The Stranger in the Cell (Ebook)

Seville, 1491. The war against Granada is grinding to its end, and in a damp cell above the river two prisoners wait to learn whether they will hang.

One is the son of a ruined lawyer, who killed a man in a duel over a married woman. The other is Antonio Pera, called Falco: twenty-one, a mercenary back from the Granada lines, the son of a mapmaker who escaped the fall of Constantinople. In the port quarter he found five hired men attacking a woman and her daughters, and he killed them all. Their paymaster has coin, and coin buys judges.

Through the long nights, under a guttering torch and a high barred window, each man tells the other what he did. What grows between them is the start of a friendship that will carry them far beyond these walls.

The Stranger in the Cell is Episode 1 of The Mapmaker's Son, with its Chronicler's Note on the real Seville behind the story. The road runs on in Volume I, from Seville to Tordesillas, 1491 to 1494.

The Mapmaker's Son continues at www.catorcini.com/mapmakerson.