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

  “For what?” Lorenzo wrote in a letter to his ally, King Louis XI of France. “Refusing to die in church along with my brother?”

  “No,” Florence's Lord Priors said. They considered the attempt to assassinate the Medici family bosses an act of war. But excommunication was a grave matter. How could they thumb their noses at Rome, when it meant condemning their souls to the eternal fires of hell? They couldn't. Consulting texts so old the parchment crumbled to dust in their hands, the Florentine clergy determined the Pope had exceeded his authority. They issued a paper excommunicating him and performed Christian rites as usual.

  In Bologna, Milan, and Lyons, discussing the situation to the point of exhaustion in his role as government oratore, Guid'Antonio had argued for the assembly of a General Council to depose Sixtus IV and reform the Church.

  This, while in the territory around Florence, the Pope's hired soldiers stole horses, set fire to mills, burned towns, and slaughtered men, women, and children. Refugees from Brolio, Radda, and Castellina in Chianti poured into the city. With the second winter of the war approaching, Florence had faced certain defeat at the hands of Roman and Neapolitan armies, the latter equipped by King Ferrante, the king of Naples, who had thrown his hand in with the Pope as a possible means of expanding his own private power.

  Within Florence, another deadly enemy roamed the streets.

  Someone found a man dead of the plague on a bench inside the church of Santa Maria Novella. When a sick boy was discovered in the adjoining piazza, people abandoned him there, loath to touch the child and take him to the hospital. Death carts piled with bodies rattled through the putrid city.

  What had begun as a private quarrel between Pope Sixtus IV and Lorenzo de' Medici was driving the Florentine Republic to ruin: no fresh fruit or meat, precious little bread, rats running rampant along the marshy banks of the Arno. When the Italian situation seemed impossibly bleak and Paris lay shrouded in the deep snows of January 1480, Guid'Antonio, still in France, had received astonishing news from Bartolomeo Scala: one month earlier, Lorenzo had sailed to Naples to present King Ferrante with his personal plan for peace.

  Lorenzo's move was daring. If it worked, it would strip Sixtus IV of his most powerful ally. But the young, informal leader of Florence in the hands of the Neapolitan king? That thought made Guid'Antonio sweat with fear for his friend and for the future of their city. Lorenzo and King Ferrante had enjoyed friendly relations in the past, but tales of the king's cruelty ran rampant in Italy. People said Ferrante embalmed his enemies and displayed their corpses in the cellars of Castel Dell'Ovo on the Bay of Naples. In France, Guid'Antonio crossed himself and prayed for Lorenzo's safety. Lose Lorenzo, and Florence's legs would be open to the Pope and the nephew many people thought was the Pope's own bastard, the rapacious, insatiable Girolamo Riario.

  And then one afternoon in early April 1480 a courier had found Guid'Antonio in Paris walking with Ameliane Vely, one of the young women of the French court, in Louis XI's gardens along the bank of the River Seine, she having chanced upon Guid'Antonio, as was so often the case, whether here among the winding pathways or in the halls of the royal household. Hardly daring to breathe, Guid'Antonio had read Bartolomeo Scala's latest missive from Italy. Two weeks earlier, in mid-March, Lorenzo had arrived home from Naples bearing a peace treaty fixed with King Ferrante's royal seal.

  The Parisian sky over Guid'Antonio's head had turned bluer, the sun brighter, the clouds impossibly puffy and white. He broke into an elated smile, hugged Ameliane, and kissed her on the mouth.

  Ameliane blushed. “Good news?”

  “Oui! The war's over.”

  “Praise God and all the saints.”

  “Praise God and Lorenzo,” Guid'Antonio said, smiling.

  Her sparkling gaze flicked toward the rose bushes along the garden path, ripe with tight buds, about to bloom. “And now, Ambassador Guid'Antonio Vespucci, you're no longer obliged to abide here in France?”

  “Not much longer. No.” Having lost his main ally to Lorenzo, the Pope would now have no choice but to call off his troops. Rome was a mighty power, but even Rome could not fight alone. Still smiling, Guid'Antonio kissed Ameliene's fingertips. “I must tell Amerigo. Excuze-moi, s'il vous plaît.”

  “Naturellement.” She ducked her head. When she looked up, the Italian ambassador was fading down the path, a ghost Guid'Antonio in animated conversation with the courier whose unexpected good news had brought the lovely rare smile to the ambassador's luscious mouth.

