by Robyn Young
Don Luys raised his head, his expression changing. ‘But . . . what?’
‘There is a chance King Henry could track him down.’
‘How?’ questioned Rodrigo, shooting him a warning look, suggesting he shouldn’t give the man false hope. ‘If he sent you to do this and you failed?’
‘The king – when you met him – had just stepped from the field of war to his crowning. It was a chaotic time. Now, things are different. His reign is established, as are his allies at home and abroad. He has resources he didn’t possess at the time. I could, at the very least, request it?’
‘You would do this?’
‘Yes, señor,’ Harry answered Don Luys. He paused. ‘I would request the hunting down of my own brother. In return for a small favour.’
‘Name it.’
Harry spoke slowly, giving his thoughts chance to catch up. ‘Over the winter, I received word from my king, wanting to know how the Lady Isabella and Lord Ferdinand fared in their holy crusade. He also asked about Christopher Columbus,’ he added, glancing at Rodrigo, who first told Henry of the sailor. ‘He is intrigued by this notion of a westward voyage.’
‘A fool’s dream,’ said Don Luys sharply. ‘You should tell your king not to waste his time.’
‘Of course, but I would like the opportunity to ascertain that myself. Perhaps an audience with—’
‘With Cristóbal Colón el Loco?’ Don Luys didn’t wait for his reply. ‘If it will get him away from the queen you may have as much time with him as you wish. My Lady Isabella has many brilliant attributes. Unfortunately, her generosity and curiosity work against her when it comes to that madman.’
Harry held out his hand to Don Luys. ‘Then, señor, I shall write to my king. If Wynter can be found, you will have your justice.’
Jack watched Laora sleep. Her palm and cheek rested on his chest, rising and falling with the rhythm of his breathing. Her eyelashes fluttered, stirred by dreams. Her hair, which had tumbled in a black mass over his arm, tickled him, but he didn’t want to disturb her. He hadn’t slept himself yet, even though dawn could not now be far away. But this peace, here in the silence, lying on her narrow bed in the halo of light from a single candle, felt like a sleep in and of itself; as if the world beyond didn’t exist.
When, earlier that evening, escaping the Palazzo Medici – hectic with the move to Rome for the betrothal, rumours flying about Pico being banished from the republic – Jack had met Laora at the side entrance, following her up servants’ passageways and back stairs to her room, he hadn’t intended to stay longer than to talk through the tentative plan to take back the chalice, which she believed was most likely locked in her father’s study. But their talk, whispered in candlelight, had gone beyond their plot, following paths into one another’s lives: she speaking of her mother, eyes now bright with happier memories, he speaking of his boyhood in Lewes, shrugging off the role he’d been playing all these months, like a jacket grown stiff and uncomfortable. He hadn’t told her the full truth about himself, but he had walked close to it, as she laid her head on him and listened, her face bathed in restless light.
As he traced the skin of her fingers, the creases in her knuckles, the olive-hued smoothness of her hand, he wondered at the ease with which they seemed to fit together. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know who he really was; it felt as though they knew one another beyond words, something in their fates, past and present, binding them, something he couldn’t articulate, only feel. He sensed the danger; that this was an alliance that could hurt them both. But, for tonight, he had pushed his cares aside.
He would do as he had promised her – take the chalice from her father and return it to Lorenzo’s study while the signore was in Rome. He had considered using the priceless object to bargain for what he wanted, but knew he could ill afford the signore’s suspicion falling on him and, without implicating Laora, he couldn’t tell Lorenzo the truth. This left him with only one option: to continue his charade within the Court of Wolves and find whoever had taken Amaury de la Croix. But his frustration hearing Laora’s confession in the alley – knowing he was back where he had started – was lessened now, soothed by the solace he felt lying here beside her. After months of uncertainty, it was the first time he’d felt he was where he was supposed to be.
Lulled by Laora’s breaths, Jack was drifting towards sleep when a loud banging woke him.
