City of Flowers Read online

  Under the hot jet of the shower, Sky thought about this. It seemed to him that everything he had taken for granted about his daily life was spiralling wildly out of control. If what Sulien and Gaetano told him was true, he was a traveller in time and space, not an ordinary twenty-first-century boy with a sick mother.

  The girl he fancied – yes, he acknowledged it now – was best friends with another such sci-fi traveller, whose other closest friend was a dead prince from centuries ago. And that prince seemed to have changed places with another school student who now lived in a world of magicians and duchesses, silver and treason.

  He shook the water off his thick locks. He was going to have to go to school knowing that neither Georgia nor Nicholas was what they seemed. This was a much bigger secret than having a rock star for a father. But Sky had already promised to take messages between Gaetano and Nicholas; he hadn’t been able to say no when he saw how moved the Giglian prince had been by the loss of his brother.

  It was what everyone who had ever lost anyone to death wanted, Sky supposed. To believe that they were in a better world – and that it might still be possible to communicate with them.

  Sandro was well pleased with his new friendship. A friar, even a novice one, was a perfect cover for nefarious deeds and Sandro had seen straightaway how useful Sky could be. But it was more than that; he liked the tall brown boy, so interested in everything he was told and so innocent about how things worked in Giglia. Sandro loved knowing more than someone else and telling them about it. The new friar was like a newborn lamb when wolves were about in a place like the City of Flowers. And then, secretly, he had the added satisfaction that, as a friar, Sky must know all sorts of things that he, Sandro, didn’t – like all that book-learning clerics had to have.

  Sandro had never had a brother, as far as he knew, but he had imagined lots of family for himself – a father like the Eel, a mother like the Madonna, a big brother to protect him and a little one to boss about. Now he felt he had found both brothers in Sky.

  ‘Never thought he’d be a Moor, though,’ Sandro said to himself. ‘I wonder what the real story is there? The Eel is interested in Sulien. Maybe this Tino is the result of some secret scandal of his?’

  He resolved to look into it. But not necessarily to tell his master. After all, he had always been well treated by Brother Sulien, who had more than once taken him into the kitchens at Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and fed him, in the days before he was the Eel’s man. And as for Tino, Sandro felt protective of any secret that might concern him. Even after one meeting, the strange Anglian was definitely his friend. And Sandro had never had a friend before.

  Nicholas Duke was the school fencing champion. He was legendary in Barnsbury Comprehensive, having arrived at the beginning of Year 9 with a twisted leg and able to walk only with crutches. Several operations, months of physiotherapy and a punishing training programme in the gym had resulted in a growth spurt, an athletic frame and a grace of movement that would have been unbelievable a year and a half ago.

  Nicholas had been a bit of a mystery. He had been found abandoned, apparently having lost his memory. But he was clever and was soon in the top group for maths, French and English literature. Science and ICT were not his forte but he was picking them up well enough. And he was good at art and music. But the real surprise was that, as soon as he could balance and walk without crutches, he joined the fencing club and proved to be as skilled as a professional.

  ‘You must have done this before,’ Mr Lovegrove, their fencing teacher, had said.

  And Nicholas had grinned, delighted. ‘I suppose I must,’ was all he would say.

  Nick Duke had almost single-handedly made fencing fashionable at Barnsbury. He was popular with girls because of his dreamy good looks, especially now he had added height to his lithe slim figure, angelic smile and black curly hair. They were pretty annoyed that he was so obviously smitten with a girl two years above him that none of them got a look-in.

  He was popular with boys too; even those who might have bullied him because of his girlish looks were impressed by his rigorous fitness training and a bit alarmed by his skills with a foil. And Nicholas was beginning to put on muscle too – he was a fine horseman and went riding every weekend. By the time he was a sixth former he was going to be a dangerous person to tangle with, even when unarmed.

  The fencing club had never had so many members, male and female. Soon the school had been able to enter a team, first in the local championships, and then in the regional ones, which they won. National achievement was the next aim, and Mr Lovegrove and Nicholas Duke were training the team almost equally between them.

