‘Not really,’ said Nicholas. ‘Talia is much more open to the supernatural than England is. I could probably get away with it here. I agree you couldn’t pull it off in Islington, but I bet Vicky and David would be willing to move away if it meant they got you back.’
Luciano couldn’t deny that.
‘And perhaps it would get my father off the Stravaganti’s back?’ said Nicholas. ‘He’s never really believed our cover story about my suicide.’
‘But what about my mum and dad?’ said Luciano, tugging at his hair. ‘I wouldn’t even think of putting them through that again.’
Nicholas looked at him calculatingly. ‘I could tell them,’ he said.
‘Tell them?’
‘Yes. They know you’re alive in another world. You told me yourself that they’ve seen you stravagate back a few times. I could tell them the whole plan. Just think about it, Luciano. You must want to see them again properly.’
And the awful thing was, although he still thought the whole idea was madness, Luciano knew that Nicholas was right. He did want to see his parents again – very much.
Chapter 25
Exile
The Pope’s men brought the body of Camillo Nucci to the church of Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and laid it out in a chapel, alongside five other Nucci corpses recovered from the Piazza Ducale. Graziella Nucci and her daughters found it there after they had visited Filippo in the infirmary. A friar had been sitting by the Nucci’s bed when the women entered. Gradually Filippo was surfacing from his death-like sleep. Brother Sulien had given him the last few drops of the argentum potabile. And the Princess Beatrice was helping to nurse him as well as her brothers.
Graziella had shed tears of joy to see her last remaining son returning to life. But it was another matter when they were taken into the church.
‘We shall have them all washed and anointed,’ said Sulien. ‘The Pope has authorised it. They shall receive decent burial wherever you wish.’
Graziella bent over Camillo. ‘Let him be buried with Davide in the same grave,’ she said. ‘And the others in the same chapel. Who knows how many of us shall join them?’
But she and her daughters stayed to help with preparing the bodies; it was the last thing they could do for their kinsmen.
*
The new Grand Duke was in a slowly simmering rage. He barked at his servants and wouldn’t wait for his tasters but tossed back many goblets of wine and sent for Enrico. He had lost another son, been overruled by his brother and his daughter and now had been turned down by a chit of girl in favour of a youth a third his age. Niccolò had no doubt who was meant when the Duchessa had referred to ‘someone else’. Who could it be but that black-haired Bellezzan youth, the Regent’s assistant, who seemed to dog his every step?
And the Duchessa preferred this callow boy to a mature man with all the wealth and prestige of his house to offer her! It made him livid to think of the silver dress, the African cats and the costly brooch. Not that he wanted his gifts back; he would disdain to have them. He was not mean. But he was proud, and the slight to his honour and his person was more than he could bear.
Still, as he drank more, his angry mood settled into an equally dangerous calm. It was not that he had failed to anticipate this. He had always known that Arianna might refuse him for this reason and he had a plan for how to turn it to his advantage.
‘You sent for me, my Lord?’ said Enrico.
‘Yes,’ said the Grand Duke. ‘I want you to take my glove to that Bellezzan boy at the Embassy and challenge him to a duel.’
*
Arianna slipped out of the Embassy, accompanied by Guido Parola and her bodyguards, to visit Giuditta. The sculptor’s apprentices were still cleaning her statue.
‘It looks as I feel,’ said Arianna. ‘Stained.’
‘The stain can be removed from marble,’ said Giuditta. ‘What has tainted the original?’
‘I am ashamed of what happened to Barbara,’ said Arianna. ‘She is weak and in pain from a wound that should have been mine. But there is something else – the Grand Duke made his proposal a few days ago and I refused him finally today. He made it very clear that his offer was not motivated by love, and yet I fear he is deeply offended and therefore dangerous.’
‘Did you give him a reason?’ asked the sculptor.
‘I gave him one I thought he would understand – that I was in love with someone else. But that is not all. He wants to take my city from me – the city my family has fought so hard to keep free and independent of the di Chimici.’
