‘Mum!’ said Lucien, in an exasperated tone, though he felt guilty about the deception he was planning. ‘I’m not made of glass, you know. My last check-up showed I’m stable and the tumour’s gone way down. The doctor even said I could go back to school after the holidays. Surely I can spend my days vegging out at home without you worrying?’
His mother sighed. ‘You’re right. I fret too much, I know.’
She smiled and ran her hand across his fuzzy head. ‘But I’m going to write my mobile number on the noticeboard all the same.’
When Lucien returned to Bellezza, Rodolfo was in a state of high excitement and it was clear that all thought of firework-making had gone out of his head. He was dressed for travel, in leather boots and a cloak, and had prepared a similar outfit for Lucien.
‘Good, you’re early. We have a good few hours’ journey ahead of us,’ he said as soon as Lucien materialized in the laboratory. ‘We’re going to Montemurato – I think I’ve found Doctor Dethridge.’
There was no time to ask questions. Alfredo sculled Rodolfo’s mandola up the canal and past the Scuola Mandoliera, to the far end of the island where a boat waited to take them to the mainland. As they cut through the water, Rodolfo filled Lucien in on developments.
‘One of our brotherhood did see Doctor Dethridge in Bellona about two years ago and it must have been after the last time I saw him. But since then he has not made contact with any other Stravaganti. However, news has reached one of our number in Remora of an Englishman living in Montemurato. It is worth investigating.’
‘And where is that?’ asked Lucien, feeling adventurous in his pantomime boots.
‘About an hour’s ride once we get to the mainland,’ said Rodolfo.
Lucien swallowed. He had never sat on a horse in his life. But he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Still, once they had disembarked and he saw the huge animal waiting on the quay, Lucien’s heart sank. There was no way he could pretend to ride something like that.
When an ostler came forward with a wooden mounting block, Lucien opened his mouth to explain, but Rodolfo spoke first.
‘I’ll mount and then you can sit in front of me. This beast is strong enough to carry both of us. Just hang on to the front of the saddle and you will be quite safe – even if not comfortable.’
Lucien was so relieved that he wasn’t too frightened, even though Rodolfo did ride extremely fast. The horse was very powerful and yet Lucien was sure that Rodolfo had whispered some sort of spell into its ear before they set off. No ordinary horse could have travelled so fast; the landscape blurred as they rode through it.
Then gradually their surroundings seemed to slow down and clarify. Lucien saw a hill in the distance with a walled town on top of it. As they got nearer, he could see that in among the walls were set many towers.
‘Montemurato,’ said Rodolfo, reining the steaming horse in to a walk. ‘The walled mountain. There are twelve towers altogether surrounding the city. Each one is a watchtower – a very safe place for someone hiding from a death sentence, wouldn’t you say?’
The watchtowers were evidently occupied, since guards suddenly appeared at the gate below the nearest one. Rodolfo dismounted lightly, helping down the stiff and aching Lucien from the horse’s back. It was his job to hold the horse by the reins, while Rodolfo explained their errand to the city watch.
‘We are looking for an Anglese,’ he said. ‘A learned man, a scholar, with a white beard. No, I don’t know what he was calling himself. Guglielmo, perhaps, with a family name beginning with D.’
‘Don’t know anyone of that name and description,’ shrugged the guard. But if it’s a scholar you’re after, you’d better try the university.’ He made a mark on a scrap of vellum and gave it to Rodolfo. ‘This allows you and your companion to stay in Montemurato till sundown. After that you’re in breach of the law.’
‘Thank you,’ said Rodolfo, with a reassuring look at Lucien. ‘We’ll be gone long before that. Now I need stabling and provender for my horse.’
The guard told him where to go and the travellers walked up the steep cobbled street into the city. They stopped and bought a flask of wine, some bread, olives and peaches from a wayside stall. Then they sat and ate their lunch on a stone bench under a fig tree outside the door of the university.
