by Robyn Young
‘Antillia,’ he murmured. When neither of them spoke, Hugh glanced up. ‘The Island of the Seven Cities. When the Moors conquered Spain it is said seven bishops fled west into the Great Ocean Sea to find a new haven for Christianity. They found an island and established a settlement there with seven cities. The sands were rumoured to be pure gold. Men have tried to reach it since, but it is said to disappear whenever they get close.’ He tapped the map. ‘I’ve seen Antillia on a map in my brother-in-law’s workshop, but it was shown as one island. Not three.’ He moved his finger west from the cluster of islands along a faint, uneven line that stretched away north and south, before vanishing off the map. ‘But this? This I’ve never seen.’ Bending closer, he jabbed at a crest in the bottom corner of the map. ‘I recognise this though. It’s the crest of a Bristol merchant company.’ He straightened, looking at Jack. The fear had gone from his eyes. ‘Where did you get this?’
Jack told him all that had happened: the appearance of Gregory in Seville, his flight home, his mother’s death, his father’s execution. Hugh listened, saying nothing.
When Jack had finished, Ned’s voice filled the silence. ‘Do you think Sir Thomas could have been executed for this map?’
Hugh seemed to think for a while, but he shook his head slowly. ‘Everything I know tells me Sir Thomas was killed for his loyalty to King Edward and his son – and the fact he and Rivers stood in Gloucester’s way.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘But I’m not surprised someone tried to kill you for this.’
‘You think it valuable then?’ Ned’s eyes glittered in the gloom, his anger towards Hugh forgotten.
Hugh didn’t answer at once. ‘There is talk – I’ve heard it in these very walls – of the possibility of sailing west to Cathay and Cipangu.’
‘I heard some men speak of this in Seville,’ Jack said, nodding.
‘My brother-in-law says most navigators and map-makers laugh at the prospect – call those who speak of such mad fools. But there are some who believe.’ Hugh’s eyes drifted back to the uneven line beyond the islands stretching into nothing – the faint hint of a coastline. ‘If this showed a route to the Spice Islands? A way past the Turks?’ He looked up at them. ‘Then I would say it would be worth all the gold in the world.’ He sat heavily. ‘God damn you, Ned. Why did you have to come here?’
‘Gregory knew Sir Thomas was my father,’ ventured Jack. ‘If I can discover who else was aware of our relationship it might lead to answers as to who he was. As far as I know only a handful of people knew. My mother, my father’s squire, the man I was living with in Seville and a lawyer in Lewes. Possibly Earl Rivers.’
‘Rivers knew your father well,’ agreed Hugh. ‘But other people he was close to? Close enough for a secret none of us – his own men – knew?’ He exhaled, shaking his head.
‘Did you find anything at the house?’ Ned asked suddenly.
‘Another symbol like this one.’ Jack held up his hand to show the ring. ‘On the door of a safe. A barber told me the Medici family used to own the property. But it was abandoned. Well, mostly. I think some Frenchmen have taken up residence.’
‘Vaughan’s ring?’ Hugh stared at it. ‘Earl Rivers had one too, you know.’
‘He did?’ Ned scratched thoughtfully at his chin. ‘I never noticed.’
‘He wore it on a chain around his neck. Kept it hidden.’
Jack felt a new twinge of excitement. He tried to think what, other than friendship and their official roles in court, connected the earl, uncle of the prince and brother of the queen, to his father. All he could think of was their charge – Edward. ‘Do you know what the symbol means?’
Hugh disappointed him with a shake of his head. ‘I’ve not seen it anywhere but those rings.’
‘What about Bernard? Might he be able to tell us more about this map?’ Ned frowned, looking around him. ‘Where is Beatrice, anyway?’
‘Living with her mother in Deptford,’ said Hugh shortly. ‘But I’m still in contact with Bernard.’ His eyes were dragged back to the map. ‘I’ll speak to my brother-in-law. For Sir Thomas, I’ll do it. But after that I’m gone.’
