The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Alana White

  He lied. The French women had flirted relentlessly with him and Amerigo both, particularly when they moved from Paris to King Louis's isolated chateau at Plessis-les-Tours in west-central France. There everyone, including the king, had gathered for cards and music after dinner. And every night, as the ringing laughter and the sound of footsteps dimmed, and the king's entourage bedded down (pillows plumped, covers flipped back, the skirts of satin ball gowns hiked up), he had gone to bed alone.

  He yanked his damp shirt up over his head. The roar of blood rushing in his ears almost drowned out the soft scrape of the chamber door, sighing open. Almost. Maria tensed with her fingers pressing into his flesh. Guid'Antonio twisted around. His hand found his belt on the coverlet and drew his knife in one fluid motion.

  A small boy stood at the door, his face squeezed into an expression of pure terror. It was their son, Giovanni. “Mama!” he screamed, the candle he was holding shaking violently in his hand. “Why's that man hurting you?”

  “Guid'Antonio—let me up!” Maria, fumbling for the sheet, was on her feet and flying across the floor in an instant. Guid'Antonio slipped his dagger beneath the rumpled coverlet, his heart thundering against his ribs.

  Maria took the candle. Bending down awkwardly with the taper flaring in one hand, she embraced the child. “Giovanni, where's your nurse? Little one, don't be frightened. That isn't a man—that's your father!”

  Her fingers fluttered to her mouth and in the light of the night lamps, the pink flush in her cheeks deepened to a brilliant hue. “I mean he wasn't hurting me, Giovanni, we're just so happy he's come home after so much time in France. Go greet him, my precious pet.” She smiled encouragingly at the boy.

  Little one? Precious pet? The boy was almost five. Wasn't Giovanni too old to be coddled like a one-year-old? Guid'Antonio extended his hand to his only child, the gift Maria del Vigna had finally given him after half a decade of marriage: a son. Precious and important, so far he was Guid'Antonio's sole heir.

  Giovanni brushed the hair from his eyes, dark jewels laced with specks of glinting gold, like his mother's. He watched Guid'Antonio speculatively. “No.”

  Instinctively, Guid'Antonio sprang up, to do what, he had no idea. Giovanni drew back, his face twisted with fear. Quickly, Guid'Antonio said, “Giovanni, I'm sorry. Maria, the boy and I are strangers.”

  Maria held Giovanni close in her arms. “He needs time, Guid'Antonio.”

  “Yes, well, so do I.” He strode to the windows, naked. Already the first light of day was seeping through the slats in the wooden window shutters. He unlatched the shutters and propped them up with iron rods. A faint vapor rose from the tiled rooftops stretching like a russet sea across the Santa Maria Novella quarter of Florence. The rain that had pelted him and Amerigo when they rode in through the Prato Gate a short while ago had abated, leaving morning arrayed in a fine gray mist.

  “Guid'Antonio?”

  He turned, arching one black eyebrow laced with silver.

  “Now you're home, we have all the time in the world. Although I believe all I needed was another moment.”

  All the time in the world. Like Amerigo, Maria was just twenty-six, with complete faith in such words. Guid'Antonio managed a smile, feeling all the weight of his forty-four years. “I hope so, Maria.”

  “Don't move! I'll fetch Olimpia,” she said.

  “Olimpia—?”

  “Giovanni's nurse.” Maria's brow wrinkled. “I wrote you. Old Silvana died. I'll be back in a moment and show you all you've missed.” She hurried off, tugging Giovanni along by the hand, glancing happily over the slender line of her shoulder.

  Alone in the bedchamber, Guid'Antonio heard slight laughter, darting, indistinct voices and light footsteps. The palace was coming to life. Eyes closed, he drew a long breath. Then he opened the doors to the tabernacle attached to the chamber wall and, kneeling before the painting of Our Lady with the Magi Worshipping Christ, offered up his soul to heaven. After reciting prayers, he bathed using the herbal soap and tepid water that Cesare, as if borne on the morning air, had brought into the apartment the instant Guid'Antonio said, “Amen.”

  “Cesare, look at you. I failed to notice earlier. You've—grown.” Guid'Antonio gestured with both hands.

  A pleased expression played around Cesare's beautifully formed lips. “Taller, yes.”

