by Robyn Young
‘Lorenzo de’ Medici? Signore?’
A man was approaching across the piazza. On first glance, Lorenzo took him for a beggar – his coarse, filthy clothes, dark hair tangled to his shoulders, a thick beard covering a hard jaw beneath a nose that looked as though it had been broken a few times. But, as the man came closer, searching the crowd outside the church, Lorenzo saw how tall and well-built he was – hollow-cheeked, yes, but nothing like the emaciated wretches who thronged the streets of Florence, in whom the rot of true poverty had set in. Then, he saw the great sword protruding through the folds of the man’s threadbare cloak.
The blade was in a plain leather scabbard, but Lorenzo caught a flash of silver and the red glint of a large jewel at the pommel. Black Martin – so named for both his hair and his temperament – saw it too, shouting to his fellow bodyguards, who immediately closed ranks around Lorenzo, unsheathing their blades with a unified rasp of steel. There were a few startled cries from the crowd.
‘Leave this to us, signore,’ urged Martin, encouraging him towards the Palazzo Medici, a short distance down the street.
The stranger had halted, eyes on the armed men arrayed before him. He held up his hands. A gesture of peace. ‘I must speak to the signore.’
He spoke Latin, rather than Tuscan and his accent had the bluntness of a northern land. English, Lorenzo thought.
‘Please, it is important.’
‘Remove your sword,’ ordered Black Martin. ‘Slowly.’
Clarice was already with the children, hastening them towards the palazzo. Poliziano hung back for Lorenzo, who was moving to join them when the man called out again.
‘I’ve come from Paris. I have a message he must hear. It concerns Amaury de la Croix.’
At this, Lorenzo turned back. Pushing through his guards, he went to the man. Some of the crowd was dispersing. Others were lingering, hoping perhaps to be noticed for their bravery, or else keen for gossip. ‘What message?’ he asked, slipping into the Latin tongue.
The stranger’s eyes alighted on him. He stepped forward eagerly. ‘Signor Lorenzo?’
It was one step too close for the guards. Black Martin lunged, grabbing him.
‘I mean no harm!’ The man was struggling now as another guard tried to take his sword.
As the stranger grabbed the offending guard’s hand in a fierce grip around the wrist, Lorenzo caught sight of the gold ring on his finger – bright against the dirt – a disc engraved with two serpents entwined around a winged staff. It was a twin of the one that adorned his own hand.
Jack flexed his shoulders. The guards had bound his hands behind his back and his muscles were starting to cramp. The two either side of the doorway eyed his movements warily, although what they thought he could do, disarmed and trussed to the chair, was unclear. Settling, he scanned the chamber – a study it seemed – furnished with a desk and a daybed piled with cushions, chests inlaid with ivory and a brass candelabra. Cupboards with carved doors lined some of the walls interspersed with silk tapestries, but although richly appointed, the study was by far the smallest and humblest of the rooms Lorenzo de’ Medici’s guards had marched him through.
A hulking block of stone from the outside, dominating the street near the Church of San Lorenzo, with barred lower windows that made it look like a prison, the interior of the Palazzo Medici had been a glittering surprise. Jack, bundled in past guards and scores of men seated on benches, some clutching papers, had seen marble pillars flanking a grand inner courtyard, open to the sky, from which arched doorways led off and a wide staircase swept up. In the centre, perched atop a plinth in a well of sunlight, a strange bronze statue of a man, naked but for a hat and sword, looked down on him as he was escorted into a cavernous chamber lined with paintings. Jack caught the coiled mass of a dragon’s tail and the barbed chaos of a battle before he was ushered into an adjoining room dominated by a curtained bed and decorated with gilt-framed mirrors. He’d glimpsed his untidy reflection being marched across them, then his captors were pushing him through the red sweep of a curtain into the study, where, despite his protestations, they removed his sword and twisted his father’s ring off his finger, then bound him to the chair.
