The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (2 page)

Anyway, didn't all men have secrets?

His chamber was warmer now, the atmosphere lighter by degrees, though outside the windows, the sky over Plessisles-Tours appeared gloomy and wet. Morning. Nineteen June 1480. In a moment his nephew, Amerigo Vespucci, would enter the richly appointed apartment provided Guid'Antonio by King Louis XI of France, all alight with anticipation and energy, eager to begin their ride across the Apennines and down the Italian peninsula to Tuscany. “
Andiamo
, Uncle Guid'Antonio! Let's go! I can't wait to leave this ball-shriveling French weather!”

And so Ambassador Guid'Antonio Vespucci swung his feet off the feather mattress and reached for his shirt and traveling pants. Rising, he saw himself and Amerigo step out into the pouring rain and sprint toward the stable, where Amerigo had both their horses saddled and waiting. He saw himself shrug into his rain cloak and pull the hood down over his forehead, its oiled edges coiling around his face. Troubled in spirit and uneasy, he saw the ground shifting beneath him as he glanced up at the darkening clouds and rode out into the storm.

Florence, three weeks later. . . .

He felt like a ghost Guid'Antonio, looming at the courtyard gate in the ethereal hours just before daybreak. Draped in fog, the workshops of the weavers and dyers and loom makers all along Borg'Ognissanti, All Saints Street, were still, the water mills closed down. The sole sound on the air was the faint echo of hooves striking rain-slick stones as a weary but content Amerigo led Flora and Bucephalus around the Vespucci Palace toward the family stables. But no, not so quiet after all, nor completely free of other movement. From where he stood, a hesitant figure alone at the wrought-iron gate, he could see the fountain in the palace garden and hear the soft gurgle of water flowing from the stone lion's jaws. Torches sputtered either side of the gate. In the dim light, he searched his scrip for his key. Amongst the jingle of coins, his fingers found the key, and he inserted it into the lock, only to discover it would not turn over. He jiggled the key, removed it, blew on it and, frowning, tried again without success. “God,” he breathed.

“Messer Guid'Antonio,” whispered the form detaching itself from the garden shadows. “I'm here. Just a moment, please.”

It was not God, but Guid'Antonio's manservant, Cesare Ridolfi, who unlocked the gate, then swung it open on squeaky hinges. A warm smile lit the young man's face. “Messer Guid'Antonio, welcome home.”

“Thank you,” Guid'Antonio said, embracing Cesare, patting his back, “but what's this?” He gestured toward the lock, wondering what preternatural force had whispered in Cesare Ridolfi's ear, “Messer Guid'Antonio and Amerigo are arriving home very early today. Moreover, Guid'Antonio will need the lock opened for him at the courtyard gate.”

“Changed,” Cesare said. “Like so many other things.” His arms went out, encompassing the dawn and the stars emerging from behind scattering clouds. “But now, you're home. Will you have a bath to start this interminable day?”

Interminable? Guid'Antonio felt too tired to ask. “No. I'll start it by seeing my wife.”

“Ah.” Smiling slightly, Cesare slipped back into the shadowy darkness from whence he came.

“Maria?”

Languidly, she turned in the canopied bed, her hair a curtain of black, her cotton nightgown hiked high above shapely thighs. She raised her arms in sleepy welcome.

And then her eyes fluttered open. “Guid'Antonio?”

Yes. Guid'Antonio. For one instant, he paused, standing booted and spurred at their bedchamber door, not liking the direction of his thoughts.

“I don't believe it!” Maria sat up, and, as he crossed the room, she held his gaze with hers. He removed his damp traveling cloak and sat, shivering, on the bed.

“I didn't know when to expect you,” she said. “Exactly, I mean.” Her eyes searched his, as if he might be an apparition.

“I wanted to surprise you,” he said.

“And did!” She laughed with unbridled delight. In the soft light cast by the brass lamps placed here and there around the room, her face shone.

A smile touched Guid'Antonio's lips. His wife was so lovely, her complexion dark olive brown, her skin glowing against the ruby hue of silk bed hangings. In the lamplight, her hair gleamed like the fine ebony ambitious timber traders transported from afar, black and sweetly smooth to the touch. “You're beautiful,” he said, admiring her figure on the bed, the long, graceful legs flowing smoothly from curving hips. He felt shy, now he was here with her after two years.

“What did you expect?” she said. “While you were gone, I'd change into a hag?” Tears welled in her eyes, deep dark pools with glints of gold. “There were times I feared you'd never come home.”

