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The Botticelli Secret

Page 35

by Marina Fiorato


  Apparently he was. In a very short conference between him and my mother, I learned that he was being petitioned to finance some enterprise, in some sort of partnership with Venice. Here I pricked up my ears—did the archduke refer to the business my mother had come to transact in the name of the doge, or was there a larger scheme at stake—in fact, the unknown ultimate design of the Seven? I had to strain to decipher his accent, for his Venetian sputtered forth from him as if he were choking on thick soup.

  “We have agreed on the larger principles and will use your sojourn here to establish the details. In fine, the matter of metals—”

  My mother cut across him swiftly.

  “Archduke, Archduke.” She was at her most charming. “Such conference is not pleasing to the ears of young maids, and I have brought the finest maid in all of Venice to meet you. May I present my dearly beloved daughter, Luciana Mocenigo.”

  Marta gave me a vicious little shove and I stumbled forward so that all the eyes of the court were on me, including the twin gimlets of their overlord. You would think that I might be outfaced by such scrutiny, but I can tell you that when you have halted a Medici wedding, and your intended groom unwraps your hair in front of the congregation, to point to your own likeness in a painting, pretty much nothing will disconcert you again.

  The archduke looked me over as if he were appraising horse flesh.

  “She is exquisite. Not unlike yourself sixteen years ago. I remember well, a time when you were as young and untried.” A look of great significance passed between them.

  Now I divined three things from this statement.

  Cosa Uno: my mother had been successful in keeping my history quiet. “Untried,” indeed—little did the archduke know that I’d been ridden more times than a pack horse.

  Cosa Due: the archduke and my mother had some sort of history—in fact, the words and the way in which they were spoke seemed to suggest that the old goat had taken her virginity. Wonder how she squared that with my father.

  Cosa Tre: whatever had taken place in the past, I’m not sure he liked her now. There was an unmistakable barb in his voice, amid all the flowery pleasantry, as if a needle had been left in a finished tapestry to prick the fingers of the unwary.

  The archduke spoke again. “She is betrothed to Pisa, I hear.”

  “She is. To be wed in July.”

  “Pity,” remarked the archduke with a sniff, clearly already forgetting his own betrothed. I guess I was about the right age for him, being not seventeen myself. “I suppose she is full young to suffer our business. Do you, my dear, repair to your room, where I hope you will find all possible comfort.”

  I was betrothed to another and of no further interest.

  Our audience concluded with a promise to meet this evening at the feast to be held in our honor. I sighed inwardly, wishing we could just be gone, but we were to stay until the morrow and I had to tolerate the delay as best I could. We both bent to kiss the archduke’s hand. I was half expecting what I saw there, so you will certainly not be surprised when I tell you that there was the golden Medici ring, complete with palle, glinting upon his thumb.

  Thus dismissed, I followed Marta and a servant from the room, while my mother remained behind to unburden her business to the archduke. I was at once vexed and relieved; my mother had demonstrated once again how little she now trusted me, and had gone to great lengths to prevent the archduke from spilling any of their dealings in my presence. Ah, well. At least I did not have to be troubled with her instruction, for I had no head for politics. I just wanted to see my friend again.

  I was conducted up a cramped stone spiral to yet another grand chamber in another alien palace, this time a painted one with incredible scenes rampaging across the stones. This time the frescoes told a story that seemed to pertain to a knight, a king, and his lady love. It was evident that the maiden was having her fun with both the king and his dragon-slaying champion. I sighed wistfully. But one man would do for me, if only he were the right one.

  The chamber was gloomy; indeed I could hardly follow the story of the doomed lovers in the low light, so I flung open the casements. The view from my window was so dizzying it made my breath short, for a sheer drop greeted my curious glance down, and wicked mountain peaks closed all around. I shut the windows swiftly but was instantly plunged back into gloom—the quarrels of the panes were round and crude, as if someone had hacked off a dozen bottle bottoms and cobbled them together with more lead than pane. Clearly the glassmaking genius of Venice had not reached the barbarous north. I snorted contemptuously down my nose. An odd trick of distance made me proud of my home city. Now that I didn’t have to live in it.

