I barely had time to wrap my arms about his waist before he dug heels into the beast and it took off. I was bounced about like a sack of polenta, until I caught the rhythm, but my haunchbones would be sore for a sennight, I was sure. Brother Guido, apparently, was taught horse manship in his noble education, for he rode fluidly, his hands light on the reins, his weight shifting expertly. We thundered along the torchlit passage, until I saw the last obstacle in our way, twin guards between us and the night sky beyond the walls. Without stopping, Brother Guido took out the snake plaque once more.
“Way in the name of il Moro! I must get the dogaressa to safety!”
The guards hesitated, then separated their pikes—they had little choice for the night-black charger had not been told to stop and would have barreled through both of them, taking them with us if need be.
We burst out into the starlit night and thundered across the barco, crossing the hunting plains as if we, too, were quarry.
We rode on without looking back for perhaps an hour, for the distant bells rang behind us as the ground began to climb. The horse, battle hardened and supremely fit, never slackened pace until we reached a wooded hill with a silver stream, and Brother Guido stopped to let the stallion drink. He slid expertly to the ground, lifted me down, and let the creature dip its head with a grateful whicker. I looked back on the city we’d left, still not far enough away.
“Where are we going?”
“At the moment?”
“No, I meant—”
“I know what you meant. Genoa, that’s the last city.”
“All right, then shouldn’t we be going west?”
He turned to look at me properly.
“Because if you look,” I babbled, “see, there’s Polaris, the North Star, and in the compass rose, well, we should be heading north by northwest.”
He was clearly surprised. But smiled. “You’re right. But it was imperative to get away from the city, for to steal il Moro’s horse alone would mean death, even without our other transgressions. Now that there seems to be no immediate danger of pursuit, we will bear west.”
We sat side by side on the freezing turf, gazing back on Milan together. The city walls, silver in the moonlight, snaked around the city in a jealous coil, keeping the citizens in and the world out.
“It even looks like a serpent, doesn’t it?” I ventured to my silent companion.
“Yes. Nehushtan. Or Aaron’s rod, which—”
He stopped, as if struck. Drew in his breath.
“What?”
‘Jesu.’
“What?”
“I know what they’re up to.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? The Seven, of course. Blessed Mary and all the saints . . .” He was shocked back into old speech patterns.
“Could we hold the Scripture for a moment? What are they planning?”
“Aaron’s rod. I was right about that at least.”
“Come on!”
“Aaron’s rod became a serpent. At the Day of Judgment it would crawl back to the valley of Josaphat.”
“I said hold the Scripture.”
“But that’s it. In Joel 3, Verse 2, we read: “I will gather together all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Josaphat.” I will gather together all nations.”
“Sorry, you lost me.”
He took me by the shoulders and fixed me with those eyes. “Do you remember, when we were in the Pantheon in Rome, just before the eclipse, and we were admiring the marble floor? The marble came from all over the Roman empire, set into one floor. I told Don Ferrente it was a statement of imperium writ in marble.”
“So?”
“So, this, this.” Without asking, he shoved his hand down my bodice and pulled out the cartone and shook it in my face. “This, the Primavera, is a statement of imperium writ in paint.”
“I still don’t get you.”
“Lorenzo and the Seven plan to build an empire. Just like the Romans did. They plan to bring back those days when our peninsula was one, and the peninsula went on to rule the world from west to east. I will gather together all nations. They have an army, a fleet, a bottomless bank. They plan to overrun the whole peninsula, bring their nations together and build a new Italia.”
“That was it!” The word burst upon me like a sunbeam.
“What?” Now it was Brother Guido’s turn to be confused.
I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “The silver angel. The coin I found in the mine in Bolzano. The one I dropped and my mother found in the carriage. On the reverse. Sol Invictus and Lorenzo on one side. And on the other—one word. Italia.”
“There it is. Writ in silver. Judas’s metal for seven treacherous villains.” He shook his head, then, “What’s the date?” he demanded urgently.
