City of Swords (43 page)

Rodolfo had sat with them, grieving for the young man’s injuries.

‘We have to save whom we can,’ he said to Laura, looking at her as if he knew her deepest secrets.

‘But not everyone can be saved,’ she whispered.

She had insisted on staying for the surgery and had left reluctantly only when Ludo was asleep, the musket ball removed and the wound laved with honey and olive oil. Laura wasn’t at all sure that would be good enough, but she understood that sixteenth-century Talia had no antibiotics.

Eventually she had stravagated home, promising to return the next day. They were all coming back for the wedding anyway.

It was the biggest single stravagation ever undertaken from the twenty-first century back to sixteenth-century Talia and it needed some careful planning. Not only were Nick, Georgia, Matt, Isabel, Sky and Laura going, they were taking Vicky Mulholland too and stravagating straight to Bellezza, where all kinds of dangers awaited.

Seven Stravaganti, one of them on her first stravagation.

‘We need to get this properly set up,’ said Matt. ‘We’re bound to stay late at the celebrations and we don’t want any of our parents finding us dead to the world in our rooms – tomorrow will be a school day here even though it’s Saturday in Bellezza.’

‘Ayesha will cover for us, won’t she?’ asked Isabel.

‘Well, she can cover for me,’ said Matt. ‘I can go round there tonight. But not for all of us.’

‘At least there’ll be no trouble at Nick’s,’ said Georgia. ‘David knows all about Talia and he’ll cover for Nick and Vicky. Maybe I could stay there too.’

‘That still leaves quite a lot of us,’ said Sky.

‘What about Mortimer Goldsmith?’ asked Laura.

Everyone looked at her in surprise.

‘I mean, what we need is someone who knows about stravagation, don’t we? We could all tell our parents we were sleeping over at friends’ houses – apart from Nick and Vicky – but actually go to his shop. Then if we don’t get back, what our parents would see was empty beds – not comatose teenagers.’

‘That could work,’ said Matt.

‘I bet he’d be up for it,’ said Georgia. ‘That’s a brilliant idea. Let’s go and ask him.’

^*

Once it had been explained to him, which took a while, Mortimer Goldsmith accepted the scheme with alacrity.

‘I have only two beds,’ he said, ‘mine and the one in my spare room. But there’s a sofa in the sitting room. Is that enough? I’ll happily stay up and watch over you all.’

‘That’s plenty, honestly, Mr Goldsmith,’ said Laura. ‘We’d be very grateful. All we need is for you to ring the school if we don’t wake up in time tomorrow morning.’

‘What should I say?’ asked Mortimer, feeling a little less enthusiastic about the idea. ‘I can hardly pretend to be everyone’s grandfather, can I?’

‘It probably won’t happen,’ said Sky. ‘And I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

When they all arrived in Bellezza, stravagating from Nick’s house and the little flat above Mortimer Goldsmith’s shop, the news about Ludo was worse.

Laura hardly took in that Vicky Mulholland had stravagated with Nick. She had arrived with them in Arianna’s parlour. Laura supposed it must be difficult for this woman to see her first son in another world and hard for Nick too, but she had no feelings left to expend on anyone else.

She saw Vicky meet her daughter-in-law-to-be for the first time and felt like a spectator at a show. Arianna was not yet in her wedding dress but a lilac wrapper and mask, yet she still looked like a duchess.

‘Should you be here, Lucien?’ Vicky asked shakily. ‘It’s bad luck in our world for the groom to see his bride on the wedding morning.’

‘Is it?’ said Luciano. He showed no signs of leaving. In fact he gave Vicky a big hug and led her to a comfortable chair.

‘Can I see Ludo?’ asked Laura.

‘Of course,’ said Arianna. ‘I’ll get Marco to take you. But the surgeon says he is rather feverish.’

When Laura saw the Manoush sitting up in bed with a hectic red circle on each cheek, her heart sank. He was awake and knew her, but his eyes were glittering unnaturally. The surgeon was inspecting his wound and it looked horrible, a sort of greenish-yellow colour. There was a sickly, rotten smell in the room.

‘Marco,’ said Laura, ‘will you please tell the Duchessa I might not make it to the wedding? I think I should stay with Ludo.’

^*

The new Pope was to be a surprise visitor at the wedding. There was something that the Grand Duke wanted him to see and report on. Pope Candidus relished all the pomp and grandeur of his new role and felt the power and influence flowing from him.

He had always loathed Bellezza and, now that he was Pope, employed an acolyte to dispense clouds of sweet-smelling incense in front of him, protecting His Holiness from the smells of the canals.

He was gliding along the Great Canal in a very highly decorated mandola, reclining inside the curtained cabin, looking forward to the sensation his arrival would cause in the cathedral. Why, the Bishop would have to give up his throne to him!

Rinaldo, who still couldn’t quite think of himself as Pope Candidus, even though he had chosen the name, lay back upon the velvet and silk cushions and considered the vengeance he and the Grand Duke would take on Bellezza and its upstart Cavaliere. Neither of them could bear to think of Luciano as Duke Consort of that troublesome city.

