Jacopo of Bellona sent his son Filippo, who was eager to earn more credit with the senior branch of the family, and Alfonso, Duke of Volana, was heading his city’s forces, reluctant as he was to leave Bianca. The Pope had ordered up an army but was content for it to be led by a mercenary condottiere. Still, he sent his Cardinal and nephew Rinaldo di Chimici, to be its chaplain.
Princess Lucia, a virtual prisoner in her own castle, knew nothing of all these preparations, but Guido Parola, who had appointed himself her personal bodyguard, assured her that something like that would be happening.
‘Your family can be relied on,’ he promised her. ‘They will send a mighty force and the Manoush will be overthrown.’
‘And what will happen to Ludo then?’ asked the Princess. ‘I know he is a rebel and my enemy, but he is also my brother and, I think, your friend?’
‘I hardly know him,’ said Guido, ‘but he has put himself beyond friendship by his actions. My loyalty is to Your Highness.’
‘Why is that?’ asked Lucia. ‘I don’t think your old employer is friend to the di Chimici. Did we not murder her husband’s first wife?’
Guido tried hard to give nothing away by his expression. After all, he had tried to murder the Duchessa too, at a di Chimici request.
‘It was the day of the weddings,’ he said quietly. ‘From the moment I saw Camillo Nucci stab your bridegroom, my loyalty was to you. No young woman should have to witness such a thing.’
Lucia touched his sleeve. ‘You are a kind man,’ she said. ‘And I am grateful you are here. Prince Gaetano recommends you, and he said I was to send him a message if I was in trouble, but I don’t know how.’
‘Have no fear,’ said Guido. ‘You have met Fabio the swordsmith and know that he is one of a special Order. They have ways of communicating and I’m sure that the Stravaganti got the news from Fortezza even before our messenger reached your family. They would have told Gaetano.’
‘You think the Stravaganti would come and fight beside the di Chimici?’ asked Lucia.
‘I don’t know whether fighting would be their strength, but I think some of them will come and use their powers in your support,’ said Guido.
‘And where is the girl – Laura?’ asked Lucia. ‘Is she safe?’
‘I wish I knew,’ said Guido.
*
Fabio, although loyal to the Princess, was not under guard. His skills were too much in demand. He could not refuse to make weapons for the rebel army; forging swords and daggers was his trade and he had never concerned himself before about who might be killed by them.
He had been both relieved and alarmed by the mirrormessage from Bellezza. At least there hadn’t been another time-shift between Talia and the other world, which could have taken the new Stravagante far beyond his reach. But he could not really understand what had happened to her. He had seen far too many deliberately inflicted wounds bringing death, disease or mutilation, to comprehend someone willingly harming herself.
But he accepted that Laura would not be able to stravagate for a while, and now he was worrying about whether, once she was able to return, she would be safe in Fortezza, with the rebels preparing the city for a siege and the likelihood of a great army being unleashed on it by the di Chimici.
The remnant of the Fortezzan soldiery loyal to Princess Lucia was all up at the castle and soon there would be a siege within a siege. Already it was unsafe to get in or out of the castle.
We could really do with a Stravagante from the other world, Fabio communicated to Rodolfo, through his mirrors. If Laura were well, she could stravagate straight inside the castle and then tell us what was going on. She could take messages between us.
*
Rodolfo was still in Bellezza when he got that message. But he would set out for Fortezza himself soon. To his exasperation, Luciano was with him.
‘I’m not going back to Padavia,’ he said, as soon as he arrived at the Ducal Palace. ‘You need me here – or in Fortezza. And how can I study with this sort of thing going on?’
‘Luciano, what are we to do with you?’ asked Rodolfo. ‘You have spent more time away from your studies than over your books. It has not even been a full year that you have been at the University.’
‘Well, it will have to do,’ said Luciano. ‘I’m as educated as I’m going to get – at least in university learning.’
Arianna rushed into the room, stopping when she saw Luciano.
‘Oh, it’s true!’ she said. ‘Marco told Barbara you were here but I couldn’t believe it.’