This sudden change of tack threw me, but I tried to answer as best I could. “I left Venice at the beginning of March, but then we were in Bolzano, then traveled here, so . . . middle of March, I’d say.”
“The ides of March, precisely.”
“But I don’t know exactly.”
“I think I do. We don’t have much time left.”
He took up the reins and jump-mounted the stallion, dragging me up with even less ceremony than before. He kicked the poor horse so hard it shot out of the spinney—the stars wheeled over our heads like a planisphere and the wind whistled past my ears. I had to bawl my question lest Zephyrus carry it away.
“Much time left before what?”
“The twenty-first day of March. New Year for the Florentines and a new empire for the Medici.” He turned his head so that I might hear. “Before the first day of spring.”
9
Genoa
Genoa, March 1483
44
Our journey to Genoa was the worst yet.
My joy at being re united with Brother Guido could not be cherished, our reunion not nurtured, for now we raced against spring herself. Brother Guido calculated less than a week till the twenty-first day of March—a day considered to be the first day of spring by Christian and pagan calendars alike—as we were now at the ides, or the fifteenth day. He was sure that the attack would take place on that day, for not only was the painting named for the season, but Poliziano’s ode was firmly rooted in the subject of the coming spring, and renewal, and new world order, and other meaningful concepts. I knew nothing of poetry, but I believed my own eyes—Flora, my own figure, was so inviting, so central, to the painting, and it was she who looked the viewer in the eye, she who stepped forth in front of her fellows, she who was pregnant with promise. I could appreciate the irony—nigh on a year ago my last client and bedfellow Bembo had promised me I would be the most important figure in Botticelli’s painting. Then I had thought it flattery—now I knew the truth.
Ludovico’s army was at our heels every step of the way. Brother Guido told me they would mobilize as soon as it was discovered that the horse and myself were gone. Once we actually saw the vast company of infantry, insubstantial as ants, on a far mountain pass, but only a day’s ride away. And as the army of the Seven gained, so did spring; soon mountains of shimmering ice turned to green hills with white villages spiraling round the top, then ever down to balmy coastline, with a brilliant lapis sea and coral caves. That warm breath of the coming spring, that first day of the year when you cast off your cloak, usually so welcome, was to us a terrifying signal of the turning season. The thaw was coming.
And there were still so many mysteries to answer, before we gained the city gates. What was Genoa’s role in the whole plot? How could the city be a member of the Seven if we had seen seven gold membership rings already? “Unless ‘the Seven’ refers to all the other conspirators that have joined Lorenzo de’ Medici, the founder.”
“Then surely they would have named themselves ‘the Eight,’ “ argued my companion. “No, I would wager that the ruler of this place does not bear a ring, but why I cannot tell you. Perhaps Genoa is innocent of all this.”
This I could almost believe, except for the presence of Simonetta, the pearl of Genoa, as plain as day, that famous face.
Il Moro’s horse cast a shoe at the hilltop town of Torriglia, so, forced to break our journey, Brother Guido and I stopped for our first repast since we had been on the road. We shared a jug of wine and a loaf at a wayside tavern, seated at a table set outside the door of the inn, so we could see all entrances to the town square and the smith shoeing our mount across the square. Way down below, now revealed by the shifting sea fog, was a granite-gray walled city set on the lip of the sea, the rooftops and turrets silver faceted like an iceberg.
Genoa.
We unrolled the cartone once more, set our goblets at each edge, and stared into the beauteous features of the last figure in the scene, Simonetta Cattaneo, that famed, long-dead beauty, a portrait true as life, according to Brother Guido. “She seems so . . . so important to the whole thing,” said I. “She is holding Naples’s hand, and Pisa’s too.”
“Not only that but Botticelli’s—I mean Mercury’s—sword, the curved scimitar just like the one I bear here”—he patted his scabbard—“is pointed right at Simonetta, see? The point of it almost touches her leg—indeed, I am sure it touches the fabric of her dress at the very least. Surely that must indicate Genoa’s place in this conspiracy, ring or no ring.”