  Now Nicholas was in the school gym, before lunch, doing a hundred press-ups. In a rare lapse of concentration, he glanced towards the door and saw a brown face encircled with chestnut locks, looking through the glass panel. And then it was gone.

  ‘I shall move to the Palazzo Ducale as soon as the wedding ceremonies have been performed,’ said Duke Niccolò. He was addressing his three sons and his daughter in the magnificent salon of his family’s palace on the Via Larga. ‘And I shall take Beatrice with me, of course.’

  His daughter made a little curtsey. She had not been allocated a husband in the recent spate of di Chimici engagements and she did not mind. She was still young, not yet twenty-one, and she knew her father needed her. Beatrice had felt even more tenderly towards him since the death of her little brother Falco the year before. So she smiled in acceptance of the Duke’s plans for her.

  ‘I have ordered the changes necessary to give Fabrizio and Caterina a wing of the Palazzo Ducale,’ continued the Duke, nodding to the architect Gabassi, who was clutching his usual armful of plans.

  ‘I trust that meets with your approval?’ Niccolò said to Fabrizio, but it was a formality. No one in the room dreamt of raising any objection to their father’s plans. The only di Chimici prince to defy him now lived in another world, though only his brother Gaetano knew that.

  ‘Carlo and Gaetano will live here in the Palazzo di Chimici, of course,’ said the Duke, inclining his head towards his second and third sons, ‘with their wives Lucia and Francesca. It is a large enough palace in which to raise children, I think.’

  The Duke was looking forward to his grandchildren, lots of them. He believed with all his heart that it was the destiny of his family to rule all Talia, and he wanted all twelve city-states secured by having their titles in family hands. Preferably in his lifetime, but if not, he wanted to know before he died that there was a good supply of di Chimici princelings and dukelets in waiting.

  Fabrizio was content. To live in the Palazzo Ducale was fitting for a prince of his family and future. And he would have more opportunity to study his father’s ways of doing things, feel more like the Duke-in-waiting. The palazzo in the Piazza Ducale had been commissioned and paid for by the di Chimici, but no member of the family had ever lived in it. It was the seat of Giglian politics, where the city Council met, but a very grand building and quite large enough to house a Duke and his heir. And it would help with achieving his father’s political plans to be living right above the place where the laws were passed.

  If Fabrizio was heir to Duke Niccolò’s title and political ambition, Prince Carlo was his natural successor in financial acumen. The di Chimici had made their fortune initially from perfecting the art of distilling perfume, but over the years it had grown through their role as bankers to the great families of Talia and the crowned heads of Europe.

  ‘And our business meetings, Father?’ Carlo now asked.

  ‘Will continue as normal,’ said Niccolò. ‘It does not matter whether here or in the Palazzo Ducale.’

  Gaetano said nothing. There was, as far as he knew, no part for him in his father’s plans. He had feared once that he would be forced into the Church and groomed to be the next Pope when his uncle Ferdinando died. But then Niccolò had ordered him to propose to the beautiful Duchessa of Bellezza. Arianna had turned him down but encouraged hi
m to ask the woman he really loved, his cousin Francesca. Gaetano’s father had raised no objections to their marriage, so presumably he had given up the idea of his third son as a celibate priest, but doubtless he had something in mind for the young prince; Niccolò had a plan for everyone.

  Sky waited until quite late to go into lunch, once he had checked that Nicholas was in the gym. He knew that Alice always had lunch with Georgia and most days Nicholas joined them. Sky timed his entry into the cafeteria so that he was about three people behind the two girls and could see where they chose to sit. There was no sign of Nicholas yet, but he guessed they’d choose a table with room for at least a third person.

  And he was in luck. When Georgia and Alice had settled on an empty table for four, Sky moved swiftly in and asked to sit with them. It didn’t escape his notice that Alice coloured up as soon as he approached, but he had a different quarry today; it was Georgia he had to speak to. And he had to get her on her own.

  Georgia was regarding him with hostility; she had noticed Alice’s blush too. But she wasn’t actually rude – just someone with no small talk, Sky realised. Overcome with shyness, Alice got up.

