The Medici secret
Michael White
Michael White
The Medici secret
Chapter 1
Florence, 4 November 1966
When the warden of the Medici Chapel, Mario Sporani's eyes snapped open at 5.45 a.m. and he heard the shutters of the bedroom window smash against the wall of the building, he thought the world was coming to an end. Instantly awake, words from Revelations shot through his brain: ' And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.'
For a moment he thought he was trapped in a vivid nightmare, but then the wooden shutters flew back so hard they shattered the glass of the bedroom window, sending glistening shards across the room. The rain was slamming against the building with such force he thought the old stone would crumble and the entire structure might collapse. This was most certainly no dream. In an instant, he was out of bed and pulling his wife Sophia through the doorway and along the corridor leading to their baby's room. He could hear their son screaming above the pandemonium of the storm. Sophia snatched him from his cot and tried to soothe him.
'Sophia, you take Leo and stay in the back room, shutter the windows and lock them. I'll bring you a quilt and a torch. Then I must go to the chapel' 'But Mario, you can't go out in this.'
'I must,' he replied. 'God only knows what damage has been caused already. The burial chamber could flood; and the bodies…'
He headed for the door. A few moments later, he was back with a bottle for the baby, a torch, some bread and the quilt from their bed. Mario kissed his wife and child. Turning, he ran out and locked the door before speeding along the hall, down the narrow wooden staircase, so dark he could hardly see the steps in front of him, and into the corridor leading to the front door.
The door almost knocked him over as he opened the latch and the wind bellowed into the hallway. He left the door pinned to the wall unable to move it back, and, his head down, took two slow steps on to the stoop. It was black outside. Storm clouds had blotted out the moon and it was obvious there was no electricity.
As Mario peered around the edge of the entrance to his building, the sky was lit up by an enormous lightning bolt. The entire street was awash. Muddy water rushed by, knee deep. It stank of sewage. He saw a bicycle wheel whirl along Via Ginori towards Piazza San Lorenzo. Taking a deep breath, he forced his way into the water.
The cold made him gasp. He couldn't be certain of his footing and the pavement under his boots felt slimy. There was nothing to hold on to except the damp brickwork and stone of the buildings. The sky lightened a fraction and the moon's rays broke through, casting a faint hollow light, just enough for him to make out the contours of Via Ginori and the walls of the Basilica di San Lorenzo ahead.
Mario tried to move faster but it was hopeless. He crept against the current an inch at a time. He had to pin himself against the wall, as a branch then a tyre, an empty box and a dustbin were swept past him by the wind before colliding with a building or landing haphazardly in the rushing mud.
By the time he reached the corner where Via Ginori met Via dei Pucci he was exhausted and covered in mud. His cheeks were stinging from the freezing cold and he could no longer feel his toes. The usually busy main street was deserted. The same brown sludge ran along the thoroughfare splashing up against the ancient stonework on either side. From far off, Mario heard a crash and the grinding of metal, followed by a scream. As he stared dumbstruck at the devastation, another lightning bolt ripped across the sky and the rain turned to hailstones that ricocheted off the roofs, and hit his face.
He pushed on across the main street finding a little shelter from the hail under the shadow of the basilica. Here the current was more powerful and it took all his strength to resist it. But then, as he approached the doors to the chapel, another branch whirled towards his head. He ducked, but too late. The wood smashed into his face and he fell backwards into the torrent.
The mud rushed over him spinning him around under the surface. Something hard jabbed him in the ribs, then he was scrambling to his feet, trying to find some purchase in the ooze. He almost made it, but his footing gave way and he found himself in the water again with a mouthful of mud. He spat it out in disgust and flailed around, suddenly terrified. With his right hand, he clutched at a metal ring in the wall of the basilica. He held on for dear life and pulled himself up, spluttering and gasping for air, a foul taste in his throat.
