by Robyn Young
Lorenzo turned his attention to him. ‘Come.’ Leading Jack to the other side of the hall, out of earshot of the servants, he halted by one of the tall windows overlooking the gardens. ‘I am leaving for my villa in Fiesole.’
‘Leaving?’ Jack knew the Medici family had villas scattered throughout Tuscany, but it was the first he’d heard of any move.
‘Some of my staff will depart this afternoon. My family and I will follow in the next few days. I was due to leave in a week or two, but there has been a report of plague in the market. The pestilence can spread like fire in this heat.’
‘May I ask how long you will be gone, signore?’
‘I will return when the air cools.’
Jack thought of Marco Valori telling him the men of the Court of Wolves were leaving the city for the summer. He guessed it must be a privilege of the rich.
‘But I wanted to make sure that you understand my absence does not excuse you from your efforts.’
‘Of course, signore. In fact, I was on my way to speak to you.’ Jack, speaking about his encounter, was gratified to see Lorenzo’s hard expression shift.
‘Valori said his brethren would be interested in meeting you?’
‘Yes, signore. When they return from their estates.’
‘Did he say anything else? Give you any sign he knew of Amaury’s abduction?’
Jack paused. In his brief report, he’d omitted Marco’s interest in Lorenzo’s vulnerability and that the young man’s suggestion of a meeting had come on the back of his own offer to find out more about any troubles in the House of Medici. But Marco was just one man, not the company as a whole. Who knew what personal history might have coloured his view of the signore? Besides, he’d learned his lesson not to give Lorenzo everything and risk receiving nothing in return. ‘He just had more questions about my father’s business in England.’
‘And the girl? I take it she has seen nothing of the man she saw?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. He looked back at the lines of servants, carrying chests to the pile. ‘Then, if that is all—’
Jack jumped before he could think, the doubts and questions that had risen in him at Marco’s words and the conversation between Pico and Poliziano made all the more pressing with Lorenzo’s impending departure. ‘Signore, is the Academy meeting soon?’
Lorenzo’s eyes were on him, narrowed and searching. ‘Who told you that?’
He was caught now, his face growing warm under the man’s scrutiny.
‘Do not hover on wings, Sir James. Speak.’
‘I heard Pico and Poliziano talking about it on my way here.’
‘Pico is here? Now? With Poliziano?’
Jack flushed deeper, the image of Pico’s nakedness, the crumpled sheets, that affectionate gesture, all telling a discomforting tale. He knew there were many men in this city with such proclivities; had discovered this soon after their arrival, Ned and Adam returning, grim-faced and early one evening from a whorehouse a mischievous innkeeper had sent them to.
‘Men, Jack,’ Ned had confided in a whisper after several ales. ‘The place was crawling with men!’
‘Aren’t they always?’ Jack had asked, laughing at his mortified expression.
‘No, Jack. I mean – all men. Men and boys! Some even painted like whores, by God! Men lying with men. Ah, my eyes!’ he’d groaned, clapping his hands over his face.
There were other places they soon heard of: hidden alleys down near the river in Oltrarno where men of all ages and classes ventured after sundown, a bathhouse where the steamy dark concealed any manner of sins, a butcher’s on the Ponte Vecchio run by two brothers where, at night, another kind of meat could be enjoyed. There were laws against it that threatened execution – let alone what the Church thundered about it – but it seemed nonetheless to run as a current, wild and alive, beneath the city.
Well, he was in it now. ‘Pico was speaking of a secret he thinks you are keeping,’ Jack admitted. ‘Something you’re hiding from them.’
Lorenzo’s eyes darted towards his bedchamber, but they were back on him again in an instant. ‘Did he say what this secret was?’
‘I wondered if it might be me – if Pico had seen through our deception? But I’m not sure. Either way, he seemed agitated.’
‘And Poliziano?’ Lorenzo’s voice was tight. ‘What did he have to say about it?’
‘He said they should trust you.’
Lorenzo pushed a hand through his hair. He looked as though he were about to say something further when his gaze fixed on two figures approaching through the bustle of servants. One was Papi. The servant was escorting a man with grey hair, dressed in a black habit. For a second Jack thought it was Marsilio Ficino, then realised it was Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, the friar from San Marco – Amerigo Vespucci’s uncle.
