The Botticelli Secret

24

A ring of bells later and we stood before an enormous building, silver and squat in the moonlight. Brother Guido and I had stopped in our tracks together, our mouths agape like twin baby birds. Don Ferrente stood watching us and not the building, a small smile playing at his lips as if he had built the thing himself. At the king’s elbow I felt the constant presence of his majordomo Santiago, smooth and silent as ever. This giant place—not a house nor yet a church—seemed to be a relic of the city’s ancient past; even I knew it to be Roman by reason of its many columns.

Above the columns an inscription was hewn into the timeless rock, and as I knew he would, Brother Guido read it out. “ ‘M· AGRIPPA· L· F · COS ·TERTIUM ·FECIT.’ “ He turned to Don Ferrente. “Marcus Agrippa made me.”

Don Ferrente, who was to be our guide it seemed, nodded, and named the place. “The Pantheon.”

Brother Guido’s eyes shone. “But this is incredible. I have longed to see this wonder since a child.”

Don Ferrente smiled, gratified that he might please his guest and show his knowledge of a place “Lord Niccolò” had never been. “Come inside,” he invited. “I have arranged for our party to visit privily, so we will have the run of the place for the spectacle to come.”

We entered the huge dark maw of the church and I saw two of Don Ferrente’s heavies posted at the portico, pikes in hand, and wondered what we were to witness. I turned at the door and looked back to the square outside—unusually busy, even for a great city. I had thought at first that the populace had gathered to see the grandeur of our carriages arriving from the Castel Sant’Angelo, but the crowd remained, milling and mumbling. Some of the goodwives crossed themselves and the gentlemen talked loudly as men do in braggadocio. It must be long past Compline as we had already dined—what did they all do there? There was a buzz of anticipation and an underbelly of something else.

Fear.

As we crossed the square, Don Ferrente’s guards elbowing the burghers of Rome from our path, I pulled at Brother Guido’s sleeve.

“What is this place?” I had no doubt that although he had never set foot inside it, Brother Guido would know all.

“The Pantheon, means temple to ‘all the gods’ from the Greek pan—every—and theon—God. It was originally part of Augustus Caesar’s plan to rebuild Rome in his image.”

“I thought you said it was built by Marcus somebody.”

“Marcus Agrippa was friend and general to Augustus; it seems likely that he designed the first Pantheon, since his inscription still fills the architrave above the portico.”

I figured that he meant “above the front door.” “So it’s a temple,” I summarized.

“Not anymore. After Rome became Christianized, the Pantheon became the Church of Santa Maria dei Martiri consecrated by command of the Byzantine emperor Phocas many centuries ago.”

“All right, so now it’s a church.” I accepted his tedious corrections. “But why are we here?”

“That I know not.”

This was typical of Brother Guido, as I now knew—he would tell you about a hundred things you did not want to know, but anything you actually wanted to know was missing from his armory of knowledge. I found the Pantheon creepy, and my neck prickled as I followed the gentlemen inside, there to recognize others of the Aragonese court, milling around the great space like flies in a bottle. The queen and the trio of royal mistresses were already within, and all nodded to me. Giovanna of Aragon was serene as ever, but the concubines were in a twitter of excitement, chattering like jays. A great ring of hissing torches was set within the walls, to illuminate the interior. And I had to admit that the place was truly a wonder. I noted at once three things.

Cosa Uno: by some strange alchemy of architecture it seemed more massive inside than it even seemed from without, and

Cosa Due: the interior was an immense circular space with a marble floor. A huge dome arched above, and

Cosa Tre: in the center of the dome sat the greatest peculiarity of the place, a huge hole, open to the skies, through which the full moon could clearly be seen.

Brother Guido turned about below this false firmament, neck cricked to the ceiling, marveling at the hole.

“The oculus,” Don Ferrente supplied. “Which serves as a mirror of the round heavens.” He raised his voice for poetic effect, and those gathered stopped to heed him. “Dio Cassius said: ‘Thanks to its dome the Pantheon resembles the vault of heaven itself.’ ”

I was unimpressed; he was clearly parroting knowledge that he had learned not one hour ago, in order to impress his court, and my lip curled a little in contempt.

“Indeed,” rejoined Brother Guido enthusiastically. “The Pantheon still exemplifies the Roman aim for perfection in structural integrity and philosophical harmony.” His statement, unstudied and unrehearsed (and to me incomprehensible), made me as proud of his learning as if he were my eldest son, but Don Ferrente’s countenance soured.

“To be sure.”

Brother Guido did not heed the king’s tone but continued to marvel, turning this way and that as if calculating the volume of the space above his head. “So, the hemisphere of roof actually becomes a full sphere in the space between roof and marble floor! It is miraculous.”

Don Ferrente was forced to agree or betray his ignorance. He nodded sagely. “The sacred geometry of the cosmos.”

This was a little too pagan for Brother Guido’s palate. “Created by God.”

The king let this pass. “And note, too, my lord, the pavimentum.” Don Ferrente used a phrase that had clearly never passed his lips before tonight.

But he was outclassed. “Ah, yes, the pavimentum—in the opus sectile style, I see.”

