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

by Alana White

  “Yes. And our two lovebirds behaved how?”

  “As you might expect. Amazing. Martino's lost all sense of guilt and wants only to wed Camilla the instant they arrive in France.”

  “And she?”

  “Agrees, judging from the smile on her pert lips. No nunnery for that one.”

  “Amore,” Maria said, pleased. “They're going where?”

  “Plessis-les-Tours.” Lorenzo had assured the young couple he would make arrangements for them, Margherita, and Isotta with King Louis XI. (“How can they make a life together in Florence?” Lorenzo had asked Guid'Antonio. “Impossible. Besides, they're in love.”) Love, love, love. In the end, it all came down to that. Before departing Peretola, Guid'Antonio had given Camilla a missive for Ameliane Vely, to catch Ameliane up on events. Inquiring in a playful way how she was faring without him there.

  “Was Camilla very happy?” Maria asked, craving the details.

  “Lit from within. Hair shining, aglow like some black sun, the beauty of her flowing locks matched only by those of her lover and her horse, Tesoro.”

  Maria punched him playfully. “You're mocking me.”

  “Not at all. Amerigo almost swooned.”

  “Cesare would have.” Maria laughed, snuggling closer. “It's nice, having you lighthearted for a change. I love you for helping that unfortunate girl. But I don't understand why our monks were so determined to stop Martino from leaving their order. You said the one called Paolo was beside himself to find Martino and fetch him back again.”

  “They were afraid word of Martino's behavior would blacken their name,” Guid'Antonio said. “Stop the flow of contributions by fathers now fearful their daughters might be ruined at the groping hands of hot-blooded young monks.”

  “Guid'Antonio,” Maria said chidingly.

  “Or that one of their own might be accused of murdering her,” he said. “Since she was having an affair with a brother monk. Maria, I wasn't helping Camilla so much I was helping Lorenzo.” And myself, he thought. Good Medici man that I am. Myself and my family.

  She held his eyes with hers. “Say what you will. I know better.”

  No, she did not. He nuzzled her ear and heard her breath change and quicken.

  Tonight, all Florence was happy. In the last two days it seemed the entire town had learned Camilla Rossi da Vinci had not only been found: she had been found alive, well, and in love. Now that she was a widow—but who needed details? Vague, titillating musings of a clandestine affair were enough. They were young, they were beautiful, and Florence was safe from the Infidels.

  Because there was more on that front, too. The good news had arrived this afternoon. Impossibly, one week ago the six hundred brave Christian Knights of Saint John had beaten back 70,000 or more Turks at Rhodes and planted the flag of faith over the fortress town. Upon hearing the news, the population of Florence had poured forth through the streets, cheering and beating their breasts to the riotous tune of clanging church bells. Not a man to take to the streets on any occasion, Guid'Antonio had smiled till his mouth ached, his chest filled with gladness and no small amount of surprise at the Knights' victory, till he heard how the Infidels had panicked and run like the Prince of Darkness himself when a vision of Mary and Saint John the Baptist led by a cross of gold and accompanied by a dazzling band of Christian warriors had appeared in the sky above the Turks' heads.

  How could the Christian Knights of Saint John lose in the face of a miracle such as that?

  He made love to Maria slowly, one renegade part of him still with Palla and Lorenzo during Jacopo Rossi's confession at the Bargello earlier in the day. Jacopo had been neither scared nor cagey, till the last. Still, there had been no need for the strappado.

  “Why is he here?” Jacopo said, glaring at Lorenzo.

  “I'll ask the questions.” Palla circled Jacopo like a cat, dark eyes shining, ready to pounce.

  “And I'll answer them,” Jacopo said. “I know when I'm caught.”

  “Did you kill Castruccio Senso?” Palla asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I hated him.”

  “Why?”

  “He paid a Neapolitan thug to kidnap my daughter and sell her into slavery.”

  Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo glanced at one another. Salvestro Aboati, of course.

  Palla said, “Why did he do that? Castruccio Senso, I mean?”

  “Because she was screwing a horny monk.”

