The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (27 page)

“I need to talk with you,” Guid'Antonio said. “Not here. Somewhere hidden. Somewhere safe.”

“I—”

“He'll not go anywhere with you,” Ferdinando Bongiovi huffed. “Father Abbot says you're in league with the devil and on the path to hell. He says sinners may spend their last florin in church, but they cannot buy entrance to heaven.”

“Well then, Uncle, do you think we should stop trying?” Amerigo said, grinning malevolently.

“Ferdinando,” Brother Paolo said, “for God's sake, hold your tongue, or one day it will get us both into such trouble, we'll never see our way back into the light. Ignore him, Messer Vespucci. He's an ignorant boy.”

But after all, a loose tongue was Guid'Antonio's aim. And it seemed unlikely he would ever get Paolo alone anywhere. “Ferdinando,” he said, quietly addressing the boy, “we came late to the weeping Virgin—”

“Praise Mary, ever Virgin, who brings us overwhelming joy,” Ferdinando chanted, crossing himself.

“Ferdinando, hush,” Brother Paolo said. “Joy certainly,” he added, turning to Guid'Antonio. “Still, it's a sad kind of joy that springs from Mary's sorrow and her disappointment in us.”

“Us?” Ferdinando drew himself up to his full height, which was sadly lacking. “Nay. Not in us, but in
Il Magnifico
. Father Abbot says Lorenzo and his lackeys are Satan's footmen.”

“How dare you, you little rodent!” Amerigo said.

“Amerigo, you're not helping,” Guid'Antonio cut in.

“Ferdinando,” Brother Paolo said, “be still or I'll hang you up by the ears.”

“If you don't, I will,” Amerigo said, his volume increasing. People stared in their direction. A boy nearby began crying.

“Quiet!” Guid'Antonio demanded and seized the moment: “Brother Paolo: have you or any of your brothers ever been here in the church when tears begin coursing down the Virgin's face?”

Brother Paolo pondered this as if Guid'Antonio had just spoken to him in Portuguese. “Begin coursing—? I don't understand.”

Guid'Antonio prayed for forbearance. “You come into the sanctuary, the Virgin's eyes are as dry as witch—as dry they are today, and then she weeps.” He gestured encouragingly.

Regret clouded the monk's blue eyes. “Sadly, no. That special blessing belongs to Brother Bellincioni and our blessed Father Abbot.”

“Ah. Well,” Guid'Antonio said, “perhaps one day.” He pulled his earlobe, as if deep in thought, and flicked his eyes back to Brother Paolo. “Have you seen Lorenzo here when Mary has just begun to weep?”

“Lorenzo?” Amerigo softly wondered.

“Lorenzo?” Brother Paolo said.

“De' Medici,” Guid'Antonio said, smiling tightly.

Whereupon Brother Paolo shook his head. “Lorenzo the Magnificent has been here only once to my knowledge, shortly after the tears were first seen by a child in the congregation and he pointed them out to his mother.”

Paolo's eyes searched the sanctuary even as his fingers strayed toward the iron latch on the sacristy door. “I pray for Lorenzo each night. I don't think he's the bad man Father Abbot believes him to be.”

Ferdinando stepped back, appalled. “You contradict Father Abbot? Father Abbot says the painting is weeping for the devil on Via Larga as much as for the sins of Brother Martin.”

Brother Martin?
Guid'Antonio and Amerigo shared a glance.

“Hush, hush, hush!” Brother Paolo flung his arm down across Ferdinando's thin chest, then grabbed him and gave him a vigorous shake. “Ferdinando, desist! Should anyone overhear, we'll be in such peril, we'll never see our way clear.”

“Trouble in paradise,” Amerigo said.

“This Brother Martin is the same fellow you chased down Borg'Ognissanti last week, yes?” Guid'Antonio said.

“No,” Paolo said.

“It is, too,” Ferdinando said. “And he has been missing ever since.”

Paolo groaned, whether from Ferdinando's blathering or from Abbot Roberto Ughi's sudden presence, Guid'Antonio had no way of knowing. In silence, the sacristy door had swung back to reveal the abbot of Ognissanti. A formidably austere man and the head of the Benedictine Order of the Humiliati, Ughi gazed at Guid'Antonio from eyes as cold and pale as a gutted fish.

“Brother Paolo,” the abbot said, his voice dangerous and low. “Get you gone. At once, or you'll be late for prayers. Take Ferdinando with you. How, may I ask, is the lad to make a monk with you his whining example?”

“I—” Brother Paolo's eyes sparked with a flash of heat.

Good. No matter that the youth immediately smothered his passion, beneath Paolo's tonsure and robe, a shimmer of fire still burned.

