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

by Alana White

  “Beneath their French silks and laces, the mesdemoiselles were full ripe. Dark pink and luscious, exactly like these cherries. Of course it was up to me to pluck their stems.”

  Guid'Antonio touched Amerigo's shoulder. “Buena mattina.”

  Amerigo jumped. “Uncle! Buena mattina.” A flush of red crept into Amerigo's cheeks.

  “Domenica, Antonio,” Guid'Antonio said, smiling despite his inner turmoil. The verbal scuffle with Amerigo and Antonio's mother had been unsettling, at best. Domenica, glancing up from the bucket of water in the kitchen sink, smiled back at him, as different from Elisabetta Vespucci as noonday was from midnight.

  The wide red sleeve of Antonio's workday gown fell back along his arm in soft folds as he motioned Guid'Antonio to join him at the table. “Good morning, Uncle.”

  Guid'Antonio pulled out a stool. “Busy day ahead?”

  “As always, yes, merchant papers to review. Spaniards. And a few of the Pazzi documents still want authorizing.” In the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy, the Republic had appointed Antonio Vespucci trustee of the Pazzi family's property. That seal of approval had established Antonio as a young man on the rise in the Florentine government. Another important Vespucci milestone and proof Lorenzo de' Medici remained convinced of their fealty.

  Antonio grinned. “My baby brother has been telling me how hard he worked in France.”

  “Long and hard,” Amerigo said, smirking.

  Domenica snorted. “Here's more the truth, Amerigo: you're having your hands smacked if you snatch any more of my cherries. They're fresh from the street, and who would believe any are available, given the poor circumstances in the market?”

  Guid'Antonio poured wine into his cup, added a bit of water, and drank, glancing at his nephews. “Your mother tells me Brother Giorgio has taken Nastagio for a visit to the country.”

  At once the atmosphere turned grim. Antonio said, “At dawn today, yes. After you left the saletta last night, we decided a stay at San Felice would benefit my father in the coming days.” San Felice, the site of the Vespucci family villa, was near the town of Peretola, beyond the Prato Gate.

  “For his health?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “For the health of us all. Pray the clearer air of San Felice helps Nastagio regain his senses. Or at least some sense of perspective.”

  “Perspective?” Amerigo said, his voice challenging. “What could be worse than this forced departure from his home, for it is an exile of sorts.”

  Guid'Antonio said, “Exile for him is exile for us all. But better a light sentence now than a more severe one farther down the road.”

  “At what cost?” Amerigo said. “The loss of all our family pride and honor? For surely people will know—”

  Antonio cut across him, “Honor, Amerigo? Unless you've forgotten, I'm first in line for an appointment as a full notary in City Hall, at long last, I might add, though my name could be struck from the list at any moment, should we lose our footing by even one inch. You dare speak of pride and honor? You, who only yesterday returned from a two-year adventure in France, thanks to the good men our father would malign.” He glanced at Guid'Antonio. “You and Lorenzo the Magnificent, I mean.”

  Visibly stung by his brother's anger, Amerigo muttered, “It's worrying, all the same.”

  Antonio snapped, “You're telling me.”

  So: more bickering and division within the family. Guid'Antonio drew his hand over his mouth, leaning back on the stool, giving Domenica room to place a loaf of bread on the table along with cheese, apples, and pears. He took more wine and passed the jug around. “Antonio. Last night, you said Lorenzo mortgaged some land to fund the trip to Naples. His finances are unstable as that?”

  “Unstable?” Antonio laughed dryly. “Uncle, Lorenzo de' Medici's bankrupt.”

  “Never,” Guid'Antonio said.

  Amerigo smacked his forehead. “No! If Lorenzo de' Medici's bankrupt, show me the debtor's prison. 'Tonio, you know he's the richest man in Europe.”

  Domenica placed a pot of honey on the table, fresh from the Vespucci bees at Peretola. “Was the richest,” she said. “ 'Tonio, you hear it in Palazzo della Signoria, our magnificent City Hall, I hear it in the market from fishmongers and salt dealers. Il Magnifico's scraping the bottom of the barrel.” She crossed herself. “So say people in the street.”

  “This wouldn't be the first time they were wrong,” Amerigo said.

