Court of Wolves

by Robyn Young

  Jack heard Valentine’s words. Once you is in, he’ll want you to stay. But there was no more power in Lorenzo’s terms. The man had given him what he needed and his heart was set on another path. ‘I will bring Djem to wherever you want, once you have paid me, signore. The Court of Wolves – well, you have Martelli.’

  ‘You said yourself you do not believe him to be the one who has been working against me here? If that is so, stay, help me find the traitor. Someone gave Pico’s book to the pope to be used against me. Drew the plan of my palace and handed it to my enemies. Someone took Amaury.’

  ‘No. I—’

  ‘Franco Martelli isn’t the only prisoner I have locked in the Stinche, James.’

  Jack prickled at the man’s hard tone. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The masked man. The one who killed your mother? Committed the murders in my city?’ Lorenzo nodded at Jack’s expression. ‘The watch took him into custody.’

  All at once, Jack knew Lorenzo had him. He thought he’d been the clever one – getting the signore to give up what he wanted. But he had shown his hand when Lorenzo questioned him about his mother’s killer; shown him what he wanted most, the grief and rage surely etched across his face.

  ‘Stay,’ repeated Lorenzo. ‘Finish what you’ve started here and I will give you your mother’s murderer. To do with as you wish.’

  The sun was descending, gilding the domes and towers, by the time Jack reached Santa Croce. The air in the quarter was humid, thick with flies and sour odours of the river. In his mind he had left this city months ago. On his way to a new life. A new world. Now, pulled back by the hand of fate, tethered here again, it felt more stifling than ever.

  Groups of people passed him, voices lifting on the wings of the day, the clatter of clogs echoing along the streets as they made their way home from the drying barns and washing sheds, freed from their labours. All this time, these men and women had been little more than background noise. Now, Jack found himself looking at them as they passed, some hurrying, others slow, bantering with one another. He envied them: the simplicity of their lives, daily routines bound around duties and families, work and home. If he’d never found out Thomas Vaughan was his father, might such a life have been his?

  He slipped down an alley scattered with rubbish, the stones of the buildings sprouting weeds. Halting by a door, its paint peeling, he opened his hand and looked down at the band of gold, warmed by his fist since he’d left the Palazzo Medici.

  His father’s ring.

  It was a token from Lorenzo; part pledge of faith, part burden of trust. The signore had forbidden him from wearing it, but it was his to keep. Jack stared at the snakes binding the staff, those wings outstretched above. He took a breath, then knocked: two raps, a pause, then two more. After a moment, there was a sound of a bolt sliding back. The door cracked open.

  Laora let out a breath of relief as she saw him, opening the door wider for him to enter. She closed it quickly behind him, snapping the bolt back in place. Jack entered the dim chamber, where the only source of natural light came through a grated window, high up in the wall that overlooked the alley. Laora had made the place her own, as much as she could; sweeping clean the dusty floors and shelves, nesting the wide bed with blankets he bought her from the market, around which she hung faded lengths of cloth she’d found in a chest. The soft glow of tallow candles gave the tented space a warm, womb-like feeling.

  They had worried at first that someone might find her here, but Marco Valori had assured them the workshop, which backed on to one of the warehouses owned by his family’s company, had not been used for over a year and she would be safe. Jack had come to rely, more and more, on the young man, who had proven himself a worthy friend. Now, at Lorenzo’s orders, he would have to turn against the only company in which he’d found safety and succour these past months.

  ‘Jack?’

  He turned. The name still sounded strange in her mouth. Laora had only started using it recently, after he told her who he was. Not a knight, but the son of one. Not here to represent his family, but to seek answers to his past. Given all the upheaval: her father imprisoned, her home and possessions confiscated – just the gown she’d been wearing and her beloved bird pendant left to her – Laora had taken his admission surprisingly lightly. But, he’d supposed, she had little choice. After everything had been swept away, he was the only solid thing that remained for her to hold on to. But in her need, he, too, had felt himself held. Each keeping the other afloat.

