Court of Wolves

by Robyn Young

  ‘Quiet!’ Martelli snapped, banging a fist on the table, making the cutlery and all the girls jump.

  He continued for a time, waxing lyrical on the early years of the business, the great successes – all down to him – Lorenzo uninterested in the daily running of the workshops, more concerned with his damn Academy. Jack tried to slip in on the subject of the Academy, but Martelli ignored him. He was starting to repeat himself, his voice thick, those red veins on his cheeks spreading into hectic blotches.

  ‘Two years ago, he came and told me he wanted out of our partnership.’ Martelli snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that. Out of nowhere. I knew he had financial troubles – hell, the whole republic knew that. After his imprisonment in Naples he had to beg and borrow, even steal from his own family to keep his position here. But I never thought he would turn on me.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I offered to buy him out over time, but he demanded the money immediately. It took almost all my capital to honour the debt. Four months later, one of our wool consignments was lost at sea. Turks, pirates – I still don’t know.’ Martelli leaned forward, his bloodshot eyes fixing with some difficulty on Jack. ‘It is astonishing how precarious are the foundations on which we build our lives. How one piece of bad luck can bring the whole damn edifice crashing down. When you are up in this city, Sir James, you are on the roof of the world.’ He thrust a finger to the ceiling. ‘When you are down you are in the dirt.’ He brought his finger stabbing down on the table. ‘A beggar. A miserabile. That’s what he made of me!’

  The change in the room was palpable. Donna Santa had paused in her eating, the girls had gone quiet and Laora’s eyes were fixed, wide and wary, on her father. All the crags and angles of Martelli’s face had drawn down into a taut façade of rage. In the hush, only Naldo’s footsteps could be heard as he came to refill his master’s goblet.

  Jack, however, wasn’t thinking of Martelli’s increasingly drunken furore – he was thinking of Marco Valori speaking of Lorenzo’s brutal erasure of the Pazzi line and of Lorenzino wondering how Amerigo Vespucci could sit at the signore’s table after everything he’d done to his family, whatever that might mean. Thinking of the man, chained in the sanctum. For all Lorenzo de’ Medici was lauded and honoured for his place as father of the republic, first among equals – il Magnifico – he was coming to see another side entirely to his governorship: one based in ruthlessness, duplicity and deception. Traits that made him think not of a republic, but of an empire, ruled by an iron fist. Had his father known this man he’d served? Been a willing supporter of all his dark endeavours?

  He glanced at Laora, wondering at her closeness with Maddalena and Lucrezia. Why would Martelli continue to allow his daughter to frequent the home of a man who had betrayed him in this way – a man he unequivocally hated? Revenge, perhaps? He thought of the Sala Grande, the scent of her perfume lingering. Thought of Amaury’s letter, intercepted, and Amelot’s drawing of a wolf’s head, inked in the dimness of the priest’s ransacked room.

  He felt cold, even though the shuttered chamber was stuffy. Was he sitting with the spies Lorenzo feared in his household? Was Martelli – Laora even – somehow involved in Amaury’s abduction? He wondered if Lorenzo knew Martelli was a member of the Court of Wolves. The only time he’d seen the man wearing the company’s badge was at the game.

  Martelli, not noticing his distraction, was still talking about his losses. He was becoming more irate, wine splashing over the rim of his goblet as he gestured, speaking of the workshops shutting down, the creditors banging on the door, the men of the Arte della Lana turning on him, friends abandoning him, the threat of imprisonment in the Stinche, the debtors’ prison.

  ‘Do you know what they do to a bankrupt in this city?’ Martelli stabbed a finger in Jack’s direction. ‘They whip him. Publicly! I had to give up almost everything. The wealth I inherited from my father, furniture, my wife’s jewels and gowns, my daughters’ dowries. My reputation was ruined. Only the brethren saved me. Brought me into their company, gave me aid and succour.’ He curled his fist, his lips peeling back. ‘Oh, he will pay. Mark my words, he will pay!’

  ‘Franco,’ murmured Donna Santa warningly.

  Martelli didn’t seem to hear her. ‘The bastard came to me, Sir James, do you understand? He came to me, then walked away with all the profit and no loss. You have seen his palace. His wealth!’ Spit flew from between Martelli’s lips. ‘Do you not think he could have afforded to let me pay him back in time?’ He went to drink, then glared into the goblet. ‘Naldo!’

