by Tom Pugh
“A letter came from Lübeck several days ago. I have been waiting for you.”
“Il Medeghino’s book,” persisted Durant. “I don’t see how it brings us nearer to our goal?”
“First things first, signore. Do you have the palimpsest?”
Durant removed it from his doublet. Standing at his shoulder, Longstaff read the opening words. Dear Tycho, Your mother and I are both well.... The document was brilliantly white, without a single bump or imperfection.
Durant strode to the window and held it up in the sunlight. A shadow text appeared behind the first. The Italian took it from him, the wide cuffs of his robe falling away from strong wrists. He pinched the corners of the thick vellum between his fingertips.
“Has no one offered you something to drink?” He indicated a tall decanter on the sideboard. “Help yourselves.”
Longstaff splashed wine into a glass, taking a long drink. Durant refused to leave his host’s side.
“Otiosi protocols are strict. What prompted you to travel here in person?”
The Frenchman indicated the text, quoting from memory, “the shining sun does never look upon them, but the moon shows them the way, and we, by Jupiter’s leave and damning Ptolemy’s eyes, journey with them into Hell.”
The Italian nodded. “Out of character for Lucretius, I agree. Though hardly a code in the normal sense of the word.”
He stepped away from the window and the faint letters disappeared from view. “You’ve done well, both of you,” he placed the palimpsest on the writing desk and rang a bell. The servant reappeared, carrying two heavy purses.
“Signor Longstaff, you have braved the horrors of Russia and achieved everything my colleague in Lübeck asked of you.”
Longstaff held his breath, waiting to hear the words for which he’d risked his life in Moscow and faced his past in the shape of Il Medeghino. He looked at his host, who seemed to read his thoughts.
“Present yourself to Sir Nicholas Bacon in London – he’ll see that your family estate is returned to you,” he pointed at the purse. “Our collaboration is at an end. The money rewards your faithful service.”
Longstaff’s hands shook as he accepted the purse. “Thank you, signore. It’s been an honour.”
“And now, if you gentlemen would excuse me… ”
“I don’t want your money,” interrupted Durant. “I would like to help, if I can.”
The Italian made a chopping motion. “You have compromised the safety of my home by coming here, signore. Our connection is at an end,” he nodded at the servant. “Clement will see you out.”
Durant raised a hand, as if about to argue. Giacomo Vescosi’s face was hard, his dark eyes flat and dismissive. The Frenchman straightened his collar. “My daughter? Has there been any news?”
“Nothing. I’ve done the best I could.”
“Of course.” Durant marched woodenly after the servant, his face set.
Longstaff took the reins of both horses in the courtyard and joined his travelling companion in the quiet street. “I’m sorry. Wait a few days. I’m sure he’ll change his mind.”
“I am happy for you,” Durant wouldn’t make eye contact. “The letter is safe. If Vescosi finds the Devil’s Library, he’ll see that Epicurus’s works are printed, and distributed.”
“I know how much you were looking forward to meeting him.”
Durant shook his head. “I have done my part. I’ve never been a man for seeing things through to the bitter end. I suppose this is goodbye.”
“What will you do?”
Durant used the toe of his boot to up-end a small stone. “You’ll go home, of course. Perhaps I’ll do the same. It has been a long time since I visited Bordeaux. Maybe I’ll just keep looking.”
“For your daughter?”
The Frenchman forced a smile. “Perhaps I’ll visit you in Suffolk. I never was in England.”
“I would like that,” said Longstaff.
Durant embraced him. “I won’t forget what you’ve done for me.”
Longstaff tried to read his expression, but could only see the outline of his narrow face. He led Martlesham away, down the cobbled street. Sparrow looked back and barked, expecting Durant to follow.
Longstaff stepped into a doorway and examined the purse Vescosi had given him. Enough gold and silver to start a new life in England. Finally, his true life. Sparrow looked at him reproachfully and Longstaff rubbed her thick muzzle. “You and I are going to treat ourselves to the finest inn in Florence.”
