City of Flowers (35 page)

‘Do not despair, old friend,' said Rodolfo. ‘There is work yet to do and other deaths we may prevent. The Duke will need restraining even if both his remaining sons survive.'

Doctor Kennedy was completely perplexed by the two sword wounds.

‘They have both been expertly stitched but with very out-of-date materials. Where was this done?'

Neither Sky nor Nicholas would answer.

‘I doubt if the wounds were even sterile,' she said, frowning. ‘Were you given anti-tetanus?'

The boys shook their heads and were both given shots by the nurse. Doctor Kennedy wrote out prescriptions for antibiotics and strong painkillers.

‘Just to be on the safe side,' she said. ‘But it would cause more trauma than it's worth to restitch the wounds. Whoever was responsible for this bit of fancy embroidery knew what he was doing.'

The boys would say nothing more than that they had both been hurt fencing, however much the women nagged them. Sky couldn't explain the scratches on his other arm, from the broken glass, and Nick had the beginnings of a black eye.

Vicky said she was going to phone the school and complain to Mr Lovegrove but Nicholas stopped her.

‘We weren't in school,' he said. ‘It was an accident.'

Even that cost him a lot, letting Vicky and Rosalind think that they had done this to each other when all their injuries were the fault of the Nucci. The two women didn't know what to make of it, but it seemed clear to them that there was no hard feeling between Sky and Nicholas and that it was safe to let them be together. The two boys spent the rest of the day at the Mulhollands' house. Their foils were taken from them and locked in a cupboard, though Vicky was surprised to find them unstained and still bated.

Chapter 24

God's Puppy

Dawn broke in Giglia over a dismal scene. The flood waters had retreated and the fine city was filled with evil-smelling sludge and mud. For the new Grand Duke, however, it was a welcome sight. He didn't want to sit by his ailing sons' beds any more; he had lived through that experience once before. He had a city to organise. And Enrico was at hand to help him.

Beatrice was left in charge of the sick and injured at the orphanage while her father strode about giving orders, marshalling his army to collect sodden debris into heaps that could be dried out in the sun and then fired. Then every bucket and broom in Giglia was commandeered to bring well water and wash the squares and streets. The bodies that had been left in the Church of the Annunciation were brought out – those of the Nucci faction to be hung by the heels on display in the Piazza Ducale, those loyal to the di Chimici washed and clothed in silk and laid in the chapel of the palazzo in the Via Larga. And first among them Prince Carlo.

The Pope was dispatched to purify the church itself from the bloodshed within, but not before he had gone to his Residence for a change of clothes and a large breakfast.

Damage to houses was less than it would have been in an English city; very few people had carpets or soft furnishings on the ground floor. And the Talian sun, which had so often been absent of late, was now back in full strength, shining into doors and windows, dispelling all mustiness from the wet floors and walls. The whole city seemed to steam in the morning heat.

Guido Parola had been sent by Silvia to the Bellezzan Embassy, for the State carriage, and he came back to the orphanage to collect Arianna and the wounded Barbara. Silvia went with them and Luciano rode on top with Parola. Gradually the nuns were losing their unexpected guests and were able to concentrate on cleaning up and looking after their usual charges.

A fleet of Ducal carriages took the exhausted princesses back to the Via Larga, to be tended and cosseted by their maids and their families. Soon the only ones who were left at the Ospedale were the two di Chimici princes and Filippo Nucci, being nursed by Beatrice, Giuditta and Sulien. Rodolfo and Dethridge had volunteered to go to the friary to see whether it could be made suitable to receive the patients. Sulien was anxious to have them near his supplies of medicine, depleted though they were.

He administered a second dose of Drinking Silver to the three injured young men but there was little of the precious liquid left. Both princes had intermittently regained consciousness, but not Filippo, who had lost even more blood than they had.

It did not take long for the Grand Duke to realise that his prisoners had escaped. He sent one team of men to comb the city for Nucci; they went from palazzo to palazzo and tower to tower of those families known to be sympathisers. It would be only a matter of time before they were brought to justice.

The new palace, into which the Nucci should have moved on that very day, had escaped damage altogether. It had been built on raised ground on the far side of the river and the flood water had not reached even up to its front gate.

Matteo Nucci doubted that he would escape with his life, let alone be allowed to take possession of his new home. He knew that they would not remain safe for long in the Salvini tower. He didn't fear so much for himself – what had he to live for now if all his sons were dead? – but he couldn't be sure that Graziella and his daughters would be spared Niccolò's wrath.

‘Go now, my dear,' he told his wife. ‘Take the girls and leave the city with what you stand up in. See if you can get to Classe and my brother's family. Amadeo Salvini will lend you some money, I'm sure.'

But Graziella wouldn't hear of it. ‘With Camillo's body and perhaps Filippo's too still lying unburied in Giglia?' she demanded. ‘Am I a mother or a monster? I am going nowhere, unless the . . . Grand Duke of Tuschia,' she spat, ‘chooses to dispatch me.'

Alice and Georgia went round to Nicholas's after school, where he and Sky were still recovering from the Giglian battle. Alice couldn't rest until she'd seen their wounds.

