City of Swords (44 page)

Laura didn’t know what to say to him. She was sure his wound was infected and that he needed antibiotics. She would have braved Rodolfo’s wrath to bring something back for him from her world, but she had no idea how to get hold of any in Islington without a prescription. And most of the people she might have asked to help her were here in Bellezza. Even Vicky.

Enrico Poggi had heard the herald too and rushed out to see who the unexpected visitor was. His lip curled when he saw his old employer, Ambassador Rinaldo di Chimici, now elevated as Pope Candidus, picking his way fastidiously through the crowd.

‘What’s he doing here?’ asked Enrico out loud. He had his own scores he’d like to settle with Rinaldo one day, but at the moment all he saw him as was what Luciano would call ‘a huge security risk’.

But before Enrico could get near to him, a wild figure had risen from out of the crowd and lunged at the Pope. He had his hands round Rinaldo’s throat.

‘Fire!’ Enrico screamed at the guards, pushing his way through the people and taking out his own musket. ‘Fire, why don’t you!’

Later, he would tell the Senate that he didn’t know who had fired first, himself or one of the arquebusiers positioned on the roof. But the attacker released his hold and sank to the ground. It was only then that Enrico saw the scarlet flowering on the Pope’s white robes; the musket ball had passed through the attacker and into his victim. Rinaldo di Chimici fell to his knees with his arms held out in supplication.

‘Goddess, Consort and Son!’ swore Enrico. And then he recognised the other man, who lay stretched out on the Piazza tiles.

‘I got the bastard,’ said the dying man.

^*

‘I can’t see Enrico anywhere,’ Luciano whispered to Gaetano. ‘And there’s a lot of noise in the square. Do you think everything’s all right?’

‘Can you use your mirror to contact Rodolfo,’ Gaetano whispered back.

Luciano discreetly took out a small hand-mirror and concentrated.

‘Look at the Cavaliere!’ said one of the choirboys. ‘Is he checking that he’s handsome enough to get married?’

‘Silver velvet!’ said his friend admiringly. ‘Only a noble could get away with that.’

But the Stravaganti in the row behind him knew what Luciano was doing.

‘Make a Circle of Minds,’ hissed Sky. ‘There’s something up, and if we link with the Talian Stravaganti we might be able to keep this wedding safe.’ He was the only one of them who had seen what happened inside the Church of the Santissima Annunziata in Giglia when so many people died just after a wedding.

Luciano saw Rodolfo’s face in the glass.

Is everything all right?
he thought-spoke.
Is Arianna with you?

There has been a . . . an unexpected development
, came the reply.
But all is well. I know of no other danger. We are coming.

The cries and shouts from the square had died down and everything was quiet. Then a different sound reached the ears of those waiting inside the Basilica. It was like the sighing of waves. Gradually the Stravaganti, who were straining their ears, realised that it
was
the sound of sighs: it was the citizens of Bellezza catching their first sight of their young Duchessa in her wedding dress.

As Arianna and Rodolfo reached the big doors, everyone stood up.

‘Here we go!’ Gaetano said to Luciano, who was gazing steadfastly forward.

^*

The surgeon had called in to see Ludo again. Laura was glad that he hadn’t been invited to the wedding or, if he had, put duty before pleasure.

But he looked worried when he uncovered the Manoush’s wound. There was redness and swelling all round where the musket ball had gone in and Ludo was sweating profusely.

‘What is it?’ asked Laura. ‘It’s infected, isn’t it?’

‘I think the cause must be inside, where the musket ball was lodged,’ said the surgeon. ‘He said he had lain in a ditch outside the butcher’s and we know that he was in the dirty water of the canal. It is possible that some pollution entered his flesh and is hindering his recovery.’

Laura bit her lip. It was no good discussing antiseptic or antibiotics with this sixteenth-century doctor; he wouldn’t know what she was talking about and she could see he had done his best to save Ludo.

But the Manoush was looking alarmingly ill and the surgeon’s frown was getting ever more serious.

Laura was beginning to think there was only one thing she could do.

^*

‘Who gives this woman?’ asked the Bishop of Bellezza.

Rodolfo Rossi stepped forward and took Arianna’s hand. He placed it in Luciano’s. No words were said, but the younger Stravagante received a very vivid picture in his mind of exactly what would happen to him if he ever did anything to hurt this young woman. He smiled and Rodolfo received a very reassuring message back.

It was as well that Brother Sulien was helping the Bishop, because the young couple needed a friend at this moment. Had there ever been such a marriage, with soldiers everywhere in the church?

Arianna had been acutely aware of every one of them when she entered the Basilica but now she was aware of nothing and no one but Luciano. She remembered every detail of meeting him after the night she had spent with the bronze rams on the Loggia degli Arieti. He had been a complete innocent, unaware of anything about Bellezza and Talia.

But then too their lives had both been in danger. She smiled to remember it and exulted that they had survived and would survive many other dangers in order to spend their lives together.

