Brother Guido seemed to lose a couple of inches in height. “Then it is hopeless. The painting is probably installed at the Medici villa at Castello by now, which has a hundred guards. We must just hope that this final rose is not significant.”
“But wait—did you not say the Primavera was a wedding gift?” asked Brother Nicodemus urgently.
“I am sure of it.”
“Then there is no problem. The painting will be at the wedding.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Eh?” Brother Guido and I spoke together, in our different styles.
“It is Tuscan tradition that the gifts await the happy couple at the narthex of the church,” the herbalist explained. “Depend upon it, the painting will be there—presented or displayed with grand gesture. ‘Tis the Medici way. And this in itself suggests to me the last rose is significant.”
“How so?”
“From what you have told me, all of the Seven will be at this wedding. And the painting too. They may all read what lies in Flora’s arms. I think it’s a fail-safe.”
I was lost, and my face showed it.
“An insurance,” explained the herbalist. “You place a code in a picture. You want the picture to be read by certain exalted persons and not others. So you take the picture to a place where they will all be, and the painting is in full sight. The last rose is the insurance. Suppose someone steals a copy of the picture—the cartone.”
I saw where he was going. “Someone did steal a copy.”
“Exactly. Botticelli has built in a detail that can only be seen on the real panel. He has insured the code as one might underwrite a fleet at sea—only those noble enough to see the real painting at close quarters, only those lofty enough to be invited to a Medici wedding—the conspirators—will be looking for the fail-safe and be able to interpret what they see. That rose is significant, I am now sure of it.”
“And if anyone knows about insurance it is the Medicis, the richest banking family in the world,” added Brother Guido.
“More significant still is the fact that since Roman times, the rose has been associated with secrets. It was then the custom to suspend a rose over the dinner table as a sign that all confidences shared there—sub rosa, or ‘under the rose’—were to be held sacred.”
This intriguing thought clearly made my companion’s heart beat with the chase like a hunter’s hound’s. But my heart was steady—we were curs on a dead scent. For even if we could tell if the rose grew or fell, we still had not discovered the secret that lay “sub rosa.” We had nothing to tell il Magnifico. “Are we actually going to march up to Lorenzo de’ Medici and say, “The secret is thirty-two roses’? Or ‘thirty-one roses, becauses we’re not sure which’? Brilliant.”
Brother Guido slumped again. “I know. But what choice do we have?”
“Perhaps it’s a password, and he will know the significance at once?” offered Brother Nicodemus.
I snorted through my nose. “So let’s sum up: we are to tell the father of all Florence that his cousin and ward is plotting against him, with six other conspirators, four of whom we don’t know. We have a password, ‘thirty-two roses,’ or ‘thirty-one.’ All this we got from a painting which is one of the wedding presents. Wonderful.”
The sky lightened outside—the wedding neared. And I couldn’t help adding a very feminine concern. “And the wedding is in two hours and I have nothing to wear.”
Brother Guido stood abruptly. “You are right. If we are to attend the ceremony, and petition Lorenzo, with whatever little we have, there are certain practicalities we must turn our minds to. You need an outfit, and I need a retinue, fit for a prince.”
“May la signorina not just attend in what she wears now?” Brother Nicodemus, silent through this exchange, piped up now to quash my sinful vanity. I looked down at the crumpled black velvet gown I had worn for a trinity of steamy days on the road since my audience with the pope, and back to the herbalist with a crushing look. I could not, as the consort of the Prince of Pisa, wear a dress travel stained and caked in sweat to the wedding of the year; nor did Tuscan protocol allow that black should be worn at a wedding. Added to this, the thick nap of the velvet was suffocating—well enough for a dank herbarium at midnight, but in the Florentine midday I would expire. I did not deign to say all this aloud, for Brother Guido at least had enough knowledge of the world to know it would not do.
“I need other weeds myself, but the retinue would seem to be the greater problem.”
