The Botticelli Secret

50

The first day of spring dawned cold and drizzling.

Although the storm had blown itself out, the misty rain soaked my hair and clothes, in the place where Lorenzo’s dream had died and my own had ended. He had wanted an empire, I had wanted a lover. A great dream and a little one. Both dead.

More than dreams had finished their stories here. As I wandered on the beach in the silver dawn, charred bodies of sailors washed ashore, some Genoese, most Neapolitan. I set myself a grisly task—I turned every body with my foot, examined every bloated face for Brother Guido’s features. My heart told me he had gone, but I had to be sure. I would not give up. My feet were numbed by the freezing tide washing over my shoes, but I barely noticed.

“Luciana!” A voice hailed me from the shore. I spun at once, but it was Signor Cristoforo.

“Come away,” he said. “He is not there.”

“I know.”

He came to me, laid a hand gently on my shoulder. “In the end he had to set fire to the boat to keep the flame alive. I saw him jump—he had no choice—it was that or burn. We all did the same. But I think he could not swim.”

“He couldn’t,” I choked.

“Better swimmers than he are dead this day. The fire, the storm, were too much for them, and him too.”

I turned my eyes on him. “Bartolomeo?”

“He lives. But many poor souls did not—here and upon the mountain too. But Genoa won the day.”

It seemed an odd phrase—for all appeared lost to me. I looked out to sea, fixing my eyes on the spot where I had last seen Brother Guido. “Did he say something?”

“Yes. He said, The chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire. He shouted it. Then jumped.”

I nodded. Unable to speak. I suppose I should have been glad that he quoted the Scriptures at the end, before going to meet his God.

But I had rather he had sent a message to me.

Signor Cristoforo held both my shoulders. “He saved many more than were lost. Countless souls. He saved my city. I think . . . he must have been a very good man.”

“He was,” I whispered. My legs gave way and I sank to the shingle, swept away on a tide of grief.

He squatted beside me and looked out to sea. Charred hulls poked from the water like bergs, soon to sink forever, their masts and blackened pennants the last to go. So many, so very many burned-out ships, clustered on the horizon like a winter forest. “I came to say good-bye,” he said.

I turned stricken eyes upon him. “You too?” He was the one friend I had left.

“I have been too long from the ones I love. If this last night has taught me anything, it is that it is time I saw my son.”

“Diego?”

He smiled. “You remembered.”

I turned back to the sea, beyond the wrecked fleet, off into the infinite, gray-blue yonder. “How will you live?”

“I think now Doge Battista may pay for my ship of fools, after the service I rendered the city, don’t you? And if he does not, no matter. I will petition the rulers of Spain.”

“Take this on Venice’s account.” I reached beneath my sodden robes and gave him the purse of fifty ducats I had stolen from my mother. His bulbous eyes popped further when he saw the gold flash, heard the chink of coins. “Don’t you need it?”

I shook my head. Money didn’t matter to me anymore. “Where will you go?”

“Portugal first, then the Azores, to my father and Filipa. And little Diego.”

I sighed like the wind, for all that he had and that I had not.

“I would not prevent you. Go and be with your wife and child. Love and family is all that matters.” I had forfeited both in one fateful night.

“I was about to say the same to you. Your mother awaits you at the doge’s palace.”

“My mother?” I had not given her a thought since Brother Guido had left my sight.

“Yes. She and your father and Ludovico il Moro were captured and brought to the city at dawn. They are my lord doge’s hostages until they sign a treaty of peace, which even now is being writ by his scribes.”

“What of Don Ferrente?”

“Turned for home as soon as the first ship burned.”

“And Niccolò della Torre?” I asked with a catch in my voice.

“Who?”

“The lord of Pisa?”

He shrugged. “I have no word of him. Why?”

“No matter.” I could not form the words, not explain the terrible irony that if I were to return to my life, I would be wed to the cousin of he who was lost to me, to be reminded every day that a better copy of this nobility once lived, once loved me. The cruelty struck me in the chest like a blow and I thought I would die too. Wished that I would.

“When you are ready, go back to your mother. You are the first soul she asked for, never thinking of her own safety. I think that she loves you. She is a lioness, granted; but you are the lion’s child.” I felt him kiss my forehead.

I could not look up. Could not lift my weary head.

“Godspeed,” he said.

“And you,” I whispered. But he had gone harborward and the wind snatched my words away from him.

I don’t know how long I sat there on the freezing shingle. Rafts of wood and bundles of canvas nudged and bumped at my feet as the tide inched in. At length the treacherous sun broke through the clouds and dried me, warmed the pebbles beneath my legs. It was going to be a beautiful day.

Soon I must choose to stay and drown or rise and live. I heaved myself up, and as I did so, I felt the scratch of a parchment in my bodice. The cartone of the Primavera, which had found me love and lost it again. I took the thing out and cast it into the sea, as far, far as I could, and turned back land-ward before I could know where it landed. I did not want the thing anymore. But the tide would not allow me even this gesture. The thing washed back to me, soaked and dun like a dead sole, and flopped over my sodden shoe. I looked at it draped there, and thought then that it was the last thing he and I had touched together—’twas something he and I had shared. Perhaps one day I would be able to look on it again. I rescued it from the surf before the ebb could take it again—squeezed the water from it like a washcloth and turned to wander back to the Palazzo Ducale, not knowing what else I could do.

My options were limited. I could stay and work the stews of Genoa, fucking sailors until I was too old for them to want me, or I could claim my birthright and get a feckless finocchio of a husband into the bargain, like a worm that comes with the apple. Or die by my own hand and meet Brother Guido in the afterlife. Only I wasn’t sure I believed in the afterlife, for all my convent education. And even if I did, the nuns had not neglected to tell me that suicides went straight to hell. As Brother Guido, who died to save others, like Christ himself, was surely going to walk straight into heaven, we would then be parted for all eternity. I hoped Brother Guido rejoiced with the angels that he believed in afresh.

Tears blurred my eyes and I all but lost my way. I passed countless families on their way to mass, anxious to give thanks for the fate they had escaped. Even the bells sounded joyful as they called the faithful in triumph. I was the only soul on the streets who did not wear a smile—not even the sight of the dames and children we had saved lifted my stony heart. I came at last to the huge striped palace with the great gates, knew that once I laid my hand upon the door I had made my choice.

I called to the guard and accepted my fate.

I was shown to an airy presence chamber, as if I were the Queen of Sheba—my fame had clearly spread and the city was in debt to me. I felt oddly guilty, as the guards and servants kissed my hands, for I did not merit this. Others deserved such thanks and praise, others that were gone. I was placed in a golden chair, given a cup of wine and asked to wait, told that the doge would be with me presently.

The door opened almost at once and another exalted personage was seated across from me, also to await the doge’s pleasure. For him, though, there was no golden chair, no chalice. Just a bracelet of chains around his wrists.

The door closed again, and for a few, short, incredible moments I was alone with Lorenzo de’ Medici.