  Laora’s hazel eyes were wide with question. ‘Did the signore give you what you wanted?’

  He sank heavily on to the edge of the bed, utterly spent.

  She crossed to him and crouched before him, her hands on his knees. A breath of blossom surrounded him. It was a smell of home, of comfort. Her face, pale from lack of sun, the freckles still winter shy, tightened with worry. ‘Jack, what happened? Tell me. Are we leaving?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he murmured, sliding his hands over hers, lacing her fingers in his. ‘Not yet.’

  Giovanni Pico della Mirandola opened the shutters, wincing as the glare blinded him, the sun bathing his nakedness in a rush of warmth. As he peered through sleep-crusted eyes, the world solidified into a dark maze of rooftops and spires, dominated by the towers of Notre-Dame. People were moving in the street below, the clop of hooves and rumble of carts telling him morning was wearing on.

  Pico’s head swam and he felt a bubble of nausea float up from his stomach. How much wine had they drunk last night? He glanced at the clothes strewn over the floor, the three jugs, one on its side, on a table. Poliziano would never have let him drink so much. The thought came with a pang of sorrow, but Pico forced it back. To hell with Poliziano and temperance. The man hadn’t even fought for him to stay. Initially, such thoughts had been kept at bay by the knowledge he had brought this banishment upon himself by betraying Lorenzo and the Academy, but these months in Paris had faded the guilt, leaving anger to shine through, bright and hard.

  ‘Dear God, what havoc we made!’

  Pico turned to see his companion sitting up in bed, staring in amused disbelief at the mess of the chamber. He had met Philippe, a young nobleman from the south, who was studying at the Sorbonne, several weeks ago. Normally, his trysts didn’t last so long, but Philippe had enamoured him; his compelling eyes and sensual lips, and poetry that set his skin on fire. He grinned through his queasiness. ‘I’ll wager we can make more before Our Lady’s bells sing for noon.’

  Philippe went to throw back the covers in readiness, but was distracted by a banging on the chamber door. Frowning, he jumped from the bed and snatched his robe from the floor. He waited for Pico to slip out of sight behind the latrine screen, then opened the door.

  Pico heard the urgent tones of Philippe’s servant.

  ‘Monsieur, a company has come, from Rome.’

  ‘Rome?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur, they bear the seal of the pope!’

  Fear rushed through Pico, a cold, sickening wave. They had found him. He had not run far enough. Nor been careful enough. Who had informed on him? Spies at the Sorbonne? In the royal court? God only knew who he’d spoken to in drunken, reckless evenings with courtiers and tutors, whores and servants. He grabbed a robe and struggled into it, before rushing to the window. His mind flashed with foetid chambers and rough questions, black-clad officials, machines of torture and the chains of the pyre.

  ‘Pico . . .?’ Philippe questioned, bewildered, at his back.

  Pico leaned out, over the drop to the cobbles. Too far. He could hear booted feet pounding up the stairs. There was nowhere to run.

  34

  The summer was passing, the year turning, but, for Jack, time had stopped, trapping him in a season of restless frustration. Every day, no matter his tasks or the directions he took, the maze of the city always somehow led him back to the high, blank walls and guard towers of the Stinche Prison, which squatted, like a stone tomb, in the middle of a confusion of stre
ets near the Church of Santa Croce.

  He’d been told the austere structure had once been a palace, but now its walls housed criminals and those who guarded them. Many of the prisoners were bankrupt cloth merchants and guildsmen accused of fraud, but there were others incarcerated there too, charged with murder and robbery. Now and then, one of these men or women would be hauled out, blinking in the daylight like an animal poked from a burrow, to be whipped through the city amid the jeers, only to be marched back to the prison walls, outside which they were hanged before a crowd.