Jaw clenched, Brother Paolo did as he was told.

“For once you come to us in daylight, Messer Vespucci,” Abbot Ughi tartly observed.

“Praying, as usual, to catch a glimpse of you,” Guid'Antonio said.

The abbot's chilly eyes narrowed. Add to the black marks on Guid'Antonio's soul the sin of disrespect. “Why are you here?” he said, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth.

“This is my family church.”

“This is a holy place, and I will not have you stirring up the passions of our young men.”

Amerigo snickered, but held his tongue.

“And I will do whatever I deem necessary to gain a more intimate knowledge of the weeping Virgin,” Guid'Antonio said.

Ughi's narrowed eyes acknowledged Guid'Antonio's careful wording. “Messer Vespucci,” he said, glancing toward the painting and the people at the altar, “the Lord works in mysterious ways. Why can't you accept that?”

“While you reap all the benefit.”

“Come now. This is no impoverished church.”

“Thanks in no small measure to us,” Amerigo pointed out.

“Still,” Guid'Antonio said, “this controversy keeps Ognissanti invigorated, does it not? In a city bursting with churches, that fact alone is worth the effort of hosting a miracle.”

Ughi gazed upon him with raw dislike. “Controversy? Hosting? If that is how you describe the miracle of the weeping
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
, I advise you to look into your soul, for it is in grave peril.”

“No doubt,” Guid'Antonio said. “But Father Abbot—” Using the man's title disgusted him, but in this instance, it was necessary if he meant to gain any ground. “On the two occasions the painting has wept. Why is it, do you think? What does Christ's mother want? And if not offerings and importance, what do
you
want?”

Ughi glared. “To see the wicked devil in Rome!”

Guid'Antonio shrugged. “He's already there.”

A squeal of distress escaped Ughi's lips. “Do you mean our Holy Father, Pope Sixtus IV?”

“Interpret it how you will.”

The fire of outrage crept into the abbot's face. “Hear me well, Messer Guid'Antonio Vespucci: the tears are a sign of God's wrath and glory to come. As the abbot of your family church, I implore you to ask yourself this: Do the Virgin Mary's tears offer you reprieve or reproach? Or do you, like Lorenzo de' Medici, place yourself above God and Church?”

In one swift move, Father Abbot Roberto Ughi turned and marched toward the altar, his commanding figure separating the people in his path like a ship dividing the ocean waters.

“Father Abbot,” Guid'Antonio called after him. “You have a monk missing and have not reported it?”

Roberto Ughi stiffened, then turned slowly around. “Don't believe everything young monks tell you. Particularly novitiates.”

Watching him vanish into the crowd, Amerigo said, “If he were any other man, he would feel my fingers around his wrinkled throat.”

Guid'Antonio took a deep breath, calming the thrum of pure hot anger roaring in his veins. “
Chi va piano va sano e va lontano
, Amerigo.”

Slow and steady wins the race.

“No wonder our good Saint Augustine casts his eyes towards heaven,” Amerigo said, thumbing toward the left wall as they strode back to the church entrance. “I would, too, if I spent much time in this place. Or in any church, come to that.”

“Ummm?” The loquacious novice, Ferdinando Bongiovi, rather than Sandro Botticelli's
Saint Augustine
occupied Guid'Antonio's thoughts. “Amerigo, Abbot Ughi says the painting is weeping for the devil on Via Larga as much as for the sins of Brother Martin. What sin might this Martin fellow have committed so foul, in Ughi's eyes at least, it could make a painting weep?” He still remembered the young, black-haired monk clearly: high emotion and hot tears as Brother Martin fled this place and ran down Borg'Ognissanti.

“Who knows? Steal a pat of butter? For that alone the abbot would condemn the poor fellow to hell.” Amerigo cocked his eyebrow. “Or perhaps the youth fled the abbot for other, more personal, reasons.”

“For some clandestine mischief in one of the chapels?” Guid'Antonio said as they stepped outside into the heat of Piazza Ognissanti.

“Between him and one of the other brothers?”

“Or with Abbot Ughi himself.” Guid'Antonio blinked. On Borg'Ognissanti the sky was spectacularly sunny, the stones radiating heat. Beyond the waist-high parapet, the Arno glistened like a silvery snake slithering between Florence proper and the Oltr'Arno.

“I think—” He slowed his stride, drawing a bead on
il Leone Rosso
, the Red Lion, and the squat little man rushing headlong down the tavern steps toward the open door.

“What?” Amerigo said.

“Unless my eyes and memory deceive me, Castruccio Senso just flew into the Red Lion. Camilla Rossi's husband.”