  Antonio's gaze swept toward the kitchen door and the courtyard beyond it. But for Domenica going about her pots and pans, they were alone. He said: “You know, two years ago the Pope seized the assets of the Medici Bank in Rome and all the Medici property he could lay his hands on.”

  Guid'Antonio nodded. That had been part of the Pope's war strategy and, yes, it had been a personal financial blow to Lorenzo. With the closing in Rome, other branches of the Medici banking network, most likely the largest in the world, had collapsed. Milan, and even Avignon in France.

  “Given we've been at odds with Naples, the office there is on its last legs,” Antonio said. “Rumors are flying about Venice. And—”

  “Mama,” Amerigo said, smacking his forehead again.

  “—the money Lorenzo loaned the English king, Edward IV, for his war against his brother, Richard, is a disaster,” Antonio said, “since Edward can't pay Lorenzo back. And isn't that a sad commentary, brother against brother? The London branch closed, anyway. The loan to Edward doesn't seem a very smart decision on Lorenzo's part.”

  Guid'Antonio glanced toward the garden, where the fountain gurgled softly. “You have the gift of hindsight.”

  Domenica pulled up a stool and with the hem of her apron wiped beads of perspiration from her forehead. “It's those precious gems and manuscripts he collects. I hear he's no businessman, either. Give him the choice of a ledger or hunting bow, and he'll flash a smile and pick up his quiver every time.”

  “Domenica,” Guid'Antonio protested, remembering Lorenzo's elaborate plans for the farm at Poggio a Caiano. “Antonio. How are our accounts? We said we'd take a look at the ledgers sometime today.”

  His nephew spread his hands. “Do you have time now?”

  No. He wanted to press forward with the weeping painting. “Of course,” he said.

  Halfway across the courtyard, Antonio cast him an unhappy glance. “Banks closed are one thing. This next is strictly private.”

  Amerigo groaned down in his throat. “What?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Lorenzo has been dipping into his cousins' inheritance.”

  Beside the spraying water fountain, Amerigo came to an abrupt halt. “He's stealing from 'Zino and 'Vanni's estate?”

  “Amerigo, go softly,” Guid'Antonio said.

  And so they walked in silence beneath the warming sun, Amerigo muttering to himself, Guid'Antonio's thoughts in a tumble. He hadn't expected to hear anything like this. Lorenzo, bankrupt. So strapped for cash, he was “dipping,” as Antonio so delicately put it, into the fortune due his two young cousins when they came of age. Lorenzino and Giovanni de' Medici were Lorenzo's legal wards, Lorenzo having been appointed their guardian when their father died four years ago. Lorenzino, the elder of the two brothers, must be . . . how old now? Seventeen? Despite the ten-year difference in their ages, Lorenzino de' Medici and Amerigo Vespucci had a close friendship rooted in Brother Giorgio's teachings. Dante, Petrarch, Heraclitus, Ptolemy, science, mathematics.

  “You're certain?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “As certain as one may be of news received from a trusted friend. It amounts to about one thousand florins to help finance the war with Rome,” Antonio said.

  “The war, the war, the war,” Amerigo muttered to himself.

  “Little brother, the money had to come from somewhere, with our government coffers dry as a bone in the desert,” Antonio flared.

  “Oh? Well, I can't wait to ask 'Zino how he feels about this,” Amerigo said.

  “You will ask Lorenzino de' Medici nothing,” Gu
id'Antonio snapped, “unless it's how he feels about peace. Antonio, where does this wealth of financial misery leave us?”

  “You'll see,” Antonio said.

  The walls of the scrittoio were close and dim, the sole light provided by a solitary high window and the single door standing open to the courtyard garden. Together they reviewed the parade of accounts Antonio marched before them, Guid'Antonio with a deepening sense of foreboding. In his absence, mercenary soldiers had raided Vespucci farmland. Vespucci cows, pigs, and poultry had been slaughtered or stolen. The families who lived in small stone houses and worked the farms had been left hungry, scared, and sick till Antonio tended their needs. Who had tended the needs of other families? Guid'Antonio wondered. In some cases no one, given the poverty he had witnessed in Florence since arriving home yesterday morning.

  “All our domestic accounts balance as they should,” Antonio said, his profile dark under the fall of his chestnut hair. “Food, clothing, repairs, servants. We're not yet in financial trouble, but we must spend wisely here on out, should there be any future emergency.”

