The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) (6 page)

Bartolomeo's face fell. “What happened?”

Amerigo grimaced. “We had to hear about the disappearance of a local girl and listen to some crazy talk about Infidels having a hand in it.”

“They slandered Lorenzo to us,” Guid'Antonio said.

Bartolomeo placed one hand on the grand meeting table, fingers splayed, as if suddenly he felt woozy. “We're as fragile as glass. What are people saying?”

“ ‘Down with the Medici.’ ”

Bartolomeo gasped. “Are they mad?”

Amerigo touched his breast. “That's what I wondered, too.”

“Are they?” Guid'Antonio said.

Bartolomeo fanned himself. “I'm not one of the nine Lord Priors, but only the Chancellor of the Republic, whose place it is not to discuss private government business with friends, no matter how dear and trustworthy.” He stepped to the sideboard and retrieved a straw-covered flask. “Discretion dictates I say no more.”

Guid'Antonio wanted to slap him across the face. “Why aren't the Priors here?”

“You're late. They'll be back, when is anyone's guess. How does this wine sit with that of the French? They have quite a good reputation.”

Dipping into a deep well of patience, Guid'Antonio said, “Chianti means home. Beside it, French wine pales.”

“Amerigo, now you know why your uncle is our most valued diplomat,” Bartolomeo said, smiling blandly around.

“I knew already,” Amerigo said.

“Ha, Guid'Antonio! Your nephew has a quick tongue.”

“He's a Florentine and a Vespucci,” Guid'Antonio said.

Bartolomeo studied the vaulted ceiling, as if seeking a safe topic of conversation there in the pattern of rosettes surrounded by
fleurs-de-lis
. “How is our lovely lady, Maria?”

Guid'Antonio recalled the heat of his wife's skin against his as they lay with their bodies touching in the predawn hours of morning. He recalled her anger, and his. “The same. And Maddalena?”

“With child,” Bartolomeo said, lowering his gaze, pleased.

A sixth addition to Bartolomeo Scala's already full house. Guid'Antonio nodded. “Praise Mary.”

A frown darkened the Chancellor's countenance. “Pray it's a son.”

“Pray it survives,” Guid'Antonio said. “Along with Maddalena.”

“Of course, yes.” Bartolomeo flushed crimson, obviously recalling Guid'Antonio's first wife, Taddea, lost in the birthing chamber soon after Guid'Antonio's marriage to her a dozen years ago. Taddea and his newborn son, gone. “Forgive me,” Bartolomeo said. “Are you hungry? Have a bite to eat.”

“I've no appetite.”

Amerigo chose a red apple from the fruit bowl on the meeting table and bit a large, juicy chunk out of it.
“Grazie.”

Footsteps sounded in the outer chamber.

“Sooner than I thought,” Bartolomeo said.

The door swung open and a gaunt, white-haired man in a crimson robe with an ermine collar and cuffs loomed before them on the threshold, his ankle-length coat distinguished from the coats of the eight other men by a pattern of stars embroidered in gold thread. He was Tommaso Soderini, the ninth Lord Prior and, therefore, the Gonfaloniere of Justice. The highest-ranking elected official in the Florentine State, Tommaso Soderini was also Lorenzo de' Medici's uncle by marriage.

“Guid'Antonio,” Tommaso said with a darkly patient smile. “At last, we hear from you.”

Guid'Antonio's mandate as he traveled from Italy to France in October 1478 had been to muster support for the Florentine government in the war the Pope had embarked upon when he realized his nephew's plot to rid the world of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici had missed half its mark—the most important half, twenty-nine-year-old private citizen Lorenzo de' Medici. How dare Florence behead the commanding general of the Pope's army and hang not only his banker, Francesco de' Pazzi, but also the archbishop of Pisa? No matter that general, banker, and cleric were guilty of abetting—and in Francesco's case, committing—murder in a town noted more for its gifted artisans and scholars than for its affairs of state. Florentine politics were more confusing than they were a threat to anyone other than Florence itself, anyway. A democracy, a republic with elected officials, yet actually ruled by one family, the Medici, for half a century? Everywhere except in Italy, people scratched their heads, equally amused and baffled how
Firenze
—the City of Flowers, for goodness' sake—could actually stand as one of the Italian peninsula's five major powers.

From the safety of the Vatican, like an enraged wizard armed with a blazing sword, Sixtus had whirled toward Florence and excommunicated the city. No one within its walls, or even its outlying territories, could marry in church. The dead must be buried in fields and ditches. Churches were closed. Surely fear for their immortal souls would turn people against that thorn in God's side, Lorenzo. To avoid war with Rome, all Florence had to do was hand Lorenzo over to Sixtus for punishment.

