The Medici secret Read online

  'Can we trust him?' Cosimo asked, turning over in his hands the golden key Valiani had given them.

  'He is an honest man,' Niccoli assured them. 'He has no reason to lie about what he has stumbled upon. I did not say earlier, but when I was a young man Francesco Valiani was my teacher. I owe him much. He was always noble and true and his heart is pure. I will happily vouch for him.'

  Cosimo looked into his friend's eyes. 'That is enough for me,' he said. 'Now this map.'

  Niccoli unfurled it on the table between them. It was a well-drawn copy, wrinkled and stained after the long journey that had brought it to Florence. It showed a mountain range running diagonally across the scroll, and around it, a web of place names. Weaving its way through the mountains was a path drawn in red, the beginning of the road to Golem Korab and the remote monastery described by Valiani. In the centre was a hole where the monastery and surrounding mountains would have been located, making the map all but useless.

  'It is rugged country,' Niccoli said. 'I have not travelled that far East, but it looks like a hazardous mountain path, especially here,' and he pointed to the edge of the hole in the map. 'Lord knows what the terrain is like nearer the monastery.'

  'Great rewards never come to the faint-hearted,' Cosimo replied.

  'No, indeed they do not my friend. But I fear you'll have to possess a very sturdy heart if you plan to visit Golem Korab.' As the tangerine sun rose over the distant hills, Cosimo and Ambrogio passed in silence through the gates to their friend's estate and took the dust track back to the city. Cosimo was lost in thought trying to resolve the clashing emotions Niccoli's strange house guest had conjured up in his mind. 'I know that silence,' Ambrogio said. 'You do?'

  'It's your faraway silence, the one that shrouds you when you are trying to resolve a seemingly insoluble problem.'

  Cosimo laughed. 'Well put, my friend, for I am indeed shrouded in thought.'

  'Valiani offers a tempting challenge, I can't deny that' 'It's a dream come true, is it not, Ambrogio?'

  'Almost too good to be true might be another way of putting it'

  Cosimo turned to look at him as they entered a small copse of spruce. 'You do not trust the man?' 'Oh, I didn't say that. It's just…' 'What?' 'I think none of us, with the exception of Niccolo of course, has any concept of the dangers involved if we accept Valiani's offer.'

  'Oh come now, Ambrogio, we flatter our egos in the study of esoteric ideas and we feel relaxed in the presence of lofty thoughts, but I believe we are all made of sterner stuff than many may imagine.'

  Ambrogio smiled. 'I did not mean to insult you my dear Cosi. Perhaps I was thinking of myself.'

  'Then you were insulting yourself, Ambrogio. If I can entertain the thought of a great adventure then so too could you.' He clapped his friend on the back prompting him to overreact and stagger forward, pretending to be mortally wounded. They both laughed.

  'Perhaps I could,' Ambrogio said. 'But have you forgotten? I'm leaving for Venice today.'

  'No, I have not forgotten my friend, and to be truthful, it grieves me. We would make good travelling companions.'

  'We would, but I fear it is not to be.' And he clamped his arm about Cosimo's shoulder. Reaching home on the Piazza del Duomo, Cosimo was exhausted, but he could not sleep. His mind was still racing, but he now knew what he had to do. Washing quickly, he was shaved and dressed by his manservant. Then, alone in his room, with the early morning sounds of the street drifting up to his window, he sat at his desk, trying to focus enough to write.

  It was a simple note, a message for his love, Contessina de' Bardi, asking her to meet him that evening. He needed to talk to her. Folding the note and sealing it with the Medici coat-of-arms, he called Olomo and gave him his instructions.

  The day passed slowly. He played with his young brother, Lorenzo; he wrote in his diary; and he wandered the streets of Florence.

  He arrived early at his suggested meeting point, the garden of Niccoli's house where he knew no one would spy on them. Cosimo was seated on a stone bench under a flower-laden archway, and before she noticed him, he saw Contessina sweeping down four recessed steps, her green velvet gown brushing the stone. Tall and willowy with jet black hair, her high cheekbones and foil lips made her the embodiment of Athenian perfection.

  'Cosi, you look troubled,' she said taking both his hands in hers and sitting beside him on the bench.

