City of Swords (27 page)

All was chaos in Fortezza, with the big guns booming from the walls and the di Chimici army beginning to return fire. The noise was deafening.

Luciano woke in the room above Fabio’s shop and breathed a sigh of relief. He ran downstairs and found that Rodolfo was very much awake and watching the devastation from the window.

‘Maestro,’ he said, going over to the man who had been his greatest protector in Talia.

‘Luciano! You are back!’

Rodolfo embraced the younger Stravagante awkwardly with his good arm. ‘You have done well. But we can’t expect to talk to Gaetano in the midst of this mayhem.’

‘It’s grim, isn’t it?’ said Luciano. ‘I was there when Ludo’s men fired. It broke up Rinaldo’s Sunday Mass good and proper.’

‘It grieves me that a man with so little conscience is so great within the Reman Church,’ said Rodolfo, ‘but I’m sorry the soldiers did not receive what would have given them comfort on what will be for many of them their last day.’

Luciano was silent. He never quite knew what religion his old master really followed, but he saw the force of that thought.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

Rodolfo had his left arm in a sling and a white bandage round his head.

‘I have felt better,’ he said, ‘but I am lucky to be alive. And that is thanks to your quick action. I might have died under that door.’

Luciano looked embarrassed.

‘Silvia is not very pleased with me,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Or Arianna. And she was not best pleased that you had gone into the heart of the army either.’

‘You spoke to them last night?’

‘Yes. When I recovered from the surgeon’s ministrations. And Fabio’s spell.’

‘I should have sent Arianna a message.’

‘I gave her your love,’ said Rodolfo.

‘Thank you. Have you also spoken to Lucia and Guido?’

‘No – the cannon started too early.’

‘We’ve got to stop this somehow,’ said Luciano. ‘Before too many more people die.’

^*

Ludo was having much the same thought. It had been his decision to fire at dawn and catch the army off guard, but he hadn’t liked doing it. It had been almost a relief when the di Chimici had started firing back. He felt he deserved it.

But the Fortezzans don’t
, he thought.
Nor those poor bastards in the di Chimici army.

Over in the Rocca, Lucia stood at the window, watching the destruction of her city.

‘Come away, Princess!’ said Guido when he saw her. ‘You might be injured.’

‘Have you seen what they are doing to Fortezza, Guido?’ said Lucia. ‘Between them Ludo and my family will leave me a heap of rubble to rule, if the di Chimici are victorious.’

‘It won’t be as bad as that,’ said Guido, though he was more worried than he sounded.

‘Just don’t let Mamma see it,’ said Lucia, turning away.

Back in Barnsbury, the atmosphere in Nick’s attic was nervous. Laura was worrying about what had been going on in Fortezza.

‘I should have gone last night, I know,’ she said.

‘But you had an exam today,’ said Georgia. ‘I’m sure Rodolfo and the other Stravaganti wouldn’t want you to mess up your education. He’s very hot on that.’

‘Yeah,’ said Matt. ‘He was dead keen for Luciano to go to university in Padavia.’

‘That doesn’t seem to have gone too well though,’ said Nick. ‘Luciano’s always running off to deal with problems in other cities. I mean, he’s in Fortezza now and it’s still term time in Padavia.’

‘Oh, why does everything have to happen at once?’ said Laura.

‘I think we should be giving you more support,’ said Isabel.

‘I remember, helping me with that “Staying Alive in a Siege” manual,’ said Laura.

‘We could do that,’ said Sky. ‘We’re all doing important exams and it’s not fair that you’re the only one stravagating. Would you like us to come too?’

Laura thought it would be comforting to have someone else from her world beside her in Fortezza, but she hadn’t told any of them that she was meeting Ludo in secret.

‘Let me go on my own tonight,’ she said, playing for time. ‘And I’ll ask Rodolfo.’

Then she thought of something. ‘But Rodolfo and Luciano were both missing when I was last there. We know Luciano’s all right because he came here. But I didn’t ask him about Rodolfo!’

‘I’m sure he’d have told us if there was anything wrong with Rodolfo or if he hadn’t returned,’ said Matt. But he looked worried.

‘I can’t believe I forgot,’ said Laura. ‘Now I really wish I hadn’t stayed here last night.’

The cannons had stopped firing by the time Laura got back to Fortezza so she didn’t realise how bad it had been. But she was shocked by Rodolfo’s appearance.

‘Why didn’t you tell us he’d been hurt?’ Laura hissed at Luciano.

‘There was too much else going on at Mortimer’s,’ he whispered back.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Rodolfo, coming to join them.

Fabio was standing at the workshop window looking at the street, with the same expression Princess Lucia had worn, if he had known it.

‘There’s been an unexpected development,’ said Luciano. ‘Someone from Laura’s world, who didn’t mean to, has stravagated.’

‘Someone stole a talisman?’ asked Rodolfo. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘No,’ said Luciano. ‘Do you remember Sky’s first girlfriend?’

‘Celestino’s friend Alice?’ asked Rodolfo.