Scholars came and went, in robes, some splendid, some patched and grubby. One or two had white beards, but in the full midday sun they all clearly had shadows. Lucien pulled himself further into the shade of the tree, feeling conspicuous again. Rodolfo frowned.
‘This doesn’t feel right,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he’s here.’
‘Couldn’t he be inside?’ asked Lucien, ‘giving a lecture or conducting an experiment?’
‘It is perfectly possible,’ said Rodolfo in a low voice, ‘but we Stravaganti can usually tell when another of us is in the vicinity. We are drawn to one another, just as my mirror was to you. You would probably have found your way to me even if I hadn’t sent Alfredo to fetch you. Come, you are a Stravagante yourself – can you sense another of the brotherhood nearby?’
Lucien had to admit that he couldn’t. Rodolfo stood up and as he did, a bell struck one. That was the time when Lucien usually finished his morning lessons in the laboratory.
‘Arianna!’ he said now, suddenly aware how late it was. ‘She’ll be expecting me!’
‘There’s no need to worry,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I sent a message to her aunt that we had been called away today. Now come, we must look for our quarry elsewhere.’
As they set off through the town, Lucien smiled. He could imagine how frustrated Arianna would be to miss this trip. Fond as she was of Bellezza, she loved the idea of travelling and there didn’t seem to be much scope for girls to do that in the lagoon.
Montemurato looked like a film set to Lucien. The streets were all cobbled, the houses tall and crooked, the whole town dominated by the formidable bulk of the twelve towers that encircled it. It was easy to imagine swordfights, assignations in the dark, treachery, chivalry and intrigue. He noticed that the ordinary houses had two doors: one massive wooden affair with iron hinges and knockers and a smaller, newer one set higher in the wall, about three feet square. He asked Rodolfo about it.
‘The smaller ones are the doors of death,’ said Rodolfo, matter-of-factly. ‘A lot of people put them in during the Great Plague twenty years ago. They are for the coffins.’
Lucien shuddered in the warm sunshine. Someone walking over my grave, he thought. People were so practical about death here in the sixteenth century. It was all so hushed up somehow in his own world and time. He tried to shake off his morbid thoughts as they searched for Doctor Dethridge.
They tried the university library, the museum, the many churches and the small observatory at the top of one of the towers. No one had heard of anyone like the Stravagante. As it got later, Rodolfo reluctantly turned back towards the tower at which they had come in.
‘I’m sorry, Luciano,’ he said. ‘I seem to have brought you on a wild goose chase.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Lucien. ‘I don’t mind. It’s been very interesting.’
As they went to retrieve the horse, Rodolfo suddenly clutched Lucien’s shoulder. ‘It’s him,’ he whispered.
A white-haired but cleanshaven man was grooming a horse out in the stableyard, hissing through his teeth in a companionable way. He wasn’t old by Lucien’s standards, only a bit older than his own parents, but he was stooped and his teeth were crooked and discoloured.
‘That can’t be him,’ Lucien whispered back. ‘Look!’ He pointed at the stable floor. The afternoon sunlight slanted across the yard, casting shadows of horse and man clearly across the straw and cobbles. But Rodolfo advanced towards the groom anyway.
‘Dottore,’ Luciano heard him say softly, and the man dropped his brush in surprise. A mi
nute later the two men were embracing and the ‘doctor’ was brushing a none-too-clean shirtsleeve across his eyes.
‘But what are you doing here?’ Rodolfo was asking. ‘We looked for you up at the university.’
Dethridge, for it did seem to be him, looked anxiously at Lucien.
‘Nay, al that is behinde mee,’ he said in a strange old-fashioned-sounding tongue, with a country burr.
Rodolfo looked round quickly, to see if they were alone.
‘Do not worry about the boy; he is one of us. Come, Luciano, step into the sunshine. See!’
Lucien felt shy as he stepped forward. He heard the Englishman gasp and felt hideously exposed standing there without a shadow – it was like being naked in front of a stranger.
Dethridge shook him by the hand, solemnly. ‘Well met, yonge mann. And wel ycome to the Brethrene. Me thought not to mete anothere suche as my selfe.’