‘Did you tell him who the other person is?’ asked Giuditta.
‘No, but I fear he will guess. Now I am worried that I have put Luciano in danger. It will be like Barbara all over again – maybe worse. It always seems to be others who suffer the consequences of my actions.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Giuditta. ‘Why not talk to your mother or Rodolfo?’
‘My mother thinks only of politics and they are both too concerned with my safety. I thought perhaps, as a Stravagante but not a politician, you might advise me.’
‘I think it might be advisable to leave the city – at least for Luciano, if not yourself.’
‘But don’t you think he will be watched?’ asked Arianna.
Their conversation had been conducted quietly, only Parola standing near enough to hear them, but now Giuditta raised her voice.
‘I think we had better make arrangements for carrying your Grace’s statue back to Bellezza,’ she said.
Georgia had not stravagated to Talia the day after the weddings. She wanted to give Merla a rest, since the horse had made some of her journeys with two riders. And Georgia herself felt weary to her bones. She just couldn’t face another night without sleep and full of exhausting adventures in Talia. So the two boys had gone with the pledge that they would tell her all about it the next day, which was Saturday in their world.
Georgia’s parents were going to be out for the day so they were all going to meet at her house – Alice too. On the Friday, Georgia had an early night, leaving the model of the flying horse on her chest of drawers, where she could see it but not be tempted to hold it.
But in spite of these precautions, she dreamed about Giglia, reliving the moments in the Church of the Annunciation – the screams and the blood and the sight of people she knew and trusted turned into sword-wielding nightmares. And people she had always feared like Niccolò di Chimici appeared even larger than life in her dreams. He was standing with a bloody sword over the body of Luciano.
She woke in the middle of the night, sweating, and wondered whether to stravagate after all, just to check that Luciano was still alive. But she lay in the dark instead, thinking about him and about how little progress she had really made in getting over him since he had walked away from her in the circular Campo in Remora over a year ago.
The Pope had prevailed over his brother about the Nucci’s lives but they were not to get away with their crimes unpunished. The Grand Duke issued a proclamation that anyone bearing the name of Nucci and any known to have fought by their side at the Church of the Annunciation were banished from Giglia in perpetuity and their property sequestrated.
‘I see their new building was unaffected by the flood,’ said Niccolò. ‘Send Gabassi to me,’ he ordered a servant. ‘I shall take their palace in payment for Carlo,’ he told the Pope. ‘I no longer wish to live in the Palazzo Ducale. It has unpleasant memories. I shall live in the Nucci’s extravagant folly and let Fabrizio have this place. And I shall get Gabassi to build me a covered walkway above the city, elevated over any future flood waters, that will take me from the seat of government here to my new home there. It can cross the Guild offices and the bridge.’
‘That is reasonable,’ said his brother. ‘I agree that Matteo Nucci should forfeit his property and be driven into exile. But let the wife and daughters remain until Filippo is fit enough to be moved from the city.’
‘Very well,’ said N
iccolò. ‘But they must stay in their old palazzo; I won’t have them take possession of the new one. And I want another proclamation issued that Camillo Nucci was a murderer and would have been executed publicly if he had not already had the penalty exacted by Prince Fabrizio. I want that family disgraced and their name wiped from the memory of this city, except as the felons they are.’
*
Luciano was waiting for Arianna when she got back to the Embassy.
‘I must talk to you,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ he said.
She dismissed her guards. The two of them sat in silence for a while in the blue salon of the Embassy. Arianna was wearing one of her simplest dresses and a white silk mask, which she now took off. The Duchessa of Bellezza went unmasked only with her personal maid and her nearest family members; it wasn’t often that Luciano saw her face now that she was ruler of a great city. It made him feel sad to see how tired she looked and so full of cares, compared with the light-hearted girl he had met in Bellezza.
But her beauty moved him as it always had, and the vulnerability she showed in unmasking before him made him feel even more protective of her than usual.