  A slender young man with a cap of glossy black hair curling at his ears, Cesare stood with perfect posture, gazing back at him. The periwinkle tunic over Cesare's camicia was cut from velvet, here in the high heat of summer. But the soft color enhanced the startling violet-blue of Cesare's eyes. Ah, youth, Guid'Antonio thought. And frowned slightly. Where the devil was Maria?

  “You're nineteen now,” he said.

  “Yes, last month. Do you like the soap?”

  “Right now, I'd like any kind of soap. But yes. What kind is it?”

  “Lemon thyme. It comforts the heart.”

  Guid'Antonio laughed dryly. “Then buy a bucket of it from the soap sellers, please.”

  Cesare handed him a linen towel and in one fluid motion withdrew a cotton shirt from a cypress wood chest and shook it out to remove the folds. “You're off to City Hall, 'less I miss my guess.”

  “We both know you missing your guess is impossible,” Guid'Antonio said.

  An odd look, one suspiciously like pity, shone in Cesare's eyes. “What?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Just this: more than your gate latch has changed in Florence these last two years.” Scooping laundry into his arms, Cesare strolled to the door and smiled encouragement before vanishing into the hall.

  Guid'Antonio stirred uneasily, his face a frown as he removed his cloak from a wooden peg and entered the passageway. The wall torches in the hall smoked, just this moment extinguished. Cesare had vanished the way he had come, in a twinkling.

  And in his place Maria stood in the darkness at the top of the stairs. She saw Guid'Antonio's crimson cloak slung over his arm, and her shoulders drooped. “Where are you leaving us for now, Ambassador Vespucci?”

  “Only as far as City Hall to surrender my credentials.”

  “Credentials?” She laughed softly. “You've been absent two years, you arrive home moments ago after a punishing ride, and you can't wait to leave again?”

  “Maria—” He made an impatient gesture. “I'll be back by noon, I swear. But for now, Amerigo has dispatched a courier downtown to let the Lord Priors know we're here. I wager he's in the courtyard, pondering my whereabouts.”

  “Well, we wouldn't want to inconvenience Amerigo, would we?” she said.

  Guid'Antonio's jaw tightened, and he licked his lips, parched, wishing he had something to drink. “A while ago, you claimed we have all the time in the world.”

  “Please don't twist my words against me,” she said. “It's insulting. You want to announce yourself, let the Priors know you're back and a force to be reckoned with.”

  Well, yes. “I only want to tend to final business, Maria.”

  “What about what I want? But my husband's always gone?” Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “Not always, Maria.”

  “Yes!” Her chin lifted a notch. “This time, France. Before that, four months in Rome, fighting with the Pope.”

  “Not fighting, Maria. Giuliano had just been slain. In Rome my mission was to prevent a war between us and Pope Sixtus IV, since it was his nephew who masterminded Giuliano's assassination, and Rome is a mighty force to be reckoned with in any circumstance.”

  “And yet you failed,” she said.

  His lips felt stiff as he spoke. “I tried, Maria. Our government trusted me with the welfare of the State.”

  “Lorenzo de' Medici trusted you, you mean. The Florentine government does whatever he says, just like you, even though he has nothing to do with the State.”

  “Nothing, Maria?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Yes, he did. Thirty-one-year-old Lorenzo de' Medici was not an elected official of the Florentine
Republic but, following in his father and grandfather's footsteps, he was the head of the Medici family and its powerful inner circle, both social and political. Guid'Antonio's circle. Like Lorenzo de' Medici, whether in office or out, Guid'Antonio had everything to do with the Florentine State, and it with him.

  An unpleasant vision of servants and family standing with ears pressed to the palace walls, listening, flashed before him. “Maria,” he said, “our hallway isn't the place for this.”

  “Believe me, I know. All I want is for you stay with me a while.”

  All he wanted was to brush by her and hurry down the narrow stone stairs to the garden gate. To manage important political concerns first, then come back home and—what? Butt heads with her again? No. To sort out everything. He reminded himself he was a doctor of law, a highly acclaimed doctor of law, in point of fact. He couldn't count the times he had stood before the magistrates in court, handling a difficult case. Retreat would have gained him nothing as Florence's special envoy to Rome, to France, or to any other place. Withdrawal would gain him nothing here.

