The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,59

belong to God, not yet; that I had reason to hope. And I realized then, too, that I’d never known what it meant to really want one man and no other. I’m not saying I’ve never enjoyed my work—hell, a good swive is a good swive, but my heart had never been captured before. Last night, I thought my heart was about to stop beating forever. But actually, it had never really begun to beat, not till that moment. Now I was truly alive, and ready for anything that fate might bring, so long as we could be together.

I looked back to my sleeping love and suddenly felt afraid of his waking. Would he remember that he had kissed me? What would he say? As if I had bidden him, he stirred, groaned, and sat straight, blinking in the light. His eyes were as burning blue as the high curve of the sky, his pupils tiny pinpricks, and when he looked at me I knew he remembered because he was instantly scarlet, as if dipped in boiling oil. And I knew my face burned too.

The Capitano looked amused, missing nothing. “Good morrow, Brother,” he said with emphasis.

Brother Guido winced. “Where are we?”

The Capitano waved his hand. “Very nearly at the port of Naples. My hometown, actually. Now you’re awake, I thought I might prevail on you for a little rowing, since you gave such sterling strokes last night. I would’ve asked your girlfriend, but we were having such a pleasant chat, and besides, she doesn’t look too strong. We’d have gone round in circles.”

I began to get the measure of the man. He was not without humor, but he was utterly without compassion. In his battered face his eyes were as little and cold as a fish’s. I felt a shiver despite the warm sun, for I knew that the moment we ceased to be of use to him, or if he did not get the expected price for us, our lives would be straw to him.

Brother Guido did not rise to the Capitano’s jibes; in fact, his face was inscrutable as he took up the oar and rowed silently. He said so little on the way into the bay—and then only inquiries as to direction or speed of his stroke, all addressed to the Capitano—that I knew something was badly amiss. He would neither address me nor look at me. I sighed. That was the worst of these religious types, and I should have expected it from him tenfold, knowing him as I did.

Guilt.

We pulled into the bay and I could see on closer inspection that Naples was a pretty shabby place close up—the houses not so white, the aspect not so fair. A dwarf trotted along the harbor and tied up our boat for us, biting the coin that the Capitano flipped him. The midget handed us all out of the boat, and as I set foot on land for the first time in days I could have dropped to the ground and kissed the filthy sand, so glad was I. In fact, I nearly did take a tumble, as my legs felt most peculiar—the ground underfoot felt insubstantial and uneven, and my body wavered as if it were still at sea. All this was not helped by the manacle on my left foot, for Brother Guido and I had to shuffle along with an odd gait, bound together in an awkward fashion as if we took part in a May Day caper. Yet my “friend” made no attempt to steady me; it was the Capitano who grasped my elbow. “Landsickness,” he said, “it’ll pass.” And together we made our way up the wharf into the town, and the streets closed around us.

I was struck by a wall of noise. I was confounded by a rainbow of colors. I breathed a hundred different smells. My senses were assaulted all at once. Naples was like nowhere I had ever been. I had stumbled into an Arabian bazaar.

From our first steps we were constantly harassed by Gypsies and locals alike. The streets were a casbah of yelling hawkers, selling their bright wares—food, beads, fishes. I even saw a collection of human skulls for sale, staring ghoulishly from their stall. I saw, too, shuffling lines of slaves manacled just like us, pretty girls in a string, or strong men, or house maids, all tied together like chattel. I knew this would be our fate if we did not please Don Ferrente.