City of Flowers (42 page)

And then all of a sudden he knew exactly what had happened to his fiancée. If the old Duchessa was alive, she must have used a substitute. She had done it before. And the person she had used was Enrico's fiancée, Giuliana.

When Enrico passed the foils to the duellists, he made sure that Luciano got the poisoned one. It was the decision of a moment. As Enrico realised that he had killed his own fiancée, blown her into little pieces, a hatred like nothing he had ever experienced welled up inside him.

He would deal with Rinaldo later, and maybe the old Duchessa herself, for tricking him by using a double – but for now he wanted to kill the Grand Duke, the man who had ordered the assassination. If it hadn't been for him, Giuliana would be alive. Enrico's first instinct was to stab the man himself. But no, there was a perfect way to do it – they were in the middle of a duel, after all, one that the Grand Duke himself had rigged. It would be very satisfying to see Luciano kill him.

And if by any chance the Grand Duke managed to kill Luciano with the unpoisoned sword, well then Enrico would stab Niccolò himself and take the consequences.

The two duellists feinted, circling each other warily. The Grand Duke lunged, forcing Luciano backwards. Nicholas stepped forwards and pulled back his hood again. The Grand Duke faltered and Luciano struck. It was a light thrust but the point went in and his man was down.

The Duke's seconds went to him. ‘You must stop it now,' said Gaetano to Enrico. ‘Look at him. He's not fit to continue.'

The Grand Duke did indeed seem a lot worse than the strike warranted. Luciano had lowered his weapon, puzzled. Enrico took it from him. Brother Sulien came out of the crowd to offer his healing skills. But the Grand Duke was racked with spasms. In his agony he grabbed a red flowering bush in a pot by the path and was showered with crimson petals. It was obvious that Luciano's weapon had been poisoned. But both weapons had disappeared and the Grand Duke's second with them.

Niccolò di Chimici was dying in front of their eyes.

‘Poison,' he said to Sulien, clutching his robes. ‘I had one of the foils poisoned. They must have been switched.'

‘What poison?' asked Sulien urgently. ‘Tell me the name.'

But the Grand Duke shook his head slightly. ‘I don't know,' he whispered. ‘Enrico got it for me.'

‘I can't help him,' said Sulien. ‘If I had any of the Drinking Silver left . . . but I gave the last drops to Filippo Nucci.'

Nicholas pushed his way through the people clustered round the Grand Duke where he lay on the ground. ‘Father,' he whispered, from within the folds of his hood. ‘Forgive me.'

And those who were nearby thought it was the Grand Duke speaking, asking absolution of a priest.

Niccolò's eyes fluttered open. ‘Bless you, my son,' he whispered.

And the onlookers thought the words were offered by the young friar to the dying man. At least that was the story that circulated in Giglia in days to come. That Niccolò di Chimici had died in a state of grace.

The Grand Duke's body was carried into the palazzo. Luciano stood stunned. Arianna ran to him as if to comfort him but stopped short of touching him. Dethridge took him in a bear hug. Sky was holding Nicholas back from going after the body and its followers. Georgia came running up to them and saw Luciano and Arianna gazing into each other's eyes. Her heart lurched. All was confusion.

‘I killed him,' said Luciano stupidly.

‘No,' said Nicholas, white-faced. ‘I did.'

*

Prince Fabrizio was startled when servants burst into his room and knelt to him. It took some time for him to understand that they were addressing him as Grand Duke and that meant his father was dead. But Gaetano came in soon after, leaning on Francesca's arm, to confirm that Niccolò had indeed been killed in the duel. The two brothers, still weak from their own wounds, were taken by their wives to see Niccolò laid out on his high bed.

‘I don't understand,' said Fabrizio. ‘There is hardly any blood. How did he die? Could you not save him, Brother Sulien?'

‘He told me that he had poisoned his foil and the weapons may have been switched,' said Sulien. ‘But his man, Enrico, had disappeared, and the Grand Duke could not tell me what kind of poison had been used. He died before I could administer any remedy.'

Fabrizio bowed his head. It was only too likely that his father had sought to rig the duel and inadvertently brought about his own downfall. Was there to be no end to the disasters brought on his family? But now he must become its head and inherit his father's wealth and title. He would be not Duke Fabrizio the Second of Giglia, as he had imagined when he was a little boy, but Grand Duke Fabrizio the First of Tuschia.

The Pope entered the bedroom, summoned hastily from the Residence by Rinaldo. He approached the bed with his censer and intoned the first words of the prayer for the dying: ‘Go, immortal soul . . .'

‘Send to have all the bells tolled,' Grand Duke Fabrizio said to his brother Gaetano. ‘The greatest of the di Chimici is dead.'

*

The Stravaganti were all at the friary, where Brother Tullio gave them warm milk laced with brandy. Rodolfo had taken them there while Sulien attended the Grand Duke.

‘I don't understand,' said Luciano again. ‘I barely wounded him.'

‘The foil was poisoned,' said Nicholas dully. ‘That man Enrico must have switched them.'

‘But why?' asked Sky. ‘He was the Duke's right-hand man.'

‘Perhaps he was a double agent,' said Georgia. ‘Maybe he was in the pay of the Nucci?'

‘He is a bad man,' said Sandro, who could not be kept out of the kitchen. ‘I know he did murders.'

Rodolfo said, ‘I think it was something Sky said that made Enrico swap the foils.'

They all stared at him.

‘Me?' said Sky. ‘What did I say?'

‘I'm only guessing,' said Rodolfo. ‘But I think he heard Sky call Silvia's name and then he realised that Arianna's mother hadn't been killed in the Glass Room.'

