City of Flowers (7 page)

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. When 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.

Enrico read the signs; he wouldn't have mentioned the Bellezzan boy if the Duke hadn't known all his other information. Now he saw that he must try to direct his patron's thoughts to happier subjects.

‘If I might ask, your Grace,' he said, ‘how are the preparations going for the weddings?'

A long silence from Niccolò, then, ‘Well. They are going well. I spent this morning ordering furniture and jewels for the young couples.'

Enrico decided to take a big risk. ‘I wonder that your Grace doesn't think of taking a second wife yourself. Why should the young ones have all the fun? The princess Beatrice will one day need a husband herself, and a fine lord like your Grace needs the companionship of a good woman in his declining years.'

The gaze the Duke turned on him was terrifying.

‘Not that your Grace is anywhere near declining yet,' spluttered Enrico, realising he had miscalculated. The Duke waved him aside, clutching at his throat, as if having trouble breathing. Then he regained control and looked at his spymaster with a new expression.