Here Brother Guido flummoxed both myself and the king.

“Circles within squares,” he instructed, “as in the geography of Ptolemy. The Romans have succeeded in squaring the circle!” He laughed and I saw the king laugh along and then mentally retain the phrase, while at the same time shooting a look of ice at the ever-present Santiago. I knew then who had been sent to garner the knowledge to brief the king for his tour, and that the majordomo would be held responsible for the yawning gaps in His Majesty’s knowledge. I could not feel sorry for him.

Don Ferrente was soon to gain the ascendancy, with a mind-numbingly dull inventory of every type of marble the blasted Romans had used for the floor. A slab resembling a slice of salami was named as purple imperial porphyry from Egypt. Pavings as pink as porco grasso pâté were called docimian pavonazzetto from Asia Minor, and the flagstones so yellow it seemed as if someone had vomited on the floor were described by the king as giallo numidiana marble from Carthage. Granito grigio pavings that resembled nothing so much as dirty snow were pronounced to come from the northwest, Gaul or the Alps. I stopped listening at about this point but I knew that Brother Guido would respond fittingly.

“Incredible,” he said. “A statement of imperium writ in marble.”

My proud smile slipped a little as Brother Guido’s pronouncements began to annoy me. I wished he could speak plain Tuscan. I saved the king the shame of asking for a translation. “What?”

“I meant only that the Romans have here built a pavement that exemplifies, sorry, shows every part of their empire set into one floor from edge to edge. From all four corners of the Roman Mediterranean they have brought these marble spoils expressing conquest of Egypt, Asia, Carthage, and Gaul. It is a political statement—propaganda in porphyry.”

Jesu.

Don’t get me wrong, I was well pleased with this intellectual pissing contest, and thought it clever of him to have instigated it back in Naples, but I wished Brother Guido would use his game of bones to produce more about the plot of the Seven. I drew him aside and whispered some of this, as if I were prettily leaning in for a caress.

Brother Guido drew back, surprised. “But it is all about that. Every word was significant, every syllable relevant to our quest.”

“Even all that cant about the marble?” I hissed.

“Especially that.” His breath tickled my ear. “Were you not listening closely?”

He had me there. “Just try and find out something, anything, actually related to this pickle of ours.” I mouthed into his neck, “Please.”

Brother Guido pushed me gently away and turned to our host with the utmost courtesy. “And what do we do here, Majesty? Are we to celebrate an evening mass?”

The king smiled. “After a fashion—not of God but of nature. The old gods hold sway tonight. Look. It begins. Watch the moon carefully through the oculus, for truly there is no better place in Rome to see such a spectacle.” His courtiers gathered around us, and his servants began to extinguish the torches. We were clearly at the appointed hour for whatever we had come to see.

I looked up, and the moon, bright and perfectly full, sat serenely in the heavens as it always did. It looked perfectly ordinary, except—wait. “The moon is . . . sort of yellow,” I noticed.

“Yes, Doña,” agreed the king. “The moon is in a sickly humor, for we are now in the ides of July.”

“Ides?” I hissed to Brother Guido.

“The middle of the month. It will soon be full summer.”

“Good.” My favorite season. I used to love lolling by the Arno with the other harlots or drinking a cup of wine under a loggia. Even in this gloomy place I could almost feel the fierce heat of the Florentine sun and smell a whiff of the Arno at its lowest ebb. Rank in the noses of others, the scent of the river and all its evils—shit, waste, and even corpses—was the smell of summer to me, as beautiful to my senses as the scent of evening jasmine. Homesickness struck me in the gut, with an even dose of terror at what we must return to.

Don Ferrente echoed my divided feelings. “Summer, yes. But then the winter will follow, as it always does, a challenging one for all of us this year.”

Once again his words seemed to ring with some chime of significance. I could feel Brother Guido hesitate beside me, then steel himself to take a chance.

“But then, sure as the sun will rise, spring comes again. La primavera.”

I heard the word with a shock—so long spoken between us to refer to Botticelli’s painting, I had forgot its other usage. We both looked to Don Ferrente to seek his reaction.

He looked my friend in the eyes, straight and true. “Exactly,” he said, with the same weight to his words. “A new beginning.”

Well, this was enigmatic, to be sure, but told us nothing. As I craned my head to see the moon, even brighter now the torches were doused, I saw the saffron disk begin to disappear before my eyes, as if someone had taken a bite out of it! The bite became bigger and bigger as we watched, aghast. What could this mean? Was the world ending? Had a huge dark celestial beast come to devour the moon like a ravening wolf? Madonna.

Brother Guido felt my consternation, for I gripped his arm fit to stop the blood.

“Be comforted,” he said. “It is an eclipse of the moon—the earth is coming between the sun’s rays and the moon, and as we live on a flat disk, the impression is given that the moon is vanishing. But it is still there and will shine again within the hour.”

I gulped. “But the sun does not shine at night!”

“The sun shines perpetually, my dear. Whether we see it or not,” said the king in significant tones, once again pregnant with meaning.

“Although,” put in my friend tentatively, “such an event can happen to the sun too.”

I felt the king go still.

