City of Stars (11 page)

The Manoush rolled out their bedding in the main courtyard of the stables of the Ram and settled themselves as comfortably as if they lay on goose-down mattresses instead of cobbles. The hospitable Teresa was perplexed and bustled out with extra pillows and blankets, which were courteously accepted but not used.

Georgia had disappeared to her hayloft just before sunset, so she missed the sight of the tall blind man and his companion stretching out their arms in farewell to the west as the red sun sank behind the city wall somewhere behind the Ram. They chanted softly in their own language. Later the whole household fell asleep to the sweet sound of notes struck gently on the harp.

Cesare was up early and saw them soon after they awoke, this time with their faces turned to the rising sun, towards the region of the Lady and the Scales, kneeling and chanting what seemed like a greeting to a wanderer returned. He didn't know the words they spoke but there was no mistaking the joy in their expressions. They never used the word ‘sun', only referring to it as the goddess's companion. They were weird folk, the Zinti, as he had heard tell, but it filled him with pride that they were here in his Twelfth, in his home, or rather outside it.

But Aurelio evidently had no objections to eating breakfast indoors and Teresa was eager to demonstrate how guests were treated in her house. She was delighted to have the Manoush at her table with the visitors from Bellezza. Raffaella offered to help and was soon busy spooning semolina into babies. Cesare had three sisters much younger than himself and twin baby brothers, who crawled everywhere, including over the feet of the blind harpist, who took no more notice of them than if they had been house dogs.

Cesare rescued one of the twins from under the table and set him on his knee. This was Antonio, the more adventurous baby, and he reached his fat arms out to Cesare's face, crowing with delight. Cesare smiled back. Antonio and the others were not his full brothers and sisters. Only Cesare remained of Paolo's first marriage. Cesare's mother had died when he was very little and Paolo had married Teresa ten years ago. The other twin, Arsenio, started to wail loudly because he had got himself wedged into a corner. Teresa swooped down to pick him up but that set off one of the little girls who had already been holding out her arms to her mother. Soon all the younger members of the family were raising their lusty voices in lament. This was the sort of thing that usually drove Cesare out to the stables.

Aurelio turned his head to the source of the sound.

‘Shall I play? Would it soothe the children?' he asked. Not waiting for the answer, Raffaella brought him his harp and the glorious ripple of its notes was soon filling the kitchen so that there was no room for sadness. The twins sat round-eyed on Paolo's lap, with their thumbs in their mouths, and the little girls twirled their fingers in their hair and snuggled into Cesare, Luciano and Dethridge as their sobs subsided. Teresa and Raffaella finished bringing the food. All was peaceful in the stables of the Ram.

Georgia heard the harp as soon as she arrived back in the hayloft. The last sounds she had heard before drifting off to sleep in London had been Russell's favourite pounding beat and amplified guitars. It wasn't even as if she hated that kind of music, but she knew Russell got as much pleasure from disturbing her sleep with it as he did from listening to it. By contrast, just from the sound of the harp she knew that Aurelio was playing it for the sheer pleasure of making music.

When Georgia slipped quietly round the kitchen door, she found that all the little children seemed to be in a dream. Cesare smiled at her over the tousled head of little Emilia and she smiled back. This was a real family. She saw her own wistful thought reflected in Luciano's eyes, as he stroked the curls of chubby Marta. And the identical expression on the face of Doctor Dethridge, who held Stella. Again she wondered if she would ever know the full story of what had happened to them and what they had given up to live permanently in Talia.

The music came to an end and the spell was broken, but there was no more crying. Paolo saw Georgia and got up to get her a plate and cup, with a twin under each arm.

‘Good morning,' said Aurelio to the air near her place. It was hard to accept that he couldn't see her, that his eyes so clear and dark blue sent no messages to his mind.

‘Did you sleep well?' asked Georgia.

‘Excellently well,' said Aurelio. ‘I always do, with nothing to separate me from the moon and stars. Did you?'

Georgia wondered if he knew that when she climbed into the hayloft it was to stravagate back to another world. He seemed to know something about the Stravaganti, but would he have guessed about her if she hadn't revealed it yesterday? And did he know that there were three other Stravaganti in the room?

‘Not very,' she answered truthfully.

