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

by Alana White

  “May God preserve him,” Sandro said, crossing himself.

  But the shrewd look in Sandro's amber-colored eyes told Guid'Antonio the painter knew all about Nastagio Vespucci's forced exodus to the countryside early this morning. No doubt the entire Santa Maria Novella quarter—all Florence—knew and knew why, too, just as they knew why Piero Vespucci was chained in the bowels of the Stinche.

  Guid'Antonio said, “Sandro, you've been in Ognissanti these last few months. Have you noticed any unusual activity there?”

  Sandro fixed him with a wide golden stare. “For a time the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta was weeping. I'm pleased to say she's not one of mine.”

  Amerigo started to laugh, but sobered, coughing into his fist, when he caught Guid'Antonio's disapproving glance. “When did the tears begin?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “A week ago tomorrow in the late afternoon.”

  Today was Tuesday. “So last Wednesday, then.” This seemed to be the truth of it, since several people had given him the same information.

  “Yes.”

  “You remember well.”

  “Who wouldn't?”

  “Who saw them first?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “A young boy—it's always children, isn't it? The truly innocent—spied them. In the next instant, people filled the church, praying and beating their breasts.” Sandro's eyes flickered, but he stopped there.

  “Did you see them?”

  “Of course. When I heard the commotion, I flew to Ognissanti.”

  “You weren't already there working?”

  Sandro shook his head. “I had an embroidery design for an altar cloth promised, and—”

  “Straight around the corner to the church,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Yes.”

  “What did they look like?”

  Sandro gave a quick shrug and a frown. “I've little to add to the official statement I gave Palla Palmieri when he came around asking these same questions.”

  Guid'Antonio's eyes narrowed. Palla had been to Botticelli and Company? Florence's chief law officer, investigating a religious matter? But then, Guid'Antonio supposed there was good reason for this, given the tears had been turned against Lorenzo. “Palla quizzed you,” he said.

  “He did.” Sandro glanced impatiently toward the drawings on his pine worktable. “He said, “ ‘Yes, no, yes, no,’ then was gone like a brisk breeze down the alley in that catlike way of his.”

  “What did you tell him they looked like?” Guid'Antonio said.

  Sandro drew a long breath, apparently in lieu of gritting his teeth. “Like tears, Messer Guid'Antonio. Wet and glistening in the glow of countless votives. Amid the uproar, joy and grace reigned in Ognissanti that day.”

  “Or mass confusion,” Amerigo said.

  “When did Camilla Rossi da Vinci disappear?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “The girl? Eleven days ago, on the first day of the month,” Sandro said.

  “That's precise.”

  “Yes.”

  “Before the painting wept,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “By several days. So what?” Sandro said.

  “How did Camilla's disappearance come to be at the hands of Turks?” Beside Guid'Antonio, Amerigo stirred restlessly. This was plowed ground.

  “Her old nurse witnessed the attack,” Sandro said.

  The old woman again. This matched Luca Landucci's version of events surrounding the missing girl and Lorenzo's version, as well. “And people believe the nurse because?”

  Sandro threw up his hands. “What reason has she to lie?”

  “Money,” Amerigo said. “A bribe to mask whatever truly happened.”

  “That's what I'd like to know,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Why do you dismiss the Turks so lightly?” Sandro said. “You know their history.”

  “I don't dismiss them, except when people bring them to our door. Thank you for the wine, Alessandro.”

  “Anytime,” Sandro said instead of: “What in hell are you really doing here?”

  Guid'Antonio smiled. He had interrogated Sandro about the tears, and Sandro had answered as best he could.

  “You seem weary,” Sandro said, following them to the door.

  “So do you,” Guid'Antonio said. Outside, he glanced up and down the street. Toward his right, a monk hurried toward Piazza Santa Maria Novella past walls so close, the folds of the man's brown robe brushed the stones on either side.

  “Uno momento, per favore, Messer Guid'Antonio.”

  Guid'Antonio whirled. “Yes?”

  “Necessity drags me places my pride would rather not go. I would sell my soul to work in the Pope's new chapel in Rome. You were there before going to France. Do you know whether the Holy Father plans to move forward and decorate the walls without us while the interdict is ongoing?”

  Us. Florence's most celebrated painters: Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, the brothers Piero and Antonio Pollaiuolo, Cosimo Rosselli, and the up-and-coming Leonardo da Vinci.