CHAPTER 18
Longstaff awoke feeling rested and ate a leisurely breakfast, before making his way to the bathhouse where a plump young man looked him up and down.
“Full service?”
Longstaff shrugged off his clothes. “Have the trousers and jerkin brushed and smoked. Burn the rest and send for a tailor.”
“Shoulders like yours, you must be a soldier?”
Longstaff pictured the fields around the house at Martlesham.
“I’m a farmer now.”
The attendant led him to the steam room. Longstaff paused beside a basin of clean water to splash his face and hair. It only took a moment, but the small gesture felt like a second baptism. He lay down on a block of warm stone. The attendant slapped him with a damp towel and Longstaff felt the tension of the last weeks ebb away.
His new clothes would not be ready for several hours. He borrowed a suit of local clothes – a wide, sleeveless lucco and sturdy leather sandals – tucked a soft cap into his belt and stepped into the yard. Sparrow was there, dozing in the sunshine. Longstaff fetched her a bowl of water before striding out in the Piazza dei Peruzzi.
He wandered the streets at random, admiring the exotic flowers in the Boboli Gardens and the trick seats, which sprayed water on unwary visitors. When Durant had said that even life and death were perfumed here, he’d described the city well, but Longstaff didn’t spend long thinking about his travelling companion. He’d grown to like the Frenchman, but for weeks they’d spent nearly every waking hour together and Longstaff was enjoying the simpler pleasures of his own company.
He passed the vast building site of the ‘Uffizi’, and the tapping of a hundred stonemasons’ hammers. The whole city was covered in dust, as the labourers raised offices for the city’s celebrated merchant family.
Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany, bore the same name as his illustrious forebear, and directed equally large sums of money to favoured artists and architects, but the similarity ended there. The original Cosimo had claimed no title, ruling the city through force of personality, encouraging novelty in music, painting and literature, commissioning radical new works from Fra Angelico and Donatello, founding a Platonic Academy and slowly turning Florence into Europe’s most enlightened city.
The present Duke was a zealous supporter of the Inquisition, a book burner obsessed with discipline and order.
Crossing the Ponte Vecchio, Longstaff walked through the new market, the stalls piled with leeks, onion and garlic, thieves and bankrupts tied to a stone pillar at the centre. Longstaff paused, no longer thief or soldier, but a man of means and estate.
He joined a group of shopkeepers and signori, and listened as the banditori read the day’s proclamations. Men traded information here and he asked for news of England. A fleshy, middle-aged man stepped forward.
“Peace and prosperity,” he said. “The people have put the trials of Mary’s reign behind them, taken Elizabeth to their hearts.”
Longstaff closed his fist around a coin. “More, if you expect to get paid.”
“Your Queen is well advised by Lord Cecil. She is still young. People expect her to make a marriage.”
“What of Lord Cecil’s brother-in-law?”
The newsmonger didn’t hesitate. “Sir Nicholas Bacon has been confirmed Lord Chancellor. With such noble men to advise their queen, the English need have no worries.”
Longstaff grinned; he’d never been so close to recovering his family estate. Seized by
an urge to tempt fate as he recrossed the Ponte Vecchio, he walked into a jeweller’s shop and commissioned a signet ring, describing his father’s coat of arms in minute detail. The goldsmith, a fine old man, with a mane of glossy white hair, opened his ledger.
The book.
Ivan’s book was still in his saddle-bag. Longstaff ran from the shop, sprinting back to the inn, hardly pausing to wonder why Vescosi hadn’t asked for it. A stupid oversight; the sort of carelessness that might put his whole future at risk. His saddle-bags were still on the floor of his room. Longstaff sighed with relief when he saw the slim volume. He pushed it down the neck of his lucco and hurried out again.
He knocked at Vescosi’s door. “Come on,” he muttered in the quiet street.
The door remained closed. It didn’t make sense. Even if Vescosi was out, a house this size would never be left empty. Where were the servants?
Longstaff’s weapons were back at the inn, except for a long stabbing knife taped to the inside of his wrist. He pushed the blade through a crack in the heavy gate. The tip of the knife just reached the latch and he slipped inside.