  Still. “Time and the Lord Priors wait for no man, Maria. Not even me.”

  A look of extreme sorrow dawned on her face. “These last two years there have been times I desperately needed you. Instead, I had to turn to your kinsmen for everything. Even for permission to order new linens for our beds. You were never here. You still aren't. All that's left of you is a shell where once there stood a man.”

  “What?” he said, staring, drawing back. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes, you did. A shell? I'm Florence's ambassador to France, for God's sake. I've worked hard for the Vespucci family—”

  “For Lorenzo,” she said.

  Tersely, he said, “They're one and the same. I'm leaving.”

  “I didn't expect you to stay.”

  Head held desperately erect, she walked past him into the bedchamber. He heard her footsteps approach the washstand, heard her hair crackle as she attacked it with a brush. He heard the sound of quiet weeping.

  He descended the staircase quickly, the heels of his boots ringing solidly against stone, and walked out into the courtyard, where he found Amerigo waiting by the fountain with his worn leather satchel containing his writing pens and ink slung over his shoulder.

  “Andiamo, Amerigo,” he said. “Let's go. It's not wise to keep the Republic of Florence waiting.”

  TWO

  “Praise God, it's good to be home,” Amerigo said, excitement rippling in his voice as he and Guid'Antonio quit the Vespucci Palace gate and walked south along Borg'Ognissanti, All Saints Street.

  “Yes.”

  “What's wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  He felt Amerigo's skeptical glance. The shell of a man? Great God Almighty, what had just transpired between him and his wife? What did she mean? Playing Maria's words over in his mind made his cheeks sting with the fresh heat of anger. Why had he stood in their hallway and allowed her to speak to him thus? Not many men would do. But few men had wives like his beautiful, contentious and hardheaded Maria del Vigna. Hadn't his notary warned him against her when Guid'Antonio approached him ten years ago about arranging the marriage? “She's a virago! A sixteen-year-old girl with a mind of her own! No wonder she's not already betrothed. Messer Vespucci—she reads and writes!”

  “So do my sisters. So did my first wife,” Guid'Antonio had said back to the little man.

  All around him now, Borg'Ognissanti was stretching to life. Yawning merchants unlatched doors and raised squeaky wooden shutters. Awnings dripped, and sunshine warmed the vast piazza between Ognissanti Church and the River Arno. Guid'Antonio drew a deep breath, drawing in the familiar sights and sounds that offered a balm to his soul. “Amerigo—” he said, but broke off as a monk clad in black robes ran from the church garden and crashed headlong into them.

  Amerigo slipped in a pile of steaming dung. “Christ!” he yelled, slapping at the glittering green flies buzzing up around his eyes and nose.

  “I—oh!” The monk stopped and briefly locked eyes with Guid'Antonio. “Messer Vespucci!” he cried and dashed on down the Borgo.

  “What the hell was that?” Amerigo fussed, brushing at his tunic.

  “Not ‘what’ but ‘who,’ ” Guid'Antonio said. “One of our own, considering his black clothing, and—” Just then two other monks of the Benedictine Order of the Humiliati burst from the church gate and plowed into them. “For God's sake!” Guid'Antonio said, stepping quickly back into the street. “Watch where you're going!”

  “A thousand pardons!” said the taller of the two young men. “Ohhh, Messer Vespucci! It's you.” Alarmed blue eyes shone from the narrow planes of the monk's alert features. His tonsure made a silvery fringe around his face.

  Guid'Antonio growled, “Yes.” He had no time for this.

  “That's Ambassador Vespucci to you,” Amerigo said. “Now get out of the way so we can go to City Hall and surrender our credentials.”

  “What?” The tall monk fumbled for words. What did he know of credentials and the Palazzo della Signoria? “I mean to say you don't know me, Messer Vespucci, but I know All Saints is your family church.” He gestured toward Ognissanti. “We all know it very well.” Gathering his dignity, he drew himself up to his considerable height. “I'm Brother Paolo Dolci, and this is Ferdinando Bongiovi.”

  Ferdinando poked his head around Guid'Antonio. “Brother Martino!” he yelled and bolted around them toward the Prato Gate with Brother Paolo giving chase, crying back, “May God have mercy on your souls!”

