City of Flowers Read online

  Sky saw that Georgia had gone quite pale.

  ‘It’s your other two brothers,’ he said. ‘Marrying some more cousins. I’m afraid I don’t remember their names. And your cousin Alfonso, the Duke of Volana, is marrying yet another relative. You have a big family.’

  He saw Georgia relaxing and heard her breathe out.

  ‘And the Duchessa of Bellezza is coming to Giglia for the weddings and the Nucci clan could be plotting something, but that’s pretty much all I know so far.’

  ‘Arianna,’ said Georgia, and Sky saw to his amazement that there were tears in this tough girl’s eyes. ‘And where Arianna is, there Luciano will be too. You know about Luciano?’

  ‘Sulien told me. But what he said seemed too fantastic to be true. It wasn’t until Gaetano told me about you two that I began to believe it.’

  ‘And is Gaetano well? Is he happy?’ burst out Nicholas.

  ‘He seemed well,’ said Sky. ‘And happy, apart from missing you. He said to tell you that he has a new horse, a grey stallion called Apollo.’

  He felt a bit silly passing on this message but both Nicholas and Georgia were listening intently, clearly horse-mad.

  ‘Will you tell him about the fencing championships?’ said Nicholas. ‘I think he’d like to know I am still good with a sword.’

  A bullock cart was delivering a piece of marble to Giuditta Miele’s bottega. She had chosen it herself in the quarry at Pietrabianca, running her hands over the white stone as if sensing something locked within it. Now she was supervising the unloading, while the white bullocks sweated and shivered.

  With her broad shoulders and muscular arms, she looked as if she could heave the marble off the cart herself, but she left it to the team of workmen. A space had been cleared in the middle of the sculptor’s workshop, where soon the piece of quarried marble stood upright. Giuditta was slicing the ropes off the sacking that covered it before the workmen were out of the door.

  Then she walked slowly round and round the revealed white stone, getting to know it all over again. Her apprentices watched in silence, used to her methods; it would be days before she took a chisel to the block of marble.

  Giuditta was remembering her visit to Bellezza, when she had met the young Duchessa. Titles and honours were of no significance to the sculptor; she saw all people as shapes and volumes, curves and relations between lines. Young and beautiful subjects rarely held much interest for her, since she had left her own youth behind and was now more interested in character and the way it stamped its mark on features and bearing.

  Her last portrait statue had been of young Prince Falco and for that she had had no model. But she had seen the boy on several State occasions and been struck by his delicate beauty. And something underneath that – a kind of steel that made him interesting to her in spite of his youth. The funeral statue of Prince Falco was already attracting visitors to the palace in Giglia, as its fame spread. A slight boy with his hand resting on the head of a favourite hound, his gaze attracted by something in the distance. It was intimate, informal, domestic, as different as possible from the classical statues that lined the loggia in the Piazza Ducale.

  And now the Duchessa. Giuditta grunted, looking at the copious sketches she had made. It was hard, this business of works of art commissioned by nobles. You had to show them still and dignified. She would have liked to sculpt Arianna in full flight, running forwards with arms raised and one foot off the ground, her hair tumbling loose down her back, like an Amazon or a nymph. But that would never do for the ruler of a great city.

  My next statue, thought Giuditta, will be of a peasant in his eighties.

  *

  In Bellezza, a formal ceremony was taking place in the Senate. The Regent, Rodolfo, and his daughter the Duchessa were conferring an honour and title upon a young man.

  ‘I wish to announce to the Senate,’ said Rodolfo, ‘that my late wife, the previous Duchessa of our great city, was subjected to an earlier assassination attempt, on the night of the Maddalena Feast two years ago. It was kept quiet at the time because it failed and the Duchessa wanted to find out more about who was responsible. Alas, the second attempt was successful, as you know, and we have concluded our investigations without finding definite proof of the identity of those who wished to rob us of her gracious presence.’

  He paused to let the other twenty-three Senators take in the new information.

  ‘In the need to keep our investigations secret, it was also necessary to keep from public knowledge the name of the person who prevented the first attempt on the Duchessa’s life.’

  He motioned Luciano forwards.

