‘Are you really going to phone the police?’ asked Laura.
‘Of course not,’ said Vicky, settling her into the car. ‘I’m going to get you back to Isabel’s and hope we can sneak you back in without waking the Evans up.’
She drove fast on the empty streets, but when the car reached Isabel’s road, she braked suddenly and turned to Luciano and Nick in the back.
‘OK. I’ve been very patient, being woken up in the middle of the night to take a teenager, dripping with blood, to hospital. But now I want the full story.’
They told her as best they could. Only Laura knew what had really happened and why. But Nick had experienced bringing a wound back from Talia, even though his had been stitched by Brother Sulien.
‘So how are you going to explain it to your parents?’ Vicky asked.
‘I’m not,’ said Laura. ‘I’m going to hide it.’
They all looked at her heavily bandaged arm.
‘I can wear long sleeves, and I’ll get Bel to unwind the bottom of it so it doesn’t show,’ she said.
But she did wonder if she would get away with it with her therapist the next day.
‘Ludovico is asking for another parley,’ General Tasca told the di Chimici brothers.
It was the last thing they had been expecting to hear. This time the Grand Duke himself went with Gaetano and their guards, in full armour, hoping to intimidate their enemy with his glittering military splendour.
‘Is your offer still open?’ asked Ludo, without preliminaries.
The brothers looked at one another. He seemed scarcely to have noticed Fabrizio or his armour.
‘You mean for your safe conduct?’ asked Gaetano.
Was Ludo surrendering?
‘Yes,’ said the Manoush. He looked like a haunted man, gaunt-faced and unshaven, as if he hadn’t slept or eaten – which was the case.
‘Do you know who I am?’ said Fabrizio.
Ludo pulled himself together.
‘Yes, Your Grace. I am sorry. We have suffered a loss on our side.’
Fabrizio had no idea who he could possibly mean. Even the death of his General should not have caused a leader to collapse like this. But he was thrilled. Lucia was going to win back Fortezza.
‘And you are willing to talk terms?’ Fabrizio said, trying to hide his elation.
‘If you are still willing to give me safe conduct to a city in the south, I will withdraw my claim to Fortezza and go to Romula and join my people.’
‘You have caused much loss of life in our ranks,’ said Fabrizio.
‘As you have in the city,’ answered Ludo.
‘I shall need to discuss it with my General and my condottieri,’ said Fabrizio, nodding to Gaetano that they were leaving.
‘Of course – I have already told my General my decision,’ said Ludo. ‘And while you talk to yours, can both sides agree to suspend hostilities?’
‘Naturally,’ the Grand Duke threw back over his shoulder, as if Ludo had questioned an elementary piece of court etiquette. ‘My men will stand down until we have concluded these negotiations.’
Behind Ludo’s back, the younger bodyguard was in anguish. He had no doubt this had been his doing. If he hadn’t stabbed the witch, his leader would not have given way like this. And the glorious revolution wouldn’t all have been for nothing. But Roberto stood solid and four-square, his expression revealing nothing. He knew better than Riccardo what it would mean to have chosen the losing side in a civil war.
*
Fabrizio was triumphant as they made their way back to the camp. ‘Lost someone on his side! Well, of course he has. Dozens of people have died on both sides. What a spineless creature!’
‘I wonder who he meant?’ said Gaetano, anxious to get back to his tent and consult the mirror Enrico had found for him.
‘What does it matter? We are going to win. I’m glad whoever it was died.’
‘But, Fabrizio,’ said his brother, ‘that offer of safe conduct to Romula must be genuine. He didn’t trust it last time, but I mean to go with him.’
‘He scarcely deserves a royal escort, but if you insist,’ said Fabrizio offhandedly.
Once he was in his tent, Gaetano took the scratched and spotted mirror and tried to focus his thoughts as Luciano had taught him.
Soon the face that stared back at him was Rodolfo’s.
I think Ludo is about to surrender, Gaetano thoughtspoke clumsily.
That is wonderful news! replied Rodolfo. But why now?
