City of Swords

  Enrico put his fingers to his lips. ‘Shh. Now do you want to find Prince Gaetano or not?’

  *

  Gaetano was sleeping on a little folding bed when the intruder quietly entered his tent. Luciano slipped softly across to the bed and put his hand over his old friend’s mouth.

  Gaetano’s eyes flew open and he reached for his sword.

  ‘It’s me, Luciano,’ whispered his visitor.

  Gaetano relaxed and Luciano took his hand away.

  ‘How did you get past the guard?’ he asked. ‘If you’d been an enemy, I’d be dead by now.’

  ‘I put a glamour on him,’ said Luciano. ‘Now, listen, this is important and we haven’t got much time. Have you got a mirror?’

  But Gaetano was probably the least vain person in the army and had not felt the need to bring one in his baggage.

  ‘We need to set up some communication between you here in the besieging force and us Stravaganti in the city,’ said Luciano. ‘Things are getting pretty desperate and we want to stop any more deaths.’

  ‘Cavaliere!’ came a hoarse whisper from outside the tent, followed by a thud and a shriek.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Gaetano, girding on his sword and going to the tent flap.

  Luciano sighed. ‘I think it’s a spy you will recognise,’ he said. ‘But let him in. I think he can be trusted.’

  The guard outside Gaetano’s tent, who had been so easily overcome by Luciano’s magic, had no such difficulty in capturing Enrico. Reluctantly, he released him to his superior officer and resumed his duties.

  Enrico shook himself like a cat who has been picked up without permission. ‘Sorry about that, Your Highness,’ he said, doffing his cap to Gaetano. ‘But I was listening to what the Cavaliere was asking you.’

  ‘Eavesdropping, you mean,’ said Luciano.

  ‘It’s what spies do,’ said Enrico smoothly. ‘The thing is, you need a looking-glass. And I can get you one.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Gaetano. ‘That would be very helpful of you.’

  ‘You don’t go to a soldier when you want a mirror, do you?’ Enrico reproached Luciano. ‘You ask a woman.’

  Luciano shrugged. If Enrico had managed to find a woman in this army of ten thousand Talian men, good for him.

  ‘Just get it, will you?’ he said.

  ‘I will if His Highness here will tell the guard to let me back in without thumping me.’

  *

  Ludo stood on the wall outside his guardroom leaning against one of the crenellations, watching the dawn rise in streaks of pink and blue. He had hardly slept. He was about to give the order he had been dreading. He could see the tents of the di Chimici army spread out to the east, the rising sun glinting on the tips of their flagpoles.

  Sleeping inside them were ten thousand men, but by the next nightfall there would be fewer, maybe hundreds fewer. He asked himself many times a day why he had ever started what was now unfolding in Fortezza. And he had come to the bitter realisation that it was much easier to start a rebellion or a war than to stop it. His di Chimici side had been uppermost when he staked his claim to the throne, but now the peaceable Manoush element of his nature could find no way out.

  His young bodyguard, Riccardo, stood respectfully a few paces away. He understood that a military leader like Prince Ludovico needed a few quiet moments before a strike.

  Ludo straightened up like someone who had made a decision and walked back to the guardroom, oblivious of Riccardo’s presence. The bodyguard didn’t mind. He felt honoured that his future prince took his presence so much for granted.

  *

  In the di Chimici camp, the chaplain, Cardinal Rinaldo, was preparing to celebrate a dawn Mass. It was Sunday in Talia and his biggest moment since arriving outside Fortezza. He hated living in an encampment, which could not provide him with the level of comfort he regarded as essential.

  Now he consecrated enormous quantities of the Host. Perhaps not every single man in the army would communicate, but most would, because it was not only Sunday but the day on which it was most likely that the Fortezzan rebels would attack.

  He and his acolytes had set up a trestle table with a lace-edged cloth and candles, to be an altar, in the middle of the camp, out of range of cannon-shot, and the servers had lit the incense in the burners. Soldiers were coming from all over the camp to attend the service, the di Chimici princes and dukes at the front.

  But Rinaldo did not know that somewhere in his congregation were the Cavaliere of Bellezza and a blueclad spy.

  Enrico had delivered the mirror as promised and Luciano had set up the link with the one in Fabio’s shop.

