I watched the unfortunate maid scuttle to the door. I shrugged, not wishing to give anything away.
She held up one long white hand, and between her fingers, flashing in the sun, she rolled a silver coin.
My heart thumped so loud she must hear it.
It was the angel from the mine in Bolzano. That I’d picked up. And lost.
She collected my expression. “Yes. It fell from your sleeve as you slept in the carriage.”
The tinkle of metal that had woken me up, to see the lakes of Lombardy outside the window.
“I knew you had been out that night,” she said. “Marta, as you will note, is no longer with us.”
Whether or not Marta was back in Venice or with the Almighty was not clear, and my mother did not expand.
“Sooner or later, Luciana, you will see that you cannot win, and obedience to myself and your father, and indeed your husband, will prove the most direct path to happiness. Disobedience brings only privation, imprisonment, and despair.” She rose and began to walk the room purposefully, like a lawyer giving weight to her pronouncements. “Forget whatever you think you know of the business of politics; you are in error. Seek not to know further than the things you are told, for your own safety. That said, in deference to your overweening curiosity about matters of state, you will today be taken into the confidence of the great Ludovico Sforza. Look and learn since you are so keen, and tomorrow will make a new beginning. Ah, your meal is here.” She switched smoothly from politics to breakfast with no change in tone.
The repast, when it came, almost made up for the threats—salted beef, beer, fruit, and good white bread. I wolfed down the lot, as my mother watched me from under veiled lids, for all the world like Nehushtan. When I’d finished, I belched loudly for her benefit. She did not flinch nor censure but surprised me again with her next gambit.
“Your hair is a disaster,” she said. “Chiara. Bring the comb and the oil. And, let me see. Yes, the moonstones, I think, will meet the case.”
Her elderly lady’s maid, whom I’d recognized from Venice, brought the needful things from my mother’s traveling cabinets. My mother placed me before the mirror and dressed my hair herself, her touch surprisingly soft and skillful. She combed my knotted locks into smooth skeins and twisted little ripples of curls to be pinned up with the moonstones, leaving half of the mass to fall down my back. When she had done, she clasped my shoulders and looked into the mirror beside me. We met each other’s eyes somewhere behind the glass. Two blond green-eyed women, dressed in flame silk, our blood relationship writ all over our faces, in the wideness of the eye, the dark wing of the brow, the small upturned nose, and the full rose lips. She did not say anything as she pressed her cheek to mine, but I got the point.
We were family.
Cloaked, booted, and masked (“for you will be among soldiers, dear”), my mother sent for the sergeant at arms again, and we were led from the residence down a flight of stone steps and past an ornamental lake stuffed with carp. The fish flicked their golden bellies to the sun as they turned in the water. I could have flipped one out, crunched his head, and eaten him whole, for I was still starving.
Into this picturesque court came the duke and his retinue, at a swift pace—I noticed il Moro always seemed to march. Not walk. His mien was military, his business war—everything about him martial. In the morning light I noted the duke’s dusky skin and olive-black eyes and hair, and understood, for the first time, why I heard him everywhere dubbed il Moro—the Moor.
Again he greeted us in his soldierly way and was as bluff and friendly to me as yestereve, as if I had not spent the night in one of his cells.
“Come,” he said. “I will show you great wonders, madam and miss, that we talked of at dinner.”
With that, he led us down a little loggia, arched black and white in strong sun, and unlocked a low door with the hand that wore the Medici ring. He turned to his guards. “Six stay, six go,” he ordered. “No Romans.”
The sergeant at arms counted out the men. “You, two Milanese. You, from Maremma. You from Siena. You from Modena, and, Pisan, you.” I looked up at the word, and saw that Brother Guido was the Pisan picked to guard us.
