‘Sometimes I think you are without feelings,’ said Arianna bitterly.
‘Then that just shows you have learned nothing about me at all in the last three years,’ said Silvia.
‘But you seem to care more about Bellezza than about your own family,’ said Arianna.
There was a silence while they both thought about an old wound that lay between them.
‘Perhaps you are to be a new kind of Duchessa,’ said Silvia at last. ‘It is true that you were not brought up to politics and had no experience before your election.’
It was a concession.
‘But I am worried about how you cannot seem to set your emotions aside. It makes you so vulnerable.’
‘That’s why you had me brought up by your sister,’ said Arianna, trying to keep the resentment out of her voice.
For nearly sixteen years she had believed her parents were Valeria and Gianfranco, who lived on the island of Torrone. And that she had two older brothers who were fishermen.
All that had changed dramatically a few years ago, when she had discovered her true parents were Silvia and Rodolfo.
‘I have told you my reasons many times,’ said Silvia. ‘I weary of repeating it, but the moment I knew I was pregnant, I also knew I would have a person in my life that would be too precious and that would make me vulnerable. To your kidnap, to blackmail, to threats of your death. I could not rule the city and live with that fear day by day.’
‘And what about the children that Luciano and I will have?’ asked Arianna. ‘Won’t they be subject to the same threats?’
‘As I said, you might be a new kind of Duchessa,’ said Silvia. ‘And if you cannot be, well, perhaps you should think again about getting married.’
*
Laura didn’t think that Ludo would come to their meeting place that day. She had been so shocked by what she saw in the streets of Fortezza she couldn’t imagine that he would have time for a tryst, but she decided to stravagate to the palazzo anyway.
The devastation by cannonball was much worse than that caused by the randomly aimed rocks from the siege-engines. Few streets close to the walls had escaped being hit, and many in the centre had been partly demolished.
Laura was coming to the conclusion that the way in which she had to help Lucia was simply this: to get Ludo to surrender. Yet at the moment it felt as if it would be easier to climb to the top of the battlements, wave a flag to get the army’s attention and offer herself in single combat with their best champion.
After going briefly back to Isabel’s bedroom, where her friend was peacefully asleep, Laura plunged again into the state that brought her to Talia.
As she arrived in the palazzo, still holding the little sword, she saw that Ludo was there but that he was not alone. Normally his guards waited outside the door of wherever their leader was, but today the younger one was in the room with Ludo.
He’d had his back to the door but swung round to see Laura standing holding a weapon, albeit a ludicrously small one, and all his instincts kicked in.
He lunged at her, drawing the short sword from his belt.
‘No!’ shouted Ludo, who had not seen Laura till that moment.
He flung himself on Riccardo, hurling him to the floor, but it was too late to stop him from hurting Laura.
The dark-haired Stravagante stood swaying, looking at the blood coursing down her arm.
‘Laura!’ cried Ludo, reaching to clasp her to him.
But even as he touched her, Laura smiled sadly at him and disappeared.
And woke in the bed next to Isabel’s, dripping blood and with her arm throbbing. It was so much worse than anything she had ever done to herself. Her gasp of pain woke Isabel, who could not for the moment think what was going on.
‘Hide the talisman,’ Laura said, clenching her teeth against the pain.
Isabel was still half asleep, but she took the little sword and buried it in her chest of drawers under a pile of underwear. She noticed there was no blood on the blade and felt relieved.
‘What happened?’ she said, looking appalled at Laura’s right arm, which she was clutching with her left. The bright blood was seeping out from under her fingers.
‘Ludo’s bodyguard,’ said Laura. ‘But no one’s going to believe that, are they?’
Realisation sank in for Isabel. It was obvious they were going to have to get help for Laura’s wound. But how could she tell her parents what had happened? And would Laura’s parents believe she hadn’t done it to herself?
‘What shall I do?’ asked Laura. ‘It hurts like hell.’
