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

by Alana White

  “Our chairman?” Guid'Antonio sat back in the pew. “What did Tommaso say?”

  “That Sinibaldo Ordelaffi, the poor, unfortunate boy, died yesterday. Now Girolamo Riario will brutalize Forli exactly as he did our Giuliano.”

  Guid'Antonio sucked in his breath. Of course Riario would. With the Pope's blessing, Girolamo Riario would add Forli to the list of towns in his possession and stay on the hunt for more, all the while staring at Florence with an army of plundering mercenary soldiers at his command.

  The Pope's monstrous nephew was in the chapel now as surely as if he stood before them in the flesh, soiling everything beautiful and good. Assassin. Instigator. What could they do about him? Beyond staying on the alert and watching their backs in Tuscany?

  “Lucrezia,” Guid'Antonio said, “that day in the Cathedral—” He stopped and started again. “I must confess—”

  She touched his arm again. “No, Guid'Antonio, pray. I've heard enough confessions for one lifetime. I know the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. I know He took my son from the world and gave it Giulio, my precious little grandson. I know you're a good man. I'm sorry to disappoint you but no, you are not God, not even approaching perfect. Who besides Our Heavenly Father is? I don't know one. Being good must be enough.”

  She said: “Lorenzo mentioned you met Giulio the other day.”

  Guid'Antonio nodded affirmation. A second chance. A healing feeling was unfolding in him now. “He's the image of his father.” Rosy cheeks, hair black as jet, eyes brown and liquid.

  “Bianca has taken him in hand,” Lucrezia said.

  “I can see how she would.” Did Bianca ever see her exiled husband, Guglielmo de' Pazzi? Did she want to? She had been such a devoted sister to Giuliano.

  “How's your little boy? Giovanni?” Lucrezia said.

  Guid'Antonio shifted in the pew. “Something of a stranger.”

  “That's honest enough.” She cocked her head, smiling. “He'll come around. So will you. Are you still going to Poggio with Lorenzo and the boys tomorrow morning?”

  Poggio a Caiano. He had almost forgotten the trip Lorenzo had proposed to him early last week. “Maria's for it,” he said. “She has to set her mother's house in order and believes the outing would be a tonic for Giovanni and me.”

  “We all need a rest,” Lucrezia said. “Lorenzo, too.” She inhaled deeply. “Piero and I had such great expectations for our daughters and sons. The girls made good marriages. Well, when it comes to Bianca and Guglielmo de' Pazzi, hindsight is everything. For the boys, nothing was impossible. Lorenzo and Giuliano grew up believing there were no limits to what they might achieve. Do you think he's careful enough, Guid'Antonio? Of his person, I mean?”

  He thought of Lorenzo walking the streets today on the way to Santissima Annunziata, a target like the rest of them. “No,” he said.

  “You'll do your best to help him?”

  “I always have.” Unlike with Giuliano, whom he had failed.

  She nodded her gratitude. “But Guid'Antonio, a friendly conversation isn't what you came here for today.”

  “No. Lucrezia, are reservations necessary to attend your baths at Morba?”

  A surprised smile tipped the corners of her lips. “That's sudden. Only if you wish to stay there,” she said, her manner lightly teasing. “The place has been amazingly popular since I remodeled it. Everyone wants a long soak in the hot springs.” She massaged her arthritic hands. “The hotel for paying visitors is almost always full. But why do you ask? Would you like to take Maria there?”

  He felt embarrassed. The farthest thing from his mind had been a vacation with his wife. Another woman occupied his thoughts these days. Two, actually: The Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta and Camilla Rossi da Vinci. Three, if you would have the whole truth. “Sometime, perhaps,” he said. “Right now I need to know if Camilla Rossi had reservations there the day she disappeared. She's the girl—”

  “I know who she is. Aha.” In Lucrezia's eyes, the light of understanding dawned. “That's where she was supposed to be going. If the hotel wasn't expecting her, that could mean she was never meant to arrive. Excuse me while I fetch the reservation book.”

  Lucrezia was gone a good long while and returned flustered. Abruptly, she sat down in the pew. “It's lost! Angelo always kept it in the library. With him gone, everything's a shambles. His assistant knows nothing of the book's whereabouts and has been too frightened to tell me. My God. There is no way of knowing whether or not Camilla's husband ever intended for Camilla to reach her destination.”