We entered the dark door and spiraled down on a left-turning stair, the soldier’s sandals clattering behind. Down, down, down to a vast chamber flooded with light from arched window shafts that reached through twelve feet of solid rock to the upper courts of the castle. I was reminded again of the covered causeway where I had run till and from last night. But if the causeway had been inhabited by such creatures as I saw here, I would never have left the castle.
Madonna.
They were great beasts of wood and iron, towers of siege standing high like giants, war machines with teeth like dragons. Constructed on a grand scale with wheels and pulleys and ropes, and joists and cannon, and bristling with blades.
We moved as one down the huge hall, cavernous as a cathedral, but a place to worship war, not God. And as if intoning the Scripture, Ludovico Sforza began to speak in a tongue that I recognized as Latin. Was that why the duke had specified no Romans? Would people from Rome be more likely to know the language of the church? I, of course, understood but one word in a hundred. My mother, nodding at the duke’s instruction, understood all. But I knew, with a fierce pride in my chest, that there was another here that would understand every word of il Moro’s commentary and would be able to relate it to me in time.
Each creature had its attendants, its keeper; engineers, tinkering, adjusting, experimenting, running trials, adding a bolt here or a nail there, planing wood or shaving metal. And at the hub of it all, a small ugly man, his features obscured by beard and moustaches. Who bowed low to the duke and then proceeded to gabble to him, in Latin faster and more fluid than his master; a firecracker of a man, fairly bursting with ideas and passions for these things he had made. By the twang of his Latin I knew him for a Tuscan. I knew that this must be the engineer from Vinci that Brother Guido had mentioned the night before. In another moment I knew more, for he was presented to my mother as Signor Leonardo da Vinci. As the two men talked and my mother listened, I wondered briefly why I, who had been kept in the dark deliberately by my mistrustful mother was now being shown such things. My mother played me at cards but was showing me her hand—she was as good as admitting that a war was planned and that she was a part of it, and this new war, with this new army, would be fought in a new way. Fought with machines that burgeoned from the fevered imagination of this little Tuscan engineer, whose ideas swelled and burst like birthing sacs, to spew forth blood of innocent soldiers devoured by his machines. My mother turned to me and echoed my thoughts in a low voice.
“These are engines of death. Whosoever has such things cannot lose a war. Do you understand me? Cannot lose.”
Now I knew the reason for disclosure. More threats.
I met her eyes. “I understand that. What are you really telling me?” I noted the duke and his engineer had stopped their discourse to listen.
“That it is useless to resist what is coming. It is as inevitable as the seasons.”
The little Tuscan added a Latin saying (which was actually destined to be the third Latin tag that I know): “Ver fugo hiberna.”
And they all laughed together. I hated them all, traders in terror, dealers in death.
“And now, let us retreat from warlike sights and enter instead the realms of love and marriage,” said my mother, wrapping one arm around my shoulder.
“Mars greets Hymen, eh?” Ludovico barked. “ ‘Tis true. Lady, be glad.” He looked fondly at me, as if he were a favorite uncle, not my jailer. “For tomorrow, we greet at court your betrothed, Lord Niccolò della Torre of Pisa.”
I almost dropped to the floor. “Lord Niccolò? Here? Tomorrow?” I piped as loudly as I could, so that Brother Guido might hear.
“Yes.” My mother smiled down on me, indulgently. “Is that not joyous? He comes to join our party and reacquaint himself with you, the qu
een of his heart.”
I felt sick and could only hope that this information had reached Brother Guido at the back of the ranks. We all moved to leave; I hung back to fiddle with my shoe until my friend had caught up with me, then at the foot of the stair I stumbled and threw out an arm to Brother Guido to steady myself. It worked.
“You—help the signorina up the stair, she is faint with the news that her lover comes!” And Ludovico laughed, his booming voice ringing up the spiral.
Brother Guido and I had six turns, perhaps, to say what needed to be said. It took less.
“I’ll come to you tonight, as we planned,” he murmured so low I could hardly hear above the footsteps, “between Vespers and Compline.”