  “But this hired man, and we know his name, this Salvestro Aboati, brought her to you instead of putting her on some foreign ship.”

  “Why ask me? You know everything.”

  “Why did Salvestro Aboati do that?” Palla said.

  “Salvestro didn't act on Castruccio Senso's scheme. He sold the information to me. We changed Castruccio's plan. Salvestro would take Camilla, but deliver her to me rather than to the slave market. Then we would blackmail Castruccio Senso by threatening to expose his wickedness. To sweeten the pot, we determined to let the horse loose in Florence with its saddle bloodied, so Castruccio would believe Salvestro had murdered my daughter.”

  “You did hate him. Why so completely?”

  “He beat her.”

  “Reason enough. So, you went forward with your plan.”

  “Right again, Palmieri.”

  “What happened next?”

  “After taking Camilla, Salvestro and I went to Castruccio's house to blackmail him. Things went sour, and I brained him.”

  “You went there planning to kill him,” Palla said.

  Jacopo grinned. “Yes.”

  “Why did you drop the fabric there? Evidence that might get you hanged.”

  “It was an accident.”

  Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo laughed. Accident? Too crazy to believe.

  “It's true!” Jacopo said, offended. “I took it with me to cause Castruccio grief. When I picked up the candlestick, I dropped the bit of cloth without realizing it.”

  “And the cloth had blood on it?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Yes. Camilla's, I wanted him to think.”

  “Whose was it?”

  “That of a cat I gutted in the street.”

  “Weren't you concerned Luigi would witness your attack on his owner?”

  “Castruccio told me he was selling the boy. I thought he had done so. Anyway, Luigi wasn't around. I looked.”

  Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo shared another glance. Now they knew why Luigi hadn't revealed Jacopo's terrible secret to the authorities: the child was scared for the lady he loved above all else and wanted only to protect her. Tell anyone Jacopo had murdered Castruccio Senso, and Jacopo might kill Camilla for pure meanness.

  “Then what?” Palla said.

  “We ran.”

  “What about the money you took?”

  “I didn't want Castruccio Senso's money. I threw it in the Arno.”

  “Where's Salvestro Aboati now?”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Jacopo grinned malevolently. “He tried to blackmail me, much as we had planned to blackmail Castruccio. I couldn't allow it.”

  “And?”

  “I made him a counteroffer.”

  Maria's breathing softened and slowed as she drifted into slumber. Hardly knowing what he was doing, Guid'Antonio eased from bed, dressed, and went out into the street. At this midnight hour, Borg'Ognissanti was deserted and quiet. He walked in the direction opposite Ognissanti, toward Florence Cathedral. At intervals along his route, torches shed pools of yellow light on the walls of the buildings. He caught sight of no one else, although he knew guards stood watch every few blocks or so after curfew.

  He advanced up the Cathedral steps with a quick pace, exactly as he had done a little over two years ago, on 26 April 1478. He opened the door. Vast the sanctuary, deserted and still. Was there ever another darkness like this, so tranquil and complete as here in the Duomo? He walked to the spot where he had stood that Easter Sunday morning and
peered through space toward Giuliano positioned apart from the congregation cloaked in the black velvet mantello with the hood lined in scarlet satin.

  Odd. Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini were with him.

  Guid'Antonio hesitated, cried out and in the next instant found himself struggling to squeeze through knots of screaming, frightened people. He felt a sudden snap of release, gained ground, and knelt beside Giuliano, weeping. Had they looked into one another's eyes then, surprised and smiling? Yes. And then Giuliano died, with Guid'Antonio holding Giuliano close to his chest as he took his last breath and his soul winged its way to heaven. Guid'Antonio had that last, precious moment with him. A moment of love and sorrow no one else had experienced, nor did anyone else know about.

  He glanced around now, his heart skipping in his chest. What had he hoped to find in this empty, dark place? Some sign, some whisper of his lost friend? Some feeling of forgiveness and release?

  He fell to his knees and placed his palm upon the marble floor, so hard and cool to the touch. “Giuliano, I'm sorry,” he said. “You are sorely missed. A lot has happened this summer. These last two years.”

