The Botticelli Secret

49
“Lorenzo?”
“Battista, my dear fellow.” Both men registered shock and surprise, swiftly covered by their urbane courtier masks, in many ways as substantial as my mother’s.
The younger man spoke first. “What do you here?”
The gray Medici eyes were wary. “My, er, ship foundered in the storm. I took shelter here to wait until I could make my way to your palace and beg for your sanctuary.”
“Indeed?” The doge expressed polite surprise. “The spring tides are somewhat unpredictable.”
The noble pair regarded each other like street cats, not sure whether to purr or strike.
“Where were you headed?”
“To Pisa. There’s a marriage there soon, is there not, my dear?” I stepped out of the shadows of the door. “And I would so hate to miss your nuptials, child, since you were good enough to attend my nephew’s.”
I met his eyes steadily and saw that he knew everything. I did not know what to say, but fortunately the doge did.
“Strange. What an odd route to take, from Florence to Pisa by sea.” His voice was dangerously soft now. “You are sadly off course, my lord.”
Now it was Lorenzo that foundered and sought an answer.
The doge forestalled him. “Forgive me, my lord. Before we continue this interesting conversation, I must assist my guest in a small matter. Perhaps you will stay a while and admire the drama of the tempest.” He was all deadly politeness.
Lorenzo caught the tone. “Oh, I think I have trespassed long enough. The winds seem to be easing.”
“Indeed you are mistaken. The storm is as threatening as ever; I really couldn’t let you risk a journey in such conditions. I really must insist, and to help you make up your mind, know that my men are posted downstairs.”
“Your men? Is that so?” Lorenzo seemed amused, even though he was as good as trapped. I felt that prickle of unease again—it was all wrong for the lobster in the pot to laugh at the fisherman. “In that case, it would be churlish not to stay a while and converse a little. What shall we talk about?”
“How is your foreign policy?” The question was as pointed as a stiletto.
“Uneventful,” Lorenzo answered smoothly. “On the domestic front, however, I have invested in an attractive alliance which I hope will soon accrue great interest.”
“There is a difference between legitimate interest and usury.”
Like scrapping toms they stopped, circled, waited for the next blow. Lorenzo got in first.
“Speaking of interest, how is your bank loan?”
“Helpful.”
They broke once again, and I took my chance, aware of the urgency of my task. I plucked the doge’s scarlet sleeve.
He turned to me, then back to il Magnifico. “Ah, yes. As I hinted earlier, my guest here has a little business upstairs. You will, naturally, make no attempt to stop her course.”
“I would not dream of it. Away you go, my dear, la lanterna awaits.”
Bemused, I held his granite-gray gaze as I backed out of the room, wary of some trick. Surely Lorenzo il Magnifico would not just stand idly by as I wrecked his cherished plans?
I left them to their counterfeit courtesies and climbed higher, to the second terrace. Entering the upper chamber, I noticed three things.
Cosa Uno: that the lantern stood in the middle of the room like a sunburst—a glass constructed of many-faceted crystals, cradling an enormous vat of flame burning what my nose told me was olive oil. The light burned bright, despite four great windows open to the four winds, letting the tempest howl through, snatching at my hair and clothes. The wind horses conspired to ride me over the merlons, so that I had to hang on for dear life or grim death. And still the lantern burned steady. It was a beauteous thing—a lens to catch the light and send it back a thousandfold, like the biggest diamond that the world held. A gem, bright as the Bethlehem star, to guide ships home.
Cosa Due: my feet stuck to the floor in a way that recalled my house by the Arno—for a flood of blood leached from the slashed throats of the two dead Genoese lookouts, sprawled where they had died upon the floor. A brief glance told me neither one was Bartolomeo, grazie Madonna. And:
Cosa Tre: I realized why the Prince of Florence had not prevented me from climbing the stair, for there, black as night and dark as death, standing sentinel over the lantern like the reaper himself, was the cowled leper, Cyriax Melanchthon.
For a heartbeat we regarded each other. He was utterly still while his tattered robes of the unclean bellied and snapped in the wind like a sail. Black bandages covered his face to leave only his silver eyes to penetrate my soul. Hunter and prey face-to-face at last. This time my terror was compounded by a further fear—that I would not be able to douse the lantern, that I would fail in the task I had been set. But there was little time to think, for he leaped for my throat.
His grip was iron around my neck—black spots danced before my eyes, fire and blood gurgled in my ears. I could not breathe, and yet he assailed me with only one of his wasted hands—the other reached for his butcher’s knife. I would have begged but could not speak . . . could not speak . . . then remembered in a flash what Nicodemus of Padua had said: he has no lower jaw, so has lost the power of speech. I thrust a hand out to the leper’s throat. Fearless of contagion, I scrabbled beneath the facecloths and met an open gizzard and twisted raw giblets of flesh. It bought me respite—he let me go—choking with a horrid gurgling sound. I fell to the floor and cracked my head upon the lantern, tried to scramble for the door, but he was upon me again, and those powerful hands lifted me like a feather, smashed me back against the lantern, the glass and the leads hot enough to brand my flesh. One powerful hand held my throat once more, and this time he managed to get his knife free—held it high to strike.