  ‘But it is now possible to identify him as my apprentice, Luciano Crinamorte.’

  There was enthusiastic applause from the Senate.

  ‘In token of the great service he did to our city, I hereby release him from his apprenticeship. And the Duchessa, honouring the memory of her late mother, bestows upon him the title of Cavaliere of Bellezza.’

  Luciano knelt at Arianna’s feet and she put over his head a purple satin ribbon with a large silver seal with the city’s emblem of a mask embossed on it.

  ‘Arise, Cavaliere Luciano Crinamorte,’ she said in her clear, musical voice. ‘Serve your city well and it will always serve you.’

  The three teenagers sat in Sky’s flat, quite exhausted. They had talked themselves to a standstill. Each was now wrapped in private thoughts.

  For Sky it was still all too fantastic to take in. Yesterday he had been an ordinary Barnsbury student, living next to the school in a little flat with his sick mother. Today he was a time and space traveller, living over an alchemist’s lab from more than four centuries ago. And his mother seemed to be getting better; could these two things possibly be linked?

  They had pooled information and Georgia had told him that Luciano had always felt well in Talia. And Falco had taken the enormous step of becoming Nicholas in order to be healed. Yesterday Sky had arrived in a place of healing, which also produced perfumes. What did that mean and why had he been chosen? Only more visits to Giglia would tell.

  Georgia was in a whirl of emotions. She hadn’t been back to Talia since the previous September, nearly six months ago, when she and Nicholas had made a dramatic stravagation to Remora together and he, as Falco, had ridden the flying horse around and above the Campo. She hadn’t seen Luciano on that occasion, hadn’t seen him for over a year and a half in fact, because Falco’s death in his old life and his new identity as Nicholas had caused the gateway between the two worlds to destabilise, so that more than a year had passed for her but not for her friends in Talia.

  And she and Nicholas could travel only to Remora, while Sky had been chosen to stravagate to Giglia, Nicholas’s home town. But if Luciano was coming to that great city, then that was the only place she wanted to be. She shook her head. This was madness. She had taught herself to do without Luciano after they had said goodbye in the Campo of Remora so long ago. He lived in a world she couldn’t inhabit, only visit, and then in the wrong city. And he did not love her, except as a friend. His heart was given to the young Duchessa of Bellezza, beautiful, clever and brave, who was going to Giglia in spite of all the dangers that awaited her there.

  Nicholas, too, was deeply unsettled. Like Georgia, he had learned to give up what he loved – his family, his city, all his old life. And he had adapted well. His physical health was the great prize he had surrendered everything else for and the sacrifice had been worth it. He had a comfortable home with Luciano’s parents, lots of friends, and Georgia.

  He was completely in thrall to her. Not just because of her bravery and daring, although that had been the initial attraction. It was her otherness, her coming from the magical world of the twenty-first century, which had not diminished now that he knew other people from the same time. And she had rescued him, had brought him here to the world and time that had cured him, so that he could ride and fence and, best of all, walk again without help. She had given him back his
life and he would always adore her for it.

  But it didn’t alter the fact that she was nearly seventeen and he fifteen and such relationships were frowned on in their school, although there would have been no objections in Talia to his being engaged to a woman much older than Georgia. All he could do was settle for a close friendship and hope that things would change in time. He was ashamed at feeling secretly glad that Luciano was safely trapped in the other world of centuries ago.

  And now everything had changed; Talia had thrust itself back into the foreground the minute he had heard his old name. Just thinking that Sky might see his brother again in Giglia that night made this new world of school and cafeteria and gym seem thin and insubstantial.

  ‘Goodness, you’re all quiet!’ said Rosalind when she got back in. ‘I thought there was no one here.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Meadows,’ said Georgia, snapping out of her thoughts. ‘We’ve been . . . talking about the fencing championships.’

  ‘Call me Rosalind, please. I didn’t know you were interested in fencing, Sky.’

  ‘I am,’ he said quickly. ‘Nicholas here is the captain of our team. I wondered if I could learn.’

  Nicholas played along straightaway. It was instinctive the way they all wanted to protect both Sky’s mother and themselves. Their strange bond was as vulnerable as a newborn infant and they jumped at a chance to defend it and prolong its life.

