City of Swords (22 page)

‘I’ll give you a hundred pounds,’ he said.

It was worth very much more than that, but Alice jumped at the offer, particularly since it came in the form of five twenty-pound notes.

When she had left, Mortimer held the sketch reverently. He had to offer it to Georgia first, he supposed, but not till Monday. He was going to take it up to his flat as soon as he closed the shop.

Ludo had to wait till he was on his own to read Laura’s note. All day he had been aware of it tucked inside his jerkin. But there had been so much to deal with. Since he had rejected the di Chimici embassy and had not heard anything back about his own terms, he had carried on visiting the gun emplacements, encouraging his men in a firm, confident voice he didn’t recognise as his own.

All the time he felt as if he were acting in a play – the role of bold soldier and leader of the rebels. And yet he had been brought up as a Manoush, among people who were peaceable and who thought nothing of territory or possessions; they carried all they owned from place to place and had no permanent city. Yet here he was, laying claim to one of the great Talian city-states and proposing to live within its massive walls under the roof of its castle for the rest of his life.

He could just about do it, but only by listening to the di Chimici side of his nature; after more than twenty years he was going to give the warlike and acquisitive side a chance. Where had being a Manoush ever got him? Nearly burned to death for his beliefs. And what happiness had it brought him? Lots of girls, he had to admit, and a sense of freedom, but he was now ready to give up his liberty as a wanderer and try his hand at being a Talian noble.

But he knew he would always be torn between the two sides of his nature. And he had sensed a similar duality in the girl from the other world. She was brave, anyone could see that. She was prepared to fight in Talia for whichever side needed her. But he knew she was also vulnerable and it was that tension in her that attracted him.

Ludo sighed.

‘I can’t come to where you are on the walls,’ said Laura’s note, ‘but I can arrange to go to that room inside the palazzo where we met. I’ll be there every day at midday. If you can, come and meet me there. If you can’t come, send me a message.’

It was so wonderful to see her trust in him that it made him feel trustworthy, in a way that he had never been before with a woman. He determined to be at the palazzo to meet her next day. Though they must find somewhere more private. He smiled to himself. Laura clearly had not had as much experience of making assignations as he had.

Ludo felt his heart lift at the thought that she had not given up on him, in spite of the fact that they were on opposite sides of the struggle for Fortezza. He just wished he could see a way that they might one day be together. He knew less about stravagation than she did but he did know that only two people from Laura’s world lived in Talia now.

And he couldn’t talk to either of them.

Mortimer Goldsmith couldn’t take his eyes off the sketch of Georgia. It was clearly her, not just someone with a resemblance to her. And it was equally clearly drawn by a Renaissance artist. He had taken it up to his flat and removed it from the frame and examined it through an eyeglass. The paper could not have been any more recent than 1600 and was probably older. The chalks used were consistent with the period.

But the drawing was fresh and vibrant and undimmed by time, which should not have been the case after more than four centuries. And no woman of the sixteenth century had worn her hair in a wild tangle of tiger stripes: red and tawny.

After puzzling over it for so long that he had forgotten to eat any supper, he poured a glass of red wine and phoned Eva Holbrook.

Matt’s great-aunt answered the phone quickly; there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Or her mind.

As soon as Mortimer had explained the issue, she pounced on the subject like the rigorous academic she had been.

‘I have been wondering about sixteenth-century artefacts ever since my visit last autumn,’ she said. ‘That leather-bound book that Matt found in your shop – there is no way that would have just turned up by chance, a piece of that age.’

‘And recently I’ve sold a small silver paperknife that looked like a sword and could have come from the same period,’ said Mortimer.

‘Well, where did that one come from?’

‘A man came into the shop and sold it to me.’

‘What sort of a man?’

‘I didn’t take much notice at the time. You know me, Eva. I’m more interested in things than in people’s faces. But he was dressed rather strangely, now I come to think of it. But people wear such odd things now and I don’t know anything about fashion.’

Eva snorted down the phone. ‘It’s not exactly being fashion-conscious to notice if someone’s wearing clothes four centuries out of date!’ she said.

‘Well, if you put it like that, he
could
have been wearing Renaissance clothes, I suppose, but they were very plain, as if he was a working man. But when I bought that little knife, I had a hunch it would attract another young person from Barnsbury Comp, and it wasn’t long before it did.’

‘And where did the leather-bound book come from? Was it brought in by another escapee from Tudor times?’

