The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (38 page)

“Uncle Guid'Antonio?”

“Amerigo.” Guid'Antonio closed his eyes a moment. It was his angel nephew, backlit by the sun pouring down on Piazza Ognissanti with Dog drooling at his heels.

“Luigi's fine now,” Amerigo said. “I'm happy you sent me to check on him. He was crying in his bed. What have you learned here?”

“Abbot Ughi is in Rome.”

“Rome! And now?”

“Let's—” Guid'Antonio glanced back at Sandro's fresco of Saint Augustine, frowning, his eyes traveling up the length of the painting. “Amerigo,” he said, advancing toward the church wall, “open the front door far as it will go. Yes, look there, just beneath our coat of arms.”

“Where? Oh, some lines scribbled in the saint's geometry book. In the shadows, I hadn't seen them before.”

“I had. But in shadow, as you say.” Guid'Antonio squinted. And read the lines aloud.

“Is Brother Martino anywhere about?”

“Brother Martino just slipped out!”

“Slipped out where?”

Where, indeed? Guid'Antonio hardly dared breathe, lest he wake to find himself not in Ognissanti, but home, swimming up from a dream featuring clues painted at the top of frescos, and how ridiculously improbable was that?

Hoping against hope, heart pounding rapidly, he read the fourth and final line:

“Through the Prato Gate for a breath of fresh air!”

Martin had been running in that direction, yes. “Amerigo,” Guid'Antonio said softly, “Alessandro Botticelli could hold the key to Brother Martin's whereabouts. Please God, we'll find our neighbor in his house.”

Those golden eyes.

“You've discovered the writing,” Sandro said, fixing Guid'Antonio with a wide yellow stare. “It was lightly meant, with no harm done to the commission.”

“Clever, too,” Guid'Antonio said.

“I knew if anyone ever saw those lines, it would be you.” Sandro cocked an eyebrow. “It was only after including them I realized my little jest might seem inappropriate.” He smiled.

Amerigo said: “Or even sacrilegious.”

“Even that,” Sandro said.

“Is that why you were nervous when we came to your shop the other day?” Amerigo said.

Sandro conceded the point with a nod of the head. “Amerigo, you are a sharp knife, as always.”

“What did you see the last day you were employed in Ognissanti?” Guid'Antonio said.

Sandro glanced at his apprentices, three boys gilding, drawing, tracing. “I was almost finished with your wall when this monk, a certain Brother Martino as it turned out, came flying from the sacristy, feverish and yelling.”

“Yelling?” Guid'Antonio said.

“That he had defiled Ognissanti. He didn't want to live.”

“Defiled Ognissanti?” Amerigo straightened. “How?”

“What else happened?” Guid'Antonio said.

“He fell before the Virgin, sobbing, claiming he had brought God down on our heads. By ‘our,’ I took it he meant Florence. He said he was Satan's brother.”

“That is a bit much,” Amerigo said.

Sandro's puckered brow indicated he disagreed. “Brother Martin believed everything he said. The word
murder
flew from his lips.”

“Murder?”
Guid'Antonio and Amerigo said.

“Who was murdered?” Guid'Antonio said.

Grim-faced, Sandro shook his head. “That he did not say.”

“Why didn't you tell Palla about this? Or me?”

“You didn't ask. How should I know it was important? Anyhow, the boy was overwrought, no more, no less. Murder? No.”

Guid'Antonio massaged his temples, thinking. “The other monks chased him—Paolo Dolci and little Ferdinando.”

“They did.”

“What did they say? Besides the exchange you jotted down for all posterity to read?”

“You mean till someone paints over the fresco or cuts a door in the wall?” Sandro laughed sourly. “They called loudly to him, or rather, Brother Paolo did: the tall, pretty one with the silver hair. Tonsured, sadly. Paolo seemed to think Martino had committed some particularly vile sin. His concern appeared to be that if Brother Martino ran off, the abbot would have his head.”

Amerigo snorted. “Most like he already did.”

“So,” Guid'Antonio said. “Martin thought, or thinks, he committed some grievous wrong. Paolo does as well, but you don't?”

“I don't want to think it,” Sandro said.

“The question remains, run where?” Guid'Antonio said. “Pisa? Lucca? Straight into the sea? I saw Martino run toward the Prato Gate, but that particular gate leads everywhere.”

A light dawned in Sandro's eyes. “That's what you want to know? Where Brother Martino went that day?”

“Yes.”