The twins soon fell asleep on Paolo's knee and the little girls had been quieted with food and music. The others breakfasted companionably in silence. Georgia wondered if she would put on weight eating rolls and jam so soon after supper in her own world. Teresa was a better cook than Maura; even her simplest meal was fresh and home made. Georgia had debated long and hard about whether to stravagate again that night – she couldn't spend Monday catching up on sleep. But she was drawn to Remora. The cheerful uncomplicated family life of the Horsemaster, the stables and being able to ride whenever she wanted, her growing friendship with Cesare and the chance to see Lucien again were all too much to resist. School would just have to take its chances.

A commanding knock at the door broke up the harmony of the gathering. Paolo laid the twins in their cradle and opened it. There stood the Duke of Giglia, with Gaetano and Falco. A grand carriage with the di Chimici crest waited behind them in the yard.

‘Greetings, Capitano,' said Niccolò, using the term which strictly speaking was Paolo's only during the week of the Stellata. It was a sign of favour. He seemed to be on his best behaviour. ‘And to the lovely mistress of the house,' he added, kissing his hand in Teresa's direction.

‘A thousand apologies for inflicting my presence upon you again so soon, but my sons told me about your visitors and I could not wait to meet them myself.'

His eyes flickered round the table. It was obvious who the Zinti were, with their exotic clothes and brilliant colours. He ignored Georgia, taking her for another of Paolo's teeming household. But he was at a loss to place Dethridge and Luciano. Their clothes told him that they did not belong to the stables.

‘May I present our guests?' Paolo was saying. ‘You have doubtless been drawn by the music of the Zinti, or the Manoush as they prefer to be called – Raffaella and Aurelio Vivoide.'

The two travellers made their obeisance to the Duke, who cordially waved them to sit.

‘And here are two other distinguished guests from Bellezza,' Paolo went on smoothly. ‘Doctor Guglielmo Crinamorte and his son Luciano.'

Much bowing followed and the Duke then presented his two sons to the assembled company. His mind was racing, trying to work out where the two Bellezzans fitted into the stables of the Ram. Their surname was unfamiliar to him but there was something about them that tugged at his memory and, as often before, he felt there was something going on in the Ram that he ought to know about.

During the introductions, Falco leaned on his sticks and looked hungrily at the family, much as Georgia had earlier. Her heart was touched by his obvious unhappiness. His own family were the lords of Talia and yet they could not make him well and she doubted if mealtimes in the di Chimici palaces were such warm and friendly occasions.

Falco manoeuvred himself to sit on a bench next to Aurelio.

‘Will you play again?' he whispered. ‘We have told my father so much about you.'

Aurelio frowned and Georgia could see that he was about to demur, but Raffaella whispered something to him and he changed his mind.

‘I will not come to your palace,' he said courteously to Niccolò. ‘I mean no disrespect, but my people are not minstrels. We play for our own pleasure. Nevertheless, we favour music-lovers and your Grace's son is one such. If Signor Paolo permits, I shall play outside and you are welcome to listen.'

Niccolò was not pleased, but he knew it would be fruitless to argue. The di Chimici went out into the yard where Cesare and Teresa found chairs and benches for them all and a recital began, the like of which had never been heard in the Twelfth of the Ram.

While it went on, Luciano beckoned to Georgia and Cesare and they retreated into the stables.

‘What do you think of the di Chimici now?' he asked.

‘Those two youngsters are very different from their father, I think,' said Cesare.

‘I wonder if we can trust them,' said Luciano. ‘They seem all right, but that man out there, Duke Niccolò, he ordered the death of Arianna's mother – I'm sure he did. There's blood on his hands.'

‘It wouldn't be for the first time,' said Cesare. ‘We hear such stories in Remora all the time.'

‘But it can't hurt to introduce them to your Rodolfo, can it?' asked Georgia. ‘I mean, he probably won't be able to do anything for Falco, anyway.'

‘I will tell you one thing,' said Luciano. ‘If there is anything Rodolfo
can
do, he won't refuse to just because Falco's a di Chimici.'