  Angelo Poliziano again. “Other than to ask him,” Guid'Antonio said, adding, “Castruccio Senso, I mean.” Questioning Camilla's husband was something he intended to do the instant he returned from the brief outing to Poggio with Lorenzo and the boys. As Lucrezia had said, no reservations made in Camilla's name might mean Castruccio Senso knew his wife would never reach her destination. It was as simple as that. This was circumstantial evidence and would never hold up in court to convict Castruccio of the crime of murder; but in a case with precious few clues, it would have provided a decent start.

  He wondered if Castruccio, assuming he was guilty, had realized his mistake and had somehow stolen the reservation book in order to protect himself. The Medici library doors were open to everyone, a policy Guid'Antonio knew Angelo Poliziano vehemently disapproved. The entire book, missing. Countless reservations lost, creating all manner of mayhem for Lucrezia de' Medici and the proprietor of the Bagno a Morba Hotel.

  Before descending the stairs, he looked back down the hall, watching Lucrezia de' Medici's slight figure pass into her bedchamber, thinking he would not want to be the lady's assistant librarian just now.

  Alone in her chamber, Lucrezia sat with eyes closed, repeating in her mind a passage from the poem Angelo Poliziano had begun in celebration of Giuliano's winter joust five years ago. Five years. That was all. How could that be true? Tears wet her cheeks, and she felt a jab of pain in her womb so sharp, she bent over, breathless. The Stanzas on the Joust of Giuliano de' Medici was meant to be a long poem, but it had never been completed, given Angelo's pen never touched it again after 26 April 1478.

  In the lovely time of his green age, the first flower yet blossoming on his cheeks, fair Giuliano, as yet inexperienced in the bittersweet cares that Love provides, lived content in peace and liberty, sometimes bridling a noble steed, the glory of the Sicilian herds, he would race, contending with the winds.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “I could work these country fields all day and never look like him.” Amerigo gulped water and flicked a glance at Lorenzo breaking rocks in the ground beyond the farmhouse in Poggio a Caiano. Lorenzo was naked from the waist up, the muscles rippling along his powerful arms and back, glistening with sweat.

  Grumpily, Amerigo added, “And yet he's my senior.”

  “By five years only,” Guid'Antonio reminded him.

  “I'd go help, but my head's pounding like he's hitting it with his mallet.”

  Guid'Antonio accepted the water ladle and drank deeply. It was midday and hot, birds chirping in the trees. “That's not too surprising, given you imbibed a vat of Medici wine last night. Anyway, I believe he's enjoying this time by himself.”

  The warmth of the sun was a balm, soothing Guid'Antonio, calming him. But only to a point. Now they were in Poggio a Caiano, Wednesday's harrowing roundtrip trek to Santissima Annunziata seemed far away. Still: that long walk and Sinibaldo Ordelaffi's demise rumbled and muttered in the back of his mind. When Girolamo Riario mustered his forces and took Forli, as he surely would, the people of Florence would look into the mirror of war and see the Pope's nephew gazing back at them.

  They had ridden into Poggio late yesterday, traveling by cart and horseback northwest toward the small town of Pistoia and beyond. A long and oft tedious but blissfully safe journey, praise Jesus, Mary's son, its only downside had come when Guid'Antonio let the two Medici boys' bickering crawl under his skin and set up house, l
ike ringworms or ticks. Bossy and impudent, at age eight Lorenzo's eldest son, Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, reveled in lording it over the younger boys, the two Giovannis, trotting ahead of them on his pony, Bella, calling back, “Little babies, can't keep up!” his voice mocking as the children bumped along the country roads in a wagon loaded with small traveling chests pulled by a donkey whose mane was twined with pink and white ribbons. Lorenzo's dimple-cheeked, fleshy son, Giovanni de' Medici, stuck his tongue out at his older brother, while Guid'Antonio's Giovanni Vespucci giggled and clamped his treasured seashell to his ear.

  At dusk, at the crest of a hill, Lorenzo had pulled up in the saddle and hushed his squabbling boys. His wide, sweeping gesture had encompassed the far off mountains, the swampy curve of the River Ombrone and, closer in, the mill and a ragtag assembly of wood and stone buildings clustered near a brushy lake surrounded by rough fields. “Guid'Antonio, Amerigo, I warned you. The place is rustic.” Lorenzo's eyes sparkled as he spoke, and he grinned.