‘Wait, let me think,’ said Isabel. ‘Perhaps Vicky would help us?’
She rummaged for her phone.
‘But I don’t know if we’ll get away with it.’
Ludo had Riccardo in a headlock.
‘What did you do that for, you fool? Laura is my – my dearest friend.’
‘I’m sorry, Capitano,’ the guard choked. Ludo released him. ‘I didn’t know. But there is no way she could have got into the room without my knowing. She just … appeared out of nowhere. And she was holding a dagger. I had to protect you. It’s my job.’
Ludo groaned and put his head in his hands.
‘She is the last person in the world I would want to see hurt,’ he said. ‘I can understand you were just doing what you thought was right, but to see her covered in blood! And if I hadn’t stopped you, you’d have killed her!’
‘But, Capitano, where is she now?’ Riccardo gestured to the bloodstains on the carpet.
Ludo could not answer him. He wished he knew.
‘It’s not natural,’ said the guard. ‘There is some evil magic at work here. And I must say one more thing.’
Ludo looked at him wearily.
‘I think your “friend” is a spy,’ he said. ‘I saw her on the walls of the Rocca with the Princess and her guard when I was coming back here from my guardhouse the day before yesterday.’
Ludo looked up.
‘I don’t know how she could have got inside, Capitano, any more than I know how she could have got in here unseen. But believe me, she is not to be trusted.’
Chapter 17
Complications
The doctor in A & E had Laura’s notes by the time they got to see him.
‘Self-harmer,’ he said, not unsympathetically.
‘But not this time,’ said Laura. ‘I swear it.’
She was desperately afraid that he would tell her parents and that she would be locked up somewhere without her talisman.
But fortunately the doctor, who was new to Bart’s, assumed Vicky was Laura’s mother and addressed her as Mrs Reid. She didn’t correct him.
‘For what it’s worth, I believe her,’ said Vicky.
‘So do I,’ said the doctor. ‘It says here that Laura is right-handed and her last wound was typically on her left arm. This one is on her right – a defence wound to protect her face or chest.’
Laura slumped with relief, even though her arm was still hurting unbearably.
‘So it was an attack,’ said the doctor. ‘Have you called the police?’
‘No!’ said Laura and Vicky simultaneously.
‘But why not? Did Laura know her attacker?’
‘No,’ said Laura truthfully. She didn’t remember ever seeing Ludo’s bodyguard before. ‘He disappeared afterwards.’
That was not strictly speaking true. It was Laura who had gone away; fainting in Talia while holding the talisman had brought her straight back to London.
‘But you could describe him?’ asked the doctor.
Male, around twenty, about five foot ten, black hair, brown eyes, dressed in sixteenth-century armour, thought Laura.
‘No,’ she said out loud. ‘It was dark.’
‘But you must report it,’ said the doctor. ‘The police need to know exactly when and where it happened so they can keep an eye out for your attacker. You know how bad knife crime is in some parts of London. Mind you, I didn’t think i
t was such a problem in Islington.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Vicky. ‘We’ll let the police know. But for now, can you just get on with patching her up? She’s in a lot of pain.’
‘Of course, Mrs Reid. Now, Laura, I’m going to give you a nerve block and that will stop the pain. You were lucky he just missed an artery.’
You are never to do that again, raged Arianna into the mirror. You must promise me not to go back into the di Chimici army.
Luciano held up his hands. I won’t, I promise. I have set up a mirror with Gaetano and I shan’t need to go back.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted him to promise because she had asked him, not because his mission had been accomplished.
How is Rodolfo? she asked.
Much better.
Luciano did not tell her about the exchange of cannon fire, which had made Fortezza so much more dangerous a place to be, whether within or without the walls.
Silvia wants to see him, Arianna sent to him. But you should know that I haven’t finished being cross with you!
Luciano smiled. He understood Arianna’s frustration at being cooped up in Bellezza while all the action was going on in another city. And he imagined Silvia felt the same.
