‘But did he really think of the consequences?’ asked Lucia. ‘From what little I saw of him, he did not seem to be a bloodthirsty or vengeful man.’
‘I really think he isn’t,’ said Laura. ‘But, anyway, I came to tell you that there have been deaths in the city and Luciano and Rodolfo seem to be, well, missing.’
Lucia crossed herself. And Guido made a curious gesture that was similar, putting three fingers of his right hand to his chest and forehead.
I wish I believed in something, thought Laura.
‘What will happen next?’ asked Lucia.
‘If Ludo is serious about carrying on this war, he’ll fire back on the army,’ said Guido. ‘And it won’t be rocks he answers with.’
*
Rodolfo had been restless ever since they had arrived in Fortezza; he believed they had made a mistake in coming inside the city, because he couldn’t get any sense of what was going on in the army.
That day he had insisted on going out into the streets to see if there was any way he hadn’t thought of to get outside the walls undetected. Luciano had gone with him.
They were close to the cathedral when the siegeengines loosed their loads and catapulted tonnes of rock into the city. Immediately all was chaos and panic; people were running around even though they had no idea where to go. It was a basic instinct to run when there was danger.
The bombardment couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes, but to Luciano, sheltering behind an overturned market stall, it felt like centuries. He had lost sight of Rodolfo after the first strike. At first he had thought it was cannon fire because the air was so thick with dust and debris it seemed like smoke.
But gradually the dust cleared and there was no smell of gunpowder.
Dia! thought Luciano. If that was just rocks, what will it be like when the big guns start?
There was a hush in the cathedral square. Luciano crawled out from behind the stall and started to search for Rodolfo.
At last, after closing the eyes of several dead men and women and covering their faces with their cloaks, Luciano spotted a pair of familiar feet sticking out from under a door which had been wrenched off its building. The image of the Wicked Witch of the West was irresistible.
Luciano fought down his hysteria and forced himself to haul the door off the person who lay underneath it, dreading what he might see.
But Rodolfo was not dead; he was unconscious. He had fallen awkwardly, knocked by the flying door, Luciano supposed, and one arm was bent underneath him. There was an ugly gash on his forehead. But he had a strong pulse, and when Luciano slid an arm under his shoulders to prop him up, Rodolfo’s eyelids fluttered.
What’s the use of being a Stravagante in the middle of an attack? thought Luciano. Then he heard his name being called.
It was Fabio.
‘Thank the Goddess!’ he said when he saw them, though his expression changed when he saw Rodolfo’s injuries.
‘We must get him back to my workshop,’ he said. ‘What a pity Laura has left. But we’ll send her a message.’
‘Where is she?’ asked Luciano.
‘In the Rocca with the Princess,’ said Fabio. ‘Here, between us we can get him back.’
The swordsmith was formidably strong in the arms and shoulders and bore more of the magician’s weight than the slighter Luciano. Together they half carried, half dragged him back to the workshop and laid him on a wooden table.
Luciano fetched a bowl of warm water and bathed the dust and blood from Rodolfo’s head. Fabio supported his neck and trickled some fiery liquor between his lips.
Rodolfo spluttered and sat up of his own accord, then groaned as he realised his arm was broken. But Fabio had already sent one of his apprentices for help.
‘I should think surgeons in the city will be keeping busy,’ said Rodolfo, shakily. ‘Not to mention the undertakers.’
‘Maestro,’ said Luciano, ‘you will be all right.’
It was a statement but there was a question underneath it.
‘Yes,’ said Rodolfo, ‘I will be all right. But many will not – today and in the days to come. We must get a message to Gaetano. We can’t let this go on.’
Luciano was with him on that. The bodies he had ministered to in the cathedral square were not the first he had seen in Talia. But seeing so many of them killed so quickly in such a small area had been a shock. And they weren’t combatants – just ordinary citizens going about their business.
For all the di Chimici army knew, as many of Lucia’s supporters would have died or been injured as followers of Ludo. Indeed, Rodolfo was one of those supporters and he might have been killed. Luciano despaired to think how many lives would be lost or ruined before the Fortezzan inheritance was settled.
‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘If you let me.’
‘How?’ asked Rodolfo.
‘I can stravagate back to my old world and, if you agree, take a second talisman from here, so that I can choose where to arrive. I can think of the army and get into the midst of it.’
‘But that is fantastically dangerous,’ said Rodolfo. ‘You will be in the middle of ten thousand men and obviously not one of them.’
‘And you think I’d be safer here?’ asked Luciano. ‘Look at you – you could be dead!’
‘I don’t think anyone has ever travelled with two talismans of their own at once,’ said Rodolfo.
‘Do we have a choice? If I can find Gaetano and talk to him, we might find a way of bringing this to an end before it gets worse.’
Rodolfo was silent. Luciano realised he could not rely on his old master this time; he was going to have to take the decision himself.
Chapter 15
Retaliation
Laura was revising hard for her French exam the next day when Isabel got a text from Georgia:
Mortimer wants to see us. Something’s up. Come to shop as soon as you can.
‘That’s weird,’ said Isabel, showing Laura the text. ‘I hardly know Mortimer. Do you?’
‘No,’ said Laura. ‘Georgia and Nick are the ones who are so pally with him. But I did get my talisman at his shop. Do you think we should go?’
‘Well, the parents are both at work and Charlie’s stuck into his Business Studies. I can’t honestly do much revision for English Language. So if you’re OK to leave the French, let’s go and see what he wants.’
And the new Laura, who was beyond worrying about exams, grabbed a jacket and went.
There was quite a posse of Stravaganti at the antiques shop. Georgia, Sky and Matt were already there, and as soon as the two girls arrived, Mr Goldsmith turned the Open sign to Closed.
‘No Nick?’ whispered Isabel.
‘Science practical,’ Georgia whispered back.
‘What’s all this about?’ asked Laura.
Georgia shrugged.
Mortimer Goldsmith removed his gold-rimmed glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Georgia. ‘You look terrible. You’re not ill, are you?’
‘I have not had much sleep the last two nights,’ he said.
There was clearly something wrong. He wasn’t offering tea and biscuits as he usually did. The Barnsbury Stravaganti found places to sit or perch on odd pieces of furniture in the shop, including a rocking horse and a Victorian commode.
Mortimer drew something out from the top drawer of his desk and held it up to show them.
Georgia and Sky gasped but the others looked blank.
‘It’s you, Georgia, isn’t it?’ said Isabel.
‘How did you get it?’ asked Sky.
‘A young woman called Alice sold it to me,’ said Mortimer.
Georgia and Sky exchanged glances again and Isabel felt her stomach clench. Alice was Sky’s ex and pretty much Georgia’s ex-best friend too but why did she have a portrait of the stripey-haired girl? It was a really good drawing too.
‘The thing is,’ Mortimer continued, ‘there is something odd about this port
rait. It is clearly a portrait of our friend Georgia here but in the style of an artist – a very good artist, I must say – from the Renaissance.’
‘It could be a fake?’ hazarded Matt.
‘My first thought,’ said Mortimer. ‘Though I’d like to meet any friend of Georgia’s with this amount of artistic skill.’
He looked at Isabel and Sky, who were sitting next to each other rather awkwardly on a chest of drawers.
‘But the paper and materials used are also of the Renaissance – and yet strangely unaffected by the passing of four hundred or so years. Now isn’t that strange?’
The Stravaganti remained silent; it seemed the safest path. They all knew that Alice had made one stravagation and were beginning to realise this must have been her talisman.
‘However,’ Mortimer was saying, ‘all was made clear to me when I met the artist – Giuditta Miele.’
‘You went to Talia?’ said Sky.
Now they all knew why they were here.
Mortimer nodded. ‘By accident, I hasten to say. I found myself in Giglia and talking to a very formidable artist with marble dust in her hair.’
A wave of nostalgia swept over Sky. It had been Giuditta who had set him on his planned course of studying sculpture.