  I opened the window again. We were so high that the clouds hung directly outside my window, and kites and buzzards landed on my windowsill to eye me curiously with their glass-bead eyes, before taking a stomach-lurching dive into the abyss below. I wondered if my mother had chosen my chamber deliberately, that I might not escape. I did not even bother to try the iron ring on the door. I had clearly heard the key turn behind me. It was so; my mother was taking no chances. Well, at least I was alone—better to be locked in than to be allowed to promenade under the eyes of the ever-present Marta.

  I heard the bells ring Nones with the dull clop of a cowbell. With nothing to do till Vespers and dinnertime I took out the cartone again, brought it as close to the window as I dared, sitting precariously on a wooden bench by the sill. The wind whistled through the casement, but the lack of glazing left me with an unwelcome choice to be freezing cold or be in pitch-darkness. I kept my fur on and the shutters open, for I needed the light.

  I wanted to learn as much as I could of Bolzano, one, I now knew, of the Seven. To make Brother Guido proud. To do, as I was here, what he couldn’t do at his distance, to divine the role of this place in the great plan. Would north be true?

  First I looked at the entire cartone once again. We now, I thought, knew all of the Seven. Pisa, Naples, Rome, Florence of course, Venice, Bolzano, and obviously Milan, as Brother Guido said we would meet there, and my mother agreed that we would break our journey in that city. And the conspirators too: Lord Silvio della Torre of Pisa; Don Ferrente, the King of Naples and Aragon; His Holiness the Pope of Rome; Doge Giovanni Mocenigo of Venice; Archduke Sigismund of Bolzano; and someone or other in Milan, a name I supposed Brother Guido would supply.

  We had built up a better picture of the players involved, but we still did not know what they intended. We knew who, but not what or when or why.

  And what role did Genoa play? That seagoing city, home of my faithful friend Signor Cristoforo? Why was Genoa in the painting if not in the Seven?

  I thought on this till my head began to hurt, then gave up and focused my attention on the Zephyrus figure. Now I imagined Brother Guido beside me, guiding me. What may we observe? Just begin with whatever comes to mind.

  In a very little time I had quite a list:

  He had wings.

  His hair was blue.

  His wings were blue.

  His gown was blue, and curled like the sea.

  His flesh, now I came to look at it, was more silver than blue.

  His feet were not visible.

  His cheeks puffed out.

  A silver stream of wind issued from his lips.

  His eyes looked into Chloris’s and nowhere else.

  He grabbed at Chloris, intent on ravishment.

  He was behind some laurel branches.

  He was before some orange trees.

  He was higher than Chloris, or any other figure in the picture save Cupid.

  Behind his left knee, and the trunks of the oranges and laurels, was a silver-blue mountain range.

  Even without my educated friend I was able to draw some conclusions from what I saw. Zephyrus was higher than Venice—Bolzano was in the mountains, a fact supported by the silver-blue mountain range at Zephyrus’s knee, and by the wings to lift him high. Bolzano was northwest of Venice (I blessed Signor Cristof
oro’s instruction) and possibly represented some sort of threat, for Zephyrus was swooping down from the mountains. Perhaps to attack? And the color blue? That was easy—I only had to look at my poor fingers where they held the cartone. Blue as Boreas, or rather, Zephyrus. The meaning of the laurels and oranges was also clear; he was between the laurel, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s emblem, and the orange, Lorenzo the Magnificent’s emblem. Zephyrus was girdled all around with Medici foliage, buried deep in a Medici plot.

