I had a revelation. “Maybe he’s following me, not you. Perhaps he thought that when he murdered Brother Remigio he had dispatched you. If he picked up the trail at Fiesole, he may have thought you were a monkish escort that Abbot Giles sent with me to Pisa to guard my way.”
“Then how are we to explain what happened to my uncle?” He choked a little as he named him.
“Perhaps he died of the bad oysters in sooth.” But I knew it was not so.
“Then why did he tell me, with his dying breath, to follow the light to the Muda?”
“Because he was dying. Whether of the oysters or of a poisoner’s draught, he would have given you the same instructions.”
“Why did Tok pursue us?”
I thought fast. “Because once your uncle was dead, your cousin wished to remove you as a rival. Perhaps Niccolò’s motivations had nothing to do with the painting.”
“And yet we know that my uncle was one of the Seven, and that Niccolò would have inherited his place in the conspiracy.”
“It does not follow. Perhaps the real Niccolò knows nothing about the Seven. You ‘inherited’ your part in the plot when your uncle passed his ring to you and told you to follow the light to the Muda. Niccolò may have been thought unfit to join the alliance. You said yourself he was a good-for-nothing finocchio who thinks more of fucking small boys than studying his books. My words, not yours,” I added hurriedly.
“But in essentials, you are correct,” he said wryly.
“Well, then. Perhaps the leper does not know your identity. If he has followed us from Florence, you look a much different creature than the scruffy monk in Pisa who had spent two weeks on the road in his own filth. Now”—I looked at him, noble and beautiful in the candlelight—“you are a prince.”
“All right. So you think that he will not move against you at present because he believes you are under the protection of Niccolò della Torre, one of the very seven lords for whom he works?”
“Why not? A clever working girl would change sides in a heartbeat and cling like a limpet. You could protect me, give me every comfort, buy my silence. Perhaps he thinks I am no longer dangerous. I may know the secret of the Primavera, but I am now in the company of one of the plotters, and it would harm your wealth and position to reveal what I know. Why would I do such a thing, if you are now my patron? Perhaps he thinks he need only watch me, for now, to follow my steps. For if I were truly your concubine, to harm me would anger you, perhaps even threaten the enterprise. Perhaps I am safe until you marry and I am then an expendable mistress.”
“Very well. Let’s say he followed you to Santa Croce, murdered Brother Remigio in my stead. He then follows you to Pisa by reason of my name—”
“And the stone tower carved over your door . . .”
“Of course. So then he knows I sent you to Pisa to my uncle before I died. My uncle then dies, however this was wrought, possibly because he thought that he had told me too much of the Seven.”
“And, he was going to introduce us to Lorenzo de’ Medici!” I cried, struck with a revelation as if I traveled the road to Damascus. “The leper thought that we were set to reveal all, that your uncle regretted his involvement and was set to warn Lorenzo that the Seven were plotting against him, that he would reveal to Lorenzo his nephew’s treachery!”
“As you say. Then we escape to the Muda. As far as the leper knows, your monkish escort goes down on the boat. He cannot have reached Naples before us, for we came on the flagship, and the rest of the fleet arrived at least half a day later . . .”
“The next time he sees me,” I took up the tale, “at court, I am now with Lord Silvio’s son, Niccolò, a man magnificently dressed, clean shaven, and a million leagues away from a penniless monk. ‘Lord Niccolò’ wears the thumb ring and closely resembles Lord Silvio. The leper believes that you are loyal to the alliance, and that now your father, the rotten apple, is gone—forgive me—he may merely observe our progress. He was not pursuing us when we ran from the Pantheon,” I admitted, “and he has not revealed your true identity because he does not know it!”
Brother Guido concluded. “The leper thinks you have changed sides and are in the pockets of the Seven. He follows you but does not act.” He fell silent for a time, a silence which told me he thought my theory possible. Then he abruptly changed his theme. “Yet all this conjecture wastes time. Whether or not another party gives us away, we will give ourselves away if we do not meet the king tonight.”
“At midnight?”
“Yes. We must change our tack from this discourse and apply our faculties to the more immediate problem. We cannot know for sure the leper’s business. But we, we have very pressing business of our own, namely that, in less than two hours, we must meet Don Ferrente at a place that we do not know the location of, and my only plan to discover the whereabouts of our tryst has been wrested from me.”
“Speak Tuscan.”
“I meant only that since Don Ferrente must himself go to that place at the hour of midnight, my notion was to follow him there.”
“But he was meeting with his officers first.”
“Yes. We could have waited and followed him again to the appointed place. But now, since we fled the Pantheon in error, there is no way of knowing for sure where the meeting of the Seven will be.”
Ah. “Could we not find some likely places where a king might meet his officers?” I knew I spoke nonsense even as I uttered the words.
“It could be a private house, a palace, even a well-appointed tavern. There are a hundred, a thousand of such places in Rome, and our time is short. No, our best chance of success is to apply ourselves to the only clue we were given as to the whereabouts of the meeting, for that was dropped from the lips of the king himself.”
“You mean whatever he muttered in English.”
“He said ‘under the seventh sun.’ ”
“Clear as cow shit.”
