City of Flowers (6 page)

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 part 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?'

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.