The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,140

First night of Carnevale.”

Bonaccorso Nivola considered, then jerked his head in my direction. “Her mum know she’s going?”

A tiny pause from Signor Cristoforo. “No. It’s a matter of the heart.”

This was true enough—I’d laid all before my tutor and he knew that I fled for love.

Bonaccorso caught on quick. “One way then?”

“Yes.”

The sailor was silent.

“It’s risky, I won’t lie to you,” admitted my tutor. “But then you can retire.”

Bonaccorso sucked in his gums, the air whistling through his lack of teeth.

“What the hell,” he said, then addressed me directly for the first time. “Be on the San Zaccharia pier at midnight tomorrow. Bring the gold in a lace kerchief. I’ll be on the rope barge. I’ll stop for a moment, no more. You ask me if I’ve ever been to Burano to see the lacemakers. Got it?”

I nodded, mute with terror and triumph.

“Till tomorrow then.” And he was gone into the crowd as quickly as he had come. I felt faint and elated at once. It was done. I was committed. Tomorrow, I would be gone.

My tutor and I hurried back to the palace as fast as we could and parted at the staircase without a word. Both too frightened and agitated to give note to the fact this would be our last meeting. I knew I would not see him again, and I could not speak lest I give myself away, but I hoped that as I hurried away he might know that I would not forget him, and that he knew how much I owed Signor Cristoforo of Genoa.

33

I did not sleep that night, and would have spent the next day in a jitter but was informed at breakfast by the witch Marta that my mother had a particular excursion to take me on today. I steeled myself for a day of polite chatter as we circled the canals of Venice in the Bucintoro and wondered how I could bear the burden of my guilty secret without breaking down under her green eye and admitting all. But when I met my mother in the presence chamber she was wearing no mask and had left off her platformed clogs. She wore a cream lace shift and a sleeveless surcoat of her favorite green, with tiny gold lions embroidered at the hem. She wore no jewels or ornaments, but as ever with my mother her costume was not less than priceless. I don’t know much, but I do know clothes; the workmanship of the lace had clearly demanded that the old ladies of Burano worked their ancient fingers to the quick, and the embroidery of the tiny lions at the hem of her gown was worth hundreds of ducats alone. Yet her hair was unbound and rippled to her waist. She had left her face unpainted, had merely rubbed her lips with a shiny salve so they glowed full and natural rose, and touched her eyelids with the same gloss so her eyes were left to speak for themselves, the green of deep, deep water. She looked about fifteen. I knew then that all my finery, the primping and preening of my ladies, was worth naught—my mother in her most natural state was the Venus of this sea. Yet when she smiled I thought she looked more mortal and friendly than I had ever seen her. For one instant I felt a pang that I was about to lose her again, my Vero Madre, the woman I had obsessed about finding for all these years.

She took my hand. “Come,” she said. “Today we are to learn the most valuable lesson of all. We are to learn about justice—Venetian justice.”

The words were strangely at odds with her innocent appearance.

Somewhere, a distant chime of foreboding sounded in my head.

She led me through numerous passages to the inner sanctum of the palace—a warren of offices and passageways that interlocked with the public rooms of the building. Such was her power and presence that her servants melted away as we approached; rooms emptied when we entered, as everyone ceased their business and gave us privacy for our progress. At length we fetched up at a quartet of darkwood offices I had never seen before. Set within the walls of one such chamber was a lion’s head with a gaping mouth, leading God knew where. It was a terrible thing, and I tasted fear in my mouth—I now faced the beast that I so feared.

“La Bocca del Leone,” announced my mother. “The Lion’s Mouth. Political