“For what?” Lorenzo wrote in a letter to his ally, King Louis XI of France. “Refusing to die in church along with my brother?”

“No,”
Florence's Lord Priors said. They considered the attempt to assassinate the Medici family bosses an act of war. But excommunication was a grave matter. How could they thumb their noses at Rome, when it meant condemning their souls to the eternal fires of hell? They couldn't. Consulting texts so old the parchment crumbled to dust in their hands, the Florentine clergy determined the Pope had exceeded his authority. They issued a paper excommunicating
him
and performed Christian rites as usual.

In Bologna, Milan, and Lyons, discussing the situation to the point of exhaustion in his role as government
oratore
, Guid'Antonio had argued for the assembly of a General Council to depose Sixtus IV and reform the Church.

This, while in the territory around Florence, the Pope's hired soldiers stole horses, set fire to mills, burned towns, and slaughtered men, women, and children. Refugees from Brolio, Radda, and Castellina in Chianti poured into the city. With the second winter of the war approaching, Florence had faced certain defeat at the hands of Roman and Neapolitan armies, the latter equipped by King Ferrante, the king of Naples, who had thrown his hand in with the Pope as a possible means of expanding his own private power.

Within Florence, another deadly enemy roamed the streets.

Someone found a man dead of the plague on a bench inside the church of Santa Maria Novella. When a sick boy was discovered in the adjoining piazza, people abandoned him there, loath to touch the child and take him to the hospital. Death carts piled with bodies rattled through the putrid city.

What had begun as a private quarrel between Pope Sixtus IV and Lorenzo de' Medici was driving the Florentine Republic to ruin: no fresh fruit or meat, precious little bread, rats running rampant along the marshy banks of the Arno. When the Italian situation seemed impossibly bleak and Paris lay shrouded in the deep snows of January 1480, Guid'Antonio, still in France, had received astonishing news from Bartolomeo Scala: one month earlier, Lorenzo had sailed to Naples to present King Ferrante with his personal plan for peace.

Lorenzo's move was daring. If it worked, it would strip Sixtus IV of his most powerful ally. But the young, informal leader of Florence in the hands of the Neapolitan king? That thought made Guid'Antonio sweat with fear for his friend and for the future of their city. Lorenzo and King Ferrante had enjoyed friendly relations in the past, but tales of the king's cruelty ran rampant in Italy. People said Ferrante embalmed his enemies and displayed their corpses in the cellars of Castel Dell'Ovo on the Bay of Naples. In France, Guid'Antonio crossed himself and prayed for Lorenzo's safety. Lose Lorenzo, and Florence's legs would be open to the Pope and the nephew many people thought was the Pope's own bastard, the rapacious, insatiable Girolamo Riario.

And then one afternoon in early April 1480 a courier had found Guid'Antonio in Paris walking with Ameliane Vely, one of the young women of the French court, in Louis XI's gardens along the bank of the River Seine, she having chanced upon Guid'Antonio, as was so often the case, whether here among the winding pathways or in the halls of the royal household. Hardly daring to breathe, Guid'Antonio had read Bartolomeo Scala's latest missive from Italy. Two weeks earlier, in mid-March, Lorenzo had arrived home from Naples bearing a peace treaty fixed with King Ferrante's royal seal.

The Parisian sky over Guid'Antonio's head had turned bluer, the sun brighter, the clouds impossibly puffy and white. He broke into an elated smile, hugged Ameliane, and kissed her on the mouth.

Ameliane blushed. “Good news?”

“
Oui!
The war's over.”

“Praise God and all the saints.”

“Praise God and Lorenzo,” Guid'Antonio said, smiling.

Her sparkling gaze flicked toward the rose bushes along the garden path, ripe with tight buds, about to bloom. “And now, Ambassador Guid'Antonio Vespucci, you're no longer obliged to abide here in France?”

“Not much longer. No.” Having lost his main ally to Lorenzo, the Pope would now have no choice but to call off his troops. Rome was a mighty power, but even Rome could not fight alone. Still smiling, Guid'Antonio kissed Ameliene's fingertips. “I must tell Amerigo.
Excuze-moi, s'il vous plaît.
”

“Naturellement.”
She ducked her head. When she looked up, the Italian ambassador was fading down the path, a ghost Guid'Antonio in animated conversation with the courier whose unexpected good news had brought the lovely rare smile to the ambassador's luscious mouth.

