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

by Alana White

  A young bravo, who until now had been content to waste the morning lazing in the shade of the marketplace, drew close. “Ignore them, Messer Vespucci!” To the crowd the youth shouted, “Lorenzo had naught to do with the war but to defend his life and his house! Do you blame him for defending it still?”

  A questioning ripple ran over Guid'Antonio. Defending it still? How so?

  The old farmer, who had remained stiffly by his fruit cart throughout, spoke up. “Say what you will in Lorenzo the Magnificent's favor. You two are apples from the same tree. You think mine are rotten? Here in the starving belly of Florence, we know why the Virgin weeps.”

  From the youth there came a lusty reply: “And I know it doesn't take much!”

  A howl of “Sacrilege!” erupted from the gathering.

  “Virgin?” Amerigo said. “Where?”

  The appearance of Palla Palmieri riding into the piazza at the head of five armed men had the desired effect. A girl shrieked, “Ufficiale!” People shied back. “Disband! Now!” Palla's lithe figure twisted in the saddle. His dark gaze drank in the gathering, memorizing faces.

  A tense moment followed. Then muttered words, and a nervous shifting about. People shook their heads and drifted off, although their faces remained set in anger. Palla caught Guid'Antonio's eye, gave him the familiar knowing grin, and vanished as quickly as he had come. After a moment, the cocky young man who had harangued the gathering settled down at the water well with his ragazzi.

  Luca blew out a long breath. “Thank God for our police chief. And, Messer Vespucci, for you, as well.” Worry creased the druggist's wide brow, and he seemed about to say more. Instead, he gave an eloquent shrug. “Peace be with you.”

  “And also with you,” Guid'Antonio and Amerigo said. “Thank you for standing with us, Luca,” Guid'Antonio said. “You're a good man.”

  Luca smiled uneasily. “A Medici man, like you. I mean—not quite like you. At any rate, Godspeed. And good luck in the coming days.”

  “Jesus! That old sheep-bugger,” Amerigo said once they were away from the market and striding down a muddy side street. “What a wreckage of opinions and misinformation! Verbal arrows fired at us from every direction! ‘Down with the Medici’? How dare that fool speak against us? All of them, really, in the open, risking their necks, and for what?” Amerigo frowned. “After all that, I remain confused.”

  “I've been confused since we first set out this morning and were knocked off our feet by three running monks,” Guid'Antonio said. And thought: Before that, too.

  He glanced back down the passage to be sure a gang of hotheads armed with short knives wasn't tailing them and was relieved to see nothing moving behind them but the drooling cane corso Italiano weaving along at their heels.

  He made a mental note to have Cesare kill the animal in some humane fashion if—when—it followed them home. Better that than let the dog starve and his corpse rot in the street. “During the war, it was the peasants who lived on bread made from the bark of oaks,” he said. Weary and disheartened, he shrugged his incomprehension. “As for the shopkeepers and all the others, I'm as baffled as you.”

  They quit the alleyway and strode diagonally across Piazza della Signoria toward the flag-bedecked building situated on the piazza's far eastern corner. For pedestrians only, the paved square was free of horses or any other beasts of burden.

  A light breeze ruffled the hem of Guid'Antonio's crimson cloak and soothed the flushed hollows of his cheeks. He inhaled deeply, calming his clattering nerves with the sight of the elegant watchtower soaring up from Palazzo della Signoria, or City Hall, into the sunny blue vault of sky. In this city of towers, Arnolfo di Cambio's bell tower loomed over the rest. It and the fortress-like Signoria had commanded this spot in downtown Florence for more than a century. The two structures would stand forever, surely.

  “A weeping virgin and a missing married lady,” Amerigo was saying. “There's odd talk for a public gathering. And Turks? Please. What in Zeus' name could all this mean?”

  Guid'Antonio nodded to an acquaintance passing them in the square. “Buon giorno. Bene, grazie, Augustino.” To Amerigo he said: “Lower your voice, please.”

  “And as you bespoke, what's this to do with our Lorenzo?”

  “Amerigo, please.”

  In silence, they walked past Donatello's Marzocco, the stone lion that was the symbol of Florentine liberty, Guid'Antonio wondering how many others had noticed the animal's fangs were bared in a silent roar.

  “With our Lorenzo,” Amerigo persisted as they entered the dimness of the Palazzo della Signoria's cool, colonnaded courtyard, where a guard with a knife at his belt stood at the bottom of the steps ascending to the Great Hall.