‘God damn,’ murmured Lorenzo. ‘He is early.’
‘Signore,’ greeted Giorgio, as Papi ushered him over. The friar bowed and kissed Lorenzo’s hand, his tonsure gleaming in the sunlight.
‘Fra Giorgio.’ Lorenzo glanced at Jack. ‘Have you met my guest? Sir James?’
‘Yes, indeed. Good day to you, Sir James.’ The friar looked round at the servants, piling the chests by the doors. ‘You are departing already, signore?’
‘Yes, a little sooner than planned. I wanted to talk to you about Lorenzino and Giovanni’s tutelage while I am gone.’
Giorgio nodded, smiling placidly as he turned back. ‘This heat! You must be keen to get to Fiesole. Amerigo, I know, is eager to spend some time in the clean air.’ The friar’s pale eyes flicked to Jack. ‘I presume you will be attending the feast, Sir James? My nephew was hopeful of another chance to speak to you about affairs in England?’
Jack shifted uncertainly.
Lorenzo answered before he could say anything. ‘Of course. I am sure there will be an opportunity.’ He met Jack’s gaze. ‘Now, Sir James. If you would excuse us?’ Placing a hand on Giorgio’s shoulder, Lorenzo led the friar away.
As Jack turned to go, he caught sight of Bertoldo outside the bedchamber talking to Papi. The steward was shaking his head, face taut with concern.
12
More horses had died in the night, littering the scrubby ground around the hastily established campsite in the shadow of a spur of rock. Swarms of flies clouded the air above them as the grooms worked to drag saddle cloths from under the heavy, limp bodies. Hearing a cry, Harry looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun, flaming over the eastern mountains. Carrion birds were wheeling in slow circles on the currents.
‘You see why Andalusians say there is no such thing as summer – only hell?’
Harry turned at Rodrigo’s voice. The hidalgo had already donned his gambeson and breastplate, the deep curve of which caught the sun’s red fire. There was a cross carved into the iron. His sword, a spiked mace and a dagger hung from his belt. Rodrigo’s face was sun-bruised; stubble crusting his jaw, dirt from the road ingrained in his skin. Harry guessed he looked much the same, only redder.
‘Better get moving,’ Rodrigo advised, eyes flicking to the packs and blankets crumpled on the ground by the ashy remains of the fire that had guttered through the night. ‘Don Carlos’s men found footprints, not far from our camp. Ten or more sets.’
‘Moors?’ asked Harry, looking over to where Don Carlos, the leader of their company, a seasoned captain in Queen Isabella’s royal guard, was talking to his men. As he watched, several split away, shouting orders. The camp was stirring to life quickly around him.
‘A scouting party most likely. Don Carlos aims to reach the king’s camp by dusk.’
One of Rodrigo’s band, a stocky man with a scar-lined face, approached, boots crunching on the powdery rocks. He was called el Barbero – the barber – apparently on account he liked to take heads. With an offhand glance at Harry, he addressed Rodrigo, before heading over to where the others were saddling their horses.
‘We’re in the vanguar
d today,’ Rodrigo told Harry.
‘I heard,’ Harry answered, pleased that some sense was now starting to form out of what had mostly been streams of nonsense. Turning, he called for Tom, his groom, but the young man was already hunkered under Nieve, tightening the mare’s girth strap.
The camp took scant time to pack up, no man wanting to linger in the wilderness now word had spread that the enemy might be alert to their presence. Men swallowed down a meagre breakfast while they set about their tasks: royal captains ordering lancers and jinetes – the light horsemen – to form up in their companies, hidalgos and caballeros pulling on helmets, while servants fastened the buckles of their armour, infantry steeling themselves for another gruelling march, hands blistered from the shafts of pikes, carters greasing the axles of the carts that transported the cannons, grooms loading packs on to the backs of the horses and mules that would bear their loads of grain and wine through the day’s savage heat.
In no time at all they were off, leaving the detritus of broken belts, lice-infested blankets, misplaced trinkets and the corpses of the animals who’d expired from exhaustion to litter the plain. Behind them, the carrion birds circled lower as, ahead, the land rose, taking them towards the crags and mountains that emerged from a milky haze, growing clearer and more daunting with the sun’s rising.
