City of Flowers (37 page)

‘Nowhere is safe in Talia,' said the Grand Duke. ‘Least of all Bellezza if it stays out of alliance with my family. Come, my dear, it is time to put aside all enmity – what is your answer?'

‘I prize the independence of my city too much to put it in your hands,' said Arianna.

‘But you wore the dress,' said the Grand Duke impatiently. ‘The dress was to have been your answer.'

‘I did not wear it,' said Arianna. ‘That was my maid. And she suffered for it. The blow was meant for me.'

‘Ah, I understand now,' said Niccolò. ‘You fear for your life if you marry me? Be assured that I shall look after you. No harm will come to my Granduchessa.'

‘You could not protect Carlo,' said Arianna, more bluntly than she had meant to. The Grand Duke flinched. ‘But that is not my only reason,' said Arianna, bracing herself. ‘I cannot marry where I do not love.'

‘That is a girl's answer, not a ruler's,' said Niccolò impatiently. ‘I am not offering love, but good political sense.'

‘I am a good ruler of my city,' said Arianna. ‘But I am a girl too. And I am in love with someone else. If I can't marry him, I shall stay single.'

Niccolò was furious but remained icily polite. ‘Might I ask who is my rival for your Grace's hand? Who can equal the offer of a Grand Duke of Tuschia?'

‘That is a matter for my own heart,' said Arianna. ‘There is no other offer and no engagement. I am very sensible of the honour you do me but I must decline. I cannot marry without love.'

And then it was over. The Grand Duke swept out of the room, white-lipped with rage. Arianna was shaking. She had always known that she could not accept his offer but she hadn't known how to do it. And in the end she had been on her own, without Rodolfo or Luciano to support her. She had gone head to head with the most powerful person in Talia and had no doubt that he would exact a terrible revenge.

*

Sandro and Sky got the cart safely back to Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and unloaded Sulien's supplies. While the sacks of dried herbs were being used to restock the unbroken jars in the pharmacy, the Eel wandered in.

‘Good day, Brothers,' he said, doffing his rather bedraggled blue velvet hat. ‘I came to enquire after the princes. But I see my little Sparrow is here helping you. Good, good.'

‘The princes are recovering well,' said Sulien. ‘And I am grateful for the loan of the boy – Sandro has been most useful. Indeed, if it had not been for his efforts yesterday, I doubt the princes would have lived to see this day.'

Enrico was surprised. He couldn't imagine what Sandro could have done that would be medically useful, but he made a mental note that the boy was well regarded by the pharmacist-friar.

Sandro looked from Sulien to Enrico and made a decision. He was not officially apprenticed to the Eel; no papers had been signed. What he knew of his master was that he had taken Carlo to find a Nucci to murder. And he didn't doubt there were other murders in the Eel's past. But all his experience of Sulien was of healing and care for others, even to the point of teaching a street boy his letters and telling him stories. Sandro didn't want a life of running errands and telling tales for the Eel.

‘I'd like to stay here,' he said to Enrico.

‘Good idea,' said Enrico. ‘You can bring me messages as to how the princes are getting on. And I want that Nucci kept an eye on too,' he added, lowering his voice.

‘I don't mean that,' said Sandro. ‘I mean I want to be a friar here at Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines.'

Sky and Sulien were as surprised as the Eel.

‘But you can't even read or write,' said Enrico. ‘How could you be a friar?'

‘I think you'll find that he can read,' said Sulien. ‘And we can teach him to write. That is, if you are serious about this, Sandro?'

‘I am,' said Sandro. ‘I want to be a Brother, like Tino and you.'

Enrico didn't like it. He felt in some way that he had been robbed. But he made no objection; somewhere under the layers of his years of crime he had a glimmer of conscience that told him Sandro had made a good choice.

*

‘You are seriously insane!' said Luciano, throwing aside his rapier and pacing up and down the courtyard. ‘There is so much wrong with that idea, I don't know where to begin.'

‘Why?' asked Nicholas. ‘We've both done it before. And it would make everything right for our families.'

‘Let's see, shall we?' said Luciano, ticking off reasons on his fingers. ‘We'd both have to die again – I can't believe I'm even saying this – my parents would have to lose their foster-son and all my friends here would have to lose me. Then, if it did work, my parents and I would have to move away somewhere so that they didn't have to explain how come their son who had been dead for two and a half years had suddenly turned up again. And, oh yes, Prince Falco would also have suddenly risen from the dead, much to the delight and surprise of his family in Giglia. Good God, Nick, this is la-la land!'

‘Not really,' said Nicholas. ‘Talia is much more open to the supernatural than England is. I could probably get away with it here. I agree you couldn't pull it off in Islington, but I bet Vicky and David would be willing to move away if it meant they got you back.'

