To Lie with Lions
Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 1999
Copyright
©
1995 by Dorothy Dunnett
Introduction copyright
©
1996 by Judith Wilt
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd., London, in 1995, and in slightly different form in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1996.
Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Dunnett, Dorothy.
To lie with lions / Dorothy Dunnett.
p. cm. — (The house of Niccolò; 6th)
1. Vander Poele, Nicholas (Fictitious character)—Fiction.
2. Fifteenth century—Fiction. 3. Bankers—Europe—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Series: Dunnett, Dorothy. House of Niccolò; 6th.
PR6054.U56T6 1996
823′.914—dc20 95-50422
eISBN: 978-0-307-76242-9
v3.1
For Halliday Alastair Dunnett
Contents
Part I - Summer, 1471 Prologue: The Chute of Lucifer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II - Autumn, 1471: Joyous Entry and Farce
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part III - Spring, 1472: The Crapault of Hell
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part IV - Summer, 1472: The Multiplication of Pains
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
The House of Niccolò
PREFACE
When my chronicle of Francis Crawford of Lymond ended, it seemed to me that there was something still to be told of his heritage: about the genetic lottery, as well as the turmoil of trials and experience which, put together, could bring such a man into being.
The House of Niccolò
, in all its volumes, deals with the forerunner without whom Lymond would not have existed: the unknown who fought his way to the high ground that Francis Crawford would occupy, and held it for him. It is fiction, but the setting at least is very real.
The man I have called Nicholas de Fleury lived in the mid-fifteenth century, three generations before Francis Crawford, and was reared as an artisan, his gifts and his burdens concealed beneath an artless manner and a joyous, sensuous personality. But he was also born at the cutting edge of the European Renaissance, which Lymond was to exploit at its zenith—the explosion of exploration and trade, high art and political duplicity, personal chivalry and violent warfare in which a young man with a genius for organization and numbers might find himself trusted by princes, loved by kings, and sought in marriage and out of it by clever women bent on power, or wealth, or revenge—or sometimes simply from fondness.
There are, of course, echoes of the present time. Trade and war don’t change much down through the centuries: today’s new multimillionaires had their counterparts in the entrepreneurs of few antecedents who evolved the first banking systems for the Medici; who developed the ruthless network of trade that ran from Scotland, Flanders, and Italy to the furthest reaches of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, and ventured from Iceland to Persia, from Muscovy to the deserts of Africa.
Scotland is important to this chronicle, as it was to Francis Crawford. Here, the young Queen of Scots is a thirteen-year-old Scandinavian, and her husband’s family are virtually children. This, framed in glorious times, is the story of the difficult, hesitant progress of a small nation, as well as that of a singular man.
Dorothy Dunnett
Edinburgh, 1998
Characters
February 1471 – November 1473 (Those marked * are recorded in history)
Rulers
*England: King Edward IV, House of York, vying with
*Henry VI, House of Lancaster
*Scotland: King James III
*France: King Louis XI
*Burgundy: Charles, Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders
*Pope: Paul II, Sixtus IV
*Venice: Doge Niccolò Tron
*Cyprus: King James de Lusignan (Zacco)
*Ottoman Empire (Istanbul): Sultan Mehmet II
*Mameluke Empire (Cairo): Sultan Qayt Bey
*Muscovy: Grand Duke Ivan III, Autocrat of All Russia
*Scandinavia: King Christian I
*Poland: King Casimir IV
House of Niccolò
Nicholas de Fleury, governor of the Banco di Niccolò
Gelis van Borselen, dame de Fleury, his wife
Jordan (Jodi), their son
Clémence de Coulanges, senior nurse
Pasque, nursemaid
Bita, temporary nursemaid
Alonse, servant to Nicholas
VENICE COUNTING-HOUSE:
Gregorio (Goro) of Asti, lawyer and manager
Margot, his wife
Tasse, former servant to Jaak de Fleury, Geneva
Julius of Bologna, notary and manager
Cristoffels (Cefo), under-manager
BRUGES COUNTING-HOUSE:
Diniz Vasquez, manager, nephew of Simon de St Pol
Mathilde (Tilde) de Charetty, his wife
Marian, their daughter
Catherine de Charetty, Tilde’s younger sister
SCOTTISH BUREAU & ESTATES:
Govaerts of Brussels, manager, Canongate bureau
Oliver Semple, factor
Wilhelm of Hall, goldsmith
Tom Yare, lawyer from Berwick
*John Bonkle, natural son of the Provost of Trinity College
PERIPATETIC:
Father Moriz of Augsburg, chaplain and metallurgist
John le Grant, engineer, sailing-master
Michael Crackbene, shipmaster
Astorre (Syrus de Astariis), mercenary commander
Thomas, deputy to Astorre
Tobias Beventini of Grado, physician to Count of Urbino
OTHER NAMED AGENTS:
Lazzarino, agent in Rome
Jooris, agent in Antwerp
Eric Mowat, agent in Copenhagen
Achille, agent in Alexandria
COMPLEMENT OF THE
SVIPA
:
*Lutkyn Mere, Danish pirate
Yuri, from Muscovy
Dmitri, his son
(with Nicholas de Fleury, Mick Crackbene, John le Grant and Father Moriz)
PAST ASSOCIATES:
Ochoa de Marchena, former master of the
Ghost/Doria
Filipe, former boy on the
San Niccolò
Duchy of Burgundy
BURGUNDIAN HOUSEHOLD:
*Charles, Duke of Burgundy and Brabant, Count of Flanders, Holland, Zeeland etc.
*Margaret of York, his wife and sister of King Edward IV
*Isabella of Portugal, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy
*Marie, daughter of Duke Charles by previous wife
*Bastard Anthony, natural brother of Duke Charles
*William Hugonet, lord of Saillant, Chancellor of the Duchy
*Philippe de Commynes, Master of Ducal Household, later chamberlain to King of France
*Loyet, the Duke’s goldsmith
*Peter von Hagenbach, Duke’s High Bailiff in Alsace
BRUGES AND GHENT:
*Anselm Adorne, merchant, magistrate, of the Hôtel Jerusalem
*Margriet van der Banck, his wife
*Jan Adorne, lawyer, their oldest son
*Katelijne (Kathi) Sersanders, Adorne’s niece
*Anselm Sersanders, her brother, Adorne’s nephew
*Dr Andreas of Vesalia, physician in Bruges and Scotland
*Louis de Bruges, seigneur de Gruuthuse, merchant nobleman
*Marguerite van Borselen, his wife
*Tommaso Portinari, Medici manager in Bruges
*Maria, his wife
*Angelo di Jacopo Tani, former Medici manager at Bruges
*Alexander Bonkle, merchant in Bruges and Scotland
*Justus of Ghent (Joos van Wassenhoven), painter in Urbino
*Hugo van der Goes, artist, sponsored by Joos