  Beneath his fingers, the pavement became as supple and warm as living flesh, and something soft brushed the top of his head. He looked up. Giuliano stood over him. “Guid'Antonio,” he said in a whisper so faint, Guid'Antonio didn't know if the words came from Giuliano's lips or from the depths of his own soul. “Florence is my beating heart. Both then and now. It always will be, my stalwart friend.”

  Hardly daring to breathe, Guid'Antonio watched Giuliano move toward the front of the church and vanish through the door. Guid'Antonio followed, his fingers turning the handle, his solid footsteps leading him outside into Piazza San Giovanni. Directly across from the Cathedral he saw the baptistery, intact and real. He turned back toward the Cathedral, looking up, his gaze seeking the wooden platform encircling Brunelleschi's red brick dome. One winter morning Guid'Antonio and Giuliano had stood up there a few feet from the iron safety rail. So very close to the edge. Too close for comfort, Guid'Antonio had thought even then. In their private meeting place overlooking the city, away from listening ears, Giuliano had spoken of Lorenzo, his beloved brother, and about what the future held in store for all of them. “I fear that by grasping for too much, we will lose everything,” Giuliano had confided that snowy morning in 1476.

  Perhaps. Perhaps. So be it.

  Alone in the piazza now, Guid'Antonio drew a deep breath. What he had learned this night was that Giuliano de' Medici still walked the byways of Florence. Well, he had already known that, hadn't he? Giuliano still laughed back in time with his companions and with Lorenzo, still rode out into Piazza Santa Croce, flying his painted standard for the world to see, still handed violets to his Queen of Beauty, Simonetta Vespucci. He still lived in the face of his son, Giulio, and in the blood of all their descendants. Like Giuliano de' Medici, Lorenzo and Guid'Antonio were everywhere in Florence, the amazing, beautiful city they were creating with their minds, hearts, and hands.

  They always would be.

  And they were all forgiven.

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later, January 1481

  Shimmering snow blanketed the valley and dressed the rolling countryside in immaculate white robes. High above Florence, a solitary man on horseback sat straight in the saddle with the church of San Miniato al Monte at his back, his cloaked figure a crimson speck against the frozen landscape. A chill breeze ruffled his black hair streaked with silver and brushed his finely chiseled cheeks, not unpleasantly, but with an edge suggestive of the icy blasts the month of February would let fly like sharp spears across the Arno valley. Alone on the hillside, he closed his eyes and watched the days of full-blown winter hurry past.

  Within the walls of Florence, icicles descended like daggers and shattered into glistening shards on winding cobblestones. Chestnuts roasted over hot coals, while youngsters, rosy-cheeked and laughing, skated across the frozen Arno. Cesare lifted extra blankets from wooden trunks, and cold air made Maria and Giovanni's breathing visible as they hastened along Borg'Ognissanti to church, bundled in fur-lined cloaks, past Spedale dei Vespucci, where Francesca Vernacci toiled in her mantle of plain white cloth.

  He opened his eyes, blinking against the dazzling glare of bright sunshine on ice. Who knew when he might see his family again, now he was going to Rome as the newly appointed Administrator and Attorney General of the Florentine Republic?

  Sì, Roma.

  Guid'Antonio Vespucci, not Lorenzo, despite the Pope's living itch to see Lorenzo there at his feet.

  This time, Guid'Antonio was traveling alone.

  It happened like this:

  In the latter days of August, the heat, always suffocating in summer, had brought its fist down hard on the city. Flies had buzzed and settled in piles of dung, whose stench cooked in the sweltering atmosphere. At night the bed Guid'Antonio and Maria shared had made a constant tangle of clammy sheets soaked with the sticky perfume of their lovemaking. In the Unicorn district, tempers flared. Cats yowled, and stray dogs barked at the moon. He and Maria, lying awake deep into the night, whispered drowsily about the odd twists and turns late summer had taken.

  With Camilla Rossi da Vinci and Martino Leone's departure to France, the weeping Virgin's tears had ceased once again. (Had the tears been for Camilla's lost innocence? Or for his own, Guid'Antonio wondered.) Soon thereafter, the dry-eyed—and for the time being nonjudgmental—painting had been borne to its church home in Impruneta, where it would rest on the altar until the next drought or festival required its presence in the nearby city.

