The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (42 page)

Long, lazy days and nights these, hot and fat with small worries and moments of intense satisfaction. Then everything had changed. The church bells had scarcely stopped ringing for the victorious Knights of Rhodes before news reached Florence that 14,000 Turks had landed at Otranto in southern Italy and slammed the small coastal town to its knees. Infidels chopped the archbishop and governor in halves, slaughtered 12,000 men, women, and children, and enslaved the remaining inhabitants.

Muslim armies on Italian soil
. Surely now, exactly as Lorenzo had predicted, the Ottomans would advance across the ankle of the Italian peninsula, ravage Naples, and march north to Rome, where they would plant the Holy Standard of Islam in the heart of the Vatican. Fueled by fear and outrage, Sixtus IV had called for all Italy to unite in the face of the common enemy and had then melted down his collection of finely wrought silver to help finance the coming battle. For his part, Prince Alfonso of Naples had abandoned Siena and scurried home to defend his future kingdom in southern Italy. Did it surprise Guid'Antonio when both Rome and Naples turned to Lorenzo for help? No. No.

In Lorenzo's name, the Florentine government had agreed to support their former enemies if Sixtus IV lifted the ban of excommunication against the city and if King Ferrante restored all the lands Florence had lost to Naples in the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy. Under the circumstances, what could Pope and king do but agree?

No surprise that in Florence the populace did a quick turnaround. How could they have been so mistaken? The Infidels weren't in Tuscany, but down south—a sure sign God was angry not with their Lorenzo de' Medici, but with King Ferrante and Pope Sixtus IV! Once again, Lorenzo was their shining hero, a man who knew how to recognize Fortune when he saw her and pin her to the ground. Once again—for the first time in thirty years—Italy was united, exactly as Lorenzo had vowed to Guid'Antonio it would be.

Wisely, Lorenzo had not addressed the suggestion whispered in Palazzo della Signoria that events couldn't have turned out better for him if he had orchestrated the Turkish invasion of Italy himself.

A brownish-purple cardinal lit on the icy finger of a nearby tree. The male, following his mate, landed in a feathery display of scarlet. Snow plopped on the ground. Guid'Antonio patted Flora's shoulder with gloved fingers. In November, he had been one of twelve Florentine ambassadors who had traveled to Rome to kneel at the Pope's feet in Saint Peter's to receive absolution on behalf of the people of Florence for sins they might possibly have committed against the Pope's person and office in the last two years.

Twelve distinguished Florentines in place of one Lorenzo de' Medici.

By that time, though, Guid'Antonio had already served on the committee of 240 handpicked citizens granted full powers to decide the reforms necessary for the good government of the city. Within a week of its creation, the committee had suspended the constitution and paved the way for sweeping changes in the Florentine government.

A wry smile lifted the corner of Guid'Antonio's mouth. There had been dissenters who had muttered phrases like “princely ambitions” and “a dangerous departure” when they understood reforming and strengthening the government meant strengthening the position of the Medici circle with Lorenzo at its core. But what would they prefer? Some other family lording it over the city? Some loose cannon?
Someone like the Pazzi family?
In truth, the creation of the
balìa
had passed the legislative councils by only one vote. Guid'Antonio took some comfort in that. The Florentine Republic remained a government of men who refused to let Tuscany be entirely ruled by any one man or family. Gowned in robes of flowing crimson cloth, they would argue, accuse, give sway, refuse, and cast their ballots before God and the people.

He took comfort in a good many things. In September, the hermit who seemed set to assassinate Lorenzo at Poggio a Caiano had failed, praise God in His infinite mercy. Guilty or not, the man had died after being questioned: the soles of his feet skinned, then burnt when his torturers in the Bargello held them in the fire till the fat dripped off. Guid'Antonio's kinsman, Piero Vespucci, was fortunate not to have suffered a similar fate. Instead, at Lorenzo's behest, Piero had been released from the Stinche, and a black mark thus removed from the Vespucci family name. This had come shortly after Guid'Antonio pledged to back Lorenzo's call for a
balìa.

And then in late October in Via di Pinti, Bartolomeo Scala, his wife, and their five daughters had celebrated the safe arrival of Maddalena Scala's sixth child, a boy.

They named him Giuliano.

