The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,110

from the flowers? For they are her major feature, but before we focus on them, perhaps we should consider her other characteristics.”

I shared a look with Brother Guido—our two half-smiles made a whole, for this was exactly how we were used to proceeding.

“She is the primum mobile of the whole scene.” Typical of my learned companion to begin with something Latin which left me behind completely. Luckily he knew me well enough to translate without prompting. “She is the ‘first to move.’ ”

I saw what he meant. “She is the farthest forward of all the figures in the scene—she leads the way.”

“Which fits my hypothesis that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, of Flora’s city Florence, is the originator of the plot—the root of all,” put in the herbalist. “Also, she looks directly at the viewer.”

“Her dress flares like angel wings.” This devotional last from Brother Guido.

“She has fishy sleeves.” This was me.

Both brothers shot me a look.

I explained. “I mean—her foresleeves are covered in, well, fish skin.”

This they could not deny, nonsensical though it sounded, for it was plain for all to see.

“Hmmm. Perhaps this indicates a maritime connection, possibly to the three Graces,” mused my friend.

“She wears their color too,” noted Brother Nicodemus. “Or rather, their lack of color. The body of her gown is white, like theirs.”

“But I am not dead!” I blurted, referring to our conversation on the Muda’s flagship, when we deduced that the Graces were dead ladies: Simonetta Cattaneo and Maria d’Aquino, “Fiammetta.”

“I think the presence of the flowers, such living, vital things, mark you out from their number, as a living, breathing . . . person.”

I knew the herbalist wanted to say “lady” but could not quite bring himself to use that word in connection with me.

“Let us begin by identifying the blossoms that adorn Flora,” he went on hurriedly, “and see what we may find.”

He then reached for an interesting contraption: two twin circles of glass within lead circles, which he clipped to his nose. When he turned back to Brother Guido his eyes seemed enormous behind the glass, as if magnified by the bottoms of twin bottles. I almost laughed, but my mirth died when I soon realized that he could see with such aids much better than Brother Guido or I, even though we had a good fifty years on him.

“Shall we begin with the headdress? In the center, on the brow”—he peered close with his eyeglasses—“the humble violet, Viola odorata. Let us have some method to this,” added the old monk. He stood on a stool, for only with such assistance could he reach high enough, and pulled at a purple bloom from the flowery field above our heads. He held it at our eyes and noses. “There: a violet,” he said of the fragrant bloom. Then he turned back to us and said one word more. “Next.”

And so we worked as the sky clotted intonight outside. Working first around Flora’s headdress, down to the garland around her neck. The names fell from the herbalist’s lips like the blooms from Chloris and echoed from the walls of the crypt: a pagan, not a Christian, litany. Cornflower, daisy, hellebore, lily of the valley, myosotis, myrtle, occhiocento, pomegranate. Violet again.

I looked on and helped take the flowers down when they proved too high for the herbalist, the smells and sights mingling to take me back to that fateful day in Botticelli’s studio; remembering the chaplet that had pricked at my forehead, the wreath that had scratched my throat. The treacherous bell of the Pazzi Chapel—cast by murderers and giving tongue to their memorial—rang twice before we had all the flowers taken down, and Brother Nicodemus marked time with a floral clock of his own. All the blooms were found and identified and fore long a veritable garden sat before us.

At last we were done with the head and neck, but there could be no respite.

“The gown,” commanded Brother Guido. “Much easier,” said the herbalist. He pulled just two blooms from their twines. “Cornflower and carnation. All over. And round her waist a girdle of roses.” He pulled down a pliant branch, black thorned and beautiful, with a dozen pink roses riding the glossy green leaves. I remembered this detail—the thorns piercing the fabric of my dress to prick my skin.

“And in her hands?”

“Well, I can tell you that,” said I. I remembered well the fragrant flower heads that were poured into my skirts that day, for me to cradle and cast upon the ground.