‘You don’t say!’ was her perpetual exclamation when he tried to tell her about his world. ‘Everyone has a box with moving pictures in it in their living-room? And people of our age have one in their bedrooms too? And lots of them have a bedroom to themselves? And they can talk to their friends on the other side of the city without leaving the room? You don’t say!’
Some things he never managed to explain to her. GameBoys for one, which she simply couldn’t see the point of, and football. The more Lucien described the rules and the rituals, the more ludicrous they sounded in his own ears. ‘But why do they pull their shirts over their heads?’ Arianna would ask, to which he had no reply.
The more he learned about her world, the more remote his life in London seemed. Arianna told him about the city’s many festivals. The carnival, of course, he knew about from his own reading about Venice, and she had told him about the Marriage with the Sea on his first visit. But there were also mandola races, rowing competitions, festivals of light when all the mandolas carried torches, special bridges where ritual fights were staged between local gangs, the list went on and on. It seemed as if almost every week held some cause for celebration for the superstitious and volatile lagooners. And every festival was marked by huge feasts and wonderful displays of fireworks.
‘It all sounds so much fun,’ said Lucien. ‘You Bellezzans really know how to enjoy yourselves.’
‘It’s not all like that though,’ said Arianna, looking serious for once. They were sitting on a stone bench within spitting distance of the Great Canal, eating plums. Arianna gestured across the water to where a fine building was nearing completion. ‘That new church is called Santa Maria delle Grazie – St Mary of the Thank-yous.’
‘Thank-yous?’ asked Lucien, puzzled. ‘What sort of a name is that?’
Saint Mary of the thank-yous,’ said Arianna. ‘Twenty-five years ago, long before I was born of course, there was a plague in the city. It killed almost a third of the people living here.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Lucien, thinking of a third of his classmates or one in three of his neighbours.
‘It was,’ said Arianna. ‘But it might have been worse. The church has been built in thanks that it wasn’t. That it stopped at a third and left the other two thirds alive.’
When she talked about the plague, Arianna constantly made the gesture with her hand that Rodolfo called the manus fortunae, the hand of fortune. He regarded it as common superstition and rebuked his servant Alfredo whenever he caught him doing it. Lucien had noticed that citizens of Bellezza did it all the time, spontaneously, a bit like touching wood for luck, but much more often. Now he asked Arianna about it.
She looked at her hand, suspended in mid-air, surprised to find she was doing it. It was instinctive.
‘It means “may the lady goddess, her king consort and her son aid us” and “may the circle of our life be unbroken”,’ she said, reciting it like a school lesson.
‘The lady goddess?’ queried Lucien. ‘But that’s a church going up over there. I thought this was a Christian country?’
Arianna shrugged. ‘So it is. But it doesn’t hurt to keep in with the old gods, does it? I know who I’d rather have on my side if the plague came again.’
Lucien remembered what Rodolfo had said about the di Chimici bringing medical cures back from his century and then keeping them for their own people. It would be only a step from that to importing twenty-first century illnesses in test tubes. Lucien thought of AIDS and shuddered. Secretly, with his back to Arianna, he made the hand of fortune himself.
As he and Arianna set off to explore further along the Great Canal, a man in a blue cloak watched them go. And slipped along behind them.
Chapter 6
Doctor Death
Lucien was feeling better. He was between treatments now and really beginning to think he would be normal again one day. His best friend, Tom, came to see him – the first time Lucien had been up to visitors since the treatment began.
After an embarrassed few minutes while Tom got used to Lucien’s changed appearance, they were chatting as if they had never been apart. Lucien let Tom do most of the talking, limiting himself to questions and reactions. After all, as far as Tom was concerned, Lucien hadn’t been doing anything worth reporting – only lying in bed for weeks.
Tom, on the other hand, was full of stories about school – the new supply teacher, the exploits of the swimming team, of which he was captain, and lots of gossip about who fancied whom. Tom had been keen on a girl called Katie ever since year eight and was now wondering if he could pluck up the courage to invite her to the year eleven disco at the end of term.
Lucien smiled, listening to Tom. He had visions of himself walking into the disco with Arianna. With her long legs and tumbling brown curls it would be a bit like taking Julia Roberts. His smile widened at the thought of what all his friends would say. Then he imagined what Arianna’s face would be like when she heard the music and had a distant picture of her making the hand of fortune and saying ‘Dia!’ It would be like taking a Martian. He found himself chuckling and turned it into a cough.
Tom was contrite. ‘Sorry, Luce. It’s crass of me to bang on about the disco. I don’t suppose you’ll be up to coming?’
Lucien shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Besides, who’d go with me? I’d need to take the Bride of Frankenstein.’
Tom punched him ever so gently, on the arm.
*
Lucien’s parents were delighted with his progress. He got up and was dressed for most of every day now. He could even go for short trips away from the house, though he still got tired. On less good days, when he wasn’t up to outings, he sat at his computer and trawled the Internet for good sites on Venice.