  ‘I forgot I meant to pick up some fruit,’ she said, escaping for the counter.

  This was Sky’s chance, now that he and Georgia were alone, but he had no idea how to begin. Should he say, ‘I know you’re a Stravagante. I’m one too’? Somehow in the very ordinary surroundings of Barnsbury Comp cafeteria, with people munching chips and slurping Coke, it seemed absurd.

  And as he hesitated, they were joined by Nicholas Duke.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ Nicholas asked Georgia, pleasantly enough but with a confidence that irritated the older boy.

  ‘Sky Meadows,’ said Georgia tersely.

  ‘Sky?’ said Nicholas. ‘Unusual name, isn’t it?’

  This was Sky’s chance. ‘Almost as rare as Falco,’ he said quietly.

  The effect on the other two was absolutely electrifying. Georgia’s fork crashed on to her plate and Nicholas dropped his drink, splashing orange juice over the table.

  Alice arrived with her apple to find them all mopping up the mess with paper napkins and thought immediately that there had been some sort of row. She sighed. She really liked Sky, and they were both so shy that this was the first time he had made any sort of approach to her. She had left him and Georgia on their own so that they would have to make some sort of conversation. Alice was never going to get anywhere with Sky unless Georgia could be made to accept him. But it looked as if Alice had made the wrong decision.

  ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ she whispered to Georgia.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Georgia, white-faced and tight-lipped. She had never thought to hear Falco’s name again unless she or Nicholas uttered it in one of their many conversations about the past, so it had come at her like a bolt of lightning. Now all she could think of was how to get rid of dear, sweet Alice and find out what Sky knew.

  In the Ducal palace of Bellezza, a much better feast than chips and Coke had been consumed. It was the last night of Carnival in that great city and the guests all wore their best clothes. Even outside in the square, the revellers, who had eaten their own feast, were brushing crumbs and wine splashes from dresses gorgeous with lace and velvet or cloaks and doublets of slashed silk. Both sets of partygoers wore masks, the men as well as the women, and all restraint was thrown aside for this last night of the week-long celebrations.

  Inside the palazzo, the Duchessa and her court were preparing for the ball. The Duchessa herself, being still only seventeen, wore ivory silk and got away with it. Her mask of white peacock feathers was echoed by the same design on her skirt and bodice, with every eye of the bird’s brilliant display embroidered in silver and sewn with diamonds.

  She started the dancing with Senator Rodolfo, her father, in his usual black velvet. His black mask was in the shape of a hawk’s head and beak and carried blue-black feathers of its own.

  ‘You are very lovely tonight, my dear,’ he said, expertly guiding her round the dance floor as more and more couples joined the whirling throng.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling. Arianna loved to dance, as she loved to run or shout or swim or scull a mandola through the water of the Bellezzan canals, but all the other occupations were almost memories. Only on grand occasions like the Carnival ball could she lose herself for a while in the sheer joy of physical action.

  ‘I must soon give you up to a younger partner,’ said Rodolfo, smiling too. ‘You are too energetic for an old man like me.’

  ‘Will you choose a staid old woman to dance with instead?’ asked Arianna, teasingly. She had already spotted her mother, in her midnight-blue dress, masked like a silver leopard, and knew where Rodolfo’s feet would lead him next. Arianna was now used to the risks her supposedly dead mother took every time she exposed herself to recognition on occasions like this; she knew how incapable her parents were of staying apart for long, even though one lived as Regent in Bellezza and the other kept up an alias as a rich widow in Padavia.

  Arianna’s mother Silvia took the floor now with a slim young man, whose long black curls were tied back with a purple ribbon. He was a good dancer, almost as good as his partner, and she was quite out of breath by the time they moved near to Rodolfo and Arianna.

  ‘Time for my staid old woman,’ murmured Rodolfo, taking his secret wife in his arms and whirling her away.

  They did not break the rhythm of the music for a moment, Luciano and Arianna, but danced together smoothly and effortlessly, as if used to holding one another.