“But did you not hear? Niccolò is expected tomorrow! He will know you at once.”
He seemed startled, recovered quickly. “But I will be disguised by numbers, he will not note the footsoldiers.”
There was not time to state that my mother had seen him but once at the Medici wedding, but Niccolò had grown up with him, boy and man. I went straight to the poniard’s point. “Let me tell you,” I hissed. “I’ve known fellows of your cousin’s tastes before, and the one thing they like doing best is looking at footsoldiers.” We were nearly at the door. “Moreover, from tomorrow I am to be under the watch of my father’s guards this time. And they know their business.”
That did it. “Very well. Then we must go tonight. Be ready.”
I nodded quickly. One turn to go to the light, one more question. “What did the Tuscan engineer say in Latin?”
He looked at me once. “He said, ‘Spring chases the winter.’ ”
The rest of the day I spent in an ague of anticipation. I recognized the symptoms well from the day before my intended flight from Venice. My appetite disappeared and I was a weathercock spinning from excitement to terror. My cheeks burned and my eyes flamed, such that on the way to mass in il Moro’s litter my mother asked if I had a fever. At which Lord Ludovico slapped me on the back, as if we were sharing a grappa in the guard house and said, “Fever indeed. Cupid’s fever, I’ll warrant. For nothing else puts roses in a maid’s cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes than the reunion with her true love—these symptoms are all in della Torre’s cause, mark my words.”
As I coughed from the blow and smiled politely, I thought that I could not fault his logic—my fevered state was all due to an assignation with my true love who bore the della Torre name, but he was in error as to which branch of that family tree I awaited.
And thus I found myself in the third Milanese basilica I had been in this day. I had visited church more times since I had come to the city than in the whole of the last four years. This time we worshipped in the great Duomo, the mass of spiny pinnacles without, with a vast many-pillared nave within. The light streamed in through the stained glass with a greenish hue, turning the pillars to bone—they reached above and curved about like a giant rib cage. Not Daniel in the den this time but Jonah in the whale—I was in the belly of a beast; would I ever be able to escape this city? The service went on for two hours; I fretted for both of them and never heard a word of it.
Back at the castle I fidgeted until feast time—this night I was invited but might as well not have been, for not a morsel passed my nervous lips. I had to be back in my room by Vespers, so I excused myself from the pomp, pleading that I must get my sleep to be fresh for my betrothed. My mother seemed to believe my protests but still assigned me two guards to escort me back and turn the key.
Once back in the cell I had little to prepare. Be ready, Brother Guido had instructed. But I had long since learned to carry all that I needed on my person at all times. I took out my warmest cloak, and bundled my mother’s mask within it, and laid them across the wooden faldstool that was the one seat in the room. Then I set myself to wait for the bells. As one church, then another, then the great booming bells of the cathedral gave tongue to the hour of Vespers, I heard a shuffling outside the door and the key turn. So soon! My heart leaped to my mouth and I leaped to my feet.
The door swung wide.
‘Twas my mother.
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She smiled at once, but this did not lessen my fear—a friendly expression meant naught with my prism-mother; if she meant to end a life she would smile and smile as she pushed the knife in. I held her eyes like a frighted coney with a fox, willing her not to question why my cloak was readied on the stool. Of course, it was the first place she went, tossing the fur to the ground to sit down. I winced in case the stolen mask fell out, but the bundle remained secure, and my mother never marked it. I thought she would question why I was still dressed, but a couple of moments in that room with its whistling winds would quickly inform the casual visitor why I would not shed one garment.
She sat on my stool in her feast-day finery, looked about her. Once again, she took on a different hue. She looked distressed; her speech was hesitant as I had never known it. She seemed genuinely upset by the conditions in which I had been held. “No bed! Nor panes in the window. I did not . . . I had not guessed . . .” She turned her great green eyes on me, pleading for the first time. “I came to ask you . . .” She seemed to struggle to find words. “Let me protect you. If you try to run, if you disobey, if you try to prevent what is in train, those that I now keep at bay will pursue you again.”
