City of Masks (26 page)

The priest did not take umbrage. If the Church failed people at their time of greatest need, it couldn’t expect to make any headway with their doubts. All he said was, ‘I shall take no belief for granted but my own.’

And now he mounted the small wooden pulpit to try to bring some sort of comfort to all those frightened teenagers. The door at the back of the church opened and a very queer figure came in. At first the priest wondered if it were a homeless person sheltering from the cold, but he quickly saw it was rather a distinguished-looking silver-haired gentleman. He was dressed as if for a part in a Shakespeare production, in black velvet knee-breeches, flowing white shirt and velvet waistcoat and cloak. He wore long black suede boots and his hair was long. He held an elaborate black velvet hat in his hands and followed the sermon most intently.

*

‘Thank you, Tom,’ said Vicky Mulholland after the service. ‘You read that very well. It was good of you to do it.’

Tom nodded and shook hands with both Lucien’s parents. A pale pretty girl held tightly on to his other hand.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Lucien’s father, indicating the strange man in black velvet who was talking to some of the young people. ‘I thought he might be one of the drama teachers from your school come straight from a rehearsal.’

‘I’ve never seen him before,’ said Tom. ‘But he asked me about what happened to Lucien. He seemed like a good bloke, very upset, even though he’s so funny-looking.’

They were standing looking at the sea of flowers round Lucien’s name card. The ones from Lucien’s parents were a sheaf of white roses and they had spent a fortune to get old-fashioned ones that would smell. They would have to come back later for the ashes, which they had decided to take back to Venice and scatter in the Grand Canal. Lucien’s ashes and those of the silver mask they had asked the undertaker to put in the coffin. Now they were waiting to speak to all the guests then drive back to the house for a funeral tea.

‘Should we ask him back?’ whispered Vicky.

At that moment, the man came over to them. He had the most wonderful mesmeric black eyes, so that when he took Lucien’s mother’s hand, she forgot to ask who he was and where he had come from.

‘I am so very, very sorry,’ he said, with evident sincerity. ‘I wish it could have been otherwise.’

‘Thank you,’ said Vicky. ‘This is my husband, David.’

The man shook hands with Lucien’s father – and then he said the strangest thing.

‘Your son still lives, you know, only in another place. And he will never forget you. He will think of you all the time as you think of him. He will grow up strong and happy and one day you will see him again.’

Tears blinded Vicky’s eyes and when she could see again, the man was gone.

‘A nutter,’ said her husband. ‘Obviously a religious nutter that hangs about funerals and talks about the next world. Don’t let him upset you.’

‘He didn’t upset me, David,’ she said. ‘And he didn’t seem like a nutter. I actually found him quite consoling.’

Lucien and Dethridge kept an anxious vigil by Rodolfo’s bed. Candles burned in the inner room and they could hear the voices of the three women, who were still in the laboratory.

At last, the seemingly sleeping figure gave a deep sigh and opened his eyes. He sat up and took off the ring.

‘Did you see them?’ asked Lucien. ‘Did you tell them anything about me?’

Rodolfo nodded. He took from his shirt a white rose and silently handed it to Lucien.

Lucien gasped. ‘You brought something back!’

‘There is a reason,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, Maestro, I need to speak to Luciano on his own.’

*

It was much later when the two of them came out of the chamber. Dawn was breaking and the pale blue light of Bellezza that is like nothing in the world, except the light of Venice, was filling the laboratory. Lucien was very pale.

Arianna ran and took his hand. During that long night, she had talked with Silvia and Leonora and Dethridge and understood more of what had happened. She was no longer angry with her mother and father or frightened of her responsibilities; there was no room for any emotion in her heart except the overwhelming sorrow for her friend.

Lucien smiled at her. He was deathly tired. But he knew that in this world he was cured. The cancer had never come with him to Bellezza and now he knew he had escaped any possibility of its doing so. But he felt it would be a long time before he would be normal and happy again.

‘There are some things we have to settle,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Because of his involvement in the affairs of our world, Luciano has lost his own. We in this room must offer him our friendship, understanding and protection. I doubt if his dangers are over yet. And, as he is a minor, I hereby offer myself as a foster-father to him.’