An hour into the march and it was sweltering; the sun in their eyes, haloed by a white aura. An hour later it was unbearable. Mules plodded, heads hanging, hooves skidding on the broken ground. Out from Córdoba they had travelled through hills and fertile plains, green and gold with olive and almond groves. Now, all was bare rock and spiky plants, incessant flies and birds of prey. The only sign of civilisation was the ruin of a fort on a distant peak, jutting like a broken tooth from the mountains’ jaws. Infantrymen trudged in silent columns behind their captains, leather brigandines dark with sweat, the forest of spears and pikes jolting in time to their footsteps. Carters cursed as the wheels of wagons carrying artillery rocked into ruts on the twisting, ever upward path. And, above them all, a cloud of dust rose like a gritty yellow banner, announcing their presence.
Harry, riding with Rodrigo’s company in the vanguard behind Don Carlos’s men, felt the sweat pouring off him like water. His dark hair, lighter at his temples, was plastered to his scalp and dripping into his eyes. His palms inside his gloves were sore and his arse had made a soupy puddle of his hose.
The armour he’d been forced to buy in the market in Córdoba hung heavy on his frame, chafing him even through the padding, sawing red lines into the skin of his armpits and around his thighs and calves, where the buckles of the cuisses and greaves were fastened protectively tight. His servant, Hervey – a red-haired, taciturn man, who’d been in Henry Tudor’s company since Brittany – was au fait enough with armour to get him into it quickly and easily, but Harry guessed it would take some time yet for he himself to become accustomed to it.
Much of his experience of warfare had been spent as a rebel, down at times to the shirt on his back. He’d worn armour in his training and in his father’s command in France with Ned Draper and the others of Thomas Vaughan’s company, but not a full suit of plate like this. He had tied the helm – too much of a restriction – to the saddle, but wished he could shrug the whole steel shell off him. The risk, though, was too great, now they were in enemy lands.
Enemy lands? How had he allowed himself to be here?
There had been a lot of Christian blood spilled in these mountains, Rodrigo had told him. They had made some important gains this past year, towns Harry had never heard of falling to their forces: Ronda, Marbella, Coín. But many of these victories had come at either a high cost to their men, or because the Moors themselves had been in disarray, the Nasrid emirate divided between the forces of the elderly emir, Abu’l-Hasan and his war-seasoned brother, Muhammad al-Zagal – and the emir’s ambitious son, Boabdil, who had risen in rebellion against his father and uncle four years ago, setting himself up in the city of Granada, even agreeing an alliance with Isabella and Ferdinand to suit his interest in defeating his own kin.
Despite his initial triumph at the recent gains, Rodrigo had become more cautious on the march, describing the fight to take back the wild territory as a long game of chess: the Christians seizing border fortresses, precipitous mountain towns and coastal villages, the Moors – experts in the terrain and masters of ambush – wresting others back in turn. As the Spanish moved east, deeper into the frontier, each stronghold became more strategic, more vital, but, so too, their own pieces became more exposed for the taking. It was a game that had been going on nearly five years, with the greatest prizes yet to take: Loja, Málaga and – the endgame – the city of Granada itself, capital of the Muslim emirate.
Stones skittered away, tumbling from the high path the snake of horses, mules and men was slowly winding around. Men twitched at the dart of a bird or the clatter of falling rocks, heads snapping round, hands reaching for crossbows or swords. Harry sagged in his saddle, swallowing back the burning in his parched throat. His tongue felt like a dried-up slug, sticky in his mouth. There was a gnawing pain in his head. The world swam in his vision, everything white, sun-blasted. He felt himself jolt – like one of the falling dreams he’d had as a boy, waking his sister with his shout. He fell forward, breastplate knocking against the pommel of the saddle. Nieve stumbled. Coming to with a start, Harry realised he’d let the weary mare wander off course. Beside him, the ground fell sharply into a boulder-strewn ravine.
‘Careful.’ Rodrigo was at his side, grasping the reins and pulling Nieve back towards the rest of the company. Twisting in his saddle, he sought out Harry’s men, a short distance back with his own servants and grooms. ‘Bring wine!’