Luciano couldn't deny that.

‘And perhaps it would get my father off the Stravaganti's back?' said Nicholas. ‘He's never really believed our cover story about my suicide.'

‘But what about my mum and dad?' said Luciano, tugging at his hair. ‘I wouldn't even think of putting them through that again.'

Nicholas looked at him calculatingly. ‘I could tell them,' he said.

‘Tell them?'

‘Yes. They know you're alive in another world. You told me yourself that they've seen you stravagate back a few times. I could tell them the whole plan. Just think about it, Luciano. You must want to see them again properly.'

And the awful thing was, although he still thought the whole idea was madness, Luciano knew that Nicholas was right. He did want to see his parents again – very much.

Chapter 25

Exile

The Pope's men brought the body of Camillo Nucci to the church of Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and laid it out in a chapel, alongside five other Nucci corpses recovered from the Piazza Ducale. Graziella Nucci and her daughters found it there after they had visited Filippo in the infirmary. A friar had been sitting by the Nucci's bed when the women entered. Gradually Filippo was surfacing from his death-like sleep. Brother Sulien had given him the last few drops of the
argentum potabile
. And the Princess Beatrice was helping to nurse him as well as her brothers.

Graziella had shed tears of joy to see her last remaining son returning to life. But it was another matter when they were taken into the church.

‘We shall have them all washed and anointed,' said Sulien. ‘The Pope has authorised it. They shall receive decent burial wherever you wish.'

Graziella bent over Camillo. ‘Let him be buried with Davide in the same grave,' she said. ‘And the others in the same chapel. Who knows how many of us shall join them?'

But she and her daughters stayed to help with preparing the bodies; it was the last thing they could do for their kinsmen.

*

The new Grand Duke was in a slowly simmering rage. He barked at his servants and wouldn't wait for his tasters but tossed back many goblets of wine and sent for Enrico. He had lost another son, been overruled by his brother and his daughter and now had been turned down by a chit of girl in favour of a youth a third his age. Niccolò had no doubt who was meant when the Duchessa had referred to ‘someone else'. Who could it be but that black-haired Bellezzan youth, the Regent's assistant, who seemed to dog his every step?

And the Duchessa preferred this callow boy to a mature man with all the wealth and prestige of his house to offer her! It made him livid to think of the silver dress, the African cats and the costly brooch. Not that he wanted his gifts back; he would disdain to have them. He was not mean. But he was proud, and the slight to his honour and his person was more than he could bear.

Still, as he drank more, his angry mood settled into an equally dangerous calm. It was not that he had failed to anticipate this. He had always known that Arianna might refuse him for this reason and he had a plan for how to turn it to his advantage.

‘You sent for me, my Lord?' said Enrico.

‘Yes,' said the Grand Duke. ‘I want you to take my glove to that Bellezzan boy at the Embassy and challenge him to a duel.'

*

Arianna slipped out of the Embassy, accompanied by Guido Parola and her bodyguards, to visit Giuditta. The sculptor's apprentices were still cleaning her statue.

‘It looks as I feel,' said Arianna. ‘Stained.'

‘The stain can be removed from marble,' said Giuditta. ‘What has tainted the original?'

‘I am ashamed of what happened to Barbara,' said Arianna. ‘She is weak and in pain from a wound that should have been mine. But there is something else – the Grand Duke made his proposal a few days ago and I refused him finally today. He made it very clear that his offer was not motivated by love, and yet I fear he is deeply offended and therefore dangerous.'

‘Did you give him a reason?' asked the sculptor.

‘I gave him one I thought he would understand – that I was in love with someone else. But that is not all. He wants to take my city from me – the city my family has fought so hard to keep free and independent of the di Chimici.'

‘Did you tell him who the other person is?' asked Giuditta.

‘No, but I fear he will guess. Now I am worried that I have put Luciano in danger. It will be like Barbara all over again – maybe worse. It always seems to be others who suffer the consequences of my actions.'

‘Why are you telling me this?' asked Giuditta. ‘Why not talk to your mother or Rodolfo?'

‘My mother thinks only of politics and they are both too concerned with my safety. I thought perhaps, as a Stravagante but not a politician, you might advise me.'

‘I think it might be advisable to leave the city – at least for Luciano, if not yourself.'

‘But don't you think he will be watched?' asked Arianna.

Their conversation had been conducted quietly, only Parola standing near enough to hear them, but now Giuditta raised her voice.

‘I think we had better make arrangements for carrying your Grace's statue back to Bellezza,' she said.

Georgia had not stravagated to Talia the day after the weddings. She wanted to give Merla a rest, since the horse had made some of her journeys with two riders. And Georgia herself felt weary to her bones. She just couldn't face another night without sleep and full of exhausting adventures in Talia. So the two boys had gone with the pledge that they would tell her all about it the next day, which was Saturday in their world.