*
The Duchessa was hungry for information, though the man in the rough clothes told her little that she did not already know. She was aware of the girl’s family circumstances already and just wanted to check that Arianna was who she thought she was.
‘They went to the islands, you say? She has brothers on Merlino, grandparents on Burlesca and her father is curator of the museum on Torrone? You are sure about all this?’
‘Absolutely sure,’ said the man. ‘And she is staying here on Bellezza with her aunt Leonora, in the house with the fountain off the campo San Sulien.’
‘Leonora,’ mused the Duchessa. ‘That must be Gianfranco’s brother’s widow.’
‘Signora Gasparini, sì,’ said her informant.
There was a silence. ‘Milady?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Shall I continue to find out more?’
The Duchessa gathered herself together. ‘No. Thank you. I have all I need. You have been very helpful.’
And she gave him a purse, heavy with silver.
‘So,’ she said to herself, after he had gone. ‘A new piece has entered the game. One I have been waiting for ever since that night Rodolfo came to me with his strange readings. Will she be a pawn or a queen? We shall see.’
*
Rodolfo, Lucien and Doctor Dethridge were in a tavern. They had little time to talk before Lucien had to stravagate back and no one understood that better than the Elizabethan. But he wouldn’t go back to Bellezza with them.
‘I canne not,’ he said. ‘Bicause this Citie pleaseth me and kepeth mee sauf.’
It was strange; Lucien supposed he must have been speaking Talian like all the other people he had met in this world. He had no more trouble understanding the old man than he had listening to Rodolfo or Arianna. But he definitely sounded as though he came from four hundred years ago, even though he was living in the same time that Lucien was visiting. And, when he thought about it, Dethridge seemed to be speaking an old form of English, rather than Talian. Lucien shook his head; it was too difficult to analyse. He just concentrated on what the two men were saying.
‘But tell us what happened,’ Rodolfo was asking. ‘How have you become a citizen of Talia?’
Dethridge was obviously fearful. He looked over his shoulder before speaking in a low voice. ‘I was condemned to dye by fyre. They sayed I had mayde Magicke and was in converse with Devyls. There was noe waye to escape and so I stravayged to Bellona. What happened to mye erthly bodie I doe not knowe.’
He drank some wine with a shaking hand.
‘I had to hide my selfe in the Citie. I hadde no moneye and noe worke and I was stil afeard for mye life. So I travelled here and toke a lowly job and kept mye selfe hid, lest any one should see my Conditioun. Then my shadowe riturned to mee. On that daie I knew that I moste bee dede in mine olde Body and translated here for alwaies.’
He looked at Lucien. ‘You are of goode fortune, yonge mann. You may cum and goe bitwene the Worldes by the waie I opened. But I may travel that road no more. This is my onlye worlde now.’
Chapter 10
A Bridge of Boats
Lucien was more disturbed by meeting William Dethridge than by anything else that had happened to him in Talia. Until that moment, he had always been able to half pretend to himself that the time he spent in Bellezza was a fantasy – a kind of waking dream. His two lives were so different that it was easy to go along with each without thinking about the other. But meeting another Stravagante who travelled in the same direction as himself was a big shock. And not just any Stravagante but the man who had created the whole process more than four centuries ago. And now that man was stranded for the rest of his life in another world.
The time before the Maddalena Feast passed swiftly in both worlds. ‘Luciano’ made fireworks, talked obsessively to Rodolfo about Doctor Dethridge and continued his afternoon wanderings with Arianna, who was consumed with envy about his trip to Montemurato. Lucien used all his remaining energy to behave as much like his old self as possible, so that his parents would get used to leaving him on his own during the day.
But there was a problem in Talia too. Lucien was sure he was being followed. He had seen the man in the blue cloak several times on his explorations with Arianna and had not thought much about it. But he was sure he had glimpsed him in Montemurato too, and after that he had been keeping an eye out for him.