  Ognissanti had become blessedly quiet after Brother Martin's exodus, although one evening Abbot Roberto Ughi broke a tooth on the gold coin he bit while eating fish stew. This had occurred just after a young boy caught Salvestro Aboati's bloated corpse in the fishing net he cast into the waters of the Arno River.

  In Via Larga, Lorenzo penned a letter to Angelo Poliziano, inviting Angelo to return to Florence, now as Professor of Latin and Greek Eloquence at Studio Fiorentino. Notoriously, Angelo opened his homecoming lecture with the declaration, “They say the female mouse is madly lustful.”

  Some came home to Florence, while others left. Soon, at Lorenzo's request, Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio would travel to Rome to fresco the walls of the Sistine Chapel, along with several other painters. But not Leonardo da Vinci, because who knew if he would finish the job?

  Against all odds, Luca Landucci's brother, Gostanzo Landucci, won the grand palio riding Draghetto against Lorenzo de' Medici's entry, Il Gentile. Not surprisingly, Brother Paolo Dolci remained at Ognissanti, whether out of piety or to protect little Ferdinando—who after a short absence had returned to the church—from the unsavory abbot, Guid'Antonio was unsure.

  Long, lazy days and nights these, hot and fat with small worries and moments of intense satisfaction. Then everything had changed. The church bells had scarcely stopped ringing for the victorious Knights of Rhodes before news reached Florence that 14,000 Turks had landed at Otranto in southern Italy and slammed the small coastal town to its knees. Infidels chopped the archbishop and governor in halves, slaughtered 12,000 men, women, and children, and enslaved the remaining inhabitants.

  Muslim armies on Italian soil. Surely now, exactly as Lorenzo had predicted, the Ottomans would advance across the ankle of the Italian peninsula, ravage Naples, and march north to Rome, where they would plant the Holy Standard of Islam in the heart of the Vatican. Fueled by fear and outrage, Sixtus IV had called for all Italy to unite in the face of the common enemy and had then melted down his collection of finely wrought silver to help finance the coming battle. For his part, Prince Alfonso of Naples had abandoned Siena and scurried home to defend his future kingdom in southern Italy. Did it surprise Guid'Antonio when both Rome and Naples turned to Lorenzo for help? No. No.

  In Lorenzo's name, the Florentine government had agreed to support their former enemies if Sixtus IV
lifted the ban of excommunication against the city and if King Ferrante restored all the lands Florence had lost to Naples in the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy. Under the circumstances, what could Pope and king do but agree?

  No surprise that in Florence the populace did a quick turnaround. How could they have been so mistaken? The Infidels weren't in Tuscany, but down south—a sure sign God was angry not with their Lorenzo de' Medici, but with King Ferrante and Pope Sixtus IV! Once again, Lorenzo was their shining hero, a man who knew how to recognize Fortune when he saw her and pin her to the ground. Once again—for the first time in thirty years—Italy was united, exactly as Lorenzo had vowed to Guid'Antonio it would be.

  Wisely, Lorenzo had not addressed the suggestion whispered in Palazzo della Signoria that events couldn't have turned out better for him if he had orchestrated the Turkish invasion of Italy himself.

  A brownish-purple cardinal lit on the icy finger of a nearby tree. The male, following his mate, landed in a feathery display of scarlet. Snow plopped on the ground. Guid'Antonio patted Flora's shoulder with gloved fingers. In November, he had been one of twelve Florentine ambassadors who had traveled to Rome to kneel at the Pope's feet in Saint Peter's to receive absolution on behalf of the people of Florence for sins they might possibly have committed against the Pope's person and office in the last two years.

  Twelve distinguished Florentines in place of one Lorenzo de' Medici.

  By that time, though, Guid'Antonio had already served on the committee of 240 handpicked citizens granted full powers to decide the reforms necessary for the good government of the city. Within a week of its creation, the committee had suspended the constitution and paved the way for sweeping changes in the Florentine government.