Whichever, it now seemed long ago and he had eaten three sandwiches and drunk two glasses of the sparkling wine before he asked Rodolfo any of the questions crowding his brain.
The silver-haired scientist, or magician, or whatever he was, sat in companionable silence while Lucien finished his meal, though he ate nothing himself.
‘Feeling better?’ he now asked.
‘Yes, thanks,’ said Lucien. ‘Actually, I feel great.’
He put his glass down on the terrace beside him and stretched, taking conscious note of how each limb, each muscle felt. There was no tiredness, no weakness, no aches. It might have just been the wine, but he felt energy coursing through him.
Rodolfo was smiling. ‘Tell me about yourself and your life in the other world.’
‘You don’t know then?’ asked Lucien, who had assumed Rodolfo must be a powerful all-knowing sort of magician.
‘Only where you must have come from and approximately when,’ Rodolfo answered. ‘Nothing about you personally, not even your name.’
‘Lucien,’ said Lucien. ‘But it seems to be Luciano here. At least that’s what I told the Duchessa.’
‘Then Luciano it had better be,’ said Rodolfo gravely, with just a hint of a smile.
‘I don’t know what you want to know,’ said Lucien. ‘In my real life, I’ve been very ill. I’m having some treatment which might eventually cure me but in the meantime it makes me feel a lot worse. I feel wonderful here, though. Nothing wrong with me at all.’
Rodolfo was leaning forward, listening carefully to every word. He spent the next hour questioning Lucien about every detail of his ordinary life, even quite trivial things like what his family ate at mealtimes and where they did their shopping. His dark eyes glittered at Lucien’s descriptions of quite mundane things, like supermarkets, the Underground, football matches. Even pizza, which Lucien assumed he would know all about, caused Rodolfo’s brow to wrinkle in puzzlement.
‘A round flat bread with cooked tomatoes and cheese on top?’ he asked. ‘Are you sure?’
Lucien smiled. ‘Or chicken tikka, or Christmas dinner, or even haggis, for all I know. Anything goes these days.’
Rodolfo looked blank. ‘We do not have these things you mention in Talia. Are they good to eat?’
‘Yes – some of them – but not necessarily on a pizza,’ said Lucien.
Rodolfo leaned back in his chair and stretched, cracking his knuckles.
‘Now it’s your turn,’ said Lucien. ‘Tell me about Bellezza, about Talia.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’ Lucien gestured around him. ‘I don’t understand any of it. I mean, why am I here and why don’t I have a shadow and why were you expecting someone like me?’
Rodolfo got up and walked over to the stone parapet. He looked out over the silver roof of the cathedral. Then he turned and gazed at Lucien.
‘To answer your questions, I have to start further back. Some time ago, a traveller came from your world to mine. It was hundreds of years ago in your time, though not in mine. He was the first to discover the secret, the first member of the brotherhood I belong to. He was the first Stravagante.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A wanderer. For us, a wanderer between worlds. He was a powerful scientist from your country. You may have heard of him. His name was William Dethridge.’ Rodolfo paused and looked hopefully at Lucien, who just shook his head.
‘Ever since Doctor Dethridge made that first journey,’ Rodolfo continued, ‘there have been Stravaganti working on the principles by which such journeys are made. It is difficult work and sometimes dangerous. As time has gone by, we have discovered the risks of crossing from one side to the other.’
‘Like in Star Trek,’ said Lucien, and saw immediately he was going to have to explain himself. ‘It’s a TV programme about the future. They mustn’t tamper with the time/space continuum or there are terrible consequences. And they mustn’t interfere with alien cultures. That’s the Prime Directive.’
‘I do not understand most of that,’ said Rodolfo slowly, ‘but the spirit sounds right. Every journey between your world and ours is fraught with hazards and is not to be undertaken lightly. It can be done only by those who have studied the science of stravagation and familiarized themselves with its pitfalls and restraints.’
