Dorothy Dunnett - Race of Scorpions: The Third Book of The House of Niccolò

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 Niccol)
1. CyprusHistoryFiction. 2. Fifteenth centuryFiction.
I. Title. II. Series: Dunnett, Dorothy. House of Niccol.
PR6054.U56R3 1990
823.914dc20 89-45292
eISBN: 978-0-307-76238-2
www.randomhouse.com

v3.1_r1

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 Niccol, 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 zeniththe 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 revengeor sometimes simply from fondness.

There are, of course, echoes of the present time. Trade and war dont change much down through the centuries: todays 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 husbands 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

(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 Niccol:

ABROAD :

Nicholas vander Poele (Niccol), 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, Crackbenes 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 Ribrac, 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

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

Diniz Vasquez, son to Tristo 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 Niccol

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 Joo Vasquez, her secretary

* Pierre Bladelin, Duke Philips controller in Bruges

* Michael Alighieri of Florence and Trebizond, the Dukes chancellor

Fleury, Dijon:

Thibault, vicomte de Fleury, maternal grandfather of Nicholas

Enguerrand de Damparis, friend of Thibaults second wife, Marians sister

Yvonnet, his wife

Anjou:

* Ren, 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 Kings Genoese matre dhtel

* John Perrot, abbot of Angers, Rens 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