I peered closer. “You’re right.”
“And there’s something else too,” he went on. “Simonetta is the only known face in the whole painting.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well, she was a very famous beauty. The other ladies here are only really renowned in their own states. Your mother’s beauty is legendary, but no one knows her features, as she goes about masked. You were a child, raised on the Florentine streets, the fairest of all”—I suppressed a secret smile—“but fully unknown. And Semiramide Appiani, a virgin bride, was protected by her family from the public gaze, and only found fame with her marriage. Only Fiammetta of Naples comes anywhere close to Simonetta’s fame, and she was more of an archetype.”
“A what?”
“A trope, a model—based on Maria d’Aquino, certainly, but a fictive construct of Boccaccio’s. Whereas Simonetta . . .” He looked on her in a way that almost made me jealous. “I’m sure that any common man, certainly in Tuscany or Lombardy, or here in Liguria, would know her if they saw this portrait. And if they did not, she wears this pearl on her forehead,” he pointed, “to identify her beyond doubt.”
I fingered the pearl at my belly, which must rival Simonetta’s for size. “And what of this other jewel?” I pointed to the brooch at Simonetta’s bosom. “More pearls, four more, set with rubies, in a cross or star.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know the significance of that, but it only serves to reinforce her importance, and therefore the point. Why is she marked out so? Why is she rendered in such detail? It seems that Genoa, far from being an afterthought, is the one city that has to be in the painting.”
“So Genoa must be involved . . .”
“So it seems, and that is a great wonder to me, for Pisa and, even more so, Venice, are traditionally sworn enemies of Genoa.”
“. . . and if it is, what’s the next move for the Seven?”
“France,” said Brother Guido briefly.
France. I had heard of the place, of course, slept with a few of its residents, but thought it many thousands of leagues away, possibly across at least one ocean. I said as much.
“No. It’s cheek by jowl with us now. Over yon mountains is the kingdom of Monaco, the gateway to Provence, and all France. The Hapsburg lands we know to be safe through the alliance with Sigismund of Bolzano, cousin to the emperor. There-fore, the only other target which adjoins these lands is France.”
I rummaged in my bodice for the torn and printed page and smoothed the map over the cartone. “Would France be”—I jabbed at the star mark I had noted on the northwest coast of the map—“here?”
He peered at the little mark, obscured by the Bible text. “I know little of cartography, but I do know that France lies to the northeast of us. So my guess would be, yes.”
I gave a long slow whistle. “So the Seven will gather here, and then attack France through the back gate!”
“By land and sea, yes.”
“On the first day of spring. The twenty-first day of March.” I calculated. “Tomorrow!”
“Yes. Tomorrow, probably at dawn for the greatest advantage of surprise, the attack will begin. And the hapless French will feel the full might of the Seven’s army, innocent French men, women, and children . . . speak your thought.” It was said without pause.
He had seen me squirming with doubt. “Well, that is, why do we care? I mean, they’re, well . . .”
“French.”
“Yes.”
His lips curled in a half-smile. “All those who live are equal in . . .” He stopped.
“God’s eyes?”
He looked down at his cup. “It’s not right. These men of the Seven have a kingdom apiece, and they’re willing to embark on a campaign of butchery to revive a long-dead dream of empire. Don’t you want to prevent more bloodshed? You saw those war machines in the crypts of the Sforza castle. Do you want to see them bearing down on families? Children? Besides, after all they’ve done, after all those who have died—your friend, mine, after all the leagues we have traveled and all the puzzles we have solved, don’t you want to stop Lorenzo and his allies?”
I thought of my mother. “Yes.”
“Then we don’t have much time.” He drained his wine.
I nodded. “The end is near,” I said soberly.
“Nigh.”
“What?”
“Nigh. The end is nigh.”
