City of Ships Read online

  .

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York

  First published in Great Britain in March 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY

  This electronic edition published in April 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Text copyright © Mary Hoffman 2010

  The moral right of the author ahas been asserted

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4088 1175 7

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  .

  THE STRAVAGANZA SEQUENCE

  .

  By Mary Hoffman

  .

  Stravaganza: City of Masks

  Stravaganza: City of Stars

  Stravaganza: City of Flowers

  Stravaganza: City of Secrets

  Stravaganza: City of Ships

  .

  For Alex, who saved the day in Toronto

  .

  ‘Studies show that the first twin to come home after birth, or the first-born or healthier, is often the favorite during childhood.’

  Elizabeth A. Pector, M.D., Adolescence: ‘Multiple Madness?’

  .

  .

  ‘Say in what place have you seen greater marine power?’

  Gregorio Typhernas

  .

  Prologue: The Merchant of Classe

  If she raised herself slightly from the stool she sat on, Flavia could see the masts of ships in the harbour. And that was a bonus of her position as senior trader in the market at Classe. Presiding over her stall in the square, Flavia was in the perfect place to see if a new ship had come in.

  From the goods spread in front of her, you might not realise just how rich this merchant in the russet dress was. Certainly she had unusual spices – cardamom, ginger, pepper, cloves – and bales of cloth, and dyes to colour them any shade a customer wanted. But when she wasn’t trading in the market square, Flavia had more wealthy patrons who called at her house to buy much more expensive merchandise – painted pottery from Western Europa beyond the mountains, glass and marbled paper from the city of Bellezza, coral and sugar from the islands off the coast of Talia.

  Some of Flavia’s more exotic goods – the silks and rarer pigments, tapestries and woven carpets – came from further east, from the countries of Eastern Europa and the unexplored lands beyond the Middle Sea, including the lands of the powerful Gate people. She had a network of reliable contacts that brought goods to the eastern ports and loaded them on to her merchant ships, which called at Bellezza before sailing down the coast to Classe.

  And that journey from Bellezza to Classe was the most dangerous stretch; the waters there were infested by pirates. Merchant ships offered rich pickings for those who lived beyond the law: not just the sort of goods that Flavia traded in but valuable jewels and gold coins. Every merchant ship was armed with guns and guards but it was hard to counter the recklessness and bravery of the Talian pirates.

  Flavia sighed; she had her own reasons for unease when she thought of pirates and not just because they stole her goods. And now that the winter was nearly over, she had sent out her first ship of the year. She pulled her mind away from her cargo and concentrated on selling a bolt of cotton and some cinnabar to a haggling buyer.

  But just then one of the ragged boys the merchants employed to watch down at the harbour came running up to the stall and tugged at Flavia’s skirt. Her heart beat faster at the thought of what news he might bring but she calmly finished her business with the haggler and put the money away in the pouch at her waist before hearing what the urchin had to say.

  ‘Pirates, Signora,’ he said. ‘Your ship the Silver Lady is back in port, but the Captain says they were boarded at sea.’

  ‘Boarded and yet the ship came back?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘Back but lacking some of her cargo, Signora,’ said the boy.

  The merchant gave him a small coin. ‘Tell the Captain to come to my house,’ she said.

  As he ran off back to the harbour, Flavia signalled to her assistant to start packing up; there would be no more trading today.

  *

  Arianna was obliged to hear an embassy from the Admiral of her Bellezzan fleet. His visits to her had become more frequent over recent months and his news was never good.

  The Duchessa of the lagoon city sighed, and then stretched. She was in her best formal costume: stiff, light blue taffeta embroidered with butterflies and a silver butterfly mask.

  There were times when she felt ready to rule the city on her own as Duchessa in her own right. But at other moments, like now, when she needed to listen gravely to the Admiral’s news, she would have preferred to hand him over to the Regent, her father, Rodolfo Rossi, drag off her fine clothes and run through the piazza chasing pigeons.

  Arianna was still only eighteen, and the cares of state sometimes weighed heavily on her. Her heart wasn’t in them; it was in Padavia where Luciano, the man she was going to marry, was studying at the university. There was all the rest of this term and the next to live through until he came back to Bellezza and they could be together for ever.

  She missed him every minute but she wasn’t a lovesick island girl, mooning over her lover. She was Duchess of Bellezza and she had an admiral to receive.

  Admiral Gambone was waiting in the elegant new Reception Room, which had replaced the Glass Room where the old Duchessa was believed to have been assassinated. Arianna was glad that the hateful and deceptive room with its misleading reflections had gone for good. Her ways were more direct than her mother’s and she wanted to see her petitioners and ambassadors face to face.

  The Admiral’s face was even longer than usual and seemed to say clearly that he too would rather be having this audience with the wise and grave Regent and could not take seriously this inexperienced girl who wore the ducal regalia. But he had perfect manners and pulled himself together before launching into his news.

