The Botticelli Secret
Page 19
“Then we have our answer,” said Brother Guido in a low, awed voice, “clearly war is planned, on a massive scale.”
“Could Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco be plotting against his cousin Lorenzo, with the King of Naples, and your uncle, and”—I quickly calculated—“four others?”
“I know not. One way to tell would be to attend the wedding as planned and see if Lorenzo wears a ring upon his thumb.”
“So we must return there then?” I said, a burst of joy and terror in me. “To Florence? Home?” The word held none of the comfort that it should.
He looked at me as if he, too, felt my divided heart. “We had to go back someday.”
“Why?”
“Because of Flora,” he replied briefly.
“Why?” I repeated, my eyes on the fleet before us.
“Come on, Luciana. Flor-a. Flor-ence. The figure in the Primavera is Florence’s most beauteous citizen—you—covered in flowers. Flora. Flora is Florence.”
I could see the logic of what he said, sweetened as it was by the compliment. We did not need a lengthy conference to come to that conclusion. “But there is somewhere else we must go first?”
He nodded. “One figure, that of Venus, stands between us and Florence. One city, before Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s wedding.” Brother Guido sounded as if he knew more than he told, but did not press the point, and before I could prod him further his mind took another tack. “Indeed, there must be some reason why these fleets are hidden, deep down here in the south, where a northern state such as Florence could never guess what might is being amassed against them. It would explain why my uncle, if we are to assume his culpability, did not just leave the fleet in Pisa. It is too close to Florence and would be seen by those coming for commerce to the seaport.” He thought for a moment, clearly troubled by his uncle’s involvement in anything less than honorable and by his own masquerade as his cousin, his own involvement. “Don Ferrente meant for us to see this. That is why his snake, Santiago, was being so knowing this morning—he knew there was a hidden passage from the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore through Neapolis to this cavern—volcanic probably. A fantastic, vast harbor created by nature, unseen by all those above—a perfect place to conceal a secret armada—but a secret that all those who can read the painting would know.”
“All of the Seven,” I put in.
“Precisely. But it is likely that Don Ferrente and any others of the Seven have been down here regularly, to see the ships amass, to make their plans. For this place is only accessible through the church, or from the open sea. This is where our friend Capitano Ferregamo would have been instructed to bring the ships when he arrived from Pisa. It’s where all the others that were not wrecked would have come.”
I scanned the topmasts and saw, at the mouth of the cave, perhaps a hundred ships flying the cross pennant of Pisa. “Look!” I cried. “There they are! The Muda, the very fleet we saw being completed not a sennight ago.” I looked about me. “Why aren’t they guarded?”
“No need,” rejoined my companion. “No one knows they are here save the Seven or the sailors who are in the pay of the Seven.”
We walked forward to survey the amazing scene—and I marveled again at the difference between this fleet and the one we had seen in Pisa—here there were no shipwrights swarming like ants, no carpenters. No tar-monkeys. These ships were ready. But ‘twas a ghost fleet with no one to sail it. “And where are those sailors?”
Brother Guido shrugged. “Disporting themselves in the port no doubt.”
I nodded knowingly. “Rum and whores.”
“As you say,” he replied wryly. “There is a great enterprise afoot—lives will be lost soon enough—they are doubtless enjoying their leisure while they may.”
“Jesu. What has your uncle gotten us into?”
He refrained from replying that it was, in fact, I who had gotten us into this.
“I don’t know. But it’s up to us to get ourselves out of it.” He pointed out to the ocean. “See, the sun climbs. If we are to return to the castello before the Angelus, we must away.” He turned back. We had seen what we had come to see, and headed back as if to return to Neapolis and thence the church of San Lorenzo.
And thence the leper.
It was time.
I put my hand on his arm. “Not that way.” I told him what I had seen—the Old Man of the Nile’s warning, the malevolent leper by the Roman pillar, the same leper in the church above, following us, observing us from beneath his cowl with his silver eyes.
For a moment I heard nothing but the whisper of the tide and the groan of the ships pressing against each other in the swell, then Brother Guido spoke.
“But even if he was there, what makes you believe that he is the author of all our woes and has followed us all this while?”
I shrugged. “I just do.”
“But that is not logical. You say he has a threatening presence, yet this is surely an impression assisted by his stature, and the fact he is swathed in robes and a cowl with his features bandaged—”
“It’s his eyes,” I insisted.
“And you say,” he went on smoothly without pause, “that his eyes have a strange quality—almost metallic. Perhaps it is so, for God makes man in many differing castes. But you must see how irrational you are being. We know not what this unfortunate’s business is with us. He could as easily be a friend as a foe. For you have not actually had any discourse with him, have you?”
“Of course not,” I scoffed, “as I’m fairly sure that our first conversation would be my last.”
He took my hands, and I realized with the touch of his fingers how cold my blood had run since I had seen the leper. “Luciana. Suppose you are right. Suppose this figure had some malign intent. Who are his paymasters? If he has indeed pursued us from Florence, then how is it that we are, and have been for some time, successfully playing the part of my cousin and his courtesan? If this person knows our true identities, why have we not been revealed to our hosts?”
