The Botticelli Secret

by Marina Fiorato

  The king confirmed my memory. “I see you admire the frescoes, Doña,” he said kindly. “Little wonder, for they were created for His Holiness very recently by a true magician among painters: one Sandro Botticelli.”

  I knew then the blood drained from my face and I could not speak. Botticelli here? The author of all this trouble? The puzzlemaster himself? I remembered how I had angered him; pictured him now as vengeful Mercury with a curved sword ready to smite me down.

  “Is the artist still in residence?” I croaked, as casually as possible.

  “No”—I breathed relief—“he is just lately gone home to Florence. Sadly we just missed the fellow or I would have had you meet him.”

  Brother Guido and I exchanged a glance.

  “He is shortly to be replaced by another of your Florentine compatriots, Michelangelo Buonarroti, who comes to adorn the pediments and the ceiling.”

  I craned my head skeptically to the ceiling. The space was vast, with huge planes and panels to be covered, and awkward triangular spaces where the cross ribs met the ceiling. Madonna, what a task.

  “You are thinking it cannot be done?” The king cocked a single eyebrow at me.

  I knew not what to say.

  “I am of your mind. But we shall see.”

  I looked at Brother Guido, happy in our escape, but I could see that he was cuckoo struck and staring before him. He had hardly noted our exchange. I looked where he did and knew that it was not the vastness of the space or the beauty of the decoration that bewitched him, but instead the personage we had come to meet.

  For half a league away, before the great altar, sat the pope himself, ready to receive us.

  As the cardinals ushered the king forward and we followed in his wake, I stole a glance at my friend. At that moment he was no longer Prince of Pisa but was once again a humble novitiate of the Franciscan order, ready to meet the greatest man of the church. He looked like he was meeting God. I began to smile, then a notion stopped me, for Brother Guido, monk and orphan, was going to greet the pope, his spiritual father and parent in the church. The pope was the only parent he had left, the church his only family. If I ever got the chance to meet my only parent, my Vero Madre (which I will, one day, mark you), I would be just as moonfazed to be sure.

  The cardinals paused at the golden altar rail and the king and Brother Guido bowed for their audience, while the court and myself knelt as one at the pews directly behind. I bent my head as the others did, but through my steepled fingers I stole a glance at His Holiness, Pope Sixtus IV.

  He sat on a throne of gold, adorned by fluttering cherubs and twisting beasts, the gilt so bright I could hardly look at it. His robes were so crusted with jewels and worked with golden thread that I could not tell you the color of their original fabric. His papal hat was red and white velvet, rimed with seed pearls and rising above a circlet of gold.

  But below the crown, His Holiness’s face was aged, the skin as thin and wrinkled as parchment, the blue eyes pale and rheumy, the papery cheeks webbed with tiny red veins. He was a man after all, and an old one at that. Yet his mien was holy and noble, he stood with vigor and spoke with great energy in ringing tones of authority.

  He moved to Don Ferrente first and placed his hand, blue veined and beringed, on the king’s head. The two great men shared a glance and a complicit nod. Then came the blessing. “May God and his Holy Mother bless you and keep you, now and all the days of your life.”

  He moved then to Brother Guido, and I smiled proudly at the joy my friend must feel. I could see his face, ashen, and white as a nun’s arse-cheeks and hoped he would not faint with religious ecstasy when the holy hand touched him. I felt pride tinged with great sadness, for I knew then he was lost to me—the church was his one love, now and forever; he was wedded to his faith, now and forever. The blessing chimed in my head, and I knew he would take no other bride.

  When the pope had blessed his two noble guests, he intoned three prayers with his hand on a golden psalter, then turned to go, followed by his cardinals, disappearing through a side door into the body of his palace. Thus, in a few short moments, our audience was apparently over. I marveled at a man so powerful that he could afford to give even a king so little of the time of his day.

  But the king seemed genuinely moved, and we all filed out into the great piazza of Saint Peter’s in silence. I breathed the morning air and watched the pigeons peck at the golden stones, watched the faithful gather before the great palace. We were dwarfed by the great gold buildings and the experience we had just had. Brother Guido was still white, his lips pinched, his eyes glossy with tears, more moved than even I had thought. I myself was morose, thinking of the day when he would reenter his order, surely soon after today’s events. Don Ferrente fetched him a clap on the shoulder, which nearly dropped my friend to the ground—I had to steady him. “Let’s away. The carriages are ready. Back to your native Tuscany and the wedding in Florence. Your heart must sing at the thought of it, heh?”

  Brother Guido did not reply, but his rudeness went unnoticed as the king and his retinue swept away across Saint Peter’s Square, to where the carriages waited in a glittering line. I, however, knew that this humor went deeper than a devotional daze.

  We quickly fell behind and I tugged Brother Guido’s elbow. “What’s wrong?”

  No answer.

  I tried again, making light of it. “Jesu. I know you looked forward to meeting the pope, but I had not known you could be so affected!”

  He turned his stricken countenance upon me. “Not so much as you might think. For I have met him once before.”

  Madonna. He had run mad. “What do you mean?”

  He took my face in his hands, his palms and fingers icy on my warm cheeks.

  “Oh, Luciana. My faith is ended, my world is over. I recognized the voice before I even saw the ring on his thumb.”

  The pigeons fluttered at my feet and in my brain. “Who?”

  “His Holiness. He was there—last night.” Brother Guido’s eyes burned into mine. “Pope Sixtus IV is one of the Seven.”

  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 ha
d 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 fucked. 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, s
traight 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.”