The Botticelli Secret

28

Florence was a world of color.

After the black and white of the Neapolitan court, I was dazzled by my gaudy city. We processed through the streets with as much pomp as our makeshift retinue allowed us, and everywhere I saw the hues that I had missed in the black-and-white world we had left. By our sides the four novices marched in liveries of rose and amber; we had no Pisan pennants so Brother Guido had bade them carry scarves of orange and red, the colors of the della Torre Cockerel party, which flowed behind us like flags. We passed under the massive looming shadow of the Duomo, and even this holy building seemed a patterned palace today, the strong sun picking up the triple marbles of green, red, and gold. My eyes were dizzy with color, my ears deaf with the bawling of the bells. I saw from the corner of my eye three shabby harlots lounging on the Baptistery steps, yawning and scratching in the sun, legs lolling apart for the passing gentry. I raised my chin an inch, feeling how far I had left them behind. Today I felt as noble as I was pretending to be.

But as we turned into the Mercato Lorenzini and I glimpsed the rough brown frontage of the Medici church, my courage left me and my bowels turned to water—

I felt they would drop from my stomach like the guts of Francesco Pazzi as he dangled from his noose.

My mouth dried as we entered the square and were assailed by more carnival and color and chaos. Truly, here I felt my senses deserted me. Petals fell from the sky as cheering citizens cast them from high windows, a multicolored snowstorm. This was a city of flowers, last night and this day. The church of San Lorenzo itself, a rough brown treasure casket, was today elevated from its workaday appearance; it was garlanded at the door with festoons and bouquets. The portal swallowed a steady stream of guests, nobles and dignitaries, bright as Barbary parrots in their wedding-day finery and screeching like them too.

I felt that I had left the common world and entered a world of fairy tale. I knew it to be so when the Medici giraffe—the same creature I had once seen wandering through the blue dusk on the hillside of Fiesole—strode across the square. Its neck was hung about with flowers, its long black tongue snaking out to snatch the laurel branches that hung from each window.

After a night of dark and quiet in the old stones of Santa Croce I felt overcome, and would have stumbled but for Brother Guido’s strong grip on my arm. He looked at me once, did not smile but nodded. I felt a little strengthened, and then we were at the church, and the dark doors swallowed us.

In the cool of the interior, I began to feel better—the colors were not so bright here, the shrieking voices of nobility likewise muted. We were shown to the garlanded pews behind the royal House of Naples and gratefully sank from view behind the king and queen, canary bright in blue and yellow—so different from their native black. I hoped that the eyes of the casual observer would travel to them and no farther. My turban began to itch.

Seated and safe for the moment, I was free to look about me as the drums and timbrels played a wedding hymn to the arriving guests. I looked at every haughty figure, every noble face, for the remaining members of the Seven. There was Don Ferrente, there the Judas-pope himself in a cloak of cinnabar red. Where were the others, that quartet of unknown conspirators? Were they here, ready for their instruction? Three things clamored for my attention above all the wonder before me.

Cosa Uno: across the aisle from us sat a strange creature, so exotic that even in such company she attracted the eye. She was clad in a gown of green and gold like my own, but with her face entirely covered with a golden mask. The workmanship of the mask was exquisite—it was the face of a lioness, studded with seed pearls and chased with curlicues of gilt, while a filigree veil of finest gold mail hung from chin to throat. I was fascinated by the strange lady, almost Eastern in her mystery. She sat silently next to an elderly man in white and scarlet robes wearing a white velvet hat shaped like a penis. My eye soon left him, bizarre though his weeds were, to stray back to the lady, for she invited my gaze like a fisherman draws a catch within his net. I gawped openly at the lion mask, almost forgetting there was a person within, until I saw that, from behind her disguise, she regarded me, too, with eyes as green as my own. I turned away, flushed, but as I did so I realized—she was the dogaressa.

The doge’s courtesan—a woman so fair she did not remove her mask.

So the man in the cock hat she escorted must be the doge of Venice.

And if it were so, she was the mother of the girl intended for Niccolò della Torre—Brother Guido’s cousin and the man he now pretended to be.

Madonna.

