Guardia: A Novel of Renaissance Italy

by Crews, Michael

  My meeting with Jacopo was taxing. He listened to my recounting of the night’s events with an impartial gaze. As I concluded the events at the Persian Lily he remained silent for a moment, deliberating internally.

  “That Signora Geraldina,” he said, confounded. “What an absolute beast. How on earth did you restrain yourself, Mercurio?” He flashed a conspiratorial smile. “I would have thrown her in the dungeon myself because of her impertinence. In honesty, I may yet do that. We’ll see how her tongue loosens after a few lashes. What say you?”

  “I thought of that, sir. But now that I’ve had a chance to cool down I don’t think it would be helpful. The room was empty of any hints as to what the murderer was after aside from the death of Carlo himself. I questioned the girls and they knew nothing of much substance.”

  “So what conclusions have you reached from that?”

  “Just that this was a very deliberate assassination, which is supported by Tino’s death earlier. It seems possible that it may have been a reprisal for the murder of Ugo since he was involved with the Albizzi.”

  Jacopo nodded.

  “I agree. It was a murder as cold as they come, and if it was the work of a random assassin then it would be difficult to determine the identity of the killer or who hired him. Especially if he was a foreign visitor of some kind here temporarily. God knows we have enough vagrants that come and go with the ships and caravans.”

  “Indeed,” I said, not really listening. I was thinking again of the sermon that morning.

  “I’m sorry, but it sounds like you’ve reached the end of this case. To be honest, I’m pleasantly surprised that you’ve managed to see it through this far. Fantastic work on finding Carlo, even if we didn’t get to him first.” We shared a drink and he dismissed me. On my way out he shouted, “Don’t come back for a few days. I need you sharp and ready for the next case. Oh!” He tossed me a pouch containing several coins. “You’ve earned a reward as well!”

  “Thank you, comandatore,” I said.

  12

  I left the Bargello in a light and unusually cheerful mood. The reward money helped, but the closure was the most satisfying feeling of all.

  “Capo!”

  I turned to see Pietro running towards me.

  “Pietro! How have you been? I feel like it’s been a long time.”

  "That it does,” he said, catching his breath. “I heard about Carlo this morning!”

  “Yes. I’m afraid we were late. Justice was carried out before we arrived.”

  “Cazzo!” he said, disgusted. “I wish we could have caught that monster alive.”

  “In the end he got what was coming to him. I’m really quite relieved that the whole ordeal is finished.” The day was only half over, and it was clear and cool. A beautiful day to be sure. I wondered what I should do with the remainder.

  Pietro did not seem satisfied. “So this is the end, then? We’re just leaving it at that?”

  I shrugged. “I’m afraid so. Unless Liam discovers something new then I think we’re all out of leads.” I paused. “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to walk over to Bartolomeo’s house right now to tell him that his brother is avenged. Why don’t you come with me? After that, take a break for a couple days. You’ve earned it as much as I have.”

  We made way to the Vicolla della Seta, to the small castello of Bartolomeo Neri and his family. It was the middle of the afternoon, so I hoped that we would catch him at the end of his riposo before he went back to the shop to continue his work.

  Approaching the house, I gazed upon its stoic façade for what I hoped would be the last time in a long while. The neighborhood seemed unearthly quiet on that block, although I attributed that to the time of day. I felt myself getting drowsy, and struggled to keep myself roused.

  I knocked loudly on the door. There was no sign of life from inside, so I waited several moments before trying again. “Signore Neri! This is Mercurio Capolupo! I have news!” Still nothing. I pressed on the door, but it was bolted.

  “Odd. I wonder why the signora is not answering.”

  “Perhaps she’s running errands at the market?” Pietro guessed.

  “Possibly. Shall we see if Neri is at his shop?”

  “Why not?” Pietro said. “It is a journey, but we have nothing better to do at the moment it seems.”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  We travelled to the Ponte Vecchio amidst the bustling and energetic traffic. The workers were returning to work now and the shipments were resuming. I was sure we would find Bartolomeo this time.

  When we approached the goldsmith bottega we could immediately tell something was unusual. Where there was ordinarily smoke billowing from the chimneys there was nothing. As we got closer we could see that the shutters were locked in place. The shop was completely devoid of activity.

  “Closed?”

  “That appears so,” I said. I attempted to pry open the shutter but it was fastened tight. The door in the back was locked too. One of the workers at a neighboring shop stepped out at that moment and I stopped him. “Scusa, but have you seen Signore Neri lately?”

  The man shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. He has not come around for several days. I haven’t heard anything about where he may have gone or when he will return. Is he in any trouble?”

  “Oh no, absolutely not. I just have news for him. I’ll come back again.” I thanked the man and returned to Pietro, who was still standing in front of the shop.

  “Nothing?”

  “This placed is locked up tight.”

  “No one here or at the house. What do you think is going on?” He followed as I walked around to the back side of the shop again. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking.” I said.

  “For what, capo?”

  “Anything unusual.” Everything around the shop was in order. The doors were secure and nothing was broken except for a couple small wooden crates that were stacked in the rear. No sign of struggle or violence of any kind.