He said he had lost someone on his side. He seems terribly upset.
Ah, that would be Laura.
The new Stravagante? But that is terrible! Was she killed by our fire?
A new face replaced the old magician’s. This time it was Luciano’s.
She hasn’t been killed at all, just injured. She will be fine, but Ludo doesn’t know that.
It had been easy getting Laura back into the house. Nick had phoned Isabel, who had been clutching her mobile waiting for the call. She crept down the stairs to open the door while Charlie stood guard outside their parents’ room, ready to come up with some excuse if they’d heard a sound.
But it had been much harder for Luciano to get back to Fortezza.
‘I must go, Mum,’ he said. ‘I must let Rodolfo and the others know she’s going to be OK.’
‘No,’ said Vicky firmly. ‘You aren’t going till we’ve had a talk. If necessary, Nick and I will take your talisman from you and keep you here.’
He had never known her like this.
‘Not till after dawn,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘You know what will happen if I stay too long.’
Vicky gave a cry like a hurt animal and he wished immediately he hadn’t joked about something so painful.
‘Let’s go and get something to eat,’ he said gently. ‘I’m starving.’
‘But where would be open?’ she said. ‘Shall we go back … home and I’ll make you something?’
‘There’s a cabbies’ stand open all night at Angel,’ said Nick.
Vicky didn’t ask how he knew but let him direct her there.
It wasn’t gourmet food and there wasn’t much fresh about it apart from a bit of lettuce and tomato in the burger bun, but Luciano wolfed it down, thinking regretfully of the dead city gardener.
‘That was great,’ he said, drinking from a china mug of strong tea. It was a stall of the old-fashioned kind. ‘I wish I could take some back for the others. We’ve been on short rations since the siege began.’
‘I hate to think of you not getting enough to eat,’ said Vicky, looking carefully at him. ‘You’ve lost weight since you last scared the life out of me at Bart’s.’
‘Once a mum, always a mum,’ said Luciano then worried that he was being tactless in front of Nick, who hadn’t said a word since they reached the food stand.
‘Lucien,’ said Vicky, ‘Nick told me you are getting married soon.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Seems mad, doesn’t it? And I’m going to be a duke, apparently. But Arianna’s lovely – you’d like her.’
‘I don’t doubt it. The thing is, I have no intention of letting you marry her without my being there to see it. You’ve got to get me to Talia.’
Chapter 18
Borderlands
There was no question for Laura of any more stravagation in what was left of that night or the next. She slept late, grateful that both Isabel’s parents had jobs that took them out of the house early. When she woke, she found Isabel sitting in an armchair beside the bed, reading a book.
‘Hi,’ said Isabel. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Terrible,’ said Laura. Her arm hurt so much more than when she had injured herself. And now she was thinking about the scars she would bear – probably permanently.
She shuddered. ‘It’s so much worse when someone else wounds you,’ she said, and felt tears welling up.
‘Oh, poor Lol,’ said Isabel. ‘Shall I run you a bath? It would be easier than a shower.’
‘Where’s Charlie?’
‘Gone to school. He has Business Studies today.’
‘OK then.’
‘And after that, when you’re dressed, we can meet the others at the café. We can have brunch there.’
In Café@anytime the other Stravaganti were waiting. Only some of them knew what had happened to Laura. They were shocked by her paleness and the dark purple smudges under her eyes.
Ayesha was not there. ‘She’s doing a Law exam,’ said Matt, ‘but she sends her love.’
Laura ordered a scrambled egg and smoked salmon muffin and was surprised by how good it tasted and how hungry she was. The others waited impatiently until she had polished it off, eating awkwardly with her left hand, and drunk a first cappuccino before asking for her version of events.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Georgia. ‘Nick told me what happened.’
Laura sighed. ‘Well, I’m not going to lose my arm but I’ve felt better.’
‘Why were you with Ludo?’ Georgia asked the question they had all been thinking.
