Court of Wolves

by Robyn Young

  She nodded uncertainly. ‘I will try. But, Father, you must answer my questions.’

  His brow puckered, eyes narrowing under his matted fringe.

  Laora had a flash of memory: lingering in the doorway of her parents’ bedchamber as a young girl, watching as he stood before a mirror, carefully brushing that mane, a rich perfume filling the air from the oil he had sleeked through it, a rare smile reflected in the glass as he caught her looking.

  ‘It’s that whoreson, isn’t it?’ growled her father, slamming her back to the present. ‘The Englishman? What has he done to you? God damn it, I’ll break his neck!’

  Laora stepped back. Her father’s hands had bunched into fists, the knuckles torn and bruised as if he’d been punching something. All at once, something rushed up in her. ‘Why did you hurt my mother? All those years, Father? How could you? How could you take her from me?’

  At her cry, a howl echoed from one of the nearby cells.

  Jack stared at the horror, chained to the wall of the cell in the sickly glare of the torch Bartolo had set to life. The figure was twisting this way and that, squirming vainly against the manacles that bound his wrists and ankles to the stone, mewling as if in pain. The years, and his mind, had turned his enemy into something enormous: a mountain of a man with massive fists and a leering death-mask face. The reality was quite different.

  Yes, the man was large, but no taller than Ned and not much broader than Valentine. His mask had gone, lost or removed. What remained was a face ravaged by some terrible force. Man-made or natural, Jack couldn’t tell. The man’s skin had been stripped away – peeled, he thought – healing back only reluctantly in puckered ribbons of raw-looking flesh. His lips had been cut away on one side, brown stumps of teeth visible in the gap, as if his mouth were crooked in a permanent lopsided grin. His eye had been removed, a warped hollow where it had been, and his ear was a root of flesh. The mask, once so sinister – such a feature of his dreams – was all at once understandable. Who wouldn’t wish to hide such hideousness?

  After the shock had worn off, Jack moved closer, assaulted by the rancid stink coming off the man. He continued to whimper and fight, the manacles rattling against the wall, his one eye swivelling in its socket, never quite landing on him.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ Jack murmured.

  The man’s whines faded at the sound of his voice, but he didn’t stop struggling. Jack glanced at the door. Bartolo had agreed to leave him alone, but he knew the guard was waiting at the top of the steps. He would have to do this quickly, quietly. He looked at the manacles, wondering if he might somehow open one when the deed was done? He could say the man got loose, tried to attack him. That he’d acted in self-defence. He doubted anyone here would be aggrieved by the loss. Bartolo had said the man had spoken no sense at all since he’d been brought in and had wounded several guards in his repeated fights to get free. The guard had confided that he didn’t know why the signore had ordered him kept alive, when the end of a rope was all the fiend was good for. Jack knew, though. The monster was the snare that kept him here, under Lorenzo’s control.

  Bending down, eyes not leaving his enemy, Jack reached into his boot and drew the dagger from its sheath. It was a stiletto he’d bought in the mercato, long and razor-keen. One stab up under the ribs and it would be done. Jack felt sweat break out on his brow. His mouth was dry. He realised he felt afraid. Not of the man, but of what he’d come here to do.

  He hadn’t expected this. This was not the first life he’d taken. Yet this was different. This wasn’t a battlefield, where everything happened in brief, brutal bursts, where to kill was a necessity to live. He thought of Estevan Carrillo, his sword punching into the man’s throat as he’d come at him, thought of his brother, Harry, his hands wrapping tight around his throat. Passion, violence and impulse. No. This was very different. This was the killing of a man in cold blood: a man who couldn’t fight back or defend himself. A man who was suddenly not so much vicious beast, but wounded animal caught in a trap.

  All at once, he was back in Lewes, a lifetime ago. He had been out in the woods with Grace, her hand warm in his; had come home to find his mother perched on the mossy tree-stump in her garden, her hair loose around her shoulders, a hum of bees in the lavender. Approaching, he had seen she was bent forward, touching something on the ground. Turning to see him, Sarah had pressed a finger to her lips and beckoned him forward. Curled on the grass at her feet was a dog, with patchy fur and jutting ribs. A single gold feather was stuck to the corner of its trembling jaw.