Deserted. The front door stood wide open. Longstaff entered the reception room. The wine glass he’d used the previous day stood unwashed on the sideboard.
He crept up the stairs and walked silently along a silk-lined gallery. Above his head, a painter’s brush had divided the ceiling into regular squares. Straight lines and perfect angles which the artist had made no attempt to soften with curlicues or floral motifs. Each square showed a man at work. A farmer peered at a sorry-looking sheaf of wheat; a smiling vintner with flushed cheeks, hem of his smock stained with grape-juice; jeweller, eyes obscured by thick lenses, standing with hands clasped behind his back in an attitude of assumed innocence.
Longstaff put his ear against a heavy wooden door. Nothing. He tried the handle, knife gripped in his free hand. The door swung open on silent hinges.
The huge room had been ransacked. Vitrines lay on their sides, the floor littered with broken glass, upturned plants and ruined treasures. Dozens of tiny white labels lay among the debris like confetti. Bookshelves – twice as tall as a man – stood bowed and empty. What in God’s name had happened here? A punishment? What crime could have invited such wanton destruction?
Wooden crates stood together in the centre of the room. Longstaff prized one open, left his knife buried in the lid as he ran his fingertips across the leather spines of books. The light was too weak to make out the titles. He pulled the case towards a ray of sunlight.
He was bent double when the man attacked. Longstaff fell away from a flashing blade. The assailant landed on top of him, drove the air from his lungs. Longstaff caught a wrist in one hand; knife’s point a fingerswidth from his throat, edging closer. Vescosi’s servant, teeth bared, eyes points of hatred.
Longstaff couldn’t turn his head. His fingers clawed at the debris on the floor. Soil. A white label. A shard from one of the smashed vitrines. The edge cut his palm as Longstaff stabbed upwards, slit the servant’s throat below the ear. Blood sprayed across the room.
Someone screamed. Longstaff shook himself free; a ragged child cowered in the doorway.
“Are there more?” he yelled in Italian.
“I saw you yesterday. I followed you,” the boy’s voice was shrill with panic. “How was I supposed to know you weren’t one of the men who took her away? She never told me what you looked like.”
She? “Come here, boy, where I can see you.”
He approached on unsteady legs. Eight years old, Longstaff guessed, gap-toothed and grey with exhaustion.
“Someone set you to watch for me?”
“I thought you were one of them. Until…” he gestured at the dead man, keeping his eyes averted.
Longstaff searched the corpse for clues. Nothing in Clement’s purse beyond a few pennies. Nothing in the boots or concealed in the folds of his woollen lucco. Longstaff stripped the corpse. No papers taped to his body or hidden in the crack of his arse, but the chest had been branded with a dog’s head. Longstaff shuddered as he stared at the pointed muzzle, the two rows of jagged teeth. The constellation of the dog was an omen of plague.
He turned to the boy. “You work for Vescosi?”
“My mother did, before men came and took him away.”
A dread weight settled on Longstaff’s chest. He and Durant had given the Lucretius palimpsest to Vescosi only yesterday.
“When?”
“Days ago. And they took Aurélie. I was in the kitchens. She grabbed me, told me to hide and come back later when the house was quiet. Keep a watch for you and the Frenchman. The men came then. I couldn’t see – she’d pushed me into a cupboard – but I heard her fight. When they left, I followed,” he added with a trace of pride. “I know where they took her.”
Longstaff closed his eyes. Who was Aurélie and how in God’s name did she know who he was? He wasn’t used to dealing with children. One thing at a time.
“Where can I wash?”
The boy’s name was Marco. He led the way to the kitchens, loitering in a corner while Longstaff splashed cold water in his face.
“Is the blood gone?”
Nervously, Marco gestured at his neck. Longstaff scrubbed harder. His hands were shaking. That bastard upstairs had come within an inch of killing him. Longstaff scanned the room – a hatch led down to the cellars below. He ran back upstairs, wrapped the corpse in a tapestry and dropped it over the balustrade. None of this was necessary – he had no intention of ever returning to this house – but he wasn’t ready to walk the streets of Florence like an honest citizen.