My thoughts did not tend this way for long, for it was then I noticed:

Cosa Due: a figure, grander and greater than all before me, seated in an elaborate carved chair, at the left of the chancel steps. This man I knew, as all Florentines knew him. Though we had never met, I had seen his image a dozen times—the noble nose, the darkly curling hair, the elongated face. But never before had I seen him in the flesh. This, I knew, was the father of our city, banker to barons, politician without peer. The man they called “the Magnificent”—Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Never had I seen a man so vital, nor one who wore the mantle of his power with such confidence. He was simply dressed in purple velvet, the color of dark grapes, a hue that I knew was written in law to be worn only by Medici men or Tornabuoni women. He wore a matching berretta hat with a twisted fall of velvet folds to the left of his face. His fingers were ringless—his one embellishment a heavy chain of office around his neck. Now I had, in the last crazy months, been in the presence of princes and popes, not something I had ever expected in my humble lot. The man before me wore perhaps one tenth of the value of the clothes that adorned Don Ferrente. And yet, he was a man to be reckoned with, a crouching tiger. At once I saw the ridiculous hopelessness of our plan. He did not look like a man who would ever be vanquished or in danger. He was not a man whom a monk and a whore could approach and prattle of riddles and plots. He looked like the king of the world. And yet, as I turned to whisper to Brother Guido that we should go quietly away and let this great man shift for himself, I suddenly caught sight of:

Cosa Tre: the greatest and most heart-stopping of these three unusual sights. For there, garlanded with flowers and grass-green ribbons, and propped on a great oaken easel, awaiting the happy couple, was the Primavera.

Finished.

Madonna.

It was glorious.

The figures had such color and vitality that they seemed more alive than any in the company here. Larger than life, they were gods and goddesses come to Earth. There was Fiammetta as Naples, Venus bidding us welcome, Botticelli dressed as Mercury, and—strangest of all—Flora.

Me.

I had been so used to seeing the cartone for this past month, so used to the faceless figure, that I had not remembered that Botticelli had captured me so accurately, so completely. My face was beautiful but worldly—my lips curling and my green eyes knowing, exactly the face I make when I conceal something, or when I tease my clients, or when they have entrusted me with a secret never to be told. A good working girl knows when to keep her trap shut, and I know better than most.

The Flora of the Primavera had a secret.

I may not know what the roses meant, but I knew in that instant that I was wrong about Lorenzo de’ Medici. Right about this. He was in danger. There was something hidden here. I recalled at once our purpose here; what Nicodemus of Padua had said of the one flower, one single rose among the others that we must note. That we’d have to see it here, in the painting, for real, to know if it fell or grew, whether it was to be counted in the number of Flora’s secret bouquet or discounted as one of the innocent blooms that dotted the sward. The secret was hidden sub rosa. It was the key to all, a touch-stone, fail-safe—a way to know that only those at the wedding, those seven conspirators who would see the thing up close, would know the meaning.

Annoyingly, from my seated position I could see the bunched roses in Flora’s skirt but not the single rose that stood or fell between her and Venus. I did not dare to stand and draw attention to myself as the subject of the painting. Already Don Ferrente and his queen were turning to smile and nod in their appreciation of the likeness.

I smiled back and craned and twisted, wriggling my bottom on the pew as if I had cunny crabs, but it was no good; the vital bloom was just lost to sight in a sea of bobbing heads.

My escort turned to admonish me. “Be still!” hissed Brother Guido. “A lady sits like a statue, in a seemly fashion. Do you have an itch?”

I looked poniards at him “No, I am trying to see Flora’s rose—can you see from where you are?”

He looked, shook his head. “We will have to peruse the thing closely when we file out at the end. Until then, keep your head down.”

“Did you see il Magnifico?”

This time he nodded. “Yes. He is well placed for our purposes, for all the guests will file past him at the end of the ceremony to be presented. See? His gentlemen-in-waiting hold baskets of laurel branches for Lorenzo to distribute to the guests at the end, as a sign of peace.”

I saw the two liveried attendants with their meaningless leaves—I pictured again Lorenzo’s own pet giraffe munching happily on the laurel leaves outside; the family pet happily devouring the family emblem. I snorted through my nose. Peace indeed. The Medici will eat itself, for the family plotted against its own head.

“Look, Luciana,” continued Brother Guido, instantly forgetting his own decorum. I followed his pointing finger, pleased that his voice held the first note of worship I had detected since his audience with the pope. But I saw no one but a quiet, astonishingly ugly man, with a robe of dun gray, writing on a tablet. The only spot of brightness in his costume was a crown of roses he wore on his brow, making him look faintly ridiculous. Even his companions found him dull, it seemed; for the two young peacocks that flanked him had both turned around to converse with their friends in the pew behind. Yet to look at Brother Guido’s moonstruck expression was to recall when he had first laid eyes on the pope.

“Who is it?” I whispered.

“That is Angelo Poliziano. The Medici court poet. Remember, he wrote the Stanze, upon which the Primavera is based, and the verses on the rose which we heard this very night?”

“Oh, yes. They were quite pretty.” I looked at the man with new respect, and was pleased that Brother Guido had not lost all his idols—for him, seeing the man whose verses he had copied so oft and so painstakingly in the scriptorium of Santa Croce was clearly a cause for joy.

