by Robyn Young
Still, he told himself, there was no need to panic. It would be months, longer even, before the king and queen were ready to take on the might of Granada. King Henry would have time to implement his own plans. Harry sat back, feeling the warmth of the wine soothe him, eyes on the glittering waters of the wide blue river that wound its way down to the sea.
The hold was dark, the timbers slimed with sea and pitted with age. The odour was overwhelming, salt-sour brine and ocean-dankness. With the smell and the uneasy swaying of the ship, creaking and clunking against the harbour wall, Jack felt as though he were underwater. He could hear the muffled shouts of men on the docks of the Port of Pisa, the shrieks of gulls and the stamp of feet on the decks above him as more supplies were loaded on board the hulking caravel.
He shifted awkwardly, trying to find a position of relative comfort, the iron manacles that dragged at his wrists attached to a chain fixed to the low roof. There were other shackles, swinging empty all the way down the hold, he guessed for the slaves he now knew Gianotto Berardi traded in.
Jack had only seen the man once since he and Laora had been taken by wagon, five days ago, from Cafaggiolo to the port. The young man had been frank, telling him if he complied with his orders he and Laora would come to no harm. Jack had been told little of what these orders would be, or what the man expected of him, but he’d been told Berardi was involved with Christopher Columbus, the sailor Amerigo Vespucci had spoken of, and that Lorenzino and Giovanni di’ Pierfrancesco had entered into a deal with these men, of which he was now part. What a terrible twist fate had made. He was heading west as planned, not with his friends to seek his fortune and future, but in the chains of enemies to a place where Harry Vaughan – his blood and his enemy – waited.
Jack assumed Berardi wanted him for his knowledge of the map and guessed Laora had been brought as leverage to ensure his compliance, but all the repeated questions about Harry had made him wonder. Did Berardi think he could influence his brother; even get the map back from King Henry? If so, he was surely going to be disappointed, although Jack hadn’t said anything of these thoughts out loud. As long as Berardi thought he and Laora were of use it seemed they would be safe, for now.
His body was weak, ribs still painful to the touch, his skin mottled with bruises. His captors had given him water and bread, enough to keep him moving, but not enough to give him strength. Laora, at least, had been offered better treatment; a small cabin at the aft. But although he was glad she wouldn’t endure this discomfort, he was deeply troubled by their separation, unable to protect her, alone with Berardi and his rough-voiced crew.
He had prayed Amaury had made it to Florence and warned Lorenzo of his cousins’ conspiracy: that they were gathering an army against him in the Court of Wolves and intended to bring him and all his dreams of peace and empire to ruin. That the signore was now aware of his own plight at their hands. In fitful half-dreams, Jack imagined Lorenzo riding in with his forces, armed to the teeth; the throb of hooves and clash of swords, Laora safe in his arms, a glad reunion with his friends and Lorenzo’s gratitude. But the ease with which Berardi had spirited them to the port had crushed his hope of rescue and he’d been plagued, instead, by the deepening belief that Amaury had not outrun those horses.
In these empty hours, the ship creaking against the harbour wall, the irons weighing heavy on him, Jack thought often of his comrades, wondering what they would think when he didn’t return. Ned and Valentine had known he was going to the palazzo the day of the quake, but only Amelot knew he intended to search the upper storey for any sign of a link between the palaces and, even if she could explain that to them, would they tell Lorenzo? Would he even listen, blinded as he was by his belief in his own family? Maybe they would just assume he’d left the city, eloping with Laora, forgetting all about them.
Such thoughts tormented him. There were so many things left unsaid, unfinished. With his friends and Lorenzo, the Academy and Prince Djem, even Marco Valori and the Court of Wolves. But, most of all, with his father.
Amaury’s words in the cellar had cracked open a fissure through which memories, packed-down and forgotten under the weight of confusion and doubt, had come seeping. It was true, he knew; these past years, in an effort to understand the man, he had been looking at his father only through the eyes of others – through half-truths and secrets, prejudice and dogma.
Who was he to you, James?
