me in this statement that I slept ill, with strange dreams of flowers and maps and a hundred thousand ships sailing up the Tiber and into my chamber. I was wrecked aboard and rose from boiling seas to regard the Primavera floating on the waves, massive and vivid with color. I climbed aboard and pressed my face to its image, as if I regarded myself in a mirror.
And woke.
The city from my window was tiled with dawn gold, the towers rocked by bellsong. The kites rose above the cacophony and bent their wings in the warm breeze that stole through my shutters. A pocky dark Roman woman entered the room bringing eggs and herring and fruit to my bedside, with a jug of wine and water mixed. I sat, hollow eyed, for it seemed I was to eat in bed, a new experience for me, for I had always thought it a place for other pastimes. I broke my fast and immediately felt better. The Roman maid returned to dress me, and in my austere Aragonese black I left my chamber to meet Brother Guido hovering outside, like a husband at a midwife’s, anxious for news of his firstborn.
“Come, Luciana,” he chided, “we must not be late. The others wait upon us.”
He led me once again through endless passages of the Castel Sant’Angelo, where I recognized the hall of statues from yestereve. Soon we greeted the king and his party. Don Ferrente met us looking smooth faced and well rested, and did not betray by a look or a gesture that he had spoken of secrets with Brother Guido at midnight in the Forum. We mutely followed his train into a dark, paneled chamber.
I plucked my friend’s sleeve. “Are we meeting the pope?”
“Yes.” He licked his lips, his eyes darted—he was in a ferment of excitement.
“Must we not enter the city of the Vatican?”
“Yes,” he said again, “but the business is secret—we must go another way.”
Once again I entered a land of fantasy, as I watched two scarlet priests wrest open a heavy oaken door. Beckoned forward, I followed the king and his company into a dark mouth leading to a tunnel studded by torches to light the way.
“The passetto del borgo,” Brother Guido murmured, “an ancient tunnel linking the castello and the Vatican. This audience between our party and His Holiness must be secret indeed.”
After long moments of walking in the dark, I began to feel a little frightened and my throat tightened at the enclosed space. All were silent, for there was something about the place and the solemnity of the acolytes that oppressed speech; there was naught to be heard but the creak of shoe leather and the whisper of velvet on the stones. When we emerged, I blinked, molelike, and by the time my poor eyes had become accustomed to daylight again our situation could not have been more different—for we had passed from our dark subterranean underworld into a bright spacious heaven. This, of course, was the Sistine Chapel, built by Pope Sixtus for the glory of God. My jaw fell open. Brother Guido was right: Jesus was not worshipped in a corner anymore, nor in a damp hole underground; God’s glory on Earth was here for all to see. Angels soared to the ceiling, gilded to the pillars with great skill. Biblical scenes adorned the wide walls as if Mary and her company lived in front of our eyes. Such colors were to be seen—such lapis, such tourmaline, such gold. For the first time I understood: painting was alchemy. Artists like Botticelli, with their glues, gessos, and varnishes, their pigments shimmering in jars and bottles and alembics, were brothers to those hopeful apothecaries who created gold from naught. I was aghast, but was not too bedazzled to miss the familiarity of the women’s faces and their dress, their positions, their ways of standing, the set of the head upon the neck, and the attitudes of the hands. All these ladies before me stood with their beauteous heads inclined to their right feet while their bodies leaned and rested their weight on their left. “Contrapposto” Brother Guido had once called this attitude, and I had stood that way myself, once, in an airy studio in faroff Florence.
The king confirmed my memory. “I see you admire the frescoes, Doña,” he said kindly. “Little wonder, for they were created for His Holiness very recently by a true magician among painters: one Sandro Botticelli.”
I knew then the blood