  ‘I think Sky could be good,’ he said now. ‘We’ve been arranging for me to give him some lessons.’

  And if Rosalind wondered why that made them all so solemn, she said nothing.

  Sulien was expecting Sky when he arrived in Giglia the next morning. It was early, because the boy had gone to bed early in his own world, eager to visit Talia again. He woke already dressed in his black and white novice’s robes.

  They were both in Sulien’s cell, but the door was open into the laboratory and through that Sky could see the other door, open to the cloister. The early morning sun steamed through and he stepped out into its light, without greeting the friar. He turned and checked: no shadow.

  And then he spoke to Sulien. ‘Tell me about William Dethridge,’ he said.

  *

  Duke Niccolò had spent a busy morning with his architect in the Palazzo Ducale. The plans for the conversion of the private apartments were developing well. Now he turned into the neighbouring piazza, to visit the workshops under the Guild offices. His new quarters and Fabrizio’s must have furnishings and ornaments worthy of princes.

  In the bottega of Arnolfo Battista, he stopped to order tables inlaid with marble chips and semi-precious stones. From the silversmith’s next door, he ordered an epergne in the shape of a dragon with wings spread. And then in the jeweller’s, four thick ropes of rubies and pearls for his two nieces and two young girl cousins, as wedding gifts.

  Well pleased with his arrangements, the Duke strolled through the cathedral piazza on the way to his old palace. And stopped outside Giuditta Miele’s bottega. It brought back painful memories, faintly tinged with pleasure. She had sculpted a lifelike statue of his boy, Falco, that was at once touchingly familiar and a great work of art. The Duke respected art and he respected Miele, though his opinion of her would have been far different if he’d known she was a Stravagante.

  Now he decided to call in on the sculptor. He found her apparently doing nothing, gazing at a block of white marble. It took her a few minutes to register her illustrious guest. One of the apprentices, who were all busy bowing and doffing their caps, tugged at her sleeve to rouse her out of her reverie.

  ‘Your Grace,’ she said in her deep voice, making a curtsey, although her rough work clothes hardly lent themselves to the action.

  ‘Maestra,’ he said, raising her graciously to her feet. ‘I was just passing.’

  An apprentice had been busy brushing stone dust off a stool and rushed forwards to proffer it to the Duke.

  ‘I do not keep much in the workshop,’ said Giuditta. ‘But I can offer your Grace a cup of wine.’

  ‘Thank you, most kind,’ said Niccolò, repressing his fastidiousness to sit on the stool and accept the pewter mug. He sipped cautiously and had to disguise his surprise at the quality of the drink.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Bellezzan red. And a fine vintage too. You have a good wine merchant.’

  ‘It was a gift,’ said Giuditta. ‘From the Duchessa.’ She couldn’t help her eyes moving to the block of marble. All the time she was exchanging pleasantries with the Duke, she could be spending time with it, getting to know the figure trapped inside.

  Duke Niccolò’s quick mind made the connection straightaway.

  ‘Ah,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You are perhaps commissioned to sculpt her?’

  Giuditta nodded. ‘I have travelled to Bellezza to make my sketches and the Duchessa will grant me several sittings while she is here in Giglia.’

  ‘Would that be before or after the weddings?’

  ‘Before, your Grace.’

  ‘So she is expected soon? I must hasten to send her appropriate gifts as an honoured guest to Giglia,’ mused Niccolò. ‘I should like her statue to show her holding in her hand a scroll of the treaty I hope she will make with my family.’

  It irked him that this artist knew more about the Duchessa’s movements than he did. What was the Eel’s spy network up to?

  But he didn’t show his irritation. Instead he finished his wine and stood up, resisting all temptation to brush the seat of his velvet breeches, and walked over to the piece of marble. He hadn’t seen the young Duchessa since the death of Falco and her rapid departure from Remora, but he thought about her often.

  Arianna Rossi was unfinished business. She had defied his wishes when she refused his son, just as her mother had always defied him in her resistance to any alliance with the di Chimici, and he must find a way of dealing with her. The white marble reminded him of the Duchessa’s creamy unblemished skin, and he left the sculptor’s workshop musing on youth and innocence and how little it could do in the long run against age and experience.

