City of Swords (25 page)

Mortimer wants to see us. Something’s up. Come to shop as soon as you can.

‘That’s weird,’ said Isabel, showing Laura the text. ‘I hardly know Mortimer. Do you?’

‘No,’ said Laura. ‘Georgia and Nick are the ones who are so pally with him. But I did get my talisman at his shop. Do you think we should go?’

‘Well, the parents are both at work and Charlie’s stuck into his Business Studies. I can’t honestly do much revision for English Language. So if you’re OK to leave the French, let’s go and see what he wants.’

And the new Laura, who was beyond worrying about exams, grabbed a jacket and went.

There was quite a posse of Stravaganti at the antiques shop. Georgia, Sky and Matt were already there, and as soon as the two girls arrived, Mr Goldsmith turned the Open sign to Closed.

‘No Nick?’ whispered Isabel.

‘Science practical,’ Georgia whispered back.

‘What’s all this about?’ asked Laura.

Georgia shrugged.

Mortimer Goldsmith removed his gold-rimmed glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Georgia. ‘You look terrible. You’re not ill, are you?’

‘I have not had much sleep the last two nights,’ he said.

There was clearly something wrong. He wasn’t offering tea and biscuits as he usually did. The Barnsbury Stravaganti found places to sit or perch on odd pieces of furniture in the shop, including a rocking horse and a Victorian commode.

Mortimer drew something out from the top drawer of his desk and held it up to show them.

Georgia and Sky gasped but the others looked blank.

‘It’s you, Georgia, isn’t it?’ said Isabel.

‘How did you get it?’ asked Sky.

‘A young woman called Alice sold it to me,’ said Mortimer.

Georgia and Sky exchanged glances again and Isabel felt her stomach clench. Alice was Sky’s ex and pretty much Georgia’s ex-best friend too but why did she have a portrait of the stripey-haired girl? It was a really good drawing too.

‘The thing is,’ Mortimer continued, ‘there is something odd about this portrait. It is clearly a portrait of our friend Georgia here but in the style of an artist – a very good artist, I must say – from the Renaissance.’

‘It could be a fake?’ hazarded Matt.

‘My first thought,’ said Mortimer. ‘Though I’d like to meet any friend of Georgia’s with this amount of artistic skill.’

He looked at Isabel and Sky, who were sitting next to each other rather awkwardly on a chest of drawers.

‘But the paper and materials used are also of the Renaissance – and yet strangely unaffected by the passing of four hundred or so years. Now isn’t that strange?’

The Stravaganti remained silent; it seemed the safest path. They all knew that Alice had made one stravagation and were beginning to realise this must have been her talisman.

‘However,’ Mortimer was saying, ‘all was made clear to me when I met the artist – Giuditta Miele.’

‘You went to Talia?’ said Sky.

Now they all knew why they were here.

Mortimer nodded. ‘By accident, I hasten to say. I found myself in Giglia and talking to a very formidable artist with marble dust in her hair.’

A wave of nostalgia swept over Sky. It had been Giuditta who had set him on his planned course of studying sculpture.

‘How was she?’ he asked.

‘Very welcoming. She gave me porage,’ said Mortimer.

The Barnsbury Stravaganti all laughed at the incongruity.

‘So you’re one of us now,’ said Georgia. ‘A Stravagante.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Mortimer. ‘I don’t intend to go there again, though Giuditta
did
say she’d get some more suitable clothes for me. To wear if I did. Why I’ve asked you all here is to explain to me what this “stravagating” is. Do you all do it?’

They looked at one another and by a silent mutual agreement all nodded.

‘And Alice? Does she do it too?’ asked Mortimer.

‘She did it once,’ said Sky. ‘She hated it. It was what broke us up in the end.’

He put his arm round Isabel.

‘I see,’ said Mortimer. ‘It is hard to be in a relationship with a – what would you call it – a non-Stravagante?’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Matt. ‘Ayesha hasn’t been to Talia and doesn’t want to go. And that suits us both fine.’

‘What about Nick?’ asked Mortimer.

‘Well, that’s a bit more complicated but yes, he’s a sort of Stravagante too,’ said Georgia.

Mortimer sat back in his chair. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth,’ he said. ‘Now tell me why all of you are teenagers and I’m an old man, yet we’ve all been to Talia.’

There was a jangle on the shop doorbell.

‘Can’t they read?’ said Mortimer irritably.

Matt went and looked out.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s my great-aunt. Shall I let her in?’

Once he’d made up his mind to stravagate again, Luciano had to think hard about a new talisman. The one he had already, since it was from his old world, would get him to somewhere near his parents’ house and would return him to Talia from wherever he had left. He had done that a few times now and was pretty sure he’d end up back in Fabio’s workshop.