  “But then,” Guid'Antonio said, sitting back in his chair at one end of the meeting table, his gaze fixed on Chairman Tommaso Soderini. “You know most of this already.” He passed Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala his credentials written on parchment, in Latin, along with a statement of his expenses on a per diem basis.

  Tommaso agreed with a slight inclination of the head. Snowy-haired, with bones as frail as a thrush, Tommaso's pale skin made a stark contrast against his robe's vivid crimson hue. “Grazie, Guid'Antonio. Your service will be duly noted in our official records.” A tiny smile tweaked Tommaso's lips. “Perhaps your sojourn in France will prove your continuing loyalty to Florence.”

  The other Priors, heretofore glancing impatiently around the chamber, snapped to attention. Beside Guid'Antonio, Amerigo stiffened. Seated at a podium beneath the windows overlooking Piazza della Signoria—those same windows where Francesco de' Pazzi had been hanged—Bartolomeo Scala's assistant, Alessandro Braccesi, sighed deeply.

  Continuing loyalty? Guid'Antonio could remind Tommaso Soderini a thing or two about allegiance. He told himself to tread carefully. Tommaso had honey in his mouth and a knife at his belt. Guid'Antonio said, “And I, like you, appreciate Lorenzo's continued trust in both our houses. Despite the traitors who have on occasion lived therein.”

  Lord Prior Antonio Capponi laughed, reaching for the wine jug near to hand. “There's a sharp parry, Guido! Here's to you, my friend.” Capponi's red Prior's coat was unbuttoned over his shoulders, revealing his black quilted farsetto and gray cotton shirt: the Capponi family colors.

  Across from Capponi, Prior Pierfilippo Pandolfini's eyes radiated impatience. Three gold-enameled fish set in a blue stone decorated the ring on Pierfilippo's hand: the sign of the Pandolfinis. “Guid'Antonio,” Pierfilippo said. “You're fresh from the saddle. You can't have heard the latest from Rome.”

  Rome, Rome, Rome. “Of course not. No.”

  “Florence is still excommunicated.”

  Guid'Antonio sat back hard in his chair. “Impossible. Both King Ferrante and Sixtus signed Lorenzo's treaty.”

  “There are always complications,” Tommaso Soderini said, smiling thinly.

  Guid'Antonio's mind whirled. If Sixtus hadn't lifted the interdict, all the rites of the Church were still forbidden the Florentine people. No wonder the people in the marketplace had been so afraid and angry. No weddings, no baptisms, no burials in holy ground. “Why?” he said. “It makes no sense.”

  “Because we haven't met the Pope's last demand,” Tommaso said.

  “Which is?”

  Shriveled and purpled with age, Tommaso's lips lifted in a grin. “That we send Lorenzo to him in Rome.”

  Guid'Antonio jumped up and hit the table with his fist. “The war began because we wouldn't give him Lorenzo! Do the last two years mean nothing to that crazy man in the Vatican?” He drew a sharp breath. “What about Lorenzo? What has he said?”

  “What he has always said,” Antonio Capponi answered. “ ‘No.’ Oh, he'll do whatever's necessary to preserve the Florentine Republic. Just not today. Naples was one edge of the sword, Rome's quite another. He might actually die there.”

  “Tommaso,” Guid'Antonio said, sitting back down. “What have you advised him to do?”

  The older man grunted. “To saddle his horse and ride like the devil to Saint Peter's.”

  “What? This is news!” Pierfilippo Pandolfini said. “At what cost? To be murdered the instant he enters the Eternal City? It'
s eternal, all right!”

  Lord Prior Piero di Nasi, by nature a quiet man, shifted in his chair. “Come now. That isn't likely to happen.”

  “Nor was it likely Giuliano would be murdered in the Cathedral,” Guid'Antonio said, his temper roaring as he fought memories so sharp, they threatened to cut him to the bone.

  Tommaso's fingers caressed his hand-warmer, a round, pewter container polished to resemble silver, then filled with heated coals, here in the high heat of summer. “Lorenzo's treaty is unpopular,” he said.

  “Unpopular? So what? Why?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Because it allows the prince of Naples to remain camped on our southern border, for one thing,” Tommaso said.

  “In Siena?”

  Tommaso shrugged. “Of course.”