  Only one small door, reinforced and guarded, allowed access. Above it was an inscription, carved in stone:

  We Should Be Merciful

  Every time he read those words, Jack would feel an itch of rage. There would be no mercy. Not for the monster within those walls. Not for the man who’d left his mother’s body to burn, after whatever he’d done to her. When Lorenzo finally gave him his reward – not in gold now, but blood – he would be as pitiless as St Michael, avenging with his blade.

  Each time he came before Lorenzo to report on who he’d met at the last gathering of the Court of Wolves, what they’d said and what business they were involved in, Jack would beg him to be allowed into the prison, if only to find answers to the questions that burned him. How did his mother die? Was it quick, or did she suffer? Had she said anything at the end; some parting declaration perhaps, of love or wisdom, that he had been denied? But Lorenzo remained firm in his offer – uncover the intentions of the Court of Wolves, whether they were working against him to some design, and who among their number Amelot had seen in Paris – and he would get what he wanted. Jack’s frustration simmered all the hotter with the knowledge that by offering to infiltrate the company in the first place he was the one who’d fashioned the cage into which he had walked, Lorenzo now standing outside, dangling the key just out of reach.

  Even the hope that Franco Martelli, another soul trapped in the prison’s stone hulk, might give up any secrets the Court of Wolves was keeping, had dwindled. The man had apparently resisted all methods of interrogation and would speak to no one. So, while Lorenzo continued the endless dance of Florentine politics, the deals and bribes, the threats and alliances, moving his pieces around the board – the plans for Maddalena and Franceschetto’s marriage continuing apace, Prince Djem hidden away, Giovanni being readied for his entry into the Vatican by the tutelage of Poliziano, a lonely figure these days, glimpsed in the halls of the palazzo, an air of sadness clinging to him like rain – the task was left to Jack.

  And so he did as he was bid, attending the gatherings of the company, more infrequent now it was summer and many of their number had left the stew of the city for the Tuscan hills; donning his wolf badge and his lies, accepted now among their number. But in all this time he’d discovered nothing that indicated these men had any sinister plan. They were, it seemed, merely what they appeared: a fraternity of ambitious young blades and old generals, looking forward or harking back, all sharing a passion for sport and politics, enterprise and endeavour.

  It was true, they remained interested in the signore and his dealings, Marco Valori often asking him questions, but to Jack that seemed no different to factions he’d observed in the royal court in England: men, drawn to the power of the throne, seeking to understand their king and how they might benefit from his largesse, or avoid his wrath, some hoping to court his favour, others to manipulate it.

  Sometimes, though, he wondered, thinking back to his first encounters with Marco – the man’s interest in where Lorenzo might be weak and his own usefulness in exposing that. Had they become wary after the arrest of Martelli? One of their own? Jack had confided in Marco about the stolen chalice, desperate to find Laora a place to hide out of Lorenzo’s sight, but even the fact he was now harbouring a thief from the signore hadn’t made the young man any more forthcoming with him. Nor had he been able to persuade Marco to speak more of the enigmatic patrons he sometimes caught mention of, but never by name.

  Occasionally, Jack thought something else might have caught their eye, turned their focus from him. Other times he worried if the rare moments of distraction he had in their company – cheering on the players of Santa Maria Novella at calcio games, betting on horse races and jousts, dining in splendour at their palazzi – had blinded him to their intentions. But none of these thoughts brought him any closer to answers and, when the thrills and laughter, wine and camaraderie faded, his mind would circle right back to those high prison walls and the monster within.

  In those times, only Laora eased his discomfort, arms around him in the candle-flamed dusk of the old workshop, curtained by the faded lengths of cloth stirring in the warm air, separating them from the world. There in the dark they escaped into one another, with quiet breaths and slow releases, in whispered promises and restless dreams; each stalked by their nightmares chained in the same prison, only streets away.

