City of Flowers (28 page)

Beatrice feared there would be no place for her in the Grand Ducal palace once it had its Grand Duchessa; it pained her to think of her little riverside sitting room turned into a dressing room for a stepmother some years younger than herself. Best to leave for a new home of her own, with a husband. But who? The only unmarried di Chimici cousin left after the coming weddings would be Filippo of Bellona, Francesca's brother, unless you counted cousin Rinaldo. Beatrice's mouth curled up at the very thought. But Filippo was all right, thought Beatrice, a kind man and not unhandsome. She would try to find out if her father's plans tended that way.

All this flashed through her mind in the time it took to sniff an orchid.

They were all going to stravagate separately that night. Alice had reasoned that, since she wouldn't arrive in the same place as Georgia, there wasn't much point in their leaving together. And she felt shy about being watched. Giuditta had promised to have clothes waiting for her in the workshop, but she hadn't much confidence in what they might be like.

Her relations with Sky were still strained and Georgia was obviously worried about Nicholas, who was still muttering darkly about translating back to Giglia full time. Alice was happy to spend some time on her own. But she found an unexpected complication.

It was one of the rare evenings when Jane Greaves didn't have a committee meeting and she was disposed to stay up late and chat. Normally this would have made Alice happy, but she wanted to get an early night in case the stravagating took a long time to get the hang of. Giuditta had said she must arrive in the workshop before the apprentices were up and she didn't want to be late.

‘What's the hurry?' asked her mother. ‘You've got another week off school. You can lie in after I've gone to work – lucky you. Besides, we haven't talked properly for ages.'

It soon emerged that what she wanted to talk about was Rosalind Meadows.

‘I gather your boyfriend's mother made a big hit with your dad,' she said, a little bit slurrily, since she was drinking her way through a bottle of red wine.

‘Well, she's nice,' said Alice defensively.

‘I'm sure she's lovely,' said Jane, waving her glass. ‘She's Laura's best friend, you know, the one who's on the same scrutiny committee as me? Known each other since they were at school. She told me about Sky's father.'

Alice was burning to ask about him but thought she shouldn't; Sky would tell her when he was ready, she supposed.

‘Doesn't it make it a bit awkward for you, though, his mother and your father being together?' asked Jane.

‘Don't exaggerate, Mum,' said Alice. ‘They're not “together” like that – they just got on well in Devon. That's all.'

‘Not what I heard,' said Jane. ‘I spoke to Laura this evening and she told me they spent last night at Rosalind's flat. Sky was out or something.'

Yes, thought Alice; he was at Nick's, stravagating to Talia. It made her feel very peculiar to think of her father and Rosalind as a couple, and she wondered what Sky would say. Her brain was buzzing with thoughts. What was her father doing in London without contacting her? Was he going to be here all weekend? And where had he been when they called round at Sky's flat this morning? Had he left before Giuditta arrived?

‘I'm sorry, Mum,' she said. ‘I'm dropping. I really must go to bed.'

Giuditta was always up before her apprentices. She was still working on the Duchessa's statue, polishing, chipping minute fragments off it, polishing it again. It was always hard for her to decide when a piece was finished. Sometimes she felt that something was complete only when it left her workshop, collected by the patron who had ordered it. At other times the finishing point was the moment when she started something else. Certainly, she didn't yet feel that her connection with Arianna was over.

She stoked the fire that heated the stove in her little kitchen at the back of the workshop and put on a pan of milk to simmer. Giuditta had a bedroom of her own above the workshop, but the apprentices slept on the floor among the statues and blocks of stone. She had stepped over them on her way to the kitchen and none had stirred. She made a mental note that Franco was not among them – catting about with one of his many conquests in the city, she supposed.

Giuditta was about to sit down in the kitchen's one chair, when an ethereal figure materialised in it. A fair, slender girl in a long blue shift with the mysterious word ‘fcuk' written on the front of it, solidified in the chair. She looked terrified.

Giuditta silently gave her some warm milk and stirred honey into it. Alice drank it gratefully, thankful too that she recognised this large, calm woman as the sculptor who had brought the drawing of Georgia, which Alice was still clutching, rolled up in her hand.

‘I am in Talia?' she whispered.

Giuditta nodded. ‘Stay quiet here,' she said. ‘I'll fetch you some suitable clothes. And don't go in the workshop – there are boys sleeping in there.'

She was back soon, holding a simple blue cotton dress. ‘My niece's,' she said, helping Alice into it and giving her a pair of dark blue ankle boots. ‘You and she are much of a size, as I guessed.'

The dress had a complicated bodice with laces and Alice suspected she might look a bit like the soppy love interest in a pantomime, but there was no mirror in Giuditta's kitchen and at least now she could go out into the street.