The answer to that was as clear as a new dawn. The man had been everything. His past and his present, and all his future hope. He should have believed in him, as so many others had: young Prince Edward who had doted on him as a father, King Edward who trusted him with the care of his son, his mother, Sarah, who had loved him through all the parting years. His anger and doubts had peeled away, leaving a painful kernel of grief, but something else too – something bright and hard that had taken root – a growing desire to protect Thomas Vaughan’s legacy, a legacy that had been entrusted to him the moment his father passed him the map and sent him his ring, telling him to seek out the Needle.
Returning to Spain, where that journey had begun, Jack felt as though Fortune was turning back the wheel, giving him another chance. A chance to stop seeking the father he had always known and become the son he should be. As the gangplanks were drawn up and shouts sounded; a slap of ropes on water, the groan of timbers, he made a pledge that while he would do whatever he could to keep Laora and himself alive, he would not give these men what they wanted. That he would protect the legacy his father had left him.
The path before him – full of threat – was unclear, but there was some light at last, shining his way forward, with the rock of waves against the bow and the snap of sails unfurling.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although many of the characters, locations and events in this book are based in reality, history doesn’t always fit perfectly into the plot of a novel and I’ve tweaked or changed some details to fit my narrative and for ease of reading.
Probably my greatest alteration is with the story of Prince Djem (also known as Sultan Cem). His background as portrayed here is true: in losing the war for the throne against his brother, Sultan Bayezid, Djem fled to Rhodes, where the Knights of St John took him into custody in exchange for a truce and an annual payment from Bayezid. Djem was later moved to a specially built tower in France, during which time several factions – including Pope Innocent VIII, the kings of Hungary and Naples, and the Republic of Venice – vied to take possession of this valuable asset in Christendom’s struggle against the Ottoman Empire, following the fall of Constantinople.
In 1489 a deal was brokered between the Knights of St John and Pope Innocent and Djem was taken into papal custody in Rome, where Bayezid reportedly attempted to assassinate him. The prince’s time in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s keeping is fictitious, although it has been suggested that Djem did indeed make the offer of a permanent peace between Christendom and the caliphate if he was supported in his bid for the throne.
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Academy is very much based on the so-called Platonic Academy established by his grandfather, Cosimo: a circle of Italian artists, poets and philosophers, who promoted and advanced the tenets and ideals of humanism, including Plato’s concept of a World Soul. Cosimo paid men to hunt down and recover ancient texts on astrology, philosophy, mathematics, alchemy and Hermeticism – among them the Corpus Hermeticum, translated by Marsilio Ficino – gathering together a vast library of knowledge at his palace in Florence, on which the Vatican Library was modelled.
The secret map from the Bristol merchant ship, the Trinity, is my invention, although the vessel did undertake several mysterious expeditions in the early 1480s and it is thought its crew may well have spied the coastline of what would become known as North America. Soon after taking the throne, Henry VII replaced the customs official behind these expeditions, Thomas Croft, with a man loyal to him. Later, in 1496, England entered the race westwards with John Cabot at the helm, under Henry’s authority.
To keep up the pace and avoid occasionally lengthy waits between action in this period, I’ve altered the dates or timing of certain events. Pope Innocent did allow Lorenzo’s son, Giovanni, to enter the College of Cardinals as part of the marriage arrangements between his illegitimate son and Lorenzo’s daughter, but this agreement was made a few years later than portrayed. In 1513 Giovanni de’ Medici ascended the papal throne as Pope Leo X.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a close friend of Lorenzo de’ Medici, was accused of heresy by Pope Innocent for his unorthodox writings on humanism and fled to France before being arrested and brought to Rome for questioning. But his book, Oration on the Dignity of Man, as depicted here, was published after his death.
Loja fell to the Spanish in the early summer of 1486, while I have it occurring later in the year, and Queen Isabella met up with Ferdinand’s forces at Moclín, not Loja, although she did visit Sir Edward Woodville, who was instrumental in the town’s fall and badly injured, much as described. I’ve simplified the assault on Málaga; the Spanish were involved in several skirmishes with the Moors and an attack on Velez-Málaga before they reached the city, although I’ve kept much of the detail of the siege and surrender as is. Harry Vaughan was Sir Thomas Vaughan’s son, but very little is known about him and his place as ambassador to Spain and attempts to thwart Columbus’s voyage are fiction, although his father was an ambassador for Edward IV. His half-brother, Jack Wynter, is solely my creation.