Tears reddened her eyes and nose, and made little damp spots on the front of her dress. Her shoulders shuddered. All these months now and still she was weeping. Harry Vaughan didn’t know whether his sister was crying for the loss of their father, strung up on the gallows for treason, or for the loss of everything else. Either way, it angered him. He let the chest he was carrying thump to the floor, starting her from her sobs.
‘Must I gather two of every animal, sister?’
It was something he remembered his mother saying years ago, when he cried as a child. In her voice it had been soothing, the lilt of a laugh in her tone as she stroked his hair after a bad dream or a fall. All these tears, my love. Noah will have to build another Ark. In his voice the question was rough, demanding.
Ann stared at him, hurt and confused. ‘What?’
‘No matter,’ he snapped, bending to push one of the other chests the porter had carried up to the chamber against the wall to make room. Ann was fifteen, six years younger than him. She had been an infant when Eleanor died. She couldn’t even remember their mother, let alone the things she used to say.
Leaving the girl to her tears, her fist balled against her mouth, Harry straightened and surveyed their new home. The chamber was up in the eaves with low, slanting ceilings that made him duck. Cobwebs veiled the small window, turning bright day to dreary dusk. In their manors in Kent and Sussex such rooms had been for playing in and hiding from governesses and nurses. Not living in.
He thought of Thomas Vaughan’s mansion at Westminster, which he had visited on the rare occasions his father had deigned to spend time with him these past years, summoning him from the household of Sir Robert, the elderly knight Harry had served as a squire. This room would fit into his bedchamber there four times over. His half-sister, Joan, one of the children from his mother’s first marriage, had promised she would prepare more suitable lodgings for them, but who knew when that would be.
Yesterday, when Harry and his sister had arrived at the house in Rochester, Joan had hugged Ann and had assured him that all would be well. Harry had kept silent at her attempt at comfort. She couldn’t possibly know this. Joan was married, secure. His father had never invested the time or effort in choosing suitable matches for him and his sister. Now, there would be no chance of a marriage to a rich heiress or heir. No knight for his sister. No dowry for him – a traitor’s son. Even old Sir Robert, whom Harry had served for years, had distanced himself. He might as well have contracted leprosy.
The lawyer’s words rang in his head.
By the charge of treason, Sir Thomas Vaughan has lost the right to pass on property and titles to you, his heir. Your father’s estates are hereby forfeit to the crown, by act of attainder.
Harry had stopped listening to the man’s droning explanation. He knew what attainder meant. It meant the loss of everything his father owned: the titles, the manors and mansion in Westminster, the jewels, the gold plates, the furniture, the money. It meant the loss of his inheritance. It meant the legal death of Sir Thomas Vaughan’s family. Attainted. The corruption of the bloodline.
These past years he had nursed a secret fear of losing everything he had been born to – everything he believed he had a right to as his father’s only son. But he had watched for that danger elsewhere. When his fear had come true the cause of his loss had been wholly unexpected.
His sister’s muffled sobs still filling the chamber, Harry crouched and opened the chest he had shoved against the wall. There, among the books and clothes, was a black velvet pouch. Reaching inside, he pulled out a coin and turned it in his fingers. The gold was stamped on one side with an image of King Edward IV and on the other the archangel Michael, slaying a dragon. He returned it to the pile of shifting coins, the gold of which caught the light from the dust-smeared window and shone. A bag full of angels. Once, it would not have seemed like
much. Now, it was a fortune. Perhaps he should have asked the man for more? That old bitterness tasted fresh in his mouth. Just how much had his father kept from him over the years? How many lies had he been told?
Beside the pouch lay his father’s signet ring – a mere trinket in the face of all he had lost – and a letter, written before his execution. The parchment, crumpled by his fist, told him to take his sister to Joan; that she would take care of them. It told him his father was sorry. That if he could live his life again he would treat him the way a son should be treated.
‘Too late now, Father. Too late.’
Looking up, he realised Ann was staring at him. Had he said the words out loud? After shoving the pouch deeper into the chest, Harry Vaughan snapped the lid shut.