Despite the uncomfortable position and his rough handling, it was a blessing to be seated in a warm room on something other than flagstone or floorboard. Jack had arrived in the city only yesterday and the miles still throbbed in his feet, the soles of his boots worn paper thin on the long road from Paris. Faint noises drifted in from the street beyond the shutters, along with smells of food. He tried to ignore the hunger that clenched his stomach into a knot. He hadn’t eaten properly in weeks and the desire for a good meal had become maddening, picking at his mind in the empty hours of the days, filled either with the slow drudgery of travel or the fitful rests between.
His eyes flicked to the doorway as he heard voices coming closer. Boots clicked on tiles. Anticipation and apprehension built in him, until the red curtain was swept aside and Lorenzo de’ Medici entered. In a tongue Jack didn’t know, he addressed the two guards, who ducked out through the swag of silk. The lack of footsteps told him they remained just outside. Drawing up a chair, Lorenzo settled opposite him.
Up close, the man known as the Needle of the Compass – a prince in all but name, who was called the Magnificent and whose fame spanned as much of Christendom as his vast financial empire – was not at all what Jack had been expecting.
He wore a long scarlet robe buttoned high at the neck, with boots of leather peeking from beneath its folds, but his clothes, although exquisitely tailored, were plain in comparison to those of many of the peacocks Jack had seen strutting around the English court. Beneath the layers of silk, he discerned the muscled bulk of a fighter and on Lorenzo’s neck, just above the collar, an ugly scar disappeared beneath his hair. A few inches to the left and Jack reckoned the wound would have sent him to the grave. His hair, dark and parted in the centre, framed a broad, sallow-skinned face with a wide, squashed nose and thin lips. But although Lorenzo de’ Medici couldn’t in any way be considered handsome, there was something nonetheless alluring about him – something charged and crackling beneath the surface of those eyes.
His unwavering gaze discomforted Jack. He felt Lorenzo’s scrutiny as a thing hot and alive, boring its way into him. ‘Where is my ring?’ he asked to break the silence. ‘My sword?’ The black-haired guard who had wrested them from him had disappeared after he’d been tied up. He’d cursed himself for having brought the precious items here, but had wanted them as proof he was who he claimed to be.
‘In my care,’ answered Lorenzo, switching into Latin.
His voice came thick through that squashed nose, but Jack understood him well enough. His own Latin, rarely used since the schooling his father had paid for, had been a little rusty, but after weeks on the road, staying in monasteries and talking to the monks, it had mostly returned to him.
‘But since you are in my house and my custody – you will answer my questions. Who are you?’
‘My name is James Wynter. My father was Sir Thomas Vaughan, trusted man of King Edward IV and chamberlain to his son, Prince Edward of York.’
Recognition – and perhaps eagerness – flashed in Lorenzo’s eyes, but neither his tone nor his expression changed. ‘Vaughan? From what I know, his son’s name is Harry.’
‘My mother was with him before he married,’ Jack said tightly.
‘I see. You have a message regarding Amaury de la Croix?’
Jack knew that if he didn’t start from the beginning he would only have to travel back there and so he began, not with what he’d discovered in the priest’s lodgings in Paris, but with that summer day, over two and a half years ago, when a stranger from England had come to Seville to tell him his father had been arrested for treason. The same day he had fought Estevan Carrillo in the dust of the olive grove – such a foolish grudge that seemed now – and spilled the nobleman’s blood on that ground.
He told Lorenzo
how the stranger tricked him and tried to take the map Thomas Vaughan had entrusted to him. How his father had ordered him to guard that map, but told him nothing of its origins or importance. When he explained this trickster was working for Sir Anthony Woodville – a man his father had thought was a friend and a fellow member of the Academy, who intended to betray him and take the map for his true master, Pope Sixtus – Jack saw the first emotions begin to shift across Lorenzo’s broad face: surprise, understanding, anger. He looked again at the scar on the man’s neck, recalled Amaury telling him Sixtus had authorised the attempt on Lorenzo’s life.
