Court of Wolves Read online

  Henry studied him, only the pop of logs bursting in the fire to fill the silence between them. After a long moment, the king sat back. His expression had changed, the lines smoothing on his pallid brow. He motioned to the page who had escorted Harry to the chamber, lingering still in a shadowy corner. ‘Wine for my guest.’

  Harry watched the page head to a table by the gilded bed, decked for the wedding night with ribbons and bells. Later, the queen would be led in by her maids, who would undress her, ready for the king to be brought here by his squires to the rough music of lewd songs and laughter. Did she know the man she would lie beneath? What he was capable of?

  As the page crossed to him with a goblet, Harry took it gratefully. The spiced wine soothed his dry throat. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

  ‘I have no need of your thanks, Harry. But your loyal service – that I do require.’

  ‘You have it, my lord.’ Harry sat forward, making sure the king could see the truth of this. ‘Always.’

  ‘Then, I have another task for you. One in which you might redeem yourself from the recent past.’ Reaching into his lap, Henry picked up a long, thin object that had been lying there, hidden by the folds of his robes. ‘You recognise this?’

  Harry nodded, his gaze on the leather scroll case. He had taken it from Wynter when he seized the prince. Inside was the map those foreign men had been hunting for. The map his father had entrusted to that bastard over him – his true blood son. ‘It was Sir Thomas Vaughan’s.’ His voice came out as a cracked murmur. He cleared his throat. ‘It was my father’s.’

  ‘No, Harry, it wasn’t. That much I have been able to ascertain.’ Holding out his goblet for the page to slip in wordlessly and collect, Henry slid the roll of parchment from the scroll. ‘I take it you viewed it for yourself, when you took it from your brother?’

  Harry knew there was no point in lying. ‘Yes, my lord. But . . .’ He trailed off, not wanting to appear ignorant, but curiosity got the better of him. ‘In truth, I could not see its value. It is just a map, is it not?’

  In answer, the king unrolled it, opening it wide across his knees. In the firelight, the vellum was almost translucent. Inked outlines of huge continents and small dots of islands spidered across the parchment. At each corner was a cherub-like creature, cheeks puffed with wind. ‘The map-makers I have consulted tell me they know of every land on this map. Every land, but this.’ Henry touched his finger to one corner, far to the west in the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, beyond Portugal and Thule.

  Harry followed the king’s finger as it moved down a long, uneven line that stretched away from a tiny cluster of three islands, before vanishing off the map. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Something new.’ Henry leaned forward, his eyes intense. ‘I have discovered that several years ago a Bristol merchant ship, the Trinity, was embarking on secret expeditions in the Western Ocean, financed by King Edward. Their mission was to seek whether there was truth to the rumours of other islands in those waters – islands of immeasurable riches. Hy-Brasil, perhaps?’

  At that name, Harry had a memory of his father speaking of mysterious lands far out in the great ocean – lands where cities were made of gold and inhabited by strange, otherworldly beings, islands that vanished when sailors got too close.

  ‘In the year before Edward’s death, Trinity’s crew sighted what they claimed to be a new land. The man in charge of the expeditions was Thomas Croft, chief customs officer for the port of Bristol. I believe Croft had a map made from that last voyage. This map. That found its way, by chance, or more as like by design into the hands of your father.’

  Harry thought that if all this were true the bag of gold angels those men had given him for information on Wynter’s whereabouts had been a miserly offering indeed. But no mind. The map was here, in front of him, and the king seemed to be trusting him again. ‘What task would you have me do, my lord? Do you wish me to travel to Bristol? Find out more from Croft and his crew?’ He asked the question tentatively. More weeks away from the king’s circle would further hinder his chances of courting his favour.

  Henry sat back. ‘No. When time allows, I will personally pay a visit to Croft.’ He rolled the parchment, thin fingers spooling up the vellum until it fitted back inside the leather case. ‘There is a Spanish knight here in London – Rodrigo de Torres – one of a company from the court of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who attended my coronation. He has spoken of a man who has captured the interest of Isabella – a sailor with a notion of a westward expedition to find a new route to the Spice Islands. Men have mulled such a concept for the past thirty years since the Turks took Constantinople, barring our paths to the riches of India, Cathay and Cipangu, but few have considered such a voyage possible. Until now. The sailor is reportedly seeking funding for the expedition.’

