The Botticelli Secret

15

I was aware of three things.

Cosa Uno: somebody had a headache.

Cosa Due: someone was groaning like a doomed steer at a butcher’s yard.

Cosa Tre: when I opened my eyes I thought that I had not, for it was so dark at first. I lay still for a moment, long enough to know that the headache was mine, and I was the one doing the groaning. I remembered the blow to my head, and knew from the rolling motion that we were on board ship. We? Yes, Brother Guido was there. I rolled against his soft bulk when the ship pitched, but he lay still, unconscious.

Dead?

The notion pulled me to my elbow as my head beat time with my heart. I nudged and shook the monk till his head rolled on his neck, but the black eyelashes fluttered and the blue eyes flew open. “Luciana,” he said. A statement, as if he had dreamed of me and woken to the reality seamlessly, with no surprise. “Where are we?”

I had only woken a moment ahead of him, but I’d already had time to work this out.

“Back down in the hold.”

He rose, too, at that, groaned, looked about him. Typically, his first concern was for me. Also typically, he couched his kind inquiries in a manner that even the most knowledgeable apothecary would find hard to follow.

“Do you have any abrasions about your cranium? Is your vision tolerably intact?”

“I don’t know what you just asked, but I’m fine,” I replied, as cheerfully as I could. “I have a headache that bangs like an African’s drum and a mouth as dry as a ship’s biscuit. But other than that, still alive. You?”

He rubbed the back of his head, and then scrutinized his pale hand for blood. “Fine too. For now.”

“For now?” His words chilled. “Do you think they’ll kill us?”

I heard, rather than saw, him shake his head. “Not at once. I think they have a job to do, and this fleet—the Muda—has to reach its destination on time, and we are merely an inconve nience.”

“Do you think they know about the picture?”

“No. I think all this is connected to the Primavera, but they do not know that we are connected to it. Let us hope they will take us where they are going and set us free.”

A wan hope indeed.

“Our first course of action would be to conceal our consciousness from our captors.”

“Eh?”

Dimly I saw him raise a moon-pale finger to his lips.

“Not let them know we are awake. We may hear something of our fate.”

It seemed as good a notion as any, and my pounding head invited me to lie down again anyway. So we resumed our lifeless postures and waited. And waited. All seemed silent above, no footfalls, no conversation. I began to wonder if the Capitano and his hideous mates had set us adrift and then abandoned ship, to leave us alone on a ghost ship. I had heard of such phantom vessels that sail the Spanish straits with no earthly crew. Eventually, I was so tired and worn-out with fear that I was nearly asleep in truth when we saw a torch flare through the grille of the hold and heard voices.

“. . . would just be throwing good money after bad, and you know how I hate to do that.”

It was the voice of the Capitano—a man that had once been cultured, perhaps wellborn, but his voice sounded as if it had been choked with weed and barnacles, like the hull of a ship, and cracked with sea air.

“Looks like we killed them anyway.” A younger voice, un-schooled, ignorant, not the first mate who had hit me.

“No. Berello has been hitting people over the head for years—if I want him to kill someone, he’ll kill them.”

“So now what?”

“Keep ‘em. If the lad is a noble, we’ll take him to Don Ferrente, might be a ransom there. And the lass is so comely that she’ll sell for good money in the market.”

“Might make the trip a bit more fun. Haven’t had a fuck since Famagusta. Dirty little Turk who gave me lice.”

I held my breath for the Capitano’s answer. Now I’m a jolly girl who likes a good time, but being worked over by a crew of ugly, lice-ridden seamen for no money is not my idea of one.

“No. If she’s a virgin we’ll get much more. Don Ferrente himself might take her, but not if she’s been poked by the likes of you. Keep your prick in your pants or I’ll chop it off and feed it to the sharks, and tell the other lads the same.”

The crewman sounded chastened. “Aye, aye. Will we feed ‘em?”

“Why not? Not the good rations. But we don’t want her starved. Keep her tits juicy. And if he’s somebody—Della Torry, was it? Might be a bit awkward if he dies before we reach . . .”

At this the footsteps faded and we were left both relieved and frustrated. We waited for silence, then began to whisper, Brother Guido’s voice warm in my ear.

“Well, at least we know we will be fed, and that we are in no present danger.”

I found his ear in turn. “Wonder where they’re taking us though. Shame we just missed it. If it’s not one of the cities in the picture, we’ll be off our course.”

“It must be one of them.” Brother Guido spoke with certainty. “The fleet, my uncle, they’re connected. Something has been set in train, and we are to be carried along. I assure you in the name of Mary and all the saints that we will be going to Naples or Genoa, and as soon as we see some sunlight, I will know which.”

I was impressed but too tired to ask how he could possibly divine our direction from the sun. Everyone knows that the sun is a great fiery ball that moves around the earth—it is never still, so how could it be any kind of marker? Presently we began to move around, in the hope that food would come if the crew knew that we were awake. But after long hours of walking from one end to t’other of our pitchy prison, feeling wooded walls and naught else, we observed a gray dawnlight begin to seep through the iron grille above. We could now see our jail, ten feet square of space, with the grille set so high above that we could never escape without a rope or ladder. They knew we were safe down here, trapped like lobsters in a pot. We sat down again, regarding the hole we were in, considering our options, realizing we had none. We were at the mercy of the brigands that walked above us. Ignorant of our fate, we were too afraid to plan, and fell to bickering the morning away. At length we subsided into a sulky silence, and this was how we greeted a new phenomenon: bright sunlight suddenly flooded through the grille trapdoor of the hold, and a square of golden light began to crawl down the wooden wall of our prison, gradually, gradually sinking to the floor as the ship sailed its course. Brother Guido was up, swift as a fox, craning below the grille to see the sun’s position. I stood beside him but could see little—after a night in the dark the sky was too bright for me to behold. Brother Guido looked about him, frustrated.

“What do you need?” said I.

“I need a marker of sorts—a stylus, pen, charcoal. We are nearing the middle of the day and I must take a measurement.”

I raised a brow. “I don’t think you’re in luck.”

“Hmm.”

He lurched to the larboard side—the left—and began to prise a glob of tar from between the clinkered planks of the hold. The ship was new, so the tar was tacky and the monk rolled the mass into a long stylus and spat on the end. He gazed at the floor, and where the light hit the board at the extreme southern edge of the grille he made a neat cross with the black tar marker.

“What the fuck . . .?”

He held up one long palm in my face, to silence me, and held the other hand to his heart. He was counting. Long moments passed, then he suddenly made another mark, where the light from the same point now fell in a new position. He then connected the two points with a line, drew a third, seemingly random point, and connected the three to make a triangle. Then he drew a circle neatly within the fattest part of the triangle and began to write numbers against the adjoining points in his cramped and wiggly hand. I got bored and stared up, hoping for provisions to be sent down, but my daydreams of salt beef and ship’s rum were soon interrupted—Brother Guido sat back on his haunches, face flushed with his calculations in the light of the new day.

He had his answer.