by Stella Riley
‘Which – on top of having the desired effect at that time – has taken you half your life to unravel,’ replied Cyrus Winter, an unpleasant smile curling his mouth. ‘If you don’t admire the complexity of it, you must surely applaud my ingenuity?’
‘It may come as a surprise – but I neither admire nor applaud anything about you.’
‘No? Then I’ll have to see if I can mend that.’ The chaos outside the door had increased in volume and, raising his voice over it, Winter said, ‘I see you’re wearing a sword – and assume you’ve left me mine for some purpose. So let’s end this, shall we?’
Luciano took his time about replying and, long before he spoke, the expression in his eyes warned Cyrus Winter of his final, catastrophic miscalculation. Then, at last, Luciano said coldly, ‘Yes. It’s time. But not that way. Not in honourable, gentlemanly combat. For you have no honour and I am no gentleman; and this is not a duel. It is an extermination.’ He paused, putting every resource he possessed under iron control and watching the rising panic in his enemy’s face. ‘I told you that you would never leave this room alive; and even if I pitted my blade against yours, that would still be true – for if I don’t kill you, Selim or my wife certainly will. And that is not a task I will lay upon either of them. So if you want to pray, pray now – for mine is the last face you will see.’ Ashen but resolute, he levelled the pistol in an unfaltering grip, ‘Caterina – for the love of God, leave the room!’
It was a nightmare but one she had to share with him. Knowing he would not now turn to check, she gave him the affirmative he needed and then remained frozen to the spot while, seeing his death approaching, Cyrus Winter sent the chair crashing over as he surged to his feet shouting.
‘No! You can’t – this is murder. You’ll hang --’
‘I don’t believe so,’ came the flat, lethal response. ‘You’ve admitted toying with both sides in this war for your own profit; you’ve admitted killing Giles Langley, Samuel Fisher and Richard Maxwell with your own hands; and you’ve admitted engineering the death of my father and planning to send me the same way. All these things, you have confessed before witnesses … and now I’m claiming reparation.’
And gently, deliberately, in the suddenly ominous silence, he pulled the trigger.
The room blurred in a fountain of red and the door burst open.
‘Bloody hell!’ said Eden. Then, looking around in more detail. ‘Oh Christ.’
Little remained of Cyrus Winter’s face and close by, colourless and frowning in a cloud of acrid smoke, Luciano stood staring down at him. Equally pale and still, Kate gazed out from behind a jumble of heaped-up furniture, while Selim had swung to meet the invasion, knife in hand. There was blood everywhere.
It flowed sluggishly from Winter’s smashed head, forming a pool on the polished floor and dying the silver hair crimson; it spattered the book-lined walls, the glass of the windows and Luciano’s face.
‘Hell,’ said Eden again. And then, turning abruptly on the stunned, curious faces thronging the doorway, ‘Robert, Abel – send the spectators away and guard the door. Tom – find something to throw over the major.’ He hesitated briefly. Luciano still hadn’t moved and his eyes were peculiarly empty. Eden shrugged and said, ‘Kate? Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was thread-like but composed and her gaze had shifted from Cyrus Winter’s corpse to her husband’s rigid back.
Something in the charged atmosphere of the room lifted the hairs on Eden’s neck. He said, ‘What the devil happened here?’
‘Justice was done,’ replied Kate. ‘He murdered Luciano’s father. And ours.’
‘What?’
‘And now he’s paid.’
Kate laid down her pistol and made her way to Luciano’s side. The blood was drying on his skin and, though the unspeakable thing on the floor was now decently covered with a curtain, he continued to stare at it. Like Selim, Kate waited without speaking. And finally, like one awaking from a long sleep, Luciano looked first at his hands and then at his wife. Expression returned slowly to both green eyes and dark blue, bringing a quiet, perfect understanding in which words had no part.
Then, in his own time, Luciano said simply, ‘It’s over, Caterina mia. It’s finally over … and this is no longer any place for us. Let’s go.’
* * *
From all around and as far away as London, merchants came to barter with the soldiers for the rich spoils of Basing House. Meats, cheeses, wines, elegant furnishings, vibrant tapestries and fine gowns – some literally stripped from the backs of their owners – all changed hands at bargain prices. The sale would probably have gone on for days, had not the house burst suddenly and inexplicably into flames.
It could probably have been put out if anyone had cared to try. But it was a Papist stronghold and so the crowd fell back and watched avidly while it burned. Fire engulfed the walls, heat shattered the windows and lead poured in a molten flood from the roof. And only then, when it was too late, did Cromwell’s officers recall the seventy-four prisoners that had been consigned to the cellars.
Twenty hours later, the horrible screams had dwindled into a pall of silence and there was nothing left but blackened walls and charred, smouldering wreckage. Completely and irretrievably gutted, with six of the priests and half its garrison dead and its lord gaoled in Basingstoke, the house sometimes known as Loyalty had paid the ultimate price.
* * *
Handfast and silent, Luciano and Kate took one last, long look before leaving the place forever.