  “Do you think he just left the city?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “After everything that has happened, I wouldn’t blame him. But what if he was connected somehow to the murders? Or, more tragically, what if the murderers thought that he was connected and they did something to him?”

  I searched amid the clutter nearby for something heavy. A twisted chunk of scrap iron lay nearby, rusty and corroded. I picked it up, weighing it in my hands.

  “Capo, don’t.”

  “No choice. We’ve got to look. A man’s life could be in danger, or worse.” I jammed the piece of iron into the door frame. Bits of wood splintered as I twisted, then struck again. The door was sturdy. It didn’t budge. “I could do this all day.”

  “Signore, do you need help?” It was the worker I had seen earlier.

  “No, grazie.”

  “But signore, I am a locksmith by trade. If you’d like I can try.”

  I stopped and turned. He smiled. “Go ahead then.”

  “Grazie.” He went into his studio and then returned with a chisel. He inspected the iron lock, poking the chisel into the small keyhole and prodding the interior mechanism. Several moments passed, and he exclaimed, “Ah ha!”

  He rose and pressed on the door. It swung open soundlessly.

  “Magnificent,” I said.

  “At your service!” the locksmith said, beaming. “My name is Ardo, in case you need my help again.”

  I generously offered him some soldi as a reward. “I will certainly remember you for later. Grazie, Ardo.”

  We entered the bottega. It was still and untouched. As far as I could tell everything was the same as the last time we had been there. Dishes and saltshakers adorned the shelves as they had before. There was a case of rings that appeared to be missing nothing.

  The back was not much different. Most of the tools we had seen were still neatly placed on the wall or on the workman’s bench. The tables were neat and organized. It looked as though Bartol
omeo had simply left and decided not to come back.

  Pietro sighed. “At least there’s no body.”

  “I was afraid of that too. We’ll need to go back to the house and investigate. Let’s get Lauro and Francesco to come with us. It is, after all, a very large house.”

  In the far corner was the opening to another room, much smaller than the others. It contained a bureau and a shelf filled with rows of books. Each one was marked with a date.

  “Ledgers,” Pietro said. “He keeps very precise records, doesn’t he?”

  “He would have to. With all the precious metals coming and going I assume he would have to keep close track of his supplies. Look at this one, from September 1422.”

  I pulled the leather bound volume from the shelf. Its linen pages crackled as I opened it and flicked through the various lists of transactions that covered each sheet. His writing was small and delicate, but there were many places that were still illegible. After a few minutes I determined that he was using a kind of shorthand that he had probably created himself.

  “Here appears to be a shipment of pearls from Napoli. Ah, and here,” I pointed to another entry, “would be a shipment of lapis lazuli imported from the Levant.” Each entry was made up of the good, the quantity, the price, and the location that it was being shipped from. In addition to the regular shipment of gold, Bartolomeo received numerous shipments of semiprecious stones and other metals such as silver and copper.

  Pietro pulled down another volume marked “12-1422”. Inside was another set of records for the month of December. It was nearly identical except for the dates. The frequency of gold shipments was exactly the same, like clockwork. Even the names of the cities were mostly the same, although some differed likely due to the fluctuation of prices in various markets.

  Before I knew it we had spent what might have easily been an hour wading through old papers. I decided that it was time to go. We needed to return to the Neri house anyway.

  Pietro replaced his ledger, and as I reached up to set mine back upon the shelf I felt an odd sensation. I set down the book and stepped back, staring at the rows of books.

  “What is it?”

  “Have you noticed something, Pietro? What are we missing?”

  He peered down and began counting the books. I could see that he was looking at the dates in particular. “Where are the ledgers from this year?”

  “Exactly.”

  Bartolomeo was a careful man. There was no way he would have just stopped recording his transactions. But if they weren’t here, then where were they?

  Together Pietro and I dug through every drawer and cabinet that we could see. We scattered pile after pile of yellowed shipping orders and receipts but there were no records for the year 1423 to be seen anywhere. When we had given up the floor was littered in pages and scrap. Still, there was nothing.

  “Bizarre,” I said.

  “Did he take them with him?”

  “Maybe they’re at the house,” I said. Then I shook my head. “But why would he have gone to the trouble? What is the purpose of hiding delivery records?”

  We recovered all the pages and bundled them back together the way we had found them. By the time we were finished the place looked exactly the same as when we had entered.

  “Now we go find Lauro and Francesco.” I stood and walked out of the tiny room and back into the workshop. Then I stopped for a moment. At the far wall I noticed the row of kilns that were shut tight and cold.

  “Pietro. You start on that end, I’ll begin at this end. It’s unlikely, but we’ll see.”

  I pulled open the door of the first oven. It was dark inside and a white film of ash covered the interior. I grabbed an iron poker and dug through the ash. There was nothing solid, just debris from old, burned out wood.

  The next kiln contained the same. I poked through the ash to find nothing but scattered bits of blackened char.

  “Capo, I’ve found something.”

