Page 55 of The Medici Return

CHAPTER 37

ERIC NAVIGATED THE NARROW TWO-LANED ROAD THAT WOUND Apath through Tuscan forests, high meadows, and pastureland. He’d left Florence and driven north in a borrowed car with a spongy suspension and modest power. The great dome of Florence, with the expanse of red-gray roofs huddled around it, was visible in the distance. From this perspective he could appreciate how close the city was held by the protecting embrace of the hills that ringed it.

The time had come to make the pilgrimage.

The first nineteen years of his life had been spent among the northern hills with flocks of sheep and wild goats. There were plenty of good memories. The kind of experiences the young in body and mind reveled in creating. His parents were decent people, but the grandmother who’d essentially raised him struggled with grief and anger. She had few friends and no family that could tolerate her abrasiveness. Only him. He’d always ignored her shortcomings and clung to her until old enough to know better. They had a falling-out two decades ago, their interaction after that minimal at best. But he’d not abandoned her. Instead, he made sure she was properly cared for, whether she appreciated the gesture or not.

He downshifted and began an uphill climb among the olive trees and vineyards. He loved the clear, clean landscape. A seeminglyperfect blend of tranquility and beauty. The grapevines were thick with ripening fruit, readying themselves for picking soon. As a teenager, like most everyone else, he’d worked the vineyards. A low stone wall ran along the road, its rough coping covered in thorny vines.

He passed a chapel surrounded by tall firs, along with the jagged pinnacles of two castle ruins. They were once owned, in the time of the Medici, by a nobleman and freebooter. Stories of family fortunes and misfortunes, their loves and hates, formed the history of this region. His grandmother loved to tell him stories. Her life seemed firmly rooted in the past, the present more a nuisance. As a child he’d loved her stories. But as an adult he came to find them annoying. He’d matured into a pragmatist. A realist. That’s what made him a good populist, and he wore that label with pride, since what was wrong with telling people what they wanted to hear.

The winding road passed more farmland lined with chestnut, oak, and copper beechwoods. Whole towns with towers appeared from afar. Higher up, firs climbed dense and dark to the crest of the mountains. In the fall there would be a resplendent mass of color, bold and bright, that he could still see in his mind.

“In 1512 the Medici saved the pope,” his grandmother said. “We loaned Julius II ten million florins. He gave them his solemn promise, in writing, to pay that money back.”

“Did he pay it back?” he asked with a twelve-year-old’s inquisitiveness.

The woman spit to the ground. “Not a florin. He died and the next pope, a Medici, had no desire to repay the loan. A few years later the Medici were granted the duchy of Tuscany to rule. Pope Pius V himself did that. But the Medici were smart. They attached a condition. So long as their duchy existed, untouched, the debt would be ignored. But take it away and they would call the debt. Their rule of the duchy lasted until 1737 when the last male Medici of the royal line died.”

“Did the pope pay the debt then?”

“Not a florin. Two hundred years had passed. The world had changed. But the Medici never called the debt.”

Later, while at college, he’d read some historical accounts and spoken to a few historians. It was true that Julius II and the head of the Medici clan did meet in 1512. But what they discussed remained a mystery. Julius II died in 1513. A Medici became the next pope as Leo X. Another Medici, Clement VII, became pope in 1523. The title Duke of the Florentine Republic was bestowed by Clement on the Medici in 1532. Then, in 1569, the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany was created. Pius V came himself to crown Cosimo de’ Medici as Cosimo I. For the next three centuries the grand duchy managed to absorb practically the entire Tuscan region, until its own eventual annexation into the Kingdom of Italy. Never was the debt mentioned anywhere. It seemed to fade away. Becoming unimportant.

“Those bastards in Rome,” his grandmother said, “still owe on the promise Julius II made. They are bound by it, as we are all bound to God. It was a Pledge of Christ.”

“Can anyone make them pay?”

“Maybe you might be able to do that one day.”

Perhaps he could.

But to do that he had to connect a lot of dots.

True, he’d made a start, and the dots were beginning to form a picture. But many remained unattached, loose ends that would have to be closed. The one thing that he could not allow to happen was to be made a fool. The National Freedom Party was counting on him. He’d assured its leaders that he could deliver the Vatican. He’d taken enough risk going to see Richter. But he had to rattle that cage. Time was running out. And besides, he’d established his DNA connection to Gregorio Cappello, and was about to complete that with a direct link to Anna Maria herself.

That made him Medici. Halfway there.

Now he needed his grandmother to help.

Would she?

Hard to say.

But he had to find out.

CHAPTER 38

ERIC MOTORED INTOVARALLO.

An Old World place, for sure, enclosed by low bastioned walls topped by grass. A medley of crowded houses and shops stood within, most broad and squat, their stone a warm yellow merged with bricks fighting hard to resist the assault of time. At its center spread the Piazza San Martino with a Romanesque church anchoring the northern side.

Inside the church was a most celebrated relic, the Volto Santo, enclosed within an elaborate tabernacle. An ornamented wooden cross with the face of Christ painted upon it in a strange representation that suggested a Byzantine origin. The myth accounting for its existence stated that, after its creation in 782, a bishop found it by way of a vision. He then placed it on a ship and abandoned it to the sea. Cast hither and thither in the waves, the ship finally ran aground on the western Italian shore, where the bishop of Varallo was visiting on a holiday. He decided to bring it back home, but the people of the village where he was visiting objected. To appease them he placed the cross in a cart driven by two white oxen and, as it had been abandoned to the sea, it was now given to the world. The oxen walked off on their own, pulling the cart. Legend said the cart ended up in Varallo, so the relic was kept there.

Was a word of it true? Nobody knew.

But it was a great story.

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