The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (20 page)

Amerigo touched Guid'Antonio's sleeve. “Look there.”

Ahead of them, Piazza Ognissanti was a mass of men, women, and children elbowing their way through the doors of Ognissanti. Palla said, “There's a dangerous situation. Fear, hot tempers, and a whiff of salvation.”

“There's an apt description of the Pope and Lorenzo,” Amerigo said.

“Palla,” Guid'Antonio said. “You're certain Tesoro was with Camilla when Camilla started out from Florence?”

“Yes. According to her nurse and slave, and a host of eyewitnesses.”

“And are we certain there was blood on Tesoro's gear when the horse bolted through the gate today?”

“The gatekeeper who chased her down confirmed it.”

“And the stable keep said the blood was fresh?”

“Yes. I have a shadow on Castruccio,” Palla said. “As well as sergeants posted all around here.” His gesture included Ognissanti, Trinita, and the byways leading to Santa Maria Novella. “And on Via Larga, too,” he said, “should people take their passion outside your church and into the Medici Palace.”

Guid'Antonio considered telling Palla about his own shadowed walk through the city two nights ago, on Monday evening. Instead, he said, “Do you know Castruccio Senso's whereabouts last night? Perhaps the horse is meant to lead us away from him.”

“He was inside his house. The night watchman confirmed it.”

Palla's slight, brown-clad figure cut a wide path through the crowd as he strolled toward the Bargello, the public jail, while Guid'Antonio's mind whirred with questions, foremost among them this: why would a man have evidence, whether fresh or dried (the stable keep said “fresh,” but how could they believe that hare brain?) erased that might shed light on his wife's disappearance and possible murder, unless he was guilty of having her killed, or of killing her himself? Tesoro let loose only to be discovered inside the city walls while Castruccio Senso remained within his house suggested additional forces at work.

If the blood truly were Camilla's . . . that meant the girl had been harmed—he recoiled from the word
murdered
—this very day.

This new twist in Camilla Rossi da Vinci's disappearance troubled him.

And what, besides, it had to do with the tears in Ognissanti.

At the entrance to Ognissanti, Guid'Antonio and Amerigo encountered Brother Battista Bellincioni, the fat almoner of the Benedictine Order of the Humiliati. Tailors, silk merchants, silversmiths, jewelers, and surgeons jostled one another through the narrow portal and on into the nave, along with menders, shearers, and poor kitchen maids smelling of cooking grease. Prostitutes wearing green cowls with bells on their heads, menders, and fishermen: all opened their fists to release precious coins into Bellincioni's wooden collection box.

“Father Abbot wondered how long it would take you to come poking around.” The monk sniffed, rising up a bit taller in his sandals, his voice narrow and haughty.

“
Buena mattina
to you as well,” Guid'Antonio said. “I came poking around the night before last, too. But of course, you know that. I hear the Virgin Mary's weeping.”

Bellincioni's face puckered into a frown. “With good reason, too.”

Guid'Antonio nudged Amerigo, who squeezed into the throng of humanity pushing into the church. “What good reason is that?” Guid'Antonio said.

Bellincioni's flabby chin lifted a notch. “Are you here as a worshipper or as a spy for Lorenzo the Magnificent?”

“As one who spends thousands of florins each year decorating this church.” Guid'Antonio indicated the wall on the right a short distance behind Bellincioni's squat frame. “Commissioning, for example, the fresco of Saint Augustine Sandro Botticelli just completed. Ah. I love the smell of fresh paint. Don't you?”

Bellincioni scrunched his face and poked the collection box toward Guid'Antonio. “Do you think I know everything?”

“Good God, no, but enough to answer me.” From his scrip, Guid'Antonio withdrew a coin and dropped it in the box, where it landed with a metallic
chink.

“Look around you,” the monk hissed, his black eyes radiant and sharp. “Our Blessed Mother is weeping in sorrow for her forgotten children. Not for you or any of your ilk. It's you and men like you who tricked us into taking Communion when Holy Mother Church forbade it. And forbids it still, though no one told us that before or since. It's men like
you
who pull the wool over our eyes time and time again, who gull us into contravening God's will, and who mean for our souls to spend eternity in hell!”

“Not God's will, but the Pope's,” Guid'Antonio said.