Marco waited in the courtyard while he disposed of the corpse. Longstaff half expected to find him gone when he finally emerged into the sunshine, but the boy had courage.
“This way, signore.”
He plucked at Longstaff’s sleeve, leading him through the city streets to a brooding Dominican House.
“She’s in there. I followed them, signore. That’s where they took Aurélie.”
Longstaff had no idea who Aurélie was. Neither daughter, nor mistress, nor maid, it seemed, but Marco was adamant she’d know how to find the leader of the Otiosi.
“What does your master look like?”
He was tall, apparently, with a nose like a hawk and tufts of grey hair sprouting above each ear. Nothing like the man to whom they’d given the Lucretius palimpsest.
“Tell me what you heard.”
“I already… ”
Longstaff shook his head. “Again. Word for word.”
“I couldn’t see from inside the cupboard, but I heard her fight. The men were laughing, like they were throwing her back and forth. Someone came in and asked if she was the one who carried Vescosi’s letters. He spoke so soft I had to strain to hear him. Then he said she couldn’t come; she’d slow them down. He ordered the men to bring her here and tell the monks to keep her safe, in case Vescosi proved difficult.” The boy shrugged. “His words.”
A water fountain stood in the centre of the small square; a shoemaker’s store and a weaver’s workshop occupied the ground floor of a large tenement building. The neighbourhood was respectable, but hardly luxurious. The Dominicans still had their fine monastery of Santa Maria Novella near the Porto al Prato, but the Order was no longer popular in the city – not since the wild monk Savonarola had made an enemy of the Medicis. These days, it was Franciscans who held the best posts at court, Franciscans called upon as inquisitors or judges, while the Dominicans were exiled to the poorer districts of the city, venturing out to parish churches during the day, spending nights huddled in this House. Longstaff studied it; a stone building shaped like a child’s building block. The windows lay barred; the only entrance a heavy wooden door.
“How on earth do you expect me to get her out of there?”
Marco was gone, without a word, vanished into the streets of Florence. Longstaff cursed, but he wasn’t surprised. The boy had seen his master abducted and a man slain in
the space of a few short days. He’d done well staying as long as he had.
What now? Longstaff marched into the shoemaker’s.
“Boots. Let me see what you have.”
The young cobbler hurried forward with samples of his work.
“Of course. What do you have in mind, signore?”
Longstaff pointed at a pair of knee-length riding boots.
“Is that the best leather you have?”
The cobbler bowed. “You have a good eye, signore. Look here,” he produced a length of flawless doeskin. “Soft and durable. I’ve been saving it for the right customer.”
Longstaff grunted, shifting the man’s measuring stool to give himself the best possible view of the Dominican House.
“What are you waiting for?” he snapped.
He spent two hours haggling with the cobbler, then returned the following day and made a grand show of inspecting his progress. All the while, he studied the Dominican House – he knew Sir Nicholas Bacon wouldn’t honour an imposter’s promise, and the girl was his only connection to the true Otiosi leader.
Longstaff weighed and discarded a dozen options as he talked with the cobbler, each worse than the last. Short of murder, there was no way to reach her. And he wasn’t prepared to start slaughtering priests on the word of an eight-year-old boy.
The shoemaker had done an excellent job in such a short space of time and Longstaff tipped accordingly.
“Your neighbours don’t seem the most welcoming of souls.” He nodded towards the heavy wooden gate. “A cousin of mine swears they have women in there and stay up half the night drinking and eating.”
“Cousins talk,” shrugged the young man. “These priests are a miserable bunch, scared witless at the sight of a pretty girl.”
“Oh?”
“They claim she’s possessed. I hear they’re starving her, to weaken the spirit before casting it out tomorrow night.”
Longstaff controlled his expression. Tomorrow night. That gave him a little over twenty-four hours to find Durant. Irrationally, he blamed the Frenchman, and was damned if he’d go up against priests and demons without him.