by Robyn Young
Here, high on the hillside, the air was fresh with pine and grass. Jack felt as though he could breathe again. It was still sultry, although evening was well on its way, the sun flaming like a torch as it descended, the sky turning from turquoise to cobalt, the pin-prick glimmer of stars in the east – but the breeze through the olive groves and the burble of fountains served to temper it. No wonder Florence’s wealthy left for the summer, escaping to their villas in the hills and valleys of Tuscany, leaving the poor to do their best to ward off the sicknesses that thrived in the heat of the city. He thought of Ned and the others, trapped down there in that stinking maze.
Hearing the clatter of hooves, Jack turned to see more guests arriving, urging their horses down the tree-shaded lane towards the grand buildings of the villa, built on two levels on the steep slope, with stables, outhouses, gardens and olive groves descending in stepped tiers of land. The heads of the company rode richly caparisoned horses and were sumptuously dressed, with a train of liveried guards and pages following in their dust. Two of the men wore jewelled collars over the scarlet and black robes of the Signoria. From what Jack had seen of the other attendees arriving through the afternoon it seemed half the elite of Florence had been invited to this feast. He wondered again what announcement Lorenzo would be making.
Grooms hastened from the stables to greet the guests and servants appeared bearing wine. Black Martin and Crooked Andrea were there too, ready to remove any weapons. Jack turned for the steps, thinking he should change his clothes for dinner, when he saw two young women emerge from the lower villa, arm-in-arm. As they paused by the dismounting riders to pat one of the horses, he recognised them as Maddalena de’ Medici and Laora.
Anticipation fizzed through him. It was several days since his encounter with Laora in the market, when the earth had shaken the city to its foundations, but the young woman had remained in his thoughts; her face tilted up, eyes closed, the words of the prayer tumbling down with the first drops of rain.
Strange, how beautiful the language of the infidel is.
Later that day, and the next, he had loitered in the hallways of the palazzo, near to the closed doors of the Sala Grande, watched by coy nymphs and glitter-eyed satyrs from the wooded depths of gilt-framed paintings, wondering how he might conjure some pretext for Papi to allow him to enter – get closer to the locked study, maybe ask the elderly servant whether Lorenzo had Muslims among his army of anonymous staff? But, then, Marsilio Ficino had returned from his brief stay at Fiesole, attending to some business of Lorenzo’s, and the chance had vanished.
He had told himself it was most likely just a slave at prayer between tasks he’d heard that night. But all the threads in his hands – his father’s words about the Turks, Marco Valori’s warnings about Lorenzo, the bite in Pico’s voice as he told Poliziano the signore was hiding something – had tied themselves in knots and he could no longer separate the significant from the irrelevant. Laora, though, had lingered in his mind; that scent in the dusk of Lorenzo’s rooms, the air hushed, held like a breath, the tremble of her hand and the flush in her cheeks when he told her he’d seen her that night, slipping upstairs. If she had been in Lorenzo’s chambers, for whatever reason, might she, too, have heard that chanting? Might she know the source? Be able to help him untangle his thoughts?
Determined to speak to her, Jack started towards the steps that led up from the garden, but Laora saw him first. She seemed to stiffen at the sight of him, then leaned in to Maddalena and said something in the girl’s ear, before extracting herself. Jack watched as she descended the uneven steps towards him, hitching the skirts of her gold gown, which ballooned from the tight bodice, making her look like a burnished bell in the last of the shimmering copper light.
She approached with a cautious half-smile, part greeting, part question, her shadow thrown long across the grass, birds flickering from the box hedges at her passing. ‘Sir James, I did not expect to see you here tonight?’
‘Nor I you, signora,’ he said, removing his hat and inclining his head. Up close, he noticed her gown was frayed around the hems and there were a few beads missing from the ornate cap that covered her hair, but despite these flaws she looked as regal as any noble lady he’d seen at the royal court in England. The kind of woman a man would win a tournament for. Jack realised he had stared a little too long. ‘No more tremors in the earth?’
