The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,35

showed him a blank face.

“A thorn from the crown of the crucified Christ. I will pray before it and repent of my sins, as he did with his last breath.” He gave me a specter of a smile and was gone. For a moment, I felt disquiet—although we had fought, I did not want to be separated from my only friend, did not want any ill to befall him on the dark streets. All this talk of last breaths was making me nervous. But as I turned to regard my reflection in the looking glass, I forgot my fears.

Madonna.

I looked like an escaped lunatic. My dress, once the finest I owned, put on five days ago to please Bembo, was crusted with mud and sweat, and the dyes had run in orange rivulets down the cheap silk from the rainfall. My hair was a bird’s nest, standing out from my head and straggling down over my back and shoulders, looking more like straw than gold. My fine miniver cloak was now matted and greasy as a wolf’s pelt, and my face had been tanned from my journey to a disgusting peasant brown (so far from the porcelain white I was used to), so my eyes shone out like green jade glittered with drink, like a moon-mad crazy. I could have screamed. How could I have mingled eyes with Lord Silvio when I looked no better than a leprous beggar?

I had to do something. I pressed one hand to each cheek, to stop the spinning of my head, and looked around the room. Luckily, the lord (or rather his servants) had thought of everything a lady (or, well, me) might need for her toilet. There was a large copper bowl of tepid water, with days-eyes floating on the surface, and a jug to pour it. There was a bone-toothed comb, such as Bembo had brought me once from Constantinople. There was a little sandalwood chest with a dozen little drawers, containing such ointments, pastes, and unguents as I knew that other ladies used to enhance their looks. I had never needed such things before, but today the case was desperate. Finally—I clapped my hands with glee—there was, draped over the bed chest, like a snakeskin waiting for a body, a wondrous gown of green and gold.

Two hours later I was transformed.

I had spent the first hour combing out my madcap hair and dousing it with water. After it was thoroughly combed and rinsed, I squeezed out the water and twisted the wet mass up onto my head, there to dry while I worked on the rest of me. I could already see, as I began to wash my face, that the blond tendrils over my ears and forehead were already drying and curling up into their accustomed ringlets, fair and fluffy as a day-old chick. Good.

Now for the body. I was caked in mud and sweat and smelled like a week-old haddock. One sniff of my own crotch almost made me faint. I used the rest of the water, and the rough flannel provided, to rub every inch of my tanned flesh till it was rosy with health and cleanliness. I even spat on the pearl in my navel and rubbed it till it glowed. Then, cleaned and wrapped in a silken robe, I did something which I know will disgust you. I picked out the flowerheads and drank all the water I had washed in.

Now before you judge me, hear this. My house mate Enna—God rest her rotten soul—said she once fucked a Spaniard who told her that if you have drunk overmuch wine you should drink the same volume in water, and in a little while you will feel much refreshed. And he was right—I did. (I must say that was a valuable little piece of advice he gave Enna. He also gave her crabs, but that was her problem, not mine.)

So when the bells rang for Vespers I was ready, sober as a friar, taking an inventory of my new persona in the looking glass. My hair now shone in a rippling sheet of gold to my waist, softened by the curls that framed my face. I had rubbed an ointment into my skin that I had found in the cabinet, which had a fine sheen to it, as if a million tiny flakes of gold had been mixed within. Although still tanned, my flesh now glowed as if something ethereal. The green and gold gown clung to