The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,62

were completely absent from this place. Without knowing I was doing it I was looking at every lady for a resemblance to the right-hand Grace, the fair lady we had identified as “Naples.” Even though I knew that the dame had to be dead according to our deductions, still I looked for her spectral spirit walking among these courtiers. But all the ladies at this court were dark-haired, black-eyed Spaniards, and none of these magpie ladies came close to the moon-pale delicacy of the right-hand Grace. “Why are they in black and white? Did somebody die?” I whispered to the Capitano.

He shook his grizzled head. “ ‘Tis not mourning but fashion,” said he. “You are in the court of the Aragonese, and they think it becoming to wear only black or white.”

Madonna. “And . . . Don Ferrente, he is one of the nobles at this court?”

“Hardly.” The Capitano’s sneer was unpleasant. “Don Ferrente is Ferdinand the Sixth and First, King of Aragon and Naples.”

A king. Shit. Typical, that once again I was destined to meet a great man when stinking like a ferret and looking like a porcupine in a thunderstorm.

At last we passed through an immense pair of doors to the grandest room of all—a long gallery with walls of intricate carvings—tiny pieces of ivory set into dark ebony to make the most fantastical shapes and patterns. Neither the bone nor wood were of any great value, but the workmanship that had gone into the panels, which stretched as far as the eye could see, made them priceless. In the center of the gallery stood an imposing figure, dressed all in white, leaning on a vast black fireplace in a noble attitude. The huge grate was empty on this burning day, and in the embers of the last fire crouched a man in simple black, on a three-legged milking stool, whittling a block of white wood so the snowy curls sprang from his fingers into the grate.

The man in white was speaking a language foreign to me, presumably Aragonese, but as my ear attuned I could make out a couple of words and could tell that Spanish was none too distant a cousin to Tuscan. The white man’s serf grunted in reply, but did not look up from his carving, a breach of manners that would have had him beaten in Florence.

We walked down the gallery softly, ignored by the black and white pair, but the white lord turned as we drew close.

“Capitano Ferregamo,” he said, teaching us the Capitano’s name for the first time. “I see you survived the recent storms. Congratulations. Can the same be said for the fleet of the Muda?”

Ferregamo bowed low and spoke in a voice so humble I scarce recognized it. “Only the flagship lost, as far as I know, Excellency. The others will follow today or tomorrow, for we were a good league ahead. We had to put to sea early, for reason of these intruders you see.”

“You have brought some bounty for Our Grace?” The white-clad monarch had an odd quality to his voice, a strange sibilant hiss like a snake.

“Indeed. The man is a noble from Pisa. The woman his doxy, but a beauty that I thought might please His Majesty?”

His Majesty? Was this white fellow not Don Ferrente? Were there yet more chambers to traverse before we reached the room of the throne? The snake man spoke again. “But your ‘nobleman’ wears a monk’s robes,” said he, circling us with interest, holding a white pomade to his nose as if we smelled (which we probably did).

“He is no monk, Excellency. I caught him embracing this woman aboard ship.”

I flashed a look to Brother Guido and saw him hang his head in shame. The black-clad servant in the fireplace carved away, his knife whistling through the air, the shavings jumping away from his fingers, chip, chip, chip.

“Hmmm.” Snake-tongue smiled. “But he did not take her virginity?”

“Not aboard,” asserted the Capitano with conviction. “I’m sure of it. They were watched constantly.”

This gave me a jolt. Watched? Had the Capitano seen us take out the cartone and heard our council on the painting’s meaning? No; I willed my heart to slow. The Capitano would not have undertaken such a watch himself, and all other hands were dead. I vowed, though, to tell Brother Guido to have a care of the painting when we were next alone—if we lost that, we were done for.

Snake-tongue looked at me speculatively. “All right. She may