‘I must give the boys their breakfast,' said Giuditta. She seemed almost motherly, warming bread in the oven and pouring spiced milk. Alice helped her carry bowls and platters into the workshop. One apprentice was opening the shutters and letting in the bright morning light. The other two were stretching and yawning. A fourth boy, older than the others, slipped in through the door and was cuffed round the head by Giuditta before being given his breakfast.

They were all amazed by the sight of Alice.

‘My new model, Alice,' said Giuditta, only she gave the name three syllables – Ah-lee-chay. She gestured to Alice to keep out of the sun; the girl jumped back quickly when she saw she had no shadow.

She was suddenly ravenous and ate bread and butter and a delicious preserve made from berries. They all breakfasted in silence, but when the apprentices were rolling up their bedding, Sky and Nicholas arrived. Alice had never been so glad to see anyone before.

Giuditta gave them a sheaf of drawings and said, ‘Please take these to Brother Sulien. Alice, you can go with them and bring me back any comments he has.'

The three Stravaganti waited outside the workshop for Georgia to arrive. Alice flung her arms around Sky.

‘I'm so glad you're here,' she said. ‘It's all so strange.' She was gazing up at the vast cathedral, unable to accept that she was here and not in her bedroom at home.

‘It'll be stranger still if anyone catches you embracing a friar,' said Nicholas. ‘I think we'd better work out a different cover story.'

Chapter 20

The River Rises

After that once, Alice never stravagated again. Sky and Nicholas and Georgia all looked at home in Talia, as if they understood their role there. But she felt out of her depth the whole time. They took her to meet the other Stravaganti and they were perfectly welcoming. But Alice felt nervous of them; she was acutely aware of being an intruder into someone else's world.

She didn't like the way the city and its people smelt, the fact that all the men carried swords or daggers unnerved her and, worst of all, she had the feeling all the time of arriving in a play where she hadn't seen the earlier acts. Everyone seemed tense and worried about these weddings and she still couldn't sort out everyone's names and which person was getting married to which.

‘Even my talisman isn't really for me,' she told Georgia the next day. ‘It has your face on it.' And she took Giuditta's sketch and had it framed and hung it on her bedroom wall.

At least the tension had gone out of her relationship with Sky and the others. She was in on their secret, which would prove useful in providing future alibis, and she now understood why they all spent so much time together. She was included in their conversations and even joined Georgia when she watched the boys fencing. It no longer seemed boring now that she knew why they needed those skills.

Gradually, as they went back to school and started revising for exams, Alice felt her world swivel so that from being an outsider she became someone who was included, who could be told secrets that no one else in the world, literally, would understand. She didn't want to go back to Talia herself but she wanted to hear all about what was going on there. And with a part of herself she knew that the life the others were leading in the City of Flowers would come to a climax in less than two weeks' time and, for good or ill, Sky's role there would be over. And she would still be here, waiting for him.

In Talia, preparations for the big di Chimici event were in full swing. An additional kitchen was being built on to the back of the Palazzo Ducale in order to cope with all the planned feasting. The tournament on the day before the weddings was going to be held in the great Piazza Ducale, followed by an open-air banquet, and one of the main worries of the Duke's steward was the weather.

For the first two weeks in April, it rained steadily in the city, causing the already swollen river to rise even higher. The Duke's men were erecting a wooden platform on one side of the square, which was to hold tables seating hundreds of guests. It was to have a canopy bearing the di Chimici arms, but the weather was too wet to put it up yet.

When Arianna walked through the square, the sight of all the preparations made her heart sink. So far she had met only two or three times with the Duke and he had said nothing of his intentions towards her, but by the time the banquet was held he would surely have made his proposal formally and she would have to give him an answer. And she still didn't know what to do about the extravagant dress.

She picked her way through the puddles, attended by Barbara and her bodyguards, glad of a break in the rain to get out of the Embassy and visit her mother. The sky was still dark with rain clouds.

‘If I believed in augury,' said Silvia after their greetings, ‘I would think the gods were against at least one of these marriages.'

‘Well, it wouldn't be that of Gaetano and Francesca,' said Arianna. ‘I never met such a lovesick swain. Gaetano hasn't stopped talking about her since I arrived. I'll be glad when Francesca gets here herself, so that she can look after him.'

‘And give you more time to look after your own swains?' asked Silvia.

‘What do you mean?' asked Arianna. ‘You are surely not referring to the Duke? He's a little old for a swain, I think.'

‘Well, he is one of them, though he has made no declaration yet,' said Silvia. ‘And I wish you would pay some thought to what you will say to him when he does.'

‘I think about it all the time,' said Arianna. ‘But to no avail.'

‘Perhaps because your affections are already engaged,' suggested Silvia. ‘That need not determine how you handle the Duke.'