‘How was she?’ he asked.
‘Very welcoming. She gave me porage,’ said Mortimer.
The Barnsbury Stravaganti all laughed at the incongruity.
‘So you’re one of us now,’ said Georgia. ‘A Stravagante.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Mortimer. ‘I don’t intend to go there again, though Giuditta did say she’d get some more suitable clothes for me. To wear if I did. Why I’ve asked you all here is to explain to me what this “stravagating” is. Do you all do it?’
They looked at one another and by a silent mutual agreement all nodded.
‘And Alice? Does she do it too?’ asked Mortimer.
‘She did it once,’ said Sky. ‘She hated it. It was what broke us up in the end.’
He put his arm round Isabel.
‘I see,’ said Mortimer. ‘It is hard to be in a relationship with a – what would you call it – a non-Stravagante?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Matt. ‘Ayesha hasn’t been to Talia and doesn’t want to go. And that suits us both fine.’
‘What about Nick?’ asked Mortimer.
‘Well, that’s a bit more complicated but yes, he’s a sort of Stravagante too,’ said Georgia.
Mortimer sat back in his chair. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth,’ he said. ‘Now tell me why all of you are teenagers and I’m an old man, yet we’ve all been to Talia.’
There was a jangle on the shop doorbell.
‘Can’t they read?’ said Mortimer irritably.
Matt went and looked out.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s my great-aunt. Shall I let her in?’
Once he’d made up his mind to stravagate again, Luciano had to think hard about a new talisman. The one he had already, since it was from his old world, would get him to somewhere near his parents’ house and would return him to Talia from wherever he had left. He had done that a few times now and was pretty sure he’d end up back in Fabio’s workshop.
But the whole point of this stravagation was to get him into the di Chimici army, preferably somewhere near Gaetano. So he needed a new, specifically Fortezzan, talisman, which would have a strong enough attraction to this city for him to refine where he could arrive. Even as he thought it through, Luciano realised he had no idea if it would work.
He looked round Fabio’s workshop for something portable, while the surgeon worked on Rodolfo’s arm and stitched the gash on his forehead. Fabio had put the senior Stravagante into a light sleep.
There wasn’t much choice, because Fabio needed all the tools of his trade and most of the finished weapons in his shop would have been too big. But there was a drawer full of decorative pieces, like the strap holders for scabbards and various ornaments for pommels, where Luciano found a large red glass ‘jewel’.
‘Can I take this?’ he asked Fabio. ‘Is it Fortezzan? It’s not real, is it?’
Fabio laughed. ‘A real ruby of that size would mean I could retire,’ he said. ‘I think it was part of an order from a merchant for a new sword and scabbard. He wanted that set in the pommel, but he died before I could make the sword. It’s Fortezzan all right. I got it from a glass-blower in San Petronio Street.’
Luciano slipped the ‘ruby’ into the inside pocket of his jerkin and took out the white rose from his funeral in the other world, which Rodolfo had set in resin. He could see it was getting dark outside and he’d decided it would be safer to try to infiltrate the army by night.
‘I’m going to try the double stravagation now,’ he told Fabio. ‘If it works, I’ll somehow find a mirror inside the di Chimici army and set it up for Gaetano to use. Is it all right to leave Rodolfo for you to take care of?’
‘It is an honour,’ said Fabio. ‘I shall look after him as if he were my true brother and not just one of the Order. Good luck!’
‘Luciano! What are you doing here?’
Nick had come home after his Science exam and found his old friend leaning against the railings outside the home they had both lived in.
‘Falco!’ said Luciano, giving him a hug. ‘I mean Nick, of course. You look wonderful! But why aren’t you at school?’
‘It’s exams,’ said Nick, ‘and study leave. Did Laura give you Vicky’s message then?’
Luciano looked troubled. ‘No. I’ve met her, but she gave me no message. What did Vicky say?’
‘Oh, I might have got it wrong,’ said Nick, embarrassed.
‘Is she home?’ asked Luciano.