‘Nay,’ said Dethridge. ‘The boy hath nede of two parentes and ye cannot, with al respecte, gracious lady,’ to Silvia, ‘live with yore legill husbonde if ye are to kepe the secrete of yore survival.’

Lucien felt perplexed. The Duchessa’s legal husband? Rodolfo was looking embarrassed and he guessed a lot had happened while he had been imprisoned.

‘And I think perhaps Arianna would not want him for a brother,’ said Leonora unexpectedly. Arianna blushed. It always disconcerted her to know how much her aunt understood about her.

‘Then what is to be done?’ asked Silvia. ‘No one should have care of Luciano who does not know his secret.’

‘It is simpil,’ said Dethridge. ‘I offire myselfe, althow olde, to be the boy’s fathire and since this kind ladye has agreed to be mye wyf, she will bee as a mothire to him. I canne see no harme in the marriage, since I am dede to my olde lyf and cannot return to my wyf in the othire worlde.’

‘Aunt Leonora!’ exclaimed Arianna.

Even Rodolfo was amazed. Lucien didn’t know what to say.

‘Luciano, don’t misunderstand,’ said Leonora. ‘We shall not try to take your real parents’ place. But you can live with us in my house, which is near to the Palazzo and to here. You will be able to see Rodolfo and Arianna as much as you want.’

‘I’d really like that,’ said Lucien.

‘You make me feel quite sorry that I shall be living in Padavia,’ said Silvia, with a touch of her old humour. ‘I shall be missing all the fun.’

‘I think it will not all be fun,’ said Rodolfo. He took her hand and kissed it, the first time that anyone in the room had seen him do such a thing. ‘But yesterday was a day of sadness and today is a new day. We shall have much to celebrate. And if Luciano cannot be Silvia’s and my adopted son, at least we can stand as sponsors for him in his new life as a Bellezzan.’

He turned to Lucien. ‘We shall have our work cut out to get enough suitable fireworks ready for my daughter’s coronation. They must be the most special I have ever devised.’ It was the first time Arianna had heard him say ‘my daughter’ in public. Rodolfo took her hand and she felt for the first time that he really was her father.

‘And now I shall get Alfredo to bring us some breakfast,’ said Rodolfo.

Lucien suddenly felt ravenous. He had eaten nothing since the hunk of bread brought to him in his prison at midday the day before. He looked round the room. He now had a foster-father and a sort of godfather who were both powerful magicians, scientists or natural philosophers. He had a godmother who was supposed to be a dead Duchessa but was one of the most fascinating, clever and ruthless women he had ever met. He had a foster mother who was kind and sensible and motherly, although quite unlike his own. And he had a friend, a girlfriend, he even dared think, from the way she was looking at him, who was going to be the most powerful person in the city.

But the thing that made him feel best was the words Rodolfo had said to him in private.

‘You are still a Stravagante, Luciano. Never forget that. All you need is a new talisman. Keep the book to remind you of past travels, but it is the rose that will take you back now. Once you are strong enough to undertake the journey. Only you will be a visitor from this world to that. You must always return here.’

Lucien patted the rose, now wrapped in fine tissue and kept in his shirt pocket. Bellezzan from now on he might be, but he would find a way back to his own world. He had unfinished business there.

Epilogue:
Carnival

For three days, Bellezza resounded to the sound of laughter, music and merry-making. Masked revellers danced in the streets or swaggered down them with linked arms. Bellezzans saved their best clothes of the year for carnival and everyone was dressed in bright silks and satins and figured velvet. The men wore masks too, as did women whether married or not, and it gave many opportunities for flirtation and seduction.

The streets were full of stalls selling food – polenta and cheese and frittata. Young men with lanterns stood round in the evenings waiting to earn a few scudi lighting people to their homes or boats. All the mandoliers wore masks and all the mandolas were hung with lanterns and coloured ribbons. Astrologers set up their stalls at every well-head, offering to read fortunes for young women in search of husbands and lovesick young men wanting to win the affections of their ladies.

Tightrope walkers ran with balancing poles on ropes strung between the two columns in the Piazza Maddalena, and any other high places they could find. In all the squares Bellezzans strolled just for the purpose of showing off their elaborate costumes and ever more exotic masks. But nowhere was this more popular than in the square in front of the great silver Basilica.