“But then,” Guid'Antonio said, sitting back in his chair at one end of the meeting table, his gaze fixed on Chairman Tommaso Soderini. “You know most of this already.” He passed Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala his credentials written on parchment, in Latin, along with a statement of his expenses on a
per diem
basis.

Tommaso agreed with a slight inclination of the head. Snowy-haired, with bones as frail as a thrush, Tommaso's pale skin made a stark contrast against his robe's vivid crimson hue. “
Grazie
, Guid'Antonio. Your service will be duly noted in our official records.” A tiny smile tweaked Tommaso's lips. “Perhaps your sojourn in France will prove your continuing loyalty to Florence.”

The other Priors, heretofore glancing impatiently around the chamber, snapped to attention. Beside Guid'Antonio, Amerigo stiffened. Seated at a podium beneath the windows overlooking Piazza della Signoria—those same windows where Francesco de' Pazzi had been hanged—Bartolomeo Scala's assistant, Alessandro Braccesi, sighed deeply.

Continuing loyalty? Guid'Antonio could remind Tommaso Soderini a thing or two about allegiance. He told himself to tread carefully. Tommaso had honey in his mouth and a knife at his belt. Guid'Antonio said, “And I, like you, appreciate Lorenzo's continued trust in both our houses. Despite the traitors who have on occasion lived therein.”

Lord Prior Antonio Capponi laughed, reaching for the wine jug near to hand. “There's a sharp parry, Guido! Here's to you, my friend.” Capponi's red Prior's coat was unbuttoned over his shoulders, revealing his black quilted
farsetto
and gray cotton shirt: the Capponi family colors.

Across from Capponi, Prior Pierfilippo Pandolfini's eyes radiated impatience. Three gold-enameled fish set in a blue stone decorated the ring on Pierfilippo's hand: the sign of the Pandolfinis. “Guid'Antonio,” Pierfilippo said. “You're fresh from the saddle. You can't have heard the latest from Rome.”

Rome, Rome, Rome. “Of course not. No.”

“Florence is still excommunicated.”

Guid'Antonio sat back hard in his chair. “Impossible. Both King Ferrante
and
Sixtus signed Lorenzo's treaty.”

“There are always complications,” Tommaso Soderini said, smiling thinly.

Guid'Antonio's mind whirled. If Sixtus hadn't lifted the interdict, all the rites of the Church were still forbidden the Florentine people. No wonder the people in the marketplace had been so afraid and angry. No weddings, no baptisms, no burials in holy ground. “Why?” he said. “It makes no sense.”

“Because we haven't met the Pope's last demand,” Tommaso said.

“Which is?”

Shriveled and purpled with age, Tommaso's lips lifted in a grin. “That we send Lorenzo to him in Rome.”

Guid'Antonio jumped up and hit the table with his fist. “The war
began
because we wouldn't give him Lorenzo! Do the last two years mean nothing to that crazy man in the Vatican?” He drew a sharp breath. “What about Lorenzo? What has he said?”

“What he has always said,” Antonio Capponi answered. “ ‘No.’ Oh, he'll do whatever's necessary to preserve the Florentine Republic. Just not today. Naples was one edge of the sword, Rome's quite another. He might actually die there.”

“Tommaso,” Guid'Antonio said, sitting back down. “What have you advised him to do?”

The older man grunted. “To saddle his horse and ride like the devil to Saint Peter's.”

“What? This is news!” Pierfilippo Pandolfini said. “At what cost? To be murdered the instant he enters the Eternal City? It's eternal, all right!”

Lord Prior Piero di Nasi, by nature a quiet man, shifted in his chair. “Come now. That isn't likely to happen.”

“Nor was it likely Giuliano would be murdered in the Cathedral,” Guid'Antonio said, his temper roaring as he fought memories so sharp, they threatened to cut him to the bone.

Tommaso's fingers caressed his hand-warmer, a round, pewter container polished to resemble silver, then filled with heated coals, here in the high heat of summer. “Lorenzo's treaty is unpopular,” he said.

“
Unpopular?
So what? Why?” Guid'Antonio said.

“Because it allows the prince of Naples to remain camped on our southern border, for one thing,” Tommaso said.

“In Siena?”

Tommaso shrugged. “Of course.”

Guid'Antonio was too stunned to speak. Prince Alfonso of Naples was the elder of King Ferrante's two sons. A skillful soldier, Alfonso had captained Roman and Neapolitan troops against Florence during the war. And Lorenzo was allowing the warrior prince to remain thirty miles from the Great Hall in Palazzo della Signoria, where the majority of Florence's government leaders now sat? Surely, Alfonso wouldn't mount a surprise attack against them.