The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) by Alana White Page B

you have a city on the verge of exploding like the cart in Piazza del Duomo on Easter Sunday. But, of course, that's meant to be festive.”
    He clapped his hands: “Bang!”
    Beside Guid'Antonio, Amerigo jumped. “There are no Turks in Italy,” Guid'Antonio said.
    “Not for a long time,” Piero di Nasi agreed. “But their ships have been sighted off the coast of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea.”
    Amerigo made a squeak of distress. “That's the last home of the Christian crusaders! Against Mehmed the Conqueror's legions, they wouldn't stand the chance of a flea in Hell—” The nine men of the Signoria, along with Chancellor Bartolomeo Scala and his assistant, Alessandro Braccesi, stared at Guid'Antonio's nephew, who had one role to perform in this official government meeting: that of
giovane
, secretary to his uncle.
    “We know the island fortress is there,” Piero di Nasi said gently. “It has been more than a century.”
    “People are always seeing Turks,” Guid'Antonio said.
    “That's because they know Mehmed II still has his eye on the West,” Tommaso Soderini said.
    “Perhaps, but the Turks in Tuscany are not real.”
    “Rather like the tears of your weeping painting,” Antonio Capponi said, grinning. “They're false—or so we hope,” he added, crossing himself.
    “My what?” Guid'Antonio said.
    “He means the painted image called the
Virgin Mary of Santa Maria Impruneta
brought down from her village and placed on the altar of Ognissanti Church for the spring celebrations,” Piero di Nasi said. “Last Wednesday, tears coursed down the Virgin's face.”
    Stunned, Guid'Antonio said, “Are you sure?”
    “There's a question with at least a thousand answers,” Tommaso said.
    In my church
, Guid'Antonio thought.
Ognissanti
. “Amerigo,” he said, “remind me—how cold and rainy was France?” This garnered a few wry smiles; one man laughed, shrill and nervy.
    Beyond the chamber windows, the sun blazed on course across the sky. One raven, then another, cawed. Guid'Antonio sat very still. The Vespuccis had moved from the village of Peretola to the Unicorn district in the Santa Maria Novella quarter of Florence almost one hundred years ago. Since then, they and the Benedictine monks of the Lombard Order of the Humiliati had dominated the neighborhood. In the late 1380s, Guid'Antonio's distant kinsman, silk merchant Simone Vespucci, had built the local hospital, Spedale dei Vespucci, a few steps from the Vespucci Palace. All these years, Vespucci money had decorated the church. Four generations of Vespuccis lay sleeping in its dim stone chapels, Guid'Antonio's mother, his father, his precious first wife, and their baby.
    And now a painting of the Virgin was weeping there.
    He looked around at the men gathered at the table. “And so—?”
    “And so, Guid'Antonio,” Tommaso Soderini said, stone-faced, “these tears in your church have people believing Mary is weeping for their lost souls. They believe God is in a high hot temper because of our defiance of the Pope. Whether by the hand of Mehmed the Conqueror, the prince of Naples, Count Girolamo Riario, or all three, they believe God means to see Florence destroyed and her people roasting in hell like pigs on a spit. And who do they blame?”
    Guid'Antonio half-expected the Lord Priors to sing the name out in a loud chorus. Instead, it whispered, unspoken, around the room:
Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo.
    Bartolomeo Scala said, “You're a Medici man, Guid'Antonio. So are we all. And you saw how it went against you in the street. It grows worse by the hour.”
    With a linen cloth, Tommaso wiped crumbs from his mouth. “The time has come for us to satisfy heaven.”
    “Satisfy Sixtus IV and his nephew, you mean,” Guid'Antonio said, his voice grim. “How? By serving them Lorenzo's head on a platter.”
    Tommaso laughed sourly. “If anyone's head is served on a platter, I doubt it will be my nephew's. He's far too cunn—” Tommaso smiled