Christopher Columbus arrived in Spain in the summer of 1485, where he met the slave trader Gianotto Berardi, with whom he began a partnership, and sought support and funding for his idea of sailing west to seek the Spice Islands. But it would be nearly five years before the council established by Queen Isabella to look into the feasibility of such a voyage – the Talavera Commission – gave their verdict, during which time Columbus returned to Portugal, where he’d spent several years, to appeal to John II to aid him in his dream. Columbus was thwarted in his ambition when the explorer Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the cape of Africa in 1488, opening up a new route and focus for the Portuguese. Columbus travelled back to Spain only to learn that the Talavera Commission had declared his voyage impossible. Queen Isabella, however, remained interested and promised to look into his idea again when Granada fell to her forces. She kept her word.
The Court of Wolves is my invention, although the backstory of its patrons, Lorenzino (whose name in reality was Lorenzo – Lorenzino was a nickname later used by a descendant of the family, but I’ve employed it here for simplicity’s sake) and Giovanni di’ Pierfrancesco de’ Medici is based in fact. Lorenzo de’ Medici was accused of taking his cousins’ inheritance and was forced to settle the dispute with the transfer of his estates at Cafaggiolo. Giorgio Antonio Vespucci was employed as the cousins’ tutor and his nephew, Amerigo Vespucci, was their clerk, although Lorenzo had clashed with other members of this family. His cousins later became enemies of his son and heir, Piero de’ Medici, and the two branches of the family entered into a struggle for control of Florence during the invasion of Charles VIII of France in 1494.
Lorenzo’s cousins, through the connections of Amerigo Vespucci, did enter into a business relationship with the slave trader, Gianotto Berardi, and his partner, Christopher Columbus, although slightly later than portrayed. It was, in part, Medici money as well as funds from the Spanish crown that helped finance Columbus’s first voyage and although Amerigo wasn’t the first man to set foot upon the New World that was ‘discovered’, the continent he later navigated and explored would come to bear his name.
Robyn Young
Brighton, March 2018
CHARACTER LIST
(*Indicates fictitious characters or relationships)
ABU’ L-HASAN: Emir of the Kingdom of Granada, father of Boabdil
*ADAM FOXLEY: brother of David, served under Thomas Vaughan
*AGATA: daughter of Franco Martelli
*ALESSO: calcio player
*AMAURY DE LA CROIX: French priest and member of the Academy
*AMELOT: ward of Amaury de la Croix
AMERIGO VESPUCCI: clerk to Lorenzino and Giovanni di’ Pierfrancesco de’ Medici
ANGELO POLIZIANO: poet and friend of Lorenzo’s, member of the Academy
ANTHONY WOODVILLE: brother of Elizabeth Woodville, executed by Richard of Gloucester in 1483
ARTHUR: son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York
*BARTOLO: guard at the Stinche
*BATTISTA DI SALVI: Monsignore under Pope Innocent VIII
BAYEZID II: son of Mehmet II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, half-brother of Djem
*BERTOLDO: chief steward of the Palazzo Medici
BLACK MARTIN: bodyguard to Lorenzo
BOABDIL: son of Emir Abu’ l-Hasan of the Kingdom of Granada
*CARLO DI FANTE: former servant of Pope Sixtus, died in 1483
*CARLOS: Spanish nobleman and captain under Ferdinand
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: Genoese sailor and business partner of Gianotto Berardi
CLARICE DE’ MEDICI: wife of Lorenzo
CONTESSINA DE’ MEDICI: daughter of Lorenzo and Clarice
COSIMO DE’ MEDICI: ruler of Florence and head of the Medici family, died 1464
CROOKED ANDREA: bodyguard to Lorenzo
*DAVID FOXLEY: brother of Adam, served under Thomas Vaughan
DJEM: son of Sultan Mehmet II, half-brother of Bayezid II
*DONNA SANTA: wife of Franco Martelli
EDWARD IV: King of England (1461–70 and 1471–83), brother of Richard of Gloucester, father of the Princes in the Tower and Elizabeth of York, died 1483