I shrugged, sulky now. “All I know is, he scares the shit out of me. And if you’re so sure he’s no threat to us, why don’t you walk out of here right now and back to San Lorenzo, and make your courtesies? Perhaps you could shake him by his leprous hand.”
“I am not saying that he is no threat to us.”
My voice heated. “And who killed Enna, and Bembo, and Brother Remigio by the well, and even your uncle?”
He blanched. “I did not assert, as you know, that there was no foul play in these cases. I think, as I said at the time, that someone thought we had learned the secret of the painting and wished us out of the way.”
“So what do you think happened to those assassins?”
“That we lost them on the voyage to Naples. There was little chance that we could be followed across the high seas, for we did not even know where we were bound, and even if someone had followed us aboard ship, the flagship went down with all hands.”
“The rest of the fleet got there well enough, though.” I made a sweeping gesture at the multitude of ships anchored before us.
He turned to me, his blue eyes troubled as a stormy sky. “Very well. Supposing I accept your assertion that to return to the church is death. ‘Twill have to be the sea. Can you swim?”
I nodded, breathless. “Can you?”
“No.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Now was not the time to question how a young nobleman could have been raised on the coast without learning to swim. How could I tell my companion I’d rather head into the blue sea that rose and flung itself at the mouth of the cave in an ecstasy of spray and crashing waves? That I’d rather carry him through the brine myself than have to return to that dark crypt and meet once more the silver eyes of the mysterious leper that had followed us here? “We will have to go seaward,” I said stubbornly. “We’ll have to steal a bark or something.” But the way was impossible. Angry cobalt waves at the cave’s mouth now swelled to tidal proportions to confound us. We w
ould be dashed from the rocks and claimed by the sea, swimmers or not. We skirted the thousand ships and stood huddled together on the foamy shores of the lake as the spume licked at our boots. “We’re trapped,” I admitted gloomily.
“Not so,” said Brother Guido gently. “We must repair to the church and brave the fellow if he is indeed awaiting us. Time is short—we must return else we will miss the royal train north.”
I knew he was right—but my cold dread weighed me down like the seawater that had soaked my velvet skirts. I stumbled as I tried to turn, and fell to my knees in the surf. I shrugged off the monk’s helping hand; while I was down there I thought I may as well pray for a miracle to keep me from that church and the gaze of those silver eyes.
You will know, by now, that prayer is not a custom with me. In fact, if the Lord had a spare moment in his day I doubted he would heed a lost sheep such as myself. But, incredibly, a miracle came. The vicious elements that ruled this place now smiled upon us and offered a marvel. In a moment of eerie calm, and sudden silence, the sea began to retreat—sliding back and over the sands like the tide going out in the time it takes the heart to beat. In an instant, the waters were gone. We looked at each other, baffled.
“God has smoothed our path,” said Brother Guido, smiling. “He has taken the sea away from our feet, as he did for Moses.”
I had never thought myself a second Moses before today, but my companion spoke the truth; the water moved from our sight almost to the horizon, leaving nothing but a calm blue line between earth and sky.
“Never mind all that,” I interrupted his biblical musings. “Let’s go.”
Behind us the ships in the hidden lake sank down till they were almost graveled, their timbers and ropes whining and creaking in protest. They were saved from grounding only by the shallows of the natural reservoir, retained within the enormous cavern by a lip of rock at the mouth of the cave. We clambered over the retaining shingle and scrambled down to the sands—instantly dry and golden in the noonday sun.
‘Twas hard to countenance what we saw; it was not just low tide, but as if a sea had never existed on this shore. “What has happened to the ocean?” I breathed, unwilling to break the sudden quiet.
Brother Guido shook his head in wonder. “I know not. Perhaps it is a thing of custom here—a sudden riptide that takes the sea away. At the mud flats of Pisa, sometimes the seas withdraw at an ill moon. But I have never seen it occur with such rapidity, nor completeness.”
The sand was flat and gold as a wheatfield, and the sky as blue as Mary’s cloak. It was a peerless day, and at another moment to stroll along the sands thus with the man I loved would have been my dearest dream. But all was not right. The sun was too bright, the sky too blue. Everything seemed too—well, real. And furthermore there were no birds singing; even the seagulls—whose constant yakking and mewing I’d endured for three days now—were silent. There was not a creature on the beach despite the sudden retreat of the sea, not a worm’s cast, not a stranded herring. The air seemed strange, viscous, as if ‘twas an effort to walk through it. I tried to express somewhat of this to Brother Guido. “The air seems, well . . . solid, not liquid as it usually is.”
I expected him to scoff at me as he had many times before, but he glanced about and nodded.
“I know what you mean. Like the saint’s blood.”
I remembered the legend of San Gennaro—remembered the bright moon last eve, and now the sea had drained away like water from a ewer. Portents, omens, signs. I shivered despite the heat of the day, and my steps quickened. We walked the short distance to the port and, by strange chance, entered the city once again by clambering upon the jetty where we had landed a day ago. This time, though, no waves lapped the wooden pier, and no citizens thronged the dock. We took the same route through the market, but today doors closed as we passed and the black-clad widows pulled their veils across their faces. Lethargy had replaced lechery, calm had replaced chaos. Curs skulked in the shadows, their barking silenced, their heads on their paws. Today the sign of the Devil’s horns was everywhere—every citizen from the oldest graybeard to the youngest child made the sign with their hands: little and first finger extended, and middle fingers held by the thumb.