At this the herbalist spoke again. “Not a problem, Brother. For here before me I see a monk in layman’s weeds; other monks could dress so too. I have four novices, so not yet tonsured, who can be roused from their beds and dressed to accompany you.”
“Dressed in what?” I asked, curious.
“We are given precious garments from time to time, as tithes or donations, or even bequests from the dead. I will have the coffer brought here—for there may be somewhat to help you too, signorina.”
It was kindly meant, but I could not imagine myself going to the Medici wedding in fusty old clothes fit for monasteries’ coffers, left by dead debtors.
I could not have been more wrong—nothing could have prepared me for the treasure I was soon to see. Four sleepy novices soon entered the herbarium, buckling under an inlaid walnut chest that they carried. As the youths were greeted and briefed by the two older monks, I opened the lid onto Solomon’s treasure. I did not heed their planning as I plunged my hands into the softest rainbow silk, silver tissue as light as gossamer, spun cloth of gold flimsy as a spider’s web, and bales of samite. Most of the clothing was for gentlemen, but there lay, too, three ladies’ gowns, folded and waiting like shed snakeskin. While the menfolk fitted themselves out—the herbalist’s quartet of novices bubbling with excitement that they were to attend a wedding in the outside world—I took the three gowns behind the firescreen and emerged in one of spring green threaded with gold. I had no mirror today but knew I resembled Spring herself. The notion reminded me what my apparel lacked; I rolled the cartone once more and placed it in my bodice. Now my costume was complete and I turned to face the company. The silk lay cool against my body even before the fire, but the gaze of the novices and Brother Guido—although he tried to conceal his admiration—heated my skin once again.
The herbalist circled me. “Should she be disguised though?” he said, as if I could not hear him. “For if the painting is there, it will be clear to all that Flora is also present in person. Unless her hair is covered.”
Brother Guido regarded me. “There will be those present who know her as my consort, and will recognize her in the picture,” he considered, “but to the general populace—well, it would be better if her presence does not attract too much attention.”
I thought for a moment. My vanity usually dictated that my hair be worn loose in a golden fall, but as the hour of the wedding drew near, my stomach was full of moths and my nervous, bubbling humors prompted me to be as hidden as I could be.
“Here then,” I said, pouncing on the cloth of gold. “I’ll bind my hair in the Turkish style—all the fashion at present.” It occurred to me then how fickle a goddess fashion was; from the herbalist’s tale, we were all in fear of the savage Turks six months ago, and now the ladies of Florence paraded forth in infidel headgear.
I wrapped the cloth around my hair till it was all hidden, feeling strangely naked without my curls to frame my face. I presented myself to Brother Guido for an opinion and saw in his expression that he was admiring but intrigued. “Well?” I demanded.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “You look no less beautiful, but without your hair you are a different person. Among the guests no one will know you for Flora save Don Ferrente, his queen, and—”
He stopped short.
“And?”
“ ‘Tis nothing,” he faltered. I knew he was dissembling, but before I could ask what he hid, he turned abruptly to his brother herbalist.
“One thin
g more, Brother. Do you know aught of a man, a Florentine, who goes about in leper’s robes?”
“I know many such, sadly.”
“He differs from the common herd of the unclean. He is immensely tall with a wasted right hand, and a strange appearance of silver in his gaze.”
Even hearing the creature described gave me a shiver. And I was not alone in that; Brother Nicodemus visibly started. “You’ve seen him?”
“Three times now. You know him?”
“Not well. I have met him but once, many years ago, when he came here for help—for my skill as an herbalist and healer.” It was said without boast. “I had to send him away, for his malady was too far gone for help. I have never seen him since. I thought him now a legend, a story to scare children. His name is Cyriax Melanchthon.”
The name repelled.
“Who . . . what is he?”
“Cyriax was a babe born of a Florentine mother and a Flemish father. He entered the Dominican order as an youth, and took a very hard line there—he was involved for some years with the Holy Office.”
