The Armageddon Protocol

TWELVE

“So start from the beginning,” Harry said. He propped his phone up so Harriet was able to see the two of them and also the paintings. “What are these panels about?”

“They were commissioned,” Harriet began wearily, “like most art in those days, by a wealthy family, and painted around 1483, or so we think.”

“Perhaps 1483 has something to do with it — another numeric code?” Lucia said.

Harry shook his head. “I doubt he would go to all this trouble for that to be the end result. He could have concealed that number anywhere. No, there has to be another reason why he referred specifically to this painting.”

Lucia opened the little book and stared at the highlighted sentence once again — Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis. “You will find more in the woods than in the books.”

“What’s that?” Harriet said.

“It’s what I told you about — a Latin text Pablo highlighted in the Epistola. Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis — it means believe me, you will find more in the woods than in the books.”

“I now what it means, Harry. I learned Latin too. He was clearly referring to these Botticelli panels — they are set amost entirely in the woods — about a story set in the woods and this clue clearly tells us we will find more in the woods than in the books.”

“But I just can’t work out what he’s getting at,” Harry said, and looked up and down the large space of Room 56B. “This must be the painting — I can’t see any other paintings of woodlands.”

“Hmmm, Nastagio degli Onesti was a knight, originally from Ravenna…” Harriet said, thinking aloud.

“Is this some religious thing?” Lucia said.

Harriet shook her head. “Hardly, this artwork is pagan. It’s derived from Boccaccio’s Decameron, a series of novellas about a group of young men and women hiding in an isolated villa in the hills outside Florence. They were trying to escape the Black Death which was ravaging the country at that time.”

Lucia looked at Harry, concerned. “The Black Death? You think this has something to do with that?”

“She said it, not me.”

“I’m not saying anything,” Harriet said. “Just what this painting is about — the fifth story of the ninth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron, which in turn was heavily influenced by Dante’s Inferno. These paintings were ordered by Lorenzo de’ Medici who intended them to be a wedding gift. As you can see, each panel is set in thick woods — the first here featuring the lovesick degli Onesti, rejected in love by his fiancée, wandering through the forest when a beautiful young woman runs across his path and is savaged by the hunting dogs of this knight here.” She pointed to a knight on a horse at the right of one of the panels. He was wielding a sword as the naked woman was pulled to the ground by his dog.

Lucia looked horrified. “This is terrible.”

“No, the second panel is terrible,” Harriet said coolly.

Harry and Lucia looked up at the next painting to see the woman on the ground, and the knight standing above her, cutting her back open, and searching for her heart.

“He feeds the heart to his dogs — look here.”

“I had no idea that…”

Harriet smiled. “That such ideas existed in the renaissance? It’s a common misconception that the era was purely about enlightenment and progress, but the very essence of the renaissance — the rebirth of classical ideas from antiquity — was always going to raise the subjects of paganism and humanism, and they manifested themselves in all quarters of renaissance art and philosophy, including many of the great masterpieces which often reflected pagan concepts such as the works of Epicurus. This went on until the counter-reformation in the mid-sixteenth century, a powerful religious revival that reimposed a Catholic orthodoxy and declared many of these other thinkers as heretics.”

“Which is exactly what I was going to say,” Harry said with a sideways glance at Lucia.

“Sounds wonderful,” Lucia said quietly. “I’m glad I’m a numbers girl…”

Harriet smiled. “History is written by the victors, and it’s here in this second panel that degli Onesti finally understands what he is witnessing — a curse made manifest — a woman hunted by phantoms.”

“Dreadful,” Harry said, turning to Lucia and offering her an apologetic smile. “Now you know why I joined the army.”

Lucia returned the smile and turned to the third panel as Harriet talked them through it once again. She was looking at a harmless picnic, again in the woods — Pablo’s woods — a long table covered in a white cloth and surrounded by revellers — or were they? There in the foreground things darkened yet again. Ugolini was there again, and now the woman was being killed — a second time — slashed and beaten by her dead lover.

“Notice,” Harriet continued with pride, “that despite the hell unfolding in the foreground, the background — the woods — are still untouched by it all — they are pure and natural.”

“It always comes back to the woods,” Lucia said, staring at the monstrous depiction in front of her. She thought Botticelli was all about the Birth of Venus, the beautiful painting of the Roman Goddess of love emerging naked from the sea in a shining scallop shell, not curses, ghouls and nude women running form the plague and hunted though desolate woodland by phantom killers.

“The woods are a constant in all of the panels,” Harry said, fixated by the image in front of them.

Lucia reached out to touch the painting but Harry stopped her. “Might be alarmed,” he said.

She pulled her hand away. “I didn’t realise Botticelli had such a vivid imagination.”

Harriet laughed. “This? Blame this on Boccaccio and the Decameron, as I said. He was one of the humanists we just talked about. He fled from Florence to escape the Black Death, the plague… and he set his Decameron in the woods… I’m getting a coffee — won’t be two ticks.”

“Coffee?” Harry said. “Are you kidding me?”

Harriet pushed back from her desk. “It’s my fuel. Take it or leave it.”

“Come on, Pablo!” Lucia said. “What were you trying to say?”

The two of them stared at the panels to find meaning in the images — searching in the trees for anything that might link all this together — a clue — a hidden meaning — anything at all.

“Maybe we got it wrong,” Harry said. “Maybe his notes were just simple notes, and not a message at all.”

Lucia shook her head. “No — I don’t believe Pablo would do something like that. None of his other books had writing in them. This book is different — and the reference to beauty being in the eye of the beholder, and how we would find the answer not in books but in the woods — and don’t forget the page numbers were cartographic grid references that led us exactly to this point in the museum. No — his reference means something and what we are looking for is in the woods.”

Harriet returned with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. “Did I miss anything?”

“Wait!” said Harry, turning from the panel and fixing his eyes on Lucia. “The Latin for woods is silvis, but why did Pablo translate it into English in the margin?”

“Pablo often spoke English, especially at work or when he was at a conference.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t explain why he would make a private note in the margins of one of his own books in English and not in Spanish, and yet that is exactly what he did here.” Harry held up the book. “What’s the Spanish word for woods?”

“Bosque, but why do you ask?”

“Did he speak Spanish at home?”

“Usually, but most of his work was written in Italian — it was his mother’s language.”

“And what is the Italian for the woods?”

“Bosco.”

Harry ran a hand through his hair in disbelief and fixed his eyes on Lucia. “How could I have been such a fool? Pablo’s reference to the woods wasn’t about woods in a painting — it was about a particular artist — The Woods.”

“I don’t understand,” Lucia said.

“I do,” Harriet said, and let out a low laugh. “It seems I managed to teach you something after all, Henry.”