“I can’t believe you’re still correcting me when we’re in this much trouble.”
“It may be my last chance.”
I did not question him but felt a cold wave of foreboding flow into my chestspoon. I drained my own cup to ebb the feeling away.
We paid for the smith from my money belt and set off down the pass to the walled city in the distance. I looked back once and thought my eyes deceived me, for I seemed to see a tall figure in leper’s robes, standing in the dead center of the town square. Looking after us with eyes like two silver coins.
“Faster,” I urged.
This last part of the journey seemed to take the longest time of all. By some trickery the city seemed to get farther and farther from us as we crossed the sea plains, like a faraway mountain long sought but never reached. Yet, at last, we were at the gates. As we joined the general throng of visitors and trades-men gathering to gain entrance to the city, Brother Guido turned in his saddle. “As I told you,” he whispered, “they are no friends to Pisans or Venetians here, so we must keep our provenance and families secret. But there is a standing treaty between Genoa and Milan, so I will use the Sforza seal once again to gain entry. I am a Milanese soldier and you are my doxy; I have a letter for the doge.”
“The doge?” I said with a jolt. How could my father have beaten us here?
“Calm yourself. The ruler of Genoa is also called the doge. There are great similarities between Genoa and Venice—for both cities, the sea is the lifeblood. Both cities vie for maritime dominance of the east-west trade routes. Both have a saint that they revere above any other—you have Saint Mark; they have John the Baptist. In fact, Giovanni Battista is said to be buried here, and they show the platter that held his severed head. The doge himself bears the name of Giovanni Battista. You see? Similarity is often at the heart of rivalry.”
The gates of Genoa were twin towers, dark and high and topped with battlements like two ebony crowns. We were given pass at the gates by two scruffy guards who seemed half asleep; they barely glanced at the Sforza seal as they waved us through. If they were an example of the military might of Genoa, I didn’t think they would offer much to the Seven’s alliance. These gatekeepers offered a stark contrast to Brother Guido, who wa
s tall and strong as an elm, in his new uniform and armor, which was still shining after a week on the road.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked as soon as the gate house was behind us. “Confront the doge of this place with what we know?”
Brother Guido gave a short bark of laughter. “No. We would be inviting imprisonment or worse. We must cross the border and warn Monaco, and that quickly too.”
My heart sank at the thought of more riding, and I pitied the valiant black horse who had brought us thus far. “So what are we doing here then?” I asked.
“First we must be sure of our story. We must know that this mark—this star upon our map—is Monaco; without that certain knowledge our theories are mere conjecture.”
“And how, exactly, may we be sure?”
“This is a maritime city. There must be many accomplished mapmakers and mapreaders here. We must petition for help from one such.”
A flash of inspiration was borne in upon me. “A map shop!”
“Well, that would certainly be a start—”
I flapped my hands to shut him up. “Signor Cristoforo!” My mother’s words came back to me: we have sent your friend back to Genoa unharmed . . .
I explained. “I know a fellow, a friend, from Venice—he has a map shop here in Genoa, in the old port, with his brother. He may not be here—he was raising money for an overseas voyage, so he may have already sailed. But his brother may still be here!”
My companion wasted no time. “Let’s go.”
We wound through the maze of streets, so dark even in daylight that we could barely see the road ahead, for the houses were so tall and bent over toward each other overhead so that they nearly touched. Blinding daylight slashed down now and again into the gloom like a knifestrike, to illuminate the way. At such times when the light broke in I could see that many of the great houses and palazzi were striped in polished black-and-white marble like a polecat. And the streets stank like a polecat too, of piss and the fishlike reek of the whores hanging around at the corners; the alleys were so high and closed that the fresh sea air could not circulate to blow the stink away. Instead, hollow-eyed sailors crouching in the shadows perfumed the general stench with the heady sweet aroma of the blue clouds of smoke drifting from their opium pipes.
The Botticelli Secret Page 42