The Botticelli Secret

2 Pisa






Pisa, June 1482

10
I wasn’t that impressed by Pisa when we finally got there, for three reasons.
Ragione Uno: It was pissing with rain.
Ragione Due: everything was a bit like Florence but a lot smaller. The same river Arno ran through the center but in a slower, narrower stream; the palaces that lined the banks seemed smaller and less opulent than their Florentine counterparts, and the people, too, seemed smaller and less polished than their elegant cousins (excepting my companion, of course, who would stand above all men anywhere he went).
Ragione Tre: my arse was as raw as carpaccio and my sex so numb from my pony’s neckbone that I was sure I would never feel pleasure in f*cking ever again. And to think I called the blasted animal “Pene” (penis) in the first place because at least that way I would get to ride one every day. Brother Guido looked thunder at me when I shared this little joke with him as we jogged along—he in turn dubbed his mount something pious: Aquinas, after one of his favorite writers or something. Anyway, I was being paid out for my jest now. I was in agony.
Don’t get me wrong, I was very glad to be in Pisa, after a seemingly endless trek through the Florentine hills. I used to love the view of the hills from the safety of the city, when they are misty and blue green and far away. But clopping over them on a reluctant pony, when every step feels like you are being shafted by the entire Florentine army, all at once, is no joke, I can tell you. Particularly when the hills at last gave way to the Pisan flatlands, stale, level marshes with a salty stink and a dun color, stretching as far as the eye could see, and depressing the spirits till I felt as low as the landscape. Add to that the stink of cowshit, the flies in the daytime, and the mosquitoes at night. I itched all over and was now more bites than flesh. I am definitely a city girl.
But the city of Pisa, when we finally reached it, seemed no more than a pale imitation of my Florence, a city that I loved more with each step I took away from it. Now I didn’t recall all the fear and the murder and the blood—only the golden palaces, and warm baths with rose petals floating, and hot salty food for my greedy stomach. I certainly tested Brother Guido’s devotion as I constantly whined and moaned and complained for the entire journey. He showed great restraint, the bastard, not even giving me the satisfaction of a sparring partner, but as we approached the city and I began to criticize his beloved home, I could see my barbs were beginning to penetrate. I am a bitch, it is true, but before you pass judgment upon me, remember that I was saddle sore, mosquito-bit, starving, bone-cold, and soaked to the skin. And I hadn’t had a man for five days. Oh, yes, and was on the run for my life.
As we crossed the Arno, its surface torrid with the pelting rain, Guido drew his cowl closer over his head, to shut out the tempest and my complaints together. He soon found a solution to my griping though, an irritating catchall answer to my constant questions.
“Where are we going?”
“You will see.”
“Where is this famous tower? Is that it?” I pointed to a rickety crenellation on the river, dilapidated and listing, hung with filthy linens to be cleansed by the rain. Brother Guido’s blue eyes flashed, but he ignored my insult. “You will see.”
“Well.” I was relentless. “This certainly is a beauteous city.” My argument was assisted by a wight who dropped his hose and pushed out three turds into the river from his bare arse. “Where is all this miraculous architecture?”
“You will see.”
It worked. I could get no more than that single phrase out of my monkish friend, and at length we came to a great wall with an arched gate within. Above the arch was a great stone shield bearing the Medici arms of six great balls in a ring. The arms made me feel oddly at home. But I was about to see something that I had never seen in Florence. As we went below, Brother Guido said the single word, “Now.”
And I did see.
As we passed the gateway the rain stopped abruptly, as if delimited by the wall. The sun shone and a glorious rainbow arced above the most beautiful sight I had ever seen in my short life.
Madonna.
There, set into a deep green meadow studded with diamond raindrops, towered a holy trinity of the finest buildings ever seen. I slid from my mount, mouth slack with wonder. In the bright sun the white Cathedral was a dazzling marble casket, the Baptistery a perfectly balanced round jewel of a building, crowned with a filigree diadem. And most fantastic of all, the campanile, leaning at an impossible angle. The fabled tower reached into the sky with layer upon layer of perfectly arched loggias, slender galleries, and arcades of snowy white, spiraling round and ever upward in their lofty measure. All in all, the place was a miracle of balance and beauty, and as I dimly heard Brother Guido smugly telling me the place was called Campo dei Miracoli—“the field of the miracles”—I could only nod feebly in agreement. All were on an immense scale, as if a race of giants had come to this green garden to build their wonders.
“Magnificent, is it not?” said Brother Guido in an ecstasy of understatement. “And beyond”—he pointed to a long blind wall—“is the Camposanto, the cemetery, a perfect rectangular cloister boasting many wonders within. The soil for the foundations was brought from Golgotha, yes, all the way from the Holy Land.” I still could not speak as we walked forth among the great buildings, but I sensed that I had somehow been forgiven. “Well, Luciana,” said the monk, “your obvious state of awe mitigates your earlier churlishness somewhat. For here is the true glory of my city, which took three centuries to realize. They say that this campo perfectly represents our journey to God. It is said,” continued my friend with enthusiasm, “that in the Baptistery we are baptized to faith, in the Cathedral we celebrate it, in the Camposanto we await resurrection, and in the tower”—he pointed high—“we reach up to the divine heights of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
