by Robyn Young
‘The moment I revealed that I knew you and Edward left England alive, I marked myself. It seems Tudor and his men planned to silence me.’ Ned nodded to the slim youth standing close at the priest’s side, studying Jack with strange, tawny eyes. ‘If not for the sharp ears of Amelot here, I doubt I would be alive to tell this tale. Although,’ he added gruffly to the priest, ‘I cannot say I am grateful for the methods those in your pay employed to bring us to safety.’
‘I did not think you would come willingly,’ said Amaury, matter-of-fact. ‘The drug was the gentlest way.’
Ned grunted. ‘As gentle as a cannon.’ He looked back at Jack. ‘Father Amaury was in London, searching for the map. Sir Thomas had been due to deliver it to him. I told him you took it with you when you left with Prince Edward.’
Jack’s eyes narrowed. He was furious Ned had revealed this to a stranger.
Ned didn’t seem to notice. He shook his head in wonder. ‘Praise God I found you, Jack. We were only recently able to come out of hiding with Tudor gone. Holt was talking about heading back to England, but with two devils vying for the crown I cannot see what is left for us there.’
‘Do you still have the map?’ Amaury cut in, his pale eyes keen. ‘You had Sir Thomas’s sword and ring when you were brought here, but nothing else.’
Jack’s hand strayed to his throat, where the gold ring had hung on the thread.
‘They are safe,’ Amaury assured him. After a pause, he turned to Ned. ‘Let me speak to him alone.’
Ned nodded. ‘You can tell me your tale later,’ he said, grasping Jack’s shoulder. He looked him up and down. ‘And I’ll fetch you some meat for those bones!’
At the priest’s look the youth followed Ned to the door, feet silent on the boards.
‘Wait,’ called Jack. ‘Was it you who nursed me?’
The youth nodded in answer, then slipped out, closing the door.
Amaury smiled, his age-worn face creasing like cloth. ‘She has ways of communicating. But speech is not one of them.’
‘She?’
The priest didn’t respond, but drew up a stool and sat. Jack remained seated, filled with a host of doubts. But some of the worry eased from his mind as the priest laid his gnarled stick on the floor between them. However weak he was he reckoned he could beat the old man senseless with it if it came to it. Ned might believe his claims, but so far the priest had given him little reason to let his guard down.
‘I see you have questions.’
‘How did you know my father?’
Amaury didn’t answer at once. He closed his eyes and bent his head slightly. As the silence stretched on, Jack wondered if he was praying.
Finally, the old man looked up. ‘I met Sir Thomas almost eighteen years ago, when he spent time in the royal court in France as King Edward’s ambassador. I was a confidant of King Louis and came to know your father well. I realised early on that we were of a similar mind and heart. In time, I brought him into my trust and recruited him into an order I had been part of for many years.’
‘What order?’ asked Jack, thinking of the brotherhoods he knew of: the Knights of the Garter in England, the Order of the Golden Fleece in Burgundy, the Knights of St John, who had turned back the Turks.
‘It is called the Academy. Its heart beats in Florence, but its blood runs to many places.’
‘The caduceus,’ said Jack suddenly. ‘Does the symbol have something to do with it?’
Amaury reached inside his robe and pulled out a ring hanging on a chain. For a moment Jack thought it was his father’s, until he saw the gold was a darker shade. The two serpents were there, though, entwined around the winged staff.
‘I rarely wear it these days. My fingers pain me.’ The priest slipped it back inside his robe.
‘I was told it was the staff of Hermes. The Greek god of thieves.’
Amaury smiled slightly. ‘That is correct. But Hermes is also a patron of trade. Furthermore, he was the messenger who communicated between the gods and man. The bridge, if you will, between this world and the next. Between the living and the dead. The worldly and the divine. Those are the aspects that are of importance to the Academy and why each of us wears the ring, to remind us of the path we follow.’
Jack tried to imagine his father, whom he had always thought of as a devout Christian, following or, worse, worshipping, any aspect of an ancient pagan god. ‘What is the Academy? What is its purpose?’ A memory jumped into his mind. ‘You said its heart is in Florence. Is it connected to the House of Medici?’
