City of Stars

by Mary Hoffman

  There had been a few weeks last summer when she had believed that he was getting better, that he would return to school in the autumn term cured. Georgia had even seen him again when she had resumed violin lessons. He seemed older somehow and a little remote, but not unfriendly, just preoccupied. She had made up her mind to tell him how much she liked him, but then terrible news had filtered through and put an end to all her plans: Lucien was in hospital, he was in a coma, he was dead.

  She had gone to the funeral like a zombie, not believing that the only boy she had ever liked could be lost to her for ever. Only seeing his grieving parents and hearing his best friend Tom’s voice cracking as he read a poem convinced her that Lucien had really gone.

  And now there he was again in Talia, looking gorgeous and as healthy as when he sat in front of her in orchestra and she watched his hair curl over the collar of his shirt. What could it possibly mean? She now began to wonder if Talia was a fantasy world which her unconscious had created for her to escape to. Horses, flying ones even, and now the resurrection of a boy she had had a huge crush on – it was all too symbolic for words.

  But what was she to do? Seeing Lucien was going to be painful – a quick glimpse had convinced her of that – but how could she give up going to Talia? Georgia looked down at the little black horse in her hand. It had to mean something, the way it had come into her life. There must be something she was meant to do in Talia or she wouldn’t have stravagated there. Was that what Lucien had done? Why was he there, and did it have anything to do with why he had died?

  Georgia felt seriously frightened. In her short experience of Remora, she had been like a member of the audience at a play, watching the story unfold. But seeing Lucien there had felt like being dragged up on the stage and made to participate in the action. From now on, if she went back to Talia, she knew she would have an active role in whatever drama was being played out there. And now she realised that it was dangerous.

  In Paolo’s house chaos reigned. Luciano had turned deathly white, Cesare was clearly terrified and both Paolo and Dethridge were completely at a loss. ‘Do you know her?’ asked Paolo, and Luciano had just had time to say he did, when Georgia was back.

  Luciano was the only one who understood what had happened. He led Georgia to a chair and asked Paolo to bring her a drink. Georgia sat in silence gulping some rough red wine, letting herself be looked after, enjoying the sensation of having Lucien’s attention focused properly on her for the first time.

  She was feeling a bit woozy now and didn’t really understand why she had re-entered the same scene she had left so precipitately. It had taken hours to get back to sleep – which was what Paolo had explained that she had to do to stravagate back to Talia. She must go to sleep holding the talisman and thinking of Remora. It had been much easier earlier in the night, before her fright over seeing Lucien.

  Back in Talia it was as if someone had pressed a ‘Pause’ button and the scene had been frozen at the point where she had left it.

  ‘If you stravagate twice during the same period of time,’ Luciano was saying, ‘the same day or the same night, you end up back in Talia only moments after leaving it.’

  ‘But why did she leave us at all?’ asked Cesare, looking warily at Georgia as if she were a ghost.

  ‘I think she must have fainted when she saw me,’ said Luciano. ‘And she must have been holding her talisman. If you lose consciousness in Talia, while you have the talisman, even if you aren’t thinking of home, you will end up in our world. It’s a sort of default setting.’

  He was speaking directly to Georgia now, who nodded; it made a sort of sense.

  ‘Georgia comes from the same part of our world as I did,’ continued Luciano. ‘We went to the same school. She knew I was dead. I expect you thought you had seen a ghost,’ he said, looking straight at her.

  Georgia nodded again, incapable of saying anything yet.

  ‘Can I see your talisman?’ Luciano asked gently.

  She uncurled the fingers of her right hand. The wings had cut into her fingers leaving red marks; she had been clinging on to it so hard. She let Luciano take the little horse and examine it.

  ‘It’s just like our Merla,’ said Cesare.

  ‘Is she safe?’ asked Georgia. ‘Did you get her away?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Paolo. ‘She and Starlight are in Santa Fina. We trust that the di Chimici won’t find her there. Though there is still a risk. Unfortunately, they have a summer palace in Santa Fina too, but they won’t use it while they’re visiting the city. And we can trust Roderigo.’

  ‘Could I go and see her?’ asked Georgia.

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ said Paolo. ‘It’s not far. You could be there and back in hours.’

  Luciano gave her back the little model.

  ‘Keep it safe,’ he said. ‘The di Chimici would be as interested in your winged horse as in the real one.’

  ‘And in the mayde hirselfe, I trowe, if mayde she bee,’ said Dethridge. He had been looking at Georgia’s stable-boy’s clothes in some puzzlement.

  ‘She is a boy in Talia,’ said Paolo, ‘even though a girl where she comes from.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dethridge. ‘It is a disguise. I understonde. We use such a devyse in monye of the playes in our citee playhouses.’

  ‘Why does he talk like that?’ Georgia whispered to Luciano.

  He smiled. ‘You hear it too? It’s because he comes from our world, from England in Elizabethan times – four-and-a-half centuries ago. Let me present to you Doctor William Dethridge, founder of the Stravaganti. Though here in Talia his name is Guglielmo Crinamorte and he is a great man in Bellezza.’

  Dethridge bowed.

  ‘My name here seems to be Giorgio,’ said Georgia.

  ‘I have been re-named too,’ said Luciano. ‘I’m Luciano now, Luciano Crinamorte. Dottore Crinamorte and his wife Leonora are my foster parents.’ Quickly he looked away from Georgia.

  But she had noticed something else.

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I’m a Stravagante from another world, or so Paolo tells me and he could tell that because I don’t have a shadow. But you and Doctor Dethridge both clearly have shadows and yet you come from the same world as me, even if he is from centuries ago. Will someone please explain it all?’

