The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (37 page)

“Good for Sandro,” Leonardo replied neutrally.

“Leonardo whiles away the hours dreaming up ideas for Florence's future defense: canals, weapons, all manner of outrageous machines,” Andrea said.

“Not outrageous. Only time-consuming,” Leonardo said. “Given the war and now the Turks breathing down our necks, someone needs to think about homeland security. Messer Guid'Antonio, do you know how it goes with the Pope's new chapel in the Vatican?”

“I've no idea,” Guid'Antonio said, not wanting to go into it and thinking of Sandro, who had asked him the same question at Botticelli and Company.

“Oh,” Leonardo said. “That would be a good commission.”

“If you don't mind working for the devil in Saint Peter's,” Amerigo said.

Glancing away from him, Leonardo said, “Along with all the rest, Verrocchio will no doubt win the right to do the latest sculpture planned by the Venetians.” He indicated the drawings on the table.

“What is it?” Guid'Antonio said. Time enough in a moment to get down to the true nature of his business with Leonardo da Vinci.

“An equestrian monument of Bartolomeo Colleoni. Big!” Andrea said. “Means traveling north. How I long for the days when Sandro and Leonardo were in this shop together, frescoes, portraits, wedding chests. Easy work.”

“The air wasn't always so quiet when Botticelli and I were apprentices here,” Leonardo said, smiling again, “and any man like our Andrea who can mount a sphere and cross atop the Cathedral dome as easily as he paints tournament banners can do anything.”

“Having Leonardo around sounds a good arrangement for you both,” Amerigo said. “His help is a boon to you, Andrea, and it keeps him off the streets.”

Hot color crept into the flesh of Leonardo's delicate countenance, and his smile faded. He adjusted the front of his tunic, pulling the hem tighter beneath the wide leather belt encircling his hips, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear. Andrea looked appalled. The silence was deafening.

“Don't mind him,” Guid'Antonio said, wanting to throttle his nephew. “Amerigo's memory is sharp when it comes to his grandfather.” Amerigo's comment had been a neat double slur, referring both to the public charge of sodomy an unidentified accuser had made against Leonardo a few years back, and to the long ago afternoon when Leonardo chased Amerigo the Elder through town, whispering to himself and drawing hastily in his sketchbook to capture the frightened old man's ancient likeness on paper.

Leonardo relaxed a bit. “I knew my fascination with his grandfather displeased your nephew, Messer Guid'Antonio. That's why I gave one of those rough sketches to him. Though I thought he might tear it up in retaliation.” He offered Amerigo a conciliatory smile. “Better than a knife in the heart, I suppose.”

“No,” Amerigo said, his anger diffused, though his cheeks still appeared warm. “The drawing was much too good to destroy. I still have it.”

Andrea looked around from one to the other of them, tapping his fingers on the table, clearly wondering what in hell the Vespuccis were actually doing in his shop.

“Leonardo, you're from Vinci,” Guid'Antonio said.

“Born there, yes. But I've lived in Florence almost twenty-eight years, since I came here as a boy.”

“What do you know of Jacopo Rossi da Vinci?”

“Jacopo? Oh. The father of the girl—”

“Who is still missing, yes,” Guid'Antonio said, leaning forward, motioning with his hands.

“Never met the man,” Leonardo said. “Nor the girl, either.”

Guid'Antonio grunted his disappointment, aware Andrea and Leonardo were staring at him. He didn't care. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. But my uncle Francesco da Vinci might know Jacopo,” Leonardo said. “Francesco's still on the farm where I spent my early years. If it's information about Jacopo Rossi you want, I'll send Francesco a message asking what he can find out about him.”

“No. Or, anyway, not yet.” Guid'Antonio must go to Vinci himself. Soon.

Then what? Leonardo's eyes asked, and Andrea cleared his throat loudly. He had work to do. So did Leonardo.

“Leonardo, how would you go about making a painting weep?” Guid'Antonio said.

Andrea stepped back. “The Virgin Mary in Ognissanti? Surely, the hand of God has been in that.”

Leonardo's mouth quirked. “I could find a thousand ways.”

“I'll settle for one.” Guid'Antonio turned back to Andrea. “The hand of God, you say? You believe the tears, intermittent as they are, are an indictment of Lorenzo?”

“Of course not. No,” Andrea del Verrocchio, a craftsman commissioned by the Medici for decades, said.

