1459: A gifted woman artist. A ruthless Scottish privateer. And an audacious plan that throws them together—with dangerous consequences. No one on the Greek island of Rhodes suspects Anica is responsible for her Venetian father’s exquisite portraits, least of all her wealthy fiancé. But her father’s vision is failing, and with every passing day it’s more difficult to conceal the truth.
Sea of Shadows, my new romantic historical suspense novel, takes readers on a journey through the beauty and danger of Renaissance-era Greece. It stars an unlikely duo. Anica Foscolo, a gifted painter, is the daughter of a Venetian artist and a Greek woman; Drummond Fordun is a fierce Scotsman renowned for his exploits as a privateer serving the Knights Hospitaller of St. John. When her family’s honor is threatened, Anica reluctantly turns to Drummond for help. There’s just one problem: she never planned to fall in love with her accomplice.
Like Island of Gold, its predecessor in the Sea and Stone Chronicles, Sea of Shadows explores the shadowy world of the Mediterranean during a time of adventure, war, prosperity, and risk. The undisputed rulers of this maritime world were the Venetians, who rose to power in the 13th century. Venice was the epicenter of maritime trade in the late medieval and early Renaissance era. Western Europe’s hunger for spices—ginger, saffron, cinnamon, pepper—and luxury fabrics like silk drove demand to dizzying heights, and the Venetians had the naval superiority to develop supply chains to Alexandria, Damascus, the Black Sea, and other points in the West and North.
Carpaccio’s Departure of Pilgrims from Venice
The Venetians’ arch-enemies were the Genoese, who had their own fleet of military and merchant vessels. At sea, these two city-states were frequently at war. But in port cities all over the Mediterranean, Venetian and Genoese merchants often formed partnerships in the name of economic gain. The Knights Hospitaller, headquartered on the island of Rhodes from 1300-1522, had a long-standing alliance with the Genoese. This explains why there were occasional attacks by Venetian vessels on Rhodes—and divided loyalties amongst Rhodian citizens with Italian heritage.
Knights at Rhodes, Caoursin Manuscript
The Knights themselves were constantly at war on the seas. They—and their privateers, typically Genoese or Catalan—preyed on Muslim vessels and raided coastal towns in Africa and the Middle East, all in the name of Christendom. In return, the knights were the targets of attacks by the Ottoman Turks and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. At sea, the knights and their agents had carte blanche to act as pirates. They could board any enemy ship, taking captives and seizing goods as they saw fit. Rhodes Town, the main port on the island of Rhodes, was home to a bustling slave market and a thriving brothel industry. Merchants from all over Western Europe, as well as the Middle East and North Africa, flocked to Rhodes to take advantage of the trade opportunities there.
Island of Rhodes medieval illustration
Artists and artisans exploited the growing wealth in Rhodes Town under the rule of the knights, setting up studios and workshops within the walled city. Gold-beaters, jewelers, textile workers, stoneworkers, and painters were among the creative classes. Evidence exists of Italian-trained artists commissioned by the knights to create frescoes and paintings for their private residences and for chapels and churches on the island. At the same time, the astounding layers of history in Rhodes offered opportunities for entrepreneurs to sell artifacts to collectors from Italy, who traveled to the island seeking treasures for wealthy patrons.
My heroine Anica Foscolo, the unsung talent behind her father’s dazzling portraits, is like many female artists of her time. There is plenty of evidence of women working alongside their artist fathers, husbands, and brothers during the medieval and Renaissance eras, but their work was not valued. Their paintings were often attributed to their male counterparts or kept anonymous.
Anica is not based on a particular female artist, but rather on a composite of these myriad women whose stories were never told. As a product of her environment, she embodies the conflicting loyalties of her time and place: She’s Venetian (not always an advantage for a citizen living under the rule of the Genoa-loving Knights Hospitaller), but she’s also Greek (and, as such, seen as subservient by her Latin rulers).
For his part, Drummond Fordun is based on a real Scotsman called Diguerus le Scot. Apparently he travelled with a Scottish knight to Rhodes sometimes in the 1430s, where he made a career for himself and returned to Scotland with a pension from the Order of St. John in 1454. In Alan Macquarrie’s Scotland and the Crusades 1095-1560, he is described as “a servant of the grand master, who served the order for many years by land and sea, with manly striving against the infidels.” The fictional Drummond is a self-made man: he earned enough money through the spice trade to buy his own ship, then signed on as a freelancer for the knights.
Greek church, sea, and ship. (Photo by Matt Artz for Unsplash)
Rhodes under the Knights Hospitaller was a goldmine of adventure, scandal, love, and divided loyalties, offering rich fodder for a historical novelist. The more I learned about this island’s storied past, the more ideas I developed for plot twists and characters in Sea of Shadows (and all of the stand-alone novels in the Sea and Stone Chronicles). As always with my novels, real historical events and people inspired my story and characters, and my ultimate goal was to bring a lost, fascinating world to vivid life.
Amy Moroney
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About the Author
Thanks so much for hosting me and Sea of Shadows today, Tony!
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