  “Amerigo, I haven't the slightest idea,” Guid'Antonio said, vaguely aware that behind them in the square the crippled mastiff's curling toenails had come to a clacking halt.

  THREE

  Sandro Botticelli, hurrying across the corner of Piazza della Signoria onto a shadowed side street, took a step back into the sun. Eyes narrowed, he watched the two men striding away from him toward City Hall. One wore a lightweight summer cloak of crimson, the color of luxury in Florence, given the high cost of the dye, produced as it was from a powder imported from the East, where it was obtained from the ground bodies of the kermes shield louse. His companion wore an expensive purple giubbia, one of the new, scandalously short tunics, over thigh-hugging brown hose along with brown leather ankle boots.

  Sandro inclined his head. He would recognize Amerigo Vespucci and his celebrated lawyer-uncle, Guid'Antonio, anywhere. Hadn't his family and the Vespuccis lived as neighbors in the Unicorn district of the Santa Maria Novella quarter since before Sandro was born? Amerigo appeared to have gained some self-assurance, whiling away the hours up north. His booted gait matched his uncle's stride-for-stride, and he wore a new air of easy self-confidence.

  Sandro observed Guid'Antonio's broad shoulders. The Vespucci family boss was a remarkably handsome man, with a kind of cool, reserved elegance about him; a long, pleasing neck, silvery-black hair shorn a bit too close around his face—conservative, that—high cheekbones, eyes a pale gray shade. To Sandro, the estimable and sometimes feared Guid'Antonio Vespucci made an altogether agreeable package.

  Add to that the man was rich, rich, rich.

  Sandro chewed his lip, wondering if he might have acted too hastily just now in Ognissanti Church. He had been seated on creaky wooden scaffolding, his knees touching stone, considering how time was flying up his tunic like Zephyr when he heard the devil scream.

  “Lust! Murder! I've defiled this holy place!”

  Sandro had snapped around on the plank, squinting along his shoulder, past his almost-finished fresco of Saint Augustine lit by torches flaring in iron sconces along the wall. There! A dark figure hurtling from the side chapels toward the altar, robes flapping about him like huge black wings.

  The dark dervish howled.

  Sandro had watched, horrified, as the creature came to a lurching halt before the altar and beat his breast, his head thrown back in wild abandon. Candles smoked and flared, treacherously close to the miraculous painting of the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta propped on the altar table. “Mary!” the dark one screamed, falling to his knees. “I brought God down on our heads! I'm not worthy to look on your face. Forgive me! Please!”

  Sandro blinked. Since when did Satan repent? Never! Moreover, this agitated figure was tonsured, the top of his head smooth as a baby's bare ass, his fringe a shining black crown. Here was no evil spirit bent on destroying the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta, but one of the black-robed Benedictine brothers of this church.

  “Oh!” the fellow cried. “My Virgin Lady, how often have you wept for me?”

  As often as she was so moved, was Sandro's opinion. Who was mortal man to question her timing? He dipped his brush and heard a riot of sound, coming near. “Ferdinando!” cried a high-pitched voice. “This way! Brother Martino's at the altar!
Where else could he be?”

  “Yes! Catch him, Brother Paolo! Run!”

  The dark monk scrambled up and faced the swell of rising voices. “I am Satan's brother! I must leave this holy place!” Whirling from the altar, he ran out the cloister door and into the loggia garden, where he paused, his form awash in streaming sunlight. Midnight's pounding thunderstorm had left the grassy courtyard sparkling, a radiant canvas of glistening silver green. The cloister door wheezed shut, and the church was enclosed in gloomy darkness once more.

  Sandro glanced back toward the altar, where Paolo and Ferdinando skittered to a halt. “He's not here! Ferdinando, can you see? My eyes are young but weak—is the Virgin weeping?”

  Sandro's pulse slowed. The Mary in the altar painting had first appeared to weep last Wednesday—or, anyway, last Wednesday was when a boy pointed the tears out to his mother. After that, rich merchants and poor farmers alike had poured in from Piazza Ognissanti, heat and hope rising off them in waves, while the ancient almoner of this church rolled his eyes heavenward, his withered ears tuned to the rhythm of the coins jingling in his collection box. “She weeps!” Little by little, though, the Virgin Mary's tears had slowed to a trickle. By Saturday, they had dried up and had not been witnessed again so far as was known.

