as soon as we were alone he spoke.
“There,” he said, “there it all began.” With no thought for his safety he was craning from the window looking up at the tall blank walls of the palazzo. I saw only the square bitemarks of scaffolding and the pockmarks of the stucco, and one high, high window below the lantern tower.
“What am I looking at?” I was relieved he spoke yet reluctant to emerge from the shadows to look too, lest I was seen by those who knew me.
“There,” he repeated, his voice gravelly from lack of use. “There hung Jacopo de’ Pazzi, head of the Pazzi family, with two of his brethren, for the offense of murdering Giuliano de’ Medici. They slaughtered him, in front of his brother Lorenzo the Magnificent, in the cathedral here.”
Everyone in Florence knew that story, so I waited for the point.
“And beside him swung Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa—a man I knew well, for he gave me my First Communion. Lorenzo the Magnificent escaped that day, but he signed his own death warrant when he hung an archbishop, in full ceremonial robes, for his part in the plot.”
Really, Brother Guido’s mind made some astonishing and frankly irrelevant leaps sometimes. Ironic that he’d just begun to speak again and was already annoying me a bit. “What the blue bollocks have the Pazzis got to do with this?”
Now he turned on me as if he hated me. “Didn’t you hear me? Not the Pazzis. The archbishop.”
Day dawned. In my mind’s eye the guilty prelate bounced on his rope, his guts and gristle streaming to the floor in scarlet cords that matched his holy vestments, his face pulped and bloody as he turned and bashed against the windowless gray walls that were blind to his plight. “So you think the pope is conspiring with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco against his uncle because his uncle had his archbishop hanged?”
“I do.”
Surely this could not be all—I had never heard him answer so briefly. He relented. “Lorenzo the Magnificent and the whole of Florence were excommunicated for the offense. Pope Sixtus’s own nephew Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola, was dispatched to arrest and charge Lorenzo the Magnificent, but the Florentine Signoria were loyal and wouldn’t hand over Lorenzo. Recourse to the law was unsuccessful, so it is my belief that Sixtus has gathered the Seven, with Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s connivance, to make an alliance to overturn Lorenzo and place his nephew, a willing tool of the papacy, in his stead. Depend upon it,” he said decidedly, “the pope is at the root of this. The clues are writ in stone.”
I was doubtful. “You sound awfully sure.”
“I am. When I said that the clues are writ in stone, I meant that literally, not metaphorically.”
I was silent. He had lost me. Luckily he continued un-prompted.
“Every clue that has led us forth so far has been literally written in stone. The leaning tower above my door in Santa Croce. The newly carved ship on the Tower of Pisa, depicting the Muda’s flagship. The rood screen in San Lorenzo in Naples, showing the stations of the cross. I am Petrus. The very church itself was writ in stone too, the papacy, the Vatican, the whole holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”
I showed him a blank countenance.
“Peter,” he said simply. “Saint Peter. Petrus. The symbol and saint of the papacy. The gatekeeper, the keyholder. I am the rock.”
“All right,” I said slowly. “Then how does Botticelli come into it? If it was the Pazzis and the pope that kicked this all off?”
Brother Guido’s eyes burned like the damned. “There.” He pointed across the square to the customs house. “There on that very wall, Botticelli was charged by his Medici paymasters to paint the conspirators where they hung, as a warning to others.”
I narrowed my eyes—there on the rough and sun-bleached stones, four faint figures could still be seen; long slashing lines above, straight as Sunday, described the ropes that hung them all.
“So when this plot was engendered, who would they choose to depict this deadly scheme but the favored artist of the Medici court?”
“And the Primavera reveals all?” I questioned. “All the cities that have agreed to join with the pope, make war on Lorenzo the Magnificent and remove him from power?”
“Yes.”
I bought it. “So we know why. But we don’t know when and how the attack will come. Our knowledge has no power unless we know the details. So the question is, what do we do next?”
His lips