Matthew Rider

Matthew Rider grew up in Elizabethan London. Well, on the edges of it, in that strange space between the cities of London and Westminster which was often lawless. His father was from the Kingdom of Warri on the West Coast of Africa. He had been an adventurous man, travelling from his home to Portugal, then around Europe until he arrived in London. He stayed on in England after a chance encounter with Matt’s mother changed his life. But Matt never knew him well as he died before Matt’s third birthday.

So Matt had been raised by his mother. She had been a supremely capable woman who ran The Bell on Fleet Street almost entirely on her own. But then she had inherited it from her own mother and had learned the trade from childhood. Perhaps because of that Matt never considered for a moment that he would take over The Bell in time. He always knew it would fall to his sister, Judith. Besides he had grown up with old soldiers’ tales from those he served at table and knew what he wanted to do.

Matt went for a soldier.

He found he was good at it.

After serving a few years in the ranks, he gained promotion and reputation. Both of which led to him gaining a place in the cavalry company of the one-eyed Milanese captain, Giovanni Abbiati. Abbati was a mercenary, an old school Italian condottiere. He would take his men to fight for anyone who paid them – just so long as that employer was a Catholic. Matt had given little thought to religion before then, his mother having been too concerned with earthly matters to do more than ensure the family attended church as required by law. He knew his father had been a Catholic and he found Abbaiati a good man by the standards of his profession and rich in wisdom, so it seemed the most natural thing in the world to follow his lead in that as in all else. Meeting and marrying Máire, the daughter of an Irish horsetrader, confirmed Matt in the wisdom of that decision.

When Abbiati died he left his company to Matt, but with no means to support it except whatever of wit and skill Matt himself could muster. Even keeping the company together had been a challenge at first but then someone lit the fuse and all Europe exploded into war.