The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,116

Florentine delegation after the peace of Constantinople. It was there that this thing landed upon him—he caught the leprosy and began to waste. It was said that at the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem he stripped off his Dominican robes and cursed God. His wasted flesh, naked and rotting, was such a horror to all that saw it that it was said the sky darkened that day. He burned his robes on the sepulcher, took leper’s weeds, and has been an instrument of the Devil ever since.”

“But the Medici still maintain his services?” asked Brother Guido, incredulous. Even a man who had fallen out of love with the church could not but be shocked at the offense of cursing God at the holiest church in Christendom.

“Not officially,” replied the herbalist. “It is certain that he returned here to Florence, for it was then that I saw him and sent him away. I have not heard his name for many years, and thought him dead—that his malady had eaten him. But there have been sightings of him, again in Florence, as I said, instances that have passed into legend to scare the children. But there are rumors, too, that he is the most efficient assassin the world holds. He cannot speak, for the leprosy pulled the jaw from his face like a wishbone. To look upon his countenance, his half-face of horror, is to look on death, for if he takes off his face cloth, his victims die of fright, or he cuts their throats like swine.”

Enna. Bembo. Brother Remigio.

“How is he the best, if he is so afflicted?” I breathed, dreading the answer.

The herbalist turned his calm eyes upon me. “Because, child, he is already dead.”

My blood froze. I had been right in Rome when I thought the leper a phantom. “He’s . . . a . . . ghost?”

The dry chuckle again, this time the humor of a graveyard. “Not quite. I meant only that he will die, sooner or later; there is no saving him. So he does not care anymore—he feels that God has turned his back on him, so he carries out his contracts with absolute dispatch. He is the perfect killer; silent, for he cannot speak or betray those who hire him, and he may go anywhere untouched and untroubled because of his malady and his leper’s weeds. For who will challenge one of the unclean? Who will pluck him by the sleeve or wrap their arms about him to detain him?”

I felt sick with terror. “Then, we are surely done for.”

“Not so. I think you are safe, for now at least.”

Easy for him to say. “How do you figure that?”

The answer was brief. “Because if Cyriax Melanchthon wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

The word echoed from the walls like a knell. Brother Guido piped up for the first time in this exchange.

“Then what does he want with us?”

“He is following you, it seems. Why, I cannot tell. But it is to be hoped that your alias protects you—when that is gone, who knows?”

To herald this cheerful thought the bells of the Pazzi Chapel gave tongue again, calling us to the wedding of their ancient enemy, and now a new chime added to theirs. The church of San Lorenzo, the Medici family church in the distant quarter of Santa Maria Novella, began to sing in counterpoint with their old enemy, the two rivals finding peace in the harmony of their intervals. Time marched, and there was not a moment to do aught more but offer our hands to Nicodemus of Padua in thanks.

“Come home to us soon, my son,” said the old man, who had followed us to the cloister door and stood blinking in the sunlight at the gate of his kingdom.

Brother Guido shook his head. “This is no longer my home. I will never return here.” There was great resolve in the words but great sadness too. I felt my lips twitch downward in sympathy for what he’d lost. The bright eyes of the herbalist searched those of the younger man.

“You will, one day,” he said, and took Brother Guido’s hand. I had expected him to take the outstretched hand of his friend. I did not expect him to then turn and take mine.

But he did.

28

Florence was a world of color.

After the black and white of the Neapolitan court, I was dazzled by my gaudy city. We processed through the streets with as much pomp as our makeshift retinue