  How is Rodolfo? had been his first message.

  Sleeping, said Fabio. The surgeon says he will make a complete recovery. If he doesn’t suffer further injury, said Luciano.

  You managed to get into the army? That’s remarkable.

  I’m going to leave the glass with Gaetano. But I must soon stravagate to the other world and back to you. Only, Rinaldo di Chimici is about to celebrate Mass.

  Don’t put yourself at risk, said Fabio. He would recognise you.

  I shan’t, said Luciano. Besides, I have altered my appearance a little.

  He was just wondering whether to go up and take Communion and see if Rinaldo would recognise him when a horrendous sound split the air.

  ‘The devils!’ shouted Fabrizio. ‘They’re attacking us. On a Sunday, when we are at the Lord’s work.’

  The improvised altar was overturned in the rush of men to grab armour and take up position at their own guns; the Fortezzans would have an instant reply.

  And in the midst of all this, Luciano had to find somewhere to lie down and sleep so that he could complete his double stravagation. In the chaos of the attack and the army’s response, he made his way back to Gaetano’s tent, which was now unguarded. He lay on the camp bed, his mind a whirl of emotions, holding the red stone and hoping it would take him back to Mortimer’s shop, from which it had brought him.

  Because if not, he was going to be stuck in the middle of a battle with nowhere to hide.

  Chapter 16

  Old Wounds and New

  Laura had her French exam the next day so did not stravagate when they all got back from Mortimer’s. After seeing Luciano back in his own world it was really hard to concentrate on what she needed to write. He had been so caught up in his ‘double stravagation’, which she was the only person who really understood, that again she had not told him what Vicky had said to her.

  This gnawed at her all through the exam and she resolved to tell him the next time she saw him. She would stravagate that night.

  Laura was still staying with Isabel and her family, even though she had no more exams till the following week. She kept making excuses not to go home, because she knew she would not dare take her talisman back with her. If she got Vicky into trouble it would be a poor return for her help.

  But not stravagating had brought its own problems. After the shock of seeing dead bodies in the streets of Fortezza, Laura had spent what remained of the night tossing and turning and then had slept late and heavily the next morning.

  The afternoon’s French exam seemed interminable but 2.45 p.m. came round at last and Laura set off for Nick’s where she had arranged to meet the others after school.

  But she found Nick at the school gates, looking glum.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ she said. ‘I was just coming round to yours. Is that still OK?’

  ‘Yeah, fine, whatever,’ said Nick.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Laura. ‘Have you had an exam?’

  ‘History,’ said Nick gloomily.

  ‘Oh dear, was it awful? I’d have thought you’d be good at history, being, you know …’

  ‘Four hundred years old? You might think it would help, but it doesn’t, because what I know is all different from what happened here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Laura, falling into step beside him.

  Nick was taller than he
r and, now that she knew he was from Talia, she could see that he still had some of that other-worldly glamour that Luciano had acquired. She wondered if Nick would ever lose it.

  ‘Actually, the exam wasn’t that bad,’ he was saying. ‘but I can’t concentrate after all that stuff at Mortimer’s.’

  ‘I’m the same,’ said Laura. ‘What do you think will happen next?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. ‘That’s what we’re going to talk about, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t seem too happy about it.’

  ‘I’m just fed up with Talia bleeding into my world,’ said Nick. ‘Every time I think I’ve managed to shake it off and become a proper twenty-first-century teenager with my family and friends all here, something else comes bursting back in.’

  ‘Or someone,’ said Laura quietly.

  ‘You’re a girl,’ said Nick suddenly. ‘Do you think Luciano’s so incredibly hot?’

  Ah, thought Laura. So that’s it. I guessed as much.

  ‘Well, he’s certainly good-looking,’ she said out loud. ‘But not better-looking than you.’

  ‘Really?’ Nick suddenly seemed to cheer up. ‘I mean, I like him a lot. He was my very good friend in Talia. But I can’t tell about other blokes and what girls think of them. And every time he comes back here it’s so – unsettling!’

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry about Georgia,’ said Laura.

  Nick was walking a lot faster now.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You’re a mate. But it’s not just Georgia.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It’s Vicky too.’

  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.’