  “Our souls? Yours first!” Amerigo said, swearing and wiping his boot with a handful of the straw littering the thoroughfare. “What did he mean by that? If I had my hands on the rascal leading that merry chase, he'd have good reason to run. I just cleaned three weeks' travel off these boots, and now they're covered with shit. Monks!”

  Guid'Antonio turned over in his mind the glittering excitement and fear he had witnessed in the faces of the three young men. “Who knows? As for Brother Martino, a heavy burden fueled that high emotion, else, why flee his Benedictine brothers?”

  They cut through a byway so narrow and lofty in places, its steep walls never felt the sun. “Ugh,” Amerigo said. “Here's an alley ripe with piss and last week's boiled pigeon livers.”

  Guid'Antonio slowed, his body drawing back. At the far end of the alley, Giuliano de' Medici slumped to his knees, his cloak a black cloud billowing around him. Blood gushed from his head. Guid'Antonio gasped, staring as a scarlet lake spread outward from Giuliano's ruined corpse.

  “Uncle! What is it?” Amerigo said.

  Guid'Antonio snapped his head toward his nephew. When he looked back down the alley, Giuliano was gone. “Nothing,” he said, swallowing hard over the lump lodged deep in his throat. “I thought—” He pushed the image back into its dark hole. “I'm only worn out from the road.”

  “Me, too,” Amerigo said. “Times there were the last three weeks I thought my rear end would wear through the saddle. Do you remember the night I spent talking with the old monk in Piacenza?”

  “Absolutely. We were late getting started the next day.”

  Guid'Antonio started walking again, profoundly shaken by Giuliano's ghostly image. In France, painful memories had gnawed at him, coming out at night like rats. But he had witnessed no visions of Giuliano de' Medici. Now he was home was he to be completely devoured by guilt and grief, when all he wanted was peace in his heart? Thinking of Maria, he choked back a laugh.

  “The old fellow kept prattling about the coming of a new heaven and earth. What do you suppose he meant?”

  “Annius of Viterbo has been predicting the defeat of the Turks,” Guid'Antonio said. “The building of holy cities and a new Jerusalem.”

  “Praise God for a miracle! And for sunshine, too,” Amerigo said as they entered Piazza Trinita in a golden shaft of light.

  “That's the prophet's prediction. The Ottoman Turks em
barked on a career of conquest centuries ago in the name of religion. I doubt they'll abandon their mission anytime soon.”

  “Islam,” Amerigo said.

  “Yes. Few have managed to hold them back.”

  “Vlad the Impaler did.” Vlad Dracula, the prince of Wallachia, near the kingdom of Hungary.

  “How very true,” Guid'Antonio said.

  A solitary man wearing a full leather apron hurried past them in the direction of Ponte Santa Trinita, off toward their right. Two women, their faces shining with a taut white candescence within their dark hoods, entered Trinita Church on the square. Did they mean to pray before Trinita's miraculous crucifix? Well, Guid'Antonio no longer believed in miracles. Certainly not when it came to the Turks. In 1453, Mehmed II's soldiers had conquered Constantinople and slaughtered King Constantine XI along with his army of Christian defenders. In the aftermath of that massive blow to the Christian world, on the blood-stained floor of Constantinople's Cathedral of Saint Sophia, the young sultan had offered up a prayer of thanksgiving: There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet! Mehmed had proclaimed the church a mosque and named the defeated city the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and so it had remained for the last thirty years.

  Guid'Antonio's gaze strayed toward the wide side street bearing off to his left. A turn in that direction would lead him to Florence Cathedral. His stomach shrank into a hard ball. He had not stepped inside that holy place since spring 1478. Giuliano's broken body was the stuff of his dreams; how could he face the haunting images within those walls again? He could not. A ghost inhabited that enormous, twilight space. A soul lost and wandering, waiting to be saved. More than one, perhaps.

  A red gateway opened off Piazza Trinita onto Via Porta Rossa. He unlatched the gate, let the wooden arm fall back into place with a thud and set a quick pace beneath Palazzo Davizzi's limp crimson banners. “Sometimes, Amerigo, whether or not you believe God has granted a miracle depends on whose side you're on,” he said.

  “Soap scraps! Used hose!”

  “Squirrel pies, pigeon pies, buy my day-old pies!”