City of Swords (13 page)

But he accepted that Laura would not be able to stravagate for a while, and now he was worrying about whether, once she was able to return, she would be safe in Fortezza, with the rebels preparing the city for a siege and the likelihood of a great army being unleashed on it by the di Chimici.

The remnant of the Fortezzan soldiery loyal to Princess Lucia was all up at the castle and soon there would be a siege within a siege. Already it was unsafe to get in or out of the castle.

We could really do with a Stravagante from the other world
, Fabio communicated to Rodolfo, through his mirrors.
If Laura were well, she could stravagate straight inside the castle and then tell us what was going on. She could take messages between us
.

^*

Rodolfo was still in Bellezza when he got that message. But he would set out for Fortezza himself soon. To his exasperation, Luciano was with him.

‘I’m not going back to Padavia,’ he said, as soon as he arrived at the Ducal Palace. ‘You need me here – or in Fortezza. And how can I study with this sort of thing going on?’

‘Luciano, what are we to do with you?’ asked Rodolfo. ‘You have spent more time away from your studies than over your books. It has not even been a full year that you have been at the University.’

‘Well, it will have to do,’ said Luciano. ‘I’m as educated as I’m going to get – at least in university learning.’

Arianna rushed into the room, stopping when she saw Luciano.

‘Oh, it’s true!’ she said. ‘Marco told Barbara you were here but I couldn’t believe it.’

He was with her in two long steps and holding her tight.

‘Oh, I give up on the pair of you!’ said Rodolfo. ‘The boy simply won’t stay away.’

‘Don’t be cross, Father,’ said Arianna, looking flushed and happy. ‘It’s not natural for us to be apart. You can’t expect it.’

‘And what if he insists on coming to join the battle at Fortezza?’ said Rodolfo.

He saw a mulish expression steal over his daughter’s face.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I absolutely forbid it. Not just as your father but as your senior adviser.’

Unconsciously, Arianna put her hand up to her hair. It was beginning to grow out of the brutal crop she had inflicted on it to disguise herself as a young arquebusier on a fighting ship in Classe.

‘And I forbid it too,’ said Luciano.

Arianna turned on him. ‘Is that the kind of husband you intend to be? The sort who thinks he has the right to tell his wife what she can and can’t do? Do I have to remind you both that I rule this city and you are both my subjects?’

The loving and impetuous girl had disappeared and been replaced by an imperious ruler.

‘It is precisely because you are my Duchessa, to whom I owe my absolute fealty, that I say you must not think of joining us – of joining your Cavaliere,’ said Rodolfo.

‘Rodolfo’s right,’ said Luciano. ‘Bellezza needs you. You mustn’t risk your life that way again.’

Hot tears stung Arianna’s eyes. She hated it when they ganged up on her and hated it most of all when they were right. She wanted to sweep out but didn’t think she could carry it off. Besides, she didn’t want to leave them together to talk about her – or about what they were going to do in Fortezza without her.

‘You seem determined to put your own life in danger as much as possible before we are married,’ she told Luciano.

‘But I am here, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘I’ve given up my studies in Padavia. I’m fully a Bellezzan now.’

‘But you will go away to Fortezza!’ said Arianna. She couldn’t help sounding like a thwarted child.

‘If Rodolfo thinks I should,’ he said.

‘It’s so unfair,’ said Arianna, sinking into a chair. ‘You have all the adventures and I have to stay here and look beautiful and listen to boring citizens’ disputes and make laws. I never asked to be Duchessa. I was happier when we were roaming the city and spitting plum stones into the lagoon.’

‘I don’t think we will be happy trying to get past a siege and inside the city walls in Fortezza,’ said Luciano. ‘I’d rather be eating plums with you too.’

‘We won’t be getting past the siege,’ said Rodolfo. ‘We will be joining it. I’m going to offer the services of the Talian Stravaganti to the Grand Duke of Tuschia.’

He had both of their attention now.

‘The Grand Duke of Tuschia?’ said Arianna.

‘You mean Fabrizio di Chimici,’ said Luciano, more calmly than he felt. ‘The man who would do anything he could to kill me?’

‘That’s right,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I think we will be fighting – if it comes to that – alongside him and his army.’

Chapter 8

Within the Walls

Once the rush of excitement about fighting for his claim had passed, Ludo was feeling a sense of anticlimax. He had staked everything on a gamble that enough of the army and citizens would support him in order to get Lucia and her mother shut into their castle and to man the walls. But what was going to happen after that?

He didn’t really expect that Lucia would just give in and he was under no illusions that the rest of the di Chimici would sit back and let him take the throne of Fortezza. But his supporters were well capable of defending the city walls against a long siege and it was just possible that they would defeat an attacking army.

And if so, what then?

Would Lucia just accept that he was Prince Ludovico of Fortezza and quietly go away with her mother to live in Volana with the Duke and Duchess? He hoped so, because he really could not imagine getting rid of her in any other way. A woman and his sister! Ludo was not really cut out to be a ruthless tyrant.