‘It's all right,' said Sky. ‘Sulien did a good job of stitching us up and we've got all sorts of pills from the doctor.'

‘That's more than my brothers have,' said Nicholas. He was very pale.

‘But that stuff Sky brought back from the friary must be pretty good,' said Georgia. ‘I'd back Sulien against Doctor Kennedy any day.'

‘Really?' said Nicholas. ‘I seem to remember I had to give up my entire life in Talia because no one there could cure me and your doctors could.'

Georgia was really worried about Nicholas. Ever since his first stravagation to Giglia and his wild idea about translating back, he had been a different person. She and Sky had both talked endlessly to him about the craziness of this idea, about the hurt he would inflict on the Mulhollands, the danger that his disability would return, the impossibility of taking up his old life in Giglia. And he had seemed to listen to them and accept what they said.

But now that he had seen his family attacked, it was different. There was a hardness and determination about him that reminded Georgia of his stubbornness when he had first decided to leave his world and come where he could be cured. Only this time she was not in his confidence; he said nothing to her about what he was planning and that made her very uneasy. And she didn't like to admit how hurt she was that he could think of abandoning her so easily to return to his family. Georgia had got used to being all-important to Nicholas.

‘Are you going back tonight?' asked Alice.

‘Of course,' said Nicholas, though it was Sky she had been asking.

Niccolò agreed to let his sons be moved to Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines, once he had inspected the infirmary. He had sent some of his own men to help with clearing up the mess left in the friary and its church. But he did not want Filippo Nucci to be nursed with them. In this, however, he was completely overruled by Beatrice.

‘He is a young man as precious to his people as Fabrizio and Gaetano are to us,' she said firmly. ‘Don't you remember how our two families played together when we were children? Why, Mother herself used to take him on to her lap and tell him stories. Where is his own mother now – dead or missing? For pity's sake, we should care for him, as we would want others to care for my brothers if we were not by.'

Niccolò was not used to this fierce side of his daughter and he let her have her way. But Sulien did not trust him and ordered three of his friars to keep a round-the-clock watch by Filippo's bed.

Giuditta had at last made her way back to her workshop, where she found that her apprentices had made a start on the clearing up. Their bedding was hung out to dry from the balcony outside her bedroom and the kitchen stove had been re-stocked with dry logs. The mud had been swept and washed from the tiled floor of the studio. But they had not touched the statues, which were all stained with a muddy high-tide mark, even the beautiful white Duchessa of Bellezza. Fortunately, she was on a raised plinth and looked as if she had been gazing out over the flood waters from her state barge.

‘Maestra,' said Franco. ‘We are glad to see you safe. We didn't know what had happened to you – there were rumours of bloodshed in the Piazza of the Annunciation.'

‘Not rumour,' said Giuditta. ‘Cruel fact. I have been tending the wounded.'

Stories about the slaughter had spread through the city. The bodies of the Nucci hanging in the Piazza Ducale and the black ribbons on the doorknocker at the Palazzo di Chimici had told some of the tale, and it was soon embroidered. But nobody expected the sight that was to be seen in the late morning. Matteo and Graziella Nucci, still in their bloodstained and muddy wedding finery, walked proudly from the Salvini tower to the Palazzo Ducale to demand the body of Camillo Nucci. It was not among the corpses displayed in the piazza, much as it grieved them to see nephews and brothers hanging there.

The Grand Duke himself came to the door when he heard who his petitioners were.

‘It is not often that the fox comes willingly back to the trap,' he said, when he saw Matteo Nucci.

The old man knelt then in the muddy square.

‘Do with me what you will,' he said. ‘I care not. But let us first bury our son and tell us whether there be another body, that of his brother, to bury with him. Then you will have robbed us of all our sons and we shall be ready to join them.'

‘
I
rob
you
?' said Niccolò, incensed. ‘I have a son of my own lying dead in my chapel and a daughter-in-law made a widow on her wedding day. And two more whose husbands' lives are in the balance, all because of your murdering boy. But you shall have his body, if someone cares to remove it from where my soldiers threw it in the orphanage. And as for the other, he lives and may yet survive to feel my vengeance.'

Matteo Nucci stood. ‘I offer myself as hostage,' he said, ‘if you will let my wife visit Filippo.'

‘You are in no position to bandy terms with me,' snarled Niccolò. ‘I could have you and your beldam hanged beside your relatives here, to make food for crows – yes, and your daughters too!'

‘But you will not,' said the Pope, appearing beside his brother on the steps of the palazzo. ‘There has been enough killing. Camillo Nucci must have his funeral rites, and these other poor wretches too. And I shall myself take Signora Graziella to see her son at the friary. As for Signor Matteo, there is no dungeon here dry enough to put him in. I suggest that he and his daughters and any of those remaining who took part in the attack surrender themselves to my authority. I shall house them at the Papal Residence under guard until they can be brought to trial.'

The Grand Duke could not show how displeased he was. His brother was Pope, after all, and ruled as Prince over the most important city in Talia, even if Niccolò was head of the di Chimici family. Never had Ferdinando defied him before – and in public too.