  He gazed into her ebony eyes. 'I can hide nothing from you, Contessina.'

  She did not interrupt once as he told her Valiani's story. 'So, you feel you must go and see this place and unravel these secrets for yourself, yes?' she said when he had finished. 'But Cosimo, what of us?'

  'It changes nothing, my Contessina. I will return in a few months and we shall continue with our wedding plans.'

  'And your father, Cosi? He knows nothing of this?' 'Nothing.' She held his gaze. 'I want to come with you.'

  Cosimo smiled. 'That would be a thought I could cherish, my love, but we both know it is not possible.'

  'Why?' Contessina asked. 'I have studied the masters as fully as you, and I too have a burning desire to know more.' 'But your family would never…' 'And I suppose yours would.'

  Cosimo conceded the point. 'It will be immensely dangerous.' 'I know.'

  'And I would be accused of abducting you. It would destroy the relationship between our two families.'

  'That's being a little melodramatic, don't you think, Cosi?'

  'No, I don't think it is, my Contessina,' Cosimo replied gently. And then, with steel in his voice. 'Contessina, I will have to do this without you.' She looked at the darkening sky beyond the archway and the roses silhouetted in the amber dusk. 'Clearly you have made up your mind. Is there nothing I can say?' 'You could wish me luck.'

  He looked at her hands clasped together in her lap and noticed the whiteness of her knuckles. Then fixing Cosimo with her black eyes, she said. 'Cosimo, my love. I dread the thought of you embarking on this journey, but I know that once you have set your mind to a thing there is no turning back. It is one of the many things I adore about you. I will wish you luck, of course I will; but more than anything, I offer you my eternal love,' and she kissed him softly on the cheek.

  Chapter 8

  FLORENCE, 6 MAY 1410

  TO HIS HOLY FATHER POPE JOHN XIII,

  PISA.

  Holy Father, as always you were entirely right and my years here have not been wasted, as I worried they might have been. Tonight, the most extraordinary news reached my ears. A messenger from the East has related a discovery which I believe could bear significant fruit. There is a certain map describing the route to a secluded monastery in the mountains of Macedonia.

  I believe this may be the place we have heard about, for news of it has been imparted by a well-known scholar named Francesco Valiani. The man has not been able to travel to the monastery himself but he believes a great treasure is to be found there. No mention was made of the specific object Your Holiness seeks, but I am hopeful.

  Holy Father, I am ready for your thoughts and await whatever instructions you wish to impart to your most loving and humble servant…

  Chapter 9

  London, June 2003 Several venues had been booked then rejected before the meeting had finally taken place in a small hotel in Bayswater. There were three men in the room: Sean Clifton, Professor Arnold Rossiter, an Oxford don and expert consultant, and Patrick McNeill, Senior Vice-President of Vitax, a division of Fournier Holdings Inc., a vast corporation owned by a French-Canadian billionaire art collector named Luc Fournier; McNeill was also Luc Fournier's chief aide. Rossiter, a consultant for hire, had been selected for the job by Fournier himself because the businessman knew so much about the professor's murky private life he could trust the man almost unconditionally.

  It was hot and there was no air-conditioning in the hotel. Clifton was nervous and sweating so profusely dark rings had appeared at the armpits of his shirt. Mopping his brow with an off-white cotton handkerchi
ef, he eyed the other two silently and removed a rectangular clear-plastic document wallet from his briefcase. He had not met Rossiter but knew him by reputation. The scholar was a man in his late-sixties, his face mottled, veins clearly visible through the pale skin of his bald head. He was little more than five foot six and his shapeless linen suit completed the image of the crumpled intellectual

  Clifton handed the wallet to McNeill. 'These are copies of course.' His nerves belied the coolness it had taken to walk past the guard in Sotheby's vault two weeks earlier.

  McNeill removed the photocopies from the wallet. There were about forty pages, double-sided, handwritten. He read the first few pages in fascinated silence. 'And your family inherited these recently?'

  Clifton nodded and walked over to the window, eyeing the street below with suspicion. Turning back to the room, he lit a cigarette.

  'I'll obviously need some time to read through…' Rossiter said.