“It seems impossible, I know, but we are well versed in such deductions now, Luciana. We have followed the trail from Florence all the way here, with nothing but our wits and the cartone.”
“Better get the painting out, then,” I said, sighing.
He wagged his index finger at me, as if I were in the schoolroom. “Not this time; for this was a supplementary riddle, provided by the king himself. I’m sure that the answer this time will not be found on the parchment, although the larger themes of the painting will still, doubtless, be at work here. No, we need to think only of the king’s riddle and the city itself.”
“Maybe we’re going about this wrong. In Naples, we found what we sought at the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore. Perhaps there is a San Lorenzo in Rome, must be!”
He raised his head quickly. “I can say that with absolute certainty, for the city of Rome is the very site of San Lorenzo’s martyrdom.”
“He died here? In Rome?” I was surprised—for when the nuns who had taught me Scripture spoke of the saints, I always vaguely reckoned that they had lived in far-off parts of the Holy Land, not in the cities where my own grubby sandals trod.
Brother Guido’s eyes shone blue fire. “Yes. Near the Villa Borghese, not far from the Pantheon. There’s even a shrine containing the gridiron on which he roasted to death.”
“They roasted him?” I always thought martyrdom a noble, if stupid, act, but I never thought that a saint would be cooked like a Yuletide dinner.
“Yes, you do not know the tale?” His face took on a beatific look; Brother Guido was a monk once again. “He was placed on a hot gridiron by the vengeful Romans till his flesh began to sizzle. Then, with great bravery and fortitude, he said, ‘Turn me over, I am done on this side.’ ”
I began to laugh. “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “But it is funny.”
He conceded a smile. “Yes. It shows that the servants of Christ cannot be easily vanquished.”
“All right.” I sprang to my feet. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s leave here and seek that place—Villa Borghese.”<
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“No.”
“What now?”
“It’s a good notion, Luciana, but it’s just not right. San Lorenzo has nothing to do with the words ‘the seventh sun.’ We are thinking too much of God and sanctity, but here in Rome everything is different. Did you not hear Don Ferrente? ‘The old gods hold sway tonight.’ These are the old days and the old ways. Unpalatable as it is, we must turn our thoughts to the pagan, even the heathen, not the Christian.”
I saw what he meant. “For even the king is different here.”
“What mean you?” But he looked like he thought so too.
“Well, in Naples, he was almost preaching the Gospel at his feast, talking of Christ, and the dayspring, and his model of the Nativity; almost as pious and pope-holy as you. Then, when we’d just left the city—do you remember, just after the earthquake—he said it was the old gods who shook the earth’? And here in Rome it’s all Romans and pagans and the power of the sun.”
“You are absolutely right. Could it not be,” he said slowly, “that in those Christian pronouncements in Naples he was dissembling—his preachings were merely clues to lead us to the church to view the fleet? He mentioned Christ on Calvary—”
“Showing us the way!” I cried.
“And that’s how we found the door to the underground fleet—the seventh station of the cross, Christ’s last journey to Calvary, on the wall of the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore.”
“But here, he is more concerned with the sun, the moon, the seasons . . .”
“He takes us to witness an eclipse . . .”
“Even his riddle speaks of the sun . . .”
“Sol Invictus!” Brother Guido crowed triumphantly. “The pendant that Venus wears in the Primavera. The sun. And,” he went on, “that Marsilio Ficino letter that you recalled in the Pantheon. The entire extract runs, ‘The Sun makes clear all your inventions by its light. Finally Venus, with her very pleasing beauty, always adorns whatever has been found.’ ”
It all fitted. Venus was the figure of Rome, she wore a sun pendant. We were on the right course. “Let’s think this through,” said I. “The king took us to a church—”
“Which was once a pagan temple . . .” Our words tumbled out so fast that they almost crossed each other.
“And told us to meet him under the seventh sun . . .”
But then we stopped, graveled for lack of matter, and could go no further.
Madonna. ‘Twas a tough cipher this time. The seventh sun. The seventh sun. There was but one sun in the Primavera, on Venus’s breast. But one sun in the heavens. What were the others?
We sat in silence then, puzzling, speaking only to begin sentences then dispose of these fragments of ideas as quickly as they had come to us. “Would there be . . . is there a temple, or palace, with seven suns painted on the ceiling? Like a fresco?” I ended weakly.
“Mayhap there is. But we would never find such a place in time.” More silence.
“Perhaps . . .” he suggested in turn, “it has something to do with months of the year? The primavera is, after all, a season, the season of spring.”
“So?” I was bullish, for my arse hurt on the cold damp stone and I was mad that my fresco idea had been dumped out of hand.
“Maybe the seventh sun is the seventh month. Sept-ember.”
“Brilliant,” I scoffed. “It’s July, but I’ll meet you at midnight in September.”
He dropped his head, chastened, and we fell again to silence.
Then it was my turn. “You said that Rome was built on seven hills. What about under the seventh?”
He brightened a little. “The seventh hill. It could be so. And yet a hill has nothing to do with the sun.”
“A sun rises over it?” I was reaching now.
