City of Stars (30 page)

‘Come on, my beauty,' Enrico whispered to Merla in the middle of the night. ‘We're going somewhere special.'

The black mare, fully grown now, flew strongly towards Remora, urged on by the man she was now used to. It was a longer flight than she usually made and she was enjoying the use of her wings.

On and on through the starry night, flying ever south, over the walls of a great city, Merla felt memory stirring within her. She wanted to veer west but her rider held her on a true course to the heart of the city and then gently pulled her to a halt, so that she hovered in the air over an open circle. Merla had no idea what he wanted her to do; but she remembered that people who had treated her lovingly were somewhere nearby.

*

Cesare had spent a wretched night, knowing that he was still going to be holed up in this room when the early morning heat began. He had a dream that he heard a horse neighing right outside his window. It must have been a dream, because no horse could be up so high. Only Merla, he thought, drifting into another dream in which Arcangelo won the race without him. It was perfectly possible for a horse to win the Stellata ‘
scosso
', without a rider. But not for it to start that way.

Cesare heard bolts being pulled and he ran to the door, but two burly men he had never seen before made sure he could not get out. One of them set down a basket of rolls and fruit and a beaker of milk. And then he was on his own again, free to satisfy his physical hunger but still gnawed by mental anguish.

*

‘I want you to ride Arcangelo for the Ram,' said Paolo, waiting for Georgia in the hayloft, with Cesare's jockey silks. ‘You can do it, can't you? Ride bareback, I mean?'

‘Well, yes,' said Georgia swallowing.

‘And you've ridden a horse as big as this?' he persisted.

Georgia remembered Conker. She nodded.

‘Then please put these clothes on and meet us in the yard,' said Paolo. ‘We must get down to the track.'

*

Word had spread fast in Remora of a supernatural event. The Campo was full of people gazing upwards. They stood around in groups, far more of them than usually turned out for a morning heat.

In the centre of the Campo the tall slender column rising from the fountain was no longer unadorned. At the top of it, far higher than anyone could reach with a ladder, the rose and white banner of the Twins fluttered from the lioness's neck.

‘It's an omen,' said the Remorans, making the Hand of Fortune. ‘The Twins will win, surely?'

‘No surprise about that,' said others. ‘Only how the banner got there.'

‘It must have been the goddess,' came a voice. And ‘Dia, Dia!' echoed round the Campo.

‘The goddess – or someone on a flying horse,' said someone.

And that was how the rumour began that a winged horse was living again in Remora.

Chapter 21

Go and Return a Winner

‘There's no time to worry about that,' Paolo said, barely glancing at the column and the fluttering scarf. ‘Now, you understand there will be no use of whips today? All you have to do is stay on for three laps of the Campo. Don't worry about where you come at the end.'

It was good advice, since Georgia in fact came last. But she did stay on and the entire heat was very close, with most of the horses bunched together. The Water-carrier won by a length, with a horse called Uccello. His young jockey was famously always hungry and, unfortunately for him, was seen munching some breakfast just before mounting up. So ‘Salsiccio' he would now for ever be.

Georgia got her nickname too and it wasn't very flattering. She had not even seen a heat before and had to be shown everything about where to wait and when to mount and what to do. ‘Zonzo' she was called, the Talian equivalent of ‘dozy', but it was quite an affectionate name and people were kind to her, even rival jockeys.

Word had spread fast in Remora about Cesare's disappearance and no one doubted that he had been removed from the scene because he was a threat to the di Chimici's chances in the race. Such things had happened before.

‘Bad luck for the Ram,' said Riccardo to Enrico, as they watched the fourth heat.

‘Terrible,' agreed Enrico. ‘But it's still only a heat. Maybe their substitute will improve.'

Riccardo shook his head. ‘To miss a heat is a dreadful omen,' he said. ‘They won't recover from that.'

But at least the Ram now had a rider. The jockeys didn't have to give their names in to the marshals till the morning of the race itself. After that, no change was possible. If Cesare had been kidnapped then, the Ram would have had to drop out of the Stellata. But Enrico didn't want the Ram to drop out; he just didn't want them to win.

Though Georgia had been quite terrified while it was going on, once the heat was over she felt elated. It hadn't been as bad as she thought it would be. It was a lot less violent than the Palio she had seen on television. Still, it was only a heat. The real thing might be very different.

Arianna was watching the heat from her balcony with Rodolfo.

‘What is going on?' she asked him. ‘That's the Stravagante on the Ram's horse, not the proper rider.'

‘Cesare is missing,' said Rodolfo. ‘We think kidnapped. Paolo decided that Georgia must take his place.'

‘Well, she doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of it,' said Arianna. ‘That's just the result to make Duke Niccolò happy – Bellezza's Twelfth coming in last.'

‘He wouldn't be content with that unless the Lady or the Twins won; remember this race is supposed to show the di Chimici dominance over Talia,' said Rodolfo.

Arianna sighed. ‘Why didn't you tell me the Reman Stravagante was a girl?' she asked.

‘I don't think I told you anything – except that the new Stravagante had arrived. Does it matter?'

‘Did you know she was a friend of Luciano's?'

‘Doctor Dethridge told me that she came from the same school as Luciano. Dethridge thinks that school is built on the place where his old laboratory used to be.'

‘What do you think of her?' asked Arianna.

‘At the moment I am very angry with her and with Luciano, because of what they did with Falco,' said Rodolfo. ‘But she is brave and loyal and willing to do what is asked of her.'

‘Do you think she is pretty?' asked Arianna.

Rodolfo didn't answer straightaway. He looked closely into her face but it was hard to tell what she was thinking in her elaborate mask.