“Apply a dry compound of a dead animal's blood to the eyes, then squirt the painting with liquid,” Leonardo said. “Or—”

“Wouldn't that make tears of blood?” Guid'Antonio said.

“Absolutely,” Leonardo said.

“God's knees, don't think it,” Amerigo said.

“But if it's translucent tears you want?” Leonardo raised his brow questioningly.

“I don't want them, but I have them,” Guid'Antonio said. True, the Virgin Mary hadn't wept in well over a week, but who knew when the tears might begin again, and him no closer to exposing the perpetrator today than on the Monday he first heard about them?

Smiling, Leonardo said, “I understand.”

“He'll be inside Ognissanti this very night studying the painting from every angle known to man,” Amerigo said, leading the way back toward the Unicorn district through shadowed stone passages and skinny side streets.

“Let us hope,” Guid'Antonio said.

“Did you notice the emblem 'broidered around the neck of his tunic?”

“I did.” Leonardo's emblem was a plow in an oval setting with the motto
Impedimento non mi piega. No obstacle will stop me
. Guid'Antonio prayed not. He heard Dog panting behind him. “Go on,” he said. “Get back.”

“The tunic was made of fine cotton, too,” Amerigo said. “But then, his family's wealthy and cares not he's a bastard. God, it's hot today.”

The hairs prickled on the back of Guid'Antonio's neck, a warning to take care. Why? He glanced over his shoulder before starting with Amerigo across a sunny piazza. Despite the heat, alms seekers loitered near the shops, stretching their hands out to passersby. People with wooden buckets crowded toward the public well, sweating, fanning themselves, and awaiting their turn at the spout.

There was something menacing here. Something hit Guid'Antonio in the back, hard. In the next instant a warm breath brushed his cheek, and a familiar voice whispered urgently in his ear, “Brother Martino, and him still gone!”

“Uncle!” Amerigo whipped around, brandishing his knife. A woman screamed. People scattered. Empty buckets struck the ground and rattled across the square.

Dog had already launched his massive body toward the darkdraped figure hurrying toward a nearby alley. “You! Dog!” Guid'Antonio shouted. “No!”

The animal jerked around, looking askance at him, confused. “Good dog! Stay! It's only Brother Paolo,” Guid'Antonio told Amerigo, excited, his heart beating rapidly. “He meant no harm. He had something to tell me.” Amazing. In the blink of an eye, they were alone in the square. So much for people coming to their rescue. He glanced at the
cane corso Italiano
. The dog's attempt to protect him was pure instinct on its part, nothing more.

“Never. How do you know? That it was Paolo, I mean.” Amerigo sheathed his weapon, breathing hard. “That fellow was uncommonly tall, but his cowl did hide his face.”

“His voice,” Guid'Antonio said.

Perplexed, Amerigo said, “Paolo didn't care if you understood it was him? Why risk having me knife him rather than just coming out with—what was it, by the way?”

“He said, ‘Brother Martino, and him still gone!’ With an exclamation point.” Guid'Antonio raised his eyebrows, thinking about this as they started walking, quickly now.

“But we knew Martin was gone,” Amerigo said. “Didn't we? He's the lout who plowed into us in Ognissanti and kept running the first day we were back in town.”

“Indeed. But we didn't know he hadn't come back, did we? And Brother Paolo risked everything to tell me that. Why, Nephew?”

“The mind reels,” Amerigo said.

They threaded south toward the Arno through the Ox and the Black Lion districts, stepping every so often into a piazzetta where sunlight illuminated the buildings, transforming their ochre facades into russet and gold stone. Thoughtfully, as they passed into a bleak passageway, Amerigo said, “In church last week the novice Ferdinando Bongiovi swore—”

“The
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
is weeping for Martin's sins, yes, yes. But now the question is where Martino may be found. And why he ran from church in the first place.”

“I think we're sidetracked,” Amerigo said.

“Then don't think,” Guid'Antonio said.

“If I were you, I'd be asking why chatty Brother Paolo didn't tell you Brother Martin's whereabouts rather than continuing this game of hit and run.”

“Because clearly Brother Paolo doesn't know and is hoping I'll find out.”

Outside Ognissanti Church, street urchins played and dogs scavenged for vegetables and fruit oozing with flies. Guid'Antonio opened the church door, glancing sideways down the street, watching Amerigo unlatch the Vespucci courtyard gate and disappear into the garden. Meanwhile, Dog lay curled into a huge ball at the church entrance with his nose resting on his massive paws, prepared to snooze and wait for Guid'Antonio to come back out.