Laora started upright, eyes wide. ‘What was that?’ she breathed, gaze darting to the door of her room.
The banging sounded again, shattering the hush. It was coming from outside. Jack slipped off the bed and crossed to the window. Laora followed, the candle fluttering, throwing their shadows up the panelled walls. Jack peered through the shutters. Down in the street were six black-cloaked men. Two held torches, which smoked and sputtered. Another harsh hammering told him a seventh was pounding on the palazzo’s doors. Across the street, a dog was barking. A shutter clattered open and a man shouted at the group, but they ignored him. As the one who’d been knocking stepped back, evidently talking to someone who had opened the doors, his face was illuminated by torchlight. It was Black Martin, Lorenzo’s personal guard. The guard reached towards his hip as if for his sword, then stepped forward. The others followed him into the palazzo.
Jack turned to Laora, hovering anxiously at his shoulder. ‘It’s Signor Lorenzo’s bodyguards.’
‘What are they doing here?’
‘I don’t know,’ he murmured, but a voice in his mind told him he did. Why else would the signore’s guards have come, armed, to beat down Franco Martelli’s door in the middle of the night? Lorenzo knew. Somehow he knew Martelli had been working against him. ‘Do you have somewhere you can go? A friend?’
Laora was shaking her head. ‘Why? You don’t think . . .? Do they know?’ She fixed on him, her hazel eyes hardening. ‘Did you tell him?’
‘No. I swear.’ Jack heard faint shouts downstairs. He took her arm. ‘Laora, we don’t have much time. It will not go well for either of us to be found here together.’
This seemed to focus her. ‘Pia,’ she said. ‘The cloth-seller, from the mercato. She lives close by.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Wait.’ She pulled from his grip to snatch the silver bird pendant from the table by the bed.
Laora drew the chain over her head as he opened the door, hidden in the panels. Heading down the narrow stairs, hands feeling along the walls in the pitch black, they made it to the first floor, where shouts and the thud of opening doors were punctuated by a child’s high-pitched wails. When they reached the mouth of the passage, which they would have to cross to reach the stairs down, they saw a group of figures at the far end, lit by the torches of Lorenzo’s guards.
Black Martin was among them and, in the centre, Franco Martelli, dressed in a crumpled nightshirt, his mane of hair wild from sleep. He was shouting, gesturing angrily at Black Martin, who stood his ground while, beyond, other guards thrust open doors, ignoring the small knot of servants looking on fearfully. Close by stood Donna Santa, her daughters clustered around her, Fea crying loudly. When one of the guards went to move her away from the door she was blocking, Martelli stepped towards him enraged, but as Black Martin drew his sword and gestured for two guards to seize him, the man was powerless to stop them compelling his wife to move aside.
‘My father’s study,’ whispered Laora, as one of the guards snatched a set of keys from Martelli’s elderly, gaunt-faced steward.
Seeing the group was occupied, all eyes on the guard now unlocking the door, Martelli’s protests drowning out his daughter’s sobs, Jack urged Laora across the passage and down the stairs. Her father’s desperate shouts followed them all the way to the street.
Pia, who lived two streets away in a tiny cottage wedged between a shoemaker and a hatter, opened the shutters and peered warily down at Jack’s insistent knocking. ‘Signora?’ she exclaimed, her voice rising with surprise as she saw Laora’s face upturned beneath her.
As Laora glanced over her shoulder at Jack, he forced what he hoped would be a reassuring smile. ‘Stay here. I’ll return as soon as I’ve found out what’s happening. I promise,’ he added, but the fear didn’t leave her eyes.