  Say, for example, if they were run out of the city by what seemed to be a growing legion of malcontents. “I see,” Guid'Antonio said, noting the dark smudges beneath his nephew's eyes. The war—bearing its weight all alone—had taken a hard toll on Antonio di Nastagio Vespucci. It had taken a hard toll on everyone. That was why they all should be grateful that, thanks to Lorenzo, the fighting had at last come to an end.

  Guid'Antonio strode to the doorway, sweat trickling down his ribs. In the garden, the sun pounded the grass and Domenica's herbs, basil, parsley, rosemary. Spraying water sparkled in the fountain.

  Antonio fanned his robe. “The good news is that England and France wanted our wool and wine even during the war.”

  Guid'Antonio thought how his law practice had suffered during his absence. Too, there were his ambassadorial expenses. Travel, gifts. Who knew when the Republic could afford to reimburse him for those items, let alone pay his per diem? Lorenzo dipping into his nephews' money. He said, “I agree we must keep a sharp eye on our expenditures. It seems even we don't have bottomless purses.”

  Antonio and Amerigo closed the ledgers and locked them in the appropriate chests. “Numbers make me hungry,” Amerigo said. “Shall we—”

  “No,” Antonio said. “Uncle, I assume you have agreed to help Lorenzo with our current crisis.” The Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta weeping in their church, a missing girl, Turks.

  “I have.”

  “Then you must ride into battle fully armed.” Antonio pulled the office door shut, casting them in almost total darkness.

  This was not going to be good. Guid'Antonio waited in silence. Amerigo said, “Oh, no.”

  “How much do you know about Piero?” Their jailed kinsman, Piero Vespucci, Antonio meant.

  Anger quickened Guid'Antonio's voice when he said, “He has dragged the family with him into the Stinche.” He did not mention his walk past the prison last night, nor the person who had dogged him, either.

  Antonio moistened his lips. “Piero and his daughter Genevra have been writing Lorenzo and his mother begging letters.”

  Amerigo's mouth dropped open. “Mon Dieu.”

  For the first instant, Guid'Antonio thought surely he had misheard. “Begging for what?” he said.

  “For Piero's release from the Stinche.”

  “Why not just throw us from the windows of Palazzo della Signoria now and have it done with?” Amerigo said.

  “How do you know?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Chancellor Scala showed me the letters. Lorenzo and his mother turned them over to City Hall. Given the Republic's acceptance of Lorenzo as first citizen of the city, the letters are considered State property.”

  A wave of shame engulfed Guid'Antonio. Yesterday at Palazzo della Signoria, everyone had known about this but him. Forget paintings—he wanted to weep. Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala, Chairman Tommaso Soderini, Lord Prior Pierfilippo Pandolfini . . . not to mention Lorenzo, when they spoke in Via Larga.

  He masked his agitation, aware of Amerigo and Antonio's sharp scrutiny. Determined to just place one foot in front of the other, moment by moment. “What do the letters say?”

  “Our Genevra writes to Lorenzo of her father's failing health and of the cruel irons on his feet, while Piero addresses himself directly to Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici.”

  “Lorenzo's mother,” Amerigo said. “Jesus. What a coward Piero is. What a fool!”

  “Claiming neither he nor his son Marco would ever have harmed a hair on Giuliano de Medici's head. Nor would they have given asylum to Napoleone Francesi, or anyone else who did.”

  “There are a damned lot of innocents about who wished Giuliano no harm,” Amerigo said.

  Antonio flashed his brother a quelling glance. “Piero has assured Lorenzo's mother he and Marco always bore Giuliano the greatest affection.”

  Amerigo chuckled. “With Giuliano screwing Marco's wife and everyone in Florence privy to it? I doubt Marco's generosity went that far. Maybe we should have Piero poisoned.”

  “Amerigo, that's enough!” Guid'Antonio said. “There's danger all around. Antonio, how stands the matter now?” Probing and already thinking ahead.

  “In the Stinche our kinsman is, and in the Stinche he shall remain. Until, as Chancellor Scala believes, Lorenzo decides to have him released.”

  Until, Guid'Antonio thought, Lorenzo is again fully convinced of the Vespucci family's loyalty to his house.

  Outside in the garden, they stood together in the sun's dazzling presence, shading their eyes and blinking. “I don't think we deserve this aggravation,” Amerigo said. “What's next? A plague of locusts to cast a deeper shadow over our family?”