  'Ten minutes.' Clifton replied squinting through the smoke. 'You have ten minutes.'

  McNeill gave Rossiter an amused look. 'You'd better get cracking,' he said and settled into a sofa.

  Rossiter sat at a table near the door and began reading.

  'I suggest you look at the marked pages,' Clifton said.

  Rossiter turned the pages slowly, his excitement mounting. He had never seen this document before, although academics had long discussed the possibility of its existence. The originals, he knew, had been presumed lost years earlier, and rumours spoke of copies of fragments that might still survive, vanished perhaps into the attics of the unsuspecting or lying at the back of cupboards in dusty storerooms. As a consequence, very few had seen this document since it had first been composed some six centuries earlier. And so, as he read he began to realise why Sean Clifton was so keen to strike a deal with Fournier. One of the few things known by the media about the head of Fournier Holdings was that he was the world's wealthiest and most enthusiastic collector of early Renaissance documents and artefacts. And this was a most remarkable find.

  Clifton walked over to the table and began picking up the photocopied pages. 'Time's up.'

  Rossiter made to protest but McNeill silenced him with a wave of his hand. 'Has our time been wasted, Professor?'

  'No. These are copies of a genuine manuscript in the hand of Niccolo Niccoli.'

  'Thank you. That's all I wanted to know. Now, I wonder if you might leave us.'

  Rossiter looked surprised for a moment, then he turned and left.

  'So,' McNeill said as the door closed. 'You want ten million pounds, is that correct?' 'It is.' 'Quite out of the question.' For a second Clifton looked deflated. 'Why?'

  'Because my boss is offering four million. One hundred thousand now, the rest in two stages after other… requirements have been met.' 'Ridiculous!'

  'In that case, I'm afraid we cannot do business.' He turned to leave.

  McNeill had taken only two paces and was reaching for the handle when Clifton said, 'OK, OK. Eight, with a million up front.'

  McNeill didn't even break his stride and started to pull the door open.

  Clifton sighed and took a couple of steps towards him. 'All right… six.'

  McNeill stopped and returned to the room. Standing so close to Clifton that he made sure the man could feel his breath on his face, he said slowly and deliberately 'Four and a half with two fifty now. That's our final offer.'

  Clifton took a step back and lit another cigarette. 'Five million and it's yours.'

  McNeill gazed across the room to the window. The only sound was coming from the traffic below. 'Very well. Five million. But, these are our conditions.' Clifton took a deep drag on his cigarette.

  'For our Ј250,000 we have the copies for two weeks. If my boss likes what he sees, one of our people will retrieve the originals from the Sotheby vault. Only then will you receive the rest of the money.' 'No!' 'Take them elsewhere then.' Clifton bit his lip. 'And the money?'

  'Ј250,000 will be placed in a Swiss account by noon Monday. You must have the documents in another specified account by 10 a.m. the same day. The transfer of funds to your account will automatically decode a six-digit security sequence of your own choosing which will then be transmitted through the Internet to my representative. This code will enable us to access the document. No money, no code and vice versa. My people will email the details.'

  Chapter 10

  Venice, present day 'No matter how many times I see this view, I still find it breathtaking,' Edie said as she gazed out of the windows of Jeff's sitting room. He was standing beside her with a hand on her shoulder; they had arrived in Venice only an hour earlier. It was approaching lunchtime and the crowds were already filling San Marco. Across the square, a small ensemble on a raised stage was playing a selection of Vivaldi and Mozart pieces. Closer to the Ducal Palace, clowns on stilts tottered around on the uneven paving stones handing out balloons to children, and clusters of masked pedestrians paraded about, some in ornate costumes. Carnivale was in full swing.

  There was a commotion at the door to the apartment. Turning, they saw Rose and Maria laden down with bags. Edie raised an eyebrow.

  'I gave her my credit card' Jeff explained. 'I felt bad about abandoning her yesterday.'

  Edie gave him a sceptical look. 'Not over-compensating at all then?' She beamed at Rose. 'Well, hello there, young lady. I haven't seen you for… God, how long is it?'

