The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (10 page)

“Ummm-hmmm, he's in the
saletta
with your other kinsmen.”

“Send word to me there the instant the lady returns, if you will,
Signorina
.”

Olimpia made a pretty pout. “Not this night, Messer Vespucci. Or tomorrow, either, most like.”

He would not falter before this girl. “Why in God's name not?”

“My grandmother has an ache in the gut,” Giovanni piped up.

Don't we both
, Guid'Antonio thought.

“Giovanni,” Olimpia protested, but mildly. “Let it suffice to say your
nonna
lies gravely ill.”

Guid'Antonio stared at the servant-girl. “How is it Maria didn't mention her mother's condition to me earlier today?”

“Suddenly,” Olimpia said. “Perhaps your lady hadn't time enough this morning.” Her expression appeared fresh and innocent.

Surely, God danced. Gravely ill, Olimpia had said. Guid'Antonio felt compassion for Mona Alessandra, yes. Who knew better than he how sickness and death waited for no one, including him and his family? But he felt disappointment, too.

“Pray Mary looks over our family tonight,” he said, and crossed himself.

Olimpia's brazen glance slid down his chest and legs to his boots and slowly back up again. “You wanted your wife,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I'll come to your bed tonight.”

A jolt shot through his loins. He glanced at Giovanni, who looked back at him without blinking, measuring and distant. Guid'Antonio did not answer at once, sharply aware of the plump curve of Olimpia's breasts beneath the light linen shift: no mere apples there. “Ah, thank you—no.” After a moment, he added awkwardly, “Sleep well, Olimpia Pasquale.”

“Better than you,” she said, the corners of her full mouth tipping up in a smile.

“No doubt.” Silently turning away, his face burning with high heat, he descended into the garden, his fingers retracing the walls of the stone stairwell.

Arista alla fiorentina
: pork loin seasoned with rosemary, garlic, and cloves and then slowly, lovingly, roasted until, crispy on the outside and juicy, with just a sweet trace of pink within, the meat was so tender, you could cut it with one of the forks recently introduced to Florence, thence into the Vespucci household.

Guid'Antonio breathed deeply, inhaling the tantalizing fragrance, making his way back past the courtyard fountain toward the
saletta
, the informal dining room he and his kinsmen shared when they weren't entertaining guests in the
sala
or in one of their private apartments. Familiar voices floated to him, rising and falling in warm camaraderie.

At the sound of his step on the threshold, the four men seated around the trestle table broke into a welcoming chorus. His nephew, Antonio Vespucci, rose and kissed him on both cheeks, his face alight with gladness. “Uncle, you
did
return from France with my little brother! I was beginning to doubt him.”

“When have you not?” Amerigo said, and drew the intended laughter.

It had been a difficult day, disappointing, shocking, exhilarating, and tiring by turn.
Thank God for family and home, especially tonight
, Guid'Antonio thought, shrugging off his crimson cloak and tossing it onto one of several pegs near the door. Tapers set in iron sconces suffused the
saletta
with light, making it cozy and intimate. The cooking fire in the hearth illuminated the marbled ochre walls and the red and gold hues in the intricately patterned tile floor.

“Brother Giorgio, Nastagio,” he said, greeting Amerigo and Antonio's uncle and father in turn. Both men smiled; neither stood.

Antonio patted the wooden stool between him and Amerigo, and Guid'Antonio sank onto it, safely anchored at last, fanning his loose linen shirt: the kitchen was warm, his underarms wet.

“Look at you, Guid'Antonio,” Brother Giorgio Vespucci said. “Is that a halo you're wearing? Or, no, only a trace more silver threaded through your black hair.”

“Brother, I wouldn't talk if I were you,” Guid'Antonio shot back. “The brown fringe that once ringed your head appears to have gone white as a dove since last I saw you.” Beneath his clerical robes, Brother Giorgio's torso appeared round and stout as ever.

Not so, that of Nastagio Vespucci! Rising shakily from the table, Amerigo and Antonio's fifty-four-year-old father offered Guid'Antonio a weak embrace.
Appalling
, Guid'Antonio thought, sinking back down onto his stool. Was this his friend, the merry Nastagio Vespucci, a man whose reputation spoke of his fondness for food, company and drink? In the last two years, Nastagio Vespucci, who was not only Guid'Antonio's kinsman but also one of his closest friends, had turned desperately pale and thin. Antonio's letters to France had said nothing of this. Or so Guid'Antonio supposed; come to think of it, who knew what Antonio Vespucci might have written in private to his brother, Amerigo?

