The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,149

cold air, and wishing my time away, breathing away the hours like the dandelion clock.

My mother’s business here was with Archduke Sigismund of Austria, a sprig of the Hapsburg family tree and cousin to some emperor. The name Hapsburg meant nothing to me, but it seemed to drop everyone else’s mouth open like a market-day fish, so I guessed they were a family on a par with the Medici but from Austria, or was it Hungary? Or Germany? Anyway. Someplace in the frozen north, beyond the mountains. My mother and her retinue were in a constant babble about the Hapsburgs, and the Holy Roman Emperor, and the mountain routes, and mines, and something called the “Old Swiss Confederacy.” But I closed my ears to all their cant as our covered carriages rose high into the mountains, white peaks turned amber and rose by the cold northern sun. Beautiful certainly. But chillier than Christmastide.

I just huddled down into my furs and thought of Brother Guido.

Presently, a sennight after we had left Venice, with Castel-franco and Trento behind us, climbing all the time, we entered a place of fable. I thought I had left the capital of deception behind us, but Bolzano had as many facets as a rose diamond. I would see a mountain transformed into a city, then a city transformed into mountain, each face and angle presenting a different view of the place. An enchanted sorcerer’s eyrie, now here, now gone. And the whole thing bathed crimson by the sunrise, like a monstrance under stained glass.

We entered the town at a prettyish kind of square, huddled around with quaint wooden houses with boxes of winter blooms crammed at every window. There, too, stood a pattern-tiled duomo with a great spike for a spire, a sharp summit to rival those that ranged around. We drove through the square ever northward and just outside the town climbed to a great castle that seemed not built by man but hewn out of the rock. And pink. I thought at once that the impression of color was given, again, by the sun, but I was to learn as the day brightened to morning that ‘twas no trick of the light, but merely the nature of the crop of porphyry rock from which this fortress, Castello Roncolo, was built. This fact was explained to me not by my mother but by one of the many Venetian strangers who traveled with us. A man whose name I never bothered to learn but who always rubbed his knuckles against my breasts when he handed me from the carriage. My mother, I noted with relief and regret, seemed to have given up my education entirely since my attempt to escape from Venice. She treated me with kindness and courtesy but largely let me be, which suited me fine. I had much daydreaming to do . . .

We wound through the castle gates and up to the massive battlements and gate house. After a series of endless ramps we entered a courtyard where we were met by the ducal retinue, who came to hand us down from the carriages, not fast enough, unfortunately, to stop what’s-his-name jumping me down first in order to get his hands on my tette.

We swept through to the great hall amid any number of pleasantries, but as we entered the huge chamber I could not at once locate the archduke. For one thing there was such a press of people crowding his court, and for another, much more interesting scenes adorned the walls. The entire place was painted with coats of arms, scenes of games and jousting, gorgeous nobles and ladies, and grotesque giants and dwarves. I was so absorbed in the frescoes, rendered more real than if I watched players act before my eyes, I nearly missed a most interesting piece of information. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and Ramses and Moses eyed each other. One of my moth-er’s cronies announced in ringing Venetian:

“The Dogaressa Taddia Michiel Mocenigo!”

(This, if you can believe it, was the first time I had heard my mother’s given name)

I turned my attention to the archduke, who rose to take my mother’s hand. Archduke Sigismund was yet another in a series of powerful old men that I had met on this odyssey. Perhaps a little over fifty, he was unremarkable, save that he had silver curling hair that waved to his shoulders, was rail thin, and spoke with a thick guttural accent that I had to