Georgia's parents were going to be out for the day so they were all going to meet at her house – Alice too. On the Friday, Georgia had an early night, leaving the model of the flying horse on her chest of drawers, where she could see it but not be tempted to hold it.

But in spite of these precautions, she dreamed about Giglia, reliving the moments in the Church of the Annunciation – the screams and the blood and the sight of people she knew and trusted turned into sword-wielding nightmares. And people she had always feared like Niccolò di Chimici appeared even larger than life in her dreams. He was standing with a bloody sword over the body of Luciano.

She woke in the middle of the night, sweating, and wondered whether to stravagate after all, just to check that Luciano was still alive. But she lay in the dark instead, thinking about him and about how little progress she had really made in getting over him since he had walked away from her in the circular Campo in Remora over a year ago.

The Pope had prevailed over his brother about the Nucci's lives but they were not to get away with their crimes unpunished. The Grand Duke issued a proclamation that anyone bearing the name of Nucci and any known to have fought by their side at the Church of the Annunciation were banished from Giglia in perpetuity and their property sequestrated.

‘I see their new building was unaffected by the flood,' said Niccolò. ‘Send Gabassi to me,' he ordered a servant. ‘I shall take their palace in payment for Carlo,' he told the Pope. ‘I no longer wish to live in the Palazzo Ducale. It has unpleasant memories. I shall live in the Nucci's extravagant folly and let Fabrizio have this place. And I shall get Gabassi to build me a covered walkway above the city, elevated over any future flood waters, that will take me from the seat of government here to my new home there. It can cross the Guild offices and the bridge.'

‘That is reasonable,' said his brother. ‘I agree that Matteo Nucci should forfeit his property and be driven into exile. But let the wife and daughters remain until Filippo is fit enough to be moved from the city.'

‘Very well,' said Niccolò. ‘But they must stay in their old palazzo; I won't have them take possession of the new one. And I want another proclamation issued that Camillo Nucci was a murderer and would have been executed publicly if he had not already had the penalty exacted by Prince Fabrizio. I want that family disgraced and their name wiped from the memory of this city, except as the felons they are.'

*

Luciano was waiting for Arianna when she got back to the Embassy.

‘I must talk to you,' she said.

‘Me too,' he said.

She dismissed her guards. The two of them sat in silence for a while in the blue salon of the Embassy. Arianna was wearing one of her simplest dresses and a white silk mask, which she now took off. The Duchessa of Bellezza went unmasked only with her personal maid and her nearest family members; it wasn't often that Luciano saw her face now that she was ruler of a great city. It made him feel sad to see how tired she looked and so full of cares, compared with the light-hearted girl he had met in Bellezza.

But her beauty moved him as it always had, and the vulnerability she showed in unmasking before him made him feel even more protective of her than usual.

‘You go first,' she said.

He took her hand.

‘Nicholas has come to me with a strange proposal,' he said. ‘He wants us to change places. For him to become Falco again and for me to go back to my parents.'

It was the last thing she had expected. But it made her shiver.

‘Would that work?' she asked, playing for time. ‘I mean, with the extra year's difference and everything? And wouldn't he be crippled again? And you, would your disease of the Crab return?'

‘Is that what you would care most about?' asked Luciano, holding her hand tightly and looking her straight in the eye. ‘That I would be ill again in my old world?'

It wasn't. But it was too much of a shock for Arianna to say what she really thought. Why was he telling her this unless he was seriously thinking of doing it? And how could he even think of leaving her if he felt as she had always hoped he would?

‘What do you think?' persisted Luciano.

‘I think you should talk to Rodolfo,' said Arianna shakily, ‘and Doctor Dethridge and any other Stravagante. I'm sure there must be rules against translating back, or the Doctor would have suggested it after – you know – what happened to you in Bellezza.'

It was not what Luciano wanted to hear. He wanted her to beg him not to go, to say she couldn't live without him.

‘What did you want to tell me?' he asked.

‘The Grand Duke came for his answer,' she said.

‘And what did you tell him?' he asked.

‘I told him that I could not accept him, that I could not let Bellezza become a di Chimici city – he wanted Princess Beatrice to rule it.'

She did not repeat the other reason she had given Niccolò; she could not bring herself to say it now that she knew Luciano was considering leaving her for ever.

And so they parted at cross purposes and Luciano was completely unprepared for Enrico's visit.

He had glimpsed the Eel on more than one occasion in Giglia and always kept well out of his way. He aroused memories of the worst days of Luciano's life, when he had been kidnapped in Bellezza and held beyond the time he should have stravagated back to his own world. Well as the old Lucien had adapted to his new life, the Bellezzan Luciano could not look back on that time without pain.