The Medici Prize (The Stolen Crown Trilogy Book 1)

by Sylvia Prince

  The

  Medici Prize

  The Stolen Crown Trilogy

  Book One

  SYLVIA PRINCE

  The Medici Prize

  Book One of the Stolen Crown Trilogy

  © 2019 by Sylvia Prince

  First edition

  v.1.0.0

  Visit the author’s website at www.sylviaprincebooks.com

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  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests, contact sylviaprincebooks@gmail.com.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. For more, see the Author’s Note.

  Cover design by Wicked Smart Designs

  Novels by Sylvia Prince

  The Medici Prize (The Stolen Crown Trilogy, Book 1)

  The Broken Blade (The Stolen Crown Trilogy, Book 2)

  The Stolen Crown (The Stolen Crown Trilogy, Book 3)

  The Lion and the Fox

  The Zorzi Affair

  A Matter of Glass (Palazzo Galileo Mysteries, Book 1)

  Salem Mean Girls

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Broken Blade

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Sylvia Prince

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Florence, Italy

  July 1468

  The woman’s long, brunette locks whirled around her face like soft goose down caught in a gust of wind. James Stewart froze in place on the crowded Ponte Vecchio, entranced by the vision, until his friend Matteo slapped him on the back.

  “Keep moving, stronzo,” Matteo cursed.

  James's feet shuffled forward, in line with his fellow Medici guards, but his eyes tracked the young woman, hoping for a glimpse at her face. But she was lost behind a rolling wagon piled with wheat before he could catch even a sliver of her profile.

  She must be a patrician’s daughter, James thought. He might have to invent her face, but he’d seen her family’s riches displayed on her dress: threads of gold peeking through the embroidery and pearls tucked into folds where they could easily be hidden if someone evoked Florence’s sumptuary laws. And of course he’d seen the slim man at her side, dressed in black. He had to be a male relative escorting the woman.

  Speaking of escorting, he needed to pay attention to the iron chest that he was supposed to be guarding. If the two thick locks didn’t deter thieves, the five guards decked out in Medici red should do the trick.

  James scanned the street, but only saw the usual assortment of artisans and merchants hurrying to the Oltrarno district across the river. A few fishermen were showing their catches at the intersection where the Ponte Vecchio blended into Florence’s central district. James didn’t see any bandits looking to make off with the chest.

  Even if the locks and the guards weren’t enough, the Medici name still counted for something in Florence. Everyone knew that Piero de’ Medici ruled the city, even if he was only a faint shade of the man his father, Cosimo, had been. No one spoke the words aloud, of course—not after a coup against Piero had been uncovered and the conspirators exiled or executed.

  Piero had doubled the guard after the coup. That’s why James had a job with the Medici.

  And he’d better do his job, otherwise he’d find himself wandering Italy looking for work, again.

  They marched north, avoiding the crowds of the Palazzo della Signoria and taking the most direct route to the Medici Palace. James didn’t know what was in the iron chest, but he could imagine. Gold, rubies, jewels. During his first weeks on the job, he’d been shocked by the wealth amassed by a family with little reputation outside of Italy. But his fellow guards, themselves Florentines, had explained it: the Medici ran the bank. The bank ran Europe.

  James quickly learned they weren’t exaggerating. The Medici were bankers to the pope. Their reach stretched to every major city in Europe and most royal families. They might lack a title—ruling behind the scenes was somewhat of an embarrassment—but they more than made up for it in wealth.

  This chest had come from Rome, maybe from the pope himself. Whether payment or gift, it must contain something valuable enough for Piero to order five guards to station themselves at the Porta Romana, the old thirteenth-century city gate on the road to Rome, where they waited for hours to meet the convoy delivering the chest.

  Mazzeo had taught James a few more Tuscan curses while they waited.

  “Giacomo, have you heard this one before? Minne?” Mazzeo had been boisterous, as usual, but he lowered his voice at the last word. Swearing was a crime, after all.

  James had shaken his head. He’d long grown used to being called Giacomo. Florentines couldn’t quite figure out how to say his given name.

  Mazzeo had leaned close. “It means, you know.” He held out both hands in front of his chest as if weighing melons. “You know.” Mazzeo had fallen into a fit of laughter, and James had filed away the word. He’d lived in Italy for years, but he never quite felt fluent. In the privacy of his mind, he usually spoke French. Sometimes Scots. On rare occasions, English. His dreams were a mess of languages.

  The street turned slightly to the left as they passed from the medieval city onto the old Roman grid that harkened back to Florence’s days as a Roman military camp. James had heard that Julius Caesar himself had laid out the plan, though Florentines loved telling such tales. Once James had come across a book on Florence’s greatness that claimed the city always smelled sweet. He’d laughed until he doubled over. Sewage coursed through the city’s streets in ruts, draining into the Arno—no one alive would buy such a lie. But it didn’t stop Florentines from telling it.

