The Lacemaker

In 1567 Giacomo Birardi, a Florentine lace maker and cloth merchant, becomes a threat to Cosimo Medici's ambitions. With his wife and two of his four children Giacomo is forced to flee his home, taking only a small hoard of coins and those possessions that could be carried. The family make the dangerous journey around Europe in the late sixteenth century to find a safe place to set up a new home. They leave behind their eldest daughter with her husband and their newly born baby deemed...
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In 1567 Giacomo Birardi, a Florentine lace maker and cloth merchant, becomes a threat to Cosimo Medici's ambitions. With his wife and two of his four children Giacomo is forced to flee his home, taking only a small hoard of coins and those possessions that could be carried. The family make the dangerous journey around Europe in the late sixteenth century to find a safe place to set up a new home. They leave behind their eldest daughter with her husband and their newly born baby deemed to young for such an arduous journey.Written as a novel the story is based on the author's family mythology that Giacomo's second daughter entered a convent where she died under mysterious circumstances. As a result, the family, who were Protestant, fled Florence making their way to Paris where just escaped the St Bartholomew's Day riots eventually settling in Scotland.The story starts in Florence where in 1478 Lorenzo Birardi is recorded as a Florentine wool merchant. The author has assumes that the name Birardi becomes corrupted to Ballardie as Giacomo makes his way through Europe. The name Ballardie first appears in the Dundee Lockit Book in 1587 where a James Ballardie in noted as paying £10 to enter the closed shop of Dundee Burgees.This novel is written against the actual historical events and places of sixteenth century Europe.