Beautifully dressed women sat in their balconies around the square, flirting with their fans, while agile young men tried to climb up to them with flowers and eggshells filled with scented water.

One young mandolier had a boatload of laughing guests. He was slim with black curly hair and a silver butterfly mask. In his craft sat a young woman, also masked, and two middle-aged men who found the boy’s efforts highly amusing.

‘Luciano!’ said one of them. ‘Who did you say was teaching you?’

‘Alfredo,’ said the young mandolier. ‘But I’ve only had the mandola a week.’ He was smiling. He had bought the beautiful black craft with the Duchessa’s silver and Rodolfo’s servant had been giving him lessons.

‘You’ll have to come up to our canaletto for a few more lessons, I think,’ said Egidio.

‘Yes, you wouldn’t be the first we’d taught up there,’ said Fiorentino.

‘Don’t take any notice,’ said the masked girl. ‘I think you’re not doing badly – for a beginner!’

‘Come up here and show me how to do it better,’ said Luciano. ‘If you think you can.’

And the laughing girl took him at his word, taking over the oar and sculling expertly along the canal, while the boy watched and the men smiled with pride.

‘You’re a real mandolier,’ cried Egidio.

‘Well, it’s in her blood,’ said Fiorentino.

And Arianna, made reckless by the anonymity and licence of Carnival, realized her ambition as she sculled the mandola up the Great Canal.

The first time that Vicky Mulholland saw Lucien, she didn’t tell her husband about it. He would have thought she was going mad. Goodness knows, she had often thought so herself in the weeks after Lucien’s death.

That first time it was just a glimpse anyway, outside the school, and she convinced herself that it had been a trick of the light. It was only later, when she had seen him again, that she believed in the first sighting. And then she had to tell David.

‘What?’ he had said, stupefied. ‘You mean you saw someone who looked like him?’

‘No,’ said Vicky. ‘It was really him. I know it was.’

Her husband took her in his arms. ‘Do you mean like a ghost, love?’ he said, very tenderly.

‘No,’ said Vicky, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Not a ghost – a real boy.’ And David didn’t know what to say.

The next time, they both saw him. He was outside their house. He didn’t speak, but he smiled and waved before he disappeared.

Over the months and years they saw him many times and in time they were able to speak to him and hear his version of events. They kept it a secret; it was so strange and disturbing. But it comforted them.

Down by the quay, two burly fishermen were explaining something, with much waving of their arms and measuring out of an invisible catch. The crowd around them were urging them on and plying them with wine and the fishermen were getting more and more merry.

‘It’s a miracle,’ said one. ‘That the merlino-fish is still alive.’

‘Prosperity for Merlino is assured,’ said the other, though this was a hard sentence for his wine-fuddled tongue.

‘And for us,’ agreed his brother.

‘It’s the least we can expect,’ said the second, ‘specially now our little sister is Duchessa.’

‘Now I know you’re lying,’ said an onlooker in the crowd. ‘Merlino-fishes come to life and our new Duchessa the sister of a pair of drunken fishermen!’

But Angelo and Tommaso were not to be put out. They had caught the merlino in their own net and let it go back into the sea where it belonged. They were content to wait for it to die of natural causes and leave its bones on the beach for them to find sometime in the future. But it was an omen and like all lagooners they believed in omens.

g

The Piazza Maddalena was full of dancers. The big party was inside the Duchessa’s Palazzo, where all the dignitaries were wearing the most gorgeous costumes and masks and eating the grandest food. But that didn’t stop the ordinary Bellezzans from enjoying their own party in the square. It was what the last three days had been leading up to.

Now they were all dressed in their very best costumes and were ready to dance all night to the music of the many players filling the colonnades around the Piazza. Everyone was masked tonight – men and women, old and young, married and unattached. Among the brightly coloured silks, satins and brocades, the glittering sequins and vivid ribbons, stalked the occasional black-clad figure, with the beaky mask of the Plague Doctor.