“Try this new wine,” Amerigo suggested. “Cesare and Gaspare are bringing our salads.”

“I'm floating in wine already,” Guid'Antonio said.

Amerigo grinned, shrugging. “Italy was baptized in it.”

Guid'Antonio accepted the dark ruby liquid. “Ummm. Nutty and velvety, with a slight sting on the tongue.” A
Chianti tipico
, or Chianti-type wine. “From our grapes?”

“Of course,” Antonio said. “It suits?”

“Absolutely.” Guid'Antonio observed Antonio with a fond smile. People often mistook Antonio for Amerigo, and vice versa. Three years apart in age, both young men were slender and pleasant-faced, with glossy chestnut hair falling past their shoulders. As the Vespucci family's eldest son, Antonio it was who had been sent to Pisa for a university education, rather than Amerigo. Today, like his father and grandfather before him, Antonio was a notary. Thus, in addition to assisting with the family business, in itself a ball-breaking task with both Guid'Antonio and Amerigo absent from home these last two years, Antonio spent grueling hours in City Hall certifying the authenticity of signatures and documents, work as hard on the brain and the back as it was eye-opening.

Was that why behind his naturally cheerful manner, Antonio had acquired a new look of watchfulness?

As for Amerigo, Guid'Antonio doubted employment as his secretary and traveling companion would satisfy Amerigo much longer. Then what?

A small, robust woman blew in from the kitchen with Cesare, Guid'Antonio's willowy manservant, in her wake. Cheeks rosy with heat, Domenica Ridolfi hurried to Guid'Antonio with a pottery mug in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. “It's about time you showed your handsome face in my kitchen!”

Delighted to see her, Guid'Antonio scooted back his stool and hastily stood with arms outstretched. “Domenica, at last.”

Under the cover of his mother's pleased laughter, Cesare said, “Messer Guid'Antonio, you survived City Hall?”

Guid'Antonio's mind slid back to Palazzo della Signoria and Palazzo Medici and forward to the Virgin weeping in Ognissanti. “So far, Cesare. That and more.”

Cesare's eyebrows quivered with pride. “Bravo.” With a flourish, he set the table, placing dishes on the linen cloth just so, turning knife blades precisely toward majolica plates, lest anyone feel threatened by his neighbor.

Guid'Antonio kissed Domenica's warm cheeks. The woman who had cooked for the Vespucci family since Guid'Antonio was a boy smelled of garlic, olives, and plum wine, the latter sloshing dangerously near the rim of her cup. She hugged him with a strength that would have surprised him had he not been accustomed to it. “Domenica, I beg you, watch the cleaver.”

“The only man I'd set this against is the one who would harm you,” Domenica said. For all her fifty-six years, the plain headscarf tied loosely at the back of her neck revealed curls more richly black than silver.

“Domenica, pork loin, my favorite dish. You're a saint.”

“What did you expect, with you just home from”—she waved her hand—“up Lombardy way.” Turning to the sideboard, she sliced a chunk of meat from the roast and offered it to him on the tip of the cleaver. “Is it true the French eat squashed lark?”

“Domenica,” Amerigo broke in, laughing. “ ‘Squashed lark’? And actually, France is farther north of us.”

Domenica skewered him with her eyes. “All that matters is the general direction.”

“Not,” Amerigo said, “when you're traveling.”

Guid'Antonio inhaled the fragrance of the tender pork loin. “Not squashed, Domenica. It's called
pâté. Buena sera
, Gaspare,” he added, acknowledging the cook's brother, the lightweight old fellow who had just come in from the kitchen, and who seemed in danger of toppling to the tile floor if anyone sneezed in his direction. Gaspare Ridolfi was older than Domenica by a decade and showing all the bone-bent wear of it. He coughed, recovered, and carefully placed a portion of salad greens on each plate.

“Now you've graced us with your presence, I can fry the ravioli. Gaspare! Cesare!” Domenica waved Guid'Antonio back toward the trestle table, where his kinsmen sat watching him, grinning, then sailed into the kitchen with her feather-footed son and her stooped, elderly brother in her wake.

“Are all servants as bold as ours?” Nastagio complained.

Antonio said lightly, “Without a doubt,” but his quick glance at his father showed he had heard the truculent note in his father's voice.

Guid'Antonio drizzled olive oil and vinegar onto the wild salad greens gracing his plate and thought back to Olimpia Pasquale. There was bold personified. He poured himself more wine. “How's this one selling?”