My last moment seemed to go on for hours—images flashed into my mind; time turning backward like a wheel. I saw everywhere and everything from my birth to now—I was a baby in a bottle, a girl in a convent, a whore, a noblewoman. And Brother Guido, so many images of him: every road we’d traveled, every time he’d touched me, all the way back to the time we had first met. I was back in Florence on that burning day, before I’d met Botticelli, before all this had begun.
The hand of my killer tightened, the lantern burned at my back, and the crystals cracked under my skull. I shut my eyes to the present. I wanted to die in Florence, with Brother Guido beside me. I remembered what he’d first said to me: Luciana Vetra, it means the light in the glass; let the light out. Let the light out . . . I was a baby in a bottle, let the light out, let it out.
With the last of my strength, I smashed out at the crystals of the lantern and we both fell back into the fire. As if we danced, I turned the leper beneath me, and the flaming oil soaked us both. But the fire in the glass protected its namesake; my sodden cloak and hair did not burn, but the bone-dry leper caught like a beacon. Like a human torch, he ran about the little room; turned about and about in unnaturally silent agony as I watched, appalled. The oil had set the floor aflame and I beat at the fire with my saturated cloak, dousing the pockets that threatened to engulf me. The leper fell at last, his superhuman strength at an end, his silver eyes dull and dead. The fire had burned his bandages away and I could not look at what was revealed. I had not expected to feel pity for him, but if God had cursed me with such a disease, then I, too, may have become what he had become.
Now in near dark and alone with three corpses, one of the dead as hideous as hell, I busied myself with dousing the last of the flames, wondering all the time how Brother Guido did on the westward cliffs. I peered from the west window but against the battering rain could see no light on the cliffs. I was just praying that one day I would see him again, when God answered and, incredibly, I heard Brother Guido’s voice, bawling from below.
“Luciana! Luciana!”
“Here!” I shouted and waved, gladness filling me.
There he was, waving from below. He carried a small bark upturned above his head against the rain. Like a corno in his shell.
“Luciana, is the lantern out?”
“Nearly—I’ll be down soon. I’m dousing the last of it now.” I turned back, happy now to finish my task.
“No!” he yelled, with such desperation that I stopped at once.
“Listen to me carefully,” Brother Guido shouted from the rocks below. “Take the map and douse it with the olive oil. Set it alight and throw it from the window. Do it now.”
“What, why—”
“Just do it.” There was such urgency in his voice I did not question further. I took the map roll from my sleeve and rolled it in the spilled oil on the floor. I found the last tiny pocket of flame in the very heart of the lantern and willed the roll to light. My will was answered more than I desired for the roll went up with a whoosh which threatened to take my eyebrows—there had to be some compound in Signor Cristoforo’s ink which made the wood burn even more merrily, with a bluish flame like a torch.
I went to the window, holding the burning roll as far from me as possible, hoping I could cast it down before it burned down to my oily fingers. I watched Brother Guido set down the boat and wrap his sodden cloak around his hands. “Drop it to me carefully, Luciana.”
I did so, praying the fall would not douse the fire, but the torch fell like a comet with a flaming tail—and Brother Guido caught it skillfully and picked his way carefully down the rocks. I could not let him go without knowing. “What happened?” I yelled.
“I could not light the beacon. Too wet,” he shouted briefly.
“So you’re taking that flame all the way to the cliffs?” I screeched in disbelief. “It will never last till then!”
“I know,” he yelled back. “Signor Cristoforo has another idea. I am to take the firebrand out to his ship, which he will set afire and sail into the fleet. For the Muda are hard by—a thousand ships, not half a league from here.”
My mind boggled at the lunacy of the scheme. “You’ll be killed! Both of you! The storm, the fire—”
He cut across me. “Better two than thousands.” He set the boat on the churning sea, took the torch in his teeth, and fitted the oars in the rowlocks.
“Don’t go!” I screamed. “Let them come! Why does it matter?”
He looked up at me one last time. “You know why it does.”
I watched, helpless, as he struggled with the black mountainous waves, fearing that he would be dashed on the rocks; but he was a strong oarsman and pulled free of the wicked shoreline, the light getting smaller and smaller. At every stroke of the oars I feared that the torch would go out, feared that it wouldn’t. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted him to succeed in his task or fail and return.
The torch flickered, was dying. Then the boat leaped into flame—he had used something for kindling, to keep the flame alive. Now I knew he could not survive, and watched, appalled, as the lighted boat illuminated a larger scape, the dark, tall silhouette of a Genoese schooner, pulling the boat in with grapple hooks, smaller dots of flame breaking off from the burning bark as the sailors lit torches. Dark figures fired the sails; then the whole ship became a conflagration, for they must have soaked the canvases with oil. Shapes jumped and fell against the flame as all hands leaped into the water—Signor Cristoforo and his valiant crew. Then the fire ship, keeping a steady course, found the flagship of the Muda and one, then ten, then twenty, then a thousand ships caught and the ocean itself was aflame. Screams and confusion as the fleet burned and enough light for my desperate eyes to search for the little burning bark—as impossible as trying to see one twig in a burning hearth. But then, for the second time that night, I did see a human form burning, standing alone in the ocean on the burning curracle—a little island of fire. The figure stretched out his arms like Christ and shouted some words, before he dived into the waves.
I did as Brother Guido had bid me and began to pray.