Extended Summary
Section I
The novel opens with a traveler approaching Sikri, the royal city of Akbar the Great, the Mughal emperor. The city sits on a great lake that seems to be made of molten gold until the traveler realizes he is only seeing the reflection of the setting sun. As he enters the gates, he attracts notice because of his height and yellow hair, which mark him as European. He thinks of the secret he has come to tell the emperor, but he realizes it is too late to see the emperor and ends up staying at a brothel, the House of Skandra.
The traveler, a Florentine, came to India on a Scottish pirate ship that was commissioned to bear a message to Akbar from England’s Queen Elizabeth. Despite being discovered as a stowaway, the traveler, now called Uccello, earned the confidence of the captain. After the captain poured them each a goblet of brandy, Uccello poured laudanum into the captain’s drink, which caused him to slip into a coma. Uccello diffused suspicion from himself by showing concern and by helping the ship’s doctor tend to the stricken captain. Uccello, however, was only searching for the letter from Queen Elizabeth, which he found the night before the ship reached its destination, the port of Surat. Then Uccello killed the captain and slipped away in the middle of the night in one of the ship’s dinghies.
As the story returns to Sikri, the emperor Akbar is revealed to be a man of both great power and strange fantasies. Despite his many royal consorts and concubines, the woman he cares for the most is Jodha, an imaginary wife he has dreamed into being. Akbar has just returned from a military campaign in Surat, where he put down a rebellion by the Rana of Cooch Naheen. While on campaign, he was wrestling with the possibility of calling himself “I” rather than the royal “we,” which reflects his growing interest in questions of identity and belief. Inspired by these questions, Akbar has founded a temple in Sikri dedicated to argument and truth, the Tent of the New Worship, where all men are free to speak their minds.
Uccello, now called Mogor dell’Amore (Italian for “Mughal born out of wedlock”), met a woman at the House of Skandra. She is called Mohini the Skeleton and is a master of potions and unguents. She prepares a scent for Uccello that will allow him to get past the emperor’s bureaucrats and talk directly to Akbar. He succeeds and relays the message from Queen Elizabeth, which he describes as a missive asking for Akbar’s alliance against the Jesuits of Spain and stating that the two empires will be mirror images of each other’s glory. Impressed, Akbar takes the foreigner to his new temple devoted to argument and philosophy, where Mogor dell’Amore argues with and makes an enemy of Crown Prince Salim.
After it is revealed that Niccolò Vespucci is Mogor dell’Amore’s real name, he relays the secret he has come so far to tell the emperor: he is related to the emperor. The emperor sends for his mother and aunt for advice. Vespucci relays the story in more detail. His mother, whom he calls Angelica, was a sibling of the first Mughal Emperor of India, Akbar’s grandfather. She was taken hostage by Lord Wormwood, an Uzbeg warlord. Ten years later, Lord Wormwood was defeated by the Persian king Shah Ismail, who also took Angelica until he was later defeated by the Ottoman sultan.
Akbar’s mother and aunt confirm that there was a princess who was erased from the...
(This entire section contains 1800 words.)
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family history. The forgotten princes had remained in Persia with her servant, called the Mirror, and her name was stricken from the official record because she preferred the Persian king to her own family. Vespucci then continues the story, relating that after the Ottomans defeated the Persians, his mother, Angelica, reached Italy in the company of the warrior Argalia.
Section II
As Vespucci tells his story, the emphasis shifts from Qara Köz, or Lady Black Eyes, Angelica’s original name, to the story of three boyhood friends in Florence: Antonino Argalia, Niccolò “il Machia,” and Ago Vespucci. Not long after the Medici family comes to power in the city, Argalia’s parents die from an outbreak of the plague. Although he is only ten years old, he leaves Florence to take service with the Band of Gold, a mercenary company headed by Andrea Doria that is currently fighting in Genoa. Ago and Niccolò continue to live in Florence and experience the political upheavals of the times, including the expulsion of the Medici and the restoration of the Republic of Florence, for which Niccolò works as a secretary of foreign affairs. One evening Niccolò and Ago are invited to visit the salon of Alessandra Fiorentina. While there, they are taken to visit a woman who is called “the memory palace”: she has had her own memory suppressed and has been trained to tell the story of another. She was originally French but was taken by pirates, sold to the Ottomans, and eventually sent back to Florence to relay the story of Argalia to his old friends.