‘Yes. It was founded many years ago by an exceptional man named Cosimo de’ Medici, head of the family and ruler of Florence.’
Jack noticed Amaury’s voice soften with affection, suggesting a personal friendship. He sat forward on the bed, his mind fizzing with questions. He felt awake – alive – for the first time in what seemed an age. He hardly knew what to ask first. ‘Before Sir Thomas was executed on Gloucester’s orders he wrote me a letter.’ Jack forced away the image of Harry ripping his father’s last words to pieces before him. ‘He said he prayed I had found the answers he could not give me. That the Needle had pointed the way. Do you know what he meant by this?’
‘He meant the current head of our order – Cosimo de’ Medici’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent. He took his grandfather’s place twenty years ago upon his death. Throughout Italy Lorenzo is known as the Needle – the one who points the way forward. Your father must have meant for you to go to him with the map, which makes sense.’ The priest frowned. ‘But it seems that was only half the message if you did not know of whom he spoke?’
‘I think perhaps, before he was arrested, that he might have sent someone to me. It could have been his squire, Stephen Greenwood.’ Jack thought of the blood, fresh and tacky on the ring Gregory had handed to him. ‘But if so, he never reached me. Another came instead. One who tried to take the map.’ Feeling more at ease in the face of Amaury’s frankness, he told the priest what had happened in Seville and that Prince Edward had verified Gregory Mercer had been a servant of Earl Rivers, supposedly his father’s friend.
Amaury’s brow drew in tight. ‘Yes, that confirms what was confessed to me.’ Before Jack could ask what he meant, the priest went on. ‘I know, after he gained possession of the map, Thomas became convinced he was being followed. He sent a message telling me that when it was safe to do so he would bring the map to me that I might deliver it to Florence. It is one of my tasks within the order – mine and others. We hunt and gather knowledge that has been lost or buried. Manuscripts and books. Maps.’ Amaury paused to take a long, wheezy breath. ‘I never heard from Thomas again. I sent men to London to try to make contact with him, but by that time he was dead. God rest his soul.’
Jack stiffened, struck by a horrible thought. ‘Did one of your men wear a mask?’ He tried to keep his voice steady as he spoke. His bandaged fingers twitched, ready to reach for that stick.
‘No.’ Amaury raised his hand to cover half his face. It was an odd gesture, his gaze thoughtful, elsewhere for a moment. ‘Amelot was tortured by one in a mask. I believe this monster was working for a man named Carlo di Fante. I found di Fante dying in an alleyway when I was searching for trace of the map. He was the one who told me about you. Thomas had kept you a secret.’
‘Carlo,’ murmured Jack, putting a name to the man he had battled in the rain and dark of Southwark. How bound were all these threads? How far did this tapestry stretch? ‘We fought, di Fante and me. He begged me not to give the map away. He warned me that those who wanted it would do something terrible with it.’
Amaury laughed. It was a harsh sound, devoid of humour. His blue eyes glinted and Jack caught a flash of something hard within them. Suddenly, the old man did not seem so frail.
‘There are two sides to every coin. Carlo di Fante killed my men. Butchered them. He confessed this before he died. I know now that he came to England to retrieve the map for his master.’
‘His master?’
>
Amaury hesitated before answering, his gaze fixed on Jack. ‘Pope Sixtus.’
Jack was stunned. The man he had fought was a servant of the Holy Father? God’s instrument on earth? Until now, the map had seemed to be a treasure to be fought over – something men wanted for its worth in gold. Something, perhaps, his father had stolen for his own gain, and damn the consequences. But if the pope was involved in its retrieval did that change the nature of the hunt entirely? What had Thomas Vaughan been caught up in?
The mystery Jack had imagined spiralling outwards from his father opened before him into a dark gulf. He felt himself in danger of toppling into it. ‘This cannot be,’ he murmured, shaking his head in confusion and disbelief. ‘Carlo di Fante and his men killed my mother. Burned down my home. They killed an old man – a friend of my father’s.’ The words were tumbling out of him. ‘They were defenceless. Innocent! How could the pope have sanctioned their deaths?’
