The princes of the pepper trade who made up the rescue committee had turned their commercial intelligence into a transcontinental highway of escape: a chain of ships, river ferries, lodgings, wagons, drivers and riders extending from the Portuguese Atlantic coast to the English ports, then on across the Channel to Flanders, down through France and the Rhineland, over the Alpine passes, into the Po Valley. If they then eluded the guards posted in Lombardy expressly to detect, arrest and deal violently with them, they might be able to reach the safety of Ferrara. Some might stop there; others
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