At the moment it made him no more than slightly uneasy, but being trailed was like having a mouth ulcer; he couldn’t ever be unaware of it. He wondered whether to say anything to Rodolfo about it, and when. He still hadn’t told him about meaning to come back for the Feast.
On the day of the Maddalena, Lucien woke up tired after spending the whole of his night helping Rodolfo set up the firework display on a raft at the mouth of the Great Canal. The larger set pieces, like the Maddalena herself, had been removed from the laboratory by a mixture of magic and hard labour, Rodolfo having shrunk them enough to get them through the laboratory door and down the stairs. Once on the waiting barge though, he had returned them to their monumental size.
Lucien had agreed with Arianna that he would collect her from her aunt’s house as soon as he had left Rodolfo and stravagated back to his home to check on what day it was there. Leonora had given approval for the two young people to go alone to the Feast. Although she had been told about Lucien’s belonging to another world, she had never referred to it and seemed to think him a very suitable companion for her niece.
It was a Sunday in his own world and Lucien was worried that his parents wouldn’t go out, but he persuaded them to visit a stately home with a fine garden. Now he struggled to keep his eyes open and fixed an animated smile on his face all through breakfast, while they took ages eating grapefruit and croissants and even reading the newspaper. At last they were gone, and he crawled back to bed to sleep for an hour. In order to convince his mother that he wouldn’t be alone all day, he had phoned Tom and invited him over later that morning.
The Reman Ambassador was nervous. It was his job to accompany the Duchessa across the bridge of boats to the Chiesa delle Grazie, knowing that the sylph on his arm was some peasant with a pretty figure. There would be no conversation because of the noise of the fireworks and that would also help to keep his mind off what was happening in the State mandola.
When Enrico called at the embassy to give his regular report, the Ambassador was glad of the distraction. He hadn’t taken the spy into his confidence but he was a useful tool; without him tonight’s plot would never have been conceived.
Now he could see the man had information he thought was going to be worth silver. He was big with it, like a woman in her ninth month.
‘All right, man, spit it out. I can see you have something to tell me,’ he said.
‘It’s the boy, Excellency, the Senator’s apprentice. I have been following him on your orders ever since that day I saw him go into Signor Rodolfo’s palazzo. There are things abou
t him that can’t be explained.’
‘Take a seat and tell me more,’ said the Ambassador, pouring Enrico a large goblet of wine.
‘Well, they say he’s from Padavia, a cousin or something. But no one there has ever heard of a Luciano in the Rossi family. I checked it myself. Then, he’s never around after dark, only by day.’
‘These things are of mild interest I suppose,’ said the Ambassador coolly, ‘but not inexplicable. I expect he goes to bed early. Senator Rodolfo must be an exacting teacher.’
‘How about this then?’ said Enrico. ‘I followed him when he went out on a boat with his little girlfriend. They went to the islands, saw the glass museum, chatted to some fishermen, visited the cathedral on Torrone...’
‘Fascinating,’ said the Ambassador, ‘but I don’t see...’
‘With respect, Excellency,’ said Enrico, ‘if you’ll just let me get to the point. It was when they were coming back from Torrone. It was dark and the boy was in a bit of a state. It was the only time I’d ever seen him out in the evening and I was watching him carefully. Then suddenly he wasn’t there any more. It was only a few moments but he definitely disappeared. Then he was back, just as if he hadn’t ever been away.’
The Ambassador looked bored. ‘Is that it? I mean, it’s all very interesting but it could have been the light playing tricks on you. You can’t have been very close if you were in another boat. And you’ve admitted it was dark.’
‘Maybe,’ said Enrico. ‘And maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it. But there’s something else odd about the boy. He has no shadow.’
The effect on the Ambassador was electrifying. He sprang out of his chair, all appearance of indifference gone, and grabbed Enrico by the throat, showing surprising strength. The spy spluttered, dropping his wine and falling out of his chair.
‘What did you say?’ hissed the Ambassador. ‘Are you trying to play games with me?’