He was almost at the entrance to the chapel and could just about pull himself along, grasping the wall. Manoeuvring himself carefully around a buttress of stone, he caught his first glimpse of the chapel doors. They had been ripped off their hinges and water was cascading inside.
With renewed determination, Mario ploughed through the torrent towards the entrance and down the half-dozen stone steps that led to the main floor of the crypt. Here the water was lapping around his calves; it was getting deeper and detritus was being carried in with the brown-grey water tumbling over the doorway and rushing down the steps. Just inside the doorway was a wall unit containing a torch and an axe. Smashing the glass, he grabbed the torch.
He almost slipped on the stone but made it to the floor of the main room. The sound of crashing water echoed from the low, arched ceiling. Around the perimeter stood monuments to over fifty of the long-dead Medici family buried in simple stone caskets under the floor. These memorials were mounted above floor level, but the water was rising and it would soon be lapping at the statues and ornate sarcophagi. But even this wasn't Mario Sporani's primary concern. Far more worrying was the possibility the water could find a way beneath the floor into the actual burial chambers. He must do everything he could to stop that happening. Mario splashed towards the altar, a raised area at the back of the crypt. There stood two huge stone angels perched on either side of a marble platform. Behind that was the entrance to the Medici family vault.
Mario moved as fast as he could through the freezing water towards the altar. The trapdoor into the burial chambers was surprisingly light and yielded easily. Inside, he could see a ladder. Probing into the gloom with his torch he could just make out rungs dropping away into the void. Water tumbled in ahead of him and he could hear it slap on to the stone floor below. Moving as fast as he could, he lowered himself into the hole and pulled the door down over his head. The seal was not perfect and water continued to flow down the ladder and into the chamber.
Moments later, Mario was on the floor of the chamber casting the torch beam about the ancient walls and the rows of stone alcoves along each side. The air was rank with mould, old earth and decay, but he was familiar with these and they no longer bothered him. Then he heard an ominous crack. Spinning round, he saw a block of stone move away from the wall and crash on to the floor. Water gushed in.
Mario was almost thrown off his feet. Energised by primal fear, he clambered up on to a shelf of stone immediately behind him. He could see, a short distance away, the opening into one of the burial alcoves and the edge of a shroud, frayed and grey. Then came another crash as a second stone fell, splashing water high up the walls of the chamber. His torch slipped from his grip into the water. He watched it sink and then abruptly snap off. The room was completely black. A voice was yelling in his head: He was an idiot to come down here. What possible good could he do? And now, the voice insisted, he was going to die here. He would join the dead all around him.
But the panic passed and a steely determination took its place. He could see nothing, but he knew the way out. Levering himself off the ledge, he slid into the icy water. It came up to his thighs and it was already lapping at the ledges where the ancient corpses lay. Ignoring the numbness in his legs and a growing giddiness, he pushed on back
to where he knew the ladder stood. In the darkness, he fumbled for the security of the metal rungs, but they were still beyond his reach. With his hands outstretched, he forced his way on blindly against the rushing water still pouring in through the gaping hole in the wall.
Just as he was beginning to despair, his fingertips touched metal. He grasped the edge of the ladder and pulled himself up on to the first rung. As he lifted his foot to find the next rung he felt the ladder jolt and start to tear away from the wall. Mario threw himself forward and his weight forced the ladder back against the stonework. Above him he could see a chink of light coming from the edge of the trapdoor where it had not quite settled back into place. Filthy water cascaded down over his head and down his back. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, as he eased his way up another rung. The ladder shuddered again. Six more rungs and he would be within reach of the opening.
And then he caught sight of something bobbing in the water no more than two feet away. It was a dark tube about twelve inches long.