Plucking a skin from the pannier of one of the mules, Peter sent Hervey hastening up the line. The servant’s face was scarlet, his nose peeling. With his bright orange hair, he looked more like a carnival mask than a man. Harry took the skin and drank deep. Watered wine sweetened with honey. Inclining his head to Rodrigo, letting the man know he was in control, he took up the slack on Nieve’s reins. As his mind came back into focus, he thought how close – how easily – he could come to death out here.
Two days ago on the march an infantryman had caught his foot in a rock and had fallen badly. He’d come round screaming, the broken bone of his leg splintered through his hose. Don Carlos’s physician had set it and the man had been carried, whimpering and sweating, on a wagon for the rest of the day. But by the next morning he was white and shuddering. Last night, Harry had watched from his dim campfire as the man’s captain and friends had gathered round him. Murmured words of prayer and the brief flash of a dagger, and all that was left by morning a pile of raised earth and a cross made of broken sticks.
‘Better?’ Rodrigo asked as Harry drained the skin.
Harry nodded, but his mind answered to the contrary. You fool, you shouldn’t even be here.
Back in Córdoba, after pledging his sword to Queen Isabella, Harry had imagined himself staying in her court, working his way into position as a favoured dignitary, much as his father had in the courts of Burgundy and France. He would amuse the queen with tales of England, enjoy the shaded gardens of the palace, the exquisite wine and meats of a royal table, while turning her against Columbus and thus winning the favour of Henry Tudor, making amends for his failure to hunt down Wynter. He would return to England triumphant, take up the place he deserved at Henry’s side, adorned in the mantles of trust and power; no more lingering on the sidelines, hoping for crumbs of honour, no more hiding in corners intimidated by men like Edward Woodville.
Harry had been bluntly disavowed of such notions the following day, however, when Isabella thanked him for his offer of service and Rodrigo had begun discussing the company they would leave for the front line with in a fortnight.
Realising he’d been taken at his word, his sword, barely blooded, put into service against the Moors, Harry had attempted to suggest he remain with the
queen to cement the ambassadorship, but Rodrigo – the eager son of a bitch – insisted he could not pass up this honour: a chance at holy crusade, in a Christian country no less. Besides which, he could not rescind his gallant offer to Queen Isabella.
Harry’s only consolation was that Columbus himself had not remained in the queen’s court either, but had departed for Seville. The man was, from what Harry had been able to glean, now working with a slave trader there, the queen having agreed a stipend to keep him in Spain while she considered his radical proposal for a voyage west to seek the Spice Islands. It seemed, at least, the sailor’s plan would not be implemented any time soon. Other than that, Harry’s only hope for this journey into hell was that he was heading for the camp of King Ferdinand – and the only other person who could help him execute Henry’s order and bring him to the future he had imagined for himself.
By late afternoon they were high in the mountains. The sky was searing blue. The air rippled, thrumming with heat. Rodrigo had become pensive. He’d stopped speaking to his men and rode apart from them, brow creased with some inner conflict. When Don Carlos gave the order for a rest – cavalry dismounting with groans to stretch aching muscles, infantry laying down pole-arms to gulp from skins, or relieving themselves against wind-withered trees – Harry watched the hidalgo walk away up a shallow slope that stretched from the path to a long ridge above them.
He glanced round, hearing a guttural voice. El Barbero was looking at him as he tore sinewy strips off a lump of salted meat. The scar-faced soldier repeated his words, tipping his head towards Rodrigo. Harry didn’t understand all of what the man had said, but he did catch one word he now knew.
‘His father?’
The Barber nodded.
Harry’s gaze returned to Rodrigo, who was kneeling on the hillside, hands clasped in prayer. He knew the man’s father had died three years ago, somewhere in these mountains, cut down in the bloody chaos of a rout when the Moors under Muhammad al-Zagal had ambushed the Christian forces on their way to attack Málaga, seizing a huge amount of plunder and livestock, killing thousands of men and taking many others as slaves. The brutal victory had reinforced the Muslim warrior’s epithet, the Valiant. Watching Rodrigo pray, Harry wondered if they might be close to where that attack had happened.