  ‘Your Grace,’ he said, bowing and accepting the chair she indicated to him, ‘I come with grave news from the east. The Gate people are not content with blockading the Silk Road or sending their pirates to our waters. They are amassing a huge fleet of warships.’

  ‘A bigger fleet than ours, Admiral?’ asked Arianna, more calmly than she felt.

  ‘My information is that their ships outnumber ours by maybe as much as four to one, Your Grace,’ said Gambone. ‘We need allies – and quickly.’

  Chapter 1

  Imaginary Twin

  Isabel Evans was feeling sick. She always did on results day. Not because she did badly; her results were usually quite respectable. But because Charlie always did better.

  It wasn’t his fault that he was brilliant at school subjects any more than it was his fault that he excelled at all sports and could play any wind instrument. Or that he was attractive to girls and got
on well with teachers. It wasn’t even their parents’ fault that Isabel felt less favoured; they had always been scrupulously fair in their treatment of the twins.

  Charlie was Isabel’s twin brother and she had to love him. She did love him. But twins were supposed to have this almost magical closeness and Isabel didn’t feel that at all. How she felt was jealous.

  Her brother was the older by ten minutes and had been heavier at birth by a pound, which put Isabel in an incubator for a couple of days and left Charlie to breastfeed direct, while Isabel had to drink expressed milk. What a little thing to determine the course of the next sixteen, nearly seventeen, years! But it did. That accident of birth was something Isabel felt she had never caught up with: Charlie would always be older, stronger, in some way just more satisfactory than she was.

  So she had invented a different twin for herself. Charlotte was a female version of Charlie but with the crucial difference that she had been born ten minutes after Isabel. This gave Isabel the chance to feel just a tiny bit superior and she knew that the imaginary Charlotte was a bit jealous of her. That made her feel special. If there was any magical twin-type closeness, it was with Charlotte rather than Charlie.

  ‘Hurry up, Bel!’ called Charlie from outside the bathroom door. ‘I need to brush my teeth.’

  She wasn’t going to be sick after all, even though she had felt too nauseated to eat any breakfast. Isabel let Charlie in and he flashed her a look of concern. ‘You OK? You’re looking a bit washed out.’

  ‘Thanks for nothing,’ said Isabel, then realised she was being unreasonably touchy. ‘Really, I’m fine. Just a bit Monday-morningish.’

  ‘Tell me about it!’ said Charlie indistinctly through his toothpaste. ‘It’s the mocks results today, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Isabel, and ran downstairs two at a time, trying to show how little she cared.

  They didn’t walk to school together; that would have been taking twin-ness too far.

  Isabel set off a regulation five minutes before Charlie but he always reached Barnsbury comp ahead of her, even though he picked up several mates on the way. Sometimes Isabel thought she could remember the sight of Charlie’s heels as his kicked his way out of the womb before her with a cheery wave and a ‘Seeya!’

  Isabel’s friends Laura and Ayesha usually waited for her at the school gates. They were there now, Laura looking nervous and Ayesha pretending to. Ayesha always got spectacular results.

  ‘Hey, Bel,’ they greeted her. And then Ayesha’s boyfriend, Matt, came up and Isabel fell into step behind them with Laura.

  Neither Isabel or Laura had a boyfriend but they didn’t begrudge Ayesha hers, even though he was undeniably fit. Yesh was just so beautiful it was obvious she wouldn’t be single. Unlike us, thought Isabel.

  Laura was pretty in a thin, neurotic sort of way, with big eyes and dark brown curly hair. Isabel could have been pretty too. She had naturally blonde hair and dark brown eyes, but what was in Charlie a striking combination was in his sister easily overlooked. It had something to do with the way she did herself down, walking round with her shoulders hunched and her eyes on the ground, as if braced for bad news. She did her best not to be noticed and as a result she never was. The only person she felt more attractive than was Charlotte – and she wasn’t real.

  ‘Are you worried?’ Laura asked, chewing the edge of her fingernail.

  ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ said Isabel. ‘I can’t wait for today to be over. At least I’ll know the worst.’

  ‘You don’t do so badly, do you?’

  ‘Just not as well as Charlie,’ said Isabel quietly.

  Laura shot her a look. Isabel pulled herself together; she didn’t talk about how she really felt about Charlie. Mostly she went along with how great it was to have a charismatic twin brother, and she knew Laura had a little bit of a thing for him.

  ‘Take no notice of me,’ Isabel said. ‘It’s probably just PMT.’

  They walked into their first lesson and Isabel braced herself; at least she would do better than Charlotte.

  The Captain of the Silver Lady was deeply embarrassed. Not only had he lost the most expensive silks in Flavia’s cargo, but he had a horrible suspicion about the pirate who had relieved him of the goods.

  ‘Describe him to me,’ said the merchant, surprisingly calmly, pouring them two cups of Bellezzan red wine.

  ‘Signora, he looked just like every other pirate I’ve had the misfortune to encounter,’ said the Captain after he had drained his cup. ‘Unkempt, rascally . . . but I must admit he was polite.’