‘You go first,’ she said.
He took her hand.
‘Nicholas has come to me with a strange proposal,’ he said. ‘He wants us to change places. For him to become Falco again and for me to go back to my parents.’
It was the last thing she had expected. But it made her shiver.
‘Would that work?’ she asked, playing for time. ‘I mean, with the extra year’s difference and everything? And wouldn’t he be crippled again? And you, would your disease of the Crab return?’
‘Is that what you would care most about?’ asked Luciano, holding her hand tightly and looking her straight in the eye. ‘That I would be ill again in my old world?’
It wasn’t. But it was too much of a shock for Arianna to say what she really thought. Why was he telling her this unless he was seriously thinking of doing it? And how could he even think of leaving her if he felt as she had always hoped he would?
‘What do you think?’ persisted Luciano.
‘I think you should talk to Rodolfo,’ said Arianna shakily, ‘and Doctor Dethridge and any other Stravagante. I’m sure there must be rules against translating back, or the Doctor would have suggested it after – you know – what happened to you in Bellezza.’
It was not what Luciano wanted to hear. He wanted her to beg him not to go, to say she couldn’t live without him.
‘What did you want to tell me?’ he asked.
‘The Grand Duke came for his answer,’ she said.
‘And what did you tell him?’ he asked.
‘I told him that I could not accept him, that I could not let Bellezza become a di Chimici city – he wanted Princess Beatrice to rule it.’
She did not repeat the other reason she had given Niccolò; she could not bring herself to say it now that she knew Luciano was considering leaving her for ever.
And so they parted at cross purposes and Luciano was completely unprepared for Enrico’s visit.
He had glimpsed the Eel on more than one occasion in Giglia and always kept well out of his way. He aroused memories of the worst days of Luciano’s life, when he had been kidnapped in Bellezza and held beyond the time he should have stravagated back to his own world. Well as the old Lucien had adapted to his new life, the Bellezzan Luciano could not look back on that time without pain.
And now his kidnapper had turned up at the Embassy, cool as a lettuce, and walked straight up to him and struck him in the face with a long leather glove! Luciano raised one hand to his smarting cheek and his other flew to the hilt of his weapon.
But Enrico raised his own hand to stop him.
‘Hold there,’ he said pleasantly. ‘The blow was not from me and should be repaid to him who sent it. The Grand Duke Niccolò di Chimici challenges you to defend the insult given to his honour. He will meet you at dawn on Friday in the grounds of the new Nucci palace. You may bring two seconds.’
Luciano felt as if he were having a bad dream.
‘What insult? There must be a mistake. I have not spoken to the Grand Duke since I dined with him a month ago. And I have never knowingly insulted him.’
‘Too bad,’ said Enrico. ‘The Grand Duke has issued his challenge and if you refuse it you will be branded as a coward and subject to his persecution.’
‘That’s completely senseless,’ said Luciano.
‘So you refuse the challenge?’ asked Enrico.
Luciano suddenly felt reckless. He had said he would kill Niccolò if he asked Arianna to marry him and now he had the opportunity to do it legitimately. It didn’t matter that she had refused the Grand Duke; she had done it for the wrong reason. He would kill him anyway.
‘Tell your master I’ll be there,’ he said.
Sky stravagated back to his world early that night, without waiting for Nicholas. He was as exhausted as Georgia and wanted to catch up on some sleep. He was confused about his role in Talia now. The Stravaganti hadn’t prevented the deaths at the weddings, he had done what he could to help the injured and he no longer knew why he was supposed to be visiting the other world.
Perhaps it had all been to save Sandro from the Eel? The boy certainly wouldn’t have offered himself as a novice friar, Sky was sure, if he hadn’t befriended ‘Brother Tino’ and become closer to Sulien. Georgia had warned him that the reason he had been brought to Talia might be different from what he thought. She had believed she was needed in Remora to help Falco translate into Nicholas, but in the end she had replaced Cesare in the mad horse race and struck a further blow for the independence of Bellezza. But Sky didn’t see what that had to do with him and his visits to Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines. In fact it made his brain hurt even to think about Talia. It had all got so complicated.
