The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,179

slapped me on the back, as if we were sharing a grappa in the guard house and said, “Fever indeed. Cupid’s fever, I’ll warrant. For nothing else puts roses in a maid’s cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes than the reunion with her true love—these symptoms are all in della Torre’s cause, mark my words.”

As I coughed from the blow and smiled politely, I thought that I could not fault his logic—my fevered state was all due to an assignation with my true love who bore the della Torre name, but he was in error as to which branch of that family tree I awaited.

And thus I found myself in the third Milanese basilica I had been in this day. I had visited church more times since I had come to the city than in the whole of the last four years. This time we worshipped in the great Duomo, the mass of spiny pinnacles without, with a vast many-pillared nave within. The light streamed in through the stained glass with a greenish hue, turning the pillars to bone—they reached above and curved about like a giant rib cage. Not Daniel in the den this time but Jonah in the whale—I was in the belly of a beast; would I ever be able to escape this city? The service went on for two hours; I fretted for both of them and never heard a word of it.

Back at the castle I fidgeted until feast time—this night I was invited but might as well not have been, for not a morsel passed my nervous lips. I had to be back in my room by Vespers, so I excused myself from the pomp, pleading that I must get my sleep to be fresh for my betrothed. My mother seemed to believe my protests but still assigned me two guards to escort me back and turn the key.

Once back in the cell I had little to prepare. Be ready, Brother Guido had instructed. But I had long since learned to carry all that I needed on my person at all times. I took out my warmest cloak, and bundled my mother’s mask within it, and laid them across the wooden faldstool that was the one seat in the room. Then I set myself to wait for the bells. As one church, then another, then the great booming bells of the cathedral gave tongue to the hour of Vespers, I heard a shuffling outside the door and the key turn. So soon! My heart leaped to my mouth and I leaped to my feet.

The door swung wide.

‘Twas my mother.

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She smiled at once, but this did not lessen my fear—a friendly expression meant naught with my prism-mother; if she meant to end a life she would smile and smile as she pushed the knife in. I held her eyes like a frighted coney with a fox, willing her not to question why my cloak was readied on the stool. Of course, it was the first place she went, tossing the fur to the ground to sit down. I winced in case the stolen mask fell out, but the bundle remained secure, and my mother never marked it. I thought she would question why I was still dressed, but a couple of moments in that room with its whistling winds would quickly inform the casual visitor why I would not shed one garment.

She sat on my stool in her feast-day finery, looked about her. Once again, she took on a different hue. She looked distressed; her speech was hesitant as I had never known it. She seemed genuinely upset by the conditions in which I had been held. “No bed! Nor panes in the window. I did not . . . I had not guessed . . .” She turned her great green eyes on me, pleading for the first time. “I came to ask you . . .” She seemed to struggle to find words. “Let me protect you. If you try to run, if you disobey, if you try to prevent what is in train, those that I now keep at bay will pursue you again.”

With a chill I knew she spoke of Cyriax Melanchthon, the murderous leper and tool of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whom I had all but forgot during my sojourn in Venice. For the first time I considered how cold it might be outside the strong circle of my mother’s arms.

“I wish you married,” she went on, “and happy, with