  ‘You last wore a mask like that in Remora,’ Luciano said. ‘When Georgia won the Stellata.’

  ‘I’m surprised you remember,’ said Arianna. ‘You had eyes only for her at that time.’

  ‘You were at the window of the Papal palace,’ said Luciano, ‘looking down into the Campo. But even a glimpse of you remains in my mind always.’

  ‘You are becoming quite poetical,’ she said, laughing.

  She always does this, thought Luciano. Just when I try to say something serious about how I feel, she always turns it aside with a joke. How can I ever get her to understand? But he was used to Arianna’s moods and always took his tone from hers.

  ‘I wonder what Georgia is doing now?’ he said now, skilfully guiding the Duchessa through the dancing throng.

  But Arianna was not jealous of the girl Stravagante tonight.

  ‘I hope she’s having as nice a time as we are,’ was all she said.

  ‘Meet you both outside the school gate at half past three,’ hissed Georgia to Sky and Nicholas.

  Somehow she was going to have to give Alice the slip; she couldn’t wait any longer to find out what Sky knew about Nicholas and how he had come by the name of Falco.

  Chapter 5

  Marble for a Duchess

  Rosalind Meadows was pleased and surprised when Sky let himself in with two friends in tow; she often worried that he didn’t seem close to anyone in school. After making them all tea, she made an excuse and took herself out, leaving them the flat to themselves.

  Georgia was looking round the living room and sniffing. ‘This flat is brand new, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘It still smells of paint.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sky. ‘We moved in a few months ago.’

  ‘Who lived here before?’ she pursued. ‘Was it all one house?’

  Sky shrugged. ‘Yes, but I don’t know who lived here – some old lady who died, I think my mum said.’

  ‘That’s it!’ said Georgia, turning to Nicholas. ‘This must be the house my horse came from! Mr Goldsmith said it came from the great-niece of an old lady who died in a house near the school.’

  ‘And Luciano said his notebook came from there too,’ said Nicholas.

  Georgia looked at Sky for a long time, as if deciding just how much to trust him. ‘Our school is on the site of William Dethridge’s Elizabethan laboratory,’ she said eventually. ‘Or a part of the school and perhaps a pa
rt of this house. Whenever a Stravagante comes to England in our time, they seem to end up here. We think that’s why two of us were found by the talismans.’

  ‘Three,’ said Sky quietly.

  ‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Nicholas, jumping up and pacing the small living room. ‘Where do you go? And what is your talisman?’

  Sky went into his room and came back with the perfume bottle. Georgia smiled when she saw the bubble-wrap. It brought back memories of her own stravagations. But Nicholas was beside himself when he saw the blue glass bottle.

  ‘That’s Giglian!’ he said. ‘You go to Giglia, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, I’ve only been once,’ said Sky. ‘Last night.’

  ‘Who did you see? Who told you about me?’ asked Nicholas eagerly. ‘Was it Gaetano?’

  The two brothers, so different physically, were very alike in one thing, thought Sky. They were equally devoted to each other and eager for news.

  ‘Yes,’ he said to Nicholas. ‘I saw him. He asked me to seek you out and give you messages. I think he wants to use me as a go-between.’

  Nicholas looked as if he wanted to climb into Sky’s mind and grab everything in it relating to his old life, but Georgia stopped him. Sky was impressed by the influence she had over the younger boy.

  ‘Do you know why you’ve been chosen?’ she asked Sky now.

  ‘No, not exactly. I found myself in a sort of a monastery, with a pharmacy attached to it.’

  ‘I bet it was Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines!’ cried Nicholas.

  Sky nodded. ‘That’s where I met your brother,’ he said. ‘But not at first. The first person I met was Brother Sulien. He . . . he told me we were both Stravaganti and that I was needed to help the city. He said there was danger coming from all sides. I think it’s linked with the weddings in your family, Nick.’

  ‘Oh, who is getting married?’ he asked in an agony of curiosity. ‘Gaetano, I know, is to marry our cousin Francesca, but who else?’