The sky was lightening to a pale, washed-out blue by the time Jack reached the palazzo, his breaths fogging in the chilly air. Most of the city was still dark; frail glow of nightlights behind shutters, a tang of smoke from dying fires, but the Palazzo Medici was lit up like a church on Easter morning, shutters open, lanterns blazing. He could see Rigo and several other guards clustered around the arched entrance. Along the street stood six of the wagons that would convey the Medici household to Rome for Maddalena’s betrothal. Porters, shoulders hunched against the cold, waited with them, rubbing their hands and talking in low voices. As Jack approached the steps, one of the guards spotted him. The man said something to Rigo, who spun round.
‘Sir James!’
Jack halted at the shout, seeing the others all turning to him. Rigo’s smile of greeting was tight, not reaching his eyes. He faltered, sensing the threat, but before he could move, Rigo gestured to two of his comrades who circled in behind him.
‘The signore has been looking for you, Sir James,’ Rigo said, hand on the pommel of his sword.
Goro had been at the inn’s window for hours, only pausing from his watch to relieve himself in the bucket under the bed.
He had seen the wagons arrive at the palazzo and the first chests being loaded, watching the servants and porters filing from the arched entranceway and the officials who followed. He counted the guards as the monsignore had ordered, wanting an accurate observation of the palazzo’s security, ready for the arrival of the men His Holiness was sending to aid them. In and out, swiftly and silently, no sign they were ever there. That was their task.
All this time and the man they were searching for had been right under their noses. They had suspected as much after their last interrogation, but it grated on Goro that his powers of persuasion hadn’t been enough to identify the precise location. Battista di Salvi had been swift to point this out, furious that someone else had now taken the credit for informing His Holiness exactly where his prize was hidden. The monsignore had vowed that when they returned to Rome, Goro would take responsibility for their failings before Pope Innocent. Of that he would make sure.
Often in these hours of watching, Goro’s eyes flicked to the stone shield above the palazzo’s entrance, decorated with the seven red balls: arms of the family who had once allied with Galeazzo Sforza, allowed that monster to thrive and grow, caring nothing for his tyranny since it suited them. Feeling his mind wandering down into darkness, he would pull himself back by pacing the room, but he kept finding his gaze dragged back to that shield, his thoughts blackening, hands twitching into fists.
Settling on the window seat, which creaked under his weight, Goro contemplated his options. Should he leave? The monsignore had what he needed to complete the mission now: allies willing to help them enter the palazzo in secret when Lorenzo de’ Medici was out of the way, as the pope had arranged. Battista was right. What use was he any more? Why return with him to Rome only to be further chastised? But he rubbed his palms together nervously at the thought. What would become of him, adrift in this world?
Across the street, a shout caught his attention. The wagons were still there, the porters clustered around them. There, too, the guards, illuminated by the torches that pushed back the dawn shadows. A man had appeared in the street, not far from the steps. As Goro watched, one of the guards gestured, sending two others to surround the man, who was marched up the steps and into the blaze of torchlight. The breath left Goro’s body at the punch of recognition.
The man was James Wynter.
30
She hadn’t believed it could be him. Not at first.
When she had stumbled back from that roof edge, the alley and the masked face below her disappearing, Amelot had run until her legs had given way three rooftops later. There she had crouched, until the shaking in her body had passed and she had forced herself to return, breaths catching in her throat as she peered over the building to look down into the alley, empty of anything except a slinking cat and scraps of rubbish eddying on the wind.
By that evening she had convinced herself that her mind had deceived her. She had lived with nightmares for years before the masked man had tortured her in that room in the shadow of St Paul’s. She knew how they lingered: ghosts in the corners of her vision, a half-recognised face that would freeze her in a crowd, a brutal dream that would stun her awake, a voice at her back whispering someone was behind her.
She had not slept easy after that though. Unable to settle, she found herself watching for a new face in Florence’s crowded thoroughfares, alert to the rumours of a monster stalking the city, her mind on that corpse she had seen being carried away on a litter, the dead man’s skin peeled from his face. Could the monster be the man – Goro – who had sat before her and removed that mask to expose her to the horror beneath? A lump of gristle where an ear should be, a shrivelled socket that once held an eye, stubs of rotten teeth in the puckered gap where his lips had been. A face ravaged and raw.