  ‘I caught him trying to take one of the hens,’ she whispered, reaching out to stroke the panting dog, which opened one eye warily.

  ‘Why didn’t you kill it?’ murmured Jack, astonished. His mother loved her hens, whose eggs were a bounty in the lean times.

  ‘He is injured, look,’ said Sarah, pointing to a seeping sore on the animal’s hind leg. ‘I cannot blame him. He was just hungry.’ Her eyes flicked up to his, flashing in the sunlight. ‘Fetch me some water will you, James. Some cloths. We will help him.’

  And so they had and the dog had become part of their family for a few short months; flopped on his bed at night, making Sarah laugh as he pelted around the garden chasing flies, until Jack had found him one day, shot with an arrow, sly grins on the faces of the boys who tormented him.

  He gripped the dagger tighter, fingers whitening around the hilt. ‘You killed my mother.’ His voice was ragged. ‘Do you remember, you son of a bitch? I want you to tell me. How did she die? Did she suffer? Did she—’

  The man was muttering. Jack took a step closer, straining to hear. It sounded like an Italian dialect. A few words he recognised sprang out here and there, fragments, he realised, of a prayer. For a moment he thought the man had seen the dagger and his intentions, but then he saw his eye was fixed on a point somewhere behind him. He turned as that eye suddenly widened as if in terror. There was nothing there but mildewed wall. Whatever he was seeing, Jack could not. There was no recognition. No sanity at all in that staring gaze.

  Jack lowered the blade, staggered back. The beast of rage clawing at him all these years had slunk beneath the surface, leaving only his mother’s face in his mind; her soft smile and loud laugh, her kindness and her pity. He had thought, by killing the man who had murdered her, that he would set her soul free. But now, he knew, she wasn’t the one who’d been chained.

  Leaving the man, whimpering and gibbering, Jack stumbled up the stairs, every step lifting him out of the darkness, into the light. Bartolo noted his pale face with a nod and not a little satisfaction, before descending to lock the cell door, then leading him back to Martelli’s cell where Laora was waiting, ashen and dazed.

  The light was fading by the time the two of them left the Stinche, both of them tight-lipped and silent. Laora halted outside, sucking in a long breath as the bolts and locks snapped back into place behind them. ‘Jack,’ she began.

  As she raised her hand to her head, he saw she was shaking. Across the street, a drunk was shouting at passers-by, becoming more vociferous.

  ‘Not here,’ he said, placing a hand on her shoulder and steering her gently back towards the workshop, a few streets away.

  As they entered, the rush of air setting all the candles aflutter, Amelot hopped off the bed and pushed through the curtains to meet them, her stare keen with question. Jack glanced at her as Laora removed her cap and shrugged off the cloak. He’d promised the girl he would ask the masked man about Amaury before he ended his life: demand to know if he’d been involved in the priest’s abduction. He would have to let her down in a moment. First things first.

  Laora had sat on the edge of the bed and was staring at the floor. As he crouched before her, she met his gaze, her eyes bright. ‘What did they do to him, Jack?’

  He shook his head, not knowing what to say.

  Drawing a breath, she slid her palms along her thighs. ‘He wants a pardon, sealed by the signore. He told me he knows things – Lorenz
o’s enemies and their plans – but he won’t speak until he is freed.’

  ‘Why didn’t he offer this months ago?’ questioned Jack doubtfully. ‘He could have saved himself from that place.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jack, looking up at her, wondered if Martelli had seen, in his daughter, something to live for. Whatever the reason for the man’s change of heart, it didn’t help him. If he went to Lorenzo with this, he would have to admit his deception and Laora’s part in it, putting her at risk. ‘He said nothing else? Nothing about the Court of Wolves?’

  ‘There was one thing,’ Laora said, after a pause. ‘He said the signore would want to hear what he had to say. That his enemies were closer than he knew – closer to home.’

  ‘Closer? Someone in his household?’ Jack shook his head. ‘But this is what Lorenzo has feared. We need to know who. Are they connected to the company?’