  Guid'Antonio regarded Sandro thoughtfully. Sixtus IV had begun building the chapel beside the Vatican seven years ago, in 1473. Now, although the cavernous building was finished, its long inner walls remained blank, because how could the painted decorations go forward without Florence's master craftsmen there to give them places, people, faces? Unthinkable. Although not impossible, given Sixtus's monumental impatience and his determination to make a point with the interdict no matter how his new chapel suffered.

  “I have no idea what Sixtus means to do,” Guid'Antonio said. “You're right, though, I was in Rome two years ago. And saw the chapel before leaving.”

  “Christ's wounds.” Sandro's hand touched his breast. “You saw the blank walls?”

  “I did.” In May 1478, mere weeks after Giuliano's assassination, Guid'Antonio had rushed to Rome along with ambassadors from France, Venice, and Milan, anxious to dissuade Sixtus from waging war with Florence and Lorenzo. While Guid'Antonio was there, Bartolomeo Sacchi, the Pope's Vatican librarian, had led the Pope's foreign visitors on a chapel tour, past a temporary curtain and on inside the building. There the men had skirted scaffolding and wheelbarrows, tools, and all manner of debris as Sacchi showed them the dizzyingly high vaulted ceiling—almost seventy feet up—the windows, and the soldiers' quarters above the vault: plainly, Pope Sixtus IV meant the chapel for defense as well as for housing cardinals during conclaves to elect his successors. The building had teemed with laborers, carpenters and brick masons, hammers banging, trowels slapping while rude jokes flew and the builder shouted orders and shook plaster dust from his flyaway, wild black hair.

  Guid'Antonio told Sandro this, but not how uncomfortably enclosed the chapel made him feel. As if he were in a tomb. Trapped, like the little sparrow desperately flapping its wings in Ognissanti yesterday evening. His mission to Rome had been short-lived: plainly, Sixtus IV and Girolamo Riario were bent on continuing their pursuit of Lorenzo.

  And so after four months, Guid'Antonio had departed the Eternal City, turning his back on the crumbling old Coliseum and the broken Greek and Roman statues and urns jutting up from the surrounding fields. Eventually, the scaffolding had been removed from the chapel some people were calling the Sistine, after Sixtus, who had commissioned it, but the inner walls remained as blank today as they had been the afternoon the laborers packed up their tools and walked to the nearest tavern for wine and bowls of stewed oxtail soup.

  “Only the devil Girolamo Riario is privy to the Holy Father's thoughts on the chapel or any other score,” Guid'Antonio said, standing in Sandro's workshop doorway.

  The artist gestured with his hand, hit the top of the stone door frame, and swore. The raven scavenging for crumbs in the alley cawed, flying up between the sides of the buildings, toward freedom and the full light of day. “I may as well forget going to Rome and throw myself in the Arno! Who knows how long Girolamo Riario will set his uncle against us?”

  Guid'Antonio grunted. He wanted the Florentines
at work in the Pope's chapel as much as any other man. After all, the place was for the ages. “Don't jump yet, Sandro. Sixtus has spent far too much time, effort, and money to settle for anything less than the best.”

  “And if he's spent all his patience, too? He'll have the walls done soon, yet we still have this . . . this other wall standing like a mountain between us and the Vatican.”

  Guid'Antonio gazed steadily at Sandro's frowning face. “A lot of people have suffered.”

  “Don't tell me. I know!” Sandro jerked his thumb back toward the shop. “Lest something changes soon, we'll all be eating stone soup.”

  Lorenzo and the war. Lorenzo and the Pope. Pope Sixtus IV held a treasure trove of high cards, even the chapel in Rome. No Tuscan craftsmen would be called there while the Pope battled Florence. Not before Lorenzo rode south and apologized for his—what? Insolence? More for his very presence on God's soil. And the only way that was going to happen was over Guid'Antonio's dead body, stone soup, or no.

  Sandro drew air into his chest. “In the meanwhile, thank God for the new contract I've signed with Brother Giorgio.”

  Guid'Antonio glanced at Amerigo, whose eyes immediately locked on the alley's swath of narrow damp ground. “What new contract?” he said.

  Amerigo scratched his cheek as if he had never experienced such an itch. “Likely, he means the portrait Uncle Giorgio recently commissioned.”

  “Of whom?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Me.” Amerigo rocked back on the heels of his boots, grimacing. “It wasn't my idea.”

