The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,131

pinched and pulled this way and that till a beauteous vase appeared as if by miracle. Coughing at the sulfurous fumes of that merry little hell, I was warm for the first time since I had come to this freezing city. We traveled thence to the island of Burano, where identical old ladies sat black clad in every doorway, catching the last warmth of a dying winter sun, tatting delicate froths of thread in their laps, not even looking at their hands as they created lace as delicate as the snowflakes that would soon come to these islands. Autumn bleached to winter and my mother continued relentlessly to teach me of my home. It was she who told me that in the winter months it is best to go about masked, with a posy of dried flowers and herbs stuffed beneath my nose, for the contagion of plague and lung fever swept in from the lagoon. It was she who taught me to keep hot rocks in my pocket, to warm my freezing hands as the days drew in. It was she who taught me that there is only one piazza in Venice, that of Saint Mark where our palace was placed, and that all other squares were known as campi, or “fields.” It was she who showed me round the great Basilica, numbered and named all the saints, explained every fresco, showed me the priceless treasures within. It was she who told me that this gold-lined church was not the city’s cathedral but my father’s private chapel, and bade me then to understand the power of my family, the power of the Mocenigos. Marveling at the rich booty of this place, the golden Pala d’Oro altar screen, the richly jeweled icon of Saint Mark, the quartet of bronze horses stolen from the East, a growing impression of the last months clotted into certainty. I had heard every word of my mother’s instruction but, ignorant as I was, I could still draw my own conclusions. I knew this place for what it was—Venice was a city of booty. This pirate people had stolen everything that distinguished it from somewhere else. The treasures in the Basilica, the style and design of the windows on every palazzo, even the words in the Venetian dialect, were looted from the East.

I learned, too, from my mother, what happened to enemies of my father’s rule—I walked with her through the sumptuous rooms of the palace, through a tiny doorway and down narrow darkwood stairs to the chambers of torture and imprisonment known as the wells, or pozzi, for they are so sunken and cold, set as they are below the waterline of the canal. One room will stay with me always, a gloomy paneled square, three stairs in the dead center of the room leading nowhere but to a cruel noose hanging above. I walked, too, around the damp cells of the notorious jail, where the imprisoned are watched every moment, for if a guard lets his charge escape, he finishes his prisoner’s sentence. No one had broken free yet, my mother told me with cruel pride and a warning. Petty criminals were kept at the roof of the palace, the piombi, or leads, where the heat of the roof tiles made their lives unbearable. In summer months their blood would boil, their flesh sizzle in preparation for hellfires. Hotter than coal or colder than ice was the choice for the unruly in Venice—I hardly knew which extreme of misery was worse. As I heard the drip of the walls and the cries of the inmates, I keened for Brother Guido, in his similar fate. Yet I could not share such thoughts. And still, in all this time, my mother would never refer to our relationship, nor our pasts, nor our meeting. She was tolerable company, accomplished, funny even—witty enough to make my frozen belly laugh, but never did I once feel that we were mother and daughter. I watched her, though, with reluctant admiration; she had a soft low voice which I tried to emulate. I began to curb my filthy tongue at her command. I watched her walk into a room and began to imitate her seamless glide—even on the awkward platforms of the chopines she had a graceful stride, while I lurched and stumbled like a newborn foal. I watched her stand as if a golden thread passed through her body and out the top of her head, holding herself as erect