Turning from it to gaze deep into his wife’s eyes, Luciano said, ‘This is not the end – it’s a beginning. And though the debt I owe Vittorio will take nearly every penny I have, we’ll still be rich in the only things that matter. For I love you beyond life … and together we can do anything.’ He paused and then, smiling, said, ‘Let’s go home.’
Kate drew a long, purifying breath and nodded.
With sure, tender hands he helped her to the saddle and vaulted lightly to his own. Then, with Selim as ever in their wake, they turned their horses’ heads towards Thorne Ash … and did not look back.
~ * * ~ * * ~
GENOA
April 1646
Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove …
Christopher Marlowe
EPILOGUE
In the months following the fall of Basing House, the war continued to shudder to its inglorious conclusion. Monmouth and Hereford fell before Christmas, Dartmouth and Chester shortly after it and Banbury Castle was again besieged. The last Royalist field army was routed at Stow-on-the-Wold … and a few weeks later, with the New Model about to surround Oxford, the King slipped secretly away to an undisclosed destination.
At Thorne Ash, those same months were passed in talk and laughter and simple daily companionship. Luciano set up a makeshift workshop to give Gino employment and continue Toby’s education. Selim took over management of the stables, Giacomo blended seamlessly into the household and, in due course, Ralph Cochrane arrived, disillusioned from the fray to slip into the role of general factotum. Meanwhile, Luciano perfected Kate’s sketchy Italian and spoke for the first time of the Black Madonna.
Then, in the spring, he took her with him on the last stage of a journey which would end – as it had begun, ten full years before – at the Villa Falcieri.
* * *
Despite all Luciano’s descriptions of it, Kate found that nothing had prepared her for Genoa. It was a living tapestry of gleaming white marble, soft black slate and glowing terracotta whose colours constantly veered and shifted with the changing light; a city of palaces, churches and turreted ramparts, all squeezed between the mountains and the sea. There were richly-painted cloisters, porticoed villas, bustling quaysides; and in the narrow, winding alleyways like the one in which Luciano had spent eight years learning his trade, hundreds of small, niched Madonnas gaze serenely down upon the squalor.
The vast frescoed s
alon of the villa was still exactly as it had been a decade ago. It was only Vittorio, sitting alone amidst the splendour in his great carved chair, who had changed. Ill-health and the strain of protecting his empire almost single-handed had drained the vigour from his frame and the spark from his eye. He looked old – and, worse still, he felt it.
Broodingly, he surveyed the young couple in front of him. At thirty, Luciano was no longer the gaunt, worrying self-possessed child he’d tried to reject nor the impersonal, shabby youth he’d only been able to keep by means of a massive loan. He was a man approaching the height of his powers … a man whose true calibre and potential could as yet only be guessed at; and the red-haired girl at his side looked as though she was worthy of him. Vittorio thought fleetingly of his own good-for-nothing sons and the chattering magpies they had all married. Then, drawing a long breath, he opened the channel that would lead to decision.
‘Well? Is it done?’
‘It’s done,’ replied Luciano. And with one ironically lifted brow, ‘Did you think I would fail?’
Vittorio ignored the provocation.
‘And the money?’
‘Here.’ Releasing Kate’s hand, he walked unhurriedly forward to lay a stained and crumpled piece of paper before his uncle. ‘I apologise for the state of it. But, as you can see, it’s been through rather a lot.’
The fingers that reached out to pick it up were less than steady and, for a moment, there was silence. The amount was exact to the last florin. Vittorio looked up from it and said slowly, ‘There’s blood on it. Whose?’
‘That of the man who murdered your brother. It didn’t get there intentionally – but I thought perhaps you wouldn’t object to seeing it.’ Luciano paused and, turning, held out his arm to Kate. Then, when she was once more at his side, he said, ‘It’s a long story. But we could tell it, if you wish.’
A long-forgotten feeling stirred in Vittorio’s chest but, because he no longer knew how to express it, he merely said, ‘Then you’d better help yourself to wine and sit down. This floor is hard on the feet – and I wouldn’t like your lady wife to think me lacking in courtesy.’
Kate smiled at him.
‘Mother always said one should be wary of making hasty judgements – particularly in the family.’
And Vittorio, without quite knowing how it happened, found himself smiling back.
As Luciano had said, the tale took time. But by the end of it there was colour in Vittorio’s cheeks and he felt more alive than he had in years. He said reflectively, ‘So … you’ve done what you set out to do and managed to settle with me as well. But how has all this left you placed?’
‘Financially?’ Luciano exchanged a small, private smile with his wife and then shrugged. ‘We still own the shop in Cheapside. Caterina has her dowry and I the skill of my hands. It’s not much – but it’s enough to enable us to start again and hopefully build something for our children.’
Kate smiled back but said nothing. The last few days had given them reason to believe that she might be pregnant but it was too early to be sure.