  “That and a Saint George for Ognissanti,” Sandro intervened. “The latter to honor Brother Giorgio himself.”

  Guid'Antonio arched a black, silver-laced eyebrow. “I see.” Perhaps he should show Brother Giorgio the family account books and teach him the mathematical Rule of Three.

  Sandro glanced back and forth between uncle and nephew. His gaze landed solidly on Guid'Antonio, his jaw set in a hard line, his eyes puckered at the corners. “You don't mean to cancel, surely.”

  “Certainly not. We need another portrait of Amerigo.” What was promised was done. But in the back of his mind, Guid'Antonio wondered how much commission Giorgio Vespucci had agreed to pay Sandro Botticelli. Inwardly, he sighed. Whatever Sandro's price, the frame for the portrait would cost more.

  “Bene! Good!” Sandro said.

  “Why did you think we might cancel?” Guid'Antonio said.

  Sandro laughed sourly. “War? Pestilence? Triple taxes? Even the greatest families are feeling the squeeze. My light purse aside, I'm more fortunate than many other craftsmen. Even during the war young Lorenzino de' Medici commissioned a large panel painting from me.”

  Friend, Guid'Antonio thought, I hope Lorenzino has paid you for it. He kept his eyes off Amerigo, knowing well he wasn't the only one thinking about Lorenzo's raid on his wards' accounts.

  Sandro smiled grandly. “Lorenzo, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano—everyone had a say in the painting. It's a meadow in spring, a pretty piece, if I say so myself. This was before Angelo fled to Mantua.”

  “Angelo fled?” Angelo Poliziano was a member of the Medici household and had been for many years. He was a well-known writer, teacher to the Medici children, and Lorenzo's close personal friend. And yet Guid'Antonio remembered Angelo's letter to Lorenzo abandoned on Lorenzo's desk, unread, the wax seal intact. Interesting, this bit.

  “Oh, yes,” Sandro said, all radiance and good humor now the issue of Amerigo's portrait was tucked away. “He had a terrible fight with Lorenzo. Lorenzo striding off from him in that cool, easy manner, Angelo running after him along the street.”

  Sandro leaned out into the alley and lowered his voice, although the ruddy-cheeked little girl who had come out from a nearby doorway to bounce a ball in the dirt alley was their only company. “All this, mind you, after Lorenzo had called him a coward in front of the Duomo.”

  Amerigo stared. “Good God, why?”

  “Because Angelo wouldn't go with him to Naples.”

  “And Angelo didn't draw his blade?”

  “Against Lorenzo?” A sharp burst of laughter escaped Sandro's lips. “No, Amerigo, he did not. And, anyway, Lorenzo was right. Angelo Poliziano is a coward.”

  Irritated, Amerigo said, “Angelo Poliziano is a renowned poet and teacher.”

  Guid'Antonio gave the painter a hard look. “And angry enough, perhaps, to eventually strike back?”

  Sandro relaxed against the door frame, beneath the blue and white workshop sign inscribed Botticelli & Co. On the sign was Sandro's painting of Saint Luke, the patron saint of butchers, surgeons, and artists. “Angry and humiliated, too. Their performance made as lively a spectacle as any penned by Lorenzo, if you can imagine it. It was actually quite terrible.” Sandro sighed deeply. “I don't doubt Angelo regrets his actions. He loves Il Magnifico as both his friend and his livelihood. In spite of everything, we all do.”

  Guid'Antonio considered this new information. Love made foolish in a public place. Tender feelings bruised—no, crushed beneath Lorenzo de' Medici's boots. “What caused the trouble between them?” he asked. “Initially.”

  “As I say, it began when Lorenzo asked Angelo to accompany him to Naples. In perhaps the first foolish move of his career, our illustrious but hungry poet dared hesitate. After that, Lorenzo wouldn't have him at any price.”

  “Not smart,” Amerigo said. “Had Angelo gone, he could have seen Mount Vesuvius. He could have climbed to the rim and looked out over the Bay of Naples. He could have sailed out from the city and looked west toward Portugal and Spain. He—”

  “Sandro,” Guid'Antonio said. “One more thing.”

  Sandro had been about to turn back to the shop. “Yes?”

  “Did you ever see the painting begin to weep? The Virgin's painted eyes were dry as sand, and as you stood watching, tears coursed down her cheeks?”

