Race of Scorpions Read online

  FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 1999

  Copyright © 1989 by Dorothy Dunnett

  Introduction copyright © 1994 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, 1989, and in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1990.

  The Introduction was originally published in slightly different form in the United States edition of The Unicorn Hunt published in 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Dunnett Dorothy.

  Race of scorpions / Dunnett. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.—(The House of Niccolò)

  1. Cyprus—History—Fiction. 2. Fifteenth century—Fiction.

  I. Title. II. Series: Dunnett, Dorothy. House of Niccolò.

  PR6054.U56R3 1990

  823′.914—dc20 89-45292

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76238-2

  www.randomhouse.com

  v3.1_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  The House of Niccolò: Preface

  Characters: November 1461–February 1464

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  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

  Reader’s Guide

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  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

  November 1461–February 1464

  (Those marked * are recorded in history)

  Rulers

  * France: Louis XI

  * Scotland: James III

  * England: Henry VI, House of Lancaster, to 1461; Edward IV, House of York, from 1461

  * Flanders: Duke Philip of Burgundy

  * Pope: Pius II

  * Milan: Duke Francesco Sforza

  * Genoa: Doges Prosper Adorno, Louis and Paul Fregoso

  * Venice: Doge Pasqual Malipiero

  * Portugal: Alfonso V, nephew of Henry the Navigator

  * Ottoman Empire: Sultan Mehmet II

  House of Niccolò:

  ABROAD:

  Nicholas vander Poele (Niccolò), son of the first wife of Simon de St Pol

  Tobias Beventini of Grado, physician

  John le Grant, Scots engineer

  Loppe (Lopez), a former Guinea slave, major domo to Nicholas

  UNDER CONTRACT ABROAD:

  Astorre (Syrus de Astariis), mercenary leader

  Thomas, English under-captain to Astorre

  Michael Crackbene, sailing-master

  Umfrid, Crackbene’s accountant

  Andrea, Florentine under-manager of Nicosia royal dyeworks

  Galiot, French steward to Nicholas in Nicosia

  IN VENICE:

  Gregorio of Asti, lawyer

  Merchant families of France, Scotland and Portugal:

  Jordan de St Pol, vicomte de Ribérac, Scots financier and merchant in France

  Simon of Kilmirren his son, co-owner of St Pol & Vasquez in Portugal

  Katelina van Borselen of Veere, Flanders, second wife to Simon de St Pol

  Henry de St Pol (Arigho), child of Katelina

  Lucia de St Pol, sister of Simon

  Tristão Vasquez of St Pol & Vasquez, Portuguese husband of Lucia

  Diniz Vasquez, son to Tristão and Lucia and nephew to Simon

  Flanders and Burgundy:

  THE CHARETTY COMPANY:

  Mathilde (Tilde) de Charetty, elder daughter of Marian, late wife of Nicholas

  Catherine, her sister

  Julius, notary, seconded from the House of Niccolò

  Father Godscalc of Cologne, chaplain, also seconded

  OTHER BUSINESS FAMILIES IN BRUGES:

  * Anselm Adorne

  * Margriet van der Banck, his wife

  * Colard Mansion, scribe and illustrator

  * Jehan Metteneye, host to the Scots merchants

  * Tommaso Portinari of the Medici company, Bruges

  * Isabelle of Portugal, wife of Duke Philip

  * Sir João Vasquez, her secretary

  * Pierre Bladelin, Duke Philip’s controller in Bruges

  * Michael Alighieri of Florence and Trebizond, the Duke’s chancellor

  Fleury, Dijon:


  Thibault, vicomte de Fleury, maternal grandfather of Nicholas

  Enguerrand de Damparis, friend of Thibault’s second wife, Marian’s sister

  Yvonnet, his wife

  Anjou:

  * René, Duke of Anjou, Count of Provence and titular King of Naples and Sicily

  * Jeanne de Laval, his wife

  * John, Duke of Calabria, his son

  * Margaret of Anjou, his daughter, wife of King Henry VI of England

  * Roland Cressant, Scottish Archer

  * Odile Spinola, widow of the King’s Genoese maître d’hôtel

  * John Perrot, abbot of Angers, René’s confessor

  Savoy:

  * Louis I, Duke of Savoy

  * Anna de Lusignan, his wife, aunt of Carlotta of Cyprus

  * Luis, Count of Geneva, his son, husband of Carlotta of Cyprus

  Naples and the Abruzzi:

  * Ferrante of Aragon, King of Naples

  * Federigo da Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, Papal mercenary