I allowed Brother Guido his triumph and forgave him his wordy explanations, for the place was truly a marvel, made unique by the crazy collapsing campanile. The monk echoed my thoughts with his next speech. “I find the tower is rendered more beautiful, not less, by the imperfection of its stance. And you can see at once, can you not, from the shape and the incline, that the tower is indeed the edifice that Botticelli’s Graces describe in the Primavera, with the negative space between their clasped hands.”
He was right, the relationship was exact. We were certainly in the right place to begin our quest. Now at the base of the tower, I was frightened and exhilarated at once by the sight. To look directly up at the structure was to feel as if it could fall at any moment and crush me flat. Excited at last to speech, I asked a single question. “Can we go up?”
Brother Guido seemed pleased by my continued enthusiasm, a welcome contrast, I’ll wager, from my humor of the last few days. “Yes,” he said. “If you are not afraid.”
I was afraid. “Of course I’m not. Why should I be afraid?”
“Because they say the thing will come down in under a year. Mind you, they’ve been saying that ever since it was built.”
I shrugged, but in truth would have been sorry to see such a splendid structure fall into rubble—sorrier still if I was within. But I tied my pony by the tower’s dark door as Brother Guido did likewise, and kilted my skirts ready for the climb.
“There is a stair within,” he said. “We must look for anything which tells us of the tower’s connection with the Prima-vera. And take care. The incline, together with the circles you must describe with your feet as you ascend, can be somewhat disorienting.”
Brother Guido was not wrong. Before we even reached the second gallery I already felt as if I had had a couple of bottles of Chianti. But I was enjoying myself—not just from the sensation of drunkenness, which all seemed so long ago, but because my spirits rose, too, as we climbed. My feminine wiles returned as I clasped Brother Guido’s arm, giggled to punctuate my steps, and fell against his body as oft as I could. ‘Twas not much for one as prick-hungry as I, and his complete indifference offered me little comfort, but it was better than naught. Most delightful of all, though, were the glimpses of the green fields below, and the beautiful sight of the Duomo and Baptistery laid out in a great white cross below. At last we reached the top, and I could admire the view of what was, I had to admit, a breathtaking city. For long moments we lingered, the painting all but forgot, enjoying the scene below, with the ant-sized humans scuttling about between the great white behemoths. At length, though, I noted a gathering crowd, as the ants became a swarm and began to congregate in a square far below. “What’s going on?” I said, pointing, my breastbone squeezed against the warm stone balustrade as I strained to look.
Brother Guido, in a fatherly gesture of protection which touched me not a little, grabbed the tail of my skirt. “Take care.” He moved beside me to look. “Ah. They’re getting ready to begin.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Among others,” he said, “my uncle. And they’re getting ready for the Gioco del Ponte, which is held on this day every year. I was hoping we’d be in time.” He began to move toward the doorway of the gallery, to begin the long descent.
“And what is the ‘jocco del pointy’?” I called after him.
He glanced back with a teasing smile. “You will see.”
I followed Brother Guido down the tower, but this time he was so far ahead that I saw no more than a flutter of his coarse brown habit at the turn of the stair, or heard the patter of his sandals on the gallery below. But at last we reached the outer door that led us out onto the campo and we were untying our mounts when I saw it.
“Look!” There was a carving, just beside the lintel of the tower’s door, a pin-sharp relief in the white marble, its angles newly chiseled and freshly cut, the lines of the design black in the strong sun. It was a ship: a fine ship with billowing sails and a sturdy crenellated forecastle, riding atop curvy waves so cleverly rendered that you could swear the petrified ocean was undulating before your eyes. “Does it mean something?” I wondered aloud. “For it was the stone tower cut above your door in Santa Croce that led me to see the tower in the Prima-vera, the very tower we now stand beneath.”
Brother Guido shrugged. “A ship,” he said. “Quite commonplace. Pisa is famous for its maritime might; it is a regular emblem in our art and architecture.”
“But this carving is new—you can all but smell the marble dust.” I once serviced a stonemason in Florence, who covered my best gowns in the snow-white dust of Carrara marble. If he hadn’t paid so well, I would have been quite annoyed. But the smell—the sweet, almost burnt smell of fresh-cut marble—that same smell crept into my nostrils now.
But the brother was already on his pony. “It cannot be. The tower was finished more than a century ago.”
I mounted Pene, but as I followed Brother Guido I looked back more than once at the stone ship by the door until it receded from sight. The carving, and its newness, together with Brother Guido’s assertion of Pisa’s maritime might, gave me an odd feeling. I followed his swift trot into the main thoroughfare as the crowd grew thicker and louder, and by the time I had remembered where I had heard such sentiments before, the noise and the press of people was too great to shout to the monk. Three maritime states. Pisa, Naples, Genoa. They were the words I had said to Botticelli.
The words that could get me killed.