  Guid'Antonio regarded his other nephew. “ 'Tonio, Maria's house is in poor repair. Tell Cesare to have our gardeners go there and see to the herbs, at least. But first some workmen to clean up the place. I meant to speak with Cesare myself, but I've other business at hand.”

  “I'll see it's done,” Antonio said, hurrying to the gate. “Uncle Guid'Antonio, I have complete faith our fortunes will improve in every direction, now you're here. Not just for us, but for all Florence.”

  Cesare, now 'Tonio. Guid'Antonio sighed, slightly smiling. “Tell me—have we dealings with a fellow named Castruccio Senso? The wine merchant who's the husband of—”

  “The missing girl, Camilla Rossi da Vinci. Yes. Or we did,” Antonio said. “We broke with him over padded invoices late last year. Short, tubby, a sparse thatch of mousy brown hair.”

  And he was married to a girl Lorenzo considered pretty as a poppy. “One thing more. Last Wednesday when the painting first wept—was it raining?”

  “No, we had fair weather till you arrived home yesterday evening. Then it poured buckets.”

  “Ha! No surprise there,” Guid'Antonio said.

  Amerigo watched his brother hurry down the street. “After all this, shall we go by Il Leone Rosso and fortify ourselves with some wine and sausage?”

  “No. Time to cut the coat according to the cloth. Past time, in fact. I want to speak with Sandro Botticelli.”

  ELEVEN

  Guid'Antonio's nose prickled: pine and poplar wood, linseed oil, flour paste and glue made from the clippings of goats' muzzles, feet, sinews, and skin. Wooden shutters attached to a window looking upon the alley stood propped open. In the small bit of gray light thus provided, there loomed the faceless figure of a man attired in a loose white robe. Amerigo jumped back. “Uncle! What is that?”

  “A wooden mannequin. For Sandro's apprentices to work by.”

  “It startled me.”

  “Obviously.”

  Two boys sat before the white-clad figure. One boy leaned forward, his hair a thick shadow across his cheek as he watched the other lad practice the drawing of clothing with all its difficult tricks. Both youths glanced up, smiling. The two men standing before them were potential customers, wealthy, most li
ke, given their elegant bearing and fine clothing, come to commission something from the master. Good!

  A boy of about ten sat apart, gilding a picture frame with paint the same bright color as his own golden tangle of curls. “Giorno,” Guid'Antonio said. “Is your master home?”

  “Sì.” Turning halfway round on his stool, the boy gestured toward the rear of the shop, where a man in a loose cotton shirt sat bent over a pen-and-ink sketch with his hosed feet locked around the legs of his stool. Sandro Botticelli's hair, a rich, ginger-gold color, brushed his nape. On the floor beside his scuffed ankle boots lay a wide leather belt, cast off for comfort.

  The artisan at work.

  Sandro looked up, scowling. Recognition came quickly: Guid'Antonio and Amerigo Vespucci. He drew back a bit. Slowly, the color drained from his face. Brushing at his tunic, he moved toward them with what Guid'Antonio could only call trepidation.

  “You've seen your new Saint Augustine,” Sandro said in a flat tone.

  “No. Or at least not clearly.” Guid'Antonio cocked his head. “Why do you mention it?”

  Sandro hesitated. “I thought perhaps you had noticed my—” He smiled, waving his fingers lightly in the air. “It's nothing, believe me. But now you're here.”

  Questions chased through Guid'Antonio's mind. Nothing? Why was Sandro Botticelli so nervous about their presence in his workshop? They had been close neighbors and acquaintances for years. “How are you, Alessandro?” he said, beginning again.

  “Fine, today. Tomorrow's another set of sleeves.” Sandro poured wine into three cups. “The Unicorn district's alive with news of your arrival. As is all Florence, I expect. After such a lengthy absence.”

  Amerigo grunted. “Have people mentioned the devil's on our tail?”

  “When's Florence ever quiet?”

  “Never in my time,” Guid'Antonio said. “Is your family well?”

  “Everyone except Mariano. My father's ill.”

  “Mine, too,” Amerigo said. “So much so, he's gone to take the air in San Felice.” A bitter smile touched Amerigo's lips. “So as not to infect the entire family.”