The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (29 page)

“Must you always answer every question with a question?” she flared. “I know you'll leave again. It's just a matter of when Lorenzo demands you go on some mission or other for him.”

Mama Mia
. He said, “I've done my duty as an ambassador, Maria. Several times, as you have already pointed out. Now it's time for me to tend my house. Antonio can't handle the family business without my help, and Amerigo's help, too, particularly now their father is in San Felice and unable to lend a hand.” He brushed her hair from her face and kissed the skin at her temple. “I'll not be leaving Florence anymore.” Except, mayhap, for short trips, he reminded himself.

“What about Lorenzo?”

He sat up against the headboard. “What about him?” he said.

“You'll tend
him
. You have obligations to him. Made all the more serious because you're cohorts, and he depends on you.”

“As does our government,” Guid'Antonio said. “That's my—” He had started to say, “That's my life, Maria.” Instead: “That's my lot in this life, Maria. But I don't have to leave Florence to serve her. Not if it means leaving you again for any length of time. And Giovanni.”

One corner of his mind had already tripped down the street and across town to the Golden Lion district in the San Giovanni quarter of Florence. It was still very early morning. He meant to go to the Medici Palace today and speak with Lorenzo and Giuliano's mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni. But would Lucrezia receive him? Once upon a time, the prospect of visiting Lucrezia would have filled him with immense joy; he liked Lucrezia and relished her company. She was kind and exceedingly intelligent. Over the years, they had become close acquaintances. Now the thought of facing her twisted in his gut like a sharp blade. Because of him Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici had lost Giuliano, her beautiful young son.

“What is it?” Maria said, her face watchful as she sat up beside him in the bed.

“Nothing. Maria, did you ever notice Camilla Rossi at Mass in Ognissanti?”

If Maria considered the question an odd one to ask at this particular moment, she hid it well. “She seemed a sweet girl. But sad.”

“Sad? How?”

“Her movements were melancholy, and she looked around frequently, as if she had lost something.”

“What, I wonder?”

Maria smiled. “Why is a girl, or woman, ever sad or watchful, Guid'Antonio, if not because of an inconstant lover? But, of course, Camilla was married.”

Of course, yes, with no hint of wantonness about her, according to those he had asked about her character—Lorenzo, Evangelista—she was a proper, even timid, girl.

“I have something for you,” he said. A necklace of pearls painstakingly chosen from Paris's finest jeweler, a man Ameliane Vely had recommended highly. Beautiful in their simplicity, their color a delicate peach blush, the pearls would glow against Maria's luminous skin.

He retrieved the pearls from the casket locked in the drawer beneath the bed and presented the packet to her, smiling as she gasped with pleasure, plucking the necklace from its black velvet wrapping. “Guid'Antonio, they're beautiful!” She twisted up her hair, and he clasped the pearls around her throat, symbols of purity, according to the Romans, the Greeks, and Ameliane Vely, who had helped Guid'Antonio choose them.

He kissed the tender flesh at the back of Maria's neck, and she laughed, shivering, fingering the costly beads. “They feel cold against my skin.”

He drew back.

“Oh, no, they're lovely!” she said. “We need more light to see them properly.”

She rose, naked, sweeping aside the damp, tangled sheets with one hand, and replaced the spent tallow candles beside the bed with a single tall one of creamy beeswax. Suspended like precious jewels in the wax were cloves for affection, leaves of jasmine for the sweet perfume of happiness, and lemon verbena, meaning,
You have bewitched me
. The sizable candle burned with flames of pure light, suggesting the unquenchable, the utterly enchanting. Swarms of bees had traveled long distances collecting nectar from clover and other wildflowers to produce not only honey, but also the honeycombs that had yielded this single candle of costly beeswax.

“There's a dear candle,” Guid'Antonio said, smiling. “Where did you get it?”

“Lorenzo brought it from Naples.”

In the stuffy warmth of the bedchamber, Guid'Antonio felt a sudden chill. “He did.”

“Yes, he came home with gifts for his closest friends.” Maria unclasped the pearls, rewrapped them, and slid back into the bed, her hair a sea of black flowing over her shoulders. They made love quickly, panting in the slippery heat, Guid'Antonio's blood pulsing as he kissed her feverishly, thinking,
One day I will eat you alive.

Afterward, with Maria asleep in his arms, he lay awake in a sultry haze, watching the candle's steady flame.