Laora smiled, the tightness in her eyes disappearing. ‘No. The world seems calm.’ She looked out over the city, her sharp features softened by the sun’s smouldering glow. ‘I forget how beautiful it looks from up here.’
‘I was just thinking the same.’
‘I used to play in these gardens, when I was a child.’ A shadow passed across her face, but then that poised smile was back in place. ‘So, you are here for the grand announcement?’ She coloured a little at his expression. ‘Oh, you do not know yet?’
The only instruction Jack had been given, arriving at midday with servants bringing supplies from the palazzo, was to be groomed and ready after sundown. Lorenzo had told him he would be seated next to Pico and that he should converse with the young man, get him to open up. It shouldn’t be difficult. Pico rarely tires of talking about himself. I want to hear what he thinks he knows. Jack studied her. ‘But you know, signora?’
Laora glanced around, making sure they were still alone. ‘The signore plans to announce that the proposed marriage between Maddalena and the pope’s son has been agreed. Maddalena told me earlier in confidence,’ she confessed.
Jack nodded, hiding his disappointment. Part of him had hoped the feast might have something to do with the Academy, since he’d heard the company was meeting. Still, maybe Pico could be coaxed, with enough wine, to speak of things that might be of use to him too?
‘First Lucrezia, now Maddalena,’ Laora murmured. ‘Soon, it will just be me on my own.’
Jack had another image of Lorenzo, pulling her to him. It was all very well playing the part of a nobleman with other men: he’d seen that role played out enough times for himself in his father’s company. But, with a woman? Grace had been a daughter of the local Justice of the Peace. Given her place within the Medici household, Laora might as well be a queen’s lady-in-waiting. How could he possibly get to the meat of the matter – ask if she was close to the signore? Close enough to know his secrets? ‘To be honest,’ he began carefully, ‘I am surprised you aren’t married already.’
‘And what of you?’ Her eyes flicked to him, voice sharpening. ‘Have you left your wife alone in England, Sir James, while you enjoy Signor Lorenzo’s famous hospitality?’
Jack was taken aback by the change of her tone. ‘My wife is dead.’
Laora stared at him, then clasped her hands as if in prayer. ‘Please, forgive my discourtesy, Sir James. I did not mean to offend you. I am sad to be losing my friend to a husband’s bonds.’ She reached out, touched his arm lightly. ‘But that is nothing compared to your loss.’
Jack shook his head, the regret in her eyes making him feel worse for the lie. But his attempt to brush away the subject only seemed to deepen her sympathy.
‘When did your wife pass?’
Now she was closer, he could smell the blossom: sweetness with a bitter bite. A memory – lavender and thyme, summer light and his mother’s hands, deep in dark soil, worms turning from her touch.
‘Some time ago.’
‘Do you have children? A family?’
‘No children. My family . . .?’ Jack looked away, the pain now real. ‘They’re gone.’
Laora followed him with her gaze until he looked at her again. She nodded, her hazel eyes, fixed and knowing, on his.
The silence between them was filled by the clang of a hand-bell as one of the cooks summoned the servants to the kitchens for the final preparations.
‘Laora!’
She turned distractedly at Maddalena’s call. ‘I must go, Sir James.’ She inclined her head. ‘I will see you at dinner.’
He wat
ched her leave with a curse in his mind. If he was to find answers here he would need to be bolder.
An hour later, at the silvery tinkle of another bell, Jack headed downstairs from the room he’d been allocated. He was wearing the sky-blue doublet Lorenzo had lent him for the party in June. There was a faint stain on the front where Pico had made him spill his wine. In the mirrors he passed he looked like an actor moving across a stage; the rich garments his costume, the lines in his head devised by someone else. Laora calling him sir and all the expensive clothes in the world could not make this pretence real. Once his business was done – even if Lorenzo kept his word, gave him what he wanted – he would become an outcast again, with tainted blood and nothing to his name. What are you doing here?