Mario swivelled round as carefully as he could. Stretching out, his fingertips brushed the object and he just managed to hook hold of it. Thrusting the object into the waistband of his trousers, he scrambled with all his strength up the ladder just as the support bolts slid from their recesses in the wall. With an almost superhuman effort, he grabbed for the edge of the trapdoor. His fingers found the metal rim of the aperture. Water crashed down on to his face, and he could barely draw breath. Driven on by sheer terror, he managed to heave himself up. With his feet scrambling against the rough stone wall, he pushed open the trapdoor and threw himself gasping on to the floor of the altar.
Chapter 2
Florence, present day Edie Granger locked her red Fiat in the private car park beside the Medici Chapel and strode across the cobblestones towards the front doors. She was five foot nine in stockings, and, thanks to a daily hour-long workout, she was extremely fit. Unusually for an English academic, Edie placed sartorial elegance high on her list of priorities, something that endeared her to her Italian friends, who only half-jokingly claimed she was a dead-ringer for the actress, Liv Tyler.
She studiously ignored the placard-carrying hooded figures in worn brown robes parading in front of the doors to the chapel, just as she had done every day for the past few months. The protestors were members of a strange group calling itself Workers For God. Led by a fanatical Dominican, a Father Baggio, they were opposed to any scientific research conducted in the Medici Chapel. To Edie they had long since become part of the landscape.
She waved her pass at the admissions booth just inside the doors, took the stairs two at a time, and strode into the part of the crypt where crowds of visitors milled around each day reading the inscriptions on the tombs of the Medici.
At the far end of the chapel an area had been cordoned off to the public, and a cream canvas tent concealed the entrance to a narrow staircase that descended into the burial chamber where deep alcoves on either side contained the sarcophagi. Entering the research area, Edie sidestepped a pair of dissection tables and passed through a doorway into the first of a pair of labs that led off to the left.
The burial chamber beneath the crypt of the Medici Chapel was a low-ceilinged room about ten by six metres. It was cramped and warm but the air was kept fresh with a powerful portable air-conditioning system. Around the walls of the lab stood X-ray machines, spectrometers and DNA analysers. Across the main chamber was the office of Carlin Mackenzie, where sealed cases of bones lay incongruously alongside a couple of souped-up Macs.
Edie had just settled down at her bench and was running through some read-outs from an infra-red spectrometer when Mackenzie walked in with two men in suits. She had met them before: the shorter of the pair was Umberto Nero, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Pisa; the other, younger man was a well-known local politician, Francesco della Pinoro, currently the hot favourite in the mayoral election.
'Ah, Edie,' Mackenzie said. The professor was a short, chubby man in his late sixties. He wore John Lennon glasses, had a shock of fine, white hair, and a soft, handsome face that had made him popular with TV documentary makers. 'Gentlemen, this is my niece, Dr Edie Granger.'
Delia Pinoro extended a hand and Nero nodded. He and Edie had met on many occasions and they had never much cared for each other.
'Edie, I wonder if you could spare a few moments for our guests? Their car is due here in a minute; could you give them a brief tour?'
'Of course.' Edie managed to inject a little enthusiasm into her voice.
'Excellent. Gentlemen, thank you for your valuable comments and I will be in touch very soon.' Mackenzie shook their hands and turned on his heel.
'This way.' Edie escorted della Pinoro and Nero back into the central chamber to a long metal table. As they walked across the stone floor, she described how the bodies in the alcoves had been embalmed and preserved in this vault. Pacing around the table, she looked across at the visitors. Between them lay a 470-year-old corpse.
Brushing away a lock of curly black hair that had fallen across her face, she fixed the men with her burnt-wood eyes, folded her arms and stretched herself up to her full height, towering over both of them.
'This is Ippolito de' Medici, the illegitimate son of Giuliano de' Medici, the Duke of Nemours,' she explained. 'For almost half a millennium, mystery has surrounded his death. Some people have speculated that this young man – he was only twenty-four when he died – was murdered by his cousin Alessandro, who was then bumped off by another friendly relative, Lorenzino de' Medici. There was no proof though, until now. We've just finished working on these remains and have found clear evidence that Ippolito was poisoned.'