‘Hang on,’ said Lucien. ‘I haven’t done any of that. I just held the book and thought about the city. Only the first time it wasn’t Bellezza. I was thinking about Venice, which I think is like Bellezza in my world.’
‘Ven-iss,’ said Rodolfo, thoughtfully. ‘It doesn’t sound like a Talian word, but I have heard it before. It was what Doctor Dethridge called our city.’
‘Anyway, I haven’t done any of that training.’
‘And yet you are a Stravagante,’ said Rodolfo. ‘And that puts you in great danger here.’
‘Why?’ said Lucien. ‘You haven’t really explained why I’m here at all.’
‘It is very hard for you to understand,’ said Rodolfo, pacing the roof terrace. ‘I don’t claim to understand it all myself and yet I have been studying this science for years. You say you “held the book”. May I see it?’
A little reluctantly, Lucien drew the book from the pocket of his blue pyjamas, which he still wore under his Bellezzan clothes, and handed it to Rodolfo.
Rodolfo held it reverently, like a Bible, turning it in his hands. ‘Do you know where this came from?’ he asked.
‘My father found it in a skip on Waverley Road,’ said Lucien.
‘No. Whatever that means, it did not come from there. It was made in the workshop of my brother Egidio, here in Bellezza.’
‘Then how did it get to London, to my world?’
‘I took it there myself.’
Lucien gasped. ‘You’ve been to my world?’
‘Of course,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Did I not tell you I am a Stravagante?’
The thought of Rodolfo striding round London in his black velvet made Lucien smile. But he’d probably just be put down as an ageing hippy and not raise an eyebrow; people would assume he’d wandered over from Hampstead, not another dimension.
Rodolfo handed the swirly red and purple notebook back to Lucien.
‘Look after it. Don’t show it to anyone else. There are those who would take it from you.’
‘But why?’ asked Lucien. ‘What good would it do them?’
‘It might help them to discover the secret of travel to your world. More importantly, if you lost it, you would not be able to get back,’ said Rodolfo, gravely.
‘Who do you mean?’ asked Lucien. ‘Other Stravagantes?’
‘Stravaganti,’ corrected Rodolfo. ‘No. Even if someone else’s talisman fell into his hand a true member of the brotherhood would not take such a shortcut. But we have enemies. People who would like to plunder your world and bring its magic here.’
‘Magic?’ said Lucien. ‘There’s no magic in my world. It’s completely ordinary.’
‘And yet you can move large numbers of people in metal boxes under the ground and on the ground and even above the ground!’ said Rodolfo. ‘You have machines you can talk into to order your dinner and other machines to bring it to you. You have many ways of communicating with people miles away from you and reading books in libraries in other countries. Is not all of this magic?’
‘No,’ said Lucien. ‘I understand why it seems that way to you, because you haven’t got things like aeroplanes and the Internet and mobile phones. But they’re not magic – they’re inventions. You know, technology – science.’
Rodolfo seemed unconvinced. ‘What I do in my laboratory is science,’ he said. ‘But let that pass. It is your kind of science, which I would call magic, that the di Chimici are after.’
‘The ?
??kimmichee”,’ repeated Lucien. ‘Are they your enemies?’
Rodolfo nodded. ‘They are one of the oldest families in Talia. A big family, always marrying and breeding. Six city-states in Talia are ruled by them as dukedoms or principalities. And they won’t rest till they rule them all. Even the Pope is one of them.’
‘The Pope?’ said Lucien, surprised. ‘You have a Pope?’
‘Of course,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Don’t you? Ours rules, technically, in Remora. But his older brother, Niccolò di Chimici, is really in charge.’
‘What would they do if they got into my world?’ asked Lucien.
‘If they got not only into your world but into your time,’ said Rodolfo, ‘they would bring back all kinds of magic – cures for illnesses, spells to make inanimate objects move, mystical weapons which can kill and maim from long distances away... Need I go on?’
‘And the Stravaganti?’ asked Lucien. ‘What do they do? They don’t take any of those things?’