  * Paltroni, his secretary

  * Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of Rimini

  * George Castriot (Skanderbeg), Albanian leader and patriot

  * Moses Golento, one of his captains

  * Count Jacopo Piccinino, mercenary captain

  Florence:

  * Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, head of the banking house of Medici

  * Alessandra Macinghi negli Strozzi, matriarch of the Strozzi merchant house

  * Lorenzo di Matteo Strozzi, her son, merchant in Naples

  Bologna:

  * Sante Bentivoglio, lord of Bologna

  * Ludovico de Severi da Bologna, Franciscan Patriarch of Antioch

  Cyprus:

  * Carlotta de Lusignan, daughter of King John II of Cyprus and Helen Paleoioga

  * Luis, her husband, son of Luis, Duke of Savoy and Anna de Lusignan of Cyprus

  Primaflora, courtesan and Carlotta’s attendant

  Ansaldo, her lover; a knight of Carlotta’s

  * Sor de Naves, Sicilian defender of Kyrenia

  * Thomas Pardo, Cypriot follower of Carlotta

  * John de Montolif, Marshal of Cyprus

  * Antony de Bon, major domo to Carlotta

  * Abbot of Bellapaïs

  * James de Lusignan (Zacco), bastard son of King John II of Cyprus

  * Marietta of Patras (Comomutene or Cropnose), his mother

  * Markios of Patras, Marietta’s brother

  * Jorgin, servant to Zacco

  * William Goneme, Archbishop of Nicosia

  * Sir Rizzo di Marino, Sicilian chamberlain to Zacco

  * Sir Nicholas (Conella) Morabit, Sicilian vice-consul of Nicosia

  * Philip Pesaro, Venetian captain of Sigouri

  * Gianozzo Salviati, a commander

  * Alexander Tarantin, Bailie of the Karpass

  * Antony di Zucco, Bishop of Limassol

  * Sir Philip Podocataro, doctor of law

  * Sir Peter Podocataro, his brother

  * George Bustron, commandant at Salines (Aliki/Larnaka)

  * Thomas Carerio, Bailie of the King’s Secrète

  * David de Salmeton, agent for the Vatachino company of brokers

  GENOESE CITY OF FAMAGUSTA:

  * Napoleone Lomellini, captain of Famagusta

  * Tomà Adorno of Chios

  * Cyprien Pallaviccino

  * James Doria, Bank of St George

  * Babilian Gentile

  * Hieronimo Verdure

  * Nicolao Archerio

  * Francesco de Pastino

  VENETIANS IN CYPRUS:

  * Paul Erizzo, Venetian Bailie in Cyprus

  * Marco Corner, sugar-grower of Episkopi and ally of James

  * Fiorenza of Naxos, his wife, princess and grand-daughter (with Valenza and Violante) of Emperor John IV of Trebizond

  * Andrea Corner, his brother, serving Queen Carlotta

  * Giovanni (Vanni) Loredano, deputy Bailie and Episkopi factor

  * Valenza of Naxos his wife, princess of Trebizond and sister of Fiorenza above

  * Ludovic (Luigi) Martini, sugar farmer

  * Giovanni Martini, his brother

  * Bartolomeo Zorzi (Giorgio), merchant refugee from Constantinople and younger brother of Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli

  * Jacopo Zorzi, vineyard owner in Cyprus, a third brother

  * Girolamo Michiel, refugee from Constantinople and ex-partner of Bartolomeo

  VENETIANS ELSEWHERE:

  * Violante of Naxos, princess of Trebizond and sister to Fiorenza and Valenza

  * Caterino Zeno, Venetian merchant, her husband

  * Giovanni Bembo, Venetian Bailie at Modon; kinsman to Piero Bembo and to Francesco, brother-in-law of Marco Corner

  Rhodes:

  KNIGHTS OF THE ORDER OF ST JOHN OF JERUSALEM:

  * Grand Master Pierre-Raimond Zacosta of Castile

  * Louis de Magnac, Grand Commander of Cyprus

  * Brother William de Combort, lieutenant in command at Kolossi

  * Brother Telli, castellan of Kyrenia

  * Tobias Lomellini of Genoa, Treasurer of the Order

  * Sir Imperiale Doria of Genoa, Admiral to Carlotta

  * Merle de Piozasque of Savoy, Admiral, also serving Carlotta

  * George de Piozasque, adherent of Carlotta

  * John de Kinloch, Scots chaplain to the Knights Hospitaller

  * Patrick Scougal, Scots Conventual Brother of the Hospital

  OTHERS:

