The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,93

sent you to Pisa to my uncle before I died. My uncle then dies, however this was wrought, possibly because he thought that he had told me too much of the Seven.”

“And, he was going to introduce us to Lorenzo de’ Medici!” I cried, struck with a revelation as if I traveled the road to Damascus. “The leper thought that we were set to reveal all, that your uncle regretted his involvement and was set to warn Lorenzo that the Seven were plotting against him, that he would reveal to Lorenzo his nephew’s treachery!”

“As you say. Then we escape to the Muda. As far as the leper knows, your monkish escort goes down on the boat. He cannot have reached Naples before us, for we came on the flagship, and the rest of the fleet arrived at least half a day later . . .”

“The next time he sees me,” I took up the tale, “at court, I am now with Lord Silvio’s son, Niccolò, a man magnificently dressed, clean shaven, and a million leagues away from a penniless monk. ‘Lord Niccolò’ wears the thumb ring and closely resembles Lord Silvio. The leper believes that you are loyal to the alliance, and that now your father, the rotten apple, is gone—forgive me—he may merely observe our progress. He was not pursuing us when we ran from the Pantheon,” I admitted, “and he has not revealed your true identity because he does not know it!”

Brother Guido concluded. “The leper thinks you have changed sides and are in the pockets of the Seven. He follows you but does not act.” He fell silent for a time, a silence which told me he thought my theory possible. Then he abruptly changed his theme. “Yet all this conjecture wastes time. Whether or not another party gives us away, we will give ourselves away if we do not meet the king tonight.”

“At midnight?”

“Yes. We must change our tack from this discourse and apply our faculties to the more immediate problem. We cannot know for sure the leper’s business. But we, we have very pressing business of our own, namely that, in less than two hours, we must meet Don Ferrente at a place that we do not know the location of, and my only plan to discover the whereabouts of our tryst has been wrested from me.”

“Speak Tuscan.”

“I meant only that since Don Ferrente must himself go to that place at the hour of midnight, my notion was to follow him there.”

“But he was meeting with his officers first.”

“Yes. We could have waited and followed him again to the appointed place. But now, since we fled the Pantheon in error, there is no way of knowing for sure where the meeting of the Seven will be.”

Ah. “Could we not find some likely places where a king might meet his officers?” I knew I spoke nonsense even as I uttered the words.

“It could be a private house, a palace, even a well-appointed tavern. There are a hundred, a thousand of such places in Rome, and our time is short. No, our best chance of success is to apply ourselves to the only clue we were given as to the whereabouts of the meeting, for that was dropped from the lips of the king himself.”

“You mean whatever he muttered in English.”

“He said ‘under the seventh sun.’ ”

“Clear as cow shit.”

“It seems impossible, I know, but we are well versed in such deductions now, Luciana. We have followed the trail from Florence all the way here, with nothing but our wits and the cartone.”

“Better get the painting out, then,” I said, sighing.

He wagged his index finger at me, as if I were in the schoolroom. “Not this time; for this was a supplementary riddle, provided by the king himself. I’m sure that the answer this time will not be found on the parchment, although the larger themes of the painting will still, doubtless, be at work here. No, we need to think only of the king’s riddle and the city itself.”

“Maybe we’re going about this wrong. In Naples, we found what we sought at the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore. Perhaps there is a San Lorenzo in Rome, must be!”

He raised his head quickly. “I can say that with absolute certainty, for the city of Rome is the very site of San Lorenzo’s martyrdom.”

“He died here? In Rome?” I was surprised—for when the nuns who had taught me Scripture spoke of the saints, I always vaguely reckoned that