City of Flowers (20 page)

She had very few moments to herself and, though she was glad of the help she was offered by Enrico, her father's confidential agent, she wearied of the way he seemed always to be there, one step behind her.

On this day, a week after having moved into her new home, Beatrice stood at the window of her sitting room, enjoying a few minutes of solitude. The year was warming up; it would be April soon and the weddings were just over three weeks away. The river was running very high, she noticed, remembering how wet the winter had been. At least the rains seemed to be over now; it would be an awful shame for the brides to have their finery drenched, she thought. She looked across to where the new Nucci palace stood and its grand gardens beyond.

Beatrice sighed. She didn't understand why things had got so bad between the two families; she could remember a time when they visited with one another reasonably civilly. Although rivals with a bloody history, they were the two wealthiest families in the city and that meant at least some social intercourse. A smile played round her mouth as a day came back to her from childhood when the three Nucci boys and their two sisters had visited the di Chimici in the Via Larga. The grown-ups had been interminably talking and drinking wine and the children had all been turned out like puppies into the courtyard. Camillo Nucci and her own brother Fabrizio had devised a plan to clothe the bronze Mercury in the middle of the flower beds.

It had been Beatrice who had fetched the scarves and necklaces and a petticoat from her mother's room, but Camillo, Fabrizio and Carlo had done the draping, while the little princess had looked on with Filippo Nucci and the little boys and girls. It had been before Falco was born and Davide had been no more than a toddler in his big sister's arms, thought Beatrice, looking back fondly on how ridiculous the Mercury had looked in his finery and how the Duke and Matteo Nucci had scolded them.

And now Davide and Falco were both dead and the families were bitter enemies. On the few occasions when Beatrice had passed any of them in the street, they had looked sternly ahead, even though Graziella had sat and mourned with them after Falco's death and Beatrice had sent words of sympathy on their own bereavement.

A knock at the door roused her from her reverie.

‘The confectioner is here, your Highness,' said Enrico. ‘Wanting to speak to you about marzipan.'

‘I shall come directly,' said Beatrice.

It would take a quantity of sugar to sweeten the inevitable coming together of the two families.

Sulien and Giuditta stood on the doorstep. Brother Sulien looked just like a monk or friar from any modern monastery or friary; his robes were a kind of uniform that hadn't changed over more than four centuries. But Giuditta did not look as if she belonged in the twenty-first century at all. She wore a long green velvet cloak with its hood flung back over her ordinary working clothes, and Sky was sure he could see marble dust in her hair. But she was as calm and impassive as she was in Giglia, with the stillness of one of her own statues.

‘Can we come in?' asked Sulien, and Sky couldn't think of any way of saying no.

They walked along the short passage to the kitchen and suddenly he found himself introducing four Stravaganti to one another. Giuditta recognised the young di Chimici prince, changed though he was, but Nicholas had not met Giuditta before. The Giglians were looking round the kitchen with interest when the freshly showered Rosalind came in and saw them.

‘Good heavens,' she said, startled. ‘We are having a lot of early visitors this morning. Who are your friends, Sky?'

Sky had no cover story ready; he had been banking on getting his mother out of the way before the Stravaganti arrived. But it was, surprisingly, Giuditta who handled the situation.

‘I am Giuditta Miele, the sculptor,' she said, holding out her hand. ‘And this is Fratello Suliano Fabriano. He brought your son to my studio and I saw that he was interested in sculpture.'

It was one of the longest speeches Sky had ever heard her make and he could see it was full of holes. But his mother was nothing if not polite and she latched on to the bit she could understand.

‘Yes, he's very good at art; it's always been one of his favourite subjects. Can I offer you some coffee, Ms Miele? And Frat . . .'

‘Please call me Sulien,' said the friar, with a winning smile. ‘Sky always does. I'd love some coffee.'

Sky was already busy washing up the cáfetière.

‘Should I know your work, Ms . . .?' Rosalind began to ask Giuditta.

‘Giuditta,' said the sculptor. ‘I doubt it. It is in another place.'

‘Italy, is it?' asked Rosalind. ‘Your English is very good, both of you.' She was struggling to incorporate these two strangers into her frame of reference. How could this handsome friar have taken her son to the sculptor's studio if it was in Italy? And how did Sky come to know him? They seemed old friends.

Nicholas came to the rescue. ‘She has a wonderful reputation,' he said. ‘Giuditta Miele is one of the most famous artists in Europe.'

‘Really?' said Rosalind. ‘Please forgive my ignorance.'

Georgia had been sitting dumbstruck, appalled by the awkwardness of the situation. She wondered what she would have done if Paolo the Horsemaster, ‘her' Stravagante in Remora, had ever turned up at her house and sat drinking coffee in the kitchen. Remembering how her mother Maura had got the wrong end of the stick about her relationship with the old antique dealer who had sold her the talisman of the flying horse, she began to feel hysterical laughter rising in her throat.

Nicholas kicked her under the table and she turned it into a cough. The phone rang and Rosalind went to take the call in the living room.

‘Thank goodness,' said Georgia. ‘I thought I was going to burst. You can't get away with this, Sky. She's bound to smell a rat. You don't just have friends who are sculptors and friars who live in Italy without ever mentioning them to your mother.'