  The Via Calimala was less crowded than usual. Here, they plunged into the medieval towers that had dominated Florence in previous generations, when warring families turned the streets of Florence red with their battles. They were only a few blocks from the great Dante’s house, but James wasn’t about to suggest a detour.

  The tall brick structures blocked the light for a moment, until they passed the piazza in front of the church of Orsanmichele.
Merchants, silk makers, and artisans gathered in front of their church, making deals and exchanging handshakes. The church had once been a granary, but now it served as the informal commercial center of Florence. The guilds had taken over and decorated the façade with commissioned statues of their patron saints.

  James searched the façade until he found Saint James—who wasn’t exactly his patron saint, yet James always looked for the thin man with a curly beard carved from marble.

  “Look there,” another guard, Borso, hissed at James and Mazzeo.

  James lowered his eyes to look where Borso pointed. He saw a group of merchants dressed in silks, their heads tilted in toward each other. One glanced over his shoulder, turning his face at James, and he recognized the man instantly.

  Filippo Strozzi.

  “Piero will want to hear of this,” Borso said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Does he still worry about the Strozzi?” The words slipped from James's mouth before he could catch them back. He was a Medici guard. He couldn’t question Piero’s motives on the middle of the street.

  But Mazzeo just gave him a quizzical look and turned his eyes back to the road.

  He hadn’t spoken Tuscan, then. James released a breath. Whatever language he’d spoken—French?—wasn’t one his fellow guards understood.

  He was glad to leave Orsanmichele behind for once.

  James checked his sword, adjusted his hat, and followed the chest as they drew closer to Florence’s center.

  He’d made the journey a thousand times, maybe more, but the breath still caught in James's throat as they stepped from the Via Calimala into the Piazza del Duomo. He was drawn to the engineering marvel of the modern world, the massive red dome atop the cathedral. White ribs rose from the red tiles up to a tiny cupola that James knew topped the dome, even if he couldn’t see it from this angle.

  The dome was barely older than James—by his count, it had recently turned thirty-two and he was a decade younger. It had stood for only a short time, and yet the dome drew people to Florence like an enormous flame circled by moths. Its pull had even caught James—he’d been on his way to Rome to work for the Colonna family when he’d stopped in Florence to see the majestic dome. That had been two years ago.

  The green and white pattern on the cathedral was replicated on the building in front of James—the Baptistry, where Florence’s residents were dunked into the marble baptismal fonts. Piero himself bragged that he had been baptized there, just steps from one of the largest cathedrals in the world. Piero’s father Cosimo had known better than to brag about where one had been baptized.

  The next hundred yards were the most dangerous on their journey through the city. The piazza was a wide open space where they could easily be cornered or attacked. But the Florentines barely looked at the guards and their chest. Their eyes were elsewhere.

  It took James a minute to see what had caught everyone’s attention. As they rounded the corner of the Baptistry, James saw a man standing on the steps of the cathedral. He was dressed like a preacher, his arms were raised above his head in a pose that reminded James of a marble statue. But the man’s words conveyed something much darker.

  “Evil flows through Florence like a poisoned river. It consumes souls and leaves hollow husks behind. A rain of hellfire will fall on this city if Florence does not repent!”

  James froze in place for the second time in the last hour. Who was this rabble-rouser disrupting the peace? And what’s more, who were the men lined a dozen deep to hear such drivel?

  He tore his eyes from the scene and rushed to catch up with the other guards. If anyone noticed how easily he was distracted from his task, James would soon find himself looking for a new position. And no one in Florence paid as well as the Medici.

  The preacher’s voice chased James through the piazza and onto the street that would take them to the Medici palace.

  “That was odd,” James whispered to Mazzeo, thinking for a moment to make sure he spoke Tuscan.

  “He’s right, you know. There are a lot of sinners in Florence.”

  James tripped over his tongue as he tried to respond. Only an hour earlier Mazzeo had been teaching him bawdy words, but now the man was a moralist?

  Before he could respond, Mazzeo winked and nudged his shoulder. “I had you going there for a moment.”

  James shook his head and couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

  And then they turned right and walked through the massive doors of the Medici Palace, which had swung open only moments earlier. When the doors slapped shut behind them, they were momentarily plunged into darkness. James's eyes adjusted quickly as he followed the guards down the hall and into the barred strong room where the Medici stored their riches.

  Torches burned in the windowless room, casting eerie shadows from the statues and coats or armor that dotted the walls. The two men carrying the chest let it drop to the ground in the center of the room.