  Sandro shook his head. “No. That's not to say I didn't approach the altar from time to time, hoping—well, who knows? When the sanctuary was otherwise empty. Ah, well. Benedetto!” He turned to the golden-haired boy bent over the gilded picture frame. “Leave that. The sun's high overhead. Every crumb in the market will have been sold or stolen by now. Take a few—” He gave Guid'Antonio a meaningful look. “A very few coins from my purse and buy bread and cheese for later.”

  Benedetto's brows shot up. “Yes, Master!”

  “And be quick about it. No stopping to gossip.”

  But Benedetto the Chosen was already past the other two apprentices and laughing as he flew clear of his teacher and the Vespuccis and on down the alley with wings on his feet. Sandro offered his visitors an exaggerated sigh. “Might as well say to a Florentine, ‘Don't breathe.’ ”

  “He's hiding something,” Amerigo said as they walked down the alley toward Piazza Santa Maria Novella.

  “Obviously, Nephew.”

  “Have you any notion what it is?”

  “Not the slightest,” Guid'Antonio said.

  TWELVE

  “Lorenzo de' Medici, a ‘mountain’? What in God's name was Sandro thinking? He might as well have called Lorenzo a hindrance to the Republic, then marched to the Bargello and slammed his head on the block for the executioner's axe.”

  “For God's sake, keep quiet,” Guid'Antonio snapped.

  Voices bounced and echoed sharply along Florence's high old walls, where ears were plentiful and ready to listen. “Sandro threw caution to the wind. That doesn't mean you should do the same, lest like your father you wind up in San Felice or, like Piero, in the Stinche staring at rats.”

  Amerigo glanced away, smarting and tight-lipped. Not often was he so rebuffed.

  Guid'Antonio touched his arm. “I only want the best for you. For us all.” No reply. “Actually, I'm glad Sandro spoke up regarding Lorenzo. Now I know we're on a slippery slope, indeed.”

  Amerigo slid a glance toward him. “Did you ever doubt it?”

  “Sandro sees the opportunity of a lifetime imp
eded,” Guid'Antonio said by way of answer. “And he's worried about keeping food on his table.” How much worse for Florence's popolo minuto, the Florentine poor engaged in menial trades outside the guilds: shearers and menders dependent on the cloth trade, peddlers, messengers, prostitutes, and pimps who lived hand to mouth and whose stomachs suffered most in times of plague, famine, and war.

  “Sandro wants a miracle,” Amerigo said.

  “Who doesn't?” It bothered Guid'Antonio that everyone he encountered bore Lorenzo a grudge—some with good reason, too.

  The strong sun beating down on Piazza Santa Maria Novella started them blinking. On their left, Santa Maria Novella Church rose up imposingly, its inlaid green and white marble face resplendent in the white-hot light pounding down on its walls. Clean, elegant, uncomplicated. How very unlike Guid'Antonio's own life.

  In the church square, a gang of boys played calcio, yelling and kicking up dust and bits of stone with their bare brown feet as they scrambled for the football. Around their tanned faces, their damp hair flew; sweat streamed in rivulets down their burning cheeks. Guid'Antonio and Amerigo shaded their eyes just in time to see the ball hurtle toward them.

  “Watch out!” Amerigo shouted. Gracefully, he lifted his arms and hit the ball back with such swift force it shot beneath the rumpled skirts of the Dominican friar holding forth before a smattering of dazzled students at the church door.

  The friar jumped back, his mouth a tiny round “o” as his gaze traveled threateningly around the busy square.

  “Oops.” Amerigo ducked behind Guid'Antonio.

  “Come on.” Guid'Antonio cut into the nearest street. In an instant, ochre walls pressed in on them, and the atmosphere dimmed.

  “These religious are everywhere,” Amerigo observed over the sound of their boots striking the cobblestones. “God's nails, Uncle, do you have any notion where we are?”

  Guid'Antonio smiled. “Only vaguely.”

  Turned around in the city of his birth—how deflating was that? He felt immeasurably fatigued, although the day was not much past its infancy. It was still quite young, in fact, almost intolerably hot, and in this narrow lane, horribly smelly. He dodged a bony canine gnawing a bone mottled with spoiled scraps of flesh, thought fleetingly of the mastiff Alessandro Braccesi had brained with a stray rock, and combed his hands back through his hair.