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

by Alana White

  Bartolomeo smiled his confusion. “From Lorenzo. He needs you there.”

  “When?”

  Bartolomeo hesitated, glancing at the courier, who bowed, murmuring, “Il Magnifico didn't say.”

  “No. Il Magnifico wouldn't need to, would he?” Guid'Antonio said.

  And so he and Amerigo went back out into Piazza della Signoria, each with his own private thoughts, Amerigo pondering the whys and wherefores of Turks and virgins, holy or otherwise, while Guid'Antonio considered the complex nature of power, desire, and truth. A brief farewell, and Amerigo struck out toward home, whistling tunelessly to himself, and Guid'Antonio strode north toward the Medici Palace in the Golden Lion district of the San Giovanni quarter of the walled city, acutely aware of the battered animal keeping a safe distance behind the heels of his fine leather boots.

  FIVE

  Lorenzo, standing at the windows of his ground floor palazzo apartment, looked around with relief and a smile of recognition when Guid'Antonio walked into the room. “So,” he said, his brown eyes dark and shining. “Shall I take myself to Rome?”

  “No,” Guid'Antonio said. They clasped one another, and embraced another moment, Lorenzo every bit as solid and strong as Guid'Antonio remembered him to be. Roused by Guid'Antonio's entrance, the sleek greyhound snoozing before the cold, man-size hearth raised his head before breathing a deep, shuddering sigh and lowering his nose back onto outstretched paws. I remember you.

  “Guid'Antonio, thank you for coming,” Lorenzo said. “So quickly, too. How are you, my friend?”

  “Stunned.”

  “Yes!” Lorenzo said. “The Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta is weeping in Ognissanti—your family church—and there's a hue and cry in the streets, while I'm blamed for everything. Or am, at least, made the solution.”

  He pulled his thick, dark chestnut hair from his face, holding it aloft before letting it brush back onto his shoulders. Never handsome, but in no respect ill-looking, Lorenzo de' Medici's hair framed dark, irregular features. He wore short boots, ash gray leggings, and a loosely belted tunic of white linen whose plain round collar stopped short at the jagged scar visible at his neck. Well above middle height and light of foot, at the first swipe of the knife-brandishing priest who meant to kill him that bloody April Sunday morning in the Cathedral, he had drawn his sword, fought off his attackers, vaulted the altar railing, and found safety in the sacristy, where he and three friends had bolted the door against the men scampering after them.

  “But I've jumped straight into the fray,” he said. “Are you hungry?” He grinned. “I doubt you ate much locked in Palazzo della Signoria with our nine Lord Priors.”

  “Not a bite,” Guid'Antonio said, glancing toward the walnut sideboard against one wall, noting the refreshments on silver trays, pottery bowls of mixed olives, fresh oil, bright green melon slices, prosciutto, salame, bread seasoned with herbs in the Medici Palace kitchen, and cheese ripe from Lorenzo's dairy farm at Poggio a Caiano. All ready and waiting for Lorenzo's friend and right-hand man, Guid'Antonio Vespucci.

  “Grazie.” He poured water over his fingers and dried them with a linen towel. Delicious, he thought, biting into a thick slice of rosemary bread slathered with creamy pale pecorino. And a far cry from the rancid cheese the farmer had palmed off on him in the marketplace today. A farther cry from the old woman's burned crow tart.

  “Poggio's up and running?” he said. Lorenzo had begun acquiring property in the countryside between Florence and Pistoia several years ago, only to have the death of his brother and the resulting war bring the farm's progress to a grinding halt.

  “By some miracle, it is. Or nearly.”

  The brindle greyhound eyed Guid'Antonio's bread and stretched up onto his hindquarters. “Mind your manners, Leporarius,” Lorenzo said. “You'll have your turn.” Lids closed to slits, the hound eased down onto the cool hearthstone. Hare hunter. Incredibly swift and spare. “Good dog. Thank you.” Lorenzo turned to Guid'Antonio, grimacing. “I haven't seen Poggio in six months, four spent in wretched Naples courting the king. But God's eyes, Guid'Antonio, what right have I to complain? You've been in France a year.”

  “Almost two,” Guid'Antonio said.

  A look of embarrassment suffused Lorenzo's face. “Of course. Forgive me.”