  Limboulaki (Boulaki), a fisherman of Apolakia

  Persefoni of Pharaclos, aunt of Boulaki

  Yiannis of Apolakia

  Lukas, his grandson

  Turcoman, Ottoman and Mameluke Powers:

  * Uzum Hasan, lord of the White Sheep tribe of Turcomans

  * Sara Khatun of Syria, his Christian mother

  * Theodora his wife, niece of David, exiled Emperor of Trebizond

  * Mehmet II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire

  * David Comnenos, former Emperor of Trebizond, his prisoner

  * George Amiroutzes, the Emperor’s former Great Chancellor

  * Khushcadam of Cairo, Sultan of Egypt and Syria

  * Emir Tzani-bey al-Ablak, his Mameluke commander in Cyprus

  Abul Ismail, Arab physician with the Mameluke force

  Introduction

  THE ELEGANT WORKING out of designs historical and romantic, political and commercial, psychological and moral, over a multivolume novel is a Dorothy Dunnett specialty. In her first work in this genre, the six-volume “Lymond Chronicles,” suspense was created and relieved in each volume, and over the whole set of volumes; the final, beautifully inevitable, romantic secret was disclosed on the very last page of the last volume. “The House of Niccolò” does the same.

  The reader of Race of Scorpions, then, may wish to move directly to the narrative for a first experience of that pattern, with a reader’s faith in an experienced author’s caretaking; the novel itself briefly supplies the information you need to know from past novels, telling its own tale while completing and inaugurating others. What follows, as a sketch of the geopolitical and dramatic terrain unfolding in the volumes which precede Race of Scorpions, may be useful to read now, or at any point along the narrative, or after reading, as an indication of which stories of interest to this volume may be found most fully elaborated in which previous volume.

  VOLUME I: Niccolò Rising

  “From Venice to Cathay, from Seville to the Gold Coast of Africa, men anchored their ships and opened their ledgers and weighed one thing against another as if nothing would ever change.” This first sentence of the first volume indicates the scope of this series, and the cultural and psychological dynamic of the story and its hero, whose private motto is “Change, change and adapt.” It is the motto, too, of fifteenth-century Bruges, center of commerce and conduit of new ideas and technologies between the Islamic East and the Christian West, between the Latin South and the Celtic-Saxon North, haven of political refugees fro
m the English Wars of the Roses, a site of muted conflict between trading giants Venice and Genoa and states in the making and on the take all around. Mrs. Dunnett has set her story in the fifteenth century, between Gutenberg and Columbus, between Donatello and Martin Luther, between the rise of mercantile culture and the fall of chivalry, as that age of receptivity to—addiction to—change called “the Renaissance” gathers its powers.

  Her hero is a deceptively silly-looking, disastrously tactless eighteen-year-old dyeworks artisan named “Claes,” a caterpillar who emerges by the end of the novel as the merchant-mathematician Nicholas vander Poele. Prodigiously gifted at numbers, and the material and social “engineering” skills that go with it, Nicholas has until now resisted the responsibility of his powers, his identity fractured by the enmity of both his mother’s husband’s family, the Scottish St Pols, who refuse to own him legitimate, and his maternal family, the Burgundian de Fleurys, who failed his mother and abused him and reduced him to serfdom as a child. He found refuge at age ten with his grandfather’s in-laws, especially the Bruges widow Marian de Charetty, whose dyeing and broking business becomes the tool of Nicholas’ desperate self-fashioning apart from the malice of his blood relatives.

  Soon even public Bruges and the states beyond come to see the engineer under the artisan. The Charetty business expands to include a courier and intelligence service between Italian and Northern states, its bodyguard sharpened into a skilled mercenary force, its pawn-broking consolidated toward banking and commodities trading. And as the chameleon artificer of all this, Nicholas incurs the ambiguous interest of the Bruges patrician Anselm Adorne and the Greco-Florentine prince Nicholai Giorgio de’ Acciajuoli, both of whom steer him toward a role in the rivalry between Venice, in whose interest Acciajuoli labors, and Genoa, original home of the Adorne family. This trading rivalry will erupt in different novels around the different, always highly symbolic commodities: silk, sugar, glass, gold, and human beings. In this first novel the contested product is alum, the mineral that binds dyes to cloth, blood to the body, conspirators to a conspiracy—in this case, to keep secret the news of a newly found deposit of the mineral in the Papal States while Venice and her allies monopolize the current supply.