The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,156

it was child’s play to help her with the key and then pocket it. In the painted chamber she slumped upon her truckle bed at the foot of mine, her snores sounding before her head even hit the pillow. I slipped out and turned the key on her, the captor captive.

I crept back down to the courtyard and loitered in shadow till the feast ended, at once blessing my new coat and cursing its color. I damned the Ursus maritimus, wherever he may live. I knew it would be difficult to follow my mother so dressed, for I was a walking snowdrift.

Finally, finally, my mother’s party emerged with the arch-duke and my mother dressed as if for hunting, with her halfdozen Venetian strangers in tow. I loitered by the gate house and joined the party fluidly as the guards let them pass, then hid in the undergrowth again as soon as they were clear of the walls, heart thudding in my throat. Now the Ursus maritimus was my friend once more, for in his white pelt I was invisible in the snowy landscape. I let the party get ahead, in no fear of losing them for they all carried burning brands, and the torch-light glowed down the mountain leading me like the Bethlehem star.

I followed the amber comet down the mountain a little way, till the party stopped. Then the streaming tail of the comet disappeared to leave a burning circle, and all of a sudden the light was gone.

Pulses pounding, I rushed to the spot where the light had disappeared. A small clearing offered me no cover, but the party had vanished and I recklessly rushed into the open, looking about me, everywhere but down. Presently I came to a halt and fell to my knees, looking down at last in despair. Then I learned that ‘twas fortunate, indeed, that I had stopped when I did, for I was on the lip of a gaping hole, open like the mouth of a well, descending to inky black. I shivered inside my coat, for I could easily have run straight over it and broken my neck as I crashed into the fathomless depths. Now I understood why the torchglow had become a circle then gone, for all the party had climbed down here, the light pouring from the mouth of the cavern, only to fade as the group moved down into the shaft. I got on my belly and inched to the lip of the thing—yes, there was a deep saffron glow from within, and I knew now that ‘twas not a well but some sort of entrance to an underground tunnel. There was silence from below and I knew them to be some way down. I felt in the soft earth for handholds and found a greasy rope tied to a stake. I took a deep breath, as if I were about to swim, and lowered myself over.

There were footholds in the walls, great gobs of bites taken out of the stone, and my fancy pointed shoes refused to be stuffed into them. My feet scrabbled and the tendons in my arms cracked. The coat was heavier than a millstone—I should have left it in the spinney. I longed to kick off my shoes but dared not, lest they fall on some fellow below and give me away. I half slid, half kicked my way to the ground, my un-gloved hands burning on the rope, my legs flailing. I hoped the shaft were none too deep, and a morbid thought visited me of the head of Brother Remigio, severed and bouncing down Santa Croce’s well. I swallowed my rising fear and thought of a happier time underground—when Brother Guido and I had been together in the Roman Catacombs. With his face in my mind’s eye I found courage, and at the same moment my feet found the ground.

And now—a fresh problem. There were six tunnels radiating out from the main shaft, and since the atrium itself was studded with torches set into wall sconces, I could not guess which one the archduke and my mother might have taken. I listened, trying to quiet my breathing and still my heart, then I heard a ringing sound—a blow, like metal upon metal. Surely no one fought here? Was there treachery afoot? Had the archduke brought my mother down here to murder her? With mixed feelings about the fate of my mother—did I care or not?—I hurried in the direction of the