d say.”
“The ides of March, precisely.”
“But I don’t know exactly.”
“I think I do. We don’t have much time left.”
He took up the reins and jump-mounted the stallion, dragging me up with even less ceremony than before. He kicked the poor horse so hard it shot out of the spinney—the stars wheeled over our heads like a planisphere and the wind whistled past my ears. I had to bawl my question lest Zephyrus carry it away.
“Much time left before what?”
“The twenty-first day of March. New Year for the Florentines and a new empire for the Medici.” He turned his head so that I might hear. “Before the first day of spring.”