  ‘And if he sails west he might find the land the men on the Trinity saw?’

  Henry nodded. ‘Whatever the land shown on this map is.’ He held up the case. ‘Whether the Spice Islands, or something new – something that lies between us and the East – the first sighting of it was by English sailors on a mission financed by the father of my bride. This land belongs to the English crown. I want to make sure it stays that way. To that end, Harry, I am sending you to Castile.’

  ‘Castile?’ Harry couldn’t keep the shock from his voice. And he had thought Bristol seemed a long way.

  ‘Your father was, I believe, ambassador to the courts of Burgundy and France. You will follow in his footsteps as my emissary in Spain. Rodrigo de Torres has agreed to introduce you personally to the king and queen. You will travel to Seville with him as soon as possible. I want you to work your way into Isabella and Ferdinand’s trust. Do whatever you can to halt this sailor’s progress and stop him getting that funding.’

  Harry drained his wine to give himself a moment’s cover as he thought. His father’s possessions and estates – seized by the crown after his execution – had all been restored to him by Henry. But the mansion on the Thames and the dwellings scattered across Kent and Sussex, all in need of serious upkeep, were not the prize he hungered for. He wanted more: a place in the king’s inner circle, a trusted man with the high offices, titles and benefits that might come with such status. All things his father had had under King Edward.

  Spain might be a long way from the king’s court, but he could see the seriousness with which Henry was treating this. Rarely had he heard the king speak with such passion. This mission had been granted to him alone – he would not have to vie with the officials all now crowding round to impress their new master. If he completed this task to Henry’s satisfaction, who knew what the rewards might be?

  ‘What is this sailor’s name, my lord?’

  Henry smiled, seeing that Harry had accepted. ‘His name is Christopher Columbus.’

  4

  ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord.’

  The congregation, swaddled in their fur-trimmed cloaks and packed into San Lorenzo’s grand aisles for Sunday Mass, watched the prior, caught in glimpses through the rood screen, as he raised his hands to begin the consecration of the wine and the bread. All except Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose gaze was fixed on the marble slab, inlaid with coral and blood-dark porphyry, on the floor before the high altar. Beneath that slab, in a tomb cradled within a pilaster that thrust through the crypt beneath, lay the remains of his grandfather, Cosimo de’ Medici: great man of the republic, first among equals, founder of the Academy, and, to him, a blazing beacon of inspiration.

  It was almost twenty-two years since his grandfather had been buried here, in the holiest place in this house of God, bones knitted within the fabric of the church where above met below, but Lorenzo could recall his funeral as clear as though he were looking back through glass. The grand procession of dignitaries weaving through the silent multitude on the streets. Men, women, children crossing themselves
as Cosimo’s body, draped in gossamer layers of white muslin, passed through their shifting masses.

  Lorenzo had been fifteen then, thrumming with emotion as he walked at his father’s side. His anguish at the passing of the old man had been tempered by the fierce pride he’d felt seeing the men of the republic – from the heads of the grand houses of Florence, the priors of the Signoria, officials and standard-bearers of the quarters and the members of the city’s twenty-one guilds, to the poor wool-workers and artisans of Oltrarno, the rough-skinned farmers come from the Mugello and the merchants and sailors from the Porto Pisano – every one of them here to pay their respects to the man who had never needed the title of leader to tell them all he was.

  ‘For of him and by him, and in him, are all things,’ proclaimed the prior, lifting the chalice and the host, the eyes of his audience rising with them. ‘To him be glory for ever.’

  ‘Amen,’ came the rumble of several hundred voices.

  ‘Amen,’ murmured Lorenzo, his gaze moving to the entrance of the sacristy on the left of the high altar, where his brother and father, uncle and great-grandfather were buried in magnificent tombs of their own. This whole church was a monument to his family, every curve of marble and embellished block of bronze, every stroke of gold leaf that brought the soaring figures of archangels and saints to glittering life across walls and ceilings, paid for by the House of Medici.