  Rose stopped fussing with her bags and looked coldly at Edie. Puzzled, Jeff was just about to say something when they heard a cough and saw a tall man dressed entirely in black leaning against the door to the apartment, a slight smile playing across his lips.

  'We find Signor Roberto as we go in building,' Maria declared in broken English and bustled out past Roberto, making him stand up straight in the doorway. She was shaking her head and tutting as she waddled along the corridor towards the bedrooms.

  Roberto stepped forward and took Edie's hand and kissed it theatrically. She flushed.

  Behind Roberto, Jeff caught sight of Rose, her face like thunder.

  'You two get acquainted,' Jeff said, and strode over to Rose.

  He led her into the hall. 'What the hell was all that about?' She looked at the floor. 'Well?'

  'You really don't know, do you?' Rose said. Her eyes were filling with tears. Jeff walked forward to embrace her, but she turned on her heel and ran down the corridor.

  'Rose…' he said. But her bedroom door slammed shut. He would have to deal with this later. Feeling terrible, he returned to the sitting room.

  Without taking his eyes from Edie, Roberto said to Jeff, 'How have you managed to keep us from meeting before now?'

  'Oh, it's quite deliberate,' Jeff replied trying to sound jolly. Edie seemed completely at ease with all the attention and was appraising Roberto just as overtly. 'What brings you here anyway?' Jeff said. 'We have lunch booked at the Gritti, remember?' 'So we do. I'd completely forgotten.' 'But if you…'

  'Roberto, come with me.' Slightly red-eyed, Rose was standing at the opening into the hall. She had a bag held up in front of her. 'I want your honest opinion of this jacket.' She walked over and snatched hold of his hand, looking daggers at Edie.

  When the two had left the room, Jeff let out a heavy sigh. 'I'm sorry,' he said. Edie shrugged. 'Just her age, I guess, but I've obviously done something to offend her, even if I haven't seen her for over a year.'

  'And Roberto has just made it worse. Rose has a huge crush on him.' 'Who is he?' Edie's eyes were sparkling.

  'Roberto? He's just about my best mate here, an amazing guy. In fact, I think he might be able to help us. Would you mind if I told him about what's happened?' 'Why do you think he can help?'

  'Roberto's the closest thing to a genius I've ever met. And I trust him implicitly.' Edie shrugged. 'OK.' They turned to see Rose in her new jacket holding Roberto's hand. 'Lovely,' Jeff said.

  'Isn't it,' Rose replied darkly and sat at the far end of the sofa to look over the rest of her pur
chases.

  'Actually Roberto, you're just the person I needed to see.' Jeff led him to a table and handed him a copy of Mackenzie's phone message. As he read it, Edie related how they had found the tablet and how she had received the call from her uncle the night he was murdered.

  'So you're thinking he was murdered because of what you found?' 'It seems likely, yes,' Edie answered.

  'Well, it's obvious why you've come to Venice,' Roberto said. 'But the three wavy lines makes it much more interesting. Together with the lion they make up the symbol of I Seguicamme.' 'Which is…?'

  'Quite literally it means "The Followers". They were a group who broke off from the Rosicrucians. They met in Venice on a regular basis; their members travelled here from all parts of Europe. They first cropped up sometime in the mid-fifteenth century. The last anyone heard of them was sometime in the late eighteenth century.' 'What did they do, these followers?'

  'No one knows exactly. Marsilio Ficino mentioned them in his De vita libri tres, and Giordano Bruno alluded to the group in his book The Ash Wednesday Supper, but these references are mostly mystical, barely comprehensible.'

  'Ficino?' Jeff said. 'The mystic? He worked for Cosimo de' Medici, didn't he?'

  'He translated a manuscript for him just before Cosimo died, Corpus hermeticum, a famous collection that described the ancient foundations of magic'

  'But what's this got to do with the verse?' Edie asked.

  'Well, that's the mystery isn't it? Jeff, this translation? It's accurate?'

  Edie played the message again for Roberto's benefit.

  'But what do you make of "the geographus incomparabilis" he asked, frowning.

  Rose approached the table and stood beside Roberto. 'What are you doing?' she asked. 'Did I hear you mention the geographus incomparabilisT 'You did,' Roberto replied.