Guid'Antonio stroked Flora's neck gently, grateful for the familiar presence of the solid animal, and inhaled a cold, calming breath. Seriously ill now, Nastagio Vespucci had given Amerigo his power of attorney; one day soon Amerigo would handle all Nastagio's legal obligations. At Guid'Antonio's request, since Amerigo would not be going to Rome this time around, Lorenzo had taken Amerigo into his service. Good. No matter where Guid'Antonio went or how long he was gone, he would have eyes and ears fixed on Via Larga.

He snugged his scarlet cape close around his body, thankful for the cloak's thick ermine lining. Flora whinnied and stamped, glancing around with a restless eye. Once Guid'Antonio turned toward the road, the blood would heat in his veins and his fingers would thaw. “Hush, Flora. Just another moment.”

Behind him he heard a scraping and
shhhussing
sound and twisted in the saddle. One of San Miniato's white-robed monks was making an icy path to the church well, carrying an axe, his formless figure ghostly against the frozen atmosphere. Pocking the snow with huge prints, a darker, fawn-colored shape bounded past the old religious and on around the church in pursuit of what? A squirrel or a rabbit? Guid'Antonio settled back around in the saddle.

Where had all this left him, a man on a mission for his own salvation? He gazed across the valley, where the cypress trees were skeletons furred with snow and a veil of white lay over the city. At Florence's heart, the Cathedral presided over all, its marble interior gathering the cold to its breast, while close by in Ognissanti, Sandro Botticelli's
Saint Augustine
raised his hoary countenance toward God, struggling to understand lightness and dark, compromise and truth. Guid'Antonio understood now he could not have saved Giuliano, even if he could have sprouted wings and flown across the sanctuary that cold April morning. What must be must be. This was life. This was history. In the end, he was a man whose head ruled his heart. So be it.

He touched the diplomatic pouch beneath his cloak and looked around, seeking his sole companion on his new journey. He made a half whistle and broke into a smile when the mighty
cane corso Italiano
barreled back around the monastery, slobbering, grinning, frisking in the snow, then shaking his giant body vigorously, the silver studs on his wide leather collar shining. What a dog!

“Come, Peritas. Unlike Alexander the Great, I doubt I'll conquer any cities and name them for you, but I can take you to Rome.” He turned Flora toward the icy road. And then with Peritas at his side and cold air blowing back his hair and the folds of his crimson cape, Attorney General Guid'Antonio Vespucci began the long road south to Rome.

“Too much knowing causes misery.”

From
A Wood of Love II
, by Lorenzo de' Medici

Guid'Antonio Vespucci (1436–1501) was the oldest son of Antonia Ugolini and Giovanni Vespucci. By the time of Guid'Antonio's birth, the Vespuccis ranked among Florence's leading families, with holdings in rental properties, vineyards, olive groves, silk shops, and wool. Like the sons of all wealthy Florentines, Guid'Antonio would have been educated in Latin, arithmetic, and logic. As a young man, in Bologna and Ferrara, he studied civil law, rhetoric and poetry, the latter two deemed essential for the Renaissance practice of diplomacy. For his profession, he chose Doctor of Law.

As Guid'Antonio once said, he believed in the maintenance of legal order and the utilization of the abilities of the cities' most able citizens. Thus, from the first days of his career, like his father before him, he supported the Medici family in its private administration of the democratic Florentine government. In his early thirties (when Lorenzo's father, Piero de' Medici, was the
de facto
, or unofficial, ruler of Florence), Guid'Antonio served as one of the Florentine Republic's nine Lord Priors (the state's highest-ranking council). From 1469 (the year of Piero de' Medici's death) onward, Guid'Antonio's close bond with Lorenzo saw them through Lorenzo's troubled ascendancy as the prince of the city until Lorenzo's untimely death in 1492 at the age of forty-three. During those years, Guid'Antonio and Lorenzo survived the Pazzi Conspiracy (1478) and the ensuing war, with Guid'Antonio traveling to Rome and France and back to Rome again as Florence's/Lorenzo's diplomatic agent.