Sandro glanced at his apprentices' bent heads and the candles burning around the shop, adding a whisper of light to the dim illumination offered by the open windows. “Seems smaller to me every year. Messer Guid'Antonio,” he ventured softly.

“Yes.”

“I want to go to Rome.”

“Yes, yes, to paint the chapel for the Pope.”

“You remember.”

“I remember everything. Including the new building in the Vatican. And its naked walls.”
And you—and Leonardo da Vinci—nattering about how it is the end of the world if you don't go there immediately and leave your painterly marks upon them.

“Those who go will need a strong recommendation from Lorenzo. You could whisper my name in his ear.”

“I could,” Guid'Antonio said.

“You'll tell no one else what I'm about to say? For I have no wish to bring trouble to Brother Martino or any of ours in Ognissanti.”

“Of course I won't.”

“Peretola,” Sandro said.

“Peretola?” Guid'Antonio stiffened. “That's the Vespucci family seat.”

“I know. And Peretola was the last word I heard on Brother Martin's lips.”

“Yes, I know Martino Leone,” Niccolò Vespucci said.

Guid'Antonio and Amerigo were in Niccolò's tavern in Peretola a short distance from Florence, having hastily saddled Flora and Bucephalus and ridden hard through the Prato Gate. “I know the boy's family, at least. The Leones keep a farm nearby. Their son, this Martino Leone, came home, oh, a good two weeks ago now. Left the church, probably in disgrace, but his family took him back willingly. Not every son makes a monk.”

Two weeks. Guid'Antonio smiled to himself. Two weeks ago was when Martino bumped into him in the street.

“Thank God for that,” Amerigo said. “I would not want to enter the church myself, though I believe Uncle Giorgio hoped I might.” He fanned himself, his face dripping sweat, then gulped the Chianti his uncle Niccolò Vespucci had poured for him and his kinsman, Guid'Antonio. Seated at one of the tavern's many tables, with a plate of cheese and fruit alongside a plate of
zucchini fritti
, eggplant fried in olive oil then sprinkled with parsley, spread before them, Guid'Antonio wiped his hands on his pants and casually said, “Do you think Martino's still there? At the Leone farm, I mean?” Please, God, please.

“Where else would he go?” Niccolò poured more wine from the carafe.

“Did—does he have a young woman with him?” Amerigo said.

“A young woman?” Niccolò fluttered his hand. “What family would allow such indecency as that?”

“None, surely,” Amerigo said.

They asked for directions to the Leone farm; Niccolò Vespucci told them the way; and then as quickly as they had come, Guid'Antonio and Amerigo were off and gone yet again.

In the fields, the apple and pear trees dripped with maturing fruit. Bees buzzed beneath the sun, buried themselves in wild flowers, and returned to their hives with pollen. Crickets sang ceaselessly. A wooden cart rattled along the road, its load a basket of ripe cherries. The old man pushing the cart waved as Guid'Antonio and Amerigo rode by. “Can things be looking up?” Amerigo said, waving back. “All seems well here.”

“We can hope.” In a few weeks, the sun would scorch the green meadows stretching out on either side of them, bleaching the grass into the thin yellow shade of straw.

They found Martino Leone gathering root vegetables in the narrow terraces surrounding the Leone farmhouse. A young girl walking down the road with a string of dead pigeons in her hand had directed them here. Roasted, the birds' meat would fill several bellies. Crushed, their bones would yield a hearty soup stock.

Martino started when he saw the two riders approaching. He glanced toward the stone house. The windows were open and empty. The mutt lounging in the door didn't lift its head. Everything in Martino's manner shouted, “Run!”

“No,” Guid'Antonio said, sliding from the saddle. “We want only to talk. You've nothing to fear.” For now.

Martino hesitated and approached them heavily, as if his feet were weighed down with stones. He held out his hands, crossed at the wrists, waiting to have them bound. “Take me to the Stinche. Or to Abbot Ughi. Whoever sent you, I'm your prisoner now.”

Guid'Antonio gave Martino an appraising look: glossy black hair, a remarkably beautiful face, a face that might have been drawn by Botticelli himself. He said, “For what crime, pray tell?”

“Murder. Cowardice.”

Guid'Antonio took in the trembling, slender hands, newly calloused and raw. When had they ever toiled? Not in Ognissanti, certainly. Not at hard labor, at any rate. He said, “No one sent me. I'm neither the church nor the police.”

“You are both,” Martino said. “I know who you are. I defiled Ognissanti. Your place of worship.”