‘I can make her forget all about meeting us if you like,' said Sulien. ‘If you think it would be less worrying for her?'

‘You don't mean with one of your potions, do you?' asked Sky apprehensively.

‘I would never administer anything that could harm her,' said Sulien gravely. ‘But no, I meant something simpler.'

Rosalind came back into the room looking pink and pretty. ‘I'm awfully sorry, but I'm going to have to go. A friend is unexpectedly in town and wants to see me. I'm sure Sky will look after you.'

To Sky she whispered, ‘It's Paul. He came up on the night train last night. He wants me to meet him at his club. Will you be all right here?'

‘Of course,' said Sky. Then said, ‘His club?' with a quizzical look.

Rosalind suppressed a giggle. She went to get her bag and jacket, then took her leave of the group in the kitchen. As she shook hands with Sulien he gazed into her eyes and said some words that no one in the room, except perhaps Giuditta, could understand. Rosalind shook her head slightly, her blue eyes suddenly cloudy. Then she said goodbye to the three teenagers, as if there were no one else in the room, and left.

‘Phew,' said Sky. ‘That was horrible. Thank goodness for Paul.'

‘We are wasting time,' said Giuditta. For all her apparent confidence, she did not yet feel at ease out of her own world.

‘Prince Falco,' said Sulien, ‘I have come because I hear you are willing to try stravagating to Talia again.'

‘More than willing,' said Nicholas eagerly. ‘I'm dying to go back.'

‘But the talisman you have takes you only to Remora,' said the friar. ‘Do you have it with you?'

Nicholas pulled a glossy black feather, about the size of a swan's, out of his jacket and laid it on the table. It was beautiful. Sulien took from his pocket what at first looked like an identical feather and put it beside the first one. Then Sky saw it was in fact a very fine quill pen. Nicholas took it up and admired it; it had a bluish sheen.

‘You understand that if you take it, you have to give up the other talisman?' said Sulien. Nicholas nodded; he seemed mesmerised by the quill. Sulien took the black feather and stowed it in his robes.

‘Simple, isn't it?' said Georgia, and Sky saw that she was glaring at Giuditta. ‘I suppose you now offer me something and I'm supposed to hand over my flying horse?'

She took a bubble-wrapped package from her pocket and began to open it. Giuditta said nothing. She had said nothing to Georgia at all so far. At last the winged horse stood on the table between them. Sky had never seen Merla, the miraculous horse with wings that both Georgia and Nicholas had ridden in Remora, but he could see how much the little figure meant to Georgia; she was fighting tears as she said, ‘What can you offer me to set beside that?'

‘Nothing,' said Giuditta. ‘The exchange can be made only if the Stravagante is willing. I did bring a new talisman for you, but if you do not want to give up your right to travel to Remora, I cannot make you.'

This was not what Georgia had been expecting. She struggled with her curiosity to see what the sculptor had brought and her desire to keep the little horse. But it seemed churlish to ask to see the new talisman when she had no intention of accepting it.

Giuditta took something from a pocket in her work-dress and put it, wordlessly, on the table. It was an exquisite figure of a ram.

‘I made it myself,' she said impassively.

‘For me?' asked Georgia. Giuditta nodded. ‘Can I hold it?'

Georgia took up the small animal. It was quite different from her original talisman – Renaissance in feeling beside the Etruscan figure, more sophisticated in its detail, with the tiny curved horns and woollen curls meticulously sculpted. And it touched her that this gifted, if severe, artist had made it specifically for her.

‘It's beautiful,' she said simply, handing it back.

‘But you are not going to take it?'

Georgia shook her head, miserable.

‘Georgia,' said Nicholas, taking her hand. ‘If you took it, we could be in Giglia together tonight! I could show you my city. And we could see Gaetano again. You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

Georgia was crying, silently.

Giuditta stood up. ‘Do not attempt to compel her,' she said sternly. ‘An unwilling Stravagante would be no good to us in time of danger. Sulien, I think we should leave.'

She put the ram away but Sky did not think she was offended; if anything, she seemed to be on Georgia's side. Giuditta asked if she could lie on his bed to stravagate back to Talia and he led her to his room; Sulien would follow as soon as the sculptor had disappeared. When Sky got back to the kitchen, he found Sulien spooning honey on to a piece of toast and making Georgia eat it.

‘You are trembling, my dear,' he said. ‘You have been through an ordeal and must have something sweet to restore you.'

‘Please don't be so nice,' said Georgia, her mouth full of crumbs and stickiness. ‘I know I'm spoiling all your plans. And the ram was really lovely. But I just can't give up the horse.'

‘Then we must just make some new plans,' said Sulien.

While Beatrice spoke of sweetmeats and silvered almonds, the Duke was giving a very special commission to a jeweller from the nearby workshops. The Grand-Ducal crown of Tuschia was to be kept a secret, on pain of death. It was to be a circle of silver with the Giglian lily in front, bearing a great oval ruby that was already in Niccolò's possession. All the way round rose points of silver, every other one terminating in a miniature lily, and the whole was to be set with gems, square-cut and round.