Midnight Angels by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page B

ensure that they would never lack for funds, no matter how precarious their situation might become.”
    “Do you think Michelangelo would agree to that?”
    “I doubt he would have had much say in the matter,” Edwards said. “Remember, he was essentially their employee for large portions of his life, and he was as loyal to them as he was to anyone. So, in this case, I don’t think he would put up much of a fight, as long as he was paid in full for his work.”
    Kate sat on the bench and stared up at the cloudless sky, her legs stretched out, two squirrels rummaging on the grass nearby. “Would he hide some of his works for the same reason as the Medici family?”
    “Most likely,” Edwards said. “Especially during the times he was either feuding with them or, worse, hiding from them. He was arrested and held prisoner by the Medicis quite a few times for infractions that would be seen today as minor offenses. And if anyone knew the true worth of Michelangelo’s work, it was the master himself.”
    “Have any of the works been found?”
    “Now and then,” Edwards said. “Your parents uncovered a lost work very early in their careers, a small piece of sculpture done by a very young Michelangelo. They gifted it to the city of Florence.”
    “Have you found any yet?”
    He shook his head. “I’ve come close a few times,” he said, “or at least I thought I had, but all my leads came up empty.”
    “Do you think I’ll ever find any?” she asked.
    “I don’t think so, Kate,” he said. “I know so. I know it with all my heart, and I’ve known it since you were first born.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “Because you will be the best one of us,” Edwards said. “You will be guided by me and by the notes left behind by your parents, but you will take it further than any of us ever dared. That’s what I believe.”
    Kate stood and began to walk back toward the Great Lawn, her head down, hands by her sides, lost in a swirl of a young girl’s thoughts.

CHAPTER
8
    K ATE AND MARCO STEPPED INTO THE ENTRY OF THE VASARI Corridor and came to a quick stop. They gazed down the sloping hall, portraits wrapped inside gilded frames hung on both sides of the cream-colored walls, small circular windows letting in shards of late afternoon light, the sheer majesty of the room overwhelming them both.
    “It’s like it was frozen in time,” Kate said. “The way it looks now is the way it looked when it was first built.”
    “They’ve added a few hundred more portraits and painted it a half-dozen times,” Marco said, “plus they put in security cameras. But if you take all that away, we are in the city of Florence as it was in 1564.”
    The Vasari Corridor was built by designer and author Giorgio Vasari in a five-month period, ostensibly to commemorate the wedding of Francesco de’ Medici and Johanna of Austria. Its true mission, however, was to serve as a link between the Pitti Palace, where the Grand Duke lived, and the Uffizi offices, where he worked, allowing him the ability to rule the city under the protection of one roof. The stone-covered walkway is just under a kilometer long, an overhead passageway that begins on the west corridor of the gallery and then moves toward the Arno River, following the flow of the water to the Ponte Vecchio. There it crosses over the tops of the shops, cutting through the Church of Santa Felicita and over the houses and gardens of the Guicciardini family before coming to an end under the arches of the majestic Boboli Gardens.
    “The Grand Duke must have been such an arrogant man,” Marco said as the two began their slow walk up and down the steps of the corridor,accompanied by an elderly guard, who stayed a few feet behind them. “And a frightened one as well.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “The Ponte Vecchio used to be the local meat market at the time Vasari began his work,” Marco said. “It was the Grand Duke who had it moved, replaced by the gold merchants who