So Gaetano di Chimici was shown into the guardroom in one of the towers by the gate, with Ludo, General Ciampi and a small guard of Ludo’s men.
Gaetano looked round approvingly. He liked the fact that Ludo was seeing both of them as soldiers not princes. The wine set before him was not as good as the di Chimici army had to drink and Gaetano approved of that too. Ludo’s claim was based not on a desire for the luxuries of a princely life but a belief in his own right to the throne of Fortezza.
The two men got down to business.
‘What shall I call you?’ asked Gaetano. ‘I cannot say “Prince” or “Your Highness”, because of course my family is here in force to dispute your claim. But I would like to maintain the courtesies.’
‘My friends call me Ludo.’
Gaetano smiled ruefully. ‘I know I said we should be courteous, but we’re not exactly friends.’
‘We have some friends in common,’ said Ludo.
‘I know. That’s why my brother suggested me for this embassy. I’ll call you “Signor Ludo”, with your permission.’
Ludo shrugged a ‘be my guest’ gesture.
‘Your Highness,’ he said, ‘now that we have that sorted out, what can you offer me?’
‘Well,’ said Gaetano warily, ‘you see the force we have mustered under your walls? More than ten thousand strong. I’m not asking you to reveal your own numbers, but of course you know them and you can see the odds yourself. There is only one way this siege can end. We can save a great many lives if you agree terms with us.’
‘What terms?’
‘The Grand Duke offers you safe conduct to a city of your choice and no retaliation for your act of sedition here, save for permanent exile from Fortezza, to which you must give up your claim.’
Ludo waited before replying. To gain time he drank more wine.
‘I do not see any advantage to me in this offer,’ he said at last. ‘And I do not accept your analysis of the situation. This is a formidably well-provisioned city, and we can inflict a lot of damage on the di Chimici army from within the security of its walls.’
‘You will not accept any compromise then?’
‘No. And let me tell you that I do not believe in the Grand Duke’s offer, although I accept that you made it in good faith. His safe conduct would not save me from the lone assassin I think would overtake me soon after I left the protection of Fortezza.’
Gaetano felt acutely uncomfortable. He had indeed brought the offer in good faith but after what his brother had said to him before, he didn’t really believe in it himself.
‘I can see you understand my point of view,’ said Ludo.
‘I would guard you myself,’ said Gaetano. ‘Any assassin would have to get past me.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I can make you a similar offer,’ said Ludo. ‘Tell the Grand Duke that I am willing to release the princess to his protection if she gives up her claim to the throne. We may avoid much bloodshed that way.’
‘I will convey your offer,’ said Gaetano evenly, sure that it would be rejected.
Ludo stood and took his adversary’s hand. ‘Please tell your brother, the Grand Duke, that I have staked everything on my claim to the throne of Fortezza. I shall be its Prince or nothing.’
On Saturday morning, Isabel’s parents agreed the girls had done enough revision to take an hour or so off. They went to Café@anytime and met the other Stravaganti. Ayesha would not join them because she had a law exam to revise for.
‘Not till Thursday,’ said Matt. ‘But you know what she’s like.’
‘I’ve got French then too,’ said Laura. ‘But I can’t stuff any more revision in till I’ve had coffee and a bun.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve got a Maths paper on Thursday but I had to get out for a break.’
‘Tell us about Fortezza,’ said Sky. ‘It will take our minds off the exams.’
He was sitting on a sofa with his arm round Isabel, while the others lounged in comfy chairs.
‘Well,’ said Laura, biting into her Belgian bun, ‘I seem to have become a spy.’
‘That’s sounds like a good Talian task,’ said Georgia. ‘How do you manage it?’
‘By stravagating alternately to Fabio’s and to the castle,’ said Laura. ‘Fabio, Rodolfo and Luciano are going to find out everything they can about what’s going on with the city and pass it on to me. Then I go back to sleep, get to the castle and tell it all to Lucia and Guido.’
‘Sounds exhausting,’ said Nick.
‘It’s OK,’ said Laura. ‘I’m still at Bel’s and I can snatch naps between my revision sessions. Bel covers for me with her mum and dad.’
But what would they say, she thought, if they knew about my other plan – the bit where I meet Ludo in secret? That’s the one that’s going to be the most tiring. And the most dangerous.
Chapter 13
Portrait of a Young Woman
Now that she found herself caught up in one, Laura thought she had better learn a bit about Italian sieges of over four hundred years ago. AS History hadn’t prepared her for this. It was too different from the Cold War or Vietnam. But she did have one distinct advantage: she had been there, or at least the equivalent of ‘there’.
Reading about it online, she was remembering the defences of Fortezza and trying to put an image of the Talian city over the diagrams she found of Pisa and Padua. She covered sheets and sheets of paper with her impressions.
‘Oh,’ said Isabel’s mother, when she brought the girls mugs of tea in the afternoon. ‘I thought you’d finished with History?’
‘Just getting ahead with next year,’ said Laura, hoping that Sarah Evans wasn’t quite so clued up about the syllabus to come.
