The Medici Secret

Chapter 5

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.

It was as if the author had become bored with his own story and changed gear suddenly. Or perhaps he had slipped into a delirium and had begun describing a fantasy. This was something quite extraordinary. Niccoli was famed for his rationality and his devotion to learning and the Arts. So what was this all about? Had the scholar temporarily lost his mind? What he had suddenly started to describe bore no relationship to fifteenth-century reality.

The surprise lasted only a few moments before it was swamped by a far stronger emotion, one Clifton would never have imagined. During his fifteen years handling priceless documents and previously unseen antiquities, he had never once been tempted to stray. But now, looking at these extraordinary pages, he felt completely overwhelmed.

He reached for the scanner attached to his laptop and quickly swept it over each of the pages in front of him, storing the information on disk. Without considering for a moment what he was doing, he returned the documents to their former positions, switched off his computer and left the room. Outside the door to the vault, Clifton passed through the X-ray security check, followed the guard to the surface and left the building, numb with excitement and anticipation.