‘No,’ said Rodolfo, quietly. ‘They – or I might say “we”, since you are now one of us, whether you like it or not – do not bring anything from your world to ours except what ensures a safe return. We have become guardians of the secret of this kind of travel. Ever since Doctor Dethridge made that first journey, by accident, it has needed someone to watch over any comings or goings between worlds.’
Lucien frowned. ‘Hang on. There’s something I don’t follow. I mean all of it, really, but didn’t you say this doctor was from hundreds of years ago in my world?’
‘Yes, the sixteenth century. The time of your Queen Elizabeth.’
‘We’ve got another one now,’ said Lucien. ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second. But if you don’t know anything about supermarkets or the Tube and you all wear these old-fashioned clothes, what century is this?’
Rodolfo sighed. ‘Still the sixteenth, I’m afraid. That is why the di Chimici are so eager to get their hands on your twentieth-century magic.’
‘Twenty-first now,’ said Lucien absent-mindedly. His thoughts were racing. He was beginning to grasp something of the situation, even though there were huge gaps in what he understood. ‘You mean the di Chimici don’t want to wait till all those things are invented here. They want to sort of speed up civilization?’
Rodolfo looked at him sadly. ‘If it is civilization to kill vast numbers of people at a stroke, then yes, that is what they want.’
‘But it’s not all like that,’ protested Lucien. ‘You said yourself, there’d be cures for illnesses, things like that.’
‘Are they harmless? Would the di Chimici know how to use the magic that is supposed to be making you better?’
Lucien had a vision of some sort of crazed villain in a velvet cloak trying to inject chemicals into a Bellezzan who might or might not have cancer. ‘No. You’d have to be a trained twenty-first-century doctor, I suppose.’
‘And if they did have these cures and the skills to apply them,’ persisted Rodolfo, ‘do you think they would be made available to all? No. The di Chimici want to help only the di Chimici. They would steal whatever made them strong, made them live long, made their women have easy childbirth and healthy babies. And the devil could take everyone else.’
He was striding up and down the terrace now, angry and rather frightening. For all that Lucien was still grasping the rules of the game he was caught up in, he was glad he was playing on the same side as Rodolfo. The Stravagante would make a terrifying enemy.
Suddenly, Rodolfo stopped, as Alfredo came struggling through the window.
‘Master,’ he panted. ‘The Reman Ambassador is downstairs. He wants an audience with you.’
Swiftly, as he spoke, the servant pressed the thumb and little finger of his right hand together and touched brow and breast with the middle fingers.
‘Tell him I am not here,’ said Rodolfo, frowning.
‘I tried that, Master, but he has seen your mandola moored below,’ said the old man. ‘And he says “his man” hasn’t seen you go out today.’
‘His man?’ said Rodolfo, outraged. ‘So, they set spies on me now, do they?’ He turned quickly to Lucien. ‘Quick, into my laboratory. If their spy has been watching my door, he will have seen you come in. But there is more than one way of leaving. We must get you away.’
Lucien followed Rodolfo over the low window-sill but he was confused. How was he to get away? And what was the Reman Ambassador to him? Rodolfo strode over to the wall and grasped a candle-holder in the shape of a peacock with its tail at full spread. It was the most beautiful piece of workmanship and Lucien wondered that he hadn’t noticed it when he first entered the laboratory. It was made of silver, with every colour of every feather picked out in bright enamels. The blue of the peacock’s breast and the greens and purples of its tail shone in the darkness of the room like a beacon signalling a safe harbour.
Rodolfo wrenched the peacock’s head round and the wall behind it swung back. Lucien couldn’t believe his eyes. A secret passage! ‘Just like Cluedo,’ he murmured. But Rodolfo was already hurrying him into the passage and grasping the peacock’s head again. Lucien could hear footsteps outside the laboratory door.
‘Just follow the passage,’ he said to Lucien. ‘It will bring you to the Duchessa’s palace. Push lightly on the door when you come to the other end and you will find yourself in her private apartments.’