When Guid'Antonio was about thirty-four, he married his second wife, Maria del Vigna, and, as in
The Sign of the Weeping Virgin
, they had a son, Giovanni. Of all his nephews, Guid'Antonio seems to have been particularly close with Amerigo Vespucci, who did, indeed, accompany Guid'Antonio to France as his secretary in October 1478, eventually spending almost two years with him at the court of King Louis XI. Back home in Florence, Amerigo went to work for Lorenzo, then for Lorenzo's cousin and former ward, Lorenzino de' Medici, finally sailing west and into the pages of history, while his uncle Guid'Antonio played his part as one of the most influential and powerful personages of his time until his death on Christmas Eve in 1501.

Together, they lived in an age when Italians already spoke of the “rinascimento,” an era in which a new spirit of rebirth in life, art, and literature prevailed. Nowhere was this more evident than in Florence, a city of about 50,000 souls at this time in history. Within the town's walls, Guid'Antonio and Amerigo rubbed elbows with their neighbors, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Toscanelli, and so many other Renaissance luminaries while at their heart there stood the controversial, charming, and brilliantly talented poet and statesman, Lorenzo de' Medici . . . justly called “The Magnificent.”

Many of the characters in
The Sign of the Weeping Virgin
are real people, and the story draws on major events in their lives. On 26 April 1478, in a plot driven by Pope Sixtus IV and his nephew, Girolamo Riario, Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini murdered Giuliano de' Medici in an attempt to rid Florence of its two unofficial heads of state. Given Lorenzo de' Medici's escape that bloody Sunday, the plot failed, and the course was set for war between Florence and Rome. Giuliano did leave behind a son named Giulio, the future Pope Clement VII. Lorenzo's son Giovanni became Pope Leo X.

Botticelli did finish his
Saint Augustine
in Ognissanti Church in the summer of 1480, just as Guid'Antonio and Amerigo returned home from Paris. Giorgio Vespucci commissioned the fresco; restorers discovered the dialogue Botticelli wrote at the top of the painting in recent times. Today in the church visitors may see the fresco, as well as Botticelli's tomb marked with the Filipepi family coat of arms in the floor of the Cappella San Pietro d'Alcantara in the south transcept. Botticelli's workshop and home was located on the side street near the Vespucci Palace and Spedale dei Vespucci, the Vespucci family hospital. The palace is no longer intact, but the hospital where Francesca Vernacci would have practiced medicine is still on Borg'Ognissanti near the church. Botticelli's
Primavera
, as well as other paintings by him, lives in Botticelli Hall in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The painting called the
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
resides in the Cathedral of S. M. All'Impruneta, in the small town of Impruneta, near Florence, and has done for centuries. In his diary (
A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516
), druggist Luca Landucci describes the painting and the miracles it performed for the good of the people. Luca notes proudly how his brother, Gostanzo, won the
palio
riding his horse called
“il Draghetto”
(the Little Dragon) on several occasions.

Readers familiar with Florence will notice how in some instances I have used present-day names for buildings and streets, while in others they retain their fifteenth-century names. Today the Medici Palace is Palazzo Medici Riccardi; Benozzo Gozzoli's
Procession of the Magi
in the Medici Chapel is available for viewing by the public. Palla Palmieri's police headquarters and jail is today called the Bargello, and I have used that designation. Now a national museum, the Bargello houses Florentine Renaissance sculpture, with rooms dedicated to the works of Michelangelo, Andrea del Verrochio, and many other artists.

For an introduction to the Medici family, interested readers might begin with Christopher Hibbert's
The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici
. For my research on the Vespucci family, I drew heavily on
Amerigo and the New World
by Germán Arciniegas, and then on materials gleaned from Italian Renaissance scholars, whose work has been invaluable to me.

As for the shadowy villain of the piece, Lorenzo de' Medici had Girolamo Riario watched from the time of Giuliano's murder in 1478. In April 1488, almost ten years to the day, Girolamo was himself assassinated while at home in Forli. His widow, Caterina Sforza, married the younger of Lorenzo's two wards, Giovanni de' Medici, brother to Lorenzino, who figures in our story. Caterina then went on to do battle with Cesare Borgia. This is the Italian Renaissance, whose tapestry of relationships is so colorful and tightly woven it seems almost to defy belief.
Almost.

Questions for Discussion:
Guid'Antonio and his nephew, Amerigo, have returned home to Florence after a two-year diplomatic mission to France. What are Guid'Antonio's expectations upon their arrival in the city? What happens to deflate them?