When Lorenzo remained silent, he continued, speaking of how he’d returned to England, hoping for answers, only to find King Edward was dead and Thomas Vaughan and Anthony Woodville had been executed by the king’s brother, Richard of Gloucester, who, after locking Edward’s sons in the Tower, had taken the crown for himself. His tone gritted, forcibly measured, he told Lorenzo how he’d found his home in Lewes burned to the ground, his mother murdered at the hands of Pope Sixtus’s men, come hunting for the map in the wake of Woodville’s death. As he spoke, his mind filled with memories of Carlo di Fante, slumped beneath him in the flooded alley in Southwark and the man’s monstrous companion, the masked giant, looming out of the shadows in the Ferryman’s Arms. His fists clenched behind his back as he thought of that masked brute who had so easily, so remorselessly admitted to the murder of his mother – thought of Harry, his own blood, who had sent them to her house in return for a fistful of gold. Pope Sixtus was dead and Amaury said Carlo di Fante had breathed his last in that Southwark alley, but Harry and his mother’s killer, they were out there still.
Forcing these thoughts away, Jack described how, during the chaos of an uprising against King Richard and with the help of his father’s men, he had broken Prince Edward from the Tower and spirited him to France, but that, by then, Henry Tudor had fixed his sights on England’s throne and sent Harry to hunt down the young prince. He finished with a curt account of his brother’s attempt on his life and how he’d come to find himself in the care of Amaury de la Croix.
‘So the map from the Trinity was taken by your brother? Vaughan’s own son?’ Lorenzo’s tone was tight. ‘Where is it now?’
‘I believe Henry Tudor has it.’
‘But you saw it for yourself? There was land to the west?’
‘Yes. A coastline. Beyond Portugal and Thule.’
Lorenzo sat back. ‘Then it is out there,’ he murmured. ‘Plato was right. Atlantis. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, out in the Western Ocean.’ After a pause, he met Jack’s eyes again. ‘And the prince?’
Jack shook his head and watched the furrows in Lorenzo’s brow deepen. ‘My men and I left England when Tudor took the throne. Prices on our heads. I went to tell Amaury what had happened.’ Jack paused, but decided not to reveal just yet how he had been driven from Paris by his need for answers and the vital funds for him and his men. He wanted to gain Lorenzo’s trust first, in the hope he might satisfy both.
‘Amaury sent you here?’
‘No. We found his lodgings ransacked. Amaury had been taken. His – companion – believes those who took him were looking for the map.’
‘When was this?’ Lorenzo’s tone was sharp, but more with impatience than surprise or concern.
Jack suddenly got the feeling the man might know more about all this than he’d let on. ‘We arrived in Paris in late November. I believe Amaury had been gone for several weeks. My comrades and I made the decision to travel here, to inform you.’ He thought of the dispute back in the tavern in the Latin Quarter that had raged between him and his men before he’d won his way.
Lorenzo was up now and pacing, his face a closed book, hiding his thoughts.
Jack watched him, not speaking of the journey south from Paris, the winter rains and the hardships he and his companions had suffered, their friendships pushed to breaking, the sickness that had carried David Foxley to death’s door and trapped them in a monastery near Dijon until Christmas was behind them and, before them, the mountain passes closed by snow, forcing them to take the sea route from Aigues-Mortes – through waters patrolled by the Turks and roamed by pirates of the Barbary Coast – to the Port of Pisa.
Lorenzo turned back to him. ‘You say you think Amaury was taken for the map. Do you know, then, who his captors were?’
‘No. But his companion was able to—’
‘Companion? You mean the girl?’
‘Amelot. Yes. You may know she is a mute, so she hasn’t been able to give many details, but she indicated there were four of them and described a badge one of them wore. It was silver – a wolf’s head.’
Now, Lorenzo’s expression left nothing to the imagination. Recognition dawned across his face.
‘You know it?’ Jack pressed.
Crossing to one of the trunks that lined the wall, Lorenzo opened it and drew out a dagger with a jewelled handle. As he approached, Jack flinched, but relaxed when Lorenzo stepped in behind and cut his bonds with expert slashes of the knife. Jack flexed the life back into his fingers.