My own pleasure in his ceased in an instant when one of the poet’s companions turned back around. I had seen him before that day, of course, but then he had been in two dimensions, harmless, rendered on the poplar panel of the Primavera, clad as Mercury. Here he was in the flesh.

Sandro Botticelli.

And by some ill chance he met my horrified eyes and, in that instant, recognized me.

Three things happened at once.

Cosa Uno: he stood, but so did the whole congregation.

Cosa Due: he cried out, but his voice was drowned by a fanfare of crumhorns.

Cosa Tre: The bride and bridegroom entered.

They came through the open doors as black shapes against the bright day, then resolved into creatures of fable, living and walking before us. They walked down the nave arm in arm, in the Tuscan tradition.

The bride was, as Brother Guido had guessed in Rome, Venus to the life. She even wore the clothes from the painting to the last detail, the oyster silk dress with embroidered flames at the neck flaring to burn her lily throat, the vivid ocher and azure cloak with the beaded hem, and the gold filigree pattens on her dainty feet, the veil on her red hair as light as mist on a spring morning. Bright at her breast was fastened the amber and gold roundel of the medal of Sol Invictus. I studied her face—delicate and white as a magnolia petal with the merest hint of pink high on each cheek, her eyes glassy and calm. I felt drawn to this quiet maiden and sorry for her at once—she was an innocent pawn in this. I studied the swell of her belly with a practiced eye but could not tell if she had tasted the sweets of the marriage bed as yet. I had to concede that my companion was right—the Romanesque style of the dress covered every sin in that quarter. Yet having seen her, I now thought her pure; she did have the countenance and bearing of a maiden. I am indifferent usually to the charms of my own sex, but I had to admit that her beauty and purity were striking, as far from my own earthy beauty as the moon floats high, cold fathoms above the warm terra. She was worthy to be Venus, queen of love, and her resemblance to her twin in the Primavera was complete when she turned at the head of the aisle and raised her hand to the congregation, in a gesture of welcome and greeting exactly matched in the painting.

The groom, on the other hand, was a jackal. He had eyes for everyone but his lady as he walked up the aisle, laughing, japing, and greeting his friends as he went, with no heed for decorum or rite. His teeth were bright white and plentiful, his caper-green eyes roving. He bore a physical resemblance to his powerful cousin and guardian, but wore none of the authority and power with the name he bore. I felt him unworthy to be heir to this, my city. My nostrils flared as he passed and I caught a whiff of male musk—he had not kept his chastity for the wedding night. His scent and his character soured together in my nose. God knows, I have few moral boundaries, but this I knew. He was a treacherous conspirator and he had to be stopped.

The couple turned from us and a priest in a splendid chasuble walked to the center of the chancel steps to meet them, and began to intone the mass over them. Having, as I said, little Latin despite my convent education, I would have slept in my seat but for the strong impression of Botticelli’s eyes burning into the back of my neck, the skin naked to his gaze without my usual tumble of hair. I knew now that we had little time after the service, to reach il Magnifico before Botticelli reached me—to say what, I dared not contemplate. I alternated for the rest of the service between nervously dreading the end of the mass and impatiently willing the priest to be done. I did not pray, for I never did; but I noticed that Brother Guido kept his full lips clamped tight shut through the proceedings—not a prayer did he offer, not a psalm did he sing, not a response passed his lips.

At length the priest began the handfasting, winding the couple’s hands together in the Florentine tradition. As the spring-green ribbon passed over and above one brown hand and one white, I craned to see the groom’s left thumb and knew that Brother Guido did likewise. For the longest time we could see nothing as the ribbon blocked our sight, but at the final binding all was clear.

No ring.

It was as plain as day. The groom’s thumb lay over his lady’s, naked as a new babe.

Brother Guido and I exchanged a look, as my heart thumped. What could this mean?

“Perhaps if he’s the leader, he doesn’t have to wear a ring?” I suggested hopefully.

“Except it bears the Medici symbol. Perhaps he left it off to keep his hand naked for the handfasting?”

But neither his theory nor mine rang true. Fuck. Could we be wrong?

There was no time to think, as the ceremony was drawing to a close with the final prayers. The bride and groom married, passed back down the aisle, and I could see once again at close quarters that the groom’s thumb was definitely bare. But, packed in as we were by leaving guests, we had no chance to see the painting properly, no time to peruse the rose. “What do we do?” I hissed, as the tide of silk and satin swept us ever forward to il Magnifico, where he sat in state in his carved chair. His servants handed him the laurel boughs, which he gave to each departing guest. Saying little, but smiling and bowing with true nobility. “Let’s appeal to him,” said I, suddenly finding kindness in the noble face. “Throw ourselves on his mercy, beg for sanctuary. We have no choice.” Through the press of the crowd I saw Botticelli pushing his way down the aisle toward me.