  A light-fisted knock, the apartment door opened, and Bartolomeo Scala's assistant, Alessandro Braccesi, poked in his head. “From the Chancellor.” Alessandro handed Lorenzo the official government notes he had taken during the Lord Priors' meeting. “Messer Vespucci,” he said, acknowledging Guid'Antonio, who nodded a greeting, thinking, Put wings on his heels and call him Mercury. Our own special messenger to the god here in Via Larga.

  “Alessandro, have some of the Brolio. It's excellent,” Lorenzo said, his eyes already scanning the papers in his hands.

  “Grazie. By the way, some boys were tormenting a half-dead mutt at the main gate. I put it out of its misery.”

  Around Guid'Antonio, the light in the apartment wavered. “Did you?” he said. Lorenzo glanced up, considering him a moment before lowering his gaze back down again.

  “All it took was a blow to the head,” Alessandro said. “With a sharp piece of sandstone. Probably the stone tumbled from some mason's cart. Here—” He leaned toward Lorenzo to decipher a passage splotched with ink.

  Guid'Antonio knew he should be grateful. The secretary had saved him—or Cesare—the trouble of dispatching the dog. That empty sack of fur and bones had no benefactor. Never would the mastiff have survived the streets. He massaged his forehead in a futile attempt to ease the tightness gathering there, his gaze drifting to the row of windows set with heavy iron gratings along Via dei Gori on the San Lorenzo side of the Medici palazzo. From beyond the barred windows, there came the sound of voices, wheezy old men trading tales on the stone bench built the length of the wall facing San Lorenzo marketplace and church.

  His gaze fell on Lorenzo's writing desk. An oil lamp hung from a brass arm above the rotating reading stand, lighting the poems of Catullus, an ancient work lost for centuries till someone discovered the old parchment stoppering a wine barrel in Rome. Beside the poems, Guid'Antonio saw a letter whose crimson seal remained unbroken. A. POLIZIANO. Lorenzo and Angelo Poliziano were intimates, yet Lorenzo had cast Angelo's letter aside, unread. Why? And, too, scattered across the marble floor were several pages of writing in Lorenzo's small, precise hand.

  Guid'Antonio turned to find Alessandro Braccesi gone and Lorenzo staring at him with frank interest. The heat of embarrassment stung Guid'Antonio's cheeks.

  Lorenzo watched him gravely. “These days even the simplest verse is hard won. I've been grappling with that poem for over a year now.”

  “What do you expect when you hold yourself up to Dante?”

  “A decent effort.” Anger blazed in Lorenzo's expressive eyes. “There was a time I thought words as valuable as swords. Now, I'm not so sure. Slay Giuliano? How could they do such a terrible thing? Jesus! The Pope! Upon my soul, my honor balks at the prospect of prostrating myself at the feet of that miscreant in Rome, but I will do it, if it means he will lift his ban of excommunication against us.”

  Giuliano would already be there, Guid'Antonio thought. He put down his wine. “What exactly does Sixtus want?”

  “Me on my knees before him, he says: his wayward servant humbled before the world. That crazy man takes me for a fool. What he really wants is to whack off my head. Meanwhile, some rival here in our own city is wreaking havoc against me.”

  Beyond the grated windows, the bells of San Lorenzo tolled, accompanied by church bells all across the city and in the neighboring hills. Closer by, Guid'Antonio caught the sweet peal of Ognissanti. Home. Maria. He strode to the windows and latched the shutters, muting the bells, and whirled back around, his boots firmly set in the heart of the Golden Lion district of his city.

  “Who profits most from the discord in our streets? To the point they would risk their necks to set people against
you? Surely, whoever it is has a hand in the weeping painting. God's wrath, damning miracles—”

  “Against us, you mean,” Lorenzo said. “Our families, our circle. My spies tell me the Pope's nephew has been whispering in his ear again.”

  Girolamo Riario. If evil walked among men, Girolamo was the devil personified.

  For ten years now, Girolamo Riario had fanned the flames of the Pope's hatred for Lorenzo. Girolamo, dead set on using the papacy to acquire land and titles and create a principality for himself in Italy. So far, he had done well.

  “Do you know Girolamo's whereabouts?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Sì, Roma.” At the hearth, Lorenzo knelt and handed Leporarius a bit of salame. “In Rome, Girolamo can keep his tongue stuck in the Pope's ear. Though by now, who knows? The bastard may have gone to Imola for a turn at terrorizing that unfortunate town.”