  James nodded to the guards at the door and was about to leave, hoping to find a quiet place to read before his next assignment, when one of the men reached out to stop him. It was Bruzzo, one of Piero’s favorites. His belly hung slightly over his sword belt and his graying hair receded at the temples.

  “The Signore wants to see you,” Bruzzo said flatly.

  James raised an eyebrow. The note of jealousy in Bruzzo’s voice put his senses on high alert. “Si, right away,” he replied with a nod.

  “He’s in the south courtyard,” Bruzzo added, and then turned back to his post.

  A hundred questions coursed through James's mind. Why did Piero want to see him? James’s orders usually came from another guard. He could count the number of times he’d spoken to Piero in the last two years on one hand. Was Piero going to fire him?

  James walked toward the courtyard, nodding at the guards he passed and keeping his eyes down whenever a member of the family or their inner circle passed. He barely saw the marble carvings in the hallway or the rich tapestries and silk hangings in the Medici reception hall.

  The south courtyard was smaller than the northern one. Green plants and potted trees transformed the space into a private garden. Statues of Roman gods dotted the space, giving the courtyard a timeless feeling. And at the center of the space stood Piero de’ Medici.

  James lowered his head in deference to the most powerful man in Florence. When he looked up, James saw a flash of pain streak across Piero’s face. The man’s gout must be acting up again. But beyond the pain, James couldn’t read anything in Piero’s face. It was as blank as the marble statues flanking the man.

  “You are James Stewart, yes?” Piero asked, the unfamiliar vowels sounding rounder in the Florentine’s mouth.

  “Si, Signore,” James responded.

  Piero studied him for a moment as if he had expected someone else. James was used to it. Florentines often expected a red-haired barbarian Pict when they learned he was Scottish. His sandy chestnut hair must have been quite a disappointment.

  “I have a job for you, Giacomo.”

  “I am yours to command.”

  “Some of your countrymen are here in Florence. I need you to watch after them for me.”

  James's mouth went dry. His countrymen? He had no country. James had last seen the green hills of Scotland through the slit in a rowing galley five years earlier. At the time, his heart had ached to return to the tiny castle overlooking the sea where he’d been raised. But that desire had been burned away years ago.

  “. . . their ridiculous war. I have no idea why they’d send him here, of all places.”

  James silently cursed himself for missing Piero’s words. He nodded and hoped the Medici wouldn’t notice.

  “Not many in Florence speak English, though, so naturally Filippo recommended you.”

  The vision of Scotland vanished from James's mind. “English?”

  “For this Lancastrian diplomat. Although I suppose he isn’t technically a diplomat, since the Lancasters command nothing more than a musty old
castle in Wales.”

  “England.” James had sailed past England, but he’d only stepped on English soil once. He tried to catch up with Piero.

  “You see, they’d never expect a Medici guard to speak English, so it’s perfect. And you certainly look the part.” Piero gestured to James's face, which had tanned after years spent in the Mediterranean. “You practically look Florentine. Or, at the least, like a Milanese.”

  James nodded again. So Piero wanted him to spy on an English diplomat. The request had nothing to do with Scotland. Then why was his pulse still racing?

  In truth, James hadn’t thought about Scotland in weeks. Months, maybe. His fury had cooled with time, though it burst back in hot waves when he remembered the night his life had changed forever. If he closed his eyes, he could still smell the thick, black smoke that had consumed his home. It had been a funeral pyre for the aunt and uncle who raised him.

  But he couldn’t afford to drift off in memories again. James shook off the distant sound of screams echoing in his ears and focused on Piero.

  Up close, you could barely tell the man was a Medici. He didn’t have the luster that surrounded his eldest son and presumptive heir, Lorenzo, who, at nineteen, was just on the cusp of manhood. Neither did Piero share the grandfatherly aura of his father, Cosimo, captured perfectly in the fresco lauding the wealth of the family that James had studied when he’d first arrived at the Medici Palace.

  Piero didn’t look larger than life. He didn’t look wealthy or powerful.

  That’s probably why his enemies plot against him so openly, James thought.

  “I’ve offered your services as his guard while he stays in Florence,” Piero continued. “He arrives tomorrow. You’ll follow him during his stay in Florence and report his movements to me every night. He’ll expect that, of course, but he’ll have no clue you speak English. If he meets with any of your countrymen, I’ll expect a full report.”

  James didn’t correct Piero’s error. After all, he did speak English. And to Florentines, the distinction between England and Scotland was minor. James had only encountered a handful of men from either country during his time in Italy. No, Italians punished their younger sons by sending them to work at the London branch of their banks. The island was at the edge of the civilized world, or perhaps on the far side of civilized, if you asked most Florentines.