‘You mean he was the one who planted the explosive?' asked Georgia.

‘If he was, then he must have realised that he had killed his own fiancée,' said Rodolfo. ‘That would have been enough to make him want revenge on the Grand Duke.'

‘Will the new Grand Duke – Prince Fabrizio, I suppose – take some revenge on Luciano?' asked Georgia. All this stuff about the old Duchessa had rather gone over her head. The explosion in the Glass Room had happened before she had ever visited Talia.

‘Let us say it would be a good idea for Luciano to leave the city soon,' said Rodolfo. ‘Even though he was unaware of the Grand Duke's deceit and killed him in a fair fight.'

‘But it wasn't a fair fight,' said Nicholas. ‘I distracted him. Luciano might not have got him if I hadn't.'

‘You weren't to know the foil was poisoned,' said Georgia. ‘It wasn't your fault. You were just trying to save your friend.'

But it was as if Nicholas hadn't heard her.

The bells of the campanile in the Piazza della Cattedrale started to toll. Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines followed suit. Soon all the bells in the city had taken up the solemn note and Giglians knew their ruler was dead.

Sulien joined them and went straight to Nicholas. ‘Come with me,' he said. ‘You too, Sky, and Luciano.'

He took them into the church and set them on the maze, Sky leading the way. ‘I'll go last,' said Sulien.

When Sky reached the middle he waited until the other three joined him. He hadn't really thought that Nicholas would walk it properly; he seemed so dazed and wretched. There was room in the centre for all of them to kneel and they did. It seemed hours before Sky was ready to step back out into the world. Luciano followed him, slowly. Finally, Sulien helped Nicholas out, the boy leaning heavily on his arm.

‘Now, listen,' said Sulien. ‘You did not kill your father. Nor did Luciano. Or that wretch Enrico, come to that. Niccolò died by his own hand, as surely as if he had drunk that poison. There was nothing anyone could do to save him. He was your father and you loved him, but he was a man who killed his enemies and in the end that was what took his own life.'

He turned to Sky. ‘I want you both to go back now. It will still be night in your world. I will give you both a sleeping draught, and when you wake up at home, look after Nicholas. He will need you. And Georgia. She must go too.'

Georgia opened her eyes in her own room; she was clutching the flying horse. It felt as if she had woken from an awful nightmare. Yet the person she used to care most about was unhurt. She could not get out of her head the sight of Luciano and Arianna staring into each other's eyes. But she realised she was more worried about Nicholas. Before she left Talia, she had arranged with Sky that she would come round to his flat in the night and ring once on his mobile. She would have to risk Rosalind hearing Sky let her in.

She dressed hastily in the dark and let herself quietly out of the house. The stars were out and the night was very still. As she walked through the dark streets of Islington, she remembered doing this once before, when she was making arrangements to stay in Talia for the Reman horse race. How simple it had been then! Scary, but easy. All she had had to do was stay on a horse for a minute and a half. Now she had no idea what to do, but Nicholas needed her.

Sky came to the door quickly and quietly and they passed through his flat and into his room. Nicholas lay on the bed fully dressed, his eyes open, but not focused. She sat beside him and took his hand.

‘How are you?' she asked softly.

He turned his gaze on her and clung on to her hand.

‘Let me go back,' he said.

In spite of how much he had grown up since then, he reminded Georgia of the boy he had been when he decided to leave his world.

She took the flying horse out of her pocket.

‘Give me the quill,' she said gently.

Reluctantly, Nicholas drew it out of his jacket. Georgia took it from him and put it with the horse on Sky's mantelpiece, next to the blue glass bottle.

‘You can't go back,' she said. She thought about the way Luciano had looked at Arianna after he had killed the Grand Duke, then she put her arms round Nicholas and took a deep breath. ‘If you like, we'll destroy them both – both talismans. We have to live here, Nicholas. The other life is just a dream.'

The boy looked at her as if he were still half in Talia and scarcely knew who she was. She would have to try harder or she would lose him. He would go back somehow or would lose his mind in the attempt. And Georgia realised that she couldn't bear to be without him.

‘Help me, Sky,' she said. ‘We've got to make him see that his life is here.'

Sky was feeling only half-sane himself. He'd been thinking about what Rodolfo had said. If he was right, then Sky had perhaps completed what he had been called to Talia to do. But it looked as if it had been to bring about Nicholas's father's death. How was he to console his friend?

‘Nick,' he said quietly, ‘I'm sorry. Really sorry about your father. And especially if it had something to do with me. I'm sorry about all the things we got wrong in Giglia – all the deaths and injuries. But Georgia's right. You belong here now, not in Talia.'

‘I feel as if I don't belong anywhere,' said Nicholas dully.

‘You belong with me, Nicholas,' said Georgia. Something shifted in her heart and she knew it was true. Nicholas was a real flesh and blood boy she could love. In fact she loved him already. Luciano was the dream, someone she had loved from afar. But she and Nicholas knew each other as they really were.

‘I'm going to live here,' she said. ‘I'm not going to go back to Talia again. There are some choices you can only make once. You can't go back to where you made a choice and then take the other one.'

Nicholas was looking at her intently now.

‘I'm doing now what I should have done ages ago; I'm choosing you over Luciano. What do you choose?'

*

Paul Greaves whistled as he shaved. He wasn't going back to Devon until the afternoon and he was going to take Rosalind out to lunch. He hadn't been so happy for years. Of course it was early days; he had known her exactly a month. But already he felt they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together.