Vittorio saw the look and drew his own conclusions. Pulling open a drawer of his desk, he laid two items beside the banker’s draft. One was a scrolled document … and the other was the Madonna. His fingers lingering on its smooth curves, he said, ‘Under the terms of our agreement, you also have this. Take it.’
Luciano enclosed the lady in a light, cool clasp. Since the day he had given her up, this was the first time he had seen her. A faint smile touched his mouth. So small and plain an object to have achieved so much; so unlikely a tool to bring about a man’s destruction. He looked at Kate and received her understanding of what this moment must mean to him. Then, with a complete absence of drama, he placed the Madonna back on the polished surface in front of his uncle and said, ‘I can wait. Hold her in trust for me.’
The unexpectedness of it caught Vittorio by the throat and it was a long time before he spoke. Then he said gruffly, ‘You are generous.’
‘No. Let’s just say that, for the present, her place is with you.’ Luciano rose. ‘And now, with the obligations on both sides satisfactorily fulfilled, I think it’s time we left you to rest.’
‘No!’ Some of the old vitality returned to Vittorio’s voice. ‘You’ll go when I tell you and not before. You may be used to doing as you please – but I’m still the head of this family, God damn it!’
‘So?’ came the deliberately infuriating reply.
‘So read that,’ snapped Vittorio, shoving the scroll at him. And almost but not quite under his breath, ‘Arrogant puppy!’
Laughter sprang to Luciano’s eyes, only to evaporate as soon as he glanced at the document in his hands.
‘This is your will.’
‘I know that. Now do as you’re bid and read it.’
Subsiding slowly back into his chair, Luciano did so; and Kate watched with some concern as his face grew steadily paler and more austere. Then, finally, he looked up at Vittorio and said flatly, ‘You can’t mean this.’
‘Can’t I? Why do you think I insisted on you coming here in person all these years, if not because it was my only way of keeping track of you?’ rumbled Vittorio. And then, bitterly, ‘Do I have to say it? You know as well as I do what my own sons are worth. And, much though I hate to admit it, I’ve grown … fond of you.’ He scowled forbiddingly and hunched one shoulder. ‘But don’t run away with the idea that I’m doing this for your benefit. I’m not. And things would have been very different if you’d failed. Now. Tell Caterina what we’re talking about and let’s make an end.’
Very, very slowly, Luciano turned a strangely dilated gaze on Kate. Then he said dryly, ‘Do you need to be told? My uncle – as I’m sure you’ve gathered – is offering us a future that is rather different to the one we were prepared for.’
Kate slid her hand into his.
‘What, precisely?’
‘Wealth and commercial power,’ he replied. ‘His sons – my cousins – are to get this house and all it contains, along with Vittorio’s personal fortune. But I am to inherit all the Falcieri interests in banking, shipping and gold.’
Kate’s eyes widened and then turned to Vittorio.
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want the work of two generations reduced to nothing – and my three would milk the business dry inside a year to finance their own pleasures,’ he responded. ‘Luciano, on the other hand, is the only one of the four who could build it into something greater still. And if his father hadn’t run off to England, he’d have had at least half of it anyway.’
‘It’s basically a matter of there being no room for sentiment in business,’ remarked Luciano in something not quite his normal tone. ‘But what you have to consider is whether you want to live here in Genoa.’
Her fingers tightening on his, Kate said, ‘It’s the perfect vehicle for your talents. Are you saying you’d give it all up for me?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And you think I’d let you?’
Wicked amusement hovered at the corners of his mouth.
‘Now that you come to mention it – no. But I thought Vittorio might like to know what kind of niece I’ve brought him. And I didn’t want you to think I take anything for granted … because you know what they say. Whether a lady accepts or refuses, she is always glad to have been asked.’
~ * * ~ * * ~
Author’s Note
In 1912, during demolition work, the collection of cameos, loose stones and early seventeenth century Italianate jewellery known as the Cheapside Hoard* was discovered on corner of Friday Street and Cheapside – the location I have given for Luciano’s shop. I’m not saying that my version of how it came to be there is true – merely that it is one of many possible explanations.
The Marquis of Winchester’s golden stags, on the other hand, probably belong to legend since, if they really existed, it seems unlikely that his lordship would have continued to live in reduced circumstance
s after the Restoration.
And finally … although Luciano and the Maxwells are my invention, I’ve tried to give an accurate picture of the complex times in which they lived. Amongst the many books that have helped me to do this, I’d like to pay particular tribute to Love Loyalty by Wilfred Emberton and The Storm of Bristol by Bernard de Gomme.
If you have enjoyed this revised and extended re-working of the original print edition of The Black Madonna, look out for its sequel – Garland of Straw.
For those readers who may be interested, the full story of Captain Justin Ambrose and the siege of Banbury Castle can be found in my novel A Splendid Defiance.
Stella Riley
May 2013
*Now on display at the Museum of London
Discover other titles by Stella Riley at Amazon
A Splendid Defiance
The Marigold Chain
The Parfit Knight
The Mésalliance
And coming soon …
Garland of Straw