The reception room – more a grand hall, with tapestries to line the walls and a painted ceiling decorated with gilt bosses – was radiant with candlelight. Incense smoke puffed from pewter burners. Long tables covered with cloth of gold had been set out in a horseshoe, so the guests could view one another. Between polished cutlery and goblets, silver basins had been filled with perfumed water for guests to wash their hands. Ushers, tunics decorated with the Medici arms, were showing people to their places.
As Jack passed the windows, the open shutters of which let in the night air, he saw hundreds of flickering lights down in the shadows of the valley. Florence had become an earth-bound constellation. He sat in the place the usher gestured him to, men and women filing in around him, skirts rustling, chairs scraping, voices lifting.
Jack recognised some from the night of the party, or from brief glimpses in the palazzo. There were Lorenzo’s cousins, Lorenzino and Giovanni di’ Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, dressed in matching blue hose and black doublets with ballooned sleeves, slashed to show blue silk beneath. They sat opposite him, Lorenzino looking imperiously around, his large eyes glassy in the candlelight. Giovanni, catching Jack’s gaze, leaned in to whisper in his older brother’s ear, before smirking and tossing back his cinnamon curls. Moving in beside them was their clerk, Amerigo Vespucci, nephew of Fra Giorgio, folding his thick-fingered hands on the table, the bald dome of his head gleaming. Here was Angelo Poliziano, slipping past with a brief nod, to sit at the end of the table at the head of the horseshoe, pushing back his brown hair, his expression inscrutable.
Jack looked to the doors, wondering when Pico would make an appearance, to see Marsilio Ficino enter, presumably just arrived from the palazzo. The old priest shuffled, stoop-backed, to take the chair at the other end of the head table. Soon, most of the other seats had been filled, leaving only the chair beside Jack and the middle of the top table empty. Jack caught one of the ushers who was passing. ‘Is Signor Giovanni Pico della Mirandola here?’
‘I’m afraid he has taken ill, signore. He will not be attending this evening.’ As a bell was rung, the usher looked round. ‘Excuse me.’
The man hurried off, disappearing through the double doors that were closed behind him, leaving the chamber to echo with polite murmurs as the guests greeted one another and craned their heads to see who else had been invited.
After a moment, the doors opened again and in swept Lorenzo de’ Medici. The signore wore a scarlet robe, buttoned high to the neck. Nodding to the company, who rose to greet him with a shuffling of feet, he made his way to the centre of the top table. In his wake came his wife, Clarice, dressed in a gown of green velvet, a black padded headdress jigging with each step. Following was her daughter, Lucrezia, with her new husband, one of Florence’s powerful silk manufacturers, with a grand palazzo and a workforce of hundreds. Jack saw the telltale bulge beneath the embroidered band of Lucrezia’s dress that told him the girl was already with child. Behind came Lorenzo’s two eldest sons, Piero, proud and erect, and chubby-cheeked Giovanni, grinning behind his hand at all the attention. Last were Maddalena – dwarfed by her voluminous gown, a gem-encrusted cross at her throat – and Laora. She met his gaze briefly as she followed Maddalena to sit in honour with the Medici.
Lorenzo remained standing. ‘Welcome, all of you.’ His harsh, nasal voice filled the chamber. ‘I am honoured to be your host here in my home. Family. Friends. Men and women of our city.’ His eyes alighted on Pico’s empty chair; a flicker of irritation, then he was moving on. ‘Please,’ he said, motioning to the servants, waiting at the wings of the hall. ‘Pour the wine, for there is much to celebrate.’ He continued as they moved in, bearing jugs of jade and crystal. ‘For seventeen years I have borne, proudly, the mantle of guardianship over our noble republic, as my father, grandfather and great-grandfather before me. It has been my deepest honour and greatest joy, even through turmoil and trouble, hardship and strife. Its citizens I count as family and nothing is more important to me. Family is the blood and bonds that bind us, the mutual pain of loss and the shared pleasure of success.’ Lorenzo waited for the servants to finish pouring, then lifted his goblet. ‘We – each – are nothing without it.’ He fixed on his cousins as he said this. ‘To family.’
Lorenzino raised his goblet in answer, Giovanni joining him a moment later.