“I wanted to.” He brushed her hair with his fingers, basking in the pleasure of her touch as she caressed his face, waiting while she traced the line of his jaw and the fine new lines radiating outward from the corners of his eyes.

Her fingers strayed to his temples. Gently, she clasped his face in her hands. What did she see? A man of advancing years drinking in the perfection of his young wife? What did she think? Not only has he been gone two years, he's not as I remembered him?

And then she was down before him, the bare flesh of her knees pressing into the hard marble floor. She removed one of his muddy boots, then the other. She rose up like Aphrodite rising from the sea, her eyes connecting with his, and ran her hands along his thighs. High, her thumbs inside, caressing him.
There.

A shudder ran through him. He slipped her gown up over her head, and they lay back on the sheets. He kissed her eyelashes, her mouth, and her breasts. “I love your eyes,” she said. “Such a tender gray, I can almost see through them.”

“
Non parlare, baciami
. Don't talk, kiss me.”

She did, her mouth hot and yearning against his. “Do you think you can still satisfy me, Ambassador Guid'Antonio Vespucci?”

“I always have.”

“You're mighty sure of yourself.”

“Yes,” he said.

Not a whit
, he thought, and then:
When it comes to love, how could I be?

“The women at King Louis's court must have been half mad in love with you.” Gently, she bit his lip.

“More like completely,” he said, and she punched him playfully. He felt his passion flare. “Not with me,” he amended, “but with Amerigo.”

He lied. The French women had flirted relentlessly with him and Amerigo both, particularly when they moved from Paris to King Louis's isolated chateau at Plessis-les-Tours in west-central France. There everyone, including the king, had gathered for cards and music after dinner. And every night, as the ringing laughter and the sound of footsteps dimmed, and the king's entourage bedded down (pillows plumped, covers flipped back, the skirts of satin ball gowns hiked up), he had gone to bed alone.

He yanked his damp shirt up over his head. The roar of blood rushing in his ears almost drowned out the soft scrape of the chamber door, sighing open. Almost. Maria tensed with her fingers pressing into his flesh. Guid'Antonio twisted around. His hand found his belt on the coverlet and drew his knife in one fluid motion.

A small boy stood at the door, his face squeezed into an expression of pure terror. It was their son, Giovanni. “Mama!” he screamed, the candle he was holding shaking violently in his hand. “Why's that man hurting you?”

“Guid'Antonio—let me up!” Maria, fumbling for the sheet, was on her feet and flying across the floor in an instant. Guid'Antonio slipped his dagger beneath the rumpled coverlet, his heart thundering against his ribs.

Maria took the candle. Bending down awkwardly with the taper flaring in one hand, she embraced the child. “Giovanni, where's your nurse? Little one, don't be frightened. That isn't a man—that's your father!”

Her fingers fluttered to her mouth and in the light of the night lamps, the pink flush in her cheeks deepened to a brilliant hue. “I mean he wasn't hurting me, Giovanni, we're just so happy he's come home after so much time in France. Go greet him, my precious pet.” She smiled encouragingly at the boy.

Little one? Precious pet? The boy was almost five. Wasn't Giovanni too old to be coddled like a one-year-old? Guid'Antonio extended his hand to his only child, the gift Maria del Vigna had finally given him after half a decade of marriage: a son. Precious and important, so far he was Guid'Antonio's sole heir.

Giovanni brushed the hair from his eyes, dark jewels laced with specks of glinting gold, like his mother's. He watched Guid'Antonio speculatively. “No.”

Instinctively, Guid'Antonio sprang up, to do what, he had no idea. Giovanni drew back, his face twisted with fear. Quickly, Guid'Antonio said, “Giovanni, I'm sorry. Maria, the boy and I are strangers.”

Maria held Giovanni close in her arms. “He needs time, Guid'Antonio.”

“Yes, well, so do I.” He strode to the windows, naked. Already the first light of day was seeping through the slats in the wooden window shutters. He unlatched the shutters and propped them up with iron rods. A faint vapor rose from the tiled rooftops stretching like a russet sea across the Santa Maria Novella quarter of Florence. The rain that had pelted him and Amerigo when they rode in through the Prato Gate a short while ago had abated, leaving morning arrayed in a fine gray mist.

“Guid'Antonio?”

He turned, arching one black eyebrow laced with silver.

