The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,171
nodded. “This way, please.”
We followed obediently to steps leading down into what could only be a crypt. I tugged at Brother Guido’s sleeve urgently—we couldn’t have this monk standing by as we tried to figure out the significance of our findings. He nodded briefly.
“Do not disturb yourself, Brother. Do you go about your business. I will escort the dogaressa. A private penance, you understand.”
The monk bowed in my direction and left. I rewarded him with a fraction of a nod, such as I had seen my mother give to servants who pleased her, and swept down the stairs.
A gloomy crypt, three candles burning for three saints, all huddled together as if they shared a bed. Their forms twisted and their flesh waxen, their finery now shredded bandages around their wasted bones. Gervaise, Protease, and the Blessed Ambrose, mummified for eternity, even the splendor of their golden bed doing nothing to glorify the hollow features of carrion. Saint Ambrose was possibly the ugliest of all, his corpse misshapen, his head swollen like a bladder, and his face caved in to one cheek, giving him a lopside.
Brother Guido caught my look. “Saint Ambrose was missing one of his eyeteeth,” said he. “It gave him an odd appearance in life too.”
We carefully searched the crypt, silently, whispering to each other occasionally, as if the three saints were not dead but asleep.
“Well,” I said at last. “There’s nothing here, not to do with snakes at any rate.” I looked to the lumpen head for a miracle.
“ ‘By virtue of these remains the darkness of that blind man was scattered, and he saw the light of day,’ “ intoned Brother Guido, repeating the words of Ambrose’s legend once again. In these surroundings, they sounded like a prayer, save he had not prayed since Rome.
“We are the blind ones this night,” I grumbled. Then I had an idea. “Perhaps we should look up, like Mercury does in the Primavera.” We both craned into the vaulted darkness and could see nothing beyond the friendly circle of candlelight.
“Upstairs then?”
My companion shrugged. “It’s worth a try. This tomb seems to avail us nothing.” He laid a hand on the saint’s shriveled arse, not without affection, but I was again shocked at how worldly he’d become. The monk was now a soldier; he’d shed the last of his faith with his habit and had donned a different persona with his armor.
We emerged into the great church and began to look about us, the sacristan’s lamp hovering distantly like a firefly. Hundreds of votive candles lit the interior, so light was not our problem. Inspiration was. We searched every inch of the place, all the while attempting to look like interested tourists. At length, the sacristan began politely extinguishing candles nearer and nearer to ourselves; the darkness crept forth and around us and threatened to engulf us till we were on an island of light in a dark cavern. Our search now seemed hopeless. At last I found a particularly fine altarpiece, with strange animals at the top of the pillars. I could see rearing horses, twisted dragons, and a great assortment of bizarre creatures. I called my escort over.
“Here,” said I. “Here are some animals. Any snakes? Help me look.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, “very interesting, very fine work. Transmutations and transformations, animal to animus.”
“Do any of those words mean snakes?” I said testily. “If not, save your syllables.”
There were a great variety of strange things to behold in the carvings, but nothing that resembled the Sforza serpent.
Downcast, Brother Guido touched my sleeve. “We should go. We cannot have long before the next guard relieves me, and if I am not there, there will be a hue and cry.”
“And if I am not there, there will be a bigger one,” I agreed.
As we headed for the great doors I kept one eye on the sacristans’s light. Remembered what he’d said. Stopped in my tracks.
“Madonna. We are blind!”
I put out an arm to Brother Guido’s breastplate to hold him back. “Truffling about like pigs in shit, and all the time he gave us the answer.”
“Who? The sacristan? In what way?”
“He said which relic, the saint or something else, that word that sounded like a sneeze.”
“That’s right! He did!”
“Shush. And he looked down. He said the sneeze word and looked down at the snake, on the seal that you showed him. So there is another relic here, and the second relic, the N word, has something to do with a snake.”