As a child, Argalia stows away on one of Andrea Doria’s boats. Doria is amused by the child’s proclamation that “the end justifies the means” and lets him live, only to set him adrift in a dinghy as a decoy when his fleet encounters the Ottomans. Argalia is captured and sent to a training camp for child soldiers, where he quickly becomes a legendary Janissary, Wielder of the Enchanted Lance, one of the elite fighters of the Ottoman Empire. In his retinue travel four Swiss albino giants: Otho, Botho, Clotho, and D’Artagnan as well as Konstantin the Serb. Their greatest exploit is the campaign against Vlad III of Wallachia, Vlad Dracula, whom Argalia and his loyal band are able to kill. As a reward, Argalia is declared a free man and becomes Pasha Arcalia, the Turk.
As the story is being relayed, Akbar finds himself becoming enchanted by the story of Angelica, or Qara Köz. Many in the city, however, are anxious; they feel that Niccolò Vespucci must be casting a spell over the emperor. The division surrounding the emperor’s new favorite leads to a further schism between the factions of the emperor and Prince Salim.
The stories of Argalia and Qara Köz come together at the battle of Chaldiran, where the Ottomans defeat the Persians. Qara Köz and her slave companion, the Mirror, have accompanied Shah Ismail to the battle. When the Persian king sees that his army is broken, he flees. Argalia finds Qara Köz in her tent after the battle, and she becomes his mistress and takes the name Angelica. Shortly after they return in triumph to Stamboul, a plot is hatched against Argalia. He, Angelica, the Mirror, and his retinue escape. They sail to Genoa and eventually arrive outside of Florence at the farm of Niccolò “il Machia.”
Section III
The Republic of Florence has been overthrown and the Medici family has returned to power. As a former official of the Republic, Niccolò has been tortured repeatedly and condemned to a life on his country farm, where he spends his time working on a treatise about the nature of political power. He quickly renews his friendship with Argalia and falls under the spell of Angelica and the Mirror, as does Ago Vespucci when he arrives the following morning. Argalia is instilled as the condottiere, or military commander, of the city. Angelica quickly wins the favor of the people and becomes known as the Enchantress of Florence.
When Lorenzo de Medici becomes Duke, he convinces Konstantin the Serb to betray Argalia and kill him during a campaign in Lombardy. After a feast, Lorenzo tells Angelica what will transpire and threatens that, unless she sleep with him, Argalia’s murderer will not even be punished. She consents. Lorenzo is stricken with a severe case of syphilis and quickly dies. Although Angelica has no sings of the disease, she is declared a witch and the people storm her palazzo. Argalia, who was wounded but not killed in the attack, returns in time to help her and the Mirror escape with Ago. As the mob finally breaks through, Argalia and the last of his Janissaries die at their hands.
Ago eventually takes the women back to Genoa, where Andrea Doria shows Angelica a map of the New World. Angelica, the Mirror, and Ago decide to make the journey to the New World. Niccolò Vespucci claims that time there was so different that Angelica was able to weave a powerful enchantment that kept her young. Niccolò, the son of Ago and Angelica, claims that as his mother was dying when he was nineteen years old, she still looked young enough to have been mistaken for his sister.
In Sikri, Akbar has become so entranced by the story that he dreams Jodha out of existence and, in her place, wills Qara Köz into being. After hearing the story’s end, Akbar is disappointed with the foreigner and tells him there is another truth. He says Ago and Angelica must have had a daughter, that Ago must have then fathered a child upon his own daughter, and that child was Niccolò Vespucci. The emperor decides it is no longer proper for him to maintain a friendship with one born of incest. Niccolò leaves the emperor’s side but not the city. He returns to the House of Skandra.
Lady Man Bai, the wife of Prince Salim, remains jealous of the foreigner and convinces Salim that Niccolò means to deprive Salim of his rightful inheritance. She sends Salim to burn the House of Skandra, but Niccolò, Mohini, and Mohini’s companion, the Mattress, have already made their escape. In the morning, one of the emperor’s boats is found on the other side of the lake, and the lake itself is quickly draining away.
Akbar realizes that he will have to abandon his city because the lake is going dry. He and his court and his army pack up and leave, but the peasants remain behind. In the final scene, Qara Köz appears in Akbar’s tent and tells him he interpreted the story correctly except that it was the Mirror who bore Ago a daughter. Akbar feels he has done a great wrong by punishing Niccolò, who was innocent, and that the ruin of his city is the price he must pay. Qara Köz ends by saying that Akbar’s belief in her has brought her home and that she will be his.