Chapter 16
The summer night drifted slowly down over the city, spreading tendrils of darkness through the waters of the Thames and sending lengthening shadows creeping down alleyways. The humid air of the day turned to mists that haloed lanterns outside the taverns. Rats scuttled along alleys stinking with night soil thrown from windows. Dogs roamed free, searching for scraps. A large pack had been drawn to the pillory on Cornhill where offal and stones scattered the street and the blood of the accused who had been trapped there was still fresh. Women in hoods lingered in doorways, beckoning men into darkness, while cutpurses and cutthroats lurked in the mouths of alleys, eyeing victims.
London was a dangerous place after curfew. Any respectable, sensible citizen was at home in bed. Only the foolhardy and the devious ventured out after dark. Or those consumed by their appetites, thought Carlo di Fante, watching a fat man in a velvet cloak stumble into an open doorway where a woman waited. His tonsure marked him as a man of God and her hood said she was a whore. This city was a Babylon. Carlo twisted one of his red rosary beads between his fingers, settled his mind with prayer.
‘They’re back,’ came Goro’s growl.
Looking across to Birchin Lane, Carlo watched two cloaked figures slip through the shadows to join them. ‘Well?’
‘The house appears empty,’ Vanni told him quickly. ‘No one has come or gone since before sundown. There are no nightlights we could see and no smoke from the chimney.’
‘That’s all?’ Carlo’s jaw tightened.
‘No,’ said Piero. ‘We asked around.’ His teeth gleamed in the dark as he smiled. ‘It was owned, possibly still is, by the Bank of Medici.’
Goro grunted, pleased. The others exchanged keen murmurs.
‘The old man never mentioned that,’ murmured Carlo. He refused to allow himself to be bitten by the same excitement as his men. They had been down this road before and the end was yet to be seen.
Still, this was something. He couldn’t deny that. He’d feared the old man might have died with a lie on his lips, for he lasted a surprisingly long time in Goro’s artful hands without giving up Vaughan’s son. He cared for him, clearly. But it seemed he cared for his cat even more. When Goro lifted the struggling animal by the scruff of its neck and threatened to skin it alive the words had spilled as free as water from the old man’s mouth – details of the young man’s destination interspersed with declarations that James Wynter only wanted answers about his father, that he’d said nothing about any map. Carlo had marvelled at this weakness. Threaten a man’s life and he resists. But threaten an animal?
The house itself had meant nothing to him, but the address certainly had. Lombard Street was one he knew well, lined with Italian bankers and money-lenders. Now he knew the house was owned by the enemy, he wondered if they might indeed be one step closer. Might Vaughan’s son have come here to deliver it? He forced back his hope. One step at a time.
‘Come.’
Together, Carlo and his men crossed Cornhill and headed down Birchin Lane. There were a few people in the shadows, one man urinating in a doorway, another pulling a struggling woman into an alley. Ignoring them, they approached the house on the corner of Lombard Street, the windows of which were dark reflections of the night sky. They gathered outside the door, under the cover of the pentice. Piero moved up, sliding an axe from the loop of leather on his belt. He wedged the head of it into the frame and pulled back on the shaft. There was a creaking, cracking sound as the wood around the lock splintered and the door sprang open.
They slipped inside, one after another, the last man sliding the bolt across the door behind him. They drew weapons as they went, steel rasping on leather. Vanni had a long rondel dagger, Piero the axe and Goro clutched a spiked mace while the other three unsheathed swords. Carlo drew his blade with its gold, tear-drop pommel. The room was pitch-black, forcing them to feel their way through to where a door opened into a narrow hallway. Cloaks whispering, footfalls soft on the boards, they made their way out into a grand hall, where space opened above them. It was lighter here. Black and white tiles were visible on the floor and they could see a set of stairs heading up to a gallery. Carlo realised with a rush of anticipation that the source of the light was coming through a door in the far wall – the soft coppery glow of candlelight seeping out. He nodded his men towards it. Slowly, moving in a tight group, they crossed the hall, weapons raised in readiness.
Reaching it, Goro shouldered the door open, allowing Carlo to lunge forward with his sword. The chamber beyond was messy with blankets and the remains of a meal. Four tallow candles sputtered in the hearth, tainting the air with bitter smoke. The room was empty. Carlo frowned and turned to Goro. Just then, the hush was shattered by shouts. Men rushed at them from the shadows of the hall. Carlo, spinning round to confront them, counted six. The detritus in the room had made him think of vagabonds, but he knew at once that these armed men were soldiers.