“For sometimes, very rarely indeed, the sun will move behind the moon in the same way. For all heavenly bodies revolve around the earth, and sometimes the moon blocks our view of the sun too.”

“You are mistaken. I fancy it is only the moon which is covered so,” asserted Don Ferrente stiffly.

“No, indeed,” went on Brother Guido, not sensing the danger, “for such phenomena have been occurring since biblical times. ‘ “And on that day,” said the Lord God, “I will make the Sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.” ’ ’Tis written in the Old Testament, the Book of Amos,” he supplied.

“Clouds,” said Don Ferrente. “The sun can never be vanquished, else we would all perish.” A memory nagged me—where had I heard such sentiments before? “ ‘Tis the most powerful entity in the heavens,” he went on.

“More powerful than God?” Brother Guido’s dark brows shot heavenward.

Don Ferrente quickly retreated from his position—he was clearly not quite ready to set himself up in opposition to the Almighty. “I meant only that the sun governs all in nature—the hours of day, the seasons . . .” He looked hard at his adversary, but Brother Guido missed the glance, so lively was he with argument.

“But the earth is not ruled by it,” said he carefully. “Nor the moon—tonight is proof enough.”

Don Ferrente had his answer ready. “Ah! But there are some who say that the sun is the center of all, and that all the heavenly bodies revolve around it. Some of those believers are great men whom we know well.”

Brother Guido, once again, missed the hint. “Heretics, sire!” I closed my eyes briefly, for Brother Guido had become bullish in his argument, and now had, if my ears did not deceive me, just pretty much called the King of Aragon and Naples a heretic. The little knot of people gathered around us below the oculus began to hush their own discourse to listen to ours.

I had to nudge my friend to help him to remain in character. “Some would say,” I amended hastily, “but not I. I feel that the Romans had the right of it: Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun. For did not the poet say,” I struggled to remember, “ ‘The Sun makes clear all your inventions by its light.’ ”

Brother Guido looked at me amazed—but you shouldn’t be, for one of a working girl’s greatest talents is the ability to remember a phrase or tidbit and quote it back to a client. It is one of the cornerstones of flattery, and every man likes it, monarch or monk.

And it worked on both; Don Ferrente thawed, nodding his approval. “Look, the celestial spectacle gathers pace.”

We looked skyward, relieved, and felt that the storm had passed. The moon was disappearing rapidly, now a half moon, now a mere crescent.

Don Ferrente leaned close to Brother Guido as he watched, and lowered his voice till I could hardly hear what he said. “When the eclipse is over, I fear I must leave you, to meet with my officers. Our royal carriages and litters are at your disposal to return to the Castel Sant’Angelo for a couple of hours, or would you prefer to remain in the city until our meeting?”

This was news. “Our meeting?”

“At midnight. At the appointed place.”

Now we were stuck, and Brother Guido was forced to ask, “The appointed place?” I froze, afeared he had given his ignorance away. If he were truly one of the Seven, he would know the meeting place, but what choice did he have but to inquire?

The king bent close. “I cannot name it for other ears but ours are listening. But your father will have told you. I will say only this to recall it to your mind.” He spoke a phrase in another tongue—I thought it English. “I will meet you there.”

It seemed to me that we were sunk, but we could hold no conference till the king had gone. We all fell silent to watch the night devour the rest of the moon, now a tiny shaving like a thumb’s nail. I found, by some odd humor, that I could not watch the last of that friendly planet disappear, for the moon had oft been my companion on my journeys to and fro in Florence, most of my labor being done at night. Whatever Brother Guido said, my irrational fear told me that it would not come back. I looked down, and the look saved my life.

The Pantheon was almost dark, but in the very last seconds of moonlight I saw a figure, tall and dark, at the very edge of our party, swathed and cowled in leper’s robes. I was not the only one not to be watching the skies. There was another. This specter was looking straight at me, with eyes as bright silver as the ferryman’s coins.

My blood froze in my arteries.

Madonna.

The leper of Naples was here.

In the next heartbeat the entire temple was black, and as Don Ferrente called for torches I yanked at Brother Guido’s sleeve, pulling him with strength I did not know I had. My eyes were blind, but my memory knew that the portico was behind us and I shoved the brother out into the night as the guards gave us pass. He followed obediently, quickly and quietly, knowing that something was wrong. I hushed his inquiries and kept going. I looked back constantly as we passed through unknown streets, my eyes telling me that we were not pursued—that the moment of darkness was enough to shed our pursuer, but my hammering heart told me that the leper was a ghost or a deadly phantom, for none other than a wraith or warlock could have walked alive from the ruins of San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples. The silver eyes burned me still and the impression of the ferryman would not leave me. I felt that the leper would not stop until he had taken us across the river of the dead.

We had gained the edge of the city, and memory told me we were almost back at the Appian Way. We must stop soon else we would flee back to Naples. In a green place stood ancient pillars and a dark doorway, I pulled us through it, twisting down and down to an underground chamber, with more passages than a cunny-warren. Once in the underworld—clearly some sort of shrine, for votive candles lit the stuffy caverns and twisted passages—we stopped to catch our breath, and I knew I must explain what I’d seen.