  How far his family had come from their humble beginnings in the Tuscan countryside, their first money-changing business growing into a bank that had spread like golden seeds, new branches springing up in Rome, Venice, Naples, London, Cologne and Bruges, housing and providing the wealth of merchants and princes, kings and popes, all serving to nourish the great tree in Florence that had created them. Their power had grown with every florin dropped into their coffers, every alliance made and deal brokered, every election that had raised more Medici sons to the Signoria, the city’s ruling council. Until, at last, they were supreme. It wasn’t long after Cosimo’s death that the people had begun calling him Pater Patriae.

  Father of the Fatherland.

  For a man who wore no crown, Lorenzo had become increasingly aware these past few years of the weight of the invisible diadem, passed down through his grandfather and father to him. He might have earned his own epithet – il Magnifico – but the name meant little without the power to uphold it, and that power had been eroded this past decade by the forces that had risen against him, threatening everything his family had built over the last hundred years.

  He had defeated his foes with execution, imprisonment, bribery and banishment, but familial roots went down deep in Florence – deep as faith – and he knew some weeds would have been left in that soil. How much they had grown he did not know, but he had sensed something these past months: some stirring of discontent beneath the bedrock of his rule, faint murmurings within the Signoria, whispers in rival houses, unfriendly eyes in familiar places.

  Lorenzo’s gaze lingered on the door to the sacristy, where his beloved brother, Giuliano, lay entombed, cut down in his prime by the blades of their enemies. Soon, sure as day, there must come another reckoning. He could only pray the plans he had set in motion to secure the future of his empire would have chance to bear fruit before then.

  ‘And taking the chalice he said to his disciples, drink ye of this for it is my blood and it shall be poured out for you.’

  As the prior completed the Eucharist, Lorenzo forced his attention to the final prayers of the Mass, the voices of the canons lifting in harmony as they sang the Paternoster and the Agnus Dei. Afterwards, he paused to thank the prior, then made his way down the aisle, smiling, nodding, occasionally stopping to talk as he was hailed by distant cousins and business allies, local officials and fawning supporters. It took some time, but at last he was stepping into the bright January morning, pulling up the fur-lined cowl of his purple cloak, his children jostling to be out of the sombre setting where they could raise their voices and laugh again.

  All around the city, bells chimed the close of Mass. People hurried across the piazza, breath pluming the air, most heading into the labyrinth of streets beyond San Lorenzo that led to the seething heart of the mercato. The hollow clop of clogs from a gang of wool-workers was accompanied by the jingle of bells tied in the hair of three whores, holding each other’s arms as they picked their way across the rutted street, their laughter sharp and skittish.

  The sky was blue and clear as stained glass, the air brittle. It was over a fortnight since Epiphany, when Lorenzo had led the city in a torchlit procession to the Christmas Cradle in San Marco – the initials of the three Magi still visible, scrawled in chalk over the doors of houses. In just two weeks it would be Carnival, but it remained unusually cold. A dirty crust of frost caked the stone-flagged streets and splintered sheets of ice had formed on the banks of the Arno and around the piers of the Ponte Vecchio, trapping the bloody clots of entrails tossed from the butcher’s shops that lined the bridge.

  ‘Father! May we have some?’

  Lorenzo saw his youngest daughters and son, Contessina, Luisa and little Giuliano, named after his dead brother, had clustered at a stall selling candied quince and slabs of gingerbread, set up by the enterprising owner to catch the post-Mass crowd. Reaching into his purse with a smile, Lorenzo pulled out a handful of soldi which he passed to Lucrezia, at fifteen his eldest child. He watched as she skipped to the stall, followed by the rest of her siblings, all gabbling happily.

  ‘You shouldn’t spoil them. Not after Mass.’

  His wife, Clarice, had moved from the circle of her friends to join him. The congregation was still spilling from the church, a few heading off, more forming huddles of conversation. A good number tried to edge towards Lorenzo, wanting to talk business, or politics, or petition him for some favour, while passing citizens, spotting him in their midst, came closer to gawp and point. Black Martin, Crooked Andrea and the rest of his bodyguards, dressed in their dark hooded cloaks, shielded him, waiting for his nod to allow any of the hopefuls through.