“Defiled it how? Why did you leave there?”

“Because they killed her. Camilla,” Martino said, her name soft on his lips.

Guid'Antonio's heart picked up a pace. “They?” he said.

“The Turkish Infidels. Because of me! And caused the Virgin Mary painting to weep, all, all because of me.” Hot tears streaked Martino's dusty cheeks.

“Holy hell,” Amerigo said, “you take a lot on yourself.”

“I repeat, Martin Leone: how? And why?” Guid'Antonio said.

“Because of our sins. Me, a monk, and her, a married lady. We couldn't help ourselves. We were in love. I love her still.”

Amerigo gave Guid'Antonio a look from beneath half-lowered lids:
I knew it.

“And this in Ognissanti?” Guid'Antonio said.

Martino swiped at the tears on his cheeks. “Yes, in one chapel after another when she came to say her prayers.”

“And had them answered,” Amerigo said.

“Where is everyone?” Guid'Antonio said, glancing around. Deserted road, empty meadows and fields.

“The market fair a short way down from here. Vegetables, fruit.”

“And you didn't go?”

“I told you I'm a coward. I neither want to see anyone nor to be seen.”

“Nor to be caught. You're out of luck today,” Amerigo said.

Guid'Antonio indicated the stone steps leading into the house. “Let's sit down.”

This they did, the old dog shuffling to the narrow shade of a plane tree. “You left Ognissanti a few days after word came the Turks had kidnapped Camilla and the painting began to weep.”

Martino covered his face with his hands, sobbing. “Yes. Why did God punish her instead of me? I've asked it over and over, but have no answer. But this—” He thumped his chest. “The pain in my heart is my eternal punishment. Camilla's sweet and good. But I—I had lust in my heart. God is punishing me. He's leveling his righteous fury on all Tuscany because of me.”

His gaze slid to Guid'Antonio. “The interdict still stands?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Mary!”

“You believe Camilla's dead?” Guid'Antonio said.

“Naturally. Her nurse came back to Florence and said—”

“We know what her nurse said. Have you any news at all from town?”

“Why should I? I don't care what happens there anymore.”

Guid'Antonio narrowed his eyes, watching him closely. “You might care about this: Castruccio Senso is dead.”

Martino whipped around on the step. “Camilla's husband? Dead? Good. How?”

“Murdered,” Guid'Antonio said.

“Murdered?” Martino gasped, licking his lips, blinking rapidly. “Don't look at me for this. I despised Castruccio Senso, but I never would kill him. But had I done that early on, we could have—”

His voice sharp, Guid'Antonio said, “You could have done nothing.” Beyond the hot passions released in the murky shadows of the church, Martino Leone and Camilla Rossi da Vinci had had no choices open to them. As Martino had said, they were a monk and a married lady. Where would they go? How would they live once they arrived there?

“How did Castruccio die?” Martino said, his words a dry whisper in his mouth.

“A burglary. In his house,” Guid'Antonio said vaguely.

“Then may he burn in the hottest corner of hell. Surely, I'll see him there.” Martino shook his head in wonder. “If it had happened differently, him killed and her not going to the baths, then we—”

They left Martin Leone like that, on the stone step alone, building an airy castle of maybes and what-ifs, Guid'Antonio content to let him do so if it eased the fellow's tortured soul. He thought about the baths, the nonexistent reservation, Castruccio Senso's murder, and the ill-starred lovers, and in his heart he still resisted the notion God decided everything.

They rode home in the early evening through an atmosphere perfumed with the ripe, hot scent of fig trees and fennel, and on through the Prato Gate. In the Vespucci garden, Maria ran to him, her smile markedly brighter than he had seen it in the five days since her mother's burial. “Oh!” She stepped back, pretending to shudder. “You're all sweaty.”

“Enjoy,” he said, smiling back at her.

“Guid'Antonio!”

“I thought you liked me this way.”

“I do, but people can hear you. Where have you been all day?”

“Buena sera,”
Amerigo said to Maria, grinning, and went on into the kitchen for a late supper.

To Verrocchio and Company. To Ognissanti Church. To Sandro's
bottega
just around the corner. “To Peretola,” Guid'Antonio said.
Turks
, he thought.
A missing girl. A weeping painting. A husband murdered.

“Did you learn anything?”

“Some.” She looked young and pretty in the twilight, even in her mourning gown and veils, black, and even more black silk enveloping her all around. How did she breathe?