The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,151

will certainly not be surprised when I tell you that there was the golden Medici ring, complete with palle, glinting upon his thumb.

Thus dismissed, I followed Marta and a servant from the room, while my mother remained behind to unburden her business to the archduke. I was at once vexed and relieved; my mother had demonstrated once again how little she now trusted me, and had gone to great lengths to prevent the archduke from spilling any of their dealings in my presence. Ah, well. At least I did not have to be troubled with her instruction, for I had no head for politics. I just wanted to see my friend again.

I was conducted up a cramped stone spiral to yet another grand chamber in another alien palace, this time a painted one with incredible scenes rampaging across the stones. This time the frescoes told a story that seemed to pertain to a knight, a king, and his lady love. It was evident that the maiden was having her fun with both the king and his dragon-slaying champion. I sighed wistfully. But one man would do for me, if only he were the right one.

The chamber was gloomy; indeed I could hardly follow the story of the doomed lovers in the low light, so I flung open the casements. The view from my window was so dizzying it made my breath short, for a sheer drop greeted my curious glance down, and wicked mountain peaks closed all around. I shut the windows swiftly but was instantly plunged back into gloom—the quarrels of the panes were round and crude, as if someone had hacked off a dozen bottle bottoms and cobbled them together with more lead than pane. Clearly the glassmaking genius of Venice had not reached the barbarous north. I snorted contemptuously down my nose. An odd trick of distance made me proud of my home city. Now that I didn’t have to live in it.

I opened the window again. We were so high that the clouds hung directly outside my window, and kites and buzzards landed on my windowsill to eye me curiously with their glass-bead eyes, before taking a stomach-lurching dive into the abyss below. I wondered if my mother had chosen my chamber deliberately, that I might not escape. I did not even bother to try the iron ring on the door. I had clearly heard the key turn behind me. It was so; my mother was taking no chances. Well, at least I was alone—better to be locked in than to be allowed to promenade under the eyes of the ever-present Marta.

I heard the bells ring Nones with the dull clop of a cowbell. With nothing to do till Vespers and dinnertime I took out the cartone again, brought it as close to the window as I dared, sitting precariously on a wooden bench by the sill. The wind whistled through the casement, but the lack of glazing left me with an unwelcome choice to be freezing cold or be in pitch-darkness. I kept my fur on and the shutters open, for I needed the light.

I wanted to learn as much as I could of Bolzano, one, I now knew, of the Seven. To make Brother Guido proud. To do, as I was here, what he couldn’t do at his distance, to divine the role of this place in the great plan. Would north be true?

First I looked at the entire cartone once again. We now, I thought, knew all of the Seven. Pisa, Naples, Rome, Florence of course, Venice, Bolzano, and obviously Milan, as Brother Guido said we would meet there, and my mother agreed that we would break our journey in that city. And the conspirators too: Lord Silvio della Torre of Pisa; Don Ferrente, the King of Naples and Aragon; His Holiness the Pope of Rome; Doge Giovanni Mocenigo of Venice; Archduke Sigismund of Bolzano; and someone or other in Milan, a name I supposed Brother Guido would supply.

We had built up a better picture of the players involved, but we still did not know what they intended. We knew who, but not what or when or why.

And what role did Genoa play? That seagoing city, home of my faithful friend Signor Cristoforo? Why was Genoa in the painting if not in the Seven?

I thought on this till my head began to hurt, then gave up and focused my attention on the Zephyrus figure. Now I imagined Brother Guido beside me, guiding me.