Second paragraph of third chapter: As they progressed, Nicholas kept seeing faces he knew. A goldsmith. A shipmaster. A chorister from Trinity College. A man who sold fish-hooks. A man who made traps for devils. As with a person drowning, he appeared to be compulsorily reviewing his past, while all the time attending to Albany’s disjointed ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter: Because the Mission travelled by road and arrived, by intent, on the Sabbath, its ears and eyes were spared the immediate impact. It heard, in the clear, biting air, only the battling clangour of church bells and the crackling tread of the welcoming cortege, followed, as they entered the city, by the dutiful ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter:Nicholas de Fleury was not brought to Ham in bonds, nor deprived of his senses, but he was under guard, and had been for the week of the journey from Angers. On the way, they stayed only at the King's lodges. The Burgundian was allowed his own horses and his own servants, who were considerably better acquainted ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter: ‘So where, you fortunate man, is your charming wife Gelis?’ asked Anselm Adorne, seating himself two places from Nicholas at Master Lamb’s table shortly afterwards. Behind them, Albany’s trumpeter let off a blast, and Julius, in the middle, began cheerfully to cut up his meat.
Fifth in the series of eight novels ( Read more... )

Fourth in the series of the adventures of Niccolò, the smart young Flemish merchant who travels fifteenth century in search of wealth and its inevitable political entanglements. This time, a cunning plan to penetrate deep into Africa becomes complicated by a new wrinkle in a long-standing family feud, and extraordinary dynastic and legal manœuvres ( Read more... )

Cyprus is partitioned between feuding rulers, one a proxy of distant Christian Europe, the other beholden to the more local Muslim regional power; the larger part of of the island is controlled by one faction, but the key cities of Famagusta and Kyrenia are in the hands of the minority ( Read more... )

Not quite a year after I read the first in this series, I've read the second, and have certainly worked up an appetite to read the rest now. Niccolò, the Flemish apprentice-turned-magnate of the first book, is sent on a mission of cut-throat mercantile competition to Trebizond, the only surviving point of the Byzantine Empire; but the year is 1461 ( Read more... )

Am grateful to James Heald for giving me this, the first of Dunnett's fifteenth century series of thick dynastic novels, set in Western Europe between Bruges, Geneva and Italy. Twenty-five years ago or more I read Dunnett's King Hereafter, about Macbeth (who she reckoned was also known as Thorfinn of Orkney) and greatly enjoyed it. Now I'm a bit ( Read more... )