Time and again his mind went back to the dark-haired girl from the other world. His men were frequent customers at Fabio’s smithy and he instructed them to ask after Laura, but no one had seen her in the last few days. Fabio had just shaken his head when asked. Ludo was beginning to wonder if she had been a vision. He had seen her only twice.

He returned to thinking about his prospects. If he did not defeat the supposed di Chimici army, then what? Death in battle? Execution by the victors? Ludo had escaped execution once and it had changed his life. He had always been attractive to women, but since he had escaped the fires in Padavia there had been a sort of desperate, dangerous quality to him that seemed to make every female he encountered want to tame him.

Except Laura. He was thinking about her again; he couldn’t help it. If she had known how much he thought about her, she would have been amazed and thrilled.

He had seen something in her that he had found in no Talian woman, Manoush or otherwise: a kindred spirit. Laura was unhappy; Ludo sensed that. And she made him face just how unhappy he had been and for how long. Of course, she was very young – much younger than him. But Ludo swore to himself that the next time he saw her, he would tell her how he felt, even if they were facing each other the length of two drawn swords.

After the bonfires of Padavia, which were supposed to be the end of Ludo and nearly thirty of his people, just for worshipping a different deity from the di Chimici, he had become horribly restless. All the Manoush were nomads but since then, once he had recovered his spirits in Bellezza, Ludo had not been able to settle anywhere for more than a day or two.

He had left his group and travelled up and down Talia alone, visiting different cities and looking up every acquaintance he could remember. The only people he avoided were his cousins Aurelio and Raffaella. Somewhere around the middle of the time he had spent wandering, Ludo made a decision.

He had looked properly at the ring his mother had given him and had gone to see a jeweller in Volana.

‘That’s the Fortezza crest,’ the man had told him.

‘You are quite sure?’

‘As sure as if I had made it myself,’ said the jeweller. ‘I know all the di Chimici crests and this one is Prince Jacopo’s. Prince Jacopo the Elder, that is, not the Prince of Bellona.’

Ludo had left Volana in a daze. His father was Prince Jacopo of Fortezza. For twenty-four years he had been all Manoush, travelling from place to place, owning little, sleeping under the stars. Now all he had to do was journey to that city and get a message to the castle; then he could tell Jacopo his story.

He had decided at that moment to embrace the other side of his blood, to find out what it would be like to be a di Chimici. To be so sure of your rights and your position, the rightness of your religion and your way of life. To lead armies and command other men if necessary.

But when he had reached Fortezza, Jacopo was already dying and Ludo had failed. He hadn’t even got as far as sending a message into the castle; he had been frozen with inertia – until he met the dark-eyed Stravagante from the other world, and by then it had been too late.

Four hundred years and incalculable distances in space away, Laura was thinking about Ludo too. She had just had her first session with the psychiatrist, and it had been so painful and embarrassing that her mind curled in on itself away from the reality and went back to a secret fantasy, in which she might actually be with Ludo.

It took place neither in Talia nor Islington but somewhere vague and amorphous. Ludo would be handsome in twenty-first-century clothes but still have that dangerous unpredictable quality like David Bowie in
Labyrinth,
one of her favourite films.

But he was sweet to her, kind and considerate and protective. That was one version of the fantasy. Then Laura would pull herself together and try to play it a different way. At the back of her mind she knew Ayesha and Isabel wouldn’t approve of this wimpy vision of herself needing a man to protect her; she didn’t approve of it herself.

So she’d restructure everything to create a scenario in which they were more equal. Perhaps she would show him how to live in London in the twenty-first century? It would make her smile to imagine how someone used to the cobbled streets and blue skies of Fortezza would adapt to life in a north London suburb.

Ludo on the Tube, Ludo at the pub, Ludo in her room.

But this was where her imagination simply gave up.

‘It’s nice to see you smile,’ said her mother,

‘Oh, Mum,’ said Laura. ‘I can’t go on apologising for being so unhappy before.’

‘I know. I’m just pleased you are looking a bit happier now.’

There was such a big gulf between them, Laura didn’t think it could ever be bridged. The thing that separated her and her parents, the thing they never talked about, was too huge.

Laura had had her first, emergency, appointment with the hospital psychiatrist, but there were still stitches in her arm and it hurt. She had never cut herself deeply enough to need stitches before and it had scared her almost as much as it had her parents. She couldn’t imagine how she could ever get back to normal. Or what normal would now look like.

‘Can I see my friends tomorrow?’ she asked. Her parents surely couldn’t keep her in the house for ever.

‘If you feel up to it,’ said her mother. Though actually she felt that she would like to keep Laura under her eye for the rest of her life. ‘How does your arm feel?’

‘Much better,’ lied Laura. ‘But I’m not sleeping very well. I think it would do me good to get out and get some fresh air.’