He was with her in two long steps and holding her tight.
‘Oh, I give up on the pair of you!’ said Rodolfo. ‘The boy simply won’t stay away.’
‘Don’t be cross, Father,’ said Arianna, looking flushed and happy. ‘It’s not natural for us to be apart. You can’t expect it.’
‘And what if he insists on coming to join the battle at Fortezza?’ said Rodolfo.
He saw a mulish expression steal over his daughter’s face.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I absolutely forbid it. Not just as your father but as your senior adviser.’
Unconsciously, Arianna put her hand up to her hair. It was beginning to grow out of the brutal crop she had inflicted on it to disguise herself as a young arquebusier on a fighting ship in Classe.
‘And I forbid it too,’ said Luciano.
Arianna turned on him. ‘Is that the kind of husband you intend to be? The sort who thinks he has the right to tell his wife what she can and can’t do? Do I have to remind you both that I rule this city and you are both my subjects?’
The loving and impetuous girl had disappeared and been replaced by an imperious ruler.
‘It is precisely because you are my Duchessa, to whom I owe my absolute fealty, that I say you must not think of joining us – of joining your Cavaliere,’ said Rodolfo.
‘Rodolfo’s right,’ said Luciano. ‘Bellezza needs you. You mustn’t risk your life that way again.’
Hot tears stung Arianna’s eyes. She hated it when they ganged up on her and hated it most of all when they were right. She wanted to sweep out but didn’t think she could carry it off. Besides, she didn’t want to leave them together to talk about her – or about what they were going to do in Fortezza without her.
‘You seem determined to put your own life in danger as much as possible before we are married,’ she told Luciano.
‘But I am here, aren’t I?’ he said. ‘I’ve given up my studies in Padavia. I’m fully a Bellezzan now.’
‘But you will go away to Fortezza!’ said Arianna. She couldn’t help sounding like a thwarted child.
‘If Rodolfo thinks I should,’ he said.
‘It’s so unfair,’ said Arianna, sinking into a chair. ‘You have all the adventures and I have to stay here and look beautiful and listen to boring citizens’ disputes and make laws. I never asked to be Duchessa. I was happier when we were roaming the city and spitting plum stones into the lagoon.’
‘I don’t think we will be happy trying to get past a siege and inside the city walls in Fortezza,’ said Luciano. ‘I’d rather be eating plums with you too.’
‘We won’t be getting past the siege,’ said Rodolfo. ‘We will be joining it. I’m going to offer the services of the Talian Stravaganti to the Grand Duke of Tuschia.’
He had both of their attention now.
‘The Grand Duke of Tuschia?’ said Arianna.
‘You mean Fabrizio di Chimici,’ said Luciano, more calmly than he felt. ‘The man who would do anything he could to kill me?’
‘That’s right,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I think we will be fighting – if it comes to that – alongside him and his army.’
Chapter 8
Within the Walls
Once the rush of excitement about fighting for his claim had passed, Ludo was feeling a sense of anticlimax. He had staked everything on a gamble that enough of the army and citizens would support him in order to get Lucia and her mother shut into their cast
le and to man the walls. But what was going to happen after that?
He didn’t really expect that Lucia would just give in and he was under no illusions that the rest of the di Chimici would sit back and let him take the throne of Fortezza. But his supporters were well capable of defending the city walls against a long siege and it was just possible that they would defeat an attacking army.
And if so, what then?
Would Lucia just accept that he was Prince Ludovico of Fortezza and quietly go away with her mother to live in Volana with the Duke and Duchess? He hoped so, because he really could not imagine getting rid of her in any other way. A woman and his sister! Ludo was not really cut out to be a ruthless tyrant.
Time and again his mind went back to the darkhaired girl from the other world. His men were frequent customers at Fabio’s smithy and he instructed them to ask after Laura, but no one had seen her in the last few days. Fabio had just shaken his head when asked. Ludo was beginning to wonder if she had been a vision. He had seen her only twice.
