Read Online The Sign of the Weeping Virgin (Five Star Mystery Series) by Alana White - Free Book Online Page B

several years ago, only to have the death of his brother and the resulting war bring the farm's progress to a grinding halt.
    “By some miracle, it is. Or nearly.”
    The brindle greyhound eyed Guid'Antonio's bread and stretched up onto his hindquarters. “Mind your manners, Leporarius,” Lorenzo said. “You'll have your turn.” Lids closed to slits, the hound eased down onto the cool hearthstone.
Hare hunter
. Incredibly swift and spare. “Good dog. Thank you.” Lorenzo turned to Guid'Antonio, grimacing. “I haven't seen Poggio in six months, four spent in wretched Naples courting the king. But God's eyes, Guid'Antonio, what right have I to complain? You've been in France a year.”
    “Almost two,” Guid'Antonio said.
    A look of embarrassment suffused Lorenzo's face. “Of course. Forgive me.”
    A light-fisted knock, the apartment door opened, and Bartolomeo Scala's assistant, Alessandro Braccesi, poked in his head. “From the Chancellor.” Alessandro handed Lorenzo the official government notes he had taken during the Lord Priors' meeting. “Messer Vespucci,” he said, acknowledging Guid'Antonio, who nodded a greeting, thinking,
Put wings on his heels and call him Mercury. Our own special messenger to the god here in Via Larga.
    “Alessandro, have some of the Brolio. It's excellent,” Lorenzo said, his eyes already scanning the papers in his hands.
    “
Grazie
. By the way, some boys were tormenting a half-dead mutt at the main gate. I put it out of its misery.”
    Around Guid'Antonio, the light in the apartment wavered. “Did you?” he said. Lorenzo glanced up, considering him a moment before lowering his gaze back down again.
    “All it took was a blow to the head,” Alessandro said. “With a sharp piece of sandstone. Probably the stone tumbled from some mason's cart. Here—” He leaned toward Lorenzo to decipher a passage splotched with ink.
    Guid'Antonio knew he should be grateful. The secretary had saved him—or Cesare—the trouble of dispatching the dog. That empty sack of fur and bones had no benefactor. Never would the mastiff have survived the streets. He massaged his forehead in a futile attempt to ease the tightness gathering there, his gaze drifting to the row of windows set with heavy iron gratings along Via dei Gori on the San Lorenzo side of the Medici palazzo. From beyond the barred windows, there came the sound of voices, wheezy old men trading tales on the stone bench built the length of the wall facing San Lorenzo marketplace and church.
    His gaze fell on Lorenzo's writing desk. An oil lamp hung from a brass arm above the rotating reading stand, lighting the poems of Catullus, an ancient work lost for centuries till someone discovered the old parchment stoppering a wine barrel in Rome. Beside the poems, Guid'Antonio saw a letter whose crimson seal remained unbroken. A. POLIZIANO. Lorenzo and Angelo Poliziano were intimates, yet Lorenzo had cast Angelo's letter aside, unread. Why? And, too, scattered across the marble floor were several pages of writing in Lorenzo's small, precise hand.
    Guid'Antonio turned to find Alessandro Braccesi gone and Lorenzo staring at him with frank interest. The heat of embarrassment stung Guid'Antonio's cheeks.
    Lorenzo watched him gravely. “These days even the simplest verse is hard won. I've been grappling with that poem for over a year now.”
    “What do you expect when you hold yourself up to Dante?”
    “A decent effort.” Anger blazed in Lorenzo's expressive eyes. “There was a time I thought words as valuable as swords. Now, I'm not so sure. Slay Giuliano? How could they do such a terrible thing? Jesus! The Pope! Upon my soul, my honor balks at the prospect of prostrating myself at the feet of that miscreant in Rome, but I will do it, if it means he will lift his ban of excommunication against us.”
    Giuliano would already be there
, Guid'Antonio thought. He put down his wine. “What exactly does Sixtus want?”
    “Me on my knees before