‘That’s right. Giuditta made her a talisman – a drawing of Georgia – and Alice sold it to an antiques dealer.’

‘I think that she and Georgia are no longer friends,’ said Rodolfo.

‘That’s true,’ said Laura. ‘Sky – your Celestino – is going out with my friend Bel now.’

‘Ah, Isabella! The heroine of Classe,’ said Rodolfo, smiling for the first time since his injuries. ‘She is better suited to him. I remember that Alice did not like stravagation.’

‘Well, Mortimer – the antiques dealer – fell asleep holding it and ended up in Giuditta’s workshop,’ explained Luciano.

‘Really? That’s remarkable,’ said Rodolfo.

‘Because he’s not a teenager?’ asked Laura.

‘No, not because of that. William Dethridge was not a teenager and he was the one who discovered stravagation in the first place.’

‘I didn’t think of that,’ Luciano admitted. ‘What about other Stravaganti in the past?’

‘I don’t know them all,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I must ask Doctor Dethridge. But I know they have not all been young.’

Fabio came over from the window.

‘We must talk about this in quieter times,’ he said. ‘Luciano, Laura, come out and see what the army has done to Fortezza.’

^*

Arianna was more restless than ever, pacing up and down her palazzo. Ever since she and her mother had seen Rodolfo’s injured face in the mirror, she had not been able to settle to any of her duties.

Silvia was exasperated by her.

‘You are behaving like an ordinary lovesick girl,’ she scolded. ‘But as Duchessa you have responsibilities that cannot be set aside just because you are worried about your lover.’

‘I wish I had never been made Duchessa!’ said Arianna. ‘I didn’t ask to have all these duties and tasks hemming me in every hour of the day!’

‘No, you didn’t ask for it. But you agreed to do it. And that means you have accepted the tasks that “hem you in”. You should not let it be said that you are an inferior Duchessa to your mother.’

‘Is that said? Who says it?’

‘No one yet. And you must make sure they don’t. Can I remind you it is my husband who has been injured?’

‘And my father!’ said Arianna. ‘But Luciano is with him in that dangerous place, and the last we heard he was going to an even more dangerous place. How can I sit here in my dresses of State –’ she flicked contemptuously at her brocade skirt – ‘giving decisions on trivial disputes between citizens or making small talk with ambassadors, when the two most important men in my life could be being killed in Fortezza?’

‘You can do it because you have to,’ said her mother. ‘Do you think all acts of heroism involve fighting and recklessness? Sometimes the task is a dreary and mundane one but it still takes a kind of heroism to bear it.’

‘Sometimes I think you are without feelings,’ said Arianna bitterly.

‘Then that just shows you have learned nothing about me at all in the last three years,’ said Silvia.

‘But you seem to care more about Bellezza than about your own family,’ said Arianna.

There was a silence while they both thought about an old wound that lay between them.

‘Perhaps you are to be a new kind of Duchessa,’ said Silvia at last. ‘It is true that you were not brought up to politics and had no experience before your election.’

It was a concession.

‘But I am worried about how you cannot seem to set your emotions aside. It makes you so vulnerable.’

‘That’s why you had me brought up by your sister,’ said Arianna, trying to keep the resentment out of her voice.

For nearly sixteen years she had believed her parents were Valeria and Gianfranco, who lived on the island of Torrone. And that she had two older brothers who were fishermen.

All that had changed dramatically a few years ago, when she had discovered her true parents were Silvia and Rodolfo.

‘I have told you my reasons many times,’ said Silvia. ‘I weary of repeating it, but the moment I knew I was pregnant, I also knew I would have a person in my life that would be too precious and that would make me vulnerable. To your kidnap, to blackmail, to threats of your death. I could not rule the city and live with that fear day by day.’

‘And what about the children that Luciano and I will have?’ asked Arianna. ‘Won’t they be subject to the same threats?’

‘As I said, you might be a new kind of Duchessa,’ said Silvia. ‘And if you cannot be, well, perhaps you should think again about getting married.’

^*

Laura didn’t think that Ludo would come to their meeting place that day. She had been so shocked by what she saw in the streets of Fortezza she couldn’t imagine that he would have time for a tryst, but she decided to stravagate to the palazzo anyway.

The devastation by cannonball was much worse than that caused by the randomly aimed rocks from the siege-engines. Few streets close to the walls had escaped being hit, and many in the centre had been partly demolished.

Laura was coming to the conclusion that the way in which she had to help Lucia was simply this: to get Ludo to surrender. Yet at the moment it felt as if it would be easier to climb to the top of the battlements, wave a flag to get the army’s attention and offer herself in single combat with their best champion.

After going briefly back to Isabel’s bedroom, where her friend was peacefully asleep, Laura plunged again into the state that brought her to Talia.

As she arrived in the palazzo, still holding the little sword, she saw that Ludo was there but that he was not alone. Normally his guards waited outside the door of wherever their leader was, but today the younger one was in the room with Ludo.

He’d had his back to the door but swung round to see Laura standing holding a weapon, albeit a ludicrously small one, and all his instincts kicked in.