One such could be seen hurrying towards the Ducal Palace, late for the Duchessa’s ball. He stopped to admire the young man sliding down the campanile on a rope, to the cheers of the crowd. He quickened his pace as he passed the bonfire between the two columns. He knew now that the figure to be burned was made of straw, but he still didn’t like to see it. He reached the Palazzo, now restored to its former beauty but without the Glass Room, and was admitted up the silver staircase. He entered the great hall, looking for his friends, and stood in the doorway, gazing out over the packed dance floor. The first person he recognized was a woman, who sought him out.

‘Where have you been?’ asked the stately figure in purple brocade, with her silver mask trimmed with black feathers, approaching the sinister doctor without fear.

‘Forgive mee, my dere,’ said the Plague Doctor. ‘I hadde to complete my experimente. Bot I am here now and ready to enjoy myselfe.’ He took a goblet of wine from a passing servant. ‘Where are owre friendes?’

The purple lady led him to the other end of the room, where two big men in dark blue velvet and black masks were engaged in a mock wrestling match. A red-headed younger man, even taller, in a harlequin’s costume and white make-up, was urging them on.

‘Fiorentino wins!’ called out Harlequin as the slightly lighter-built of the blue velvet ones kept the other pinned to the ground.

‘I demand a rematch,’ said the heavier man, laughing underneath his brother.

‘You see, even when they are in disguise, they are themselves,’ said a silver-haired man in black velvet, with the silver mask of a fox, clapping the Plague Doctor on the shoulder.

‘Gretinges, old friend,’ said the doctor, returning the embrace affectionately. ‘Where are the yonglinges?’

‘Over there,’ nodded the man in black, indicating a handsome couple about to take to the dance floor. Just then a woman in green silk, with a green sequinned mask, came up to the man in black and, with the boldness of all Bellezzan women at carnival, demanded a dance. He yielded reluctantly.

‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself, Senator?’ asked the woman in a low voice, her violet eyes glittering behind the mask.

‘Silvia!’ he whispered, holding her more tightly. ‘Aren’t you afraid of being recognized?’

‘At Carnival?’ she mocked. ‘I think I am safer here than at any other time.’ She was wearing his silver ring on the third finger of her right hand. And he hers. It was something they could do to make up for the concealments under which they still lived.

The new Duchessa was dressed in silver taffeta, her mask a fantasy of silver lace, made by her grandmother on Burlesca. Her partner, a slim young man with black curls, was like her shadow, in his grey velvet cloak and silver cat mask.

They whirled around the floor together, creating a circle of space round them as the crowd gave way to make room for the Duchessa’s wide swirling skirts and the dancers’ flickering feet.

‘You’ve been taking lessons!’ said Arianna, laughing and out of breath as they finally stopped.

‘Yes,’ gasped Luciano. ‘I bet you never guessed that Doctor Dethridge was a demon dancer in his day. He was determined that I should do him credit tonight.’

‘You dance better than you scull,’ said Arianna.

‘Give me time,’ said Lucien. ‘I have plenty of teachers.’

The Plague Doctor was leading the applause of the crowd as the Duchessa and her partner left the floor.

‘Let’s have an ice,’ said Arianna. ‘This dress is so hot.’

She was much more at ease in the Palazzo than she used to be. Everyone had done their best to help her since the coronation at the top of the silver staircase, when she had officially become Duchessa of the city of Bellezza. It had been hard to accept that there would be servants surrounding her at every hour of the day, anticipating her every need and supplying her with whatever she wanted. Now a footman brought two glass bowls of melon-flavoured ice, its crystals sparkling like something in the museum at Merlino, before they had even reached the refreshment table.

Arianna nodded graciously to him and swept out on to the gallery running round the Palazzo’s courtyard. Luciano stood with her, letting the ice melt deliciously on his tongue, cooling his throat. He had had much more to adapt to than Arianna had. In the first days after what Dethridge called his ‘translation’, he had made lists both mental and real of all the things he would never experience again.

They were all so small but seemed suddenly so important. He would never go to a football match, or see a film or eat a pizza or take a hot shower again. Never watch TV or eat popcorn or travel by Tube or swim in a swimming-pool. Never sleep under a duvet or buy a lottery ticket or use a
GameBoy
or chew gum. Never fly in an aeroplane or ride on a rollercoaster or wear jeans. He wouldn’t do his GCSEs or AS levels, wouldn’t ever vote or drink legally in pubs. The lists went on and on.