  I could not guess why his skin was silver, unless ‘twere some reference to water. The wings, too, puzzled me. Did they indicate a certain bird, or was Zephyrus just depicted so because he was a wind and traveled on the ether? I began counting feathers, mindful that Flora’s thirty-two roses had led me, finally, to the compass rose. But that had been hard enough; this was impossible. I gave up quickly and instead spent some little time trying to interpret the expression that the West Wind wore, and the nymph Chloris too. The legend, according to Signor Cristoforo, went that Zephyrus ravished Chloris, got her with child, and the nymph gave birth to the wind horses. But although his posture to her was very threatening—swooping down from on high—and although, to be sure, she seemed to be running and reaching for the protection of Flora, there was, on second look, more tenderness in the eyes of the couple than you might think. Chloris looked almost mesmerized, both desiring and fearing all at once—like a virgin, touched for the very first time. Zephyrus, too, though serious in his mien, inclined his head to his lady. And the hand he placed upon her was relaxed and soft, not grabbing, for the thumb was not visible—in a violent act surely it would have appeared to help the fingers grab gown and flesh. No, this was more of a . . . a caress. I wondered if this was a union of mutual benefit, much like the puzzling conference I had heard downstairs. I think my mother needed Sigismund and feared him. And the archduke needed Venice’s connivance for some reason, but meant the city no harm. Rather he wished for the relationship to have an issue, to bear fruit. We knew my mother was Chloris—’twas plain from the likeness and from her own admission—and now I knew we must cast Archduke Sigismund as the actor who would represent Zephyrus in our play. If only I had been able to divine what their joint venture might be! But my mother had couched her words so carefully and caged their meanings—as I had guessed, she did not trust me an inch since I had planned my flight. I almost crumpled the cartone in frustration. Not for the first time I cursed my impulse to escape from Venice—I had bought a whole heap of trouble for more than just myself. I should have trusted Brother Guido to come for me. And now here I was in prison, shut out of the conference that was taking place downstairs, ignorant of what connected Bolzano and Venice, two members of the Seven.

  ‘Twas lucky I had almost balled the cartone in my fist for the key turned in the lock and I was obliged to shove the painting down my front. A rosy apple of a goodwife entered, wearing a gray house robe and a linen wimple. She was almost hid behind a huge soft mass of white fur—had she brought a bear to share my cell? Her smile had more charm than teeth, and she handed me the bundle, so heavy it made me stagger.

  “For you. The archduke—he wants,” she choked in her weird voice, bowed and left.

  I examined what I held. Was it a coverlet to keep me warm at night? No, it had sleeves and a hood—it was a coat, of white fur, the like of which I had never seen. Thankfully I snuggled into it and felt the difference at once. I blessed whatever monstrous mountain creature had shed its skin for me.

  I danced a little twirling jig so the pelts swung around my legs, and I was warm at last. The scenes of the faithless maid and her two lovers wheeled around me in a colored mass. Then I stopped at once, as if stunned.

  I had not heard the key turn back again.

  Heart thumping, I turned the iron ring of the door handle. It turned silently, the latch lifted. I could have kissed the goodwife who had brought the coat. I was free.

  I drew up the hood of my new gift. Since no one had seen me wearing it, perhaps it would give me a little anonymity, although it certainly would not conceal me from the eye, as it was white as milk. I descended down the passages and steps I remembered, to the hall of the Giants, by virtue of the paintings I had remembered on the walls. The door was guarded by two surly soldiers.

  Shit.

  So I turned on my heel and climbed up the stairs again. I made a few turns to find the chamber I thought would be above the great hall, and here my luck improved. A chamber, empty, with candles burning. Painted, as the rest of the place, but this time with scenes of devotion. It was a chapel.

  I closed the oaken doors and looked about me. Here once again I was assisted by the ancient building. Drafts whistled up through boards along with snatches of conversation. I knelt as if in prayer and applied my ear to a crack in the planks as long as an oar. Voices were raised—my mother’s and the archduke’s too—which helped me hear all.