EDWARD V: son of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, succeeded his father as king in 1483 but was never crowned, assumed dead by autumn 1483
EDWARD WOODVILLE: English knight, brother of Elizabeth Woodville and uncle of the Princes in the Tower
*EL BARBERO (THE BARBER): Spanish soldier under Rodrigo de Torres
ELIZABETH WOODVILLE: wife of Edward IV, mother of the Princes in the Tower and Elizabeth of York
ELIZABETH OF YORK: queen consort of Henry VII, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville
*ESTEVAN CARRILLO: son of a Spanish nobleman, killed by Jack in Seville in 1483
*FEA: daughter of Franco Martelli
FERRANTE I: King of Naples
FRANCESCHETTO CYBO: son of Pope Innocent VIII, betrothed to Maddalena de’ Medici
*FRANCO MARTELLI: wool merchant and former business partner of Lorenzo de’ Medici, member of the Court of Wolves
FERDINAND II: King of Aragon and husband of Queen Isabella
GALEAZZO SFORZA: Duke of Milan, assassinated 1476
*GARCIA: royal official under Isabella and Ferdinand
GIANOTTO BERARDI: Florentine slave trader
GIORGIO ANTONIO VESPUCCI: priest, uncle of Amerigo Vespucci and tutor to Lorenzino and Giovanni di’ Pierfrancesco de’ Medici
GIOVANNI DE’ MEDICI: son of Lorenzo and Clarice, destined to enter the Vatican
GIOVANNI DI’ PIERFRANCESCO DE’ MEDICI: cousin of Lorenzo de’ Medici, younger brother of Lorenzino
GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA (PICO): Italian nobleman, philosopher, friend of Lorenzo and member of the Academy
GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA: Dominican friar
GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI: younger brother of Lorenzo, assassinated during the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478
GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI: youngest son of Lorenzo and Clarice
*GORO: former henchman to Carlo di Fante, now serving Pope Innocent VIII
*GRACE: childhood sweetheart of Jack’s in Lewes
HARRY VAUGHAN: son of Thomas Vaughan and Eleanor Arundel, *half-brother of Jack
HENRY VII: son of Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor, King of England (1485–1509)
*HERVEY: Harry’s manservant
INNOCENT VIII: pope
ISABELLA I: Queen of Castile and wife of King Ferdinand
*JACK (JAMES) WYNTER: *son of Thomas Vaughan and Sarah Wynter,
*half-brother of Harry Vaughan
JOHN II: King of Portugal
KATHERINE (OF ARAGON): daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand
*LANDO: member of the Court of Wolves
*LAORA: friend of Maddalena and Lucrezia de’ Medici
LORENZINO DI’ PIERFRANCESCO DE’ MEDICI: cousin of Lorenzo de’ Medici, older brother of Giovanni
LORENZO DE’ MEDICI (THE MAGNIFICENT): grandson of Cosimo, ruler of Florence and head of the Medici family
*LUCA: Italian mercenary
LUCREZIA DE’ MEDICI: eldest daughter of Lorenzo and Clarice
*LUIGI DONATI: member of the Court of Wolves
LUISA DE’ MEDICI: daughter of Lorenzo and Clarice
*LUYS CARRILLO: Spanish nobleman under Isabella, friend of Rodrigo de Torres
MADDALENA DE’ MEDICI: daughter of Lorenzo and Clarice, betrothed to Franceschetto Cybo
*MANI: mercenary
*MARCO VALORI: son of a silk merchant, member of the Court of Wolves
MARGARET BEAUFORT: Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry Tudor
MARSILIO FICINO: philosopher, priest, friend of Lorenzo’s and founder of the Academy with Cosimo de’ Medici
MEHMET II: Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, father of Bayezid and Djem, died 1481
MUHAMMAD AL-ZAGAL: brother of Abu’ l-Hasan and uncle of Boabdil
*NALDO: manservant to Franco Martelli
*NED DRAPER: served under Thomas Vaughan
NENCIA: Lorenzo’s mistress
*ORHAN: assassin
*PACINO NARDI: member of the Court of Wolves
*PAPI: manservant to Lorenzo
*PETER: Harry’s secretary
*PHILIPPE: French nobleman
*PIERA: daughter of Franco Martelli
PIERO DE’ MEDICI: eldest son of Lorenzo and Clarice
RICHARD III: Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV and King of England (1483–85), died in battle against the forces of Henry Tudor
*RIGO: guard at the Palazzo Medici