“Lorenzo sent the letters, Gio.  It’s the only explanation.  He must have slept with them on his pillow for the scent to be that strong.”

“Those letters were bound in a correspondence book.  If he has those two, he has all of them.  If he has the correspondence books…”

“He has all your books.”

Giovanni leaned his hip against the table, still staring into the fire as the memory of other fires haunted him.  “We don’t know that he has them all.”

“But the rumors—”

“Are rumors, nothing more.  It is possible…many things are possible.  What we do know is he has the correspondence books and he sent the letters.” Giovanni cursed.  “And if his note is correct, there will be more.”

“He was never one to bluff,” Carwyn growled.  “Why?  Why now?”

“Why didn’t I know he had them?” Giovanni asked, pushing away from the table and pacing the length of the library with deliberate strides.  “After five hundred years?  Or why is he sending them now?”

“You tell me.  You know him far better than I ever will.  What’s his game?”

Giovanni stalked the room, mentally shifting the pieces, and trying to make sense of everything they had learned that night.  One disturbing thought kept circling his mind until it was all he could think about.

“You’re missing his boldest move, Carwyn,” he muttered to the priest as he halted, leaning against the oak table and staring at the empty desk in the corner of the room.  “He didn’t send them to me.”  He nodded toward the desk.  “He sent them to her.”

Carwyn’s eyes widened as he turned to stare at the girl’s desk and heard Giovanni murmur, “He sent them to Beatrice.”

Chapter Ten

Houston, Texas

December 2003

He had gone to prison for love.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the translation of the second letter of Angelo Poliziano to Giovanni Pico as she huddled in the stacks, avoiding the packed reading room on Wednesday afternoon.  Pico had been imprisoned for his affair with a married woman and only escaped because of his connection to Lorenzo de Medici.

“I hope this letter finds you well, and free from the imprisonment which shocked us all.  By this time, Signore Andros should have arrived in Arezzo with the letter from Lorenzo.  Do not feel the need to thank me for my intervention, for the Medici was eager to take your part in the matter and needed little convincing, from either myself or the odd Greek.”

He had gone to stay with Signore Niccolo Andros in Perugia, presumably to study Andros’s library of mystic texts and recover from his imprisonment.

What happened to the little boy? Beatrice wondered as she skimmed over the notes from the second letter.  The letter mentioned their mutual friends, even Savaranola himself, but Beatrice was more enthralled by the hints of scandal than she was about the more historical significance of the translation.

She read it twice, adding to her notes on the first which she then tucked carefully in her bag.  Though both letters had been under the intense scrutiny Dr. Christiansen had predicted throughout the day, she had managed early in her shift to get her hands on them for a few minutes to make a copy of the notes.  There was little doubt in her mind that Giovanni and Carwyn knew exactly who the letters had come from.  She scratched down a reminder to herself to tell them that Dr. Christiansen mentioned more letters would be arriving.

“B?” Charlotte called.  She shoved her copy of the translation and her notes into her messenger bag and stood up, pretending to examine a stack of photographs that needed to be catalogued.

“Hey, I know you’re as sick of the philosophers as I am,” Charlotte sighed, “but could you come take care of the reading room for a bit?”

“Sure.”

“I know you’re going to be here all night, but if I don’t get a break from the chatter, I’m going to end up throwing old reference books at them.”

Beatrice smiled and held in a laugh.  The reading room was unusually packed that afternoon, as the philosophy department took a look at the documents.  The history department had already come and gone for the day, and the Italian studies department was due that evening.  Apparently they had all worked out some tentative custody agreement for the Pico letters.

“Are they scheduled to stay through the evening hours?” she asked, conscious of the two guests she had no doubt would be showing up when it was dark enough.

Charlotte nodded.  “Yeah, I guess philosophy’s leaving at five, and then the Italian chair is showing up to take a look at them.  Have you met Dr. Scalia?”

She shook her head.

“He’s a hoot.  He’s got these enormous glasses and looks like an owl, but he’s sweet man and not too chatty.  He’ll be here most of the evening, so between him and Dr. Handsome, you should have a pretty quiet room.”

Beatrice sighed, wondering whether poor Dr. Scalia was going to shake hands with Dr. Vecchio and forget about the letters he was supposed to be examining.  She had a feeling Giovanni would be more than happy if the Italian professor suddenly remembered he needed to pick up his dry-cleaning.  She might have to lay some ground rules about playing with cerebral cortexes while in the library.

Reminding herself that Carwyn would also be in attendance, she decided there would definitely need to be ground rules.