  ‘And he took just the silk?’

  ‘He took the silk and then asked whose ship it was, Signora,’ said the Captain uncomfortably.

  Flavia sighed. ‘And what did he say when you told him?’

  ‘He . . . He smiled, Signora. And then he said something strange – “It’s a new ship. She should have told me.” Could it be . . . ?’ he hesitated. ‘Could it be that you know this brigand?’

  Flavia did not answer. She weighed out the amount of silver due to the Captain for his entire cargo.

  ‘But I have not brought it all safely into harbour,’ he protested.

  ‘No matter,’ she said. ‘I think the silk will find its way to me.’

  The Captain did not wait for her to change her mind.

  ‘Oh, well done, both of you!’ said the twins’ mother enthusiastically, when she got in from work.

  Their father was equally encouraging and ordered an Indian takeaway to celebrate. Homework was abandoned and beer opened even though it was a school night.

  Isabel painted a smile on her face and kept it from peeling off all evening, until she went to bed and let her face gratefully droop into its real expression. Their parents were always so fair! She couldn’t blame her problems on them. Or on Charlie, who – damn him – was actually a really nice brother.

  It’s all my fault, she thought. I’m rubbish. If I’d been an only child, without comparisons, my results would have been genuinely good. It’s just that Charlie’s are always better. Everything about him is better. And I’m a rat for even thinking what it would have been like if he hadn’t been born!

  The curry and beer sat heavily on her stomach as she tried to find a comfortable position and get to sleep. She fell back into her usual habit of imagining Charlotte.

  ‘Oh, Bel, I wish I’d got your averages! A levels will be a doddle for you.’

  Then suddenly the thought of what she was doing nauseated Isabel.

  Give it a rest, she told herself. It’s pathetic that you can’t cope without an imaginary sister. What about your Art result?

  It was true that her Related Study work on mosaics, which had been assessed as part of the mocks, had got a stunning Charlie-type grade. Isabel was so glad that Charlie didn’t do Art; it was the one area where she felt she had an edge on him and she couldn’t have borne it if he had chosen it for A level.

  Flavia was at the mosaic-maker’s in the Via Bellezza. Fausto Ventura was the busiest mosaicist in Classe. His bottega employed a dozen people who were always busy cutting stone and coloured glass into tesserae. Others applied them to the designs and fitted them on walls and floors throughout the city. But only Fausto drew up the designs. His unique visions covered almost every important surface in modern Classe – every new church or villa.

  And he was Flavia’s friend. Not just because she imported most of the coloured glass and silver ‘smalti’ from Bellezza used in his workshop, but because she loved art and had a good eye for mosaics. She spent her considerable wealth on adorning the walls and floors of her house with his work and he often visited her there, reminding himself of the peacocks and lilies, leopards and dolphins he had created from chips of marble, glass and the silver smalti that were Classe’s trademark.

  But today she had come to visit him, and Fausto could see she was perturbed. He invited her into his private studio at the back of the bottega where he worked on his elaborate designs.

&n
bsp; ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Flavia hesitated then took the plunge. ‘I have lost some of my cargo to pirates,’ she said. ‘The Silver Lady came back but lacking some of her silks.’

  Fausto spread his hands in the universal gesture of pity mixed with resignation. ‘It happens,’ he said. ‘Is the loss of money very great?’

  ‘It is not so much that,’ said Flavia. ‘Although they were very fine silks. But my ships are subject to dangers on all sides now. I have heard a disturbing rumour that the Gate people have placed their own men on pirate ships along our coast.’

  ‘So first they sell you the silk and then they rob it back off you before it even reaches Classe?’ said Fausto. ‘Twice the profit for them, or more, depending on how many merchants they can steal from in this way.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Flavia. ‘Although I don’t think it was the Gate people who took my silk this time. But that’s not what really worries me.’

  Fausto had known Flavia a long time and he was sure there was something more to the silk story than she was revealing, but he was prepared to let her tell him in her own time.

  ‘I have heard from Rodolfo in Bellezza,’ continued Flavia. ‘His daughter has been told that the Gate people are amassing a war fleet. She’s coming here soon to talk to Duke Germano about an alliance between our cities.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, surely?’ said Fausto. ‘Germano is sure to say yes. We have always been on good terms with Bellezza.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Flavia. ‘And who are we both on bad terms with?’

  ‘You mean besides the Gate people?’

  ‘Someone much closer to home than them.’

  ‘The di Chimici.’

  It wasn’t a question. Classe was one of the few city-states that remained independent in the north of Talia. Fabrizio di Chimici, the young Duke of Giglia, was now also Grand Duke of Tuschia, and his family ruled in half the great cities of the peninsula. But there were fierce pockets of resistance to the family’s empire-building schemes, and here in the north-east Classe, Padavia and Bellezza made natural allies against the powerful di Chimici.