by Alana White
He shouldered forward, enveloped in prayers wafting their way toward the vaulted ceiling. “Mary, Mother of God, in coming to know you better, we come to a closer union with God and His Son. Beloved Mary, intercede on our behalf, for we have committed terrible sins. Madonna, save us from eternal damnation and the angels of hell. Nostra Signora dell'Impruneta, prega per noi!”
Guid'Antonio sighed, glancing toward the rafters, where he caught no sign of a small brown swallow or any other winged creature poised to swoop down on his head. Where were the singing angels? The white doves bearing the olive branch of peace? Be wary should you see them. He passed the Vespucci Chapel and Sandro's elderly saint, a snowy-haired old man who, if he could talk, would no doubt say he had seen everything. Guid'Antonio glanced away. Farther down the nave, he spied Amerigo at the altar rail and saw him sink onto his knees and bend his head to pray.
On Guid'Antonio's left stood the wooden door leading to the church garden. The door was closed. Toward his right, on the south side of the sanctuary, the monks' full black skirts flapped about their ankles as they sought direction, first one way, then the other, past the chapels built by families like Guid'Antonio's own. His thoughts traveled to another time in another church when hesitation and disbelief held him back until it was too late to save Giuliano de' Medici.
His stomach churned, as if with acid.
Too late.
Too dead.
Stop it!
At the altar, his heart stuttered and stalled. There in a circle of light stood the panel painting: the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta, just as when he had visited the church two nights past. But now tears trickled from the Virgin's eyes onto her pale cheeks. Tears dampened her painted pearls and the gilded halo encircling the head of the Christ Child seated in her lap. Silvery wet tears, where before he had witnessed only fading red and green paint. At the rail he squeezed in beside Amerigo. Together, they remained on their knees for a long while before the miraculous painting.
After the leaden dimness of the sanctuary, the light of the piazza stung Guid'Antonio's eyes. He inhaled deeply, blinking, filling his chest with air and relishing the intensity of the sun warming his face. Across the square, the waters of the Arno glinted, golden and bold.
“It's almost midday,” Amerigo said, lifting his face to the light, as if he, too, felt the need of the sun's healing hand on his lids and cheeks.
Guid'Antonio glanced over his shoulder, watching Brother Bellincioni's monkish replacement thrust the collection box toward the sea of hands paying the entrance fee into Ognissanti—for what else could you call the coins people dropped in the box? “These monks are like weeds,” he said. “Where one has been, another pops up.”
Amerigo chuckled. “Soon our good Benedictines will be richer than King Midas.”
And where there was money, there was power. Guid'Antonio had started to say as much when a woman in rags, clutching a baby on her hip, stumbled blindly into him. Her eyes, filled with dread, locked with his. He stepped aside, and in an instant she vanished, her bony figure swallowed in the church shadows.
“Poor woman. What in God's name is happening to our town? To our church?” Amerigo reached out and gently touched Guid'Antonio's shoulder. “To Tuscany? Who's responsible for this wretched lunacy?”
For the first moment, Guid'Antonio did not answer. His gaze swept across the Arno, up toward San Miniato Church sitting high on a hill overlooking Florence. From where he stood on Borg'Ognissanti, the church appeared plain and small, whereas actually its facade was a graceful design of lustrous Prato green and Carrara white marble. Along with the monastery and Bishop's Palace, the grounds supported by the White Benedictine monks from Monte Oliveto yielded plentiful olive trees, an excellent wine, and thick golden honey.
He let out a long loose sigh, thinking of the ragged woman who had staggered past him just now. Her hair, which once might have been as thick and shiny as Maria's, hung in mousey-brown strands around her shoulders. Her face was pinched, and her coloring so pale, she appeared drained of blood. The sharp scent he had smelled inside Ognissanti was the stench of poverty and fear.
“I don't know who is responsible,” he said. “But I swear on my mother's grave, I will find out.”
Once more on the move, they turned into a passageway lined with vendors hawking cheap wooden crosses and Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta miniatures. Waving the hucksters away, they crossed a small square, where a blind woman pleaded for money. Amerigo's purse was empty. Guid'Antonio dropped a silver coin into the beggar's gnarled hand and kept walking toward the Golden Lion district and the prince of the city.