He handed the mirror to Rodolfo and turned away to find Fabio. ‘Where is Laura?’ he asked.
‘She hasn’t been here today,’ said Fabio. ‘Perhaps the cannon assault was too much for her?’
‘Have you checked with the castle?’ asked Luciano. ‘She might have gone straight there.’
Fabio shook his head. ‘No. I’ll have to wait for Rodolfo to finish with the mirror.’
Like someone waiting to use a computer, thought Luciano.
But before they could contact the castle, a messenger came from Ludo, not to collect weapons from Fabio but to hand him a note.
Laura was wounded by my bodyguard, the hastily scrawled message read. She just disappeared. Tell me if you hear anything of her. Ludo.
‘She must have lost consciousness,’ said Luciano. Rodolfo joined them.
‘Is there a reply?’ the messenger asked.
They showed Rodolfo the note. He pushed the hair away from the wound on his forehead, which was itching.
‘Say we have not seen her,’ he said, ‘but tell him not to worry.’ He turned to Luciano.
‘I must go, mustn’t I?’ said Luciano. ‘To find out what’s happened to her.’
At the Evans house there was a lot of surreptitious activity. Once Isabel had phoned Nick and got Vicky to agree to take Laura to the hospital, a massive clean-up operation had been needed. Isabel had bundled up sheets and towels and taken them down to the utility room, blessing the fact that the washing machine was so far away from where her parents slept.
But she had woken Charlie up.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked, ambling into the kitchen in his trackpants. ‘Why are you doing the washing in the middle of the night? Did you wet the bed?’
Isabel punched him.
‘No, seriously,’ he said, rubbing his arm. ‘Are you OK?’
Isabel thought for a split second about keeping him in the dark, but realised it might be useful to have another ally in the house.
‘I’m fine, but Laura got hurt in Talia.’
He was instantly concerned. ‘What kind of hurt?’
‘Stabbed,’ said Isabel briefly. ‘Oh, not too badly. But she’s gone to A & E.’
‘On her own?’
‘No. I called Nick Duke and his mum has taken her. There’s no way her parents or ours must find out. They’d all believe she’d done it to herself again.’
‘And you’re doing the washing because she bled over the sheets? Jesus, Bel, that sounds serious enough.’
‘Yeah, it was horrible.’
Isabel sat down suddenly on a plastic chair in the utility room and put her head in her hands. Charlie put his arms round her.
‘This stuff is getting serious,’ he said. ‘And weird. I mean, weirder.’
‘It’s always been dangerous,’ said Isabel. ‘I could have been killed in the sea battle.’
‘How is she going to get back here?’
‘Vicky will bring her. Nick’s going to call me.’
‘He’s at the hospital too?’
‘With his mum. That’s where things are getting really weird,’ said Isabel. ‘Between Vicky and Nick.’
Ludo was at his wits’ end. Firing had stopped on both sides and there was a kind of unexpected lull. In this breathing space he had to decide what to do next, but now his head was full of images of Laura as he had last seen her – covered in blood and then disappearing. Why had she smiled? Did it mean she wasn’t badly hurt? And would he ever see her again? He was pacing on the battlements but on the inner side, out of the army’s sightlines, watched over by his bodyguards.
Riccardo was deeply penitent, seeing how his leader was in agony about the girl, but he couldn’t really believe he would do anything differently if such a thing happened again.
‘She’s a witch,’ he told Roberto, the older bodyguard. ‘I tell you she just appeared out of nowhere, holding a dagger. What was I supposed to do? You’d have attacked her too.’
‘Maybe,’ said Roberto. ‘Or maybe I’d have tried to disarm her first. She was only a slip of a thing, by your account.’
‘But she has him enchanted,’ said Riccardo. ‘Look at him! We need our leader to be strong and that … siren has him under a spell. He’s like a sleepwalker.’
‘Well, your attempt to kill her can’t have made him any less enchanted,’ said Roberto. ‘He doesn’t know if she’s still alive – that’s what’s haunting him.’