The church bells tolled at dawn. He stood at the bedroom window, listening to a melody of sound as monks across the city and in the surrounding hills and valleys gripped strong ropes woven in Pisa, arms pumping, faces tilted toward the day's first glimmering rays of sun. From the southeast, a particularly sweet, ringing peal echoed down from San Miniato al Monte.

He rested his hands on the stone windowsill and cast his gaze toward the church, considering the decapitated Greek soldier who had taken up his head and flown with it across the Arno to the hill where he wanted his head buried with his body. What happened in that old monastery at night? Did the monks hear Saint Miniato's ghost rustling in the nave as his footstep skimmed the images of lions and lambs inlaid in the marble floor? Did they hear the long-dead soldier descend step-by-step into the crypt, where human corpses lay moldering amongst dust and bones? Did they hear the sighs of young lovers made bold by passion, heightened enough to risk slipping into the unlit chapels under the cover of night, the youngsters' feelings for one another thwarted by arranged marriages, most often between girls of thirteen and fourteen and prosperous, withered guildsmen? Most men in Florence did not marry until their late twenties or even well afterward, hence Amerigo's single status. The city teemed with budding, married maidens and hot young bachelors. The secret corners and shadows of churches made lively meeting places. This Guid'Antonio Vespucci knew with certainty.

More bells rang, cocks crowed loudly. He glanced toward Maria, sleeping in their rumpled bed. Her face appeared peaceful and unguarded. He watched himself walk over and kiss her on the mouth, her perfect lover and trustworthy friend. In addition to Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici, he meant to speak with Luca Landucci today, to see if the druggist was making any progress on how the Virgin's tears might have been manufactured, not once, but twice now, although they had since gone dry, praise God and all the saints. While at the Sign of the Stars, he would buy Maria a bouquet tied with ribbons and scented with dried herbs. Amaranth for unfailing love, lavender for devotion, and oregano—
You add spice to my life
. No lie there.

His brow puckered into a frown. Spice; was that the essential ingredient his nature lacked? Was he too solemn, too intense? Too—dare he think it?—
removed?
Any man, whether cloth dyer, tailor, or lawyer and diplomat, could be hardworking, but cheerful and lively, as well: light and dark in equal measure. Couldn't he? Spice. What might he accomplish then? What, if he insisted, demanded, claimed,
took
, as other men did?

He started to the bed and heard a quiet knock at the door. Barefoot, he walked over and eased up the iron bolt.

Cesare regarded him from the depths of the hall, his face livid in the yellow glare of a solitary torch. Guid'Antonio stepped into the passage, the soles of his feet cool on the stone floor. “Maria's mother?”

“Yes. During the night.”

Guid'Antonio crossed himself. “How did you come to know?”

“Olimpia Pasquale came to me disguised as a boy.”

“Olimpia?
You?
” Guid'Antonio said.

“Ummm. She makes a good courier.” Cesare pursed his lips roundly. “Never fear. The dead lady's nurse is there with Giovanni.”

Behind Guid'Antonio, Maria stirred restlessly in the bed. “I'll be down in a moment,” he said.

Cesare faded along the corridor. In the shadows at the top of the stairs, he checked. “The Pope has spies watching constantly to see how Florence treats his interdict. In the coming days, all eyes will be on you.”

Not a child christened, not a couple married within the walls of any holy sanctuary, not one corpse buried in blessed ground. In the end, it was Guid'Antonio Vespucci who was in the Pope's glaring light. He had known he would be, all along.

Beneath his fingers, Maria's flesh tingled with warmth, with life. Slowly, she came up from sleep. Within the instant, she knew. Her arm fell hard back upon the bed, as if he had bent over and placed a heavy stone in her hand.

At the washbasin, he dampened a cloth to cool her fiery cheeks. He would have wagered his soul that on this day she would cry fiercely, rant, and throw pottery and silver on the floor in a protest of rage and grief. She did not. Instead, she curled on her side in the bed, as if by making herself small, she might disappear into the sheets.

The mattress sank beneath his weight. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I was fond of your mother.” They remained like this for what felt to him a very long time, Guid'Antonio aware that elsewhere the wheels of Florence were turning forward with the news of Alessandra del Vigna's passing. Town criers would add her name to their lists of the newly deceased. Speculation concerning Guid'Antonio Vespucci's plans for her funeral would grow by leaps and bounds.