‘No, she’s giving school lessons to Year 8s today. Come in.’
Once they were inside the house where Luciano had lived for most of his first sixteen years, Nick got out his phone.
‘I’ll let the others know you’re here, shall I? Oh, hang on – there’s a message from Georgia. Damn. I forgot to switch it back on after the exam.’
Luciano looked around his old kitchen. There was a new kettle.
‘Mortimer has stravagated. Come to shop as soon as you can,’ Nick read out from the screen.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Luciano. ‘Mortimer is still in Talia? Where did he get a talisman from?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nick, ‘but if he was still in Talia how would Georgia know he’d done it?’
‘Shall we go?’ said Luciano.
*
There was quite a party atmosphere in Mortimer’s shop. But as well as the Barnsbury Stravaganti, there was a grey-haired woman Luciano didn’t recognise.
When the boys arrived, there was a double-take when people saw who was coming in behind Nick’s tall frame.
‘Luciano!’ said Laura. She couldn’t believe she was seeing him in her own world.
And she saw that he was the one without a shadow this time.
There were a lot of introductions to be made. Mortimer had not known the old Lucien.
‘This is my great-aunt Eva,’ said Matt, still looking dazed that she was there.
‘And a very good friend of mine,’ added Mortimer.
Eva looked Luciano up and down and then said, ‘That’s a sixteenth-century shirt, young man.’
He opened his arms wide. ‘Guilty as charged. What can I say?’
‘So, let me get this straight,’ said Nick. ‘Everyone here knows about stravagation now?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say I knew about it, but I’ve done it apparently,’ said Mortimer. ‘And I’ve told Eva.’
‘So where did you go and how?’ asked Luciano.
‘Alice sold him that sketch Giuditta Miele did of me,’ said Georgia. ‘And it accidentally took him to Giglia.’
‘You met Giuditta?’ said Luciano at the same time as Nick said, ‘You went to Giglia?’
‘The others can fill you in on the details later,
’ said Mortimer. ‘What I want to know is why there is all this time travel and what it has to do with me?’
It took so long to bring Mortimer and Eva up to speed with what all the Stravaganti had done in Talia that in the end he sent out for pizza – something that had never happened in his antiques shop before.
They found it particularly hard to understand what had happened to Lucien and Nick. Luciano had to demonstrate his absence of shadow. But when they had finished the pizza, he suddenly looked up at all the clocks that were chiming two.
‘I must go back,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be stravagating into the di Chimici army. I didn’t mean to spend so much time here.’
That gave rise to many more questions and explanations but Luciano left them to it, asking Mortimer if he could go and lie down on his bed in the flat upstairs.
If Luciano had been surprised to run into Nick in Islington, it was even more of a shock to come face to face with Enrico Poggi and a large horse.
‘Dia!’ said the man in blue, making the Hand of Fortune, when the Cavaliere materialised in front of him.
It took him a while to soothe the startled horse but he noticed that Luciano was carefully putting away in his jerkin what looked like a hugely valuable jewel.
‘That was a bit sudden, Cavaliere,’ said Enrico. ‘Where did you spring from?’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Luciano, looking anxiously at the sky. He had stayed too long at Mortimer’s and it was nearly daylight. ‘Do you think you could get me into Gaetano di Chimici’s tent?’
Enrico tapped the side of his nose as if to say, ‘Trust me,’ which Luciano didn’t want to have to do, but he hadn’t much choice.
‘I know where they all are,’ said Enrico.
‘Are you a spy again?’ Luciano asked him. ‘Because if you are, I’d like to know whose side you are on.’
‘Why, yours of course, Cavaliere,’ said Enrico. ‘But I wouldn’t advise you to go anywhere near the Grand Duke’s tent – hasn’t he still got a warrant out for you? And Fortezza is still a di Chimici city till proved different.’
‘Well, we are not in Fortezza, are we?’ said Luciano. ‘And while we are on that subject, I should think you’d want to stay out of Fabrizio’s way too. He knows you switched the foils when I killed his father.’