as was the norm in high society.
Ragione Tre: Brother Guido was closely observing other nobles and their courtesans around the tables, and aped their behavior with me, leaning close, sharing morsels, and whispering in my ear. It mattered not that we spoke together of a stolen painting; the closeness itself was enough. I was happy to play along. For this afternoon, in his chamber, he had looked at me with the eyes of the damned across a yawning chasm that seemingly could never be breached. Now, although we were merely players in a play, I felt I had crossed the valley and scaled the battlements—was it too much to hope that I might, one day, be admitted to the citadel?
While I mused, Brother Guido spoke at length to the king on his right, but the roar of chatter was too great to hear what they said. When he turned back I bent close to his perfumed head, and as once before, his warm hair tickled my cheek. “Did you find out anything about the Seven?”
“No,” he breathed at me. “He was speaking of how this is a better residence for such feasts than his old abode, Castel Capuano across the bay. This place, Castel Nuovo, he inherited from his dead father, and he said that such bereavements can bring joy as well as grief. He alluded to my own loss.”
Here, I am sure, Brother Guido presented a very suitable countenance of the grieving son, for he cared more for his uncle than the real Niccolò ever had. “Anything else? What’s the celebration that we’re all supposed to be attending?”
“He didn’t say, but he did imply that tonight’s feast is in honor of someone or something. He’s making a toast; mayhap we’ll learn more then.”
“And the cartone, is it safe? Where is it?”
He patted his shimmering, jet-studded chest. “Here.”
It looked suspiciously flat—as if nothing lay under the nap but his smooth broad muscle. “Still in the goatskin?” I asked with narrowed eyes.
“No. I told them to take care of the gourd for it contained relics of my dead father. The Spanish understand such things, and my lord king did send me a jeweled leather pouch, flat like a pocket, meant for the carriage of relics on the person. I effected the transfer, and the cartone is safe. Not damaged by our travels, nor like to be in the future, for the pouch is sturdy and proof against water.”
My shoulders dropped in relief. “Thank fuck for that. ‘Twould have been a fine pot of piss if we’d come all this way and—”
Brother Guido shushed me with a flap of his hand, for the king stood up to speak and the room fell silent in three heartbeats. Tall and aquiline, Don Ferrente cut an impressive figure in his head-to-toe black. “My dear friends,” he began, in his gravelly, Aragonese-accented Neapolitan. His white smile accepted the whole room, and from the corner of my eye I saw his trio of mistresses and his wife all looking up at him with adoration. “We are here, as you know, to celebrate the betrothal of the cousin of a dear friend.”
There was a rumble of dissent around the room, which surprised me—I thought the king well loved. Mayhap he should murder a few more barons in the future.
He held up a hand to stay the protests. “No, no, my friends. Lorenzo de’ Medici has given our kingdom pain in the past, and we have not always been on good terms. But since his visit to me earlier this year, and the tribute he paid to me, all past wrongs are forgotten. I consider us to be as brothers—we do not always agree, but we are bound together by blood.” There was now laughter, and the hecklers seemed satisfied. “And for this reason we celebrate today the betrothal of his dearly beloved cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, and Semir-amide Appiani, of the House of Aragon.”
My dull brain struggled to keep up. Lorenzo il Magnifico had recently fallen out with Don Ferrente, but had come here himself earlier in the year to make good. His cousin, Botticelli’s patron, was to be married to a member of Don Ferrente’s family. Was this alliance the “tribute” il Magnifico had made to the House of Aragon? “Wonder what they fought about?” I whispered to my consort. “Must have been serious, for il Magnifico to offer his cousin as a marriage prize?”
“Shhh!” Brother Guido hissed, for the king was speaking again.
“And we