  “God Almighty,” Guid'Antonio said. “Our troubles with those two began with Imola seven years ago. Seven,” he repeated, shaking his head.

  “Yes, and they've made the place a viper's nest.” They regarded one another, one face mirroring the other's exasperation, and then what could they do but share a sour laugh?

  A gruff, toothless man from a poor fishing village in Liguria, on his election as Pope Sixtus IV, Francesco della Rovere had begun advancing his half dozen or so nephews with a bent for nepotism theretofore unequaled, even in Rome. For his pet, Girolamo Riario, Sixtus had set his sights on a lordship in the Papal State, a sprawling province in northern Italy whose cities and towns were part of the Church State but had over time come to be governed by dukes and lords who gave the Church lip service, while ignoring its demands for money and military support.

  A toehold there would give Girolamo Riario a base to build up estates and tighten his family's control over the province's rebellious households. His first chance had come when Imola, a small town on the thoroughfare between Florence and the Adriatic Sea on Italy's eastern coast, had come up for sale by its Milanese lord, Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Sixtus, fifty-seven in 1471 and the newly elected Pope, had decided he would buy the town and present it to Girolamo. Lorenzo, twenty-two and ascendant in Florence, had made up his mind Sixtus would do no such thing. From Rome, the Papal State curled around Florence and her environs like a claw. Control this area and you had a good chance of controlling Florence.

  In the end, despite wickedly clever maneuverings by Lorenzo, Imola had fallen to the Pope, who had immediately appointed Girolamo its lord and master. All this had come to a head in 1473, and today Lorenzo still battled Sixtus, who spied Lorenzo's dark, shifting shape behind his every failed attempt to make his relatives dominant in Italy. Seven years ago, Lorenzo had unmasked Sixtus IV and Girolamo Riario as major political players in the Italian peninsula. He had challenged the Pope's right to take control of the Papal State and insulted the Pope's family. Worse, Lorenzo had performed these acts in public with the entire peninsula watching the Pope and his nephew made foolish on stage.

  For this, Giuliano had died.

  For this, there had been war.

  For this, Florence still battled Rome.

  Give me that Florentine upstart.

  Guid'Antonio remembered Girolamo Riario well from the contest over Imola, having traveled to that unfortunate little town as Florence's legal representative at the height of that affair, on what amounted to his first “mission” for the youthful Lorenzo. Girolamo was a slender prick of a young man with bobbed hair and moist, prissy lips.

  He tapped his mouth with his fingertip, mentally sifting, considering this and that and drawing back. “My bet is on someone local rather than Rome as the source of our troubles here. Currently, I mean.”

  “What?” A brittle laugh escaped Lorenzo's lips. “Why now?”

  “Power? Fortune? First place in the city?”

  Lorenzo regarded him with a mild brown stare. “Neither the Pope nor Girolamo Riario, but other men who regard me with suspicion and envy? That would include my Uncle Soderini.” Tommaso Soderini, the official head spokesman of the Florentine government.

  Dangerous, dangerous waters. “Surely the monks in Ognissanti are thriving, given the weeping Virgin,” Guid'Antonio said. “Would this be the first time a church made a hoax to fill the collection box? No.”

  The raven-haired monk dashed through Guid'Antonio's mind, along with the two black-robed young men of the Humiliati who had pursued their brother toward the Prato Gate early this morning. Brother Martino, Brother Paolo, and the little novice, Ferdinando Bongiovi. What might that trio have to do with the painting weeping in Ognissanti? Something? Nothing? What of the missing girl—at the hands of Turks, or so some hare brains believed—and the escalating demand for Lorenzo to pack his bags for Rome? Guid'Antonio's imagination, experience, and hours spent handling all manner of complex court cases and tricky investigations warned him not to dismiss any scheme.

  “Florence is rich with monks and miracles,” Lorenzo said. “And no monk is more devious than the abbot of your church.”

  True. Guid'Antonio knew this all too well from past experience with Roberto Ughi, the arrogant abbot of Ognissanti. “Have you seen the tears?” he said.

  “Haven't I, yes. Last Wednesday the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta wept as copiously as if for the devil himself.” Lorenzo's face clouded. “Yet in my heart I can't believe she wept for me.”

  “She will if you go to Rome.”

  Lorenzo waved his hand. “Surely His Holiness isn't truly capable of murder in the Vatican.”

