The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,111
“I was holding roses.”
Brother Guido’s head snapped up. “Say it again.”
Puzzled, I repeated myself. “I was holding roses.”
“Flora was holding roses.” He almost whispered the words, like a man in a dream. Then he began to smile, and with a sudden action swept all other carefully collected blooms aside to fall to the floor in a fragrant mass.
We regarded him as if he’d become a lunatic.
“We’ve been wasting our time,” he crowed. “Naming all the flowers, classifying them, taking them down.” He capered about the room, playing a pantomime of our actions for the last hour. He hooted with laughter for the first time since Rome. “We are asses all! Flora holds the secret! Roses! That is all we needed to know! She is holding them in her hands! She is the only figure holding flowers! Such humble blooms that grow in every garden and hedgerow! We could have named them ourselves!”
Brother Nicodemus sank down onto the milking stool, took off his eyeglasses, and passed his hand before his eyes; when he took the hand away he revealed a toothless smile.
“You are right,” he said, “and had we been true scholars the Latin would have told us; the riddle was ‘Flora manus secretum.’ Manus means to hold in the hand, from the root mano—hand. If Flora had held the secret in a metaphorical sense, like a guardian, Pope Sixtus would have used the verb custodia, ‘Flora custodia secretum.’ “ He turned to me. “Child, you did hold the secret after all, in the most literal sense, when you modeled for Botticelli that day.” The dust-dry chuckle came again.
I began to feel a little annoyed. I didn’t see what there was to smile about. We’d just spent from Vespers till Compline naming flowers, and yet finding the actual answer was the work of a moment. I felt rather disappointed. We did not need to be here at all. Roses. We could have named that frigging flower in the carriage on the way up from Rome in the time it takes to fart, if Brother Guido had not been sulking in the seventh circle of his personal hell. A child could have done it; we didn’t need the old monk after all. I began to think about dinner, while Brother Guido apologized to the herbalist.
“I’m sorry, Brother. We did not need to trouble you after all.”
“You did, my son. For you still do not know the meaning of the roses. Or how they may conceal anything.”
This was true; we were no further forward.
“Since we are here, then,” said Brother Guido, “we must use the resource we have for this night—namely, Brother Nicodemus’s extraordinary knowledge of botany. Besides, I think the codes of the Primavera are too clever to have a direct appearance. Botticelli has been cleverer than that so far—all the puzzles have been oblique, and have clarity only to the Seven. We must look for something clever. I think the type of flower is important; perhaps its properties too. Let us spend a little time in colloquy and consider all we know of the queen of flowers, the rose.”
Brother Nicodemus then took a rose from his collection, the pale pink of a shell, and another of blushing coral, exactly the two hues that were bundled into my arms in the painting. We all sat at the table now, gazing at the two perfect flowers as if we expected them to speak.
“Rose; Rosa centifolia,” mused Brother Nicodemus. “As you have well said, she is known as the queen of flowers. Roman brides and bridegrooms were crowned with roses, so too were the images of Cupid and Venus and Bacchus. Such a headdress was much favored by poets too—Anacreon’s odes speak of poets sporting rose crowns at their feasts of Flora and Hymen.”
I didn’t see what a bunch of fey poets could have to do with this—the bridal theme seemed much more relevant—but Brother Guido pounced on the poetic thread.
“I think that is significant. Poliziano, the Medici court poet and the very man who wrote the Stanze, the verses upon which the Primavera is based, has written many times on the beauties of the rose. In fact”—he brought his hand down on the table with a crash—“the Stanze themselves, if memory serves, contain a very specific couplet on flowers, ‘Ma vie più lieta, più ridente a bella / ardisce aprire il seno al sol la rosa . . .’ which expresses that the rose is more daring than the humble violet!”