The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,114

arms. I think it’s a fail-safe.”

I was lost, and my face showed it.

“An insurance,” explained the herbalist. “You place a code in a picture. You want the picture to be read by certain exalted persons and not others. So you take the picture to a place where they will all be, and the painting is in full sight. The last rose is the insurance. Suppose someone steals a copy of the picture—the cartone.”

I saw where he was going. “Someone did steal a copy.”

“Exactly. Botticelli has built in a detail that can only be seen on the real panel. He has insured the code as one might underwrite a fleet at sea—only those noble enough to see the real painting at close quarters, only those lofty enough to be invited to a Medici wedding—the conspirators—will be looking for the fail-safe and be able to interpret what they see. That rose is significant, I am now sure of it.”

“And if anyone knows about insurance it is the Medicis, the richest banking family in the world,” added Brother Guido.

“More significant still is the fact that since Roman times, the rose has been associated with secrets. It was then the custom to suspend a rose over the dinner table as a sign that all confidences shared there—sub rosa, or ‘under the rose’—were to be held sacred.”

This intriguing thought clearly made my companion’s heart beat with the chase like a hunter’s hound’s. But my heart was steady—we were curs on a dead scent. For even if we could tell if the rose grew or fell, we still had not discovered the secret that lay “sub rosa.” We had nothing to tell il Magnifico. “Are we actually going to march up to Lorenzo de’ Medici and say, “The secret is thirty-two roses’? Or ‘thirty-one roses, becauses we’re not sure which’? Brilliant.”

Brother Guido slumped again. “I know. But what choice do we have?”

“Perhaps it’s a password, and he will know the significance at once?” offered Brother Nicodemus.

I snorted through my nose. “So let’s sum up: we are to tell the father of all Florence that his cousin and ward is plotting against him, with six other conspirators, four of whom we don’t know. We have a password, ‘thirty-two roses,’ or ‘thirty-one.’ All this we got from a painting which is one of the wedding presents. Wonderful.”

The sky lightened outside—the wedding neared. And I couldn’t help adding a very feminine concern. “And the wedding is in two hours and I have nothing to wear.”

Brother Guido stood abruptly. “You are right. If we are to attend the ceremony, and petition Lorenzo, with whatever little we have, there are certain practicalities we must turn our minds to. You need an outfit, and I need a retinue, fit for a prince.”

“May la signorina not just attend in what she wears now?” Brother Nicodemus, silent through this exchange, piped up now to quash my sinful vanity. I looked down at the crumpled black velvet gown I had worn for a trinity of steamy days on the road since my audience with the pope, and back to the herbalist with a crushing look. I could not, as the consort of the Prince of Pisa, wear a dress travel stained and caked in sweat to the wedding of the year; nor did Tuscan protocol allow that black should be worn at a wedding. Added to this, the thick nap of the velvet was suffocating—well enough for a dank herbarium at midnight, but in the Florentine midday I would expire. I did not deign to say all this aloud, for Brother Guido at least had enough knowledge of the world to know it would not do.

“I need other weeds myself, but the retinue would seem to be the greater problem.”

At this the herbalist spoke again. “Not a problem, Brother. For here before me I see a monk in layman’s weeds; other monks could dress so too. I have four novices, so not yet tonsured, who can be roused from their beds and dressed to accompany you.”

“Dressed in what?” I asked, curious.

“We are given precious garments from time to time, as tithes or donations, or even bequests from the dead. I will have the coffer brought here—for there may be somewhat to help you too, signorina.”

It was kindly meant, but I could not imagine myself going to the Medici wedding in fusty old clothes fit for monasteries’ coffers, left by dead debtors.

I could not have been more wrong—nothing could have prepared me for the treasure I