  “Is it quiet?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Except for the rooster.”

  “That's all I ask,” Guid'Antonio said.

  Lorenzo grasped the donkey's nose halter and negotiated the cart carrying the boys down the gently sloping hill to the farm, while Piero de' Medici rode ahead, his thin behind bouncing in the pony's leather saddle. “Careful!” Lorenzo called after him. “You'll break your head, and we're a long way from nostro medico.” For reply, Piero slapped Bella's flank and shot down the hill.

  Guid'Antonio and Amerigo kept Flora and Bucephalus reined in, their eyes trained on Lorenzo and the three children. “We're alone out here,” Amerigo said. “In the midst of nowhere with Lorenzo de' Medici and his first two heirs.”

  “With mine, too,” Guid'Antonio said. He did not need Amerigo to remind him they made attractive targets here in the campagna.

  A pebble skipped behind them in the road. Flora and Bucephalus danced; Guid'Antonio and Amerigo jerked around in the saddle, alarmed. It was only a goat, separated from the herd.

  Later, while there was still light in the western sky, they found sleeping places in the plain stone farmhouse and set torches, tinder, and night-lights near to hand. That done, they gathered around the trestle table shaded by cherry trees near the kitchen door. The early evening air was fine. A lamb, skewered on an iron spit, sizzled, juices steaming and hissing in the stone pit banked with chunks of wood. “We played at guessing what meat you'd cook for us,” Lorenzo told his farm manager, Falcone Bellaci.

  “It came from your neighbors,” Falcone said. “A plump gift to welcome Il Magnifico home to Poggio. A little olive oil, some herbs.” Falcone kissed his fingertips.

  “Piero!” Lorenzo said. “Catching fireflies is one thing; pulling their wings off is quite another. Stop it.” The boy ignored him. Lorenzo snatched the pottery jar from his son's fist and shook the remaining insects free, prompting Piero to glare at the ground, simmering with heat.

  Guid'Antonio glanced at the two Giovannis. The pair were taking turns holding the seashell to their ears to listen to the sound of waves roaring along some distant shore. Which one? he idly wondered.

  In the pit, the fire was dying to a red glow, the wood ashy around the edges. It was then, as they settled down to eat, that Falcone became stupid and talkative. “Have the Turks attacked Rhodes yet? Did our Christian Knights put up a good fight, or did the Turkish Infidels slaughter them like dogs? And the girl, murdered. Despoiled. Maybe in that order.” Falcone's eyes shone in the heat radiating from the wood fire. “Maybe—”

  “Falcone!” Lorenzo cut his farm manager off with a sharp gesture of his hand. “Not around the boys. There's no news from Rhodes beyond the fact the Turks are reconnoitering the island. Regarding the lady, whatever happened, it wasn't at the hands of Infidels.”

  “What does ‘reconnoitering’ mean?” Giovanni de' Medici said.

  “They're merely looking around.” Lorenzo sucked meat from his fingers. “Boys, do you want more wine? Yes?” He poured the children's wine from a separate pitcher, watered down to a rosy hue, and changed the subject from Mehmed the Conqueror's campaigns to his own plans for the dairy farm.

  “We had cows brought from Lombardy. One hundred of them.” He regarded Guid'Antonio's son. “Giovanni, did Piero tell you about our pet calf, Belfiore?”

  “Sì, Il Magnifico.” Giovanni placed his wooden spoon on the table. “He said we're going to eat her.”

  Lorenzo gasped. “Eat her? No!”

  Solemnly, Giovanni nodded. “Piero said the Ombrone has snakes, and if we try to swim in it, they'll kill us dead.”

  Lorenzo gave his smirking older son a razor glance. “Piero has a bold imagination. One day, I fear it will be his undoing. Falcone found one harmless green snake by the river and took care of it. And we are not going to eat Belfiore.”

  In an aside to Guid'Antonio, Amerigo said, “Not tonight, anyway.”

  “Father, why don't we kill the bad men back?” Giovanni de' Medici said.

  “Giovanni. Exactly which bad men do you mean?”

  “The Turks. Everyone says they're going to kill the crusaders, then skin us alive and feed our eyes to the lions in the piazza.” Giovanni de' Medici's mouth, shiny with meat grease, turned, trembling, down at the corners.