‘It is thus with pride and with honour that tonight I announce the expansion of my family – of Florence’s family. This coming year, my daughter, Maddalena, will celebrate her betrothal to Franceschetto Cybo, nephew of His Holiness, Pope Innocent VIII.’
The announcement stirred a mixture of reactions. A few people nodded, clearly having expected this. Others appeared pleased or impressed, while some smiled wryly at the careful use of the word nephew. Jack caught a man beside him murmur to his companion.
‘It seems everyone but his own children may call His Holiness, Father.’
Maddalena kept her eyes down as Lorenzo and the rest of the room drank in her honour. Jack noticed her small hand was entwined in Laora’s.
‘Furthermore, this new accord with Rome has ushered in the prospect that my son, Giovanni, may soon be granted a cardinal’s hat.’
This revelation elicited gasps of surprise, all eyes turning to the chubby-cheeked eleven-year-old. As the guests began murmuring, Jack kept his gaze on Lorenzo, not missing the small smile that played at his thin lips. No wonder the man was pleased. If his son became a cardinal it would put him in line to the papal throne.
Jack’s eyes moved to the scar on Lorenzo’s neck, from the attempt on his life authorised by Pope Innocent’s predecessor, Sixtus. He had seen how much the signore involved himself in all aspects of the day-to-day business of the republic, but he’d not realised until now just how far forward his gaze seemed to be focused; a man moving a piece on a board, but thinking many steps ahead.
Jack recalled Amaury speaking of corruption in the Church; a spreading cancer, he’d claimed. Did Lorenzo mean to cure that poison by seeding his own son in the heart of the Vatican? What other long games was he playing? And what small, expendable piece might he be within them?
After the guests had drunk to the announcements, servants carried in the food. There were spiced peacock tongues and kid roasted in cherries, zucchini flowers in honey and saffron-flavoured cream. Angelo Poliziano was called to say grace and, as the company tucked in, two musicians plucked softly on lutes, although the melodies could barely be heard over the clatter of dishes and the buzz of conversation among the guests, all talking among themselves at Lorenzo’s announcements and the fates of his two children, now entwined with the most powerful house in Christendom: the House of St Peter.
Jack sat alone in the midst of the chatter, Pico’s empty chair beside him. He felt out of place and foolish, eating in silence while these illustrious guests talked around him – a beggar at a table of kings. He glanced over at Laora, seeing if she would catch his eye, but she was focused on comforting Maddalena, who was pushing her food around her plate, her stern-eyed mother murmuring intently in her other ear.
By the time the plates were being cleared away, the hum of conversation had risen, the wine flowing. Lorenzo was turned in his chair, talking with the priors from the Signoria. Other pe
ople were shifting their places, moving to talk to friends and acquaintances. Jack caught snippets of friendly banter mixed with more serious exchanges about business or politics. He was wondering if he might be able to extricate himself, retreat to his room, when the chair beside him scraped back.
Amerigo Vespucci smiled as he sat, his teeth stained dark with wine. ‘Good evening, Sir James. My uncle told me you might be here.’
‘Master Amerigo,’ Jack answered with a guarded nod. Was the clerk going to drill him again on his family’s non-existent wool business? He had neither the patience nor the energy.
‘I’ve been meaning to seek you out since our first meeting. Tell me, are you gaining a deeper understanding of our city? Finding inspiration to take back to London and your father’s company?’
Jack’s spirits sank. ‘I am.’
Amerigo studied him. After a moment, his dark eyes flicked to Lorenzo. ‘I understand.’ He raised his goblet with a dip of his head. ‘You do well to be guarded about your affairs with the signore.’
No doubt he did, thought Jack, when it seemed everyone in Florence was guarded about everything. Despite all the talk of the noble republic, of the strong bonds of family that bound them, all he was starting to see was a city of secrets, envy and distrust.
‘But your wool business isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘No?’
‘I wanted to ask if you have heard of a man called Cristoforo Colombo? A sailor?’ When Jack shook his head, Amerigo looked disappointed. ‘Ah, I thought if your father exports wool through Bristol or Southampton you might have come across him.’