  ‘It is unseemly, husband.’

  In the stark winter sun, his wife’s face was pallid. Her auburn hair was scraped back beneath a bulbous black headdress embroidered with tiny white pearls that looked like clusters of spider’s eggs and her brow was furrowed with the three deep lines that always appeared with her displeasure: one of the children stealing a bite of food before grace was said, the too-loud laughter of a servant, the drunken gaiety of his friends at feasts.

  Clarice – daughter of the House of Orsini, an ancient and noble family from Rome with vast estates across Italy and a private army – had always been this sober, even when they were sixteen and newly married. She would, he knew, have been happier wedded to Christ in a convent, but his shrewd mother had chosen her for her pedigree, not her charm.

  ‘How can I not spoil them, Clarice? Look at them – how much they have grown. In just a season it seems.’

  It was true. Dark-eyed Lucrezia, depositing the coins in the stallholder’s hand, would be the first to fly. In just two months, when her dowry fund matured, she would disappear into the household of her betrothed, a wealthy political ally of Lorenzo’s. Beside her was wilful Piero, on the cusp of manhood at fourteen, destined to inherit his empire. Behind him, dutifully waiting his turn, was Giovanni, eleven years old and chubby as a cherub, whose destiny, though he did not know it yet, lay in another direction entirely. And, there, arm-in-arm with Lucrezia, was Maddalena, thirteen and sweet as honey, her fate – should all go according to Lorenzo’s plan – now entwined with young Giovanni’s.

  ‘They will soon be gone. Then who shall I indulge?’

  ‘Nencia, I should expect.’ Clarice spoke this in a murmur so no one else could hear – even though all of Florence knew of his dalliance with the peasant girl from the Mugello. The softness of Clarice’s voice didn’t take the bite from her words. Not waiting for a response, she turned away and called to a nearby group of men. ‘Angelo.’ />
  A handsome man with a hooked nose and softly sculpted face, framed by shoulder-length brown hair, looked round at her voice.

  Clarice pointed to the stall. ‘They are to buy one piece each. And the younger ones can share.’

  ‘Of course, signora.’

  Giving Lorenzo a look as if she had won this particular game, Clarice returned to her friends. But his gaze had already moved to the young man now walking to the stall.

  To Lorenzo, and all his companions, he was Poliziano, but Clarice refused to call him by the familiar name, despite the fact he had lived in their household for over a decade, teaching their children in turn. Now, tutor to Giovanni and professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Florence, a post Lorenzo had secured for him, Angelo Poliziano was one of his closest friends.

  The young man had been beside him that fateful day eight years ago, the Sunday after Easter in Santa Maria del Fiore – the day of blades and chaos – when Giuliano had gone down screaming under the swords of their rivals, the Pazzi, and blood had been spilled in the house of God. It was Poliziano who had dragged Lorenzo into the sacristy when the back of his neck had been slit by the dagger of a priest; Poliziano who lifted his hair and closed his mouth over that wound, sucking out any poison that might have laced the blade, while their friends hauled furniture in front of the door to halt the assassins.

  Clarice had given him seven healthy children, after the loss of three in their early years, and, despite her demeanour, commanded his household well, at the head of an army of administrators, cooks, nurses, servants and slaves. But there was no love grown between them on this stony ground, nor would there ever be. For that, Lorenzo had always looked elsewhere.

  He watched Poliziano divide gingerbread between his younger children. After making sure Clarice wasn’t looking, the young man knelt with a grin and handed each of them a piece of candied quince in compensation. Lorenzo felt a sudden urge to go to his friend and confide in him, to tell Poliziano everything he’d been keeping from him these past months. But he had agreed with Marsilio Ficino, his old mentor and confidant, that he should maintain his silence. The fewer people who knew his secrets the better – and safer for them all – at least until there was hope his plan would work. Lorenzo thought of the man now hidden in the heart of his palace. How long might it take to turn him? How long before he would feel sure ground beneath his feet again? See a clear road ahead?