The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,195

will soon accrue great interest.”

“There is a difference between legitimate interest and usury.”

Like scrapping toms they stopped, circled, waited for the next blow. Lorenzo got in first.

“Speaking of interest, how is your bank loan?”

“Helpful.”

They broke once again, and I took my chance, aware of the urgency of my task. I plucked the doge’s scarlet sleeve.

He turned to me, then back to il Magnifico. “Ah, yes. As I hinted earlier, my guest here has a little business upstairs. You will, naturally, make no attempt to stop her course.”

“I would not dream of it. Away you go, my dear, la lanterna awaits.”

Bemused, I held his granite-gray gaze as I backed out of the room, wary of some trick. Surely Lorenzo il Magnifico would not just stand idly by as I wrecked his cherished plans?

I left them to their counterfeit courtesies and climbed higher, to the second terrace. Entering the upper chamber, I noticed three things.

Cosa Uno: that the lantern stood in the middle of the room like a sunburst—a glass constructed of many-faceted crystals, cradling an enormous vat of flame burning what my nose told me was olive oil. The light burned bright, despite four great windows open to the four winds, letting the tempest howl through, snatching at my hair and clothes. The wind horses conspired to ride me over the merlons, so that I had to hang on for dear life or grim death. And still the lantern burned steady. It was a beauteous thing—a lens to catch the light and send it back a thousandfold, like the biggest diamond that the world held. A gem, bright as the Bethlehem star, to guide ships home.

Cosa Due: my feet stuck to the floor in a way that recalled my house by the Arno—for a flood of blood leached from the slashed throats of the two dead Genoese lookouts, sprawled where they had died upon the floor. A brief glance told me neither one was Bartolomeo, grazie Madonna. And:

Cosa Tre: I realized why the Prince of Florence had not prevented me from climbing the stair, for there, black as night and dark as death, standing sentinel over the lantern like the reaper himself, was the cowled leper, Cyriax Melanchthon.

For a heartbeat we regarded each other. He was utterly still while his tattered robes of the unclean bellied and snapped in the wind like a sail. Black bandages covered his face to leave only his silver eyes to penetrate my soul. Hunter and prey face-to-face at last. This time my terror was compounded by a further fear—that I would not be able to douse the lantern, that I would fail in the task I had been set. But there was little time to think, for he leaped for my throat.

His grip was iron around my neck—black spots danced before my eyes, fire and blood gurgled in my ears. I could not breathe, and yet he assailed me with only one of his wasted hands—the other reached for his butcher’s knife. I would have begged but could not speak . . . could not speak . . . then remembered in a flash what Nicodemus of Padua had said: he has no lower jaw, so has lost the power of speech. I thrust a hand out to the leper’s throat. Fearless of contagion, I scrabbled beneath the facecloths and met an open gizzard and twisted raw giblets of flesh. It bought me respite—he let me go—choking with a horrid gurgling sound. I fell to the floor and cracked my head upon the lantern, tried to scramble for the door, but he was upon me again, and those powerful hands lifted me like a feather, smashed me back against the lantern, the glass and the leads hot enough to brand my flesh. One powerful hand held my throat once more, and this time he managed to get his knife free—held it high to strike.

My last moment seemed to go on for hours—images flashed into my mind; time turning backward like a wheel. I saw everywhere and everything from my birth to now—I was a baby in a bottle, a girl in a convent, a whore, a noblewoman. And Brother Guido, so many images of him: every road we’d traveled, every time he’d touched me, all the way back to the time we had first met. I was back in Florence on that burning day, before I’d met Botticelli, before all this had begun.

The hand of my killer tightened, the lantern burned at my back, and