‘I’ve been trying to meet him each day I was there,’ said Laura. ‘I know, you don’t have to tell me it was stupid. And dangerous too. And I knew it might look as if I was going to betray Lucia to the rebels. But I wasn’t spying. I just couldn’t stop seeing him.’
They were all silent for a moment.
‘When will you go back?’ asked Sky.
‘Not tonight at any rate,’ said Laura. ‘I’m shattered and can’t face seeing any more bodies in Fortezza.’ Especially if one of them was Ludo’s, she thought. I can’t bear to think what might be happening there. Out loud she said, ‘I’m desperate for sleep.’
General Ciampi was furious with Ludo. He had not been consulted about the surrender – just told what the decision was – and yet that was what his leader and prince was proposing to do.
‘We will lose everything,’ he said. ‘Even our lives are at risk. And we could sustain this siege for much longer.’
‘You maybe,’ said Ludo, ‘but I can’t. I have made a mistake. Although my claim is good, I have found the price of pursuing it too high.’
He looked at Ciampi’s white face.
‘I’m sorry. I have let you down. You and all the citizens and soldiers who threw in their lot with me. But I am going to accept the Grand Duke’s offer of a safe conduct and surrender the city to the di Chimici.’
‘You might be lucky,’ said Ciampi, his contempt visible. ‘Fabrizio di Chimici might honour his promise. After all, you are related to him.’
Then he left Ludo the pretender to his fate and went off to tell his men the bad news and see if he could get any of them away from the city by a back gate.
*
William Dethridge was with Silvia and Arianna in the Ducal Palace. Rodolfo had contacted him and asked him to speak to Luciano. He had his own system of mirrors in his laboratory, but he didn’t want to do this alone.
It was unusual for the two stravaganti in Bellezza to contact the Ducal Palace in the morning but they could sense when another of their Order was trying to reach them and never more so than when its founder was that person.
Rodolfo’s face appeared first. His forehead was a mass of purple and green bruises round his injury, but the wound was clean.
Silvia gasped at the sight of him.
‘Let me speak to him,’ she said, taking the mirror from Dethridge’s hand.
You look terrible! she thought-shouted at her husband.
I am feeling much better than I look, he replied. And there is good news. Luciano has been back to his old world and seen Laura. She is alive and will recover fully from the attack.
I am pleased, for your sake, said Silvia. But I have never met Laura and can’t be expected to be as worried about her as I am about you!
Don’t worry about me, said Rodolfo. I think things are coming to a head here and will soon be over.
And you will soon be back? thought-spoke Arianna, snatching the mirror from her mother. And Luciano?
Would you like to talk to him? asked her father. He is as eager to take my mirror as you were to have Silvia’s.
‘We should leave them in peace to talk,’ said Silvia to Doctor Dethridge. ‘They have a lot to think about.’
‘I wolde, yf thatte I colde,’ said Dethridge. ‘Bot Maistre Rudolfe himself asked mee to speake to yonge Lucian about his visits to the othire worlde.’
Arianna was think-speaking into the mirror so fast and furiously that they could almost see sparks flying from the ends of her hair. She could be as adept at it as any Stravagante when Luciano was the recipient of her thoughts. This went on for some minutes, at the end of which she relaxed and smiled.
Eventually she handed the mirror to William Dethridge.
‘Luciano wants to speak to you,’ she said.
Goode den to yow, sonne, he said to the curly-haired young man in the mirror.
Hello, Doctor, the face smiled back at him.
Maistre Rudolphe tells mee ye have mette your trow mothire againe.
I have.
Thatte moste have bene a sore trial for ye.
It gets a little easier each time. But it’s always hard seeing my mother and I have to sort of arm myself against her. But this time she got past my defences.
Whatte does thatte meane?
She wants to come to the wedding.
To stravayge?
Yes. What do you think? Rodolfo said I should ask you.
Yt is a naturall wysshe for a mothire to see her sonne’s marryage in churche.
That’s more or less what she said.
Lette me thynke upon yt, sonne. It wolde notte be the fyrste tyme a stravayger from your olde worlde hadde come to Talie without being summoned in times of trouble.