  “You know as well as I do that madman is capable of anything. As is his nephew.” Guid'Antonio left the rest unsaid. After all, with Francesco de' Pazzi as their pawn, they murdered Giuliano.

  “What choice do I have but to go? All I hear from Bartolomeo Scala, our nail-biting Chancellor, is how an alarmed sense of fatality has overcome our city. Because of the war, the wool and silk trade has declined sharply. The backbone of Florentine industry, as you well know. Business travel and employment have suffered. On and on it goes until I'm sick of hearing it. Predictions of uprisings and exile march daily from the good Chancellor's pen and lips.”

  “We are as fragile as glass,” Bartolomeo Scala had said this morning.

  “Mercy Jesus, if I could have one hour of quiet, I swear I never would complain!” The frustration in Lorenzo's voice cracked the silence like a hammer cracking marble. By the hearth, Leporarius blinked, staring from one to the other of the two men.

  “Nor would I,” Guid'Antonio said mildly.

  “All I want is peace! How has this happened?” Lorenzo's voice caught, filled with unrestrained emotion. “When was the last time we had peace? Fourteen fifty-four! And then thanks to the Turks.”

  In 1454, one year after the fall of Constantinople to Mehmed the Conqueror, Italy had united in fear and formed a defensive league to present a united front against foreign aggression. Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples and Rome: eventually, all five major Italian powers had joined the treaty. This only after the Infidels had killed King Constantine, peeled the skin off his face, filled it with straw, displayed it in triumph through the city, and slaughtered the Christian men, women, and children huddled in the Church of Saint Sophia.

  “That was a bloody settlement,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Aren't they all? Which brings to mind another matter you may not know about.”

  “Oh, God,” Guid'Antonio said, leaning back against the writing desk with Lorenzo, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Did the Priors mention Forli?”

  “No.” Guid'Antonio's senses heightened as he anticipated more troubling news. Like Imola, Forli town fell within the Papal State on Via Emilia, between Florence and the Adriatic Sea.

  Lorenzo filled Guid'Antonio in:

  “My agent in Forli sent word last week Sinibaldo Ordelaffi is dangerously ill. Last February, Sinibaldo's father died, leaving Sinibaldo the new lord of Forli, and him a sickly boy. I've written Sinibaldo's mother a letter of c
aution. If Sinibaldo dies of this fever, Girolamo and his uncle will make a grab for the town. Take it, and Girolamo will have both feet firmly planted on our northern border—” He paused as a rush of footsteps approached the apartment's closed doors.

  Guid'Antonio's gaze fastened on the unbolted latch. “Lorenzo,” he said, “are you expecting anyone?”

  “No!”

  They sprang up, hands flying to their daggers, eyes locked on the sole entrance to the chamber. Leporarius stood, growling, his fur spiked along the thin ridge of his back.

  Let Satan himself burst in upon us, Guid'Antonio silently swore as the doors blew open, and this time I will plunge my blade hiltdeep into his throat and watch his blood stain the floor.

  SIX

  A boy burst into the apartment, all ruddy cheeks and blow-about hair. “Lorenzo!” With that gusty cry, Giovanni de' Medici darted, laughing, toward his startled father. Guid'Antonio blew out a shivery sigh; smoothly, he and Lorenzo sheathed their daggers, glancing ruefully at one another.

  Short and thickset, Giovanni de' Medici moved ploddingly. Lorenzo lifted the snub-nosed, roundly built five-year-old and swung him in a circle before putting him down and administering a loving pat on the rump. Guid'Antonio's glance slid toward the hooded hearth and the two jewel encrusted jasper and gold vases jiggling on the mantelpiece; Leporarius dipped his tail and slipped out into the hall.

  “Giovanni,” Lorenzo said, smiling. “Say ‘Buon giorno’ to Guid'Antonio Vespucci.”

  The boy gazed at Guid'Antonio with squinting eyes. “Are you my father's most trusted friend?”

  “I believe I am. Yes.”

  “My father says so, too. Buon giorno, Ser Vespucci.” Giovanni trotted to the sideboard and, reaching up a chubby hand, grabbed a thick slice of herbed rosemary bread.

  “Giovanni,” Lorenzo began, his voice exasperated. “Mind your manners, please. In Guid'Antonio's instance, the correct address is ‘Messer,’ as he is a lawyer. Only if he were a notary or ordinary tradesman would you address him as ‘Ser.’ ”