A second soft knock sounded at the door. It was Cesare's mother, Domenica, with bread, pesto butter, wine, and cheese. Silently, with a nod to Guid'Antonio, Domenica came and went from the bedchamber. Shadows receded into far corners and sunshine streamed through the open windows, washing the bedchamber in a blaze of bright white light. Below in Piazza Ognissanti, a horseman clattered past, and a milkman shouted out his wares.

“Guid'Antonio?”

He started. “Yes?” On impulse he bent down and kissed Maria's shoulder.

“Now I am completely alone,” she said and fell, exhausted, back to sleep.

Guid'Antonio stared at his wife. Surely, she meant that with her mother's passing, she was bereft of her natural family, her father, brothers, sisters and now, her beloved mother. All, all gone from her forever, while here in the natural world, she had him and Giovanni.

Why, then, did he feel as if he had plunged into an icy lake?

Completely alone. Yes. He knew how she felt.

Weeping painting or no, it seemed to Guid'Antonio everything had been leading up to this: Alessandra del Vigna's illness, her death, and his public response to it in the eyes of Sixtus IV and the city. There had been religious rites in Florence these last two years, quietly and humbly held. Tiptoeing disobedience. In the opinion of the town, it was men like Guid'Antonio Vespucci and his cronies who trod the perilous line between heaven and hell, more so than everyone else. Men who deserved to be struck down for mocking not only Rome, but God Himself. God the Almighty, capable of floods and fire, of plagues, and of casting people into the hands of their enemies.

He could arrange a private Mass and burial for Alessandra del Vigna in Santissima Annunziata, Alessandra's family church. This would defy Sixtus IV's dictates, but meekly, without commotion, a semi-nod to the Pope's authority. Or he could honor the lady's death with all the public display his wife's mother deserved: a solemn procession of powerful men through the city with caparisoned horses and Vespucci family banners displayed.

Guid'Antonio Vespucci: Disobedient. Rebellious. Proud. Was he unafraid? No. God aside, there was the possibility of assassination. Why play with a weeping painting and hangings writ in blood, when all it would take to change Florence forever was an arrow through the heart of the man, or men, who walked together through the city's slow, twisting streets from Santa Croce to Santissima Annunziata? Guid'Antonio and his kinsmen, along with Lorenzo de' Medici, Chairman Tommaso Soderini, Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala, the Capponis, and the Pandolfinis: the glorious, longtime leaders of the Florentine Republic.

He glanced at Maria in their bed. In a moment, he would leave her sleeping and tread downstairs into the garden, where he would find Amerigo and Cesare waiting to do his bidding. First he would instruct Cesare to fetch Annunziata's infirmarian to confirm the lady's death and to prepare her body for her entombment in Annunziata's church crypt. Then he would ask Amerigo to tell Lorenzo and the Lord Priors he planned to observe all the public ceremonial funeral display befitting his kinswoman.

In two days' time, before all the people of Florence, he would put heaven to the test. Risking himself, his family and his friends, he would challenge God head-on.

Guid'Antonio squinted up at his nephews' black-clad figures moving against the sky, shading his eyes against the glare as they struggled to take the litter bearing Alessandra del Vigna's corpse from the hands of the neighborhood religious fraternity and settle it onto the funeral wagon's scarlet-draped platform. A light breeze stirred the lady's gossamer veil and the sleeves of her crimson velvet gown, distributing the perfume of white roses and the lady's stink across Piazza Santa Croce.

The four horses hitched to the wagon stirred restlessly, glossy black coats and decorative metal trappings glinting, expensive and beautiful, for the world to see and envy. Resplendent in rich brown tunic and hose, Cesare waited alone in front of the caparisoned animals, poised to lead the funeral procession on its lengthy journey to the Holy Church of the Annunciation, Santissima Annunziata, when Guid'Antonio gave the signal.

Shoemakers and laborers who worked for the dyers and finishers on Corso dei Tintori lurked in the doorways of shops and houses, men, women, and children taking stock of the lithe shield bearer, the proud horses, the scarlet-draped catafalque and the white robes worn by the men of the confraternity, all in direct contrast to Guid'Antonio and his nephews' smothering black cloaks. These were voluminous, hooded affairs, each sewn from fourteen arm-lengths of cloth, or more, and worth enough money to put soup in the workers' bellies for a year.