You mean Alice?
Yonge Alice and othires.
And did you know Alice sold her talisman to an antiques dealer and he stravagated to Giglia by accident?
Judyth did tell mee. She sayde he semed in sympathie with some of our Ordire.
Yes, he is a good friend to the Stravaganti from our old world, thank goodness. But I feel as if the boundaries between my old world and my new are getting thinner all the time.
‘Have you heard what Vicky wants?’ asked Georgia when Laura had told them all she could about her attack.
Laura was glad to have the focus taken off her. No one in the group knew what Georgia was talking about except Nick, and he was morose and silent.
‘She wants to go to Luciano’s wedding!’
Laura noticed that Georgia never referred to him as Lucien, even though she was the only one of them who had known him in his old life. Laura herself was still feeling guilty that she had never passed his mother’s message on to him; and yet in the end he had come back because of what had happened to her. So in a way she had brought about the meeting between mother and son.
‘That’s not going to be easy, is it?’ said Isabel. ‘But I can see why she would want to.’
‘Yes, but how on earth can anyone get her there?’ said Matt. ‘It’s not as if they’re getting married in a registry office in Croydon. This will be a huge do in the cathedral of Bellezza. I doubt it would be over in one day, even if Vicky could get there.’
‘What does it matter where it is?’ asked Sky. ‘Or how grand? I bet Silvia could dress Luciano’s mother up to match the occasion. And no one needs to know who she is or where she has come from. As long as we can find a talisman for her and get the senior Stravaganti to agree.’
‘You talk as if it would be easy for Vicky,’ said Nick, drawn into the discussion against his will.
‘You don’t think it would?’ said Laura.
‘No, I don’t! I’m not talking about the talisman. I wish Luciano would stop coming here and upsetting her.’
It had been said at last.
Nick stared defiantly at the group. ‘I need more coffee,’ he said abruptly and went to join the queue.
The others looked at each other, at a loss wh
at to say to him.
‘Poor Nick – he’s been made very restless by all this coming and going between worlds by people who have no task to perform,’ said Georgia. ‘Every time it happens he is reminded of his old life. Mortimer’s stravagation to Giglia, his family home, was the last straw.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Sky. ‘It was my city too, even if for a short while and I miss it. But I know it would drive me mad to think about it too much.’
‘We all feel something like that,’ said Matt. ‘But I can’t imagine what it must be like for Nick, who lived there with his family all his childhood.’
Nick came back over with a tray of drinks for them all. Somehow he had never quite managed to lose the habits of a prince, though here he had to play servant as well as host.
‘Sorry, everybody,’ he said. ‘I like Luciano just as much as anyone here. In fact I love him like a brother. But none of us – not Vicky, not David, not me – can settle when he comes back. It would really be easier for everyone if he just stayed dead.’
In the midst of all that was happening in Fortezza, Rodolfo had been thinking about Vicky’s request. He wasn’t quite happy about procuring a talisman for her and felt he needed more help about making a decision. After talking to Fabio, when Luciano was out of earshot, he contacted William Dethridge through his mirror.
Maestro, he thought-spoke when he saw the old Elizabethan’s face.
Maistre Rudolphe, replied Doctor Dethridge. Is somme thynge amiss?
Nothing new in Fortezza. But I am worried about this request from Luciano’s mother in the other world. Is it wise to let her have her own talisman, do you think?
Whatte gives ye concerne? We have given talismannes to those who have notte bene chosen bifore.
Yes, and look what has happened! We let Alice have one and she hated what she found in Talia so much that eventually she and young Celestino were forced apart.
Thatte is trow enoghe.
And then Alice gave her talisman away – actually sold it. You heard about that?
Aye, but the persoun she solde yt to is a goodly manne from whatte I canne tell.
But suppose it had not been a good man or a man already sympathetic to the Stravaganti, even though he didn’t know that’s what they were? Suppose someone like Filippo or Ronaldo di Chimici had stravagated by accident from the future?