‘The Church does not want the Academy to succeed in its aims. It will – and has – done everything in its power to stop us. Seven years ago, Pope Sixtus authorised the assassination of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The attempt failed; however Lorenzo’s brother was killed. A truce was settled, but the bad blood between them has neither been forgotten nor forgiven.’ That hardness was back in Amaury’s eyes. ‘Rivers was recruited by your father into the Academy. But he betrayed us. I believe he was the one watching Thomas – the one who wanted the map and sent his man to take it from you. He was working in secret for the pope. Carlo di Fante confessed to me that upon Rivers’s arrest he and his men took up the earl’s mission.’
Jack’s mind filled with the memory of Gregory’s words as the man lay dying on the floor of the Seven Stars. They will come for you. Come for him they had. And – if Amaury spoke the truth – all of them the pope’s men. He pushed his hand through his hair, the burns on his palms stinging beneath the bandages. ‘I don’t understand. What are the Academy’s aims? Why would the Church want to destroy you, unless you are . . .’ He paused, thinking back to the caduceus – symbol of a pagan god. ‘Heretics?’
‘That is not the word for us,’ said Amaury, watching him closely. ‘For we are still Christian men.’ He paused. ‘But you must have seen for yourself that the Church is not above sin?’
Jack thought of the whores in their yellow hoods in Southwark: the Winchester Geese, who worked the flesh of men for the Bankside rents that poured into the coffers of the bishop. He thought of the priests and clerics he had seen frequenting those same stews, drunk on wine and desire, clad like princes in their jewels and furs while, outside, children slept in gutters. But then he thought of kindly Father Michael in Lewes, who had listened with patience to his childhood confessions. ‘Sometimes,’ he conceded reluctantly.
‘As a man of the cloth I have perhaps seen more of the darkness – the cancer – at its heart. That poison in our Church, which is spreading, has the power to destroy Christendom. We are already in danger from outside forces. The Turks smell our weakness and desire our destruction.’
Jack seized on this. ‘Prince Edward told me of a fight between Vaughan and Rivers. They argued over some sort of alliance with the infidel. Edward said my father believed the Turks are not our enemy. Yet you now say they are?’
‘What your father said is right, in spirit at least. In reality, most of them are as lost as we are – as filled with righteous rage, believing their deity to be the one true God. This belief is the curse of mankind. The cancer in all our hearts.’ After a moment, Amaury nodded to himself. ‘From all you have told me, I believe Thomas meant for you to know this truth. I will trust you with the burden of it if you swear on his name to keep silent.’
‘I swear.’
Amaury spoke, holding him in his pale gaze. ‘Before the Flood, we believe mankind was united. One brotherhood under God. The waters that engulfed our world in the time of Noah erased that, scattering all knowledge of earth and heaven, all the secrets of the stars. The dream of Cosimo de’ Medici was to search for that lost knowledge – to find the old texts in temples, tombs and churches, and gather them together. He believed this gathering would save us from the path to destruction he saw we were on. At his death, his library in Florence contained more than ten thousand manuscripts. For years, I was one of his best hunters. When Constantinople fell I was in the city, looking for a text Cosimo believed was the key to unlocking the heart of the mysteries we were beginning to uncover in our search. When this text was found and translated we knew he was right.
‘Plato and other brilliant men of that golden age believed in a World Soul. That soul once connected us all with a single truth, but after the Flood that same soul was divided, broken into many faiths, the followers of which do not see what was granted to man in ancient days: the knowledge that the God we worship, no matter the language of our prayers or the traditions of our ancestors, is one and the same.’
Jack was shaking his head. Half of what Amaury was saying he didn’t understand. The rest, he didn’t want to understand. This was heresy, pure and simple.
‘Through the World Soul nothing occurs in isolation. What affects one affects all. The ancients believed that what happens in heaven is reflected on earth and that the same is true in reverse. By our divisions and the corruption of our faiths we believe we are poisoning paradise.’
Jack’s mind stilled for a moment, filling with the words inscribed on his father’s sword. ‘As above, so below.’
Amaury nodded at his murmur.