He returned to thinking about his prospects. If he did not defeat the supposed di Chimici army, then what? Death in battle? Execution by the victors? Ludo had escaped execution once and it had changed his life. He had always been attractive to women, but since he had escaped the fires in Padavia there had been a sort of desperate, dangerous quality to him that seemed to make every female he encountered want to tame him.
Except Laura. He was thinking about her again; he couldn’t help it. If she had known how much he thought about her, she would have been amazed and thrilled.
He had seen something in her that he had found in no Talian woman, Manoush or otherwise: a kindred spirit. Laura was unhappy; Ludo sensed that. And she made him face just how unhappy he had been and for how long. Of course, she was very young – much younger than him. But Ludo swore to himself that the next time he saw her, he would tell her how he felt, even if they were facing each other the length of two drawn swords.
After the bonfires of Padavia, which were supposed to be the end of Ludo and nearly thirty of his people, just for worshipping a different deity from the di Chimici, he had become horribly restless. All the Manoush were nomads but since then, once he had recovered his spirits in Bellezza, Ludo had not been able to settle anywhere for more than a day or two.
He had left his group and travelled up and down Talia alone, visiting different cities and looking up every acquaintance he could remember. The only people he avoided were his cousins Aurelio and Raffaella. Somewhere around the middle of the time he had spent wandering, Ludo made a decision.
He had looked properly at the ring his mother had given him and had gone to see a jeweller in Volana.
‘That’s the Fortezza crest,’ the man had told him.
‘You are quite sure?’
‘As sure as if I had made it myself,’ said the jeweller. ‘I know all the di Chimici crests and this one is Prince Jacopo’s. Prince Jacopo the Elder, that is, not the Prince of Bellona.’
Ludo had left Volana in a daze. His father was Prince Jacopo of Fortezza. For twenty-four years he had been all Manoush, travelling from place to place, owning little, sleeping under the stars. Now all he had to do was journey to that city and get a message to the castle; then he could tell Jacopo his story.
He had decided at that moment to embrace the other side of his blood, to find out what it would be like to be a di Chimici. To be so sure of your rights and your position, the rightness of your religion and your way of life. To lead armies and command other men if necessary.
But when he had reached Fortezza, Jacopo was already dying and Ludo had failed. He hadn’t even got as far as sending a message into the castle; he had been frozen with inertia – until he met the dark-eyed Stravagante from the other world, and by then it had been too late.
Four hundred years and incalculable distances in space away, Laura was thinking about Ludo too. She had just had her first session with the psychiatrist, and it had been so painful and embarrassing that her mind curled in on itself away from the reality and went back to a secret fantasy, in which she might actually be with Ludo.
It took place neither in Talia nor Islington but somewhere vague and amorphous. Ludo would be handsome in twenty-first-century clothes but still have that dangerous unpredictable quality like David Bowie in Labyrinth, one of her favourite films.
But he was sweet to her, kind and considerate and protective. That was one version of the fantasy. Then Laura would pull herself together and try to play it a different way. At the back of her mind she knew Ayesha and Isabel wouldn’t approve of this wimpy vision of herself needing a man to protect her; she didn’t approve of it herself.
So she’d restructure everything to create a scenario in which they were more equal. Perhaps she would show him how to live in London in the twenty-first century? It would make her smile to imagine how someone used to the cobbled streets and blue skies of Fortezza would adapt to life in a north London suburb.
Ludo on the Tube, Ludo at the pub, Ludo in her room.
But this was where her imagination simply gave up.
‘It’s nice to see you smile,’ said her mother,
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Laura. ‘I can’t go on apologising for being so unhappy before.’
‘I know. I’m just pleased you are looking a bit happier now.’
There was such a big gulf between them, Laura didn’t think it could ever be bridged. The thing that separated her and her parents, the thing they never talked about, was too huge.
Laura had had her first, emergency, appointment with the hospital psychiatrist, but there were still stitches in her arm and it hurt. She had never cut herself deeply enough to need stitches before and it had scared her almost as much as it had her parents. She couldn’t imagine how she could ever get back to normal. Or what normal would now look like.
