10 If Michelangelo is to be believed, then they arrived prematurely, since Cortes did not set sail until 1519, 13 years in the future. Perhaps Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, given their supernatural talents, knew when the game was over and gave themselves up.
11 Michelangelo’s great work in the Sistine, completed in October 1512, after 4½ years of super-human toil and savage arguments with Pope Julius, survives – and according to Admiral Slovo permitted its creator to do the same. The Colossus, a three times life-size bronze, was less fortunate, being torn down by an unappreciative Bolognan mob after a mere four years. It passed into the possession of Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who reforged its bronze into a giant cannon, ironically dubbed ‘La Julia’. Alfonso did however retain intact the 600-pound head – for unknown purposes.
12 Pope Julius refers to Cambrai in North-East France, near the Burgundian Netherlands. Hence the association known to history as the League of Cambrai, contracted on 10/12/1508.
13 In fact he was – cut into nine pieces in a petty skirmish in Navarre in 1507. Clearly, the good news took time to travel.
14 It was always known that Thomas Cromwell had, as a young man, served as a mercenary in Italy. However, the period’s true formative power was not, until now, suspected.
15 An earlier invention than you might think.
16 Which he duly did, seven years later, appropriately enough on All Saints Day, to the door of All Saints Church at Wittenberg.
17 Poggio Bracciolini. Famous Florentine Latinist and ‘discoverer’ of lost classical texts. 1380-1459.
18 Presumably Emperor Constantine the Great (274?–337) who proclaimed Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
19 Constantine XI was last seen alive on 29/5/1453, advancing alone and sword in hand, towards the Turkish army storming into his City after an eight-week siege. Allegedly, his socks were the sole means by which his body was eventually recognized and recovered.
20 Flodden Field. 9/9/1513. Battle between the English and invading Scots near Branxton, Northumberland. Possibly the most crushing of all the Scottish defeats.
21 The English quarter of Rome since the first Anglo-Saxon pilgrims. The name derives from the English for Borough.
22 Traditional Scottish fighting formation. A tight clump of spear- or pikemen.
23 The Byzantine Emperor’s axe-wielding ‘foreign legion’ and bodyguard unit, largely composed of North Europeans and, after 1066, Englishmen.
John Whitbourn (1958–)
John Whitbourn is an archaeology graduate and has been a published author since 1987. His first book, A Dangerous Energy, won the BBC/Victor Gollancz Fantasy Novel Prize in 1991. Whitbourn’s novels and short stories tend to focus on alternative histories set in a ‘Catholic’ universe. Key characteristics of his works are wry humour, the reality of magic and a sustained attempt to reflect on the interaction between religion and politics on a personal and social scale.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © John Whitbourn 1993
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The right of John Whitbourn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by
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ISBN 978 1 473 20090 6
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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