Bellincioni shook with such indignation, the coins in the collection box clattered, as if they, too, were outraged. “God will punish you! He will punish all of us!” he cried, bouncing up and down on his toes. “He already has, with curses in the streets and empty bellies! Next, He'll send the Infidels to destroy us, just as they destroyed the innocent lady. If ever a mortal woman may innocent be. Cross versus Crescent, here in our own city. The defeat of Christianity, thanks to the devil burrowed in the heart of the Golden Lion district!”

“Shame on you, Bellincioni,” Guid'Antonio said, his voice harsh as he spoke. “It's you and men like you who keep this misery flaming. And what would you know of empty bellies? It appears you haven't missed many meals.”

“Satan's mouth!” Brother Bellincioni whirled and hastened into the church, seeking the black comfort of his Benedictine brothers.

Dangerous, these religious with their shaven heads and holier-than-thou attitudes. Dangerous, their grip on the scared and needy.

Guid'Antonio slipped into the sanctuary. A man stumbled into him, tugging a little girl along by the hand. A young man pushed against him, elbowing past. Slowly, Guid'Antonio's eyes adjusted to the half-light. In the gloom he smelled sweat and musk mingled with—what? An odor he couldn't identify, something rotten hovering beneath the usual church smell of incense, candle wax, and stone.

He shouldered forward, enveloped in prayers wafting their way toward the vaulted ceiling. “Mary, Mother of God, in coming to know you better, we come to a closer union with God and His Son. Beloved Mary, intercede on our behalf, for we have committed terrible sins. Madonna, save us from eternal damnation and the angels of hell.
Nostra Signora dell'Impruneta, prega per noi!
”

Guid'Antonio sighed, glancing toward the rafters, where he caught no sign of a small brown swallow or any other winged creature poised to swoop down on his head. Where were the singing angels? The white doves bearing the olive branch of peace? Be wary should you see them. He passed the Vespucci Chapel and Sandro's elderly saint, a snowy-haired old man who, if he could talk, would no doubt say he had seen everything. Guid'Antonio glanced away. Farther down the nave, he spied Amerigo at the altar rail and saw him sink onto his knees and bend his head to pray.

On Guid'Antonio's left stood the wooden door leading to the church garden. The door was closed. Toward his right, on the south side of the sanctuary, the monks' full black skirts flapped about their ankles as they sought direction, first one way, then the other, past the chapels built by families like Guid'Antonio's own. His thoughts traveled to another time in another church when hesitation and disbelief held him back until it was too late to save Giuliano de' Medici.

His stomach churned, as if with acid.

Too late.

Too dead.

Stop it!

At the altar, his heart stuttered and stalled. There in a circle of light stood the panel painting: the
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
, just as when he had visited the church two nights past. But now tears trickled from the Virgin's eyes onto her pale cheeks. Tears dampened her painted pearls and the gilded halo encircling the head of the Christ Child seated in her lap. Silvery wet tears, where before he had witnessed only fading red and green paint. At the rail he squeezed in beside Amerigo. Together, they remained on their knees for a long while before the miraculous painting.

After the leaden dimness of the sanctuary, the light of the piazza stung Guid'Antonio's eyes. He inhaled deeply, blinking, filling his chest with air and relishing the intensity of the sun warming his face. Across the square, the waters of the Arno glinted, golden and bold.

“It's almost midday,” Amerigo said, lifting his face to the light, as if he, too, felt the need of the sun's healing hand on his lids and cheeks.

Guid'Antonio glanced over his shoulder, watching Brother Bellincioni's monkish replacement thrust the collection box toward the sea of hands paying the entrance fee into Ognissanti—for what else could you call the coins people dropped in the box? “These monks are like weeds,” he said. “Where one has been, another pops up.”

Amerigo chuckled. “Soon our good Benedictines will be richer than King Midas.”

And where there was money, there was power. Guid'Antonio had started to say as much when a woman in rags, clutching a baby on her hip, stumbled blindly into him. Her eyes, filled with dread, locked with his. He stepped aside, and in an instant she vanished, her bony figure swallowed in the church shadows.

“Poor woman. What in God's name is happening to our town? To our church?” Amerigo reached out and gently touched Guid'Antonio's shoulder. “To Tuscany? Who's responsible for this wretched lunacy?”

