City of Flowers (27 page)

‘Look into it,' he said abruptly. ‘Find out all you can about this Benvenuto and bring the information direct to me. Speak to no one else about it.'

Nicholas's announcement had stunned them all.

‘I'm tired of being Nicholas,' he said simply. ‘I don't even want to be Brother Benvenuto. I want to be Falco again, living in my own city, with my own family.'

‘But you can't just turn back the clock,' said Georgia. ‘You're dead and buried in Giglia – with a statue by the great Giuditta Miele on top.'

‘How do you know I can't?' asked Nicholas. ‘When I was translated here, this world leapt forward a year. Perhaps if I went back, it would move in the opposite direction.'

‘But wouldn't you end up just the way you were before?' asked Sky, ‘with your leg all hurt?'

‘It's worse than that,' said Georgia, who had seen it all in a flash. ‘He'd have to die in this world. Are you really prepared to do that to Vicky and David, Nicholas?'

‘There may be a way to make it work out all right for them,' he muttered.

‘Stop it!' said Alice. ‘You three are freaking me out! OK, I believe you about this other world of yours. There's no need to go on about dying.'

‘Look,' said Sky. ‘You're tired and it must have blown your mind to be back in your world. We can go back tonight – every night if you like. But you can't just go back to live in Talia as if nothing had happened.'

‘Have you ever wondered about where Brother Tino came from?' asked Sulien.

‘Anglia, you said it was,' said Sandro.

‘And that is true,' said the friar. ‘In a way. But both he and Benvenuto come from an Anglia that is in another world – and from a time hundreds of years ahead of us.'

Sandro made the Hand of Fortune, to ward off the evil eye. Such talk was the last thing he expected to hear from a man of the church. Sulien smiled.

‘There is nothing to be afraid of,' he said. ‘They are good people. And they belong to the same Brotherhood as I do.'

‘The Hounds of God?' asked Sandro.

‘The Stravaganti,' said Sulien.

‘What's that?'

‘Travellers,' said Sulien. ‘Travellers in time and space. There are several gathered in the city at the moment. They – we – have plans to save it from bloodshed at the approaching wedding festivities.'

‘So Brother Tino isn't really your novice after all?' asked Sandro. ‘Is he even a friar?'

‘No,' said Sulien. ‘I'm afraid that was a story to give him a reason for being here.'

Sandro felt strangely pleased. ‘Tell me about the shadows,' he said. ‘You said you are one of these travellers, but you have a shadow. I've seen it.'

‘We have a shadow in the world we live in because that is where our real bodies are. It is only in the world we travel to that we are without our shadows.'

‘So where do you go?'

‘To Tino's world,' said Sulien. ‘And there I have no shadow. I am just a visitor.'

‘Could I go?' asked Sandro.

‘Who knows?' said Sulien. ‘Maybe one day. But you couldn't take Fratello with you – dogs can't be Stravaganti. Anyway, what I have told you is a secret. It would be very dangerous for us if anyone else knew it – particularly the di Chimici.'

‘Even Prince Gaetano?' asked Sandro.

‘No,' said Sulien. ‘Gaetano knows about us. But you mustn't tell anyone else. I have told you our great secret, because I believe you can be trusted. You have changed in the last few months and I don't think you are as much of a di Chimici man as you used to be. You wouldn't do anything to put Brother Tino and myself in danger, would you? But you must be careful in front of that man up at the palace, the one who works for the Duke.'

‘He already knows about the shadows,' said Sandro, anxious to show himself worthy of Sulien's trust. ‘We saw you all coming out of a palazzo in the city today. Tino and that Benvenuto came out first and Enrico spotted that they didn't have them.'

‘Then we are already in danger,' said Sulien. ‘I must tell the others.'

Nicholas was so restless that the four of them left the house and walked back to Sky's flat. Georgia was really worried about Nicholas. There had always been a danger in letting him go back to Talia but she had never thought it would hit him as badly as this. All the anxiety about him and the problems with Alice were spoiling her enjoyment at having been back to Talia herself. She longed for the old days when no one else knew about stravagation but her.

Sky let them in and heard his mother talking to someone. But the last person he expected to see at their kitchen table was Giuditta Miele. His heart sank; what on earth had the two of them found to talk about?