Lorenzo laid the dagger on the desk and planted his hands either side of it. After a pause, he glanced at the doorway, beyond which his guards remained stationed. When he spoke, his voice was low. ‘Amaury de la Croix wrote to me in the summer, telling me not to lose faith. That he had located the map from the Trinity’s voyage – a voyage authorised by King Edward, but funded by my bank – and had sent a man he trusted to retrieve it. You,’ Lorenzo added, meeting Jack’s eyes. ‘He said that when it was in his possession he would bring it to me himself.’ He shook his head. ‘I trust Amaury as my grandfather did. But he is not a young man, nor a strong one. I feared for him on that journey. Not wanting to lose, again, the map your father pledged to secure for us, I sent one of my men to Paris to bring it here. But my man never returned and I heard no further word. I had been praying that bad roads or weather had delayed him.’
‘Could your man have been the one who took Amaury?’
‘No.’ Lorenzo’s tone was assured. ‘But he might have been followed. Intercepted. It is possible Amaury’s letter could have been read by eyes other than mine.’ His voice lowered further. ‘I sensed it. Enemies stirring in the shadows.’ He clenched his hand, knocked his knuckles against the table. ‘But here? In my own household?’
‘You think Amaury was taken by someone from the city?’ After the initial surprise, Jack realised this made sense. He remembered Amaury saying the manuscripts he hunted down and translated for the Academy – their Gathering – were sent by messenger to Florence when completed. In his questions about who might know where to find Amaury he’d not suspected the very people the priest worked with. The revelation gave him hope. If Amaury’s abductors were from this city, then his decision to travel here was indeed justified. ‘And the badge? The symbol means something to you?’
‘The Court of Wolves,’ Lorenzo murmured. He straightened, eyes elsewhere. ‘I must speak to Marsilio. There is much at stake.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘I thank you for bringing this to my attention, James Wynter. You are free to go.’
‘Free?’ Jack rose, the severed ropes falling from his wrists.
Lorenzo called out and his guards ducked in. One, seeing Jack on his feet, went for his sword, but Lorenzo stopped him. He spoke calmly, gesturing to the door. Though Jack did not know the words, the meaning was clear. He was to be escorted out.
He found his voice. ‘Signore, before my father was executed, he wrote to me. In his last words he said you would give me the answers he could not. Amaury promised me the same, if I brought him the map.’
‘But you failed. You did not get the map.’
‘Failed?’ Jack felt a tide of emotion rush in, almost overwhelming him. The road to Florence had been long indeed, but one foot in front of the other was nothing compared to the hardships he’d suffered in his greater journey to this point. The danger that had dogged him, the confusion and uncertainty that had shrou
ded him, the grief that had shattered him.
He saw himself: racing through the trees that encircled the little house in the woods where he’d grown up, his vision filling with a horror of blackened, twisted timbers, smoke still tainting the air. His mother’s name tearing ragged from his throat. The sorrow in Grace’s eyes as she told him Sarah Wynter was gone. Later, his helplessness, as he realised if he had come home sooner, mere days, he might have saved her. She had stood no chance against Carlo di Fante and that masked brute, but he might have. If only. If only.
‘Failed?’ Jack repeated, his voice cracking on the word. ‘With respect, signore, I could have done no more. My friends – my father’s men – and I did all we could to protect the map and the prince. You have no idea what we sacrificed. One of those men died helping me!’ An image flashed in his mind: Hugh Pyke’s head on a spike on London Bridge. ‘All of us are outlaws in England. We’ve lost everything!’ His voice was rising. The guards looked as though they were preparing to step forward, but kept their eyes on Lorenzo who remained impassive. ‘My home is gone. My mother dead. My father too. I have nothing left, signore!’
‘So it is money you have come for then? Compensation?’
Jack felt his cheeks warm at Lorenzo’s dispassionate tone. Was that condescension he saw in the man’s eyes? He realised, standing here in a palace fit for a dozen kings, that Lorenzo de’ Medici could not possibly understand just how little he and his men now had.
How had he thought this meeting would be so different? How had he imagined it so wrongly, every step of the way here promising Ned and Valentine, Adam and David that they would get their reward for what they’d lost? Promising Amelot, who had joined their company, that he would find her master. How had he believed that the questions thrumming in him – tormenting him – would at last be answered? That he would be able to lay the ghosts to rest? Build himself a new life out of the ashes of the old?