I saw Brother Guido swallow.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“The Inquisition,” answered the herbalist briefly. Even I had heard of the Inquisition, with their hideous tortures and burnings of infidels.
“He became the Medici family confessor—”
“And now works for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco!” I finished. Brother Guido quelled me with a look, for the herbalist was not done.
“He went once on their business to the Holy Land, traveling with a Florentine delegation after the peace of Constantinople. It was there that this thing landed upon him—he caught the leprosy and began to waste. It was said that at the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem he stripped off his Dominican robes and cursed God. His wasted flesh, naked and rotting, was such a horror to all that saw it that it was said the sky darkened that day. He burned his robes on the sepulcher, took leper’s weeds, and has been an instrument of the Devil ever since.”
“But the Medici still maintain his services?” asked Brother Guido, incredulous. Even a man who had fallen out of love with the church could not but be shocked at the offense of cursing God at the holiest church in Christendom.
“Not officially,” replied the herbalist. “It is certain that he returned here to Florence, for it was then that I saw him and sent him away. I have not heard his name for many years, and thought him dead—that his malady had eaten him. But there have been sightings of him, again in Florence, as I said, instances that have passed into legend to scare the children. But there are rumors, too, that he is the most efficient assassin the world holds. He cannot speak, for the leprosy pulled the jaw from his face like a wishbone. To look upon his countenance, his half-face of horror, is to look on death, for if he takes off his face cloth, his victims die of fright, or he cuts their throats like swine.”
Enna. Bembo. Brother Remigio.
“How is he the best, if he is so afflicted?” I breathed, dreading the answer.
The herbalist turned his calm eyes upon me. “Because, child, he is already dead.”
My blood froze. I had been right in Rome when I thought the leper a phantom. “He’s . . . a . . . ghost?”
The dry chuckle again, this time the humor of a graveyard. “Not quite. I meant only that he will die, sooner or later; there is no saving him. So he does not care anymore—he feels that God has turned his back on him, so he carries out his contracts with absolute dispatch. He is the perfect killer; silent, for he cannot speak or betray those who hire him, and he may go anywhere untouched and untroubled because of his malady and his leper’s weeds. For who will challenge one of the unclean? Who will pluck him by the sleeve or wrap their arms about him to detain him?”
I felt sick with terror. “Then, we are surely done for.”
“Not so. I think you are safe, for now at least.”
Easy for him to say. “How do you figure that?”
The answer was brief. “Because if Cyriax Melanchthon wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
The word echoed from the walls like a knell. Brother Guido piped up for the first time in this exchange.
“Then what does he want with us?”
“He is following you, it seems. Why, I cannot tell. But it is to be hoped that your alias protects you—when that is gone, who knows?”
To herald this cheerful thought the bells of the Pazzi Chapel gave tongue again, calling us to the wedding of their ancient enemy, and now a new chime added to theirs. The church of San Lorenzo, the Medici family church in the distant quarter of Santa Maria Novella, began to sing in counterpoint with their old enemy, the two rivals finding peace in the harmony of their intervals. Time marched, and there was not a moment to do aught more but offer our hands to Nicodemus of Padua in thanks.
“Come home to us soon, my son,” said the old man, who had followed us to the cloister door and stood blinking in the sunlight at the gate of his kingdom.
Brother Guido shook his head. “This is no longer my home. I will never return here.” There was great resolve in the words but great sadness too. I felt my lips twitch downward in sympathy for what he’d lost. The bright eyes of the herbalist searched those of the younger man.
“You will, one day,” he said, and took Brother Guido’s hand. I had expected him to take the outstretched hand of his friend. I did not expect him to then turn and take mine.
But he did.
28
Florence was a world of color.