‘Oh, hello, darling,' said Rosalind. ‘You have a visitor. We've been waiting for you. Hello, you lot. Make yourselves at home – I'll get another chair.' She went off to the bedroom to fetch one.

‘Alice,' said Sky. ‘This is Giuditta Miele. I've told you about her.'

‘It's Alice I've come to see,' said Giuditta. ‘I've brought something for her.'

She took out a piece of paper, smaller than A4, with a red crayon sketch on it.

‘Oh, that's Georgia, isn't it?' said Rosalind, coming back in with a chair. ‘It's very good.'

‘Thank you,' said Giuditta.

Alice took up the sketch, which showed Georgia hiding from the world's gaze behind a long sweep of tiger-striped hair.

‘You made her look sort of Renaissance,' said Rosalind, ‘in spite of the hair. How did you do that?'

‘I drew what I saw,' said Giuditta simply.

‘Well, I must leave you all to it,' said Rosalind. ‘I have a client to visit. Sky will look after you.'

‘Is that my talisman?' asked Alice when she had gone. ‘The drawing of Georgia?'

‘Yes,' said Giuditta. ‘It will bring you to my workshop in Giglia.'

‘And I'm to go tonight?' said Alice, stunned. She no longer had any doubts that her friends had been telling the truth and she wasn't sure that she wanted to go to Talia any more. It seemed to bring nothing but trouble. But the others were all looking at her eagerly, as if something wonderful had happened, so she just said, ‘Thank you.'

Wherever Beatrice went, her father's agent was at her elbow; she was beginning to think that the Duke had ordered this man to be especially helpful to her and she wished fervently that he had not. Enrico had a rank body odour – as if he rubbed himself with onions – and he stood too close. She took to applying more of the cologne that came from the pharmacy in Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines, so that she moved in a cloud of her own scent. But although it kept something of the man's smell at bay, it did not get rid of the man himself.

Today she was trying to arrange what would be necessary by way of flowers for the weddings, and it was no small task. Beatrice set off for the Garden of the di Chimici, a large tract of ground near their old palace, where Dukes as far back as Fabrizio the First, a hundred years ago, had grown flowers in the heart of the city. She had a key to the iron gates in the bunch hanging from her girdle, so she let herself into the garden, reluctantly allowing Enrico in after her.

‘Paradise on earth!' he exclaimed. ‘Just look at those colours!'

‘I like it for its sweet scents,' said Beatrice.

‘Never had much of a sense of smell myself,' said Enrico cheerfully. ‘But I like flowers. You get plenty of them in this city but I've never seen anything like this garden.'

The garden was full of bees and butterflies. Gardeners worked in beds of all shapes – crescents, circles, octagons, diamonds, trefoils – divided by gravel paths. But Beatrice walked straight to the glass hothouses, where she knew the head gardener would be. Here were plants which would normally flower later in the year, like roses and carnations and lily-of-the-valley, brought on to bloom early and grace the Duke's dinner table. Here too were the exotic flowers collected by her father, not her favourites, because of their fleshy petals and their absence of scent. But they needed specialist care so the senior gardeners looked after them.

‘Principessa!' said the head gardener, coming towards her wiping his hands on a sacking apron. ‘We are honoured. What can I do for you?'

‘I have come to talk about the wedding flowers,' said Beatrice.

‘I think I'll wait outside, if you don't mind, your Highness,' said Enrico, mopping his brow with a lace handkerchief. ‘It's too hot for me in here.'

Beatrice watched him go with relief. It was indeed stifling in the hothouse but it was worth it just to be rid of the man's presence.

‘We need flowers for each bride, of course,' said the princess. ‘And for their attendants. The cathedral itself must be a mass of blossoms and we shall need more flowers for the palazzo and the procession to the Church of the Annunciation that comes after the wedding ceremony.'

‘We cannot supply so many from our own beds,' said the gardener. ‘But the brides' flowers and those for the banqueting table, those we can provide from among our finest blooms here. The rest will come from the meadows outside the city, picked fresh on the day.'

Beatrice bent to smell a white orchid with purple splotches: no scent, as usual. She had a sudden vision of her father's own wedding, perhaps only a few months away, to the beautiful young Duchessa. He would want her to wear these waxy, lifeless flowers, as like real ones as statues to living, breathing people. And what then? Would the Duchessa look after Niccolò the way his own daughter had?