“Now you're home, we have all the time in the world. Although I believe all I needed was another moment.”

All the time in the world. Like Amerigo, Maria was just twenty-six, with complete faith in such words. Guid'Antonio managed a smile, feeling all the weight of his forty-four years. “I hope so, Maria.”

“Don't move! I'll fetch Olimpia,” she said.

“Olimpia—?”

“Giovanni's nurse.” Maria's brow wrinkled. “I wrote you. Old Silvana died. I'll be back in a moment and show you all you've missed.” She hurried off, tugging Giovanni along by the hand, glancing happily over the slender line of her shoulder.

Alone in the bedchamber, Guid'Antonio heard slight laughter, darting, indistinct voices and light footsteps. The palace was coming to life. Eyes closed, he drew a long breath. Then he opened the doors to the tabernacle attached to the chamber wall and, kneeling before the painting of
Our Lady with the Magi Worshipping Christ
, offered up his soul to heaven. After reciting prayers, he bathed using the herbal soap and tepid water that Cesare, as if borne on the morning air, had brought into the apartment the instant Guid'Antonio said, “Amen.”

“Cesare, look at you. I failed to notice earlier. You've—grown.” Guid'Antonio gestured with both hands.

A pleased expression played around Cesare's beautifully formed lips. “Taller, yes.”

A slender young man with a cap of glossy black hair curling at his ears, Cesare stood with perfect posture, gazing back at him. The periwinkle tunic over Cesare's
camicia
was cut from velvet, here in the high heat of summer. But the soft color enhanced the startling violet-blue of Cesare's eyes.
Ah, youth
, Guid'Antonio thought. And frowned slightly. Where the devil was Maria?

“You're nineteen now,” he said.

“Yes, last month. Do you like the soap?”

“Right now, I'd like any kind of soap. But yes. What kind is it?”

“Lemon thyme. It comforts the heart.”

Guid'Antonio laughed dryly. “Then buy a bucket of it from the soap sellers, please.”

Cesare handed him a linen towel and in one fluid motion withdrew a cotton shirt from a cypress wood chest and shook it out to remove the folds. “You're off to City Hall, 'less I miss my guess.”

“We both know you missing your guess is impossible,” Guid'Antonio said.

An odd look, one suspiciously like pity, shone in Cesare's eyes. “What?” Guid'Antonio said.

“Just this: more than your gate latch has changed in Florence these last two years.” Scooping laundry into his arms, Cesare strolled to the door and smiled encouragement before vanishing into the hall.

Guid'Antonio stirred uneasily, his face a frown as he removed his cloak from a wooden peg and entered the passageway. The wall torches in the hall smoked, just this moment extinguished. Cesare had vanished the way he had come, in a twinkling.

And in his place Maria stood in the darkness at the top of the stairs. She saw Guid'Antonio's crimson cloak slung over his arm, and her shoulders drooped. “Where are you leaving us for now, Ambassador Vespucci?”

“Only as far as City Hall to surrender my credentials.”

“Credentials?” She laughed softly. “You've been absent two years, you arrive home moments ago after a punishing ride, and you can't wait to leave again?”

“Maria—” He made an impatient gesture. “I'll be back by noon, I swear. But for now, Amerigo has dispatched a courier downtown to let the Lord Priors know we're here. I wager he's in the courtyard, pondering my whereabouts.”

“Well, we wouldn't want to inconvenience Amerigo, would we?” she said.

Guid'Antonio's jaw tightened, and he licked his lips, parched, wishing he had something to drink. “A while ago, you claimed we have all the time in the world.”

“Please don't twist my words against me,” she said. “It's insulting. You want to announce yourself, let the Priors know you're back and a force to be reckoned with.”

Well, yes. “I only want to tend to final business, Maria.”

“What about what I want? But my husband's always gone?” Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “Not always, Maria.”

“Yes!” Her chin lifted a notch. “This time, France. Before that, four months in Rome, fighting with the Pope.”

“Not fighting, Maria. Giuliano had just been slain. In Rome my mission was to prevent a war between us and Pope Sixtus IV, since it was his nephew who masterminded Giuliano's assassination, and Rome is a mighty force to be reckoned with in any circumstance.”

“And yet you failed,” she said.

His lips felt stiff as he spoke. “I tried, Maria. Our government trusted me with the welfare of the State.”

“Lorenzo de' Medici trusted you, you mean. The Florentine government does whatever he says, just like you, even though he has nothing to do with the State.”