His favourite was VirtualVenice.com, where you could cruise the canals and walk the streets of a city so like his Bellezza that it almost took his breath away. He would spend hours doing that every day. Another one had street maps of the city and he often pored over those, noting the similarities and differences in the names of places where he walked with Arianna every night.
One day, he typed William Dethridge’s name into the Search box and was rewarded by a list of several sites. Once he had eliminated the inevitable non-matches – a modern musicologist, a mountain range in Alaska, several Australian mathematicians, a coin dealer, a bike shop in the Lake District – he found three sites that really did deal with Rodolfo’s Elizabethan doctor. But there was nothing about his being a Stravagante.
Nevertheless, Lucien read the entries with mounting excitement, downloaded them and printed them out. He dared not take the pages to Bellezza, which would mean breaking one of Rodolfo’s rules, but he set to work memorizing everything he could.
The first was an academic site – www.histdocs.ely.ac.uk/mathematicians/dethridge.html – which listed the bare facts:
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DETHRIDGE, William (?1523-?1575)
Born: ?April 20, 1523
Died: ?November 1575
Datainfo: Dates uncertain; no independent confirmation
Lifespan: ?52 years
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Nationality: English, but spent many years studying in Italy.
Education: Oxford 1538-42. Bologna 1543-6. In 1547 became lecturer in mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford, a post which he retained until his disappearance in 1575.
Religion: Anglican. But, like John Dee, often viewed with hostility as a practitioner of the occult. He was tried for witchcraft in 1575 and condemned to death by burning, but there is no record that the sentence was ever carried out.
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Scientific disciplines: Mathematics, calendarism, alchemy, astrology.
Marital status: married, 1548, Johanna Andrews. Six children, of whom three survived to adulthood: his sons Bruno and Thomas and daughter Elizabeth.
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For more information, open these links:
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Publications / Bibliography / Related Websites
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Despite the dry tone, Lucien found these sparse facts fascinating. So William Dethridge had really existed and been some sort of magician, with a connection to Italy, though it was a bit of a surprise to find he had been a mathematician. Alchemist and astrologer sounded more like it, though goodness knows what a calendarist did. But what had happened to him? The site referred to his ‘disappearance’ and said there was no record of his execution but gave the date of his assumed death anyway.
The next site had been much more chatty: www.williamdethridge.org claimed to be the official homepage of the ‘William Dethridge Society’, which was a weird sort of fan club. It offered links to its newsletter ‘The Magus’, a chat room for followers of the ‘Master’ and, after a list of facts much like the one on the previous site, gave a further list, of Unsolved Mysteries about Doctor Dethridge:
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When was he born? Dethridge gave his own birthdate as 20th April 1523 in the village of Barnsbury, but no parish register for the period records any such information. In the light of what followed, it has to be asked ‘was William Dethridge a mortal man at all?’
What arts did he practise? He was an astrologer at a time when the Queen had her own Royal one, and an alchemist, which was a legal profession. What exactly did he do that cost him his life? (If indeed it did – see below.)
When did he die? He was condemned to death by Elizabeth I in 1575 but apparently disappeared before the sentence could be carried out. What happened to him? He was never seen in England again. One theory is that powerful friends engineered his escape to the continent but there has been no further mention of him found in any document. Besides, where would he have gone? Italy was not safe for someone with his reputation; burnings for witchcraft were common there at this period. His disappearance remains a mystery, with some explanation perhaps based in the occult.
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This was even more exciting. Lucien couldn’t wait to tell Rodolfo about it. The third site was quite amateur, put together by someone called Paul Evans, who had written an article on William Dethridge for an obscure journal called Natural Philosophy. www.paul-evans. co.uk/william dethridge just said:
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Doctor Death: the strange absences of William Dethridge, an article by Paul Evans in Natural Philosophy, volume 43, issue 2, September 2001.
Synopsis: local people in Dethridge’s home village of Barnsbury used to call him ‘Doctor Death’, because he was, on more occasions than one, found in a sort of trance from which he could not be roused. Tradition has it that he was transported to the undertaker on at least two occasions and subsequently sat up in his coffin. Could this be the reason he was arraigned for witchcraft? The author investigates the evidence for the popular belief that William Dethridge was in communication with the devil.
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Lucien felt a thrill down his backbone when he read that one; surely these ‘absences’ must have been times when Doctor Dethridge had been on his travels to Talia? It was disturbing to think that he might have been put to a horrible death for doing what Lucien now did every night.
Giuliana was uneasy. It had never occurred to her that she was doing anything dangerous when she had accepted an invitation to the Duchessa’s Palazzo. The work had not been difficult, although she had had a dreadful cold for the next week. And the money had come in very useful. She was getting married in a few months, to her handsome Enrico, and now they would be able to afford so much more for their household.
That was when the trouble began. She couldn’t help herself, in her pride at bringing more to their union than might be expected of a poor peasant-girl; she told him about the money. From then on he showed her no mercy till he had wormed the whole story out of her. His eyes shone when he found out that the Duchessa used a substitute on some State occasions.
