The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,101
drained from my face and I could not speak. Botticelli here? The author of all this trouble? The puzzlemaster himself? I remembered how I had angered him; pictured him now as vengeful Mercury with a curved sword ready to smite me down.
“Is the artist still in residence?” I croaked, as casually as possible.
“No”—I breathed relief—“he is just lately gone home to Florence. Sadly we just missed the fellow or I would have had you meet him.”
Brother Guido and I exchanged a glance.
“He is shortly to be replaced by another of your Florentine compatriots, Michelangelo Buonarroti, who comes to adorn the pediments and the ceiling.”
I craned my head skeptically to the ceiling. The space was vast, with huge planes and panels to be covered, and awkward triangular spaces where the cross ribs met the ceiling. Madonna, what a task.
“You are thinking it cannot be done?” The king cocked a single eyebrow at me.
I knew not what to say.
“I am of your mind. But we shall see.”
I looked at Brother Guido, happy in our escape, but I could see that he was cuckoo struck and staring before him. He had hardly noted our exchange. I looked where he did and knew that it was not the vastness of the space or the beauty of the decoration that bewitched him, but instead the personage we had come to meet.
For half a league away, before the great altar, sat the pope himself, ready to receive us.
As the cardinals ushered the king forward and we followed in his wake, I stole a glance at my friend. At that moment he was no longer Prince of Pisa but was once again a humble novitiate of the Franciscan order, ready to meet the greatest man of the church. He looked like he was meeting God. I began to smile, then a notion stopped me, for Brother Guido, monk and orphan, was going to greet the pope, his spiritual father and parent in the church. The pope was the only parent he had left, the church his only family. If I ever got the chance to meet my only parent, my Vero Madre (which I will, one day, mark you), I would be just as moonfazed to be sure.
The cardinals paused at the golden altar rail and the king and Brother Guido bowed for their audience, while the court and myself knelt as one at the pews directly behind. I bent my head as the others did, but through my steepled fingers I stole a glance at His Holiness, Pope Sixtus IV.
He sat on a throne of gold, adorned by fluttering cherubs and twisting beasts, the gilt so bright I could hardly look at it. His robes were so crusted with jewels and worked with golden thread that I could not tell you the color of their original fabric. His papal hat was red and white velvet, rimed with seed pearls and rising above a circlet of gold.
But below the crown, His Holiness’s face was aged, the skin as thin and wrinkled as parchment, the blue eyes pale and rheumy, the papery cheeks webbed with tiny red veins. He was a man after all, and an old one at that. Yet his mien was holy and noble, he stood with vigor and spoke with great energy in ringing tones of authority.
He moved to Don Ferrente first and placed his hand, blue veined and beringed, on the king’s head. The two great men shared a glance and a complicit nod. Then came the blessing. “May God and his Holy Mother bless you and keep you, now and all the days of your life.”
He moved then to Brother Guido, and I smiled proudly at the joy my friend must feel. I could see his face, ashen, and white as a nun’s arse-cheeks and hoped he would not faint with religious ecstasy when the holy hand touched him. I felt pride tinged with great sadness, for I knew then he was lost to me—the church was his one love, now and forever; he was wedded to his faith, now and forever. The blessing chimed in my head, and I knew he would take no other bride.
When the pope had blessed his two noble guests, he intoned three prayers with his hand on a golden psalter, then turned to go, followed by his cardinals, disappearing through a side door into the body of his palace. Thus, in a few short moments, our audience was apparently over. I marveled at a man so