Jack felt anger bubble up inside him at the priest’s calm. There was clearly much he still wasn’t being told. More than ancient philosophies and heretical notions, he wanted to know the truth of what he himself had experienced. ‘What of the map? What does it have to do with any of this? I know it was made by the sailors of the Trinity, out of Bristol – that they found Antillia and something else beyond it. The Spice Islands. Is that what your order wants? A route to the riches of the world? Is that why my father took what wasn’t his? Why he sent me away with it?’ His voice rose. ‘Is that what my mother died for?’
‘Your mother died because she found herself at the heart of a battle that has raged for years. A battle between light and dark, that has the power to shape the world at its conclusion. For good or ill. Your father sent you away because he trusted you implicitly. He never would have given you the map if he did not.’
‘It was stolen property! It wasn’t his to give!’
‘The Trinity’s voyages were financed by the Bank of Medici. When King Edward failed to repay the loan the family’s office in London collapsed. Your father stole it, yes. But, understand me, we paid for that map. And paid dear.’ Amaury exhaled softly. ‘As you have been its guardian, I will tell you that we do not believe it shows the Spice Islands. We believe something else lies between Christendom and the shores of Cathay and Cipangu. Between Occident and Orient. This past decade there have been many rumours – sightings from lost sailors, strange discoveries washed upon our shores. We have heard it from Portuguese sailors and fishermen of Thule, and from those Bristol men who sailed on Trinity.’
Jack recalled Bernard’s nervous excitement in the cellar of the Ferryman’s Arms; the names he had reeled off. Hy-Brasil. Markland. Vinland. ‘What is it if not the Spice Islands?’
‘Plato wrote of a vast land destroyed by a terrible disaster. It was said to lie beyond the Pillars of Hercules, far out in the Western Ocean. He called it Atlantis. We call it New Eden. To us it means more than gold or riches. Much more.’ Amaury sat forward, forcing Jack to meet his gaze. ‘We are not the only ones who have heard these rumours. There is a sailor, a young ambitious man, who has become convinced he can reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. If he or others with such a mind attempt these voyages, we fear they will find New Eden first. Our hope, then, may be lost. There are factions out there who would carve up the world for themselves, careless of the cost. We are on a path to darkness, all of us. We must halt this course before it is too late. We
must have that map.’
Jack sat back. He felt drained, in body and in soul. There was much he still didn’t understand; so many more questions he wanted answers to. But despite this he felt – here in this chamber of light and shadow high up among the rooftops of Paris – that there had been only truth spoken. And just as he had sensed the cruelty in the masked giant and the bitterness in Carlo di Fante, he felt, deep down in his gut, that his father had been a good man, as was the one before him now. He began to speak, telling Amaury of his assault at the hands of his half-brother; of the capture of Prince Edward and the taking of the map.
‘I believe Harry was there on behalf of Henry Tudor,’ he finished.
Amaury took this in silently. Finally, he nodded. ‘Your comrades fear Tudor may not want a prince of the blood in his path to the throne, any more than King Richard did.’
‘How much of this have you told Ned?’
‘Only what he needed to know in order to trust me. The rest, as I have said, must remain between us. Does your brother know of the map’s importance?’
‘He may have guessed at it. He told me Carlo and his men paid him handsomely to tell them where I might be.’
‘Will you retrieve it for me? The boy too? Your father invested years in his teaching, guiding him to be open to our cause, our aims. It is something we have worked at for decades, seeding hope in the heart of the kingdoms of the west, trying to foster light in the face of the growing darkness.’ When Jack didn’t answer, Amaury pressed him. ‘If you do this, I will take you to Lorenzo de’ Medici myself. There is much, yet, that our leader may choose to reveal to you. Answers your father may have wanted you to have.’
‘I heard Henry Tudor is due to sail for England at the head of his fleet. Harry may have already left these shores.’
‘I can secure you a vessel. Give you whatever funds you need. Trusted men, I believe you have.’
Jack breathed slowly. He wanted answers, yes, and he wanted to save the prince he had come to care for as a brother. But even more than this he wanted revenge. Harry might not have caused his mother’s death with his own hands, but his words had made it possible. Meeting Amaury’s eyes he nodded. ‘I will get you your map.’
