Cremonello

Thomas Cromwell would become England's most powerful and revered politician until his rapid downfall in 1540, but he grew up in a shattered family during the most brutal period of history, starting from Sir Robert Cromwell's cruel 1461 death in England's bloodiest ever battle during the Wars Of The Roses. His family then suffers four generations of misfortune and violence before Thomas is born.As Cromwell suffers a traumatic boyhood, King Henry VII has just ended the reign of Richard III at the 1485 Battle Of Bosworth, thanks to thousands of extra Flemish mercenary soldiers that Henry could hire using vast loans, which he secures from the bank run by Lorenzo de Medici in Florence. Sixteen years on from Bosworth, Cromwell finds himself as a soldier in this same Flemish mercenary brigade. The influence on English rulers by the Medici Bank and other wealthy Italian families, like the Lomellini and the Frescobaldi, has existed for over a hundred years, not just in London. Daughters are a political pawn to be traded like a shipload of quality Cotswold cloth. Sexual violence and infidelity are acceptable nearly everywhere, led by the most powerful monarchs, nobles or cardinals. But the story highlights two women who rise above this male cruelty: Maddalena de Medici and Valeria di Casentino.Cromwell thrives on the stages of Renaissance Europe. After his father's beatings, then prison and exile from England at the age of fifteen, he is the ultimate survivor. When cornered he is a vicious killer as he travels through France and Italy with the Flemish mercenary brigade and fights with Cesare Borgia and then the French, as they try to regain Naples. He is captured and tortured by the victorious Spanish before being sold into slavery. Escaping to Florence, he finds furtive but life-changing love with Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, who is twelve years older and locked in a miserable arranged marriage to the vile son of a pope. The lovers liaise in the threatened world of the Medici's finest Tuscan homes, assisted by Madam Valeria, herself an illegitimate Medici daughter and the owner of Rome's finest salon for gaming and courtesans.Cromwell matures fast into a respected merchant and envoy for the Frescobaldi Company in Venice. But he never knows if he can return as a free man to England. And two bitter enemies pursue him - Bartolomeo D'Alviano, a mercenary general, maimed by Cromwell in a battle for French control of Naples; and Angelo Lomellini, the fiendish Genoa gang leader, from whom Cromwell ruthlessly extracts a long-overdue Frescobaldi debt. Returning to England as Cremonello after seven years in exile, he has fathered Maddalena's son. But he must still evade his enemies and consider a tempting but treasonous offer by Florentine politician Machiavelli. He also now controls Valeria's momentous secret archive, which could change the religious and political landscape across the whole of Europe forever. This is the untold story of Cromwell's early life, with startling conclusions and unique insights on the dynamics between a turbulent England and a volatile Renaissance Italy."This novel is set during one of my favourite times in history. I love the espionage, intrigue and evil of the Medici. I love the excesses and the indulgences of the time. There is a wonderful duality of perversion and propriety that makes for fascinating tales. The author obviously shares my interest in the time and has a fantastic sense of the history." – Independent Critic and former Commissioning Editor