“The little horse appears and the Virgin weeps. Who has the wit to devise this hellish scheme? All to bedevil me.” Within Palazzo Medici, Lorenzo roamed the confines of his candlelit studiolo, his brown eyes dark as oak and glowing with frustration and anger.
“That is the question,” Guid'Antonio said.
Moments earlier, alerted by a servant, Lorenzo had walked toward them from the inner garden courtyard, his smile as bright as the sunshine pouring down on his head. Boot heels clattering on pavement, he had crossed the arcaded loggia with both hands extended in greeting. “Benvenuti in questa casa! Thank you for stopping.”
He had embraced them both, his manner casual, even breezy, as gawking pedestrians hurried along Via Larga past the palace's main gate. “How was France, Amerigo? Did you meet Catto there?” Angelo Catto, astrologer to King Louis XI.
“In Paris, yes.” Amerigo matched Lorenzo's lively tone as he and Guid'Antonio hurried behind him up the curving stone staircase to the Medici family's private quarters. “We spent time with Catto at Monsieur Phillip's apartment. When we weren't at court,” Amerigo added hastily.
“Phillip de Commines, now there's a good man. Did Catto read your stars? Did he predict your fate?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I'm going far in the world,” Amerigo said.
“You already have,” Lorenzo said, smiling as they walked along a hallway with apartments on either side. “I've never been to France.”
Amerigo threw Guid'Antonio a questioning glance. Nor had Amerigo ever been upstairs in the Medici Palace. Guid'Antonio shrugged, assuming they were going to the Medici Chapel, where they could talk without fear of being overheard. God knew he had been there with Lorenzo often enough. But Lorenzo strode past the chapel, turned, and beckoned them into a spacious apartment. A massive bed with hangings embroidered in a pattern of falcons and dormice flashed by. They were in Lorenzo's bedchamber, and their host showed no sign of slowing down.
This was deeper into Lorenzo's private quarters than Guid'Antonio had ever been before, though they were intimate friends. Intriguing. Flattering, even, since in Florence a man's standing was gauged by how far into another man's home he was allowed to penetrate. The word “trustworthy” popped into Guid'Antonio's mind.
Lorenzo lit lamps and candles, and flames danced around them, bathing in golden light the room they had just entered. Looking around, Guid'Antonio felt as if he had stepped into a treasure chest. Above their heads, twelve glazed blue and white Della Robbia tiles jumped to life. On the walls were many shelves of books, some of them newly printed, others ancient illuminated manuscripts. Antique cameos, bronzes, coins, and gems. Gleaming Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Venetian vases. Add to this a fine walnut desk with a highly polished brass lamp suspended over it for ease of reading.
This was Lorenzo's haven, his most private place, his lair in the heart of the Golden Lion district.
Gingerly, Amerigo touched a book placed shoulder high to him on a near shelf. “I'm almost paralyzed with wonder. So many books. And the illumination so lovely.”
Distractedly, Lorenzo said, “Thank you, yes. You're welcome to borrow them whenever you wish.”
Guid'Antonio narrowed his eyes. Lorenzo de' Medici's thoughts were not on his prized possessions, but on a weeping painting, a missing girl, and a lost horse, found.
/> He stirred in the stiff leather chair by Lorenzo's desk as Lorenzo paced the little studiolo. “How much do you know?” Guid'Antonio said.
“Not enough. Only hearsay from a servant early this morning. The horse, the Virgin Mary, and still no sign of Camilla Rossi da Vinci. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Comb his fingers through his hair as often he might, Lorenzo could not prevent it from falling in dark wings around his face.
“Palla hasn't been here?”
“No.”
“He meant to put his sergeants on Via Larga.”
Lorenzo whipped around. “At my gate? What message would that send? That I'm a coward? No!”
Guid'Antonio swallowed a protest. Lorenzo's constant public exposure troubled him. In the streets. In Florence Cathedral, when Lorenzo had a will. Guid'Antonio whisked his thoughts away from that vast place. If Lorenzo de' Medici refused police protection, there was little he could do about it. Rather than pursue the issue, he explained in detail how the terrified mare had galloped inside the Prato Gate and how Camilla's husband, Castruccio Senso, had immediately ordered the stable keep to groom the horse and scrub her bloodied tack clean.