  Guid'Antonio was too stunned to speak. Prince Alfonso of Naples was the elder of King Ferrante's two sons. A skillful soldier, Alfonso had captained Roman and Neapolitan troops against Florence during the war. And Lorenzo was allowing the warrior prince to remain thirty miles from the Great Hall in Palazzo della Signoria, where the majority of Florence's government leaders now sat? Surely, Alfonso wouldn't mount a surprise attack against them.

  Tommaso slathered fresh cream cheese on a thick slice of bread. “King Ferrante wants his son within pissing distance of us. Should opportunity knock, I suppose. Lorenzo agreed to it to bring home the treaty.”

  “You know our ways,” Bartolomeo Scala said, frowning. “Lorenzo gave us peace. Now we gripe about terms. Reason has little to do with it.”

  Antonio Capponi blew a stray blond hair from his cheek. “The point is, when you add Prince Alfonso's continuing presence to the Turks beating at our door and the Pope's constant interdict, you have a city on the verge of exploding like the cart in Piazza del Duomo on Easter Sunday. But, of course, that's meant to be festive.”

  He clapped his hands: “Bang!”

  Beside Guid'Antonio, Amerigo jumped. “There are no Turks in Italy,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Not for a long time,” Piero di Nasi agreed. “But their ships have been sighted off the coast of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea.”

  Amerigo made a squeak of distress. “That's the last home of the Christian crusaders! Against Mehmed the Conqueror's legions, they wouldn't stand the chance of a flea in Hell—” The nine men of the Signoria, along with Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala and his assistant, Alessandro Braccesi, stared at Guid'Antonio's nephew, who had one role to perform in this official government meeting: that of giovane, secretary to his uncle.

  “We know the island fortress is there,” Piero di Nasi said gently. “It has been more than a century.”

  “People are always seeing Turks,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “That's because they know Mehmed II still has his eye on the West,” Tommaso Soderini said.

  “Perhaps, but the Turks in Tuscany are not real.”

  “Rather like the tears of your weeping painting,” Antonio Capponi said, grinning. “They're false—or so we hope,” he added, crossing himself.

  “My what?” Guid'Antonio said.

  “He means the painted image called the Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta brought down from her village and placed on the altar of Ognissanti Church for the spring celebrations,” Piero di Nasi said. “Last Wednesday, tears coursed down the Virgin's face.”

  Stunned, Guid'Antonio said, “Are you sure?”

  “There's a question with at least a thousand answers,” Tommaso said.

  In my church, Guid'Antonio thought. Ognissanti. “Amerigo,” he said, “remind me—how cold and rainy was France?” This garnered a few wry smiles; one man laughed, shrill and nervy.

  Beyond the chamber windows, the sun blazed on course across the sky. One raven, then another, cawed. Guid'Antonio sat very still. The Vespuccis had moved from the village of Peretola to the Unicorn district in the Santa Maria Novella quarter of Florence almost one hundred years ago. Since then, they and the Benedictine monks of the Lombard Order of the Humiliati had dominated the neighborhood. In the late 1380s, Guid'Antonio's distant kinsman, silk merchant Simone Vespucci, had built the local hospital, Spedale dei Vespucci, a few steps from the Vespucci Palace. All these years, Vespucci money had decorated the church. Four generations of Vespuccis lay sleeping in its dim stone chapels, Guid'Antonio's mother, his father, his precious first wife, and their baby.

  And now a painting of the Virgin was weeping there.

  He looked around at the men gathered at the table. “And so—?”

  “And so, Guid'Antonio,” Tommaso Soderini said, stone-faced, “these tears in your church have people believing Mary is weeping for their lost souls. They believe God is in a high hot temper because of our defiance of the Pope. Whether by the hand of Mehmed the Conqueror, the prince of Naples, Count Girolamo Riario, or all three, they believe God means to see Florence destroyed and her people roasting in hell like pigs on a spit. And who do they blame?”

  Guid'Antonio half-expected the Lord Priors to sing the name out in a loud chorus. Instead, it whispered, unspoken, around the room: Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo.

  Bartolomeo Scala said, “You're a Medici man, Guid'Antonio. So are we all. And you saw how it went against you in the street. It grows worse by the hour.”

  With a linen cloth, Tommaso wiped crumbs from his mouth. “The time has come for us to satisfy heaven.”