*

Among the many passers-by who stopped to listen to the harp playing in the Twelfth of the Ram that morning, nobody paid any attention to a short stocky figure in a dirty blue cloak. Enrico had naturally followed Niccolò and his sons from the Papal palace and it was a good opportunity to get a closer look at the stables of the Ram. He slipped through the listeners in the yard and on round to the back of the stable-block, meaning to check up on the horses while everyone was occupied.

He put his eye to a knot-hole in the wood. And there were the young Rams, deep in conference – the boys that he had followed to Santa Fina and a third, that must be the one who had been with them in the square when they first met the musician. He was Senator Rodolfo's apprentice from Bellezza – that the spy knew well – but seeing him so close to brought back uncomfortable memories.

Enrico quickly made the ‘Hand of Fortune', the sign made on brow and breast with the middle three fingers of the right hand. It was what Talians did to ward off ill fortune. ‘Dia!' he whispered and broke out into a sweat. There was something uncanny about that boy. Even though Enrico had had him in his grasp and knew him to be made of flesh and blood, there was something inexplicable about him. He used not to have a shadow and then, just when Enrico and his master had been on the verge of exposing him as some kind of freak, his shadow had materialised. He remembered how interested his old employer, Rinaldo di Chimici, had been in that.

Enrico didn't know what it meant and that bothered him. He was a spy and it was his job to know more about his victim than anyone else – and if possible also about his employer. And Luciano had foiled him. Enrico didn't like failure and he didn't like to be reminded of it. It made him link the boy in his mind with that other disturbing mystery – what had happened to his fiancée Giuliana.

Now he moved his eye from the hole and put his ear to it instead. They were talking about Senator Rodolfo and that was interesting in itself. Why would the Senator's favoured apprentice chat about him to a couple of stable-hands? They seemed on very friendly terms.

‘The Duke seems to be making a habit of visiting us,' said one of them now.

‘Thank goodness Merla is safe in Santa Fina,' said another, younger, voice.

‘Wouldn't he like to know about her?' said the voice that Enrico recognised as Luciano's.

‘He wouldn't leave us alone for a minute if he knew what had happened in the Ram,' said the older boy.

Enrico stopped listening; he had heard enough. His instincts had told him that there was a secret up in Santa Fina and it looked as if he had been right. Time to pay his new friend Diego a visit.

Chapter 10

Luciano's Story

It was a relief when Duke Niccolò left the stables of the Ram. But he was willing for his sons to stay.

‘If that is agreeable to you, Signor Paolo,' he said to his host, who of course was in no position to object.

‘It likes me not to see these sonnes of oure enemy consorting with oure yonglinges,' said Dethridge to Paolo when the Duke departed. He left his carriage for Falco and strode off into the city about his business.

Paolo shook his head. ‘Perhaps that is the way of the future,' he said. ‘Perhaps the old enmities will come to an end. I have heard nothing against these two young men.'

‘Mayhap they are doing their fathire's will nonetheless,' said Dethridge, ‘and will finde oute more from the yonge folk than they sholde knowe?'

The Manoush packed up their bedding and made to move off too.

‘We thank you for your kind hospitality,' Aurelio said formally to Paolo and Teresa. ‘But we must now be on our way. We wish to revisit old friends in the city.'

They both bowed, touching their foreheads with clasped hands. Then they spoke in their own language, translating: ‘Peace on your house and on your people – may you fare well and your enemies come to grief.'

And then they were gone, like bright birds flying south.

‘Strange people,' said Teresa, ‘but I liked them.'

‘The Manoush are always welcome here,' said Paolo. ‘They remind us of older times and better ways.'

The Duke had tried to reward Aurelio for the music but Gaetano had whispered to him and the silver had been quietly passed to Raffaella instead. Georgia was surprised that the young noble had also noticed who held the purse-strings in that couple. And then she remembered that she still didn't know whether they were a couple. The Manoush seemed open enough in their dealings with other people but now that they had gone, it was hard to pin down anything about them.

Luciano was not surprised that the two di Chimici brothers wanted to stay; he knew that Gaetano was determined to find out more about the Stravaganti. But he felt very odd about what seemed to be a sort of friendship beginning between the sons of this powerful family and the people of the Ram.

‘Come for a drive with us,' Gaetano said now. ‘If that's all right with your father, Cesare. We have the carriage and it's easier for my brother if he can sit in comfort.'

