I met my father officially shortly after my arrival—on the day of his return to Venice I was allowed to watch him in audience with some of his citizens. After three moot sessions on various shipping rights, and one neighborly dispute about right-of-way on the canal, he beckoned me to him. I kissed his hand as expected, looked into his pale blue eyes and felt nothing. His skin had a waxy pallor, and his dignified stillness added to the impression that he was not, in fact, real.
“I am glad to see you back, Luciana,” he said, kindly enough. “You may kiss us.” I had no time to press my lips to his tallow cheek before I was ushered from the room. And that was the closest I ever got to him. I saw him little, for he even ate apart from us except for formal occasions, and then he sat at the head of the great dining board, as distant from me as the moon. Faraway he may have been, but he was still close enough for me to observe one important detail. On the thumb of his left hand, he wore a golden ring, adorned with nine golden balls—the Medici palle.
My father was one of the Seven.
My intended groom, Niccolò della Torre, was not mentioned, but I knew that my marriage treaty held with the city of Pisa. I even toyed with swallowing my pride and begging Niccolò to intercede for his cousin. Madonna, I would even marry the wight if he could save Brother Guido—but I was kept from his sight until the spring when my instruction was complete. If he visited my father’s house I did not know it, and I was kept from all negotiations. From snippets of gossip from my washerwoman I knew that the dowry was settled and the wedding set for summer, but I could not think of this now. I would never wed him, and knew in my heart that there could be no use in pleading for Brother Guido; I recalled Niccolò’s venomous person and knew such pleas would fall on deaf ears.
But as I settled into my new life I thought of Brother Guido constantly. I was a three-legged dog or a bird with one wing—so used was I to his companionship for those sweet months. And now I knew not whether he lived or died. My mother, pleased with my obedience during her instruction, kept her word and made inquiries as to his whereabouts from the Florentine commune. I paced my room waiting for an answer, and when the runner finally returned, the news was good: Guido della Torre had been released from Bargello but nothing further was known. I felt a huge rush of joy at the news, but soon began to fret once again; I knew that if he’d been released into the hands of his cousin, he may have been safer in jail. I pestered my mother to find out more, and in the space of time that was only a sennight but seemed a year, she reported to me. In a voice filled with truth (I must admit), she informed me that my monkish friend had been released into the arms of the brothers at Santa Croce there to continue his calling on the condition that he did not try to leave their precincts. Relief filled my chestspoon, although a note of doubt sounded—I knew he did not want to reclaim his monkish life, but supposed that, if faced with death, he might have made his peace with his Lord. With that, I had to be content, until I could find a way to quit this place. For I was now trapped indeed. Not just by the city but by the winter, the cruel winds, mountain snows to the north, and freezing tides. However, nothing less than this news could have made me stay. My mother watched my reaction to the news carefully, in some ways as relieved as I. She suspected, I knew, that had I known Brother Guido to be in true danger I would have found a way, somehow, to leave that night.
Yet I was not content for long with my precious snippet of information, and my doubt at Brother Guido’s religious about-face swelled on the horizon like a cloud fattened with rain. I needed some contact, some more news of how he did. Was he well? Had he truly found the church again? I worked as hard as I could with my stern Dominican tutor and one day after a lesson I scratched out a laborious, blotted, short note—an ink-stained plea for information, with pain and hope in every word. After long deliberation I decided to send the missive to Brother Nicodemus, the herbalist, as I did not wish to invite suspicion or draw attention to my friend by having him receive strange messages from Venice. I felt sure the Medicis would be keeping a close eye upon him. I wrote the direction myself and sent a runner to Florence on my own account; these little freedoms were small compensation for my watery prison.
When the reply came, all hope died. Brother Nicodemus of Padua had, of his great kindness, written a reply so simple that I could read it.
“You are mistook. Brother Guido not at Santa Croce; in Bargello awaiting trial. Courage.”
Black hate filled my heart against my mother. That lying bitch. How could I have ever thought her noble, found her companiable? I, even I, had been seduced by her company, after sixteen years of desertion. And she had repaid me with this. How she must have laughed at her little deception. I spent the afternoon in my room, alternating my humors between rage at my mother and anguish at Brother Guido’s fate. How long would he wait for trial before facing the inevitable noose? Had they tortured him, damaged him in mind or body? How long did I have to save him?
I toyed with the idea of confronting my mother with her fraud but knew it would avail me nothing. I was in the Shelion’s den and she would do anything, say anything, to keep me there. It would not do to show her all I knew. I was learning the Venetian way.