  *

  Sulien took Sky to walk the maze with him. At first the twenty-first-century boy was sceptical. It seemed a bit New Age-y to him, all this chanting and meditating and pacing slowly in silence. But it worked. He had stepped on to the black and white stone labyrinth with his mind all a-jangle.

  Sulien had first explained to him about William Dethridge. ‘He was the first Stravagante, an Elizabethan alchemist who was trying to make gold and instead, after an explosion in his laboratory, found the secret of travel in time and space.’

  ‘And his laboratory was where my school and my house are now?’

  ‘So it would appear,’ said Sulien. ‘When I brought your talisman, on the advice of both Doctor Dethridge and Rodolfo, I left it on the doorstep of what must be your home.’

  Sky smiled at the thought of the friar in Islington. But monks and nuns and people like that still wore robes in Sky’s time, so he probably wouldn’t have attracted that much attention.

  ‘You say that Dethridge and Rodolfo advised you, but how did you speak to them? You said they both live in Bellezza now, and you don’t have telephones yet.’

  Sulien had then shown him a plain oval hand-mirror in which Sky saw not his own brown face reflected but a dark panelled room with a lot of strange instruments in it. Sulien passed his hand over its surface and closed his eyes, concentrating. And then there was a face, thin and bony, with hawk-like eyes and silvered black hair.

  ‘Maestro,’ said Sulien. ‘Let me show you our new brother.’

  He had encouraged Sky to look full in the mirror and he found himself face to face with Rodolfo. It had been an unsettling experience. Apart from his actual travelling between the two worlds, Sky had not encountered anything in Talia that could be described as magic until that moment.

  Rodolfo was nothing but warm and welcoming, but Sky knew that he was talking to a powerful Stravagante – and doing it through an enchanted mirror. Wh
en he had stepped on to the maze a few minutes afterwards, his thoughts were a jagged and swirling mess.

  When he left it twenty minutes later, he was quite calm. Sulien was five minutes behind him.

  ‘Incredible,’ said Sky.

  ‘It was here when I arrived,’ said Sulien. ‘I found it under the carpet one day but the other friars didn’t know how to use it. You don’t have to believe it – just do it. I walk the maze every morning and evening, just so that I can find the centre whenever I need it.’

  Sky looked alarmed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the friar. ‘I don’t expect you to do it that often. Only when you feel the need. I just wanted to show it to you.’

  Sky was relieved. But a part of him knew he did want that experience again.

  *

  The Eel was waiting for his master outside the gates of the Palazzo di Chimici in the Via Larga. There was a new guard on duty that day who didn’t know him. But he knew the Duke all right, and was apologetic when Niccolò arrived and waved the unprepossessing little man in after him.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about your contacts in Bellezza,’ said Niccolò.

  ‘That’s a coincidence, your Grace,’ said Enrico. ‘That’s what I’ve come to tell you. I’ve had a report from my man Beppe that the Duchessa will soon be in the city.’

  ‘Buzz, buzz,’ said Niccolò irritably. ‘I learned that myself today. The point is I should have heard of it sooner.’

  ‘And she is going to have her likeness made,’ continued Enrico, unabashed.

  ‘By Giuditta Miele, yes, yes,’ said the Duke. ‘Tell me something that I do not already know.’

  ‘That her young paramour will accompany her?’ hazarded Enrico.

  ‘Paramour? You mean the old wizard’s apprentice?’

  ‘Yes, her father’s favourite – and hers too, if rumours are true.’ Enrico dared a familiar leer.

  Everywhere he turned his thoughts or laid his plans, Duke Niccolò seemed to come up against Rodolfo or his mysterious apprentice. He knew they were in some way connected with the death of his youngest son, which he believed was not a true death, even though he had held the lifeless body in his own arms and seen it laid in coffin and tomb. It was why he needed to persecute the Stravaganti. The very thought of the one young man alive while the other lay in a marble vault crowned by Giuditta Miele’s statue filled him with a wild rage that threatened to overturn his reason every time he entertained it.