After the black and white of the Neapolitan court, I was dazzled by my gaudy city. We processed through the streets with as much pomp as our makeshift retinue allowed us, and everywhere I saw the hues that I had missed in the black-and-white world we had left. By our sides the four novices marched in liveries of rose and amber; we had no Pisan pennants so Brother Guido had bade them carry scarves of orange and red, the colors of the della Torre Cockerel party, which flowed behind us like flags. We passed under the massive looming shadow of the Duomo, and even this holy building seemed a patterned palace today, the strong sun picking up the triple marbles of green, red, and gold. My eyes were dizzy with color, my ears deaf with the bawling of the bells. I saw from the corner of my eye three shabby harlots lounging on the Baptistery steps, yawning and scratching in the sun, legs lolling apart for the passing gentry. I raised my chin an inch, feeling how far I had left them behind. Today I felt as noble as I was pretending to be.
But as we turned into the Mercato Lorenzini and I glimpsed the rough brown frontage of the Medici church, my courage left me and my bowels turned to water—
I felt they would drop from my stomach like the guts of Francesco Pazzi as he dangled from his noose.
My mouth dried as we entered the square and were assailed by more carnival and color and chaos. Truly, here I felt my senses deserted me. Petals fell from the sky as cheering citizens cast them from high windows, a multicolored snowstorm. This was a city of flowers, last night and this day. The church of San Lorenzo itself, a rough brown treasure casket, was today elevated from its workaday appearance; it was garlanded at the door with festoons and bouquets. The portal swallowed a steady stream of guests, nobles and dignitaries, bright as Barbary parrots in their wedding-day finery and screeching like them too.
I felt that I had left the common world and entered a world of fairy tale. I knew it to be so when the Medici giraffe—the same creature I had once seen wandering through the blue dusk on the hillside of Fiesole—strode across the square. Its neck was hung about with flowers, its long black tongue snaking out to snatch the laurel branches that hung from each window.
After a night of dark and quiet in the old stones of Santa Croce I felt overcome, and would have stumbled but for Brother Guido’s strong grip on my arm. He looked at me once, did not smile but nodded. I felt a little strengthened, and then we were at the church, and the dark doors swallowed us.
In the cool of the interior, I began to feel better—the colors w
ere not so bright here, the shrieking voices of nobility likewise muted. We were shown to the garlanded pews behind the royal House of Naples and gratefully sank from view behind the king and queen, canary bright in blue and yellow—so different from their native black. I hoped that the eyes of the casual observer would travel to them and no farther. My turban began to itch.
Seated and safe for the moment, I was free to look about me as the drums and timbrels played a wedding hymn to the arriving guests. I looked at every haughty figure, every noble face, for the remaining members of the Seven. There was Don Ferrente, there the Judas-pope himself in a cloak of cinnabar red. Where were the others, that quartet of unknown conspirators? Were they here, ready for their instruction? Three things clamored for my attention above all the wonder before me.
Cosa Uno: across the aisle from us sat a strange creature, so exotic that even in such company she attracted the eye. She was clad in a gown of green and gold like my own, but with her face entirely covered with a golden mask. The workmanship of the mask was exquisite—it was the face of a lioness, studded with seed pearls and chased with curlicues of gilt, while a filigree veil of finest gold mail hung from chin to throat. I was fascinated by the strange lady, almost Eastern in her mystery. She sat silently next to an elderly man in white and scarlet robes wearing a white velvet hat shaped like a penis. My eye soon left him, bizarre though his weeds were, to stray back to the lady, for she invited my gaze like a fisherman draws a catch within his net. I gawped openly at the lion mask, almost forgetting there was a person within, until I saw that, from behind her disguise, she regarded me, too, with eyes as green as my own. I turned away, flushed, but as I did so I realized—she was the dogaressa.
The doge’s courtesan—a woman so fair she did not remove her mask.
So the man in the cock hat she escorted must be the doge of Venice.
And if it were so, she was the mother of the girl intended for Niccolò della Torre—Brother Guido’s cousin and the man he now pretended to be.
The Botticelli Secret Page 27