The Dark Heart of Florence by Tasha Alexander (ebook reader screen TXT) 📕

I can take no wife. My sister will help you see to the baby. Beyond that, we can have no further relationship.”

“I know that leaving the priesthood is something not to be taken lightly, but—”

“Why would I leave the priesthood?” he asked. “It is unfortunate that our encounters have left you encumbered, which is why I have offered my sister’s assistance, but this has no bearing on my holy orders.”

I was reeling, confused, angry, crushed. “We sinned together and must face the consequences together.”

“Not together, signorina. Quite separately. If you want me to hear your confession one last time, I will. Otherwise, there is nothing left to be done. I do have another appointment this afternoon, so if you would repent, we should get on with it.”

“I am in great need of the sacrament,” I said and followed him back into the church. I mumbled half coherently in the confessional, fighting tears. Upon my exit, I nearly collapsed. Alfia rushed from the pew on which she’d been waiting and steadied me.

“I’m sorry, signorina,” she said.

“No, Alfia, it will be all right. He just—” I stopped. “I must go back and speak to him again, if only to—”

She steered me around so that I was looking back at the confessional. There, pulling open the door was a young girl, about my age, beautiful and elegant, bright with anticipation in a way wholly inappropriate for one about to ask for absolution from her sins. I recognized the look all too well.

When Alfia went outside, I refused to leave the small, triangular piazza, insisting that we wait until the girl left the church. I marked the time with the bells ringing from the campanile. She did not emerge for nearly two hours, and when she did, she was radiant, just as I used to be.

My heart broke in that instant, never to heal again.

 Florence,

190319

“Dead in a most unpleasant manner?” I repeated the jeweler’s words back to him. “Could you please provide more details?”

“Sì, there are at least three stories that spring to mind,” Signore di Nardo said. “The first, of course, is that of the lady who hid the treasure in the first place. It is said Savonarola burned her as a heretic, and that his action led to the curse that has held the house in its grip ever since.”

“Who was she?” I asked.

“I do not know her name,” he said. “But a century or so after her death, a man decided to start opening walls in the palazzo. He’d heard rumors of a treasure hidden away from Savonarola’s gangs who marauded through the city seizing anything they considered sinful.”

“Jewelry, for example,” Cécile said.

“Exactly.” Signore di Nardo continued. “Jewelry and any trappings of luxury frowned upon by the little friar and his thugs. No sooner had the gentleman then living in the house breached the first wall than he was stricken with plague. It killed him within a few hours. His son had the wall repaired. No one else in the family fell ill.”

“And the third story?” I asked.

“That is the one I know in the most detail. Bartolomeo di Vieri, the last member of the family that built the palazzo, had fallen into a genteel poverty. The Vieris had once been powerful allies of the Medici, but their influence and their fortune were long gone by the time Bartolomeo inherited. He married three times, but none of his wives ever gave him a child. Two died trying, and an illness strangely like the plague that held Florence in its grips during the fifteenth century claimed the third. No doctor could explain how she might have acquired it. We all know how contagious the disease is, yet no one else in the city exhibited any symptoms, only Bartolomeo’s poor wife.”

“What does this have to do with the treasure?” I asked.

“Because he was teetering toward financial ruin, Bartolomeo started to research the stories about the valuables hidden in his house. He spent much of his life trying to find them, to no avail.”

“Yet his wives, not he, were the ones who died,” I said. “That seems to argue against a curse.”

“No, signora, it does not. The curse is a punishment, meant to deter anyone tempted to seek the treasure. Bartolomeo did not care whether he lived or died. Death would have released him from poverty. But he did care, very deeply, for his wives. The curse struck them down to punish him.” He grinned. “Or so they say. I myself do not put much stock in such tales, although they are most entertaining.”

“Do you believe there is a treasure hidden in the house?” Cécile asked.

“All old houses hold secrets, do they not? Most are not worth finding.”

We spent another quarter of an hour in the shop. I bought a pair of cuff links for Colin. As Cécile and I ducked in and out of the other establishments on the bridge, we asked if their owners knew the stories of the treasure at Palazzo di Vieri; they all did. Each told us a version that varied slightly from the rest, but the essential message was the same: look for the treasure and expect a grisly death.

Colin and Darius roared with delight that evening when, having gathered in the Sala dei Pappagalli after dinner, we recounted for them the tales shared by the jewelers. Neither they nor Cécile was put off searching for the Renaissance treasure by a legendary curse.

“It only spurs me on,” Cécile said. “I wonder, Kallista, about the Latin graffiti you’ve discovered. It could contain a coded message that reveals the location of the treasure.”

“I don’t see a connection,” I said. “We have two quotations from a Roman poet: The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye, and the advice that

Watch a man in times of adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off.

Neither seems