THE MERCY OF LIONS: The Renaissance Trilogy - Book I

WELCOME TO HIGH RENAISSANCE ITALY:
- The age of Michelangelo and Leonardo, of Machiavelli and Raphael – a belle epoque for warrior popes, prelates, princes, poets and the realpolitik.
- But even as the philosophers claim that ‘man has come of age,’ Europeans once again arm for war and march on Italy.
- Into this inferno of intrigue and bloodletting, the knights of Rhodes send Hugh de Erpingham to assassinate his hero, Marcantonio Vendramin, a knight who has disappeared with the gold that could save Rhodes from a growing Turkish threat.
- As the Sultan amasses a monstrous armada in Gallipoli, these two errant knights; two refugees from the collapse of chivalry, lock horns in a desperate dance of death across the Italian city states in a bid to save Christendom.... and their own souls.