  Little pitchers, Guid'Antonio thought. His own son's dark golden eyes shone with confusion and fear. Extending his hand, he patted the child's knee. “Giovanni, they're just pretending.”

  “The Turks are far off in another land, Giovanni,” Lorenzo said, addressing his son. “As soon as we're back home, I'll show you a map.”

  “I want to kill the Pazzis,” Piero said. “For murdering Uncle Giuliano.”

  In the sudden silence, Giovanni de' Medici said, “What about Uncle Guglielmo de' Pazzi? Will we kill him? Won't that make Aunt Bianca sad?” Tears formed in his eyes and threatened to spill down his cheeks. “Cousin Giulio might cry, too.”

  For the uncle whose brother killed his father? Guid'Antonio doubted it. His eyes traveled to Lorenzo, who said by way of protest, “What kind of vacation is this? Uncle Guglielmo is safe outside the city gates. Piero, all the men who killed your uncle Giuliano have been punished. Anyway, we don't kill people on a whim. We leave that to the Pope.”

  “Are all Popes evil?” Giovanni de' Medici said.

  “Only those like Sixtus IV.”

  “Piero says it's illegal for us to pray.”

  “Your brother's wrong,” Lorenzo said, exasperated now. “It's almost never wrong to pray. Although it depends on what you're praying for. The Pope is using that kind of language to batter us down.”

  In the distance a dog or wolf howled, and Guid'Antonio thought of the loyal, if lumpy, cane corso Italiano back home in Florence. Where did the animal spend his nights? At the garden gate, alert and remembering, with one ear cocked toward the Vespucci Palace?

  “I think it's time we called it a night,” Lorenzo said. “Past time, in fact. Falcone, see the fire's extinguished, will you?”

  After lighting torches to illuminate the night, Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo escorted the boys to their camera and put them to bed, and to Guid'Antonio, how odd it felt. Afterwards, deep into the night the three men leaned forward with their elbows resting on the rough kitchen table, playing cards and consuming musky red wine while the boys tossed and turned in a largely empty room flooded with moonlight and phantom Turks who flew in through the open windows wielding bloody bayonets.

  Now, Lorenzo strode languorously toward Guid'Antonio and Amerigo across the sun-baked field, swiping the sweat from his eyes with his forearm. He removed a towel from the trestle table and dried his muscled torso. “So, friends, how are you this morning?”

  “Bene,” Guid'Antonio said. He had not slept a moment last night. Thinking, reconsidering, and turning inside out all the events of the last twelve days. Leaning first one way, then the other. Indecisive? No. Yes. Weighing all the options, not just for himself, but for his family for gener
ations to come as well. This morning, after seeing to the horses (both Flora and Bucephalus, since Amerigo was a layabout), he had begun reading Simplicius' commentary to Aristotle's Physics, but couldn't concentrate for the nattering in the farthest reaches of his mind. In the last few days, the Lord Priors had not moved one foot closer to proposing a balìa to the other councils. They had been far too busy bickering about it amongst themselves. What would become of those government changes Lorenzo wanted? Something? Nothing?

  “I expected Sangallo to arrive by now,” Lorenzo said, and cast a glance toward the road as if hoping his master architect, Giuliano da Sangallo, would ride toward them through the hazy morning light. “We agreed on Friday morning.”

  “It's almost noon,” Guid'Antonio said. “Perhaps he started late.”

  “I could ride out for him.” Amerigo let the suggestion hang.

  “Don't worry yet. Thanks.” Lorenzo poured well water over his face and chest. “Where're the children?”

  “Taking turns riding in the donkey cart,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “All three of them?”

  “No, Piero's catching butterflies with a net.”

  Lorenzo sighed, shaking his head. “Let's hope he enjoys the sport of it and releases them soon.”

  After a light meal of cheese and bread, they accompanied the boys to the stables, where Lorenzo instructed everyone to wait outside till he came back out. Moments later, he returned leading a horse whose chestnut coat shone in the light of the afternoon sun.

  “There's a magnificent animal,” Amerigo said. “What, about sixteen hands?”

  “On the mark,” Lorenzo said. “Not too close, boys, she's restless.” The mare shifted her hooves, tail switching, as if to prove the point.

  “Eeeeee!” The two Giovanni's jumped back, squealing. Piero shied away, intimidated by the size and presence of the horse.

  “She's a secret,” Lorenzo said.