  ‘That is all he said. But . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  Laora frowned. ‘There was just something in the way he said it. Closer to home.’

  Angelo Poliziano made his way back to the palazzo, a bag of books slung over his shoulder: volumes of poetry for Giovanni. The boy had become fractious with the pressure of his intensive schooling, readying him for the College of Cardinals, and Poliziano knew he needed some light relief. Perhaps he should speak to Lorenzo about bringing in another tutor for Giovanni’s lessons in theology? The Dominican friar, Savonarola, was highly regarded as a fierce orator, a skill that any prospective cardinal would do well to learn.

  ‘Hello, my dear.’

  Poliziano turned, recognition of that voice sending a rush of heat through his face. There he stood. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Thinner, paler, but familiar as an old song; one he knew by heart. Pico wore a black cloak, the hood drawn up to shadow his face.

  Feeling himself start to smile in greeting, Poliziano forced back his joy. He glanced anxiously around the busy street as he went to him. ‘Pico? Does the signore know you’ve returned?’

  ‘No! And you mustn’t tell him. Not yet. Not until I have spoken to him myself. Come,’ Pico urged, steering him off the thoroughfare and into a gloomy side street. Once they were out of view he smiled, shook his head. ‘Oh, my friend.’ He reached up to touch Poliziano’s cheek. ‘I couldn’t stay away.’

  Poliziano drew back. ‘You shouldn’t have returned, Pico. He banished you. You betrayed him. Betrayed us all.’

  ‘You haven’t missed me? Do not lie,’ Pico murmured as Poliziano shook his head. ‘I see it in your face. Just as I have missed you.’

  This time, as he reached up, Poliziano let the man touch his cheek. His fingers were cool.

  ‘There is a hole in my heart, Angelo. Nothing has been the same without you. Not food. Not poetry. Not wine.’

  ‘Not lovers?’ muttered Poliziano, but he didn’t pull away. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘France. Other places. It doesn’t matter.’

  Poliziano caught the young man’s hand as his gaze darted away. ‘What is it?’ He stared at his friend, trying to divine the unfamiliar emotions flickering in those grey eyes. Was that fear he saw? ‘What has happened, Pico? Why have you returned?’

  ‘I told you. For you.’

  Pico turned back to him, his smile now sly and keen, filled with that wild spirit that had ensnared him years ago.

  ‘Come, my dear.’ Pico threaded his arm through Poliziano’s and tugged. ‘A jug of wine? Just the two of us? I will tell you my adventures.’ His smile broadened when Poliziano didn’t resist. ‘And you can tell me all that has happened in my absence.’

  36

  The air on the top floor was musty, as if it hadn’t been disturbed in a while, shutters drawn across windows, doors closed. Jack could hear the faint clatter from the kitchens below. He ran his hands over the wall of the passage, plain of any gilding up here where no one important ever ventured, decorated only with cracks. On the other side, through layers of mortar and stone, was the palace of Lorenzino and Giovanni di’ Pierfrancesco de’ Medici.

  Closer to home.

  When Laora had said this, Jack, thinking through the possibilities of what Martelli could have been implying, had come to wonder if he’d meant it literally. Might that explain the noises he’d sometimes heard on this deserted floor and the pope’s men – coming for Prince Djem – appearing as if from nowhere, unseen and unheard?

  He had asked Laora whether she thought Lorenzo’s cousins could be working against him, but she hadn’t thought it possible. Yes, there had been disagreements in the Medici family over the years, disputes even. But Lorenzo had taken the boys in when their father died, had raised them as his own. He had given them everything they could want, even granting them his estate at Cafaggiolo. No, she was adamant, Lorenzino and Giovanni were family, bonded to the signore in blood. In Florence, a man could have no greater loyalty than to his house and his father. But Jack, thinking of Harry, knew kin could be the worst kind of enemy.