Paolo gave his permission and the five young people got into the di Chimici carriage, with its plumed horses and velvet upholstery. It made Luciano feel very strange indeed, to be riding out with people he had been taught to consider his enemies. And Cesare had been brought up from birth to fear and distrust them.

Georgia had no such worries. Everyone in Talia had told her that the di Chimici were bad and dangerous and she could believe that the Duke was someone you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night. But once you got over their fancy clothes and elaborate manners, Gaetano and Falco were just boys. They were much nicer than Russell and his cronies, anyway.

‘Take the South road,' Gaetano now commanded, and the carriage rolled out over the cobbled streets of the Ram, skirted the Campo and turned south down the broad Street of the Stars to the Moon Gate.

Gaetano leaned forward to talk to Georgia. ‘We need your help,' he said, getting straight to the point. ‘If my brother cannot be cured, he will be made to enter the church.' He didn't say by whom, but it was obvious.

‘And you don't want to do that?' Georgia asked Falco, playing for time.

The younger boy looked pensive. ‘Not really,' he said slowly, ‘not if I had a choice. I'd rather go to university like my brother and find out about philosophy and painting and music.'

Georgia tried to imagine what university might be like in sixteenth-century Talia. Falco didn't have a wheelchair, so presumably Talians didn't know about them or ramps and things. Unless he could walk properly, he'd have to be carried to lectures.

‘Is there anything the Stravaganti can do that would help my brother?' Gaetano asked Georgia. ‘He has had the best doctors in Talia and they can do no more. Only a superior skill, such as you natural philosophers know about, could give him a chance of recovery.'

Georgia was at a loss. She wasn't any kind of philosopher but this young noble was treating her like a learned scholar. She was prepared to believe that the mysterious Rodolfo might be a person like that, or the Elizabethan doctor, or even Paolo, who had an air of natural authority. Perhaps even Lucien, since he had inexplicably ended up here in another world, had some remarkable powers she had never suspected. But she was just a skinny Year 10 schoolgirl, whose only power was to be able to get from one world to another. How could that help the boy with the big dark eyes and the shattered leg?

Falco was watching her and he suddenly turned to his brother and said, ‘I don't think that she can do anything for me.'

The atmosphere in the carriage was electric and Georgia felt the colour rising in her face.

‘She?' said Gaetano. ‘The Stravagante is a woman?'

Luciano came to the rescue. ‘She needs to be disguised here in Talia. We Stravaganti do not draw attention to ourselves.'

He had certainly drawn attention away from Georgia. Both di Chimici turned to him, eager with questions.

‘You are a Stravagante too?' said Gaetano. ‘So that is what you are learning from the Regent!'

‘Please,' said Falco. ‘If there is anything you know, share it with us. Can what the Stravaganti do heal bodies?'

*

When the Duke left the Ram, he was followed by a man in a blue cloak. When he reached the Campo delle Stelle, he whirled and faced his pursuer, relaxing when he saw who it was.

‘I hope you are usually more discreet,' Niccolò said to Enrico. ‘Otherwise your value as a spy will be limited.'

‘Certainly, my Lord,' said Enrico smoothly. ‘I was of course not shadowing your Grace – I would not have such presumption. I was merely following you, so that I could report to you some news.'

Duke Niccolò raised one eyebrow. He had no illusions about Enrico; his nephew had told him all he needed to know about the man.

‘The Ram have a secret they are keeping from you, my Lord,' Enrico continued. He had the Duke's complete attention now; he had known there was something going on in the Ram, for all their deference.

‘Something that will help them in the race?' he asked now.

‘More than likely,' said Enrico. ‘The secret is in Santa Fina. I am on my way there now, to try to find out more.'

‘Let me know as soon as you do,' said the Duke. ‘And if you need any help in Santa Fina, or somewhere to stay out of sight, use my summer palace there.' He scribbled something on a scrap of paper. ‘Give this to my major-domo. He will see to it that you have anything you need.'

*

Luciano had made up his mind.

‘If I tell you what happened to me,' he said, ‘you must both swear not to tell anyone else, particularly your father.'