We were next.

Brother Guido gave his false title to the manservant nearest us. The powerful scent of laurel was in my nose, the powerful hand of Lorenzo de’ Medici was at Brother Guido’s lips, accepting the kiss of greeting.

I saw the flash of gold too late.

Il Magnifico’s fingers were ringless, but his thumb was not.

At the same instant that Brother Guido’s lips touched the ring hand, and his blue eyes flew wide in realization, a black shadow peeled from the wall behind Lorenzo, inclined its cowled head to its master, and extended a diseased hand from the robes of the unclean to point to me.

My numbed brain trotted out a trinity of panicked thoughts, like the litany we had just heard.

Credo Uno: Lorenzo il Magnifico was one of the Seven. Not his cousin the groom.

Credo Due: he was in no danger—he was the source of it.

And most terrifying of all,

Credo Tre: Cyriax Melanchthon was his creature.

I turned to hush the servant before he announced us, but it was too late—he intoned in his loud Tuscan: “Lord Niccolò della Torre of the city of Pisa.”

A voice from the doorway, calling back, just as loud, as in answer to catechism:

“No man has a right to that name but me.” The accent was Pisan. We all turned as one to the door.

Like the happy couple at their entrance, the figure in the door was black gainst the sun. Yet I would know his foppish stance anywhere, for all that I had met him only once. And there was no mistaking his retinue, wearing the colors and holding the streaming yellow-orange pennants of the Cock-erel party.

It was Niccolò della Torre.

Many, many times between that day and this I have asked myself why it never occurred to Brother Guido or me that the real Niccolò della Torre might have been there at the Medici wedding. Was it that he had, for us, disappeared from the earth’s disk once his cousin had taken his name? Was it that we were so absorbed in the riddle of the Primavera that we had forgotten that he existed, had been invited? Or was it that we assumed a fellow who would not attend his father’s feast when he lived in the same city would not cross Tuscany for a wedding, however exalted?

In the end it mattered not why we had not considered this pass—I looked into Brother Guido’s anguished eyes and knew we were done for. The eyes of all were upon us—my companion and I were silent, knowing this to be the end.

The crowd parted as if before Moses to let Niccolò through. Although he was gloriously dressed in cloth of gold, his weak face and mean eyes were unimproved, and his voice dripped evil as he spoke the dreaded syllables. “This is my cousin, a Franciscan novice, Guido della Torre.”

He ignored the gasps and raised his voice over them. I had to drop my eyes as the furious gaze of Don Ferrente raked us from the crowds. “And this is his doxy. You will know her as the goddess Flora”—his voice dripped irony—“but she is no deity, merely a common whore.”

Before I could prevent him, he yanked at the turban that covered my hair; I spun around like a top as the cloth unraveled and my wheaten curls fell around my shoulders to my waist. The sunlight streaming in at the door snatched greedily at the gilded filaments, turning my tresses to spun gold. The staring faces about me seemed to wheel and spin around me in dizzying circles, and as I tried to steady myself before my accuser, I was powerless. My painted twin gazed from her spring scene, smiling her mischievous smile, offering no help, for all the world enjoying my disgrace. I knew not what would happen now, but I could never have expected what did.

The dogaressa rose from her seat and spoke in clear tones. “That is no whore, Prince. She is my daughter, and your betrothed.” Then she took off her mask.

Now, I cannot tell you much of what happened next, for I was beyond all sense and reason. I will have to refer you to what my husband told me afterward, for yes, he was in the church that day. He said that when the dogaressa took off her mask, there were three of me in that room, myself, Flora, and she. Mother and daughter, he said, were so alike it was as if a Venetian mirror stood between us. I saw the resemblance for a mere heartbeat, an instant impression that we had the same green eyes and gold hair, that we were even wearing the same hue of green gown. But as she came toward me and I slipped from consciousness, I could even see that her expression held the same half-smile of Flora; she found amusement in this predicament.

As I fell to the ground, insensible, I knew three things.

Cosa Uno: Brother Guido was wrestled to the floor by two Medici men-at-arms with pikes; there could be no escape for him.

Cosa Due: the crowd parted to allow the dogaressa to come to me, and I could see through to the Primavera with a straight and uninterrupted view of Flora’s last rose. It had a green stem and a glossy leaf, and it was falling to the ground. I fell with it. And as I fell, I thought,

Cosa Tre: I had found my Vero Madre.