To Giuliana, he said, ‘Just think, my own darling in the water! All the people of Bellezza waving and cheering my Giuliana without knowing!’ But to himself, as a professional spy, all he could think of was how to make the most out of this information. And as a true Talian, he hugged his blue cloak around him and said, ‘And since it was you who really made the marriage with the sea, it is you who will reap the rewards of prosperity. This money is just the beginning, Giuliana. We shall be rich!’
That was what was frightening Giuliana. She begged him to understand that he must tell no one, that the story was to end there. But she knew Enrico and in her heart she wished she had never told him.
*
Rodolfo was fascinated by the information Lucien brought him on his next visit. Lucien had to begin by explaining the Internet again because Rodolfo kept seeing ‘the web’ as something like a huge network spun by spiders. And if it were that, it was all too easy to imagine a sinister presence at the heart, a member of the di Chimici family trying to entrap unwary users.
‘No, it’s not like that,’ Lucien insisted. ‘It’s neutral. In fact people complain that it isn’t regulated enough. Anyone can post up any sort of silly stuff on it. Dancing guinea-pigs, whatever.’
Rodolfo gave him what Lucien thought of as one of his ‘puzzled alien’ looks.
‘I can’t understand why anyone would want to see pigs dance,’ he said gravely, ‘but if anyone can put “silly stuff” in this web, then how do you know what they say about Doctor Dethridge is true?’
‘I don’t,’ said Lucien patiently. ‘But I think you’ll be interested.’
Then he had told him all he could remember: the academic, university site, the fan club and, most interesting of all, the article about ‘Doctor Death’s’ occasional trances.
Rodolfo was completely gripped and made Lucien repeat it all several times. He was particularly interested in the mystery surrounding Dethridge’s disappearance.
‘What do you think happened to him?’ asked Lucien.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rodolfo slowly, ‘but I hope it means he is here, somewhere safe in Talia.’
Lucien had a sudden thought. ‘What year is it? I mean now, here in Bellezza.’
Rodolfo turned his large dark eyes on Lucien, as if reluctant to answer, but in the end he said, ‘It is 1577.’
Although Lucien had known it must have been something like that, it was still a shock. And now he felt excitement fizzing through his veins.
‘So he disappeared only two years ago. Less, if it was in November. It’s only June now. When did you last see him?’
Again the reluctance and then it was as if Rodolfo had made up his mind to tell Lucien a story he had so far withheld.
‘It was about two years ago,’ he began. ‘We in the brotherhood have accepted that we will not see him again. We believe him to be dead. He did say, last time, that he was in danger.’
‘But why didn’t he come here then?’ said Lucien. ‘Surely, if he planned to escape the death sentence, he would have stravagated to Bellezza?’
‘No,’ said Rodolfo. ‘This was not his city. He came to and from Bellona, to the University. Although of course he travelled to other cities when he was here.’
Lucien was by now used to the way that Talian names were variants on the ones in his world. Bellona must be Bologna, he decided. But he hadn’t realized that each Stravagante was limited to one city for his departure and arrival. It was like only being able to use one airport. He supposed that he, Lucien, always arrived in Bellezza because that was where his purple and red notebook had come from.
‘Did William Dethridge use a – a talisman, like my notebook?’
Rodolfo nodded.
‘Yes, but to explain it, I must tell you about the way in which he came to Talia first. You have read that he was an alchemist. Do you know what that is?’
‘Someone who tries to make gold from lead?’
‘In your world, yes. Here of course our natural philosophers are striving to create silver. Getting gold is easy enough.’
Lucien remembered the name of the magazine that had carried the ‘Doctor Death’ article.
‘Is a natural philosopher what you call a scientist?’
‘A scientist, yes, like myself. But not all of us are striving to make silver, any more than all are Stravaganti. Anyway, Doctor Dethridge was trying to make gold, not from lead but from earth and salts and various minerals. He had been to university in your world’s version of Talia, in the city we call Bellona. When he was conducting one of his experiments late at night in his laboratory in Anglia – your England – there was an alchemical accident – an explosion affecting time and space. When he came to he found himself still clutching the copper dish he had been using in the experiment. Imagine his excitement and amazement when he saw that the dish now contained gold!’
‘So he did it!’ exclaimed Lucien.
‘Yes and no,’ said Rodolfo. ‘It was indeed gold, but he hadn’t made it in your world, where it is valued, but in our world, where it is not. When he looked around him, he found himself, even more to his amazement, transported to Talia, in Bellona, in the laboratory of one of our greatest scientists, Federico Bruno. From that day on, Doctor Dethridge gave up his interest in alchemy and dedicated himself to the science of stravagation.’
‘And did he never take any gold back with him?’
Rodolfo shook his head. ‘He tried. He took the copper dish back, but when he returned to your world, it contained only earth and salts. And his laboratory had been half destroyed by fire. Still, the dish was now his talisman, his most precious possession, which carried him back and forth between worlds. From then on he wasn’t interested in gold or in making his fortune; it was the pure science of stravagation that consumed him. It was Doctor Dethridge himself who established the rules about taking nothing between worlds except talismans.’