The Medici Return (Cotton Malone #19)

Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

E RIC WAS HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING .

He’d been born and raised about an hour outside of the city, in an ancient hilltop town, one of many scattered across Tuscany. His grandmother would tell him a giant carved the town straight from the rock, and to see it was to believe that story. Less than five hundred full-time inhabitants. Lots of blooming flowers, laundry hanging from lines, street names like Via dell’Amore and Via del Bacio. Its main claim to fame? Sheep cheese. High quality, made from an especially aromatic milk thanks to the succulent pastures in the nearby valleys. Its pungent smell remained in his nostrils, even after all the years that had passed since he left.

Earlier, he’d followed the curator and his DNA expert as they made their way down to the lower crypt in the Medici Chapel, off limits to tourists and any other visitors, to the coffin holding the remains of Anna Maria. There she’d rested for nearly three centuries. But not peacefully. Far from it with all the so-called scientific investigations. With regard to Anna he’d always found it curious that she’d been buried wearing the crown of the German Palatinate, for her husband, rather than the traditional Medici death crown. That had been a relatively unimportant piece of information to those performing the examination of her remains.

But to him? It spoke volumes as another message from the grave. True, Anna had been first and foremost a Medici, conscious of her birthright, proud of her family heritage. But she’d been resentful when she was denied the opportunity to succeed her father as grand duchess. Especially considering the ineptness and unpopularity of her brother. After Gian Gastone died she was still denied, as the duchy was confiscated by the Holy Roman emperor and given to Francis of Lorraine, effectively ending Medici rule. She’d been relegated to being the widow of Wilhelm, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, daughter of the late Cosimo III, sister of the departed Gian Gastone.

Which meant nothing.

But fate worked in her favor.

Her brothers left no legitimate heirs. Which meant that after Gian Gastone died, everything the Medici possessed became hers. Paintings, statues, bronzes, gems, cameos, busts, books, antiquities, suits of armor, furniture, reliquaries, clothing, land, money, anything and everything dating back three centuries. The fact that the duchy itself had been lost did not affect the vast holdings of family wealth. Prior to her death Anna Maria made a momentous decision. In her will she left all of it to Tuscany on the condition that it be maintained as ornamentation of the State for public use and to attract the curiosity of foreigners, never to be removed or transported outside of the Capitol and the Grand Ducal State.

The famous Family Pact.

A final Medici bow to dignity and greatness.

In the years after 1743 Medici possessions flowed into the galleries and museums of Florence. Anna’s final act was one of great generosity. An astonishing gift that laid the groundwork for modern-day Florence. Yet few knew her name. No statue of her adorned any of the city’s open spaces. No gallery or museum displayed her name above its doors. No bust or picture of her was placed in honor on any walls. Only a sculpture in the Medici Chapel above her grave. Hundreds of thousands pass through Florence every year without ever hearing her name. Yet none of what those people came to see would be there but for her.

Was he related to Anna Maria?

He had to know.

They’d opened Anna’s tomb, the bones reverently arranged anatomically by the latest investigators from a few years ago. Everything else that had been there in the 1857 exhumation was gone, decayed over time or ruined by the 1966 great flood. His expert had extracted several samples. He was bolstered by the fact that viable DNA had been found in her bones during the last exhumation.

Find it once. Find it again.

He knew he now faced several vexing issues.

First, he had to establish a verifiable DNA link to the Medici, through Gregorio Cappello and Anna Maria. If what his grandmother had told him was true, Gregorio Cappello and Anna Maria were mother and son. Which meant the historical accounts of Anna Maria being childless were wrong. But a DNA accuracy of 99.9 percent would rewrite that history. Since he’d already verified his DNA link to Gregorio, along with what his grandmother had always said, that would make him a royal Medici.

Check that off the list.

Second, he had to establish a DNA link from the paternal side.

Then the third part. The hardest of them all. Proving that Anna Maria and her baby’s father were legally married. Only then would he be a legitimate royal Medici heir.

Could he do it? In three days?

He was about to find out.