There was a short silence, while Gaetano wrestled with his feelings about his family. The two brothers looked at one another, one so ugly but physically strong and vigorous, the other so beautiful and so damaged. They nodded at the same time.

‘We swear,' they both said. And to the surprise of the others, Gaetano stopped the coach, so that they could both kneel to Luciano and proffer him their daggers. It was not possible for Falco to kneel properly, but he leant forward and bent his better leg, his face creased with pain.

Both brothers solemnly chanted together:

g

By the house of the City of Flowers–

May its strength never dwindle or ail–

Ever true is the word that is ours

Take our lives if our promise should fail.

g

They urged Luciano to take the daggers by the hilts and make a small nick in their wrists.

They're going to become blood brothers, thought Georgia, but it wasn't that. The two young nobles held their wrists out to Luciano, each bright with scarlet beads of blood, and motioned him to put his lips to each. Georgia shuddered but Luciano didn't hesitate. As soon as he had tasted the blood voluntarily shed by the di Chimici, Georgia felt Cesare relax beside her, and she realised that he had been as tense as a tight violin-string.

The whole atmosphere in the carriage had changed.

‘Drive on!' ordered Gaetano, sheathing his dagger, which Luciano had handed back to him, and the coachman urged the horses on. They were now through the Gate of the Moon and heading south, but no one inside the carriage paid any attention to where they were going.

No one now had any doubt that the di Chimici would keep whatever they were told to themselves. Georgia realised that she was going to hear for the first time what had really happened to Lucien.

It was clear to her that it was an edited version of his story, but it was amazing enough.

‘I was a Stravagante from another world, like Georgia,' he began. ‘In that world I was very sick – not in the way that Falco is, but with a slow creeping illness that was devouring my body.'

Gaetano nodded. ‘We know of such a sickness. We call it the malady of the Crab, because it grasps and pinches the organs of the body.'

‘When I first stravagated here,' Luciano continued, ‘or rather to Bellezza, which is my city, I felt completely well again.'

Falco's eyes lit up and Gaetano gasped. ‘Does that mean if Falco went to your world, he would be healed?'

‘I don't think so,' said Luciano. ‘He might feel better, but I don't think his broken bones would be mended. At most his strength would be improved. And it wouldn't last when he returned here.' He paused.

‘Although I was always well in Talia, I got worse in my own world. And then I was captured in Bellezza. The thing about stravagation is that it is night-time in the other world while it is daytime in Talia. If one of us stays for a Talian night, he will be discovered in his own world during the day as a sleeping body that cannot be awakened. I was unable to return to my world while I was held captive, and during that time my body appeared to be in a coma – you know, when someone is still breathing but seems otherwise dead?'

‘Yes,' said Gaetano. ‘We call it “
Morte Vivenda
” – the living death. It happens sometimes after a riding accident. But such victims almost always die in truth soon afterwards.'

Luciano nodded. ‘It was like that for me. Soon my otherworldly body could not even breathe for itself.'

‘So you died?' asked Falco, his huge dark eyes seeming to fill his face.

Luciano hesitated. ‘I come from a time far in the future,' he said, choosing his words carefully. ‘The doctors can keep people alive for a while with machines. I don't know exactly what happened to me, but I think that I was kept breathing in that way for a while and that then the doctors believed that I was dead in my brain and the machines were turned off.'

There was a long silence in the carriage and Georgia found that she was holding her breath. Lucien looked terrible.

‘Anyway,' he continued in a hurry. ‘At a particular moment, I suddenly knew that I was alive here in Talia but dead in my own world. From that day, now nearly a year ago, I have been a citizen of Talia, under the protection of my master the Regent and living with my foster-parents Doctor Crinamorte and his wife.'

‘And you can't go back?' asked Falco.

‘Not permanently, no,' said Luciano. ‘This is the only life I can lead now.'

‘And these doctors of the future,' said Gaetano, focusing on what was for him the most important thing in the whole story. ‘Could they help my brother?'

‘Again, I don't really know,' said Luciano. ‘What do you think, Georgia?'

‘I don't know much about medicine,' she said truthfully. ‘They might be able to do operations to make it easier for him to walk. And even if they couldn't do that, he could have an electric wheelchair and get about more easily.' She stopped. ‘There's not much point in my telling you all this,' she said.