We climbed the silent hill to Castel Nuovo and were let pass at the gates. Inside the castle courts I looked forward to a return to normality, but here, too, there had been a sea change. Outside the keep a dozen gold and black carriages lined in wait. The black horses stood still as statues, but rolled their eyes to the whites, their flanks dark with sweat. They did not shift in place or flick manes or tails at bothersome flies—for, incredibly, there were no flies to swat away. Brother Guido and I walked grimly forth to join a waiting Santiago. Now there was no argument about whether we would or would not return home to Florence with the king. Whether we went all the way there or not, one thing was for sure: we had to leave this eerie place in those fast carriages or face we knew not what. At Santiago’s gesture, we followed him to the royal carriage. We needed no second invitation, for I felt more and more uneasy. Brother Guido wrenched open the gilded door of the third carriage, with the elaborate cognizance of the House of Aragon upon it. We climbed inside and almost fell into the laps of the king and queen. They nodded, but their tongues were silent, their smiles muted. They felt it too.
As I caught my breath I looked to the bay below and marveled at how hidden were the cavern and the fleet—had it not been for the riddle of Fiammetta we would never have known it was there.
But as I looked to sea I saw something else.
The ocean was gathering in an enormous steely mass on the horizon, a wave of such biblical proportions that it seemed all seven seas were rising to crash upon the hapless city and sweep us from the coast like insects. Fishmouthed in horror, I pointed seaward and my noble companions followed my finger with their eyes. It was enough.
“Drive!” bellowed Don Ferrente. As the order left his lips three things happened.
Cosa Uno: the twelfth stroke of the Angelus struck.
Cosa Due: the angry sea rushed home upon the city.
Cosa Tre: the driver’s whip cracked and the earth did too.
An immense rumbling shook the ground beneath us and the castle walls round about. I looked to Brother Guido, horrified, my teeth rattling in my head and my ribs shaking in my chestspoon. Masonry began to fall from the fortress, and we lurched forward at a pace that would be frightening were it not that every hoofbeat took us farther away from this falling place. It felt as if the end of the world had come, but our horses sped down the drive and hurtled out of the castle gates, needing no further cuts of the whip. As we rattled around like polenta in a stockpot we wordlessly regarded the scene below. The vengeful tide seemed set to consume the bay as the waters curdled and seethed on the shores, greedily snatching boats from the harbor and shacks from the hillside. I clasped Brother Guido’s arm hard enough to hurt, in genuine fear for my life as the horses bolted through the ruined city. I felt his hand squeeze mine in return. I knew at that moment that he felt death approaching too, but I understood also that he had forgiven me for what happened last time we stared doom in the face. In the town below, buildings collapsed before our eyes, crumbling from their foundations upward as the earth continued to shake in violent tremors. More than once we were nearly flattened by falling masonry; the carriage before us overturned in the dust, our terrified horses swerving and pitching just in time. We did not see what happened to the passengers, but there was no question of stopping, not if we were to live. In some places hardly one stone remained standing above another. As we passed San Lorenzo Maggiore somehow I registered that part of that church had fallen in a heap of stone, the tower standing firm like a chimney as gray dust climbed into the sky like smoke. I offered a silent prayer that the terrifying black specter with the freezing silver eyes had surely met his end within. Everywhere were the sounds of screams and shouts and the sights of citizens running with their homes piled on their backs, snaillike, th
e corno of the popular song. Firestorms broke out everywhere in little pockets which threatened to spread, and I knew that in such a sun-soaked, arid place the city could soon be reduced to cinders. I understood now the power of the blood of Saint Gennaro—not just religious hocuspocus, which I had snorted at with scorn at last night’s feast. His blood had the power to shake the earth and drain the seas. His blood had not liquefied this year so he had given his people fair warning; he had told his people of impending doom.
And doom had come.
“The city gate!” yelled Don Ferrente to his driver above the chaos. “We must climb the hill away from the city.” He pointed to the glorious triumphal Roman arch we had passed through on the way to San Lorenzo.
Another rumble entered my ribs as the ground shook again. As we hurtled to the gates, rubble rained upon the silk canopy of our carriage, ripping the roof and powdering our heads as the queen and I competed in our screams. Still the faithful horses pressed on, skirting the human disaster, the fallen masonry, and the keening women kneeling and crying by the road. I could not let myself think of what they had lost—we just had to reach the arch and quit this place. We passed the statue of Old Man Nile and I was glad that he, at least, had survived this to live a thousand more years. I blew him a kiss for his earlier warning as we sped past, but this time he was silent, shocked into slumber by the wreck of his citadel. But I knew by the very sight of him that we were nearly at the city gates. The wedding carriages thundered round the corner in a maelstrom of dust, skidded through the great arch and began to climb, and suddenly we were away from the chaos, high in the hills, the earth still once more and the cursed city below us. I wondered that the sun still hung in the sky.