The Red Lion was smoky, dimly lit, and thick with the ripe odor of hard-laboring men. Craftsmen and vendors, mostly, spooning from pottery bowls small white beans anointed with fruity olive oil and washing this down with thick red wine. Guid'Antonio and Amerigo stepped over the yellow dog snoozing in the narrow entry.
“Sogni d'oro
, dreams of gold,
Biscotto.
” Amerigo rubbed the animal's graying ears in a gesture of affection.

Slowly, Guid'Antonio's eyes adjusted to the pale light of the tavern and inn.

Artisans and shopkeepers in plain belted tunics and mended hose crowded the rough wooden tables and the hinged service counter. Many wore
foggette
, the soft, floppy caps of the
popolo minuto
. Seated on stools or standing at the counter, a few peered at the newcomers with ripe curiosity. A purse maker Guid'Antonio recognized from the Santa Croce quarter narrowed his eyes before lowering his gaze. In a far corner, Camilla Rossi da Vinci's husband, Castruccio Senso, argued heatedly with a young man Guid'Antonio did not recognize.

Heatedly, at least, on Castruccio Senso's part. A rough young fellow by his stained and muddy appearance, taller than Castruccio Senso by a good two heads, the stranger listened with cool attention to the missing girl's husband, curving his lips up in a contemptuous smile.

At the bar, Neri Saginetto, the tavern's owner, threw down his bar cloth, clapped his hands with pleasure, and hurried from behind the counter to greet Guid'Antonio and his nephew. “Two years gone! Mama! Evangelista! The traveling Vespuccis are here!”

Neri snapped his fingers at the girl behind the counter, washing dishes. “Bring them a jug of the Chianti we just purchased, you know the one. Yes!” Neri tossed Evangelista a key. “There, the top cask.”

“That can't be little Evangelista?” Amerigo said.

“My daughter. It can be and is.”

A quietly pretty girl, Evangelista's black eyes glowed, acknowledging the compliment she heard in Amerigo's voice. “Fourteen now, and not much longer for this place,” Neri assured them. “Much too pleasing on the eye. Have a seat. Evangelista will bring the wine.”

“And
salame?
” Amerigo said. “I'm starving.” They claimed a vacant bench, placing the wall at their backs, offering Guid'Antonio a clear view of Castruccio Senso and his tall companion.

A slim, dark figure slipped past
Biscotto
and on into the tavern. Palla Palmieri. Guid'Antonio pursed his lips. Palla was making good his promise to shadow Castruccio Senso, and he was doing it himself, rather than leaving it to his men.

Palla glanced around the smoky chamber and caught Castruccio in his sight. His sweeping gaze came to rest on Guid'Antonio seated against the wall. Smiling faintly, he moved smoothly back past the sleeping dog and on out the tavern door, his exit accompanied by a general easing of tension amongst Neri's customers.

Beside Guid'Antonio, Amerigo, who had been watching Evangelista place the
salame
along with some cheese and bread on a platter, sighed with unadulterated pleasure, not only in tribute to the food. “Such a difference in a girl in two years. But for all that, where is this elusive Castruccio Senso, now we're here?”

“In yon corner with that dangerous-looking fellow.”

Amerigo gave a hushed cry. “God! That fat toad? No wonder his wife disappeared.”

Age had yellowed Castruccio Senso's white hair. This he wore cropped around a reddened face beaded with sweat. He had on the simple short gown of a successful merchant, the brown folds belted high over a barrel-shaped belly. Skinny legs and knobby knees sheathed in soled brown hose protruded like twigs from beneath his gown.

Amerigo said, “He seems more agitated and angry than bereaved.”

“Decidedly.”

“He is wearing a black mourning band, though. Who's that tall tree with him?”

“Good question, Amerigo.”

Whoever the man was, he was an unkempt fellow, watching Castruccio Senso with an almost disturbing calm, his muscular arms anchored over his chest, the heel of one boot propped against the wall. A jagged red scar ran from the line of his cheekbone to the edge of his upper lip. Unkempt or no, he stood in controlled silence before Castruccio's shrill outbursts.

Evangelista served the food and returned with two pottery cups and a pitcher of wine. This was the red wine her father had yesterday purchased from Castruccio Senso, the wine merchant, she explained, nodding toward the far corner. “ 'Tis a Chianti from Montepulciano.”

Fleetingly, Guid'Antonio thought of Angelo Poliziano. Montepulciano was the poet's hometown, built so high in the Tuscan hills that when strolling its streets you walked in the clouds. “Castruccio's one of your father's suppliers?” Guid'Antonio said.