  I stepped behind Pietro quickly. Inside the oven were several ruined volumes, their covers burned off and their interior pages exposed and crispy. I carefully reached in and removed them from the oven, placing them on the workbench.

  “How on earth are these still intact?” I mumbled to myself. “Nothing should have survived the heat of those ovens.”

  “Maybe he burnt these after he’d already put them out?”

  “Yes, as an afterthought! He’d already cleaned up the studio and extinguished the ovens. He must have remembered the ledgers later and decided to return to burn them just to be careful.”

  The pages were brittle to the touch. Soon my fingers were black from sifting through the crumbling paper. About halfway through the stack we found pages that were golden but still had some of the writing intact.

  “Look here. This is March 23rd. We have a shipment of gold followed by three small shipments of silver.” I flipped to the next page. “On the 27th we have five shipments of silver, no shipments of gold.”

  Pietro opened the next book to a random spot. “May 17th. We have five more shipments of silver. Here’s one of gold, some more semiprecious stones.”

  “There’s something scribbled in the margin. What does that say?”

  “I don’t know. It says ‘AZ’. Do you recognize those letters?”

  It was Bartolomeo’s shorthand. The scrawled initials had no meaning to me, but I would file those initials in my memory for later. Each entry for silver had the same initials scrawled beside them.

  “What the hell would Bartolomeo be needing this much silver for?” I neatly bundled the burnt pages together and placed them inside a pouch. “Pietro, let’s go. We need to find Lauro and Francesco immediately.”

  I happened across Lauro and Francesco back at the Bargello. It was getting late and they were preparing to leave for the evening. The look on their faces as soon as they saw mine was a mixture of surprise and dread.

  “Mercurio! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  “Sorry Lauro. I need you two for a while.”

  Francesco groaned. “Come on, some of us have lives, capo!”

  “Only a little while,” I assured them. “We need to go to the Neri house. Bartolomeo has disappeared. I only need to take a look. Thought you guys could help. But we need to hurry.”

  “Fine,” said Lauro.

  The two quickly gathered their things and met us out in the courtyard. We arrived at the Neri house a short while later, just as the sun was dipping into the hills and the chorus of bells announced vespers.

  All was still quiet in front of the house. I knocked on the door in order to remain official, though I knew no one would answer. No one did. “Signore Neri, please open up. This is Investigatore Capolupo, I need to ask you some questions! Open the door please!”

  The building remained silent.

  “Very well, we are going to enter!” I turned to Aldo, who we had summoned earlier. “Aldo, if you please.”

  “Certo, signore.” He set to work on the lock with his chisel. Within moments an audible pop indicated that the lock had been defeated. I thanked Aldo again and the four of us entered the house.

  Darkness oozed through the narrow corridors and vaulted rooms. The orange aura of our lamps flickered while we combed each level. Much like Neri’s bottega, the house was fastidiously kept. Nothing was out of place. The warmth of the hearth seemed starkly out of place there.

  We reached the top floor where Neri’s chamber was located. “Bartolomeo, if you are here please come out!” I turned to face the men and confirm that they were prepared. When all was ready I spun back and gave the door a fearsome kick. It gave little resistance, slamming against the wall and rattling on its hinges. In the next instant we poured inside to find a sparse room with little accoutrement, and no sign of the master of the household.

  “Looks like they’ve long gone, capo,” said Pietro.

  “As I thought.” I grunted. “Well then, everyone continue to search the place until we’re su
re there are no bodies at least. Keep your eyes open for anything suspicious.”

  The trip itself was a waste of time, and the men and I found nothing. The only purpose that it served was to confirm what I already knew: Bartolomeo Neri and his family had disappeared from Florence. I hoped that I would soon understand why.

  As soon as we secured the house I dismissed the men. It had been a long day. My head and limbs ached from exhaustion. It would be nice to finally have a break. All the men deserved it, especially Pietro. I admired his fortitude, which was rare in most men of his age.

  “Buona notte, capo,” he said.

  “Buona notte.” We all went our separate ways for the night. It was dark by now, and the hour of compline had already passed. The city was now officially under curfew for the night. We were among the few that were not bound by this restriction.

  I walked in silence through the shadow filled streets. The stars shone brightly above, and the crescent moon gave me faint but adequate illumination. The hollow emptiness of the silk workshops at night struck me, and they seemed for a moment like giant pupae that had been vacated and left for the world.

  I passed through the silk workers district and onto the main borgo, which I followed westward towards the mercato. Occasionally I saw the glint of a torch from afar as the night watch made their rounds. I was in no mood to talk to them that night, so I carefully dodged them.

  My house was close, and I could almost feel the softness of my bed. It felt intoxicatingly near, so much so that when I heard the young woman’s voice it did not entirely register at once.

  “Signore!” It was a hushed whisper, and at first I thought it was the wind. When I heard it again I knew it was not my imagination.

  “Who is there?”

  The tall figure emerged from the shadow with a frail and fluid grace. “Please. Please, you must help me. I don’t know where else to go.”

  “I’m sorry. It is past curfew, you must leave now before you get into trouble.”