  The little fellow called Ferdinando stared at the painting, his body canted slightly forward. “It's difficult to see in this lack of light. But no, Brother Paolo, Christ's mother is not weeping today.”

  “Ah, Ferdinando! Thank you.” Hastily, Brother Paolo crossed himself, his glance sweeping the nave, sliding over Sandro. Sandro Botticelli was part of the wall, merely one of several craftsmen who had been working here the last few months. Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio: they came and went according to their trade. “Brother Martino!” Paolo called. “There's no cause to leave this place! Father Abbot says God forgives even the most depraved sin!”

  Sin! Sin! Sin! The word sang up into the abyss and melted in the shadows.

  The frown darkening Sandro's brow deepened. “Lust! Murder!” Brother Martino had said. Panic-stricken and agitated, yes. But a murderer? No. Sandro found a fresh brush and applied a tracery of gold along his saint's voluminous hem, his eyes traveling now and again toward the two monks chattering like jackdaws at the altar.

  “Reveal yourself, Brother Martin, or Father Abbot will have my head! Please!” Brother Paolo begged, glancing frantically around.

  That probably was not all the abbot would have if he could manage it. It was no secret here in the Santa Maria Novella quarter of Florence that Abbot Roberto Ughi enjoyed riding the lance.

  Little Ferdinando snapped his fingers. “Brother Martino's gone! Pouf, in a cloud of smoke!”

  “Honestly!”

  “Well, he is!”

  Brother Paolo huffed, “The question is, gone where?”

  Ferdinando pointed toward the cloister door. “Through the garden and toward the Prato Gate!” Skirts lifted, the two raced outside into the shining green heat.

  Brother Martino had vanished so quickly, he might have ascended into heaven.

  Sandro smiled, cocking his ears and listening: silence, at last. In his thirty-five years, he had witnessed some mighty odd behavior, both within church and without. The monks of Ognissanti would deal with their own kind. His mind strayed back to the painted Virgin set upon the altar. Paintings wept, plaster statues oozed tears and blood, and crucifixes were seen to sweat. The Lord's outrage made manifest in the world was not unusual. In Volterra town a few years ago, people said a boy was born with the head of a bull and a lion's claws and feet. Sandro shivered, envisioning that terrible image.

  In his fresco of Saint Augustine, he had painted a shelf, and on the shelf, he had drawn a geometry book propped up with the pages open. On impulse—thinking who would ever notice a little joke recorded in the details of a fresco painted in Florence in an old church on Borg'Ognissanti in the spring and summer of 1480? “Here's another painting by Sandro Botticelli. Hohum.”—he had dipped his brush in black pigment and in Latin, high up in one margin, he had inscribed four lines of poetry. . . .

  Now, though, watching straitlaced Guid'Antonio Vespucci and his nephew enter Palazzo della Signoria, where they disappeared up the stairs, Sandro wondered if he had made a grievous error. How angry might the Vespucci family be if any of its members noticed the little joke he had painted into his—their!—fresco of Saint Augustine on the south wall of their family church? After all, one of Amerigo's other uncles, Giorgio Vespucci, had commissioned the painting. Hurrying into the alleyway, muttering to himself, Sandro crossed himself and prayed for the best.

  Is Brother Martino anywhere about?

  Brother Martino just slipped out.

  Slipped out where?

  Through the Prato Gate for a breath of fresh air.

  FOUR

  Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala whirled from the credenza, parchment paper and a quill pen aloft in his hands. His simple gown, cut from the finest brilliant red cloth, lifted, revealing matching red hose. Fifty years old and a proud but accommodating man, Bartolomeo greeted the Vespuccis warmly. The three men kissed one another's cheeks and Guid'Antonio handed his cloak to Amerigo, who hung it in a pine wardrobe set against the wall.

  “You appear well, despite the rigors of three weeks' travel,” Bartolomeo said.

  “Despite our hot reception in the street, too,” Guid'Antonio said.

  Bartolomeo's face fell. “What happened?”

  Amerigo grimaced. “We had to hear about the disappearance of a local girl and listen to some crazy talk about Infidels having a hand in it.”

  “They slandered Lorenzo to us,” Guid'Antonio said.

  Bartolomeo placed one hand on the grand meeting table, fingers splayed, as if suddenly he felt woozy. “We're as fragile as glass. What are people saying?”

