The Botticelli Secret

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 was 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.

At length we found ourselves on the edge of a glittering bay, with the spars of clustering masts sticking up from the shoreline like a quiverful of arrows. I scanned the faint blue line of the horizon, hanging between sky and sea in the far distance, for the dark low thundercloud of a thousand ships rolling in toward unknowing France. But there was nothing to be seen, the skyline flat and uninterrupted; the whole idea seemed incredible on such a peerless blue day. Genoa showed us an innocent face; a hectic, bustling port going about its daily business. Looming over all stood a tall stone finger of a tower—one level perched above another with battlemented terraces at the middle and top. Seagulls wheeled mewing around the merlons, perched and dived off to follow the catch. We headed in that direction, guided by the tower as so many must have been before us, till we were in the huddle of houses and shops, fishermen selling their catches in strange accents that I recognized from Signor Cristoforo’s tones, their wives and children knotting the nets with fingers so swift they were a blur. The fisherfolk melted away from the path of our horse; adults and children alike stood gaping, fishes themselves, at the sight of the two of us atop our black mountain. We were attracting too much attention.

“What is your friend’s name?” I thought I detected a guarded tone in Brother Guido’s voice, sensed that he did not like the notion of my having found an ally, not a young male one at least.

“Cristoforo.”

“His family name,” he snapped back.

I pondered. “I don’t know. I never learned it.” I had a flash of memory. “His brother is Bartolomeo,” I said in a rush.

“Wonderful.” He sighed and dismounted, leading me for a little way like a manservant until he spied a fellow sitting on a barrel baiting a hook. Brother Guido nodded to him. “Giorno,” he greeted the man in the worst Milanese accent I had ever heard. “Cristoforo and Bartolomeo?”

The fisherman spat a silver oyster of phlegm at Brother Guido’s feet and my friend moved back a pace. But the fellow showed no enmity—as his spittle rose and crawled away I realized he was keeping baitworm warm in his mouth and must expel the creature before he spoke. I was so busy trying not to gag I did not catch his answer, but his nod was expressive, and we headed in the direction he indicated till we came upon a tiny hut with a low roof made ingeniously of barrel sides, making the whole dwelling resemble a boat. Through the open half-door came the smells I had come to love and were dam’s milk to Brother Guido—parchment and ink. Even without the map scroll above the door we knew we were in the right place.

A scribe sat within, his back to us, scratching carefully at a parchment pinned upon a slanted desk. He did not look up as we entered, giving me time to dig Brother Guido in the ribs and point to a sight that lined the far wall, rows and rows of wooden map rolls, carved and marked like our own.

The fellow kept his eyes on his work still. “Can I help you?”

I had hoped against hope that Signor Cristoforo would, by some miracle, be here; but the voice was not his—this must be the brother.

“Might you read a map for us, sir?”

“We don’t read maps,” came the curt reply. “We make them.”

I took over. “But signore, we have traveled a long way, and we have money.” If only the man would look at me! My voice is not my best asset—but I thought my chest might help our case. But there was no need to use my wiles, for a voice hailed me from the back of the shop. “Luciana!”

Now we had never been close companions, but the service Signor Cristoforo had rendered me in Venice had made me his friend for life. I shot into his arms, and he kissed me on each cheek, clearly as delighted as I was.

“I never thought to find you here!” I gasped. “I thought you had gone to sail the seas and map the world!”

He rubbed his bulbous nose. “Believe me, I am trying. I came back home to petition our own doge, after Venice’s doge, or rather the dogaressa . . . removed me from your city.” He smiled ruefully.

“She did not harm you?”

“Not a hair on my head.” He ruffled the matted red mass at his crown.

Once again I marveled at my mother’s weathercock nature. She gelded the boatman that was to sail me away, but the man that planned the whole thing was sent home in safety because he was my friend.

Brother Guido was still as a sculpture beyond me, and the look with which he greeted Signor Cristoforo was as frosty as a mountain blast. He was soon disarmed as the sailor clasped his shoulder. “And this is your friend, whom you went to seek? Well-a-day! I am right glad you managed to escape at last. And Nivola?”

I thought of the poor sailor, rotting without eyes or balls in my father’s prison.

“He lives,” I whispered, bowed down with guilt. I did not lie, could not share the truth lest Signor Cristoforo refuse to help us.

“I am glad of that too.” He smiled; Brother Guido smiled. Signor Cristoforo introduced Signor Bartolomeo, a fellow as ill-favored but pleasant-natured as he, and we all smiled at each other. Then Signor Cristoforo made it even easier by repeating his brother’s question. “What do you here? Can we help you?”

“We need you to read a map.” I looked at Brother Guido and he gave me a tiny nod, license to share our confidence. “We think the star denotes the site of an attack which will come tomorrow.”

I unraveled the silk from my bodice. He bent in to look at the landmass depicted, and I saw his smile die.

“Where did you get this?”

“In Venice. I found this.” I showed him the wooden roll. “And we, well, printed it in Milan.” I did not trouble him with the facts that we had used a Bible page for parchment and communion wine for ink—the story was incredible enough, and the map spoke for itself.

He took the thing from my hands, weighed it in his. “A rotogravure. A roll with the design of a map etched into it—we make them here as you can see.” His gesture took in the similar rolls upon the walls. “Maps are often transported this way on long and perilous voyages; they are not damaged by wind or rain as parchment may be, nor can they be torn. And if the ship is wrecked, they bob to the surface and float with the jetsam, to inform those that come after.” He turned the roll in his hands. “Let us just be sure—I’d like to make another print, for you did not use the best materials”—he grinned his lopsided grin—“and the design is as clear as a February fog. Con permesso?” He asked our permission, and the monk and I nodded as one.

Signor Cristoforo took us to a flat wooden block and pinned a clean square of parchment in place. He spun the rotogravure in a tray of sticky black ink and rolled it once, cleanly, across the virgin sheet. Printed expertly as this, we could now see the detail as never before, and the star that we had seen at the left upper side of the unknown country now revealed itself to be a cross, with four short arms. Signor Cristoforo seemed thunder-struck and I followed his glassy gaze to the inky roll in his hands, which stained his fingertips with ink that he seemed not to notice.

I thought I guessed the reason for his dazzlement. “Is this one of yours?”

“No.” He peered closely at the top end. “Very like. But there is a snake etched into the wood. We have a cross, the cross . . .” he said, “of Genoa.” He plucked one of his own rolls from the wall shelf and showed me.

“It’s the cross from the map!” I said slowly.

“Four arms of even length like the Maltese design,” put in Brother Guido.

“Precisely. Or the Genoese design, for it rides upon our flag. And so I must ask you again. Where did you get this rotogravure?”

Briefly, not believing it myself, I told him: of the storm, the basilica, and the Zephyrus horse. He merely nodded once or twice, not questioning at all. I could see Brother Guido trying to read his look, and the twin expression upon Signor Bartolomeo’s face.

“What is it? What is amiss?”

The two brothers looked at each other. “It’s just that,” began Signor Bartolomeo, “this landmass here is the peninsula known as Italia.”

That word again.

“We thought so,” admitted Brother Guido. “And the cross denotes Monaco? For it is at the extreme northwest of the land-mass. It is so, surely? The point of attack is Monaco, the gateway to France?”

Signor Cristoforo shook his head. “No, friend. It is certain. The city is denoted not just by the latitude and positioning but also by the emblem of the city itself. The site of attack, if there is to be one, is Genoa.”