The two groups clashed together, sparks shooting in the darkness as blades knocked slivers off each other. Goro was the first to spill blood, smashing his mace into the side of his opponent’s head, blood and brain spraying. As the man fell two more went for Goro, the giant roaring as he swung at them. Vanni thrust his dagger at one attacker’s neck. The man ducked away, then countered, hacking his axe into Vanni’s outstretched arm. The blade bit down to bone. Vanni screamed, the dagger falling from his fingers. His eyes widened in terror as the man loosed the axe in one fluid movement and swung it, two-handed, into his chest. There was a sharp splintering as his sternum caved. Vanni crumpled.
Piero stormed in as his comrade fell, curving his own axe into the killer’s back. As the man sprawled to the floor, Piero went down on top of him. Leaving his axe buried in the man’s spine, he grabbed fistfuls of hair and smashed his head into the tiles, each wet crack spilling more fluids across the floor. Piero arched back suddenly, hands grasping behind him, as one of the attackers shoved a blade deep between his shoulders.
Carlo thrust his sword at his opponent, then crossed it to block the man’s answering lunge. His wide-brimmed hat had fallen off, but it left his vision clear. He hacked at the man, fierce, rapid strikes that forced him back. Carlo’s foot slipped in a puddle of blood and he staggered. The man leapt in. Carlo just managed to block his blow, their swords clashing together. They stayed locked for a moment, breathing hard as they pushed against one another.
‘Où est Amelot?’ the man growled over the crossed blades. ‘Où est la fille?’
He reached out with his free hand and snatched at Carlo’s rosary, trying to pull him closer. The string snapped, the beads flying loose. Carlo head-butted the man, causing him to rock back, blinded by pain. As Carlo ran him through, he doubled up over the blade, his mouth stretching in shock. Carlo withdrew his sword with a twist of the wrist, slicing organs as the length of steel left the man’s body. He turned, panting, ready for whoever came at him next. No one did. Men lay dead all around him. Only Goro was still standing, hacking away at his opponent.
As Carlo moved to help, he felt something go through him. It felt like fire in his flesh. Looking down, he saw the tip of a dagger protruding through his black velvet robe, just above his belt. He staggered round to see the man
he had just skewered, slipping back to the floor. Carlo put his hand to his side, where the dagger remained. Sweat broke cold across his body. As he sank to his knees, he saw Goro’s axe slice through the neck of the last of the attackers. The giant turned, his rough voice rising in alarm as Carlo collapsed.
Amelot swung down from the roof and slipped in through the window. She rubbed her hands together gingerly, her palms sore and black with dirt from scrabbling across the rooftops. Heading back to Birchin Lane she had stayed up high as much as she could, not wanting to be down in the darkness, where she could see the dangers that lurked in the alleys below.
Her muscles were stiff and she was cold and hungry, having spent the afternoon and most of the evening hidden in the branches of a willow tree, watching the building she had followed the man to on the banks of the river. There she had waited, shrouded by the trailing canopy of leaves, as the setting sun turned the river red and scores of boats began to cross the water. While all the taverns filled, the building she was watching remained silent, the windows shuttered and the door closed. When the man didn’t reappear and the first boats began to return their drunken cargo to the city, Amelot had dropped from her hiding place and made her way across the bridge, ducking past the inattentive watchmen on patrol at the gateway. Guessing the man must be staying there, she planned to lead the others to the building at first light. They could search the place and question the man with the serpent ring.
Remy would be cross, she thought, as she padded across the upstairs chamber, past the large bed. She had been gone for hours and they wouldn’t know where. Her nose wrinkled as she thought how irritated he would become as she tried to explain what she had discovered; how he would curse and shake his head when he didn’t understand her gestures. But she didn’t regret her actions. They needed a place to start and she felt certain she had just found them one. Since their arrival in the city they had discovered that Thomas Vaughan and Anthony Woodville had been executed by the new king and that his nephew was now locked in the Tower. But these things were not important. They had one task only to perform here.