Betimes I thought of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his hellish assassin, and allowed myself to speculate on their future plans—for it was certain now that the father of Florence was one of the Seven and had some deadly plot in mind. But such thoughts never occupied me for more than a heartbeat; I forgot all about the thirty-two roses, whatever they may mean, and the rest of the clues we had unearthed in our month-long odyssey. I hid the cartone in an inlaid chest in my room, but never took it out to look—the pain was too great, for I had pored over it so often with him that was gone. I cared not for any plot nor painting anymore—just for my lost companion. I would not rest easy till I saw him again, but as the winter closed in I knew I must wait. Unbearable though it was, I must contemplate a winter here in this freezing city, without the warmth that knowledge of my friend’s fate would give me. I knew, too, that the commune of Florence did not keep miscreants alive for long—there were enough thieves and varmints to fill the Bargello twice over, and the turnover was fast—my friend would soon be dispatched.
From the day the herbalist’s letter reached me, I began to plan my escape.
31
In this cause I began to pay more attention to the lessons of Signor Cristoforo. I wanted to learn all I could of the Stato del Mar—for I knew the only way off this rock was by sea. And I had to admit that the Genoan’s tuition interested me. I was more a child of the sea than I thought, for his stories of great voyages and far-off lands held me bewitched. Only at these times could I almost forget the gaping hole Brother Guido’s loss had blown in my life, like a cannon’s ball through the fo’c’sle. I was a blasted ship limping to shore; I was a doomed siren drowning a little more every day. Hold tight, my love, I vowed. I’ll sail away and rescue you, as soon as the spring tides turn.
At least there was no chance that my Genoese tutor could ever replace my lost friend in my affections. My mother, knowing my history, had chosen a tutor ugly enough that even I would not want to fuck him. Actually, there was never a chance of a jump with Signor Cristoforo, for my interest in getting laid had waned to naught. Even if it had not, there were three major objections to his person.
Obiezione Uno: a flat mat of red hair sat on his head.
Obiezione Due: his nose was bulbous.
Obiezione Tre: his cod was plump to the point of grossness.
But from the first time I met him, I knew that he was cleverer than any man I had ever met, save one.
We had our daily lesson always in the same place—the Sala delle Mappe—a great salon in the upper reaches of my father’s palace, where the walls were covered in maps and charts rendered by Venice’s greatest artists. Voyages were expressed in great sweeping lines, winds were depicted as bearded gods cracking their cheeks and blowing from every corner, spiked compasses sat at each cornice like alien fruit, a
nd fabulous monsters peeped from the curling seas while ornate ships with full-bellied sails dodged their jaws.
Signor Cristoforo, despite his ill-favored appearance, was extremely friendly and—once I had penetrated his thick sailor’s accent—an amusing and gentle man, very good company, and had an absorbing passion for his subject. Once again I could see that a man’s carnal appetites could be suppressed by another genuine passion. Botticelli, a genius in his own time as I suppose I must own, had thought of me no more as a woman than as a bowl of fruit he must paint. And here was this strange little man, not much older than I, who stared into the eyes of the wind rather than my own, would rather gaze on a compass’s face than my countenance, and stared more intently at latitude lines than the faint blue veins that mapped my bosom.
For now I knew a little of the mystery of the place where I lived; the city herself, in a unique trick of geography, was the gatekeeper of the Black Sea and all the trade routes from here to Constantinople. From Signor Cristoforo I heard of the rivalry between Venice and Genoa for these routes, for it seemed that his own city was the only port to approach Venice in her maritime supremacy. He explained to me the intense competition in chartmaking, the race to map the world, the contest to build bigger and better ships, all of which meant that our peninsula ruled the seas from both west and east. I learned from him the great units of measurement—of fathoms and leagues and latitudes; here he made me laugh, claiming that the curvature of the horizons at sea suggested strongly to him that the world was round like an apple, not flat like a frittata (I told you he had good humor). From him, too, I learned that one of the earliest and most accomplished maps was made right here in Venice, by a priest called Fra Mauro. Signor Cristoforo took me across the lagoon to the island of San Michele, for we had special permission to enter the monastery to see the thing. As I gazed upon the crazy lines and divisions, the countries of our world marked out in gold upon an immense azure disk, I marveled at how small our own peninsula was, and yet how powerful. As we crossed back over the lagoon, choppy angry jade waters that day, I noted at firsthand how skillful Signor Cristoforo was at sea. I sat in my cushions, tasting the spray that flecked my lips salty as a man’s seed, and relaxed. Not for me the heaving and retching over the side that poor Marta, my constant chaperone, was experiencing. I watched the treacherous witch heave her guts up, with no small pleasure. For I had been in a worse pass than this in the straits of Naples, shipwrecked and near drowned. I looked at my tutor, competent at the tiller, his pale eyes narrowed at the sky, seeing to the horizon and beyond, and wondered what he would say if he knew I had more practical experience of seagoing than he thought. But my tutor was busy warning me of the high tide, or acqua alta, that flooded the city each autumn and spring, And it was Signor Cristoforo who told me, when we were safe in San Marco’s basin, with my white prison looming above, the most valuable piece of information he had ever imparted to me. As he cursed the ignorant tourists clogging the waterways, he complained that in a sennight things would be ten times worse, for every gondola and traghetto the city owned would be abroad on the Grand Canal for Carnevale. At this time the city held a great celebration before the privations of Lent began; fourteen days and nights of drinking and debauchery and daily regattas on the Grand Canal. Twenty times worse, said he, for at Carnevale everyone went about masked and costumed and jug-bitten, so the inexperienced sailors were further handicapped by being drunk and having their vision obscured by masks and their limbs impeded by heavy costumes. Several revelers drowned each year, said he, but, he finished with typical dry humor, not nearly enough. I pictured these unfortunates falling from their perch to be dragged below by heavy velvets and brocades. I thought fleetingly of those well-dressed skeletons dancing below us, weighed down by their fancy shoes, upright and dancing for eternity in an eerie measure, their own underwater Carnevale of the dead.