  “Satisfy Sixtus IV and his nephew, you mean,” Guid'Antonio said, his voice grim. “How? By serving them Lorenzo's head on a platter.”

  Tommaso laughed sourly. “If anyone's head is served on a platter, I doubt it will be my nephew's. He's far too cunn—” Tommaso smiled deliberately. “Far too sharp-witted for that. Whereas if something isn't done to prevent a civil war in our streets, our own heads will land there.”

  In Tommaso's flat gaze, Guid'Antonio saw fifty years of relentless service to the Florentine Republic and the bitter frustration that must come with Tommaso's role as Lorenzo de' Medici's second. With more legitimate authority than his thirty-one-year-old nephew, certainly. Christ, but for Bartolomeo's secretary, Alessandro Braccesi, and Amerigo, every man in this room wielded more official power than Lorenzo, for all the good it did them. Lorenzo might be uncrowned, but he was the prince of the city, the green grass springing up beneath the feet of everyone who supported the Medici family. Hadn't they—largely, the men in this room—placed the mantle of leadership on Lorenzo's shoulders almost a dozen years ago, when his father died of crippling gout? In December 1469, Lorenzo had been twenty, a strapping youth more interested in poetry and horses than politics. Now they must reckon with the fact power fit him like a second skin.

  “Alternatively,” Tommaso droned on, “we may find ourselves in exile, with new men as our replacements.”

  “Exile?” Amerigo went deathly pale. The Vespuccis, the Soderinis, the Medicis and Pandolfinis, stripped of wealth and power and run from the city?

  This time, the others ignored Amerigo's intrusion into the conversation. “You might as well tie blocks of stone to our necks and drown us in the Arno,” Pierfilippo Pandolfini said.

  “Or heave us from yon windows into Piazza della Signoria,” Antonio Capponi cut in. “Exactly as we did Francesco and the archbishop of Pisa two years ago.”

  The vacca, the great bell of Arnolfo di Cambio's bell tower, mooed the noonday hour, marking with exact precision the chill quiet pervading the Great Hall. Exile. Who could imagine any worse fate? No: even death paled by comparison.

  With an impressive air of grace, Tommaso gathered his coat lightly about his shoulders, and rose. “No wonder to me the Virgin was seen weeping. Even I am weary of my nephew's conflict with Pope Sixtus IV.”

  The old man's brown eyes sought Guid'Antonio. “I must say, former Ambassador Vespucci, I do enjoy your reports. For all the rest of it, if my nephew doesn't want to go to Rome, we can't force him to do it.” For an instant, he paused, eyebrows raised. “Or can we?”

  Guid'Antonio was donning his cloak when Pier
filippo Pandolfini hurried over. The younger man embraced him, smiling, though his eyes were dark and troubled. “Guid'Antonio, I'm glad to have you home.” In an undertone, Pierfilippo said, “Admire my jewelry, quickly!”

  “There's a beautifully crafted ring. Who's the maker? Andrea, by the look,” Guid'Antonio said.

  “Yes, or one of the boys in his shop, though I paid Verrocchio's own price.” Pierfilippo lowered his voice. “It's true the current turns against us with all swiftness. But appease Sixtus, my ass! Lorenzo's four months in Naples gave his uncle freedom of action he otherwise never could have managed. A cunning man may accomplish everything in less time. What better opportunity to begin taking the upper hand, which everyone knows Tommaso has always wanted? Missing ladies, miraculous paintings, and civil unrest in our streets. Miraculous timing, don't you think?”

  Raising his voice, Pierfilippo finished, smiling broadly, “God be with you, friend. We'll get together, have some wine.” With that, he took hasty leave.

  Guid'Antonio's eyes traveled to the messenger who had entered the chamber and stood speaking with Bartolomeo Scala. He frowned to himself, mulling over Pierfilippo's words while Amerigo slid his writing instruments into his satchel and secured the straps. Could Tommaso Soderini be stirring up trouble on the Pope's coattails in hopes of ruining Lorenzo? If so, who were Tommaso's accomplices? Were the other families who supported Lorenzo in danger? Guid'Antonio rubbed his neck to ease the muscle ache holding him in its grip. With Amerigo at his side, he approached the door.

  “Guid'Antonio,” Bartolomeo said, beaming, “here's a message from Via Larga.”

  All eyes shifted their way. Tommaso turned and locked Guid'Antonio in his silver gaze. “And?” Guid'Antonio said.