‘You’re sure you don’t want to do some more French?’ asked Isabel when her mother had left them. She couldn’t get used to this new version of her friend, who didn’t seem to be worrying about the imminent exams at all.
‘I honestly think it will be of more use to know how not to get killed in a siege,’ said Laura, looking at her drawings.
‘But how can you do that?’ asked Isabel. ‘I mean, if you go out into the street, you could get – oh, I don’t know – an arrow in the eye or something.’
‘You’re thinking of the Battle of Hastings,’ said Laura. ‘A cannonball or a big lump of rock from a siege-engine is more likely.’
Isabel looked horrified.
‘But that could get you even in Fabio’s workshop – or the castle!’
‘Lucia is sure they won’t fire on the castle.’
‘OK. Maybe not the castle. But it’s scary to think you aren’t safe even inside a building.’
‘You see why I’m not revising French?’
‘It was different for me,’ said Isabel, remembering. ‘I was only really in danger once the sea battle started, and that was all over in a few hours. I can’t imagine what a siege would be like. Don’t they go on for ages?’
‘They can last for months apparently.’
‘Months! But none of us has ever been in Talia that long – at least, I don’t think so,’ said Isabel.
‘Luciano is supposed to get married in a couple of weeks,’ said Laura. ‘So he must think it will be over before then.’
‘Married!’ said Isabel. ‘I can’t get my head round it. I mean, he’s only a year or so older than us, isn’t he? And here’s me thinking it’s incredibly daring to go to America for the summer to spend time with Sky.’
‘It’s different for them though, isn’t it?’ said Laura. ‘They live in a different world – literally – and all the expectations are different. And they’re these kind of – nobles, who do everything younger.’
‘But it must still be really odd for him. It’s not that long since he was a teenager like us at Barnsbury.’
‘How long would it take to get used to such a different life though?’ asked Laura. ‘It might have been a case of “adapt or die” for him.’
‘As long as the adapti
ng stops you from the dying,’ said Isabel.
‘That’s where we started,’ said Laura. ‘How to stay alive in a siege. It sounds like a textbook I need but don’t have.’
‘You’re right – we’ll just have to write it for you,’ said Isabel firmly. ‘Let’s get everyone on it.’
*
Mortimer Goldsmith knew all the Barnsbury Stravaganti, though he didn’t know that’s what they were; they all dropped into his shop on the way home from school from time to time. But he didn’t recognise the fair-haired girl who came in that Saturday afternoon. He guessed she was at Barnsbury Comp, because it was rare for a teenager to come in who wasn’t. This one wasn’t a buyer, but a seller.
She had a package under her arm, wrapped in brown paper, and marched confidently up to Mortimer’s desk.
‘Good afternoon, my dear,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I want to know if this is worth anything,’ she said, without beating round the bush. She unwrapped the package and displayed a framed picture.
Mortimer jumped when he saw it. He took out a magnifying glass and scrutinised the drawing under the glass. Then he straightened up and looked the girl in the eye.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Alice Greaves,’ she said.
‘This is impossible,’ he said. ‘It’s a picture of Georgia O’Grady but it was made some time in the sixteenth century. Is Georgia your friend?’
‘She used to be,’ Alice said. ‘Not any more. I want to get rid of it.’
‘Can you explain how a Renaissance artist could have drawn a very convincing portrait of a specific twenty-first-century teenager?’
‘Look, do you want to buy it or not?’
Mortimer suddenly wanted the sketch of Georgia very much.
‘I’ll give you a hundred pounds,’ he said.
It was worth very much more than that, but Alice jumped at the offer, particularly since it came in the form of five twenty-pound notes.
When she had left, Mortimer held the sketch reverently. He had to offer it to Georgia first, he supposed, but not till Monday. He was going to take it up to his flat as soon as he closed the shop.
Ludo had to wait till he was on his own to read Laura’s note. All day he had been aware of it tucked inside his jerkin. But there had been so much to deal with. Since he had rejected the di Chimici embassy and had not heard anything back about his own terms, he had carried on visiting the gun emplacements, encouraging his men in a firm, confident voice he didn’t recognise as his own.
All the time he felt as if he were acting in a play – the role of bold soldier and leader of the rebels. And yet he had been brought up as a Manoush, among people who were peaceable and who thought nothing of territory or possessions; they carried all they owned from place to place and had no permanent city. Yet here he was, laying claim to one of the great Talian city-states and proposing to live within its massive walls under the roof of its castle for the rest of his life.
He could just about do it, but only by listening to the di Chimici side of his nature; after more than twenty years he was going to give the warlike and acquisitive side a chance. Where had being a Manoush ever got him? Nearly burned to death for his beliefs. And what happiness had it brought him? Lots of girls, he had to admit, and a sense of freedom, but he was now ready to give up his liberty as a wanderer and try his hand at being a Talian noble.
But he knew he would always be torn between the two sides of his nature. And he had sensed a similar duality in the girl from the other world. She was brave, anyone could see that. She was prepared to fight in Talia for whichever side needed her. But he knew she was also vulnerable and it was that tension in her that attracted him.
Ludo sighed.