  “ ‘Down with the Medici.’ ”

  Bartolomeo gasped. “Are they mad?”

  Amerigo touched his breast. “That's what I wondered, too.”

  “Are they?” Guid'Antonio said.

  Bartolomeo fanned himself. “I'm not one of the nine Lord Priors, but only the Chancellor of the Republic, whose place it is not to discuss private government business with friends, no matter how dear and trustworthy.” He stepped to the sideboard and retrieved a straw-covered flask. “Discretion dictates I say no more.”

  Guid'Antonio wanted to slap him across the face. “Why aren't the Priors here?”

  “You're late. They'll be back, when is anyone's guess. How does this wine sit with that of the French? They have quite a good reputation.”

  Dipping into a deep well of patience, Guid'Antonio said, “Chianti means home. Beside it, French wine pales.”

  “Amerigo, now you know why your uncle is our most valued diplomat,” Bartolomeo said, smiling blandly around.

  “I knew already,” Amerigo said.

  “Ha, Guid'Antonio! Your nephew has a quick tongue.”

  “He's a Florentine and a Vespucci,” Guid'Antonio said.

  Bartolomeo studied the vaulted ceiling, as if seeking a safe topic of conversation there in the pattern of rosettes surrounded by fleurs-de-lis. “How is our lovely lady, Maria?”

  Guid'Antonio recalled the heat of his wife's skin against his as they lay with their bodies touching in the predawn hours of morning. He recalled her anger, and his. “The same. And Maddalena?”

  “With child,” Bartolomeo said, lowering his gaze, pleased.

  A sixth addition to Bartolomeo Scala's already full house. Guid'Antonio nodded. “Praise Mary.”

  A frown darkened the Chancellor's countenance. “Pray it's a son.”

  “Pray it survives,” Guid'Antonio said. “Along with Maddalena.”

  “Of course, yes.” Bartolomeo flushed crimson, obviously recalling Guid'Antonio's first wife, Taddea, lost in the birthing chamber soon after Guid'Antonio's marriage to her a dozen years ago. Taddea and his newborn son, gone. “Forgive me,” Bartolomeo said. “Are you hung
ry? Have a bite to eat.”

  “I've no appetite.”

  Amerigo chose a red apple from the fruit bowl on the meeting table and bit a large, juicy chunk out of it. “Grazie.”

  Footsteps sounded in the outer chamber.

  “Sooner than I thought,” Bartolomeo said.

  The door swung open and a gaunt, white-haired man in a crimson robe with an ermine collar and cuffs loomed before them on the threshold, his ankle-length coat distinguished from the coats of the eight other men by a pattern of stars embroidered in gold thread. He was Tommaso Soderini, the ninth Lord Prior and, therefore, the Gonfaloniere of Justice. The highest-ranking elected official in the Florentine State, Tommaso Soderini was also Lorenzo de' Medici's uncle by marriage.

  “Guid'Antonio,” Tommaso said with a darkly patient smile. “At last, we hear from you.”

  Guid'Antonio's mandate as he traveled from Italy to France in October 1478 had been to muster support for the Florentine government in the war the Pope had embarked upon when he realized his nephew's plot to rid the world of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici had missed half its mark—the most important half, twenty-nine-year-old private citizen Lorenzo de' Medici. How dare Florence behead the commanding general of the Pope's army and hang not only his banker, Francesco de' Pazzi, but also the archbishop of Pisa? No matter that general, banker, and cleric were guilty of abetting—and in Francesco's case, committing—murder in a town noted more for its gifted artisans and scholars than for its affairs of state. Florentine politics were more confusing than they were a threat to anyone other than Florence itself, anyway. A democracy, a republic with elected officials, yet actually ruled by one family, the Medici, for half a century? Everywhere except in Italy, people scratched their heads, equally amused and baffled how Firenze—the City of Flowers, for goodness' sake—could actually stand as one of the Italian peninsula's five major powers.

  From the safety of the Vatican, like an enraged wizard armed with a blazing sword, Sixtus had whirled toward Florence and excommunicated the city. No one within its walls, or even its outlying territories, could marry in church. The dead must be buried in fields and ditches. Churches were closed. Surely fear for their immortal souls would turn people against that thorn in God's side, Lorenzo. To avoid war with Rome, all Florence had to do was hand Lorenzo over to Sixtus for punishment.