  Jack’s plan to head west had not dimmed, his desire to take that road only increasing in the months trapped here. Early on, Ned had tried to convince him to leave; give up his chance at vengeance, be done with this city. But Jack could not. Not while the masked man still lived; his mother’s blood on his hands. Only once he’d given Lorenzo what he wanted and had taken his payment would they go. He and Laora, Ned, Valentine and Amelot. Not David Foxley though. He had gone already, slipping away without a goodbye, soon after Jack had given him his and Adam’s share of the money Lorenzo had paid; first instalment of a promised larger sum.

  Jack had glimpsed David once after that, stooped and unsmiling in the warm summer rain down near the docks, where the barges brought goods from the Port of Pisa. Gone before he could reach him. He’d not seen him since. Jack, anguished by Adam’s death and his part in it, accidental though it was, couldn’t help but feel some measure of relief, his guilt less painful without the constant reminder in the eyes of his brother. He prayed, fervently, that David would find the comfort they could no longer offer. But he knew well how the demons of grief and loss could cling to the soul.

  Ned and Valentine’s impatience to be off had been tempered somewhat by their well-remunerated task of guarding Prince Djem in the nondescript little building Lorenzo had bought for the purpose, nestled among a row of tatty shops north of San Marco. For his part, the Turk seemed to have accepted his new life, watched but no longer chained, with an enclosed courtyard where he could sit and read, feel the sun on his face.

  Valentine remained suspicious. But Ned, despite initial reservations, fell into an oddly natural friendship with the man, chatting while they played chess, asking about his homeland and listening, rapt, to Djem’s talk of snow-crowned mountains rising from great plains, skies of stars beyond measure and markets perfumed with spices. Ned, who’d lost his precious shells in the destruction at the Fig, seemed to have found himself a new collection in these stories, hoarding them like treasures.

  Jack, too, had come to feel a connection with Djem, not only through the man’s poised presence, but by the fact he knew what it was to have a brother – a man of his own blood – who had wounded him more deeply than any stranger. So it was, he found himself, one morning in early September, heat simmering off the stones of the courtyard, flies droning around a plate of fruit, confiding in the prince.

  Valentine was sitting on a stool in the shade, arquebus propped beside him, head resting against the wall, mouth open, snoring. From the shadows of the house, Ned was telling Titan to quiet. Jack, sitting opposite Djem, felt the back of his neck burning as he waited for the Turk to make a move. Again, he was struck by the oddness of this scene: him sitting here with a prince – a would-be emperor – drinking wine, while Djem, dressed in his silks and turban, sipped at warm milk sweetened with honey, the two of them like old friends. He clicked his tongue irritably as Djem took his rook, knowing he should have seen the move coming.

  The prince sat back, eyes on him. ‘You aren’t playing as you usually do.’

  ‘I’m just tired.’ Jack ha
dn’t slept last night, assailed by dreams.

  ‘You are thinking of your mother’s killer again?’

  Jack’s eyes flicked up to meet Djem’s. Over these months, sitting here in this courtyard, he’d found himself talking about his life; his past and his time in the city, his frustrations with Lorenzo and his task here. To him, they had been mere drops of information, sporadic, unconnected, but Djem had surprised him by collecting them into a pool, into which he often dipped without warning. Jack, glancing at the goblet of wine near his hand, guessed the man, with nothing more potent than his sweet milk, always had him at a disadvantage. He nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘Vengeance is a powerful force. We must be careful its fire does not burn through us. It can hollow a man out from the inside, leave nothing but a shell.’

  Jack paused, thumb and forefinger hovering over a pawn. The board, its pieces made of jade and jasper, had been a gift to the prince from Lorenzo. ‘Has it diminished for you?’

  Djem considered, then answered carefully. ‘Yes, I will seek retribution for my brother’s actions against me. And, yes, if I have the chance I will take the throne from him. But I no longer allow my hatred of him to have mastery over me. Now, a more powerful force compels me. Love – for my family, my home. The desire to return to them.’

  ‘It isn’t only your brother who has kept you from them all this time,’ murmured Jack, pinching the pawn and moving it towards Djem’s bishop.