Then, on the night Jack set her and Ned to watch the men gathering for the Court of Wolves, she had seen him again. He had been stalking along the bank of the Arno, his hunched figure unmistakable, swaddled in a grey cloak, the white mask like a glint of frost in the dark of his hood.
This time, she hadn’t let him go. Despite her fear, she had forced herself to follow him, over the river and into the city, winding north and east under the great dome of the cathedral, slipping behind a cart to avoid being seen, all the way to a hostelry close to the Ospedale degli Innocenti; the foundling hospital, where unwanted infants were left on a wheel of cradles outside.
All this time since, she had trailed him, following his movements from the hostelry, where he shared a room with a man she heard him call monsignore, and out around Florence, threading after him like a confused spider, haphazardly spinning a puzzle around the city, returning to the palazzo only to collect her cloak and pinch food Jack had left lying around. Goro, whose name she knew from her ordeal in London, had been part of the pope’s company searching for the map in England. He and the others had killed Amaury’s men and seized her for it. With his presence here in the city, Amelot had become convinced he must have something to do with her master’s abduction from Paris.
The more she followed him, her terror began to diminish. The monster who had hunted her through dreams became a shambling object of pity. She saw how cursed he was by his deformity; how people hastened to avoid him on the street, how others gawped and pointed. Youths pulled faces at his back, screeched with horrified laughter if he turned. The man he shared his lodgings with – the monsignore – was no less disdainful of his presence, every word and look holding the bite of contempt. But although Amelot rarely let Goro out of her sight, sleeping most nights on the roof of the hostelry, warmed by the heat of a chimney, he had not yet led her to her master.
The two men had a purpose for being here though, that much was clear. It was a purpose that had evidently become more pressing in recent days; messengers arriving at the hostelry, the monsignore scouring papers and ordering Goro out on errands. Amelot understood enough to ascertain that their plans had something to do with Lorenzo de’ Medici.
That morning, after a fitful night on the roof, she slept longer than intended and woke to find Goro gone. Waiting through the day, she watched people come and go through the hostelry doors. By the time the sun was going down, setting fire to all the glass in the city, she was starting to worry. She forced herself to stay awake through the long dark, pacing the tiles, but it wasn’t until the gleam of dawn that her fraying patience was rewarded.
Amelot’s eyes picked him out in the street, the only figure that
had moved there for hours. She knew it was him, his form now as familiar as her own shadow. Goro was moving with haste, head down and purposeful. She crept across the roof as he entered the hostelry, the thud of the door intrusive on the quiet. Just along from the room he shared with his companion a dilapidated balcony sagged from the adjacent building. A scrawny black cat would sometimes lie there, stretched out in the sun. Amelot, slipping down there one afternoon to stroke its warm belly, had discovered that by climbing over the edge of the balcony, one hand holding the rotting rail, the other gripping a protruding beam, she could peer in through a gap in the faded drapes of the window.
Inside, the room was a dance of shadows, a lantern burning on the table and a nightlight flickering by the bed where the monsignore slept. Goro’s sleeping place was a pallet, too small for his large frame, close to the door. The monsignore was up, sitting in the circle of light at the table, which was strewn with papers, some attached with seals. His black hair, salted white, hung in his eyes as he pored over them. He was in his nightshirt, rather than the neat scarlet and black robes he wore during the day, but his ornate cross was, as ever, around his neck, the green jewels glowing in the lantern light.
He looked up suddenly, his face sharp in profile. Amelot followed his gaze to the door, which opened. Goro entered, pushing back his hood. The monsignore rose, his voice, coming muted through the glass, abrupt with question. Goro spoke, his own tone stiff with suppressed emotion, which, after watching him stalk about the room, fingering his mask, Amelot realised was rage.