‘Can I see my friends tomorrow?’ she asked. Her parents surely couldn’t keep her in the house for ever.
‘If you feel up to it,’ said her mother. Though actually she felt that she would like to keep Laura under her eye for the rest of her life. ‘How does your arm feel?’
‘Much better,’ lied Laura. ‘But I’m not sleeping very well. I think it would do me good to get out and get some fresh air.’
But the only air she breathed next morning was on the fume-filled main road between her house and Nick’s. And then she was just as indoors as she would have been in her own room. But it was a change of scene. And she hadn’t seen any of the boys since her sudden hospitalisation.
They looked as embarrassed as she felt but the awkwardness soon passed. She wanted to know about Matt’s stravagation and they all wanted to know if she would go back to Talia – always supposing she could get her talisman back.
‘I know it’s a terrible time to be out of the action,’ she said. ‘but I’m not up to going back there yet.’
‘Just as well, since you can’t anyway,’ said Georgia. It sounded blunt, but she was thinking of the times her stepbrother had taken her own talisman of the winged horse. The first time, he had broken it; the second time he had hidden it for a whole year.
‘Could one of us get you another one?’ asked Isabel. ‘I mean, we could go to one of our own cities and find something that originally came from Fortezza, I’m sure.’
‘Nothing is going to get out of Fortezza at the moment,’ said Sky. ‘From what we’ve heard it will soon be under siege.’
‘But if it’s so famous for its weapons, other people we know will have them too,’ said Matt. ‘What do you reckon, Nick?’
He was the only one of them likely to know.
‘Apart from Merlino daggers, which you hardly see outside Bellezza,’ said Nick, ‘Fortezzan blades are certainly the Talian weapon of choice.’
‘Hang on,’ said Ayesha. ‘Wouldn’t Laura’s parents go mental if they found she had another dagger?’
Ayesha wasn’t a Stravagante herself but she was studying law and was often quick to see things the others d
idn’t.
‘Good point,’ said Georgia. ‘Don’t they make anything else in Fortezza?’
‘They make what they make in every city, I imagine,’ said Nick. ‘But you wouldn’t live in Giglia and buy your – I don’t know – saucepans from Fortezza!’
Even in her current state, Laura had to laugh at the idea of using a saucepan as a talisman.
‘Wouldn’t it just be easier to steal Lol’s knife back?’ asked Ayesha.
There was silence while they all contemplated just how difficult this would be.
‘You could try asking for it back, I suppose,’ said Matt.
The girls looked at him as if he were a Neanderthal. But then Georgia shrugged.
‘It’s worth a try, I suppose.’
‘But what if they say no?’ said Isabel. ‘Then it would be ten times more difficult for anyone to steal it.’
‘You could ask them to give it to one of you,’ said Laura.
‘They’d make us promise not to give it to you though,’ objected Ayesha. ‘We’d have to swear on our parents’ lives.’
‘It would be worth breaking the promise if it got Laura back to Fortezza,’ said Nick. ‘Every night she’s not there, we’re just wasting time. There must be a reason she was chosen to go there.’
The castle was a fortress within a fortress. It had been built centuries before at the same time as the massive city walls and been appropriated by the di Chimici family when they took over the city nearly a hundred and fifty years earlier.
It had nothing graceful or stylish about it; it was designed to repel attack and that it could do magnificently. Surrounded by two semicircular curtain walls that linked it to the city wall at the north-east corner, the Rocca di Chimici looked like what it was – a secure fastness rather than an elegant palace. It had been the home of Fortezzan princes from the first, Carlo, to the most recent, Jacopo the Elder, whose death had thrown the city into such disorder.
Princess Lucia was the great-great-granddaughter of that first di Chimici prince and had expected to be the fifth ruler of that line when the time came. Now she was shut up inside the inner fortress of her home with archers positioned day and night on the inner, crenellated wall that rose slightly above the outer wall, which was similarly topped with bowmen.