Michael White - The Medici secret

Cosimo strode past the tables and the customers gathered there, climbed six stone steps at the front of the bank, nodded to the guards at the doors and was ushered into the grand entrance hall that lay beyond.

It was cool inside. His feet echoed on the smooth stone floor. To each side stood more tables,, these were larger and the smartly dressed figures presiding over them looked more important than the men doing a similar job outside. Cosimo passed between the tables without looking at the customers and walked up another small flight of stairs to a mezzanine floor. At the top, he turned right and followed a corridor to a pair of heavy wooden doors. He knocked but after receiving no response he knocked again. 'Who is it?' 'Your son, Father.' 'Come.'

Cosimo pushed the door and entered a large, low-ceilinged room empty except for a heavy wooden desk and two chairs, a large one behind the desk and a smaller one facing it. Cosimo's father, Giovanni di Bicci was walking towards him, his arms extended. He wore the formal red gown and cap of his guild.

'Come my boy,' he said, his voice warm and gentle. 'Have you eaten? Can I get you anything?'

Cosimo looked into his father's face. He had recently turned fifty but seemed older, more weathered. His was a crooked face. As with his eldest son, nothing matched properly; each feature was slightly misplaced, creating an unappealing asymmetry. But Giovanni's intense black eyes, a concerned frown, the line of his jaw, each expressed different aspects of his character with unusual clarity.

'No thank you, Father,' Cosimo replied and as Giovanni retreated behind the desk, the younger man took the other chair. Placing his hands in his lap he looked intently at his father and waited for him to speak.

Giovanni had a half-finished bowl of fruit on the desk in front of him. He had placed the bowl on a pile of papers and juice had slurped across what looked to Cosimo like official documents of some kind. Before speaking again, the older man stabbed at a piece of orange with a silver fork and brought the oozing fruit to his mouth, wiping his moist chin with the back of his hand.

'I expect you're wondering why I've asked you here today, Cosimo,' he intoned slowly, fixing his son with his black eyes. Leaning forward, he found a piece of crisp pale green pear with his fork.

'Well, I finished my studies two weeks ago, Father. I imagine you would like me to pull my weight here at the bank.'

Giovanni smiled warmly. 'You make me sound like a dragon. Two weeks and then you are enslaved!'

Cosimo returned the smile, but he felt disturbed. His father might make a joke of it, but he knew that his time of freedom was about to end and that he was to lose for ever the life of study and contemplation he had enjoyed.

'Actually I have some news I thought might excite you.' 'Oh?' 'I have arranged for you to begin a tour of branches of our bank.' 'A tour?'

'Yes, obviously not encompassing all thirty-nine banks, but a trip that will allow you to visit the branches in Italy. It will take you to Genoa, Venice and Rome. It will be a marvellous way for you to learn more about the Medici business.'

Cosimo made a show of appreciating the gesture, but he could feel his mood sinking. 'You seem displeased, Cosi.'

Cosimo was staring into space, seeing his new life, his pre-planned career flashing before his eyes. 'Cosimo?' 'Sorry, Father. Yes, a tour.' 'I said you seem displeased.'

Cosimo paused for a second too long before answering. In that time it was clear that whatever he was to say would have little effect, other than to complicate things. 'I'm not displeased, Father, I just feel a little, well, a little… rushed?'

Giovanni laid his fork in the bowl and sat back in his chair. Again, he fixed his son with his keen black eyes. Cosimo knew his father to be a caring and warm-hearted man. He knew that all those who did business with him respected and admired this man who had risen from humble beginnings to become one of the most successful bankers in Italy. But Cosimo also knew his father had a will of iron, and what he wanted, he made happen. He believed he knew what was best for his family and for the future of the dynasty he had founded. Cosimo had enjoyed freedom and the exuberance of youth, now it was time for him to assume the heavy mantle of manhood and responsibility. For his part, Giovanni did not entirely approve of the group of friends Cosimo had gathered around him during the past year or two. To him, such figures as Ambrogio Tommasini and that other fellow with whom his son seemed particularly tight, Niccolo Niccoli, exuded a distinct whiff of subversion. Giovanni did not hold with many of the new humanist ideas of the younger generation.

'I believe it is time, Cosimo. It is time for you to adopt the role that has been prepared for you. You are a Medici, you are my eldest son. You have proven your worth as a scholar, now you must begin to show the world your many other qualities.' 'But Father, I had hoped

'You wished to spend the summer in the pleasure gardens or with your friends idling the time away?'

'Not idling, father, discussing and debating. Surely…' 'My boy,' Giovanni replied, keeping his patience but only just. 'I understand these impulses. I once craved the world of the intellect as you do now, but responsibilities came upon me fast, and I have to say, thirty years on, I do not regret the path I followed. Do you not wish for a wife, a family? Do you not wish for independence and to play your part in the growth of the family business… this great bank? I thought you would.'

Cosimo knew his father was manipulating him and he had no illusions about who would win this argument. Give him the literary importance of Dante to discuss over wine and he would have stood a chance, but on this subject and against his father's iron will he withered like a flower in the frost. 'Naturally, Father. I just thought…'

'Very well then, I will make the appropriate arrangements,' Giovanni jumped in and made a show of rifling through the papers on his desk. 'I think you will find this a most enriching experience, my boy.'

London, June 2003 Sean Clifton, Sotheby's Early Italian Renaissance specialist, descended in the security lift to the subterranean vaults beneath the auction house's Mayfair offices. Following the guard in silence along the over-lit and echoing concrete-floored corridor, he reached the door of the air-conditioned document room and waited as his security number was punched into the electronic locking system. Next, the guard told him to put his computer and briefcase through the security check before he swung open the heavy steel door to let Clifton start his work.

Once inside and alone, Clifton relaxed and prepared himself for the task ahead. His job frequently required him to authenticate and value a wide range of old manuscripts. Before him on the table was a unique find, a recently discovered collection of rare scrolls belonging to the great Renaissance humanist, Niccolo Niccoli.

Before starting, Clifton pulled on a pair of white linen gloves, coughed quietly and settled himself into his seat. Then he examined the collection. It stood in two separate piles. On the left, a stack of unbound loose papers, on the right, a set of scrolls rolled up and tied with narrow, red ribbon. He leaned forward and moved aside the stack of unbound sheaves and began to tease open the first of the pile of neatly tied scrolls.

He sat in total silence. The only sound in the room came from him as he inhaled and exhaled, moved papers and rearranged himself in the chair or occasionally tapped at his laptop, writing his report on the Niccoli archive, assessing its value at auction.

He had to read slowly, the handwriting was idiosyncratic, and in places it was barely legible. He had gone through six pages of closely packed text and had begun to slip into the world of six hundred years past and the thoughts of one of the most adventurous travellers of the fifteenth century when the revelation came. Later, he recalled it like a slow motion action replay of a great sporting moment. The core of the collection consisted of three volumes of journals and diaries, hand-written and dated 1410, in which Niccolo Niccoli gave a detailed account of a journey from Florence east to Macedonia. It was a romping adventure full of colour and excitement, but the journey seemed to have little purpose. Then, turning a page, Clifton's heart gave a leap. Confused, he paused for a moment, then began to read as quickly as he could.