The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,46

knows well enough to leave it a few heartbeats before entering the room when summoned; it’s much less obvious.

Brother Guido took the hint. “I will leave you alone with your grief,” he said with emphasis, and bowed with barely concealed disgust.

We were halfway out the door, and Niccolò had already begun to stroke the boy’s hair when he fired his parting shot. “Oh, and coz? Do stay at the palazzo—as my guest—for we have much to discuss. Family matters, you understand. Don’t go anywhere, will you? Tok, see that he doesn’t.”

Brother Guido and I both saw the look that passed between Tok and his new master as the door closed. The king is dead, long live the king. We both knew that the old order was gone and the new regime was in place; the favorite nephew was now cast down and the black sheep of the family exalted.

I knew as well as Brother Guido that Tok had been assigned to kill him.

14

Once outside, we meekly followed Tok for a little while, but it needed no more than a look and a little pressure of the hand to send me dashing into the dark crowd at Brother Guido’s signal. We snaked through the packed side streets, and only when we came to the riverbank, and were sure we’d lost our escort, did we lean against the balustrade, gasping for air. At last I managed, “Where now?”

Brother Guido shook his head. “We can’t go back to the palazzo,” he said. “Our best hope is to go downriver to the Medici palace, and petition to see Lorenzo ourselves.”

“Without your uncle’s introduction?”

“What choice do we have? We must hope that the family name is enough. And we have the painting as collateral. Come.”

We ran as fast as we could down the Lungarno Mediceo, weaving through the dark shuffling shapes of the saint’s-day revelers, until we saw the red mass of the Medici palace in the dying light. As I craned up at the house that loomed from the darkness—immense, forbidding, and the color of meat—I felt an extreme foreboding which almost made me open my bowels there and then. I grabbed Brother Guido’s sleeve.

“Don’t,” I panted. “Something isn’t right.”

“Many things, signorina. But we must do something. We cannot run forever.” He approached the grandiose steps lit by torches, where two armed guards were talking to a third man, maybe a tradesman or jongleur. But there was something familiar about the great height, the width of the shoulders. The giant turned.

The third man was Tok.

“It’s them!” he shouted to the guards. “Quickly!” And he gave chase.

Shit. How had he gotten here ahead of us? We turned as one and fled back to the river, trapped by crowds at either side. (What were they all waiting for? It was as if they had all gathered to witness our capture.)

Brother Guido led me quickly to a small private pontoon. He fumbled with the rope of the only moored boat as Tok thundered down the little pier, the planks bouncing under his weight, the two Medici guards following behind. In a flash of a blade I pulled the green glass knife from my hose and sliced the rope; one grateful glance from Brother Guido later, we collapsed in the bottom of the boat, panting like summer dogs, our lungs and limbs still aching from the chase.

As we drifted into the midstream of the dark river we saw Tok, bent double on the pontoon, looking murder at us as we slipped from his reach. As Brother Guido fished two splintered oars from the bottom of the bark, I felt confident enough to wave sweetly as the giant became a pygmy, and then a bend in the river took him from our sight. “And now what?”

Brother Guido was manning the tiller in an attempt to keep our vessel in the fast current. He shook his head, dark curls clinging to his forehead with the sweat of our pursuit. “For the first time,” he said, “I have not even a notion of how to proceed. My uncle—our one protection—is gone. I signed his death warrant the instant I sat with him at the festival. They knew from that moment I would show him the Prima-vera. You were right. We should have approached him more covertly.”

This was no time for triumph. “It was the oysters,” I said, sharing with him at last the growing notion I had had since yestereve. “The golden platter at dinner was meant for all three of