  Jack saw Laora lock gazes with the thin-faced steward, saw her shake her head. It was a tiny movement, but one that didn’t – despite his condition – go unnoticed by Martelli.

  ‘You would presume to answer for me, girl?’

  Laora sat back in her chair, pinned by her father’s wrath, all now directed at her. Donna Santa and the other girls were silent, watching. ‘Father, I am sorry. I just thought . . .’

  ‘You thought what? That I’d had enough?’ The mimicry in his voice suggested it was a familiar conversation. ‘I’ll decide when I’ve had enough! Do you hear me?’ He rose suddenly in his chair, which screeched on the tiles. ‘I said, do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Father!’ Laora’s eyes were large.

  ‘What worries do you have? What responsibilities? Sitting pretty doing nothing here each damn day!’

  ‘Signor Franco, I—’

  Martelli ignored Jack’s attempt to interrupt his outburst. ‘I’ve had enough, have I?’

  ‘No, Father, I meant only to—’

  Martelli flung the goblet with all his might. It struck the wall by a painting, with a clang. Before Jack could say anything, the man was striding to Laora’s chair, pulling it back with the girl still in it. He grabbed her by the arm, hauling her to her feet. She shrank back, but he had her. Jack remembered the bruise on her shoulder, imprints of fingers on skin. He stood and was about to intervene, try to calm the man down, when Martelli backhanded Laora across the face, sending her flying.

  ‘I’ll decide when I’ve had enough!’

  Donna Santa had clutched her daughters to her, leaving Laora alone, dazed and sprawled on the floor. Her gown had ridden up, exposing long pale legs, a yellow bruise clouding one thigh, a kink in one knee.

  ‘Do you hear me, you ungrateful bitch?’ Snatching hold of her, Martelli dragged Laora to her feet. She cried out as he swept back his hand.

  Jack was moving before he could think what he was doing. He seized Martelli’s raised arm by the wrist, halting the blow. Franco turned on him, wild-eyed. Jack saw his mistake at once. He had been in Florence long enough to know how sacred a father’s honour was. In the household his word was law, his authority absolute. To challenge that authority was a grave insult. He relinquished his grip, too late.

  Martelli’s eyes had narrowed to slits. He let go of Laora, who darted from the room, to turn his anger on Jack. For a moment, Jack thought the man was going to flatten him. Then Martelli spoke, the words hissing out through clenched teeth. ‘Get out.’

  ‘Signor, I—’

  ‘Naldo!’

  The elderly steward was at Jack’s shoulder in a moment. ‘Sir.’

  Jack stared at Martelli, his hunched shoulders, the red of his eyes. There would be no placating the man, not now. Inclining his head, he left the room. As Naldo closed the door, Jack heard the sound of things breaking beyond it.

  A quick step across the hall and he was out in the sunshine, the doors closing behind him, leaving the hulking stone building to glare down on him. He cursed, running his hands through his hair. Should he attempt to go back in, at least try to calm the man down? What else might he do in such a temper?

  ‘Sir James.’

  He turned to see a smaller door had opened, further down the building. Laora was in the opening, flush-faced. He felt relief, seeing her unharmed.

  ‘Quick,’ she called, beckoning.

  Without thinking, he hastened to her and stepped inside. She s
hut the door, plunging them into darkness. Jack had a sense of a narrow space, walls pressing in, a corridor stretching away, then Laora’s hand was on his arm.

  ‘Come.’

  The sun warmed her face as she stood on the terrace, eyes tracing the now familiar skyline of disorderly tenements, immense palazzi and crenellated towers. The dome of the cathedral was the colour of dried blood in the afternoon light. Feeling a shadow pass across her, Amelot turned, gaze on the door that led into the room she shared with Jack. It remained closed and, seeing no further movement, she guessed the shadow had been a bird. But as she returned her attention to the city she felt a prickle at her back.

  Again, last night, she had heard someone moving around the top floor. She’d been aware of movement out there before at odd times, usually deep in the dark before dawn when everyone was asleep – the click of a door, the creak of a stair, a faint odour of unfamiliar sweat tainting the air. She thought at first it must be servants or Lorenzo’s bodyguards on patrol, but that seemed odd when it was only their room, a library, a couple of storerooms and an armoury on the upper floor. Twice now, she had crept out to investigate, but had seen no one.