By that time I had made up my mind.
I dismissed Marta as soon as I reached my room. Tool and spy of my mother’s she may have been, but she was also lazy, and went quickly enough, knowing that I was once more safe in my cell. I had to be alone to think. I calculated—I had been here some months; the long winter was passing. My heart had turned to ice in this snow palace but was beginning to thaw again; a little of the beating matter remained, a small ruby of flesh within me that burned like a tiny coal. That tiny kernel blossomed and grew together with the beginnings of an idea that spread the warmth all the way through my body and burned in my cheeks. I knew at once that that time of Carnevale—of masks and confusion, of dissembling and deceit, of constant, unnoticed leisure voyages—must be the time that I quit this place. I planned to leave the city as I had done sixteen years ago—by boat to Mestre and then by horse cart to Florence, there to seek the one I could not bear to be without.
I knew that I needed help, and knew I must look to my tutor for it, because he was the nearest to a friend that I had—all the other servants of this place, and even my father, were bewitched by my mother and utterly in her thrall. I knew also that I put Signor Cristoforo at great risk if I told him what I intended; yet I could not think of anyone’s safety but that of Brother Guido. I needed a boatman to take me from Venice, February was already upon us, and I was certain that Signor Cristoforo knew every seagoing wight in the city. I decided to broach my problem at our next lesson. On the appointed day I could not break my fast but sent my kitchen girl back with the tray untouched. I could barely stand still to be dressed—appropriately, in a gown and shift as blue as the sea, with snowy sleeves peeping through the surcoat as white as the horses that crowned the waves. I twitched and bitched and moaned while Marta, the toad, laced my bodice. I fidgeted when the Moorish maid smoothed my hair with olive oil and turned it round a hot poker to make glossy ringlets, into which she fastened sapphires and moonstones. I scarcely glanced in the mirror to note my mermaid beauty, for I could almost taste my freedom—I was now twitching to be gone and could almost not bear another day in this place. For all these cold winter months I had been hibernating, stupid as a bear—now I felt an unbearable urgency, as if Brother Guido’s trial were tomorrow. I had written ten, twenty times for more news from Brother Nicodemus, but had had just one more reply, that Brother Guido was still languishing in the Bargello to be tried on Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday was in February, just after Carnevale.
What if I were too late?
I nearly ran down the passages to the Sala delle Mappe. Signor Cristoforo was waiting for me, for my toilet had been frustratingly long that day. He rose as I entered, but as usual, he took not a jot of notice of my finery.
“Signorina Mocenigo,” he said with a courteous nod of the head. He sat as I did at the great oaken table and unrolled a yellowing parchment, and weighted it at either side with an astrolabe and calipers. A needle of memory pricked my belly as I remembered the numerous times Brother Guido and I had unrolled the Primavera cartone, as a prelude to a heated discussion of one of the figures.
“Today’s lesson will treat upon perhaps the most important tool at the sailor’s disposal,” began the seaman in his thick Genoese accent.
I was twitching with impatience, did not even look at the paper before me. “Signor Cristoforo—”
“The compass rose.”
I stopped. This sounded useful.
“Thanks to this device, designed by the finest men of science, it is possible to know exactly where we are when at sea, even in storm, even in dark.”
Even in dark. Tomorrow, with Mary’s blessing, I would be leaving this city, in a boat, by dark. I began to listen and to look. Before me, inscribed neatly on the paper, was a compass of many points, with a direction writ beneath each point. It looked like a wicked flower, and in fact, a rose sat at the center of all, like the axis of a ship’s wheel.
The Botticelli Secret Page 31