‘I can’t come to where you are on the walls,’ said Laura’s note, ‘but I can arrange to go to that room inside the palazzo where we met. I’ll be there every day at midday. If you can, come and meet me there. If you can’t come, send me a message.’
It was so wonderful to see her trust in him that it made him feel trustworthy, in a way that he had never been before with a woman. He determined to be at the palazzo to meet her next day. Though they must find somewhere more private. He smiled to himself. Laura clearly had not had as much experience of making assignations as he had.
Ludo felt his heart lift at the thought that she had not given up on him, in spite of the fact that they were on opposite sides of the struggle for Fortezza. He just wished he could see a way that they might one day be together. He knew less about stravagation than she did but he did know that only two people from Laura’s world lived in Talia now.
And he couldn’t talk to either of them.
Mortimer Goldsmith couldn’t take his eyes off the sketch of Georgia. It was clearly her, not just someone with a resemblance to her. And it was equally clearly drawn by a Renaissance artist. He had taken it up to his flat and removed it from the frame and examined it through an eyeglass. The paper could not have been any more recent than 1600 and was probably older. The chalks used were consistent with the period.
But the drawing was fresh and vibrant and undimmed by time, which should not have been the case after more than four centuries. And no woman of the sixteenth century had worn her hair in a wild tangle of tiger stripes: red and tawny.
After puzzling over it for so long that he had forgotten to eat any supper, he poured a glass of red wine and phoned Eva Holbrook.
Matt’s great-aunt answered the phone quickly; there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Or her mind.
As soon as Mortimer had explained the issue, she pounced on the subject like the rigorous academic she had been.
‘I have been wondering about sixteenth-century artefacts ever since my visit last autumn,’ she said. ‘That leather-bound book that Matt found in your shop – there is no way that would have just turned up by chance, a piece of that age.’
‘And recently I’ve sold a small silver paperknife that looked like a sword and could have come from the same period,’ said Mortimer.
‘Well, where did that one come from?’
‘A man came into the shop and sold it to me.’
‘What sort of a man?’
‘I didn’t take much notice at the time. You know me, Eva. I’m more interested in things than in people’s faces. But he was dressed rather strangely, now I come to think of it. But people wear such odd things now and I don’t know anything about fashion.’
Eva snorted down the phone. ‘It’s not exactly being fashion-conscious to notice if someone’s wearing clothes four centuries out of date!’ she said.
‘Well, if you put it like that, he could have been wearing Renaissance clothes, I suppose, but they were very plain, as if he was a working man. But when I bought that little knife, I had a hunch it would attract another young person from Barnsbury Comp, and it wasn’t long before it did.’
‘And where did the leather-bound book come from? Was it brought in by another escapee from Tudor times?’
‘No. That had been here a while in a box of oddments. It came originally from the old house in Waverley Road, where the school is. But what are you saying? That there are time travellers in Islington?’
He thought she would snort more derision down the phone, but instead she said nothing.
‘Eva?’
‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ she said eventually. ‘Be careful of that drawing, Mortimer. I suggest you ask Matt and Georgia and your other young friends about it before you try anything with it.’
What would I try? he asked himself as he got ready for bed. Abracadabra? Take me to your artist? But he knew there was something fishy about all these artefacts from sixteenth-century Italy ending up in the hands of teenagers he had come to know.
And he remembered that the man who had sold him the paperknife had given the money to someone selling the Big Issue outside the shop on his way out. He had thought it strange at the time.
He held the drawing in his hands, careful as he could be to keep it clean, and thought how much he’d like to know how it had come into Alice Greaves’s possession. She seemed very different from the others.
Giuditta Miele had just finished her latest commission and was very pleased with the result. It was a small piece that she had to complete in a hurry, a little statue of the dog Grand Duke Fabrizio had bought for his infant son. The sculptor liked dogs, and this was a hunting hound called Sagitta, the arrow.
She was a big beast, much bigger than the child she had been given to, but gentle and protective of her little master. Giuditta had gone several times to the palace south of the river Argento, to study and sketch the dog. She was to be shown wearing the di Chimici lilies on her collar and with one paw on a stone perfume bottle.
It hadn’t been an easy commission, but Giuditta could now relax until the next. She was never out of work for long. She was now making breakfast for herself and her apprentices in the little kitchen attached to her studio and humming tunelessly.
She turned from the range and gasped. There was a man in her chair who hadn’t been there before. He was even more startled than she was, as well he might have been, since he was wearing only a long blue and white striped nightshirt.
But Mortimer Goldsmith had no idea where he was, and Giuditta had a good guess where he had come from. She had been there herself, more than once, and this wasn’t the first Stravagante to materialise in her kitchen. She saw what he was holding.
‘How did you get the portrait I gave Alice?’ she asked him.
It took Mortimer a moment to work out that ‘Ah-LEE-Chay’ was the fair girl who had sold him the drawing.
And was this large fierce woman a dream? He couldn’t see her properly because he didn’t wear his glasses in bed. Then it occurred to him that he had always been able to see perfectly well in other dreams. He thought he’d better answer.