  My mother first. “And yet you market through Venice to Alexandria, to Tunis, to India . . .”

  The archduke: “Precisely, Dogaressa. We market through Venice. Our treaty states that we will use your port and your port only, your ships. I see no reason for such niceties to cease . . . afterward. Then, too, you have the treaty ratified by my cousin Hapsburg, the guarantee of safe passage through these mountains, the emperor’s own seal upon it that there will be no attack on the Seven from the Hapsburg lands. We have repaid our debt many times over. Yet this matter of the angel is another issue.”

  “The golden angel has been circulating in England for more than twenty years, with great benefits to commerce. Regulation can only strengthen trade.” My mother’s voice, lively with argument.

  “That is so; I don’t think we have ever been in dispute over the matter. Is he entirely decided upon the weights and measures?”

  “Our understanding is that the fineness would be that of his own florin. Or our own Mocenigo.”

  “Ah, yes, the Mocenigo. Your family stamp. I am sure that is what you would prefer. Yet I was thinking back a little further, to the fourth Crusade. To your forebear, Doge Enrico Dandolo. For did he not set the standard for the grosso? War costs, and peace is even dearer. This enterprise upon which we embark will be dearly bought. Now that we crusade again, shall we not strike an equivalent?”

  My mother’s voice, raised now. “A grosso? Surely you jest. The standard of the grosso was 124 soldi. Are you seriously suggesting an angel of this weight? Venice does not have the seam!”

  The archduke’s voice, calm, quiet, assured, infinitely powerful. “Venice does not. I do.”

  A pause. “In truth?” My mother, a little awed.

  “I have my own standard here, you know.”

  “I do know, not for nothing are you known as der Münzreiche.” My mother, flattering now.

  “Indeed. Then you should know that I can underwrite that side of the bargain, for these mountains are richer than even Solomon could ask. Yet our request from you, ratified by our mutual friend, is that, as you know, we will borrow your own expertise in this area. For the overheads are considerable. Assaying, casting, cutting blanks, stamping. Will you use the Zecca?”

  My mother again. “Not the Zecca. All operations must be outside the city. This enterprise is to be kept secret, on his orders. And since you cannot come to the Zecca, I have brought the Zecca to you.”

  “Here?”

  “Here. In my train are the finest craftsmen our city can provide, the heads of their divisions at the Zecca. I thought to leave them here, so that they may instruct your own men in your own seam. Or our own seam.”

  “It will belong to the Seven, as he has agreed. So neither of ours.”

  “Or both of ours.” They were sparring again, and my mother had won the bout. “We leave tomorrow, for we must meet my lord the doge in Milan presently.”

  “He brings the map?”

  “He does. It is safe under his own roof.”

  Now this, as you can imagine, made my ears prick and my bowels loosen. My father was t
o bring the map. If they meant the wooden roll I now held in my sleeve, when he went to seek it in the Zephyrus horse, he would find it gone. But I still could not see how the wooden roll could be a map—perhaps there was another map that my father would bring from “under his own roof”—in another location, signposted in the painting, hid somewhere in the palazzo maybe. And yet, the basil-ica was his “own roof” too; my mother had ofttimes told me that the great church was my father’s private chapel and part of his palace. I stilled my pattering thoughts lest I miss some tidbit from below.

  “Then tonight it must be. After the feast my sappers will lead your men down.”

  “My men and myself.”

  A pause from the archduke. “Dogaressa, it is a perilous place.”

  “No matter. I am accustomed to peril.”

  “Then if I may address you on a matter of some delicacy, may I recommend that you . . . ah . . . wear some . . . breeches.” A snuffly laugh, like a pig truffling, issued from the archduke and I got the idea that he rarely gave way to mirth. I knew from the jest that Archduke Sigismund had heard the same rumors about my mother and father’s relationship that had reached the ears of Don Ferrente, namely that she wore the breeches in the marriage.

 

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