‘This will all be over in a few days,' he said. ‘Then you and I and Luciano will all be back together in Bellezza. This last month will soon be forgotten.'

‘Then you do think she is pretty,' said Arianna dolefully.

‘Not in the way that you are,' said Rodolfo. ‘Young women in the future in the other world don't seem to be beautiful in that way, if Georgia is typical. But she is not unpleasant to look at.'

‘I don't like looking at her,' said Arianna under her breath.

And if Rodolfo heard her, he chose not to answer.

*

Cesare was planning his escape. He was not hopeful of success but he had to think of a way to get out or go mad. The last few times that food had been brought to him, there had been only one man, but that one had been armed. Desperate though Cesare was to escape, he knew it would just be a waste of energy to hurl himself at someone bigger, stronger and carrying a dagger.

But the plan he had was hard to carry out. He had decided not to eat or drink anything they brought him. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, his throat was dry and the sheer boredom of his captivity made it virtually impossible to stop thinking about food but Cesare wanted to be in the Campo delle Stelle even more, so he gritted his teeth and kicked the dishes over on to the dusty floor, lest he be tempted.

*

Georgia was living on her nerves. Paolo took her back to the Ram and talked her through everything that would happen in the next day and a half. There would be another heat that evening, followed by long dinners held in the streets of all the Twelfths, and most Remorans would stay awake all night drinking and talking about the race. Soon after dawn all the jockeys would attend Mass in the cathedral and then, after the last heat, their names would be formally given to the marshals as those who would ride in the evening race.

Even if Cesare miraculously should return, once Georgia's name had been entered in the lists, she would have to be the one who rode Arcangelo in the Stellata. There could be no change of jockey after that. And then there would be the last heat, run in the morning. She could rest a little around lunchtime, but the build-up to the great contest would start at about two in the afternoon, when all those taking part in the parade, including the jockeys, would be dressed in the colours of their Twelfth, and the standard-bearers and drummers would set out towards the cathedral.

‘It sounds as if I'll need to be here continuously,' said Georgia, alarmed.

‘It's not quite as bad as that,' said Paolo. ‘But you certainly would need to be here after dark for most of the time. Can you do that?'

‘Is it safe?' she asked, suddenly worried about finding herself stranded in Talia for ever like Luciano.

‘I think so,' said Paolo. ‘I will talk to Doctor Dethridge and to Rodolfo. But I think this is a risk we have to take. I think this may be why you found your way to us.'

A risk I have to take, thought Georgia. Out loud she said, ‘Do I have time to stravagate back home now? I need to make some arrangements.'

She climbed into what she now thought of as her hayloft and took out the talisman. But sleep seemed impossible. Her mind was too busy. If Paolo was right and this was what she had been brought to Remora to do – to ride in the Stellata and make sure that Bellezza's Twelfth was not publicly disgraced – then it hadn't been her task to help Falco at all. Perhaps Rodolfo was right and she should bring him back? But was that still an option? Gaetano had told them how thin and frail his brother had become, kept hanging on to life by having warm milk and honey dribbled into his mouth from a spoon. There were no drips and feeding tubes in sixteenth-century Talia.

*

Rodolfo came to see Luciano in the Ram. Never before had they been at odds and it was uncomfortable for both of them.

‘Luciano,' said Rodolfo. ‘We must speak again of Falco. I know that Georgia has been distracted by this business with the race – and goodness knows that is important – but she needs to bring Falco back to his body while it is still possible. I don't think he can hang on here much longer.'

‘You don't understand,' said Luciano. ‘It's all got more complicated than that. Falco is living with my parents.'

Rodolfo looked at him, astounded. ‘Complicated is not a big enough word,' he said. ‘Whose idea was that?'

‘It was Georgia's,' said Luciano. ‘She organised everything in the other world. In fact, she was sure it was what she had been brought here to do.'

Rodolfo was thoughtful. ‘She is a Stravagante,' he said. ‘It would be surprising if she got something like that wrong. But she hasn't had any training like you. And something like this can destabilise the gateway. Remember how time in the other world leapt forward three weeks when you were translated? We've worked so hard to keep the dates stable. We even succeeded in bringing our worlds back into alignment, so that our dates now match again those in the other world, even though they are still more than four hundred years in the future. Who knows what will happen if Falco dies here? What if he should die today? The other world could race even further ahead of us and Georgia could be an old woman before she gets here again. And we need her here tomorrow, fit to ride in the race.'

‘It's such a mess,' said Luciano, running his hand through his hair. ‘I don't know how it all got so difficult. It all began when we made friends with the di Chimici.'

‘And how did that happen?' asked Rodolfo.

Luciano thought for a bit. ‘It was the Manoush,' he said. ‘We all heard their music and that's when it began.'

‘The Zinti?' said Rodolfo. ‘Then I cannot believe it was wrong.'

He sighed deeply. ‘I must talk to Georgia again and this is not a good time to do it. But perhaps there is more going on here than I know.'

And he put his arm round Luciano's shoulder.

Georgia found herself back in her room in the middle of the night. Again she was planning – how to free up time to be in Remora, the plan she had for getting out of her house and how she was going to get Falco to agree to it. The next day was going to be Friday and, with everyone at work, she could spend the whole day away without causing any suspicion. But she had to have a plan for the evening and the next day. Her family would expect to see her then.

Quietly, she got up and switched on her desk lamp. She took a piece of paper and wrote a note to Maura. Then she crept down the stairs and left it on the kitchen table, where her mother would find it at breakfast. The next bit was going to be much harder. She would have to go to the Mulhollands' house and get Falco to let her in, in the middle of the night. And her courage quailed at the thought of walking the London streets in pitch darkness.