He shrugged. “Perhaps. It’s the best notion we have had thus far.”
“So which is the seventh?” My voice was bright with hope.
“I could name the seven for you—but there would be no way of really determining which hill is the ‘seventh,’ for God made all the lands on the same day.” His hand reached up to rub his chin. “I could tell you with some confidence of the name of the one which would be considered the first hill, for tradition has it Rome was founded on the Palatine hill by Romulus. But as to the ‘last,’ I could not say. The others are named—let me see—Aventine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, and Caelian.”
Once again I could not help but admire his knowledge, un-helpful though it was in the present case. “But we’re looking for one that you can get underneath,” I reminded him. “That cannot be true of them all, surely?”
He shook his head. “Sadly, your assertion is not true—all the hills could well have subterranea—this very place where we now shelter is only one of the myriad underground tunnels in Rome. In fact”—the blue eyes blazed again—“we are under a hill now! Did you not see the ancient mound, when we entered through a dark door?”
“So you are saying that this might be one of the hills?” I gestured above my head, looking about me properly for the first time. I’d been so caught up in our desperate discourse that I had not noticed what was before my very eyes. I got to my feet. “What is this place?”
He stood, too, his posture giving weight to his words, like an actor. “A labyrinth of the dead. The Catacombs.”
I licked suddenly dry lips. “A labyrinth of . . . of the . . . dead?” I gave a shiver despite myself.
“To be sure,” he replied breezily. “All these cavities”—he pointed to the rectangular holes in the walls, set at regular intervals—“are graves. Observe, you can see the bones within, and the winding sheets too.”
I backed away from the charnel.
“And they are clearly respected still in this modern day—see, the devotional candles still burn.”
I cared not if the candles burned, I wanted out of this bone house and my fear showed in my face.
“Don’t be afeared. Death holds no horrors for those who believe in the afterlife.”
But I wasn’t sure I was one of those people.
“Think once more of San Lorenzo in his agony. There are many tombs here in the Catacombs, it’s true; yet there is peace and hope also.”
I had to disagree. “It’s pretty sinister, if you ask me.”
“You find it so? I feel only serenity, for this was a place of great faith.”
“How do you mean?”
“The first Christians used to worship in such places in the days when the Romans worshipped their false pagan deities and to name God or his Son could spell death. But the true faith is evident in these inscriptions—look . . . perhaps there is somewhat here that will instruct us.”
“You think?”
“It cannot hurt to look for clues.” He read for me the Latin characters scratched on the wall, spidery characters hewn into the stone, yet surprisingly neat and regular after the wear of centuries—a labor of love. “Here’s a reference to seven!”
“Soothly?” I came to see. “Anything about suns?”
“No . . . I was mistaken. They are family names . . . a deacon named Severus, and here”—his voice grew soft—“his daughter who died while he still lived, another seven as I thought, but now I see she was named Severa after her father.” He read as if he intoned a prayer. “ ‘The mortal body is buried here until He makes it rise again. And the Lord who has taken from Severa her chaste, pure, and forever inviolable soul with her saintly spirit will give it back adorned with spiritual glory. She lived nine years, eleven months, and fifteen days. Thus she passed from this earthly life.’ ”
I was touched by the fate of the little girl even so long ago, touched by the father who loved her enough to stand in this dark place weeping and carving by the light of a guttering flame till his fingers bled, to think of her all the days of his life, and to die, many years later, and be buried with her in this place, their bones collapsing into an embrace at last. I wished that I had a parent to love me so. I’ll find you one day,
Vero Madre, and you will hold me to you and call me dear. I could not speak for a moment, so lost was I in this little human tragedy. I remembered, too, that Brother Guido had just lost the only parent known to him, and I’m pretty sure that we both forgot our quest for a moment. I shot a look of sympathy at my friend, but it was not heeded or needed, for Brother Guido was off on a more spiritual bent.
“Do you see now? Do you hear their voices across the ages? You are hearing, directly, what early Christians thought of the last realities of death and the fate of the soul in eternity, in the days when faith must be hidden. They truly believed, even then, that the soul would rise again, like Saint Lazarus, like our Lord Jesus himself. Now you see what I mean, that this is a cemetery where everything speaks of life more than death. And now we are truly blessed, for in the modern age we need not fear, need not bury our faith underground.” He stroked the inscriptions tenderly with his long sensitive fingers. “Indeed, His Holiness Pope Sixtus—whom God willing we will meet on the morrow—has built a wondrous chapel for all to see, to the glory of the Lord, and plans a dome for Peter’s church even greater than the one that crowns the Duomo in your native Florence.”
The bells of the nearby basilica struck a warning chime, telling me that time was short, and recalling me to the quest. I tried to return to the matter at hand. “So if we are in a meeting place where those who had to meet in secret once hid, might we not be in the right place? Under the right hill? By chance?”
“It’s possible. But nothing I have read so far fits the riddle.”
I looked about me, desperate for an idea. Saw, in the warm glow of the candles, images which I had not seen before stand forth on the walls. “Mayhap we must look to their paintings as well as their words—for it was a painting that began all this!”
The Botticelli Secret Page 22