Nastagio stirred restlessly. “Well enough to the few who can still afford it.”

“Apparently, that's true of everything.” Entering the garden off Borg'Ognissanti just now, glancing at the wine-window open to the street, Guid'Antonio had noted the lack of customers who usually appeared at dusk to fill their jugs for a nominal fee.

Cesare, gliding back in from the kitchen, passed the meat on a platter while his mother served the fried ravioli, and Gaspare puttered along behind her, sprinkling the pasta with grated cheese from Parma.

“God,” Guid'Antonio groaned, savoring the fine aroma. “I've died and gone to heaven.”

“No,” Antonio said. “You've come home to Italy.”

Brother Giorgio's mouth formed a smile as round and red as a ripe cherry. “It takes more to usher a man into heaven than Domenica's
arista
and fried ravioli, Guid'Antonio.”

“That's your opinion,” Cesare inserted neatly.

Guid'Antonio smiled, blowing on the steaming ravioli on the end of his fork to cool it. The cutlery was new. Silver, with ornate finials in the form of
le vespe
, or wasps, according to the Vespucci family name. “Brother Giorgio, at this particular moment, I'm all content on earth.”

Amerigo sopped his bread in olive oil, his face glowing with wine and pleasure. “Me, too. But you saw Lorenzo this afternoon. What did he have to say?”

At the sideboard, the meat platter slipped in Cesare's fingers. He sat the platter down with care and cut his eyes toward Amerigo with marked disapproval.

Nastagio slapped the table. “Amerigo! What does it matter what Lorenzo the Magnificent
says?
More importantly, what does he
do?
Or not do, according to his own selfish nature?”

There was an awkward silence. Amerigo stared at his father. In the quiet, Gaspare crept forward to refill Guid'Antonio's goblet.
“No, grazie.”
Guid'Antonio placed his hand lightly over the rim, his gaze fixed on Nastagio, who, it seemed, was as ill-humored as he was unwell. Nastagio Vespucci, a brave supporter of the Medici family, speaking of Lorenzo with such . . . disrespect? What spurred the man? A lingering illness? A raging fever?

Antonio shifted on his stool. “Uncle Guid'Antonio, Amerigo said Alessandra del Vigna is ill.”

“Yes. Maria's with her at her house.”

“Christ be with the lady,” Brother Giorgio intoned, and crossed himself.

Guid'Antonio glanced around and settled on the tried-and-true Amerigo. “Did you get a lot done this afternoon?”

“I did. Uncle Giorgio and I rode to Careggi to visit Marsilio, who welcomed us with open arms and a host of new manuscripts.” Marsilio Ficino, the diminutive doctor-philosopher who—having produced the first translations of Plato's dialogues from the original Greek into Latin for Lorenzo's grandfather, amongst many other writings—now kept an oil lamp burning before a marble bust of Plato in his villa foyer and dabbled in magic.

Guid'Antonio frowned. “I meant what did you accomplish here at
home
, Amerigo. Perhaps tomorrow I should tie you down in the
scrittoio
, where surely there's a mountain of paperwork waiting, else you'll be sitting with your uncle Giorgio at Toscanelli's feet, charmed by that old man's ramblings on geography and the limits of the seas.”

Spots of pink color bloomed on Amerigo's cheeks. He glanced at Brother Giorgio before speaking. “Scholars come from all over Europe to the University of Florence to attend Marsilio Ficino's lectures. For us, it's just a short ride to his villa. And, yes, as you've surmised, we're meeting at Paolo Toscanelli's tomorrow. Paolo may be in his eighties and his theories bold but, as you well know, his belief we may reach the Orient by sailing west across the sea has people wondering if it may be so. Moreover, having been gone for almost two years, I naturally assumed a few hours in the presence of others would be amenable to us both.”

Guid'Antonio was feeling ill-tempered, and he knew it. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Today's been a bear. When you come home tomorrow, you, Antonio, and I will review our ledgers.”

“I'll be here,” Antonio said, sighing deeply.

“That reminds me,” Brother Giorgio said, brushing crumbs from the lap of his robe as Cesare whisked around the trestle table, collecting dinner plates, “have we paid Sandro's commission for Ognissanti? Antonio?”

“Haven't we! You'd think he was Masaccio and had painted the glorious frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, given his price. Higher than a cat's ass, and since he lives just around the corner, I couldn't put him off. He was here at noon today, having just this morning given our new Saint Augustine his final brush-stroke.”