ALEX CONNOR
New York • London
© 2014 by Alex Connor
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e-ISBN 978-1-62365-370-5
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.quercus.com
Alex Connor is also known as Alexandra Connor, and has written a number of historical sagas under this name. She is an artist and lives in the UK.
The illustrations within this book are copies of Titian’s paintings, the portrait of Angelico Vespucci the author’s own.
Contents
Book One
Prologue
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
Book Two
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Book Three
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
Book Four
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
Book Five
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Book Six
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Epilogue
Bibliography
Also Available
TITIAN (SELF PORTRAIT)
PIETRO ARETINO (AFTER A PORTRAIT BY TITIAN)
ANGELICO VESPUCCI – THE SKIN HUNTER (IMAGE BY THE AUTHOR)
BOOK ONE
Thirty feet under the first supporting column of Grosvenor Bridge a savage tangle of birds were fighting, shaken on the shifting surface of the Thames, their beaks dipping and jabbing at each other to get closer to the package which had just been dropped there. Over the previous few minutes they had tried to rip open the plastic covering, but when they finally gained access to the insides they flew off, disappointed. Slowly but determinedly the tide finished off the birds’ work and tugged aside the wrapping to expose the corner of a painting.
Incongruous under a sulky London sky, the painted face looked up as though surprised to find itself shuffled between the bridge supports; the merchant’s vestments lapped by water as the painting headed towards a small launch vehicle. Then, buffeted by another early November wind, it spun on the current and was shunted away. Ten minutes later the portrait washed up on the slimy bank of the Thames where it was spotted by a tourist walking along the Embankment.
It was the first time the portrait of Angelico Vespucci had been seen in public for over four hundred years. As the painting was lifted out of the river, the varnished surface shimmered in the light, the eerie gaze of the sitter unblinking and oddly defiant. No one knew the history of the portrait, or of the man it portrayed.
No one knew that its discovery would result in brutal murder and the identification of a killer who had been active centuries earlier.
Prologue
Venice, 1555
I am afraid of water. Even though I was born with a caul on my head, which the old say is a protection from drowning. No one knows this, for people know little of me. That is my talent – to be invisible. Walking among people as unseen as the monsters under the Lagoon, the grasping weedy fingers lurking under bridges and the echo of drowned men, bleached and bloodless under the sea.
Winter has come quickly to Venice. Too soon, too cold, mists curling about the alleyways and the narrow bridges, figures looming up like ghouls as they go about their day. The atmosphere of the city has changed too. Long, fathomless nights and murky, unwholesome days lure in the city dwellers with the call of the bells from St Mark’s. A darkness more profound than anyone can remember comes down on the city after dusk. Lamps struggle to make an impact, and they say more than fifty dogs have drowned, losing their bearings in the blackness.
Not only dogs are dying. Not long ago I saw a woman dragged up from the Lido, laid out for the passers-by to gawp at. She had been in the water a long while, caught up under one of the bridges, and was unrecognisable: her eyes blind opals, her tongue slimy, thick as a sea slug. Her throat was cut, the skin stripped from her torso and limbs.
At first it was thought that the tides had mutilated her, but later it was discovered that she had been flayed. Rumours began to circulate: the killer had been disturbed before he could finish his work, before he could strip the flesh from her face. People talked of a lunatic, come to the city from abroad. Others suggested it had to be someone with wealth and means, a man with room and time to mutilate a corpse. Still others blamed the whores. But everyone asked themselves the same question: where was the victim’s skin? Where was the flayed hide?
Venice is waiting, dreading but expecting another victim. The courtesans talk of nothing else and stay away from the piazzas at night, while respectable women visit their priests and burn candles in the dying light.
1
London, the present day