It had been much more straightforward when it had just been him and Sulien in the friary, and now it was all tangled up with Nicholas and Georgia, and even Alice. It had been much easier at the beginning to separate his daily life from his nightly journeys to the other world. Now they seemed to be sort of leaking into one another.
He woke early and set out for Georgia’s house as soon as he reasonably could. Paul was going to be in town again and Rosalind was singing while she washed her hair. It seemed to Sky that being an adult was much less complicated than being a teenager – particularly a teenager who was a Stravagante.
When Sky got to Georgia’s house it was Alice who opened the door. He put his arms round her, burying his face in her hair; it smelt good. He wondered if she had sung in the shower at the thought of spending the day with him.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘Pretty much,’ said Sky. ‘My arm’s a lot better and I came back early last night – I was so knackered.’
Georgia let them in and the three of them waited for Nicholas to arrive. Her parents had already left and the house felt calm and quiet. They made mugs of instant coffee and took them out into the garden with slabs of a chocolate cake Maura had bought. It was sunny and still warm, as it had been in Devon, and tulips were beginning to come up in the flower beds among the daffodils. They sat at the wooden pub table where barbecues were eaten in the summer and Georgia shared her worries about Nicholas.
‘He’s shutting me out,’ she said. ‘I’ve always known what he was thinking and planning before, but all I know now is that the signs aren’t good.’
‘Do you think he still wants to go back to Giglia?’ asked Alice. ‘Even though he’s been stabbed there?’
‘I think he wants it more than ever,’ said Georgia. ‘He’s seen what his family has been through the last few days and it’s bound to make him want to be with them.’
‘I’d have thought he was well out of it,’ said Alice, shivering in the warm sunshine. She couldn’t wait for her friends to finish their Talian adventure. She just didn’t understand the fascination it held for them.
‘Georgia’
s right,’ said Sky. ‘I think he has got some sort of plan. He went to see Luciano today, after he’d checked his brothers were doing OK.’
The doorbell rang and the three of them jumped guiltily.
A body of the Grand Duke’s soldiers accompanied Matteo Nucci and a dozen of his followers to the north-east gate of the city. He was glad that his route to Classe did not take him past the new palace where he and his family would never live. He had been allowed only the clothes he wore and the horse that would take him away from Talia. But Matteo Nucci had money in cities other than Giglia.
Graziella had accompanied him as far as the gate, promising to bring Filippo and the girls on to Classe as soon as possible.
‘Believe me, I shall not stay a minute longer than I have to in this city,’ she said bitterly. ‘I can think of nothing better for us now than to live in a city where the di Chimici do not rule.’
They embraced then and parted.
*
In another part of the city, a young boy was being robed as a Dominican novice. He had to make his preliminary vows in the church; then he would be entitled to eat all his meals and spend all his nights quite legitimately at Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines.
‘But you must give up swearing, gaming and keeping loose company,’ said Brother Tullio solemnly.
‘And you won’t be able to keep the dog,’ said Brother Ambrogio. ‘Friars aren’t allowed to have pets.’
Sandro looked absolutely stricken.
‘Don’t tease him,’ said Sulien. ‘Fratello sounds like a friar already. He shall be Brother Dog and live in the kitchen with Tullio. We need something to keep down the rats. Now, are you ready to take your vows?’
Sandro looked round; he wished that Brother Tino and Brother Benvenuto could be there to see him through the ceremony, but he understood that they could not be in Giglia at night-time; it was all to do with their shadows and their lives in the other world. But the encouraging smiles he was getting from Sulien and the others were enough to make him feel he belonged. He was going to get a family at last – not the kind of brothers he had once imagined and neither the Father nor Mother were where he could see them. But it was enough.