Michael White - The Medici secret

Outside the old monastery it looked like the aftermath of a military operation. Close to the towers they could see figures in bulky white biohazard suits erecting a large inflatable decontamination tent. The chopper returned to hover over the towers and another was perched on a narrow plateau of rock a dozen metres from the entrance to the ruins. A policeman instructed them to follow him. Inside the helicopter, three men in biohazard suits sat with rifles across their laps. On the floor behind the pilot, his hands cuffed behind him, was Luc Fournier. His face was badly bruised and his suit ripped. 'Is this the man?' the policeman asked Jeff. Fournier did not even look up. The policeman gave the pilot the thumbs up.

As they ducked away from the whirling blades, Roberto said, 'OK, so I arranged a little back-up.'

Jeff could not resist laughing, and with a grin, Roberto leaned forward to ruffle Rose's hair. 'You two go and get warmed up,' he said. 'I think we're all going to be put through decontamination.'

Two paramedics ran up and escorted Jeff and Rose to the ambulance chopper.

'You certainly know how to put on a show, don't you Roberto?' Edie said, her eyes gleaming. 'You complaining?' 'No!' She laughed and looked away.

'I want to show you something before we get checked out'

She slipped her hand through his good arm. 'You are the most extraordinary man I have ever met. How on earth did you find your way here?'

'I called the Medici Chapel, hoping to reach you, but instead talked to Sonia. She told me about the key and Candotti. Google and my library did the rest'

'Ah yes, your library. I can just picture Vincent heaving all those books to the hospital.' 'Made a change from grapes.'

They passed the remains of the western tower and skirted the outer wall of the monastery. A path led directly to a circular stone platform, which then afforded them a vista of breathtaking beauty. Lake Angja lay stretched out before them, glistening in the moonlight like a black and white photograph taken with a starburst filter. They could see the mausoleum, a flattened cube of dark stone on the island off to the west. It appeared fathomless, and now they knew that it did indeed harbour many secrets inside its walls.

Roberto put his arm around Edie as they stared out at the water. 'It's not hard to imagine Cosimo and Contessina standing on this very spot six centuries ago, is it?' he said. 'Puts things into perspective.' 'They must have been very much in love.' She turned to look at him, surprised.

'Contessina didn't just create this whole thing to hide the vial,' Roberto said, his eyes fixed on the incredible view. 'This place obviously meant a great deal to them. It was their special place and she wanted them to be here together for eternity.'

'I didn't realise that the Visconte was such a terrible romantic'

'Maybe,' he replied with a sly smile. 'But I was also thinking what a sacrifice they made.' 'How do you mean?'

'In the fifteenth century people believed that the body was sacrosanct. Just think of their obsession with Holy relics. Yet they allowed their beautiful tomb to be destroyed just to stop anyone unworthy taking the vial.' 'Did they though?'

'Of course they did. I think the Medici Secret is safe, at least for a while. I don't intend telling anyone about it. And I get the feeling our friend Luc Fournier is going to be locked away for a very long time. Naturally, there will always be people like Fournier. But there will also be people like Cosimo and Contessina…' 'It was understanding what made them tick that got us out of there.' 'A lucky break.'

Edie gave him a doubting look and they were silent for a moment, savouring the peerless atmosphere of the place.

'And at the very least they certainly looked peaceful before the roof came down, did they not?' Roberto said finally.

'They weren't really there though were they, Roberto?'

'Perhaps not, but we were, so their legacy lives on. Perhaps in another six hundred years someone else will learn of the Medici Secret. And, who knows? They may even live in more enlightened times. It would be nice to think that one day there might be no place for people like Fournier and nothing to be gained from trying to sell death to the highest bidder.' 'What? You mean the Humanist ideal?'

'Something like that,' he whispered, pulling her close and lowering his lips to hers. 'Something like that'

The Facts Behind the Fiction The Medici Secret is of course a work of fiction but, as with my first novel Equinox, many elements of this story are also based in fact. What follows is a summary of those elements and the truth behind them.

Ancient Manuscripts

The Greeks and Romans were great chroniclers. Unfortunately for human civilisation much of what was written in ancient times has been lost. The magnificent store of knowledge destroyed when the library at Alexandria was razed was one of the worst losses. But many texts disappeared in other, less dramatic ways.

Some of the vast literature of Greek and Roman civilisation was preserved in the monasteries and royal libraries of Europe and Asia Minor, and many documents survived the Dark Ages. It was largely thanks to the Florentines that this knowledge was retrieved by Europeans and used as the basis for the tremendous blossoming of civilisation we call the Renaissance.

The great fourteenth-century Italian philosopher, Petrarch, gathered about him a collection of like-minded adepts who shared a fascination with the Classical tradition. They believed there were perhaps thousands of manuscripts and documents in the original Latin and Greek secreted away in private collections and in isolated monasteries. Many of these men made it their life's work to seek out such treasures.

A generation after Petrarch, some of the most significant finds in the area of ancient 'scientific' studies were made. One of the most important figures in this quest was Niccolo Niccoli. During the second decade of the fifteenth century, Niccoli discovered Astronomica by the Roman writer Manilius, along with Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and several books about mining and agriculture including Silvae by Statius and De Re Rustica by Columella. A few years later, Bracciolini found Cassio Frontinus' On Aqueducts, which had provided the cornerstone of Roman architectural technique, and Cicero's Brutus, a book that soon became politically controversial because of its portrayal of the virtues of a monarchical form of government.

What was significant about these finds was that they were written in the original Latin and were mostly unadulterated. This meant that for the first time the Florentine elite of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries could read the words of the great thinkers of the Classical era exactly as they had been written.

This was a tremendous advance. But perhaps even more important is the fact that, when these works were translated and interpreted, it was soon realised just how much the scientific thinking of Roman scholars was actually based upon an older source: the ideas of the Greeks, and in particular, such figures as Archimedes, Aristotle, Pythagoras and Plato from the golden era of Greek learning between 500 and 250 BC.

The inevitable result of this was a new and intensified search for the original Greek sources of scientific knowledge. Inspired by what had already been found, many of the richest people in Florence began to send emissaries abroad to locate and to purchase on their behalf anything they could find in the original Greek.

Until this time, the only original Greek manuscripts in Western European hands consisted of a few fragments of Aristotle and scraps of Plato along with some tracts of Euclid, all jealously guarded by monks or in the hands of a few devotees. Petrarch himself was reputed to have owned an original manuscript of Homer, but could not read a word of it. On the authority of the Roman writers to whom he referred, he accepted that Homer was a great poet and would kiss the book every night before retiring.