A Slave To Kings

Chapter 3

After the track snaked its way around a steep hillside and dropped down into a small vale filled with olive trees, I was startled to find I knew where I was, despite the coach’s lurching and the horses’ snorts of protest as their hooves slid over the loose ground. This was the landscape Sam had told me of the year before when travelling to Westminster Hall on trial for his life.

Though he had never been in these hills near Maiano before today, his mother had described this place so vividly, he had been able to pass it on clearly enough for me to recognise it now. I reined in my horse. ‘Wait, Noah.’ I signalled the coach to halt, too. Sam was already hanging out of the open window. ‘Do you see where we are?’ I called to him, riding back and quickly dismounting.

‘My God. It’s just as she said. We’re on Cardinale land already. I hadn’t realised.’ Sam jumped out and walked down into the shade beneath the gnarled trees, heavy with green and black olives. Nets were pegged out on the ground beneath them to catch the fruit when it fell. He stood, hands on hips, turning full circle to take it all in.

The weeks of sickness had left him pale, his chestnut hair darker, no longer bleached by the sun. Though the voyage from Lisbon, through the Mediterranean and on to Livorno on the Tuscany coast, had given him more time to recuperate. Thank God, he now seemed nearly back to full health after such a close brush with death, following his stabbing in Jamaica.

‘I recognised it, just from your words.’ I took Susannah’s hand to help her down from the coach, Penny jumping out behind her and running to Sam, who swept her up in his arms to kiss her. She was his daughter, after all, though she called me Papa. Pearl passed my son down to me before climbing out herself. The hot air, heavy with the fruity-spice scent of olives, was filled with the calling song of cicadas. I led Susannah into the shade. Of all of us, she was the only one untouched by the Caribbean sun, her pale, creamy skin and moonbeam hair unsuited to such exposure. Though Penny appeared just as fair, her skin had proved more resilient than her mother’s, suffering nothing more than some rather pretty freckles.

‘Raphael, this is wonderful. I’ve never seen an olive grove before. The trees are so beautiful.’ She reached out to touch one. ‘This pitted, gnarled bark. The silver-green of the leaves.’

Taking care not to wake Paolo, I lifted a green fruit from the net and passed it to her, taking one myself and eating it. ‘Bellissima.’

BellissimaPearl joined us, relieving me of my sleeping child. How glad we were she had decided to leave Jamaica – where she had been housekeeper to Sam and Noah – to be nursemaid to our children. And how well she had taken every new experience in her stride. I imagined London would prove the ultimate test though, as it did for all of us used to warmer climes. Indeed, it had proved something of a shock to me when I arrived there some years before. Cold. Wet. Overcrowded. And filthy.

‘How much longer now? I’s had more a-nuff a-bumpin’ an a-bouncin’.’ She smiled down at Paolo. ‘Him happy nuff wid it.’

‘Well, my arse has had more than enough of a saddle which now feels made from iron. Though, I think it can’t be too far as this is a Cardinale olive grove.’

Sam and Penny joined us. ‘If I remember my mother correctly, I’d expect the house to be on the other side of that ridge.’ He pointed.

Noah rode down the slope to us, like a Viking coming out of the sun. ‘I’ve been up to the brow and that’s where it is, all right. With a rather fine view of Florence in the distance behind it.’ He swung his leg over the pommel and dismounted, before tilting his head to study Sam. ‘How are you feeling?’

Sam smiled. ‘Well, relieved to be here … yet sad, too, of course.’

Without discussion, we all moved away back up to the coach to give them some privacy. They would soon part, for they could no longer live as they had in Jamaica, hiding their true relationship behind the pretence of being half-brothers. Noah would return to London with his sons – left behind with the Mirabel in Pisa after sailing up the Canale dei Navicelli from Livorno – to go after those who had conspired to murder Sam. What he would do after that seemed uncertain. I hoped they could find a way to be together. ‘How is he really?’

Susannah sighed. ‘Better. Yet melancholy, which is understandable I suppose, with the prospect of losing both Noah and Penny.’

I squeezed her hand. ‘And you, cara.’

cara‘May I ride with you, Papa?’ Penny said. ‘I’ve had enough of the carriage. It smells too much of Paolo’s shit.’

Susannah raised her eyebrows and laughed, turning to me. ‘You’ve been a bad influence on us, Raphael. We no longer use good English euphemisms.’

‘Of course you can ride with me, piccola.’ I climbed into the carriage to help the others back inside. ‘It was hard enough learning plain English without all those strange substitutions that make no sense.’ I bent to kiss my wife. Her hand came up behind my head and we smiled at each other.

piccolaOnce mounted with Penny in front of me, I followed Noah up the slope to the ridge, where we stopped to view the house. It was more impressive than I had expected for a villa so far outside the city, though very much in the typical Tuscan style, with its single square tower at the end of a long three-storey building with many small, shuttered windows. Villa Falconieri. Home of the Cardinale family for several generations. And down the slope behind it was that view of Florence Noah had spoken of. The great dome of the basilica was starkly visible in late sunlight, its terracotta tiles glowing like fire, filling me with such joy to look on it once more and also trepidation at the thought of seeing my father again. I took a long breath.

Sam’s aunt Serafina had generously offered to accommodate us all, so I would not be obliged to call upon my family to lodge us. Artemisia and Claudia already lived in crowded family households, and I refused to stay in my childhood home with Papà while he lived there with his mistress. Somewhat hypocritical of me perhaps, after having had many illicit relationships myself, though not since my marriage.

Papà I would take my new family down into the city tomorrow and introduce them to my old one. What would Susannah make of them? What would they make of her? Surely, they would be astonished at my good fortune in finding such a wife, never mind by our beautiful son and my stepdaughter, who is the very image of her mother.