“And he did?”
“Naturally.”
“Imbecile!” Lorenzo swiped his hand through the air. “That was Castruccio Senso's reaction? To erase all evidence?”
“He wanted no visible reminders of his wife's disappearance or her possible death. Supposedly,” Amerigo said, dragging his attention from a copy of Pliny the Elder's Natural History.
“Ignare! Fool! This grows stranger by the hour.” Lorenzo's shadow loomed large on the wall as he paced. “I've been writing letters all morning. Kings, priests. Nothing new there.” He massaged his hands as if they ached and wanted comforting. “I had thought Camilla content somewhere. Like you, Guid'Antonio. But given the bloody saddle, how content may she be? Although the blood could have come from any forest creature, rabbit, fox, squirrel. What I know is she wouldn't part gently from that fine treasure.”
Guid'Antonio feigned calm, as if his heartbeat had not picked up a pace. “You know the horse by name?”
“Tesoro? Naturally. There's no other like that one in this town. Nor like the girl, either.” Lorenzo shot him a smiling glance.
Guid'Antonio weighed Lorenzo's words and tucked them away. “So,” he said, “whether or not the blood was hers, the lady may have been parted forcibly from her steed.”
“Dashing the notion of a scheme betwixt her and a lover,” Amerigo said. “No man would be so foolish as that. Part a lady from her pet bird or kitten and draw back a nub. Who, though?” He plucked the Natural History from the shelf.
Lorenzo chuckled. “If we knew the answer to that, we'd have an end to this tale.”
“The husband?” Guid'Antonio wished Lorenzo would sit down. “Spurred by jealousy? A cuckold. And him, one of your employees.”
Lorenzo looked at him, hard. “We've been over this. Yes. Castruccio Senso's a wine dealer. From time to time, he handles our oil and wine, as he does yours, too, no doubt. And no. Never Castruccio Senso for any reason. He hasn't the balls.”
Guid'Antonio remembered Lorenzo's coat of arms: six palle, or balls, five of scarlet and one of sapphire blue emblazoned with three golden fleurs-de-lis on a gold field whose design graced everything from the covers of Lorenzo's illuminated manuscripts to his horses' gilded tournament trappings, exactly as his father and grandfather's arms marked the walls of the Medici Palace and countless other buildings they had constructed or rescued and renovated in Florence. Balls, indeed.
He felt as if they were talking in circles and had done so all along. “Who, then?”
“The monks,” Amerigo said. “They have balls aplenty.”
Lorenzo laughed. “But do they have the brains? And anyway, so elaborate a plot for so few coins? In that case, I'll match them ducat for ducat, if they'll cease this madness.”
“If they're our culprits, it's not only for coins, but also for their loyalty to the Pope,” Guid'Antonio said.
Lorenzo gazed at him, eyes and mouth stern. “Hang the Pope. And the monks in Ognissanti.”
Guid'Antonio closed his eyes a moment, praying for direction. “After things calm down, I mean to return to the church and speak to Abbot Ughi.”
“Why not just inspect the painting? See what—who—is causing the Virgin's tears, now they're flowing again.”
Guid'Antonio laughed. “And be exposed by the monks, who surely would pounce on me and ridicule me in the street? I don't think so.” Besides, he had already inspected the painting and learned nothing, or so it seemed to him.
Lorenzo paced. “Do you really believe Abbot Ughi, that old lecher, will share anything with you other than how pretty his boys are?”
Guid'Antonio's stubborn nature flared. “Perhaps inadvertently.” There was not one puzzle here, but two, at least. “Who besides the husband knew Camilla was traveling from the city the week she disappeared?” Sweet Jesus, he was beginning to feel as if he knew this girl. Perhaps he should have inspected Tesoro's mane and tail for some identifying bit of brush or herb when he had occasion to do so at the Hoof and Hay. For some sneaky little leaf growing far out in the contado. But he was no gardener or monkish herbalist. And anyway, too late. The dutiful, damned stable keep had groomed the horse.
“Who didn't?” Lorenzo included the world in one flip of his hand. “When Palla interrogated Castruccio Senso after Camilla's disappearance, Castruccio admitted telling anyone who would listen that his wife was off to the baths. Fool.”