Of course the cathedral would need to be ritually purified if cousin Fabrizio’s plan came off but that was just the beginning. A terrible omen for the couple’s marriage. And then he, Rinaldo, had a personal score to settle with Silvia the ‘late’ Duchessa. And that red-headed fellow, who was bound to be there now that he had married Princess Lucia – with indecent haste in the Pope’s view; he was another that should face a reckoning. He owed Rinaldo money!

^*

Silvia was in charge of clothing Vicky suitably for the wedding. The two women mentally circled round each other in Silvia’s apartments for about a minute and then became instant friends.

‘Luciano has already told us your height and size,’ said Silvia, ‘and I have a choice of five different dresses for you here.’

Vicky looked at the brocades and silks and taffetas and smiled. She had nothing so fine as even the least of them in her wardrobe at home.

‘Is there nothing you like?’ asked Silvia anxiously. ‘My maid Susanna will help you try them on.’

‘They are all beautiful,’ said Vicky, ‘but I can’t imagine wearing any of them.’

‘I have jewels and shoes ready to match any colour,’ said Silvia.

‘I’m happy with this,’ said Vicky, closing her hand on the miniature that now hung round her neck on a silver chain.

‘Well, at least you don’t need a mask,’ said Silvia.

‘Don’t I?’ asked Vicky. ‘Arianna was wearing one.’

‘But for the last time,’ said Silvia. ‘It’s only unmarried women over sixteen who wear them in Bellezza. What a pity Luciano’s father is not here with you!’

‘It’s all so fantastic,’ said Vicky, looking round the grand chamber. ‘I still can’t believe my son is living in your world.’

‘Best not to think of it then,’ said Silvia, always practical. ‘Just enjoy the day.’

^*

Arianna’s two attendants were both di Chimici princesses, which would annoy the Grand Duke immensely when he found out later.

Beatrice and Arianna had become great friends when the di Chimici princess stayed in Bellezza before her marriage to Filippo Nucci a few months earlier. And Francesca, Gaetano’s wife, whose acquaintance with the Duchessa had begun in the awkward circumstances of standing against her at her election, had been a friend for a long time.

The two princesses wore dark green silk dresses, the colour of ivy, with long trains, and carried trailing white roses.

Luciano’s groomsmen included di Chimici too: Gaetano would stand beside him with Duke Alfonso. But Cesare Montalbano was there too, come from Padavia for the occasion.

But by far the largest group among the wedding guests was that of the Order of Stravaganti.

Rodolfo would of course step forward to give Arianna’s hand into Luciano’s, and William Dethridge as Luciano’s foster-father sat on the other side of the great Basilica with his Talian wife, Leonora, and Vicky Mulholland, who had come further than any Talian guest and was an honorary Stravagante for the day. She was clad in dark blue brocade and receiving many admiring and curious glances.

Brother Sulien was taking part of the service, but Giuditta Miele had come with him and Sandro from Giglia and was sitting monumentally in a row near the front, next to Professor Constantin of Padavia. Fabio the swordsmith of Fortezza sat with Flavia the merchant of Classe, and on the other side of her was her son Andrea, looking less like a pirate than he used to and with a very pretty girl on his arm.

But there were other Stravaganti that the Barnsbury students had not met – from all the other city-states that they hadn’t visited, men and women who knew the secret of travel in time and space yet looked like ordinary people with ordinary jobs.

The teenagers from Islington all lined up on the groom’s side in the second row. All except Laura, who could not leave Ludo. Beside them were Aurelio and Raffaella, Ludo’s cousins, dressed in their most colourful costumes.

In a new blue suit and having been forced to bathe to within an inch of his life, Enrico Poggi patrolled the aisles, checking on the position of every guard in the wooden superstructures that criss-crossed the upper levels of the Basilica. He had been sprayed with a perfume supplied specially for the occasion by Brother Sulien, the pharmacist.

On Arianna’s side, Silvia sat with her sister, Valeria, and husband, Gianfranco, and their tall fisherman sons – the family that until three years ago Arianna had regarded as her own. At the last minute Paola, Arianna’s grandmother, slipped into the seat beside her husband, Gentile.

‘All well?’ asked Silvia, who knew her mother had been making final adjustments to Arianna’s dress.

‘More than well,’ said Paola. ‘My best bride yet.’

‘You are prejudiced, dear,’ said her husband.

‘Well, you wait and see.’

Waiting without seeing was what was happening inside the Basilica, the crowd was good-natured and patient, eating and drinking and gossiping about every arrival in front of the great doors. The bronze rams gazed down at them placidly.

There was a sudden kerfuffle in the Piazzetta and a flustered herald sounded a few awkward notes in order to clear a path through the crowds, who had spilled over there from the Piazza Santa Maddalena.

From Ludo’s room, which overlooked the Piazzetta, Laura heard the sound. She looked out at the seething mass of people and the man dressed all in white.

‘I think the Pope has come,’ she said. ‘That’s odd. He wasn’t supposed to.’

Ludo was drifting in and out of consciousness and often said things that did not make sense.

‘The Pope is my enemy,’ he said now. ‘I would kill him but I lost my dagger.’

Laura remembered Luciano giving it to him in the jail.

‘You aren’t going to kill anyone,’ she said. ‘And no one is going to kill you. Just rest.’

‘I might die though, all the same,’ said Ludo, sitting up in a moment of sudden lucidity.