For the first moment, Guid'Antonio did not answer. His gaze swept across the Arno, up toward San Miniato Church sitting high on a hill overlooking Florence. From where he stood on Borg'Ognissanti, the church appeared plain and small, whereas actually its facade was a graceful design of lustrous Prato green and Carrara white marble. Along with the monastery and Bishop's Palace, the grounds supported by the White Benedictine monks from Monte Oliveto yielded plentiful olive trees, an excellent wine, and thick golden honey.

He let out a long loose sigh, thinking of the ragged woman who had staggered past him just now. Her hair, which once might have been as thick and shiny as Maria's, hung in mousey-brown strands around her shoulders. Her face was pinched, and her coloring so pale, she appeared drained of blood. The sharp scent he had smelled inside Ognissanti was the stench of poverty and fear.

“I don't know who is responsible,” he said. “But I swear on my mother's grave, I will find out.”

Once more on the move, they turned into a passageway lined with vendors hawking cheap wooden crosses and
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
miniatures. Waving the hucksters away, they crossed a small square, where a blind woman pleaded for money. Amerigo's purse was empty. Guid'Antonio dropped a silver coin into the beggar's gnarled hand and kept walking toward the Golden Lion district and the prince of the city.

“The little horse appears and the Virgin weeps. Who has the wit to devise this hellish scheme? All to bedevil
me.
” Within Palazzo Medici, Lorenzo roamed the confines of his candlelit
studiolo
, his brown eyes dark as oak and glowing with frustration and anger.

“That is the question,” Guid'Antonio said.

Moments earlier, alerted by a servant, Lorenzo had walked toward them from the inner garden courtyard, his smile as bright as the sunshine pouring down on his head. Boot heels clattering on pavement, he had crossed the arcaded loggia with both hands extended in greeting. “
Benvenuti in questa casa!
Thank you for stopping.”

He had embraced them both, his manner casual, even breezy, as gawking pedestrians hurried along Via Larga past the palace's main gate. “How was France, Amerigo? Did you meet Catto there?” Angelo Catto, astrologer to King Louis XI.

“In Paris, yes.” Amerigo matched Lorenzo's lively tone as he and Guid'Antonio hurried behind him up the curving stone staircase to the Medici family's private quarters. “We spent time with Catto at Monsieur Phillip's apartment. When we weren't at court,” Amerigo added hastily.

“Phillip de Commines, now there's a good man. Did Catto read your stars? Did he predict your fate?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I'm going far in the world,” Amerigo said.

“You already have,” Lorenzo said, smiling as they walked along a hallway with apartments on either side. “I've never been to France.”

Amerigo threw Guid'Antonio a questioning glance. Nor had Amerigo ever been upstairs in the Medici Palace. Guid'Antonio shrugged, assuming they were going to the Medici Chapel, where they could talk without fear of being overheard. God knew he had been there with Lorenzo often enough. But Lorenzo strode past the chapel, turned, and beckoned them into a spacious apartment. A massive bed with hangings embroidered in a pattern of falcons and dormice flashed by. They were in Lorenzo's bedchamber, and their host showed no sign of slowing down.

This was deeper into Lorenzo's private quarters than Guid'Antonio had ever been before, though they were intimate friends. Intriguing. Flattering, even, since in Florence a man's standing was gauged by how far into another man's home he was allowed to penetrate. The word “trustworthy” popped into Guid'Antonio's mind.

Lorenzo lit lamps and candles, and flames danced around them, bathing in golden light the room they had just entered. Looking around, Guid'Antonio felt as if he had stepped into a treasure chest. Above their heads, twelve glazed blue and white Della Robbia tiles jumped to life. On the walls were many shelves of books, some of them newly printed, others ancient illuminated manuscripts. Antique cameos, bronzes, coins, and gems. Gleaming Roman, Byzantine, Persian, and Venetian vases. Add to this a fine walnut desk with a highly polished brass lamp suspended over it for ease of reading.

This was Lorenzo's haven, his most private place, his lair in the heart of the Golden Lion district.

Gingerly, Amerigo touched a book placed shoulder high to him on a near shelf. “I'm almost paralyzed with wonder. So many books. And the illumination so lovely.”

Distractedly, Lorenzo said, “Thank you, yes. You're welcome to borrow them whenever you wish.”

Guid'Antonio narrowed his eyes. Lorenzo de' Medici's thoughts were not on his prized possessions, but on a weeping painting, a missing girl, and a lost horse, found.