With a chill I knew she spoke of Cyriax Melanchthon, the murderous leper and tool of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whom I had all but forgot during my sojourn in Venice. For the first time I considered how cold it might be outside the strong circle of my mother’s arms.
“I wish you married,” she went on, “and happy, with children growing like vines around your table. I never watched my children grow.” Her voice cracked and she suddenly looked much older.
I did not go to her, did not speak, but behind the mask of my stony expression I was, despite myself, a little touched at all she had lost, for all that she had brought our separation upon herself.
She came close. “I wish the best for you. In that way, I am your Vero Madre.” My arms almost twitched upward. I almost wrapped them around her but did not.
She kissed me once and left.
I was still and stunned for a moment. I was astonished that she had remembered what I had once called her. I had uttered the words Vero Madre to her but once, when I had woken beside her in the gondola in Venice; she had all but laughed at the phrase. I had never used it again, even to myself, my dream of sixteen years shattered, the notion of my warm and loving mother smashed like the false idol that it was.
As she left I heard more footsteps and was instantly on the alert again. It was the cambio di guardia—the changing of the guard. I froze—for although my mother would never have picked out Brother Guido from a battalion of soldiers, surely even she would know him if she passed him, she and he alone, in a narrow passage.
But no, she must have been as affected by her little interview as I, for the guard left, she left, and Brother Guido—I even knew his tread by now—was outside my door again.
I hesitated once as I went to pick up my cloak and mask from the floor—I knew that as soon as the door had opened and I left this room, I was setting myself against my mother and all the rest of the Seven. Forever and ever, amen. Against armies, against fleets of ships, against all the silver in the mountains, against a murderous leper who wanted me dead.
But when the door opened he only had to ask me the question and I knew I would follow him to the ends of the earth, no matter what danger we were placed in. For we would be in it together.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
We took the little stair down and down the tower as we had done the night before. I assumed we would use the covered causeway again to Santa Maria delle Grazie, and then somehow try to get out of the city gates before dawn.
“Too risky,” said Brother Guido. “Fortunately, there is another way.”
We doglegged left and down into a different passage, high and cavernous, a
n underground thoroughfare. “Why, a whole regiment could pass through here!”
“That’s the idea.”
“Where does it lead? Another church?”
“No. It leads behind the fortress, out into the hunting ground behind the castle.”
“Outside the city gates?”
“Outside the city gates.”
Before he could finish his confirmation I heard stamping footsteps and guttural grunts. Of course the tunnel would be guarded—I stood rooted, knew we were discovered, and hoped Brother Guido could talk fast enough to get us out of this one. From my mother’s demeanor tonight I knew that even she could not protect me if I transgressed again.
“Do not distress yourself. It is only our transportation.”
We rounded a corner and there, oil-black with a gilded coat of torchlight, stood the mountainous horse I had seen between il Moro’s thighs yesterday.
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
“But that’s . . .”
“I know.”
“And you want me to?”
“Yes. I’ll mount first. You get up behind me. The Templars rode two by two for many centuries. ‘Twill not harm you.”
I didn’t give a fuck about the Templars, whoever they may be, but I did know that I’d never ridden a proper horse in my life. The nearest I’d come was my pony ride from Fiesole to Pisa with Brother Guido, hardly the same thing. Despite my new education into the nobility, riding had not been among my list of lessons; Venetians are not horse people, since the only horses in that entire city are the four bronze ones atop the basilica.
Madonna.
Brother Guido vaulted expertly onto the black mountain and heaved me up after him. The horse stood stock-still, surprising me, as I expected him to rear and skitter.
“Do not worry,” said Brother Guido, sensing my fear. “He is well used to battle and is steady as a rock. Hold on, though.”
The Botticelli Secret Page 41