The Thief Of Peace by Jess Whitecroft

Author:Jess Whitecroft [Whitecroft, Jess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical, LGBTQ, mystery, romance
Published: 2019-11-06T18:00:00+00:00

*

They were back in Florence, with Albani’s corpse in tow.

As Teo had predicted, there was a lot to do. Masses sung, horses groomed for the funeral procession, tombs opened to admit new tenants. The room was covered in Teo’s scribblings, crossed out notes on a eulogy. A tailor had been chasing him around the place for a good twenty minutes now, trying to get him to stand still enough to take measurements.

“You’ll wear a hole in the floor,” said Nicci. “Hold still, and let the man do his work.”

“I’m sorry,” said Teo, and stretched out his arm for the tailor. “I don’t even know what to say. He was my father and now he’s dead. And I’m sorry for his death. What else can I say?”

“List his achievements,” said Nicci. “His virtues. The things that gave him joy in life. His dogs, his gardens, and so on.”

Teo, a measuring cord around his neck, sighed. “This is why I belong in a monastery,” he said. “Give me other people’s words to sing, because I don’t have any of my own. I’m not a politician, Nicci. I’m not even a good son.”

“You’ll be fine. I’ll help you.”

There was a discreet tap at the door and Vicini appeared. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I was wondering if you might be able to come to the Stinche?”

“What, now?” said Teo. He glanced at the tailor, who nodded that he was finished. Vicini receded back into the hallway like a ghost. “Yes, fine. I’ll be out in a moment.”

“The Stinche?” said Nicci. He knew the place rather better than he’d like to. “As in the prison?”

“She’s there,” Teo said. “The woman. The one who was sleeping with Giacamo. Vicini thinks she was the one who sent the…offal.”

“Offal?”

“In the package. What else would you call them?”

Nicci blinked for a long moment. “Balls,” he said. “Those were balls. Where do you imagine she got them?”

“I don’t know. A slaughterhouse, I assume.”

Oh God. He really didn’t have a clue. “Teo, you might want to sit down for this.”

“For what?”

“Those weren’t…animal.”

Teo didn’t sit, but he leaned more heavily against the edge of the table in front of him. He had turned very pale.

“I’ve seen inside enough bodies to know that those didn’t come from a slaughterhouse,” said Nicci. “Or a butcher. Those looked…human.”

“But whose…I don’t…”

“No, I don’t know either, but I have this feeling that Vicini’s wrong about that woman.”

“But you were there,” Teo said. “At Prato. When she said that the only balls in the family belonged to the Medici. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”

“I did,” said Nicci. “But it doesn’t make any sense. Where would she lay hands on a pair of human testicles, for God’s sake? Don’t get me wrong, Fiorina del Campo seems like a handful, but I still can’t picture her walking into some charnel house behind the gallows and asking the executioner for a pair of balls. Desecrating a corpse is…well…it’s a line that few people cross. Put it that way.

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