‘No. That had been here a while in a box of oddments. It came originally from the old house in Waverley Road, where the school is. But what are you saying? That there are time travellers in Islington?’

He thought she would snort more derision down the phone, but instead she said nothing.

‘Eva?’

‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ she said eventually. ‘Be careful of that drawing, Mortimer. I suggest you ask Matt and Georgia and your other young friends about it before you try anything with it.’

What would I try?
he asked himself as he got ready for bed.
Abracadabra? Take me to your artist?
But he knew there was something fishy about all these artefacts from sixteenth-century Italy ending up in the hands of teenagers he had come to know.

And he remembered that the man who had sold him the paperknife had given the money to someone selling the
Big Issue
outside the shop on his way out. He had thought it strange at the time.

He held the drawing in his hands, careful as he could be to keep it clean, and thought how much he’d like to know how it had come into Alice Greaves’s possession. She seemed very different from the others.

Giuditta Miele had just finished her latest commission and was very pleased with the result. It was a small piece that she had to complete in a hurry, a little statue of the dog Grand Duke Fabrizio had bought for his infant son. The sculptor liked dogs, and this was a hunting hound called Sagitta, the arrow.

She was a big beast, much bigger than the child she had been given to, but gentle and protective of her little master. Giuditta had gone several times to the palace south of the river Argento, to study and sketch the dog. She was to be shown wearing the di Chimici lilies on her collar and with one paw on a stone perfume bottle.

It hadn’t been an easy commission, but Giuditta could now relax until the next. She was never out of work for long. She was now making breakfast for herself and her apprentices in the little kitchen attached to her studio and humming tunelessly.

She turned from the range and gasped. There was a man in her chair who hadn’t been there before. He was even more startled than she was, as well he might have been, since he was wearing only a long blue and white striped nightshirt.

But Mortimer Goldsmith had no idea where he was, and Giuditta had a good guess where he had come from. She had been there herself, more than once, and this wasn’t the first Stravagante to materialise in her kitchen. She saw what he was holding.

‘How did you get the portrait I gave Alice?’ she asked him.

It took Mortimer a moment to work out that ‘Ah-LEE-Chay’ was the fair girl who had sold him the drawing.

And was this large fierce woman a dream? He couldn’t see her properly because he didn’t wear his glasses in bed. Then it occurred to him that he had always been able to see perfectly well in other dreams. He thought he’d better answer.

‘She sold it to me,’ he said. ‘I’m a dealer in antiques.’

The frightening woman softened. ‘Ah. You are the one who sold Georgia the flying horse?’

How could she possibly know that? Mortimer decided to go along with it.

‘Yes, that’s me. This is a sketch of Georgia, isn’t it?’

‘It is. I made it for Alice, but she used it only once.’

There it was again: ‘used it’. Just what Eva had said.

‘Where am I exactly, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘You are in the workshop of Giuditta Miele, sculptor of Giglia,’ said the woman, who even Mortimer could see had a lot of marble dust in her grey hair.

‘And you are she?’

Giuditta inclined her head.

‘Would you like some porage?’ she asked.

It was so surprising that Mortimer said yes. He realised he was very hungry after missing supper and even if it wasn’t quite morning in his world it seemed to be in this one.

Giuditta fetched him a dusty velvet cloak and a blanket which she tucked round him as if he were an invalid. He would have protested, but then a troop of Renaissance angels came into the kitchen for breakfast and Mortimer realised he would have been embarrassed by his skinny bare legs in front of them.

‘This is a visitor who knows Georgia,’ said Giuditta.

The oldest boy – almost a young man, Mortimer could see on closer inspection – took the drawing from his hands and twirled round the room with it.

‘Ah, the pretty one who came to meet the black friar,’ he said.

‘Franco, don’t tease. Give the signor his picture back,’ said Giuditta. ‘He needs it.’

Franco stopped. ‘Are you perhaps her grandfather? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I just like pretty faces.’ He returned the drawing.

‘No,’ said Mortimer. ‘She is like a grandchild to me though and so are the others.’

He suddenly thought of the pale girl he had sold the knife to.
I wonder if she is here too
, he thought.

^*

Laura was indeed in Talia, but not in Giglia. She was getting into the swing of stravagating first to Fabio’s and then to the castle, acting as a secret go-between. But tonight she was going to add meeting Ludo to the mix.