will see.”
I followed Brother Guido down the tower, but this time he was so far ahead that I saw no more than a flutter of his coarse brown habit at the turn of the stair, or heard the patter of his sandals on the gallery below. But at last we reached the outer door that led us out onto the campo and we were untying our mounts when I saw it.
“Look!” There was a carving, just beside the lintel of the tower’s door, a pin-sharp relief in the white marble, its angles newly chiseled and freshly cut, the lines of the design black in the strong sun. It was a ship: a fine ship with billowing sails and a sturdy crenellated forecastle, riding atop curvy waves so cleverly rendered that you could swear the petrified ocean was undulating before your eyes. “Does it mean something?” I wondered aloud. “For it was the stone tower cut above your door in Santa Croce that led me to see the tower in the Prima-vera, the very tower we now stand beneath.”
Brother Guido shrugged. “A ship,” he said. “Quite commonplace. Pisa is famous for its maritime might; it is a regular emblem in our art and architecture.”
“But this carving is new—you can all but smell the marble dust.” I once serviced a stonemason in Florence, who covered my best gowns in the snow-white dust of Carrara marble. If he hadn’t paid so well, I would have been quite annoyed. But the smell—the sweet, almost burnt smell of fresh-cut marble—that same smell crept into my nostrils now.
But the brother was already on his pony. “It cannot be. The tower was finished more than a century ago.”
I mounted Pene, but as I followed Brother Guido I looked back more than once at the stone ship by the door until it receded from sight. The carving, and its newness, together with Brother Guido’s assertion of Pisa’s maritime might, gave me an odd feeling. I followed his swift trot into the main thoroughfare as the crowd grew thicker and louder, and by the time I had remembered where I had heard such sentiments before, the noise and the press of people was too great to shout to the monk. Three maritime states. Pisa, Naples, Genoa. They were the words I had said to Botticelli.
The words that could get me killed.
11
At length the crowds were so jammed either side of us that my legs were pressed painfully into Pene’s sides, and the pony began to fart most noxiously in protest. I noticed with amusement that the crowd behind his arse began to disperse a little to avoid his foul winds. Brother Guido took down his cowl and turned to yell at me.
“Follow me to my uncle, he will see us well seated.”
“Where is he?” I bawled. I could not hear his answer but saw his jabbing forefinger point.
Madonna.
We had come at last to a large square, colorful as a parrot, with scenes and frescoes painted on all the square houses around. The buildings themselves were crazy colors: canary yellow, saffron orange. And the people themselves were dressed in such bright weeds to match that they dazzled the eye: sashes and ribbons, quartered tunics in clashing hues, and shining silver helmets of a military style.
I craned to see what Brother Guido could be indicating, and I saw, set above all the chaos, a high platform decorated with flowers and ribbons. On a central, thronelike chair sat a large, handsome fellow, with a twisted velvet cap and a silken surcoat. His long legs in their party-colored hose disappeared from the knee down into a veritable sea of fine greyhounds which wound about his feet, barking at any that passed. His household stood about him, offering wine and meats, in livery near as splendid as his own. But though the finery piqued my whore’s interest, as a woman it was the fellow’s countenance that held my attention. His face had a high magenta color of good living which set off the startling blue eyes. Brother Guido’s eyes. And but for the blurring of age, the face was Brother Guido’s too.
The uncle.
Brother Guido hailed his kinsman from the crowd, and I felt at once uneasy, for it had been our notion, decided on the road, to approach him unseen, not in so public an arena. But I knew that Brother Guido felt safe in this place, for it was his home, and that help was too near at hand for him to hold