Luciano sensed that smile under her veil and moved it away from her face. He was no expert on dresses, but he had seen Arianna on many state occasions and yet he had never seen anything as grand and as simple at the same time as the white lace dress her grandmother had made for her. There were tiny pearl buttons at the neck and sleeves and layers of complicated airy lace patterns that were like the frost on an English windowpane in winter – something Paola could never have seen.

Once they had made their vows and the Bishop had pronounced them husband and wife, Rodolfo stepped forward to do his last formal action in the service, untying the white lace mask that had hidden almost all her face apart from her violet eyes.

Luciano bent to kiss his bride and the Basilica erupted with cheers. He glimpsed his mother out of the corner of his eyes, weeping openly and being comforted by his foster-mother Leonora.

And then he heard the rumour whispering its way round the Basilica.

‘The Pope is dead! Rinaldo di Chimici is dead!’

Epilogue: Saved

The A & E doctor was baffled. The unconscious young man who had been brought in by an even younger girl and an older man was dressed in nothing but a beautifully stitched white nightshirt. He was barefoot and wearing a silver charm bracelet.

The girl said that the man had been shot but it wasn’t a fresh wound. And it wasn’t like any gunshot wound he had ever seen.

It was just Laura’s bad luck that this was the same doctor who had been on duty the night she had come in with her short-sword injury from Fortezza.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said. ‘You’re Laura, Laura Reid. Let me look at your arm.’ He admired the neat line made by the stitches he had put in less than a fortnight earlier.

‘You seem always to turn up in the middle of the night,’ he said.

‘It’s not Laura who’s been injured this time though,’ said the man. ‘What can you do for, er, Luke?’

Laura was very grateful to have David Mulholland with her. He had been the only person she could think of when she got Ludo back to Mortimer’s shop after taking him the talisman of a silver charm bracelet, which the antiques dealer had found for her in the shop. It wasn’t very masculine but it was the first thing made of silver they could find and Laura had been in a hurry.

Mortimer had been startled when she sat up on his sofa for the second time that night; he had been dozing in an armchair when he saw a man beside Laura. He knew that had been her plan but it was still a shock.

Mortimer had got quicker at this and was soon agreeing he couldn’t leave the others; he was the one who had phoned David, who had left his apparently sleeping wife and adopted son at home and driven as fast as he could to the antiques shop.

‘Well,’ the doctor was saying, ‘I’d say he was a re-enactor and had been injured by a ball from a musket, but I’m no expert on such wounds. What I do know is that it’s vital to get him on to an IV drip and fill him full of strong antibiotics. If it was an authentic musket ball of the period, who knows how much dirt and crud was on it? I’ll give him a tetanus jab too, unless you know if he’s had one in the last three years?’

‘I’m quite sure he hasn’t,’ said Laura honestly.

‘I don’t like his loss of consciousness though,’ said the doctor, opening Ludo’s eyelids and shining a pinpoint of light into his pupils. ‘Did he hit his head at all?’

Who knew what had happened to Ludo between being shot and being fished out of the stinking canal by the other Manoush?

‘He might have done,’ said Laura. She remembered from what Matt had told her that bruises would not have travelled with him, only cuts to the skin, as she knew to her own cost.

But she had watched the doctor inspecting the musket wound and had been thrilled to see that the swelling and redness had gone. She had banked everything on the infection not travelling with him from Talia.

‘His temperature is normal, anyway,’ said the doctor. ‘So there’s no infection.’

‘Will Luke be all right?’ asked David, who had given Ludo’s name as Luke Vivian, the closest he could get to his Talian name and still sound at all convincing.

‘Should be,’ said the doctor. ‘I’d like to know who took that ball out though. And I’ve never seen a re-enactor who fought a battle in a nightshirt.’

Laura felt the knot in her stomach dissolve. She had broken so many rules of stravagation but it would be all right if she could just keep Ludo here until, until . . . no, she dared not think about it.

Ludo’s eyes opened and the first thing he saw was a man in strange pale blue clothes leaning over him. His eyes opened wider and he looked round wildly. He saw Laura.

‘Laura,’ he said, in the Talian way, ‘where have you brought me?’

‘Well, it makes a change from “Where am I?” which is what they always say in films,’ said the doctor.

‘To where you will be well . . . always,’ said Laura.

‘If he doesn’t catch MRSA,’ muttered David.

‘What was that?’ said the doctor.

‘Nothing.’

‘Must he stay in hospital then?’ asked Laura.

‘Just for a few days,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll pump him full of antibiotics with an IV line and then let him home with some tablets. He must finish the course though.’

‘Home?’ said Ludo. He looked at Laura. She looked at David. He shrugged.

The wedding feast had been a strange business. Luciano and Arianna were so happy and so caught up in each other that they could spare no attention for what had happened to Rinaldo di Chimici. But Rodolfo, Silvia and the leaders of the other city-states were all too aware of the delicacy of the situation.