‘But he has no feelings for me,' said Arianna, exasperated. ‘It is my city he wants, not me. It's all politics.'

‘So it must be dealt with politically,' said her mother. ‘Not romantically at all. It must not matter that he doesn't care for you – or that you don't care for him.'

‘How could I care for him? He was behind the plot to kill you, and as far as he knows he was successful. I think he was also involved in killing that young boy in the Nucci family and goodness knows how many others.'

‘All the more reason to be careful how you refuse him,' said Silvia. ‘You know what a dangerous man he is. And if he suspects that it is because you prefer another, that person's life would not be worth a scudo.'

*

Enrico hadn't been able to find out anything about the new novice, and it bothered him. Sandro had been quite useless in bringing him information on Brother Benvenuto, or anything else at the friary recently, come to that. Though he was still keeping an eye on the Nucci.

Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines niggled at the back of Enrico's mind whenever it wasn't occupied by the arrangements for the wedding, helping the Principessa or spying on the Nucci. He knew that the pharmacy used to be the seat of the di Chimici's experiments, which were only partly into distilling perfumes. It was common knowledge that the family continued to be supplied with poisons from there for generations. But what about now? Enrico couldn't quite see Brother Sulien handing out deadly potions to the Duke if he asked for them. And yet he had no reason to suppose that the friar wasn't loyal. He had been prompt enough to save the Duke in his hour of need.

No, and besides, Sulien definitely had a shadow; Enrico had checked. He could not be one of those occult masters that the Duke feared and hated. So why did he entertain two novices who were under suspicion of belonging to that secret Brotherhood? It was one of those things that irked Enrico – like what had happened to his fiancée.

The Warrior had been in London for nearly two weeks and had not yet plucked up the courage to go and see Sky. Loretta knew he was worried about something and wisely said nothing. She had known what she was taking on when she married him and knew that if they were to have any future she mustn't be jealous of his past.

They had been married for six years now and there had been no babies, which was a sadness for her; she had long passed the youthful stage of thinking that children would ruin her figure and would have liked one of her own now. But she could see that Rainbow, as he liked to be called, was not exactly broody. He had so many children of his own already.

It was a mild spring in London, with the parks full of daffodils and no likelihood, as so often, that they would end up battered under a layer of late snow. Loretta filled the flat with flowering plants until it was full of the scent of hyacinths and the exotic blooms of orchids and hibiscus. And she waited.

One warm April morning while they were drinking cappuccinos outside the Café Mozart and the Warrior had signed just the right number of autographs to keep him happy – he was still a celebrity but didn't want his privacy disturbed – he said, ‘Loretta, there's something I've got to tell you.'

At last, she thought, and took another bite of sachertorte.

The State coach of Fortezza, with its crest of the lily crossed by a sword, rumbled into the Via Larga late in the evening of Maundy Thursday. Princess Beatrice, who had spent all day supervising the making up of beds and airing of rooms, was first to greet Prince Jacopo and his family. Even though the di Chimici palazzo was large, she was glad that she and the Duke and Fabrizio had already moved into the Palazzo Ducale; there were more visitors expected. Francesca would be brought from Bellona by her brother Filippo, who would be giving her away. And cousin Alfonso would arrive next, from Volana, with his sister and mother. Thank goodness, thought Beatrice, that Uncle Ferdinando had a Papal residence in Giglia too, where he and cousin Rinaldo would stay; the di Chimici palace would be stretched to its limits, particularly since the bridal couples must be kept strictly apart.

‘Welcome, welcome!' she said now to Jacopo and Carolina, receiving hearty kisses on both cheeks, and hugging Lucia and Bianca with genuine affection. Beatrice had always been fond of that branch of the family and intimate with these two cousins, who were distant in blood but near to her in age. These weddings were going to bring everyone closer.

‘Little Beatrice!' growled Jacopo, gripping her like a bear. ‘Why no husband for you in the cathedral next week? You are as pretty as your mother and shouldn't keep the young men waiting.'

‘Father is not ready to part with me yet,' said Beatrice, blushing. ‘He will be here soon, to greet you. Fabrizio too. Let me show you to your rooms.'

Liveried servants, of both the Fortezzan and Giglian branches of the family, carried the considerable baggage of the brides-to-be and their parents up the staircases, while maids scurried to bring heated water and lighted candles.

‘Come and talk to us while we change, Bice dearest,' said Lucia.

‘We want to show you our wedding dresses,' said Bianca.

‘And I want to see them,' said Beatrice.

‘Will Carlo be at dinner?' asked Lucia.

‘Yes, yes,' said Beatrice. ‘He is anxious to see you. And Alfonso will be here on Saturday,' she told Bianca, ‘and Francesca. By the day after tomorrow all four couples will be able to sit down to dinner at the same table, even though you know you must not be alone together.'