  Jack didn’t seem to have noticed these intrusions, his mind elsewhere. At least now he appeared to be focused on the hunt for Amaury again, since he’d gone to meet the men of the Court of Wolves, asking the others to help her in her search and telling her he hoped there would soon be an opportunity for her to get a look at the company – see if she could spot the man she’d glimpsed at Carnival.

  Amelot set off across the terrace to the adjoining building. Jumping up, she grabbed the overhang of the roof and pulled herself on to it. The tiles were sun-warm under her bare feet as she crossed the expansive roof of the palace of Lorenzo’s cousins, then scrambled across the next one, launching a flock of birds into the sky.

  Beads of sweat broke out on her brow as she moved, eyes alert, scanning rotting balconies and expansive loggias where washing waved like flags, peering through attic windows curtained with webs and between the gaps of shutters. It was too early to venture inside any of the buildings. That she would only risk at night. In this way she had seen many of the city’s secrets.

  She had seen wonders. A shadowed workshop filled with masks, rows of painted heads, horned devils and gilded dragons lined up like an audience. Men tipping cauldrons of dye into the Arno that had turned the river pink. A marble giant chiselled to life in a cellar. And she had seen horrors. A girl dragged into an alley by three men, her screams stopped by a brutal hand. A tonsured friar rutting like a dog with a dead-eyed boy with painted lips in a brothel. A woman smothering her crying baby. A slave’s brown back lashed to bloody ribbons by her master’s whip.

  She had seen arguments and kisses, slow currents of bodies moving beneath silk sheets, deals brokered and confidences whispered, pockets picked and filled. She had seen Lorenzo de’ Medici in his many dealings, a spider in the centre of a web. She’d seen Giovanni Pico della Mirandola slipping from Angelo Poliziano’s bedchamber and Marsilio Ficino stalking the passageways, his black habit making him one with the shadows. She had seen Adam and Valentine, buying weapons in the market, meeting alone to talk furtively. But the one person she had seen no sign of, depite her hunting, was Amaury.

  Near the wide piazza outside Santa Croce, she paused for a rest, perched on the edge of a tall building with a view over the square and down into a rubbish-strewn alley. Her eyes tracked across the piazza, busy with people: Franciscans in grey heading into the church, workers entering the barns where dyed wool was hung out to dry on racks, people ducking into inns for refreshments. Outside a tavern, a man in bright clothes was juggling knives. A small crowd had gathered to watch, clapping as he threw one blade high and caught it between his teeth, while continuing to spin the others.

  Amelot’s mind filled with an image of her father, his sun-brown face, taut with concentration, burnished by the sputtering flames of the five torches he tossed deftly in his large hands. He grinned as she stepped up to him, but didn’t take his eyes off the flaming wands. Round and round they went, a glowing circle, lighting up the tents around them. Beyond – campfires and laughter. ‘Want to try, little angel?’

  ‘No, Papa!’

  ‘Soon, then. I have so many tricks to teach you.’

  Amelot turned away, squeezing out the memory.

  Her body felt sluggish today and a gnawing discomfort in her stomach made her fearful the blood might be returning. It was four months since it first appeared, trickling between her legs to soak her hose. At first she thought she’d cut herself, but her fingers, coming back red and sticky, had touched without pain. It had lasted several days, during which time the hated buds she bound so tight to her chest had become unbearably tender. She had become certain she was dying until, just days after it started, it stopped. When it came again, last month, she’d stolen one of Jack’s old shirts, torn into strips stuffed into her hose to soak up the blood. She had kept the strips, washed out in the river, in case it returned. But again? So soon? She had never heard the men speak of such things or seen any sign they dealt with this. Was it another curse of womanhood? How she hated her sex. So tender, such easy prey. Why had God made her a sparrow when he could have made her a hawk?

  Down in the alley, movement caught her eye. A door cracked open and a man appeared, dressed in a thick woollen cloak, the hood pulled up. Even from here she could see he was enormous; a giant of a man, his shoulders hunched and broad.