What persistence. Stepping inside the church, Guid'Antonio breathed deeply and glanced around. The sanctuary was quiet, with only three or four people praying at the main altar. Behind him, the door opened, admitting a crack of light. The two women who entered craned their necks for a better view of Sandro's
Saint Augustine
before continuing past Guid'Antonio to the church front. A figure swathed in black crept toward him through the shadowed nave. It was Brother Battista Bellincioni, the doughy almoner of the church, and him ever on the prowl.

Guid'Antonio narrowed his eyes. Was Bellincioni the culprit who had manufactured the tears? If so, why had he stopped? On orders from Abbot Ughi, who feared they might get caught, now Guid'Antonio Vespucci was on the case? He smiled to himself, acknowledging his own sense of self-importance.

“Messer Vespucci,” Brother Bellincioni said, sneering. “You again.”

“And you. You look undressed without the collection box in your hands.”

“You look undressed without your costly red cloak,” Bellincioni said.

“I would speak with Brother Martin.”

A shuttered look closed the monk's face. “There is no Brother Martin here.”

“Not anymore, you mean.”

Bellincioni blinked. “I mean there is no such person here.”

“The novice Ferdinando Bongiovi, then.” Guid'Antonio's little talker.

Bellincioni snapped his fingers, his expression gloating. “Gone!”

A sliver of fear slid up Guid'Antonio's throat. “Gone where?” Surely they wouldn't hurt the boy.

“I wouldn't know,” Bellincioni said.

Quite possibly, this was true. Probably the worst thing that had happened to young Ferdinando was that he had been sent to another church somewhere outside the town walls, squirreled away to keep him from blabbing about Brother Martino and his whereabouts. All three young brothers of the Humiliati Order, Paolo, Martino, and Ferdinando, held the key to some secret Ognissanti did not want revealed. Guid'Antonio was certain of it now.

He hardly dared say it: “And Brother Paolo Dolci?” Could Paolo have reached here so soon after bumping into him? Yes. He would have run, run, run, timid and scared as a mouse.

“Unavailable,” Bellincioni said.

“He had better not come to any harm. Nor any of them.”

“We protect our own,” Bellincioni said.

“From what?”

“Themselves,” Bellincioni hissed.

“Abbot Ughi, then.”

“Gone. To Rome.” A smile snaked across Bellincioni's lips. “To meet with the Pope.”

Sixtus IV. This was interesting. Guid'Antonio's eyes sought and found the Virgin Mary on the distant altar. The two women who had come into the church with him were kneeling before Mary's painted image. Ognissanti and the Pope in collusion over the tears did not seem such a stretch anymore. But it was not too much to say that the
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
was Florence's most revered icon. Would Abbot Ughi dare tamper with the painting? He thought of the Pope's support of Giuliano's murder and of the abbot's frosty stare. The tears meant money in the coffers and Lorenzo's reputation soiled. Two for one, and both men benefited, abbot and Pope.

He said: “Abbot Roberto Ughi can't stay in Rome forever, although it might be best for Florence if he did. Mind this, Bellincioni, playing with the Pope can be dangerous.”

“Playing?”
Bellincioni quailed. Recovering, his countenance sour and outraged, he turned without further words and scurried deep into the sanctuary.

Guid'Antonio glanced at the wall on his right side. In the gloom, the
Saint Augustine
—the old man's gold-and-white robe—jumped out at him. “Old fellow,” he said, noting the beseeching expression on the saint's face and how his eyes were turned toward heaven, seeking answers, “I know just how you feel.”

Near the sacristy, a shadow, watching Guid'Antonio, vanished.

Guid'Antonio's skin prickled. What would they have done with little Ferdinando? Would they have sent him home or, indeed, to another church? If Brother Paolo were still here, tucked away somewhere, did he fear some personal harm? Paolo had risked his neck by contacting Guid'Antonio out in the open just now, no matter how briefly. And where was Brother Martino? He and Camilla Rossi da Vinci disappeared. Camilla gone
before
the young, dark-haired monk, and then Camilla's horse, Tesoro, sent into the city.

One thing he did know: he must find Martino, if only because Brother Paolo Dolci desperately wanted him to do it and believed that he could.

A beam of light shone over Guid'Antonio's shoulder.

Startled, he glanced around. A dark shape hovered within the church door, its shadowed form surrounded by a halo of golden light. He strode forward, toward whatever good or evil stood waiting for him.