Guid'Antonio gaped at Lorenzo's broad back moving away from him. “Baths? Which baths do you mean?”
Lorenzo turned, staring. “Ours at Morba.”
Here was the detail niggling Guid'Antonio these past three days. The lady was from Vinci, yet people had said she was traveling to Morba. Both Luca Landucci and Lorenzo had told him as much on Monday, but neither had mentioned Morba's baths and its healing waters. He had assumed Camilla was on a family visit, and he had not remarked her destination overmuch. Why Morba? Why to any bathing place?
And who owned the resort at Bagno a Morba, but Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici, that gentle and enterprising lady who, three years ago, had leased the baths, doubled the water supply, added a hotel and rented the sparkling new accommodations to visitors, and her no less a personage than Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici's mother. Admired, like her son and his castoff friend, Angelo Poliziano, as one of Italy's foremost poets. Circles, Guid'Antonio thought. Chains.
“Was Camilla ill?” he asked, a man surfacing from a warm, murky lake.
“Not that I know of. But then I wouldn't, would I?” Lorenzo's manner was completely natural.
A young woman off to the Morba Baths, off anywhere, without her husband? Strange. “How odd she traveled alone,” Guid'Antonio said.
“Not alone,” Amerigo said. “With her nurse and the Moorish slave boy.”
“Just so.” Guid'Antonio thought about all this and wondered. “Lorenzo, have you had any dealings with Camilla's father, Jacopo? Since he's a winegrower?”
“Pray God, no!” Amerigo cut in. “There's an ill-tempered madman. Il Magnifico, yesterday afternoon in Orsanmichele, Jacopo caused such a commotion—”
“No need to digress,” Guid'Antonio said, lightly slapping Amerigo on the side of his leg with the back of his hand.
“Jacopo Rossi da Vinci?” Lorenzo said. “You saw him here in Florence? What did he say regarding his daughter?”
“He left Orsanmichele before we could catch up with him,” Guid'Antonio said.
“ ‘Left’?” Amerigo stared at Guid'Antonio. “He practically—”
“Never mind,” Guid'Antonio said.
Lorenzo's eyes traveled from Guid'Antonio to Amerigo and back again. “I don't know Jacopo. My business associates handle these matters. Our silk shops along with the olives and wine, and everything else we own. You do know Palla questioned him. In Vinci town, where Jacopo lives.”
“Yes. And?
” Guid'Antonio said.
Lorenzo shrugged. “Apparently, Jacopo Rossi da Vinci was quiet as a clam.”
Lorenzo's reply was unsatisfying at best, since from what Guid'Antonio had witnessed in the marketplace, Jacopo, with his razor stare, was not a man he would ever call quiet. If, on the other hand, Palla Palmieri had ridden all the way to Vinci a week or so ago and declared Jacopo a dead end, he supposed that should satisfy him. It did not.
“You just came from Ognissanti,” Lorenzo said.
“You know we did.”
“And?”
“Emotions are high, people scared and angry, the seeds sown for terrible violence.”
“Mary!” Lorenzo swore beneath his breath. “I knew as much. We've got to calm Florence down.”
“We will. Find the culprit—”
“Yes!” Lorenzo said. “But here's the thing: we've got to gain lost ground in the city and within our circle, as well.”
Amerigo lifted his brow and looked at Guid'Antonio, who shook his head. I don't know where this is going, Amerigo. Stay quiet.
Lorenzo turned the chair opposite Guid'Antonio around and straddled it, facing him across the desk. “I'll speak bluntly,” he said.
“You almost always do.”
A little color spread over the high bones in Lorenzo's cheeks. “Who knows how far some of our friends will go while we're weak, and they have this chance to seize power? With the arrogant Pazzi family, we saw how far pride extends.” He picked up a bronze medal displayed in a wooden case on his desk and played his fingers over it.
It was the medal Lorenzo had commissioned to commemorate the attack on him and Giuliano in the Cathedral. Small but intricate and swirling with detail, on one side Lorenzo fought off his attackers. On the other, Francesco de' Pazzi raised his knife high over Giuliano, who already lay lifeless on the church floor.
Guid'Antonio pulled back in his chair, straightening his shoulders. He felt surrounded by all things Medici, with no means of escaping his memories.