  She was rising, meaning to move on, head deeper into the quarter, when a shutter was pushed open beneath her. The man’s head tipped back at the bang. Terror flooded Amelot; a black, icy wave. The giant only had half a face. The rest was covered by a white mask.

  23

  Jack looked around the chamber as Laora pushed the door to behind him. The walls were lined with wooden panels. The room was

  expansive, but sparsely furnished: a bed drawn up against one wall, table and stool by tall, shuttered windows, a few chests dwarfed in a corner, dresses hanging like a row of limp bodies from hooks.

  From what he’d glimpsed, hastening at her behest through shadowy passageways and up servants’ staircases, past doorways that opened into space and silence, the rest of the palace was much the same. An echoing tomb for a once grand life. He wondered why Martelli hadn’t simply sold the place, found a smaller home to better fit what he’d been left with after Lorenzo had been done with him. Pride, he guessed. Pride and an unwillingness to reveal to the city what had become of him. At least the palazzo’s hulking walls retained the façade of power.

  ‘They were my mother’s.’

  At Laora’s voice, Jack turned his gaze from the row of hanging gowns. Even in the dim light he could see her cheek had already bloomed red where her father had cuffed her.

  ‘They’re all I have left of her. And this.’ Reaching inside her dress, Laora pulled out the bird pendant. She went to the bed and sat on the edge, twisting the chain between her fingers. After a moment, she lifted the bird to her face and breathed in, closing her eyes.

  Jack watched her, wondering why she had brought him here. Wondering, too, why he had come. Martelli was already furious. Why risk inciting more of the man’s wrath? He crossed the room to stand before her. ‘I should go, signora. I don’t want to cause you more trouble.’

  She met his gaze. ‘What more trouble could I have?’

  He thought of the bruises he’d glimpsed, faded tracks of violence. How often did this happen?

  Laora seemed to read his mind. ‘He has always been this way. Long before he and the signore parted company.’ She let the pendant fall to her chest. ‘It started with my mother, when I was very young. Some nights I would wake to hear shouts. Screams. I would go downstairs to see the servants huddled outside the room – watching, doing nothing – while he beat her.’ Her brow pinched. ‘I tried to stop him sometimes, but my mother would tell me to leave. Once, when I refused to go, she struck me herself.’ Her voice cracked i
nto a whisper. ‘One night she fell when he hit her, split her head on the edge of the hearth. He left. A tavern? A gambling den?’ Laora shook her head, hands clenched in her lap. ‘I sat with my mother, tried to staunch the bleeding. She was talking strangely. Not herself. She slipped into sleep while I was sitting with her. I fell asleep too.

  ‘When I woke her hand was still in mine, but it was – so cold.’ She shivered. ‘So stiff I had to pull her fingers open. I shook her, tried to wake her. But she was gone. He killed her.’ Laora inhaled and pressed her fingers to her lips as if trying to put the words back in. ‘I’ve never told anyone.’ Tears rolled freely down her cheeks, but she made no sound. ‘He doesn’t touch Donna Santa or my step-sisters. Why her?’ She shook her head, her face scrunching in self-disgust. ‘Why me?’

  Jack knew that shameful, secret question: pain and humiliation, the impotence, victim to another’s fists. The taunts and kicks, punching him down into the dirt. Something in his blood, some scent that drew his tormentors. Seeing her sprawled on the floor at her father’s mercy, hands raised to ward off his blows – wasn’t it recognition that made him stay Martelli’s hand? After a moment, he sat beside her, the bed creaking beneath his weight. ‘Can you leave?’

  She let out a choked laugh. ‘Where would I go? Into a whorehouse? On to the street? You have seen what happens to women in this city when they have nothing. No family. No husband. No money. Miserabiles.’

  ‘A convent then?’

  ‘A prison for women without dowries,’ she said, standing. ‘How could you understand, Sir James? You, who have the freedom to go wherever you please? Do whatever you wish?’ She began to pace, the skirts of her gown whispering. ‘Besides, he would never release me. He wants me here. Here to do his bidding.’ She put her hands, trembling, to her brow. ‘Dear God, but he has made me a thief and a liar.’

  Jack thought of her slipping away at the party. Thought of her father’s quarrel with Lorenzo – a distraction? ‘What has he made you steal, signora?’