Michael White - The Medici secret

But the panic passed and a steely determination took its place. He could see nothing, but he knew the way out. Levering himself off the ledge, he slid into the icy water. It came up to his thighs and it was already lapping at the ledges where the ancient corpses lay. Ignoring the numbness in his legs and a growing giddiness, he pushed on back to where he knew the ladder stood. In the darkness, he fumbled for the security of the metal rungs, but they were still beyond his reach. With his hands outstretched, he forced his way on blindly against the rushing water still pouring in through the gaping hole in the wall.

Just as he was beginning to despair, his fingertips touched metal. He grasped the edge of the ladder and pulled himself up on to the first rung. As he lifted his foot to find the next rung he felt the ladder jolt and start to tear away from the wall. Mario threw himself forward and his weight forced the ladder back against the stonework. Above him he could see a chink of light coming from the edge of the trapdoor where it had not quite settled back into place. Filthy water cascaded down over his head and down his back. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, as he eased his way up another rung. The ladder shuddered again. Six more rungs and he would be within reach of the opening.

And then he caught sight of something bobbing in the water no more than two feet away. It was a dark tube about twelve inches long.

Mario swivelled round as carefully as he could. Stretching out, his fingertips brushed the object and he just managed to hook hold of it. Thrusting the object into the waistband of his trousers, he scrambled with all his strength up the ladder just as the support bolts slid from their recesses in the wall. With an almost superhuman effort, he grabbed for the edge of the trapdoor. His fingers found the metal rim of the aperture. Water crashed down on to his face, and he could barely draw breath. Driven on by sheer terror, he managed to heave himself up. With his feet scrambling against the rough stone wall, he pushed open the trapdoor and threw himself gasping on to the floor of the altar.

Florence, present day Edie Granger locked her red Fiat in the private car park beside the Medici Chapel and strode across the cobblestones towards the front doors. She was five foot nine in stockings, and, thanks to a daily hour-long workout, she was extremely fit. Unusually for an English academic, Edie placed sartorial elegance high on her list of priorities, something that endeared her to her Italian friends, who only half-jokingly claimed she was a dead-ringer for the actress, Liv Tyler.

She studiously ignored the placard-carrying hooded figures in worn brown robes parading in front of the doors to the chapel, just as she had done every day for the past few months. The protestors were members of a strange group calling itself Workers For God. Led by a fanatical Dominican, a Father Baggio, they were opposed to any scientific research conducted in the Medici Chapel. To Edie they had long since become part of the landscape.

She waved her pass at the admissions booth just inside the doors, took the stairs two at a time, and strode into the part of the crypt where crowds of visitors milled around each day reading the inscriptions on the tombs of the Medici.

At the far end of the chapel an area had been cordoned off to the public, and a cream canvas tent concealed the entrance to a narrow staircase that descended into the burial chamber where deep alcoves on either side contained the sarcophagi. Entering the research area, Edie sidestepped a pair of dissection tables and passed through a doorway into the first of a pair of labs that led off to the left.

The burial chamber beneath the crypt of the Medici Chapel was a low-ceilinged room about ten by six metres. It was cramped and warm but the air was kept fresh with a powerful portable air-conditioning system. Around the walls of the lab stood X-ray machines, spectrometers and DNA analysers. Across the main chamber was the office of Carlin Mackenzie, where sealed cases of bones lay incongruously alongside a couple of souped-up Macs.

Edie had just settled down at her bench and was running through some read-outs from an infra-red spectrometer when Mackenzie walked in with two men in suits. She had met them before: the shorter of the pair was Umberto Nero, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Pisa; the other, younger man was a well-known local politician, Francesco della Pinoro, currently the hot favourite in the mayoral election.

'Ah, Edie,' Mackenzie said. The professor was a short, chubby man in his late sixties. He wore John Lennon glasses, had a shock of fine, white hair, and a soft, handsome face that had made him popular with TV documentary makers. 'Gentlemen, this is my niece, Dr Edie Granger.'

Delia Pinoro extended a hand and Nero nodded. He and Edie had met on many occasions and they had never much cared for each other.

'Edie, I wonder if you could spare a few moments for our guests? Their car is due here in a minute; could you give them a brief tour?'

'Of course.' Edie managed to inject a little enthusiasm into her voice.

'Excellent. Gentlemen, thank you for your valuable comments and I will be in touch very soon.' Mackenzie shook their hands and turned on his heel.

'This way.' Edie escorted della Pinoro and Nero back into the central chamber to a long metal table. As they walked across the stone floor, she described how the bodies in the alcoves had been embalmed and preserved in this vault. Pacing around the table, she looked across at the visitors. Between them lay a 470-year-old corpse.

Brushing away a lock of curly black hair that had fallen across her face, she fixed the men with her burnt-wood eyes, folded her arms and stretched herself up to her full height, towering over both of them.

'This is Ippolito de' Medici, the illegitimate son of Giuliano de' Medici, the Duke of Nemours,' she explained. 'For almost half a millennium, mystery has surrounded his death. Some people have speculated that this young man – he was only twenty-four when he died – was murdered by his cousin Alessandro, who was then bumped off by another friendly relative, Lorenzino de' Medici. There was no proof though, until now. We've just finished working on these remains and have found clear evidence that Ippolito was poisoned.'

Nero looked up from the mummy on the table. Edie noticed he was a little pale. She quickly led the men into a smaller room off the main chamber. Here the smell of earth and old cloth was fainter. A man was seated at a workbench, peering into an eyepiece of a large microscope. 'This is the very heart of the operation,' Edie said. 'This room and the lab next door once contained up to a dozen coffins, but most of these were badly damaged in the flood of 1966. The bodies, those of minor members of the Medici clan, were reburied in another part of the chapel. This is now the principal lab where we analyse materials taken from the mummies in the crypt.'

'How can you be sure the man out there was murdered?' Delia Pinoro asked. For the past few minutes, he had been taking particular interest in the V-shaped opening at the top of Edie's lab coat. 'Surely any evidence would have disappeared centuries ago?'

'A good question,' Edie said, feeling relieved she could demonstrate her knowledge. 'The main purpose of our work here is to ascertain the cause of death of prominent members of the Medici. These corpses may seem like lifeless husks,' she added and gestured towards the chamber they had just left, 'but they tell us an incredible amount that has remained hidden until now.' 'Such as?'

'Often we have to reconstruct a scenario just from skeletal remains. Usually this is all that's left after five hundred years. But even crumbling bones can tell us an enormous amount. Common diseases of the time, such as syphilis and smallpox, leave telltale signs in the fine structure of the victim's bones which we can study using immunohistochemical and ultra-structural analysis.'