Riccardo shook his head. ‘She just disappeared, the way she came,’ he said. ‘Vanished. And I know she can do the same to get into the castle. I saw her there.’
‘Not all enchantments are evil though, are they?’ said the older man. ‘Maybe she was acting for the good.’
‘What do you mean? You can’t be on Prince Ludovico’s side and on Lucia di Chimici’s,’ said Riccardo. ‘It’s one or the other that has to be our ruler.’
Roberto sighed. The young were always so certain that it must be one way or another. The older he got, the more he learned that ways tended to merge. But he was beginning to think he had thrown in his lot with the wrong side in this battle.
*
There had been no fresh food in the city since the siege began over a fortnight earlier, and the citizens were beginning to grumble. One of the houses that had been destroyed by cannon fire had belonged to a man who grew tomatoes and lettuces in pots, and his surviving neighbours had fallen on the produce, squashed and crushed as it was and covered in dust, to put something fresh into their diets. The city gardener and his family had all died in the house.
Fabio and Rodolfo had tightened their belts and got on with it but Rodolfo did wonder if Luciano would take advantage of his second stravagation back to his old world to vary his diet.
‘I worry about him every time he goes back there,’ he told Fabio. ‘It seems to be taking hold of him again, even after all these years.’
‘Even though he is about to marry your daughter?’ asked Fabio.
‘Yes, even in spite of that,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I know he loves her but he needs to sever his ties to his old world, as Doctor Dethridge has done.’
‘I believe even the old Maestro went back once,’ said Fabio.
‘Yes, he went with Luciano when Matteo was in trouble,’ said Rodolfo. ‘But his family and his life in his old world all died out hundreds of years ago. Luciano’s parents are still alive and he also has to see his place taken in their family by Falco di Chimici. It is very hard for him.’
‘It will be easier when he is settled as Duke Consort of Bellezza,’ said Fabio.
‘I hope so,’ said Rodolfo. ‘But I feel uneasy about this latest stravagation. I shan’t rest till he is back.’
‘We always seem to meet in the hospital,’ said Luci
ano.
Vicky jumped at the sound of his voice. And so did Nick.
‘Lucien!’ she said, putting her arms round the young man who had not been there in the chair beside her a moment before.
‘I guessed Laura would be in this A & E,’ he said to both of them. ‘But I didn’t expect to find you here. How is she?’
Vicky couldn’t answer. Although she had longed and waited for another visit from Lucien, this was the last thing she had expected.
‘She’s going to be OK,’ said Nick.
‘Why did you bring Laura here?’ Luciano said to his mother. For all his bravado, it had been a shock to find her there.
Again it was Nick who answered. ‘She’s been staying at Bel’s. There was a lot of blood and Bel didn’t want to wake her parents. And Laura didn’t want her parents to know.’
‘She didn’t want them to find out I gave her the talisman back,’ said Vicky.
‘You did?’ asked Luciano.
Vicky nodded. The rubber doors swung open and Laura came out, looking pale and leaning on a nurse; there was another great big bandage on her arm, the right one this time.
She staggered a bit when she saw Luciano but the nurse interpreted it as a reaction to pain and local anaesthetic.
‘She needs to get home now, Mrs Reid,’ said the nurse.
Luciano looked quizzical.
‘Of course,’ said Vicky firmly. ‘I’ll drive her.’
‘And keep her off school for a few days.’
‘I don’t have any more exams till next week,’ said Laura. ‘I’m on study leave.’
The nurse gave Vicky some painkillers for Laura and they all left the hospital. Luciano looked round the car park, remembering the last time he and Vicky and Nick had been there. He wished Georgia was with them.
Vicky opened the car door.
‘Mum!’ said Luciano. ‘It looks like a slasher movie in here!’
‘Well, what could I do?’ said Vicky impatiently. ‘I had to get her here, didn’t I?’