But the whole point of this stravagation was to get him into the di Chimici army, preferably somewhere near Gaetano. So he needed a new, specifically Fortezzan, talisman, which would have a strong enough attraction to this city for him to refine where he could arrive. Even as he thought it through, Luciano realised he had no idea if it would work.

He looked round Fabio’s workshop for something portable, while the surgeon worked on Rodolfo’s arm and stitched the gash on his forehead. Fabio had put the senior Stravagante into a light sleep.

There wasn’t much choice, because Fabio needed all the tools of his trade and most of the finished weapons in his shop would have been too big. But there was a drawer full of decorative pieces, like the strap holders for scabbards and various ornaments for pommels, where Luciano found a large red glass ‘jewel’.

‘Can I take this?’ he asked Fabio. ‘Is it Fortezzan? It’s not real, is it?’

Fabio laughed. ‘A real ruby of that size would mean I could retire,’ he said. ‘I think it was part of an order from a merchant for a new sword and scabbard. He wanted that set in the pommel, but he died before I could make the sword. It’s Fortezzan all right. I got it from a glass-blower in San Petronio Street.’

Luciano slipped the ‘ruby’ into the inside pocket of his jerkin and took out the white rose from his funeral in the other world, which Rodolfo had set in resin. He could see it was getting dark outside and he’d decided it would be safer to try to infiltrate the army by night.

‘I’m going to try the double stravagation now,’ he told Fabio. ‘If it works, I’ll somehow find a mirror inside the di Chimici army and set it up for Gaetano to use. Is it all right to leave Rodolfo for you to take care of?’

‘It is an honour,’ said Fabio. ‘I shall look after him as if he were my true brother and not just one of the Order. Good luck!’

‘Luciano! What are you doing here?’

Nick had come home after his Science exam and found his old friend leaning against the railings outside the home they had both lived in.

‘Falco!’ said Luciano, giving him a hug. ‘I mean Nick, of course. You look wonderful! But why aren’t you at school?’

‘It’s exams,’ said Nick, ‘and study leave. Did Laura give you Vicky’s message then?’

Luciano looked troubled. ‘No. I’ve met her, but she gave me no message. What did Vicky say?’

‘Oh, I might have got it wrong,’ said Nick, embarrassed.

‘Is she home?’ asked Luciano.

‘No, she’s giving school lessons to Year 8s today. Come in.’

Once they were inside the house where Luciano had lived for most of his first sixteen years, Nick got out his phone.

‘I’ll let the others know you’re here, shall I? Oh, hang on – there’s a message from Georgia. Damn. I forgot to switch it back on after the exam.’

Luciano looked around his old kitchen. There was a new kettle.

‘Mortimer has stravagated. Come to shop as soon as you can,’ Nick read out from the screen.

‘What does that mean?’ asked Luciano. ‘Mortimer is still in Talia? Where did he get a talisman from?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nick, ‘but if he was still in Talia how would Georgia know he’d done it?’

‘Shall we go?’ said Luciano.

^*

There was quite a party atmosphere in Mortimer’s shop. But as well as the Barnsbury Stravaganti, there was a grey-haired woman Luciano didn’t recognise.

When the boys arrived, there was a double-take when people saw who was coming in behind Nick’s tall frame.

‘Luciano!’ said Laura. She couldn’t believe she was seeing him in her own world.

And she saw that he was the one without a shadow this time.

There were a lot of introductions to be made. Mortimer had not known the old Lucien.

‘This is my great-aunt Eva,’ said Matt, still looking dazed that she was there.

‘And a very good friend of mine,’ added Mortimer.

Eva looked Luciano up and down and then said, ‘That’s a sixteenth-century shirt, young man.’

He opened his arms wide. ‘Guilty as charged. What can I say?’

‘So, let me get this straight,’ said Nick. ‘Everyone here knows about stravagation now?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say I
knew
about it, but I’ve done it apparently,’ said Mortimer. ‘And I’ve told Eva.’

‘So where did you go and how?’ asked Luciano.

‘Alice sold him that sketch Giuditta Miele did of me,’ said Georgia. ‘And it accidentally took him to Giglia.’

‘You met Giuditta?’ said Luciano at the same time as Nick said, ‘You went to Giglia?’

‘The others can fill you in on the details later,’ said Mortimer. ‘What I want to know is
why
there is all this time travel and what it has to do with me?’

It took so long to bring Mortimer and Eva up to speed with what all the Stravaganti had done in Talia that in the end he sent out for pizza – something that had never happened in his antiques shop before.

They found it particularly hard to understand what had happened to Lucien and Nick. Luciano had to demonstrate his absence of shadow. But when they had finished the pizza, he suddenly looked up at all the clocks that were chiming two.

‘I must go back,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be stravagating into the di Chimici army. I didn’t mean to spend so much time here.’

That gave rise to many more questions and explanations but Luciano left them to it, asking Mortimer if he could go and lie down on his bed in the flat upstairs.