Nero looked up from the mummy on the table. Edie noticed he was a little pale. She quickly led the men into a smaller room off the main chamber. Here the smell of earth and old cloth was fainter. A man was seated at a workbench, peering into an eyepiece of a large microscope. 'This is the very heart of the operation,' Edie said. 'This room and the lab next door once contained up to a dozen coffins, but most of these were badly damaged in the flood of 1966. The bodies, those of minor members of the Medici clan, were reburied in another part of the chapel. This is now the principal lab where we analyse materials taken from the mummies in the crypt.'
'How can you be sure the man out there was murdered?' Delia Pinoro asked. For the past few minutes, he had been taking particular interest in the V-shaped opening at the top of Edie's lab coat. 'Surely any evidence would have disappeared centuries ago?'
'A good question,' Edie said, feeling relieved she could demonstrate her knowledge. 'The main purpose of our work here is to ascertain the cause of death of prominent members of the Medici. These corpses may seem like lifeless husks,' she added and gestured towards the chamber they had just left, 'but they tell us an incredible amount that has remained hidden until now.' 'Such as?'
'Often we have to reconstruct a scenario just from skeletal remains. Usually this is all that's left after five hundred years. But even crumbling bones can tell us an enormous amount. Common diseases of the time, such as syphilis and smallpox, leave telltale signs in the fine structure of the victim's bones which we can study using immunohistochemical and ultra-structural analysis.'
Delia Pinoro looked confused. 'In the case of Ippolito,' Edie went on. 'We've been able to make a detailed analysis of his skeleton which has revealed unusual levels of chemicals called salicylates.' 'And this proves…?'
'Well, Alessandro got away with the murder because, on his deathbed, Ippolito displayed all the normal symptoms of malaria: fever, rigors, excruciating headaches and severe abdominal pain. But poisoning with oil of wintergreen produces almost identical effects, and oil of wintergreen contains methyl salicylate.'
Delia Pinoro was about to say something when a movement behind the men caught Edie's eye. 'Ah, they're bringing out the latest cause of disagreement.'
'Cause of disagreement?' Nero asked, as she headed towards the door.
/> 'Apparently, this is Cosimo de' Medici, Cosimo the Elder,' Edie replied, leading the two men to another dissection table that stood head to tail with the platform containing Ippolito's remains. Mackenzie was there with his stepson, Jack Cartwright, the team's DNA expert.
'Apparently?' Mackenzie looked quizzically at Edie.
'We have conflicting opinions about the identity of this body,' Edie explained. 'My uncle is certain it's Cosimo, I'm yet to be convinced.'
Jack Cartwright, the tall, broad-shouldered man at Mackenzie's side stepped forward and introduced himself to the visitors. He had just returned from a morning at the University of Florence.
'And where do you stand in this matter, Dr Cartwright?' the vice chancellor asked, averting his eyes from the corpse.
Cartwright was about to reply when a young woman arrived, looking rather flustered. 'Sorry to interrupt,' she said. 'The car has arrived for our guests.'
The vice chancellor could not conceal his relief, and before della Pinoro could say anything, he had stepped up to Mackenzie. 'I'm very grateful you could make time,' he said. '… And thank you, Dr Granger, for showing us around.'
A few moments later, Edie returned having seen the visitors to their limo. Mackenzie and Cartwright were examining the body on the table. Mackenzie, with a loupe to his eye, was easing open a flap of a remarkably well-preserved silk tunic with a pair of tweezers. For two weeks they had been studying material taken from this body, running tests on tissue samples and bone structures using a portable X-ray machine. But only this morning they had agreed the body should be removed from its niche and inspected more closely. The body shared the alcove with another. Mackenzie believed it to be the remains of Contessina de' Medici, wife of Cosimo I, who had died in 1473.
'I do wish you wouldn't put out our dirty laundry for other people to see' Mackenzie said, without looking up.
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