  His inspection of the passage wall revealing nothing, he headed into the armoury. He was due to report on Djem – Lorenzo demanding regular accounts of the prince’s cooperation in his new place of confinement. The signore was at Mass, but he wouldn’t have long. The expansive chamber was shadowy, arrows of light lancing through the closed shutters. The air in here was thick with odours of iron and rust, leather and steel, making Jack think of camps and battlegrounds. Catapults and weapons haunted the shadows, forgotten, dust-filmed; wars for the Medici fought now behind the counters of their banks in the clink of coins, behind the seals that stamped trade deals to life and the doors of the Signoria, where power was cultivated and brokered. Jack turned his attention to the fresco of the battle that decorated the wall that adjoined the cousins’ palace, hills and cypress trees descending to a thicket of spears and men.

  Starting at the far end, stepping over chests and around piles of brigandines, he was surprised to find not plaster, but panels of wood beneath his hands, the cracks in the grain and in the gaps between the boards. Looking closer, he realised there were latches set at regular intervals along it, almost indistinguishable from the mass of colours in the sprawl of horses and men. A series of small doors, hidden in the painting.

  Jack opened the first, his heart picking up pace, until he saw it was just a cupboard, filled with coils of rope. Crouching, he reached in and rapped on the far wall. The lime-washed stone was solid against his knuckles. Closing it he moved on to the next, crammed with small barrels of grease that stank of dead things as he leaned over them to knock again. In this way, he moved methodically along the wall of storage compartments, but although his body was focused on the task, his mind began to drift.

  He didn’t have to do this. He had faced his mother’s killer in the Stinche, had felt the torch of rage he’d been holding all these years blown out at the sight of that chained and piteous thing. That night, held in Laora’s arms, he had slept without dreams. When he woke the next day it was as though a tide had passed through him, leaving a beach bare and new, his feet upon the sand. He had known then that he was done; that he could take the money Lorenzo had given to him and leave this city. There was nothing else tying him here and the road west was calling.

  But Laora had begged him. Amelot too, in her silent way. Both of them had things that tethered them here, ties they could not yet cut. No matter how much Martelli had hurt her, Laora was desperate to see her father released from the Stinche, even though she did not plan to stay, and Amelot would not give up her search for Amaury. Not while there was one trail left in the hunt for his abductors. So, Jack had come, in hope this might lead to the answers that would free them, these two women who had become part of his strange new family. Ned with his unwavering humour. Valentine’s rough loyalty. Fey Amelot. And Laora, her softness, her light, filtered though it was through a prism of sadness, no less rich or warm for that. The way she understood him without words. The ways they fit together. Old souls, she said.

  Ned
and Valentine were packing their gear and gathering supplies in readiness. His father’s ring and sword, and the silver wolf badge Marco Valori had given to him were with them for safekeeping. The road, when they took it, might not lead him to the life he had dreamed of; the shining cloak of knighthood left far behind him. It wouldn’t be what the son of a nobleman should have, perhaps. But it might be more than the bastard boy of a widow and a suicide, and a band of outlaws could hope for.

  Jack had opened a fifth door on some folded gambesons when he saw it – a mark in the dust that layered the cupboard floor. Looking closer he saw it was a handprint, fingers trailing from it. But it wasn’t facing inwards – it was facing out, fingers pointing towards him. Removing the gambesons, he reached in and knocked. The sound echoed, hollow. As he felt along the top, he realised the whole back panel was loose. Digging in his fingers, sweating in the close air, Jack pulled it down to reveal a tunnel, no more than a crawl space, the sides and roof wedged by beams. It was short, the other side visible by a frail rectangle of light. He stared at it – until the deep toll of the cathedral’s bell started him to life.

  He could wait, show Lorenzo what he’d found, let the signore follow this trail and – if it led him to his enemies – appeal for Martelli’s freedom in return for his indictment. But a dogged need to see for himself what was on the other side tugged at him. He still had some time; the signore always stayed chatting after Mass at San Lorenzo. Jack grabbed a dagger from one of the shelves and crawled inside. Turning awkwardly, he pulled the gambesons in after him and closed the cupboard door, easing the latch back into place. He did the same with the panel, not wanting to alert anyone on the other side to his discovery. As he made his way through, inching towards the light, dust puffed up around him, making his eyes itch. Crumbled chunks of stone and mortar jabbed at his palms, his shoulders and head bumping against the beams.