Lucien stopped on the threshold at this alarming information. He had absolutely no intention of being alone with the Duchessa in her private apartments! He’d rather come face to face with a tigress in her cage. The Duchessa was definitely the most alarming person he had ever met.
‘Whoa!’ he said. ‘Why would I want to do that?’
Rodolfo leaned close, his large dark eyes fixing Lucien’s like a hypnotist’s. ‘Because the person coming up the stairs is Rinaldo di Chimici,’ he said softly. ‘And if he ever finds you, he will happily kill you for that book. Now go. And I will follow as soon as I can. Take this firestone to light you on your way.’ Here he searched inside his robes and thrust something into Lucien’s hand about the size and shape of a large egg.
‘Tell Silvia I sent you.’
Then he pushed Lucien inside the passage and the wall closed up behind him before he could ask, like the Elizabethan poet, ‘But who is Silvia?’
Lucien stood inside the secret passage, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. It was pitch black inside. Then he held up the ‘egg’ and watched, fascinated, as it started to glow. Soon it was warm to the touch and glowing red. It gave out a soft light but enough for him to see that he was in a narrow stone corridor with an uneven floor. It smelt musty but not damp. After listening for a while at the door behind the peacock sconce and finding he could hear nothing through its thickness, he shrugged and headed down the passage, the firestone making weird patterns on the walls as he went. Again he saw that he cast no shadow.
‘Duchessa, here I come,’ he muttered.
*
‘Ambassador, what can I do for you?’ Rodolfo greeted Rinaldo di Chimici with icy politeness but inwardly he was seething at the audacity of this aristocratic spy and his lesser spy at the gate.
‘Senator,’ said di Chimici, bowing formally but his eyes darted round the room. He had received information that a boy had been brought from the Scuola Mandoliera to Signor Rodolfo’s laboratory and was intrigued. But he could hardly ask where the boy was.
‘I am giving a dinner for the Duchessa at the embassy next week,’ he improvised, ‘and I was hoping you would join me.’
‘It would be my pleasure,’ said Rodolfo. ‘but you do me too much honour to issue your invitation in person.’
Both men were saying one thing but meaning another, and their meeting did not last long. Rodolfo got rid of the Ambassador as quickly as he politely could but did not follow Lucien down the secret passage i
mmediately.
Instead, he adjusted the setting of his mirrors and focused one on the canal outside his apartments. There, on the nearest bridge, slouched a figure in a blue cloak, apparently idly watching the murky waters. As Rodolfo murmured under his breath the figure looked up, startled, as if he was aware of the magician’s gaze on him. And then the bridge was empty. Rodolfo smiled. ‘So much for their spy,’ he said.
*
Lucien inched cautiously along the secret passage, bathed in red light. At times he thought he heard music but it was very faint. The stone walls were massively thick. At last he reached the far end and found a door very like the one at the laboratory end. Here he stopped to think.
Silvia must be the Duchessa. Was she friend or foe? She was clearly Rodolfo’s friend, so that made her on the right side. Then, she was a much more alarming person than Rodolfo. Perhaps he should just hide in the passage until the Reman Ambassador had gone.
Thinking of the Ambassador, though, recalled Rodolfo’s words: ‘If he ever finds you, he will happily kill you for that book.’ Suddenly, Lucien felt not just afraid but very vulnerable. Life here in Bellezza was certainly more exciting than lying in bed feeling sick but he didn’t want to be stranded here for ever, which he would be if the book were stolen. And what would happen to the other Lucien if he were killed here?
These thoughts were enough to propel him through the door. He had to screw up his courage all the same and his eyes were closed as the door swung round.
‘Well, well, what have we here?’ asked a voice he recognized.
Lucien opened his eyes and blinked, dazzled by the opulence of the room he found himself in. Seated opposite him, without her mask, was the Duchessa. Her face wasn’t terrifying at all; she was stunningly beautiful, although not young. Her large violet eyes pierced him as he gazed at her and her lips curved in amusement at his open-mouthed admiration.