  *

  Rinaldo di Chimici was profoundly glad to be back in Remora. His sojourn in Bellezza had been uncomfortable and at times frightening and he was not a brave man. He had hated the city with its smelly canals and the unreasonable cheerfulness of its citizens. And its unnatural absence of horses. Above all he had hated its Duchessa, so clever and beautiful and so much more experienced at diplomacy than him that she made him feel like a callow boy.

  Still, he had got his own back on her with a vengeance. The formidable Duchessa of Bellezza was no more and, even though he had not succeeded in replacing her with one of his family, the daughter who had taken her place was only a girl, and surely no match for his uncle, Duke Niccolò?

  Rinaldo made his way down to the stables of the Twins. He wasn’t sure what direction his career would take him in next, but in the meantime, there was nothing he wanted more than a fast ride on a fresh horse.

  Since his father’s death two years ago, when his older brother Alfonso had become Duke of Volana, Rinaldo had been at a loose end. There was no other title for him to inherit and no obvious work for him to do, so he had drifted to Remora and settled in one of the many rooms of his uncle Ferdinando’s palace, until Duke Niccolò had sent him to Bellezza as his ambassador.

  Rinaldo now felt as at home in the Twelfth of the Twins as he ever had in the rather gloomy family castle in Volana many miles to the north-east. He had stopped off there on the way back from Bellezza, to visit Alfonso and their younger sister Caterina, but it no longer felt as if he belonged there. His brother had been preoccupied with the idea of getting married, wondering whether the Duke had someone in mind for him. Rinaldo was supposed to find
that out.

  He wondered whether to suggest their cousin Francesca, his failed candidate for Duchessa of Bellezza. The di Chimici were quite keen on inter-marriage, so Niccolò might look kindly on the idea. One of Rinaldo’s current missions in Remora was to get Uncle Ferdinando to dissolve Francesca’s first marriage, which Rinaldo had rather hastily arranged to a much older Bellezzan Councillor, in order to qualify her for election to the city’s rulership.

  ‘Good morning, Excellency,’ said the Twins’ Horsemaster. ‘I have a mount saddled and ready for you – Bacio, the bay mare.’

  ‘Superb!’ said Rinaldo, looking affectionately at the mare. She was his favourite horse in the Twins’ stables, not a race-winner like Benvenuto, but a smooth ride and a beautiful animal.

  ‘In good shape, isn’t she?’ observed a familiar voice from the shadows, and Rinaldo jumped at the sound.

  He flinched when he saw the speaker. Enrico had been picked up in Bellezza like a bad smell that the young ambassador could not shake off. The city had not been a place that either of them wanted to stay in after the Duchessa had been assassinated. The di Chimici and anyone associated with them were highly suspect after the explosion, even though there had been no evidence to link them with the crime.

  Rinaldo had not been able to deny Enrico a job in Remora and had recommended him to both his uncles: to the Pope as an experienced horseman and to Duke Niccolò as an unscrupulous spy. But the very sight of the man unnerved him. He had carried out an act of cold-blooded murder, more than one probably, and even though the most recent such act had been on Rinaldo’s orders, he looked on the assassin with fascinated horror, knowing that he would just as easily slit his own master’s throat, if paid enough.

  ‘Ah, how are they treating you here?’ he asked Enrico nervously, anxious to get away from him and out of the city for his ride in the hills.

  ‘Very well,’ said Enrico. ‘It’s good to be back among horses. They’re more reliable than humans, if you know what I mean.’

  Rinaldo thought he did. This scruffy spy had a grudge; his good-looking fiancée had disappeared and the man had got it into his head that his old employer knew something about it. Rinaldo had met the girl only once and knew nothing at all of her fate, which had in fact been very different from what Enrico suspected. The ambassador had no time for young women himself, beautiful or otherwise. They were quite alien to him, apart from his sister and cousins. And the last thing he wanted was for Enrico to harbour any malice against him. He could do Rinaldo a lot of harm, and not just physically.

  ‘Excellent, excellent!’ he now said vaguely. ‘Let me know if there’s anything you need.’ And he led Bacio out into the yard, with Enrico’s mournful brown eyes following him.

  *

  ‘Where shall I begin?’ asked Luciano. He, Cesare and Georgia had left Paolo and Doctor Dethridge closeted together, and taken the road west out of the city walls through the Gate of the Ram. They had been sent off with instructions to spend the day continuing Georgia’s education about Remora and sharing information.

  ‘Well, how did you get here, for a start?’ asked Georgia. They were sitting on the small wall of a farm just outside the city.

  ‘Today I arrived by carriage,’ said Luciano, smiling. ‘But I suspect that’s not what you want to know. I came from Bellezza. That was the city I first stravagated to last May.’ His smile faded. ‘That is where I live now – it is my home.’

  The three young people remained silent for a while. Cesare was rather in awe of this elegant young man, who was a year younger than him and yet had known such wonders. Luciano was a Stravagante and Cesare still wasn’t sure what that meant. Cesare had been told that Luciano was apprentice to Signor Rodolfo, the most distinguished Stravagante in Talia, and that he lived in Bellezza with Doctor Crinamorte, who had founded the brotherhood. And now he had turned out to be not only a visitor from another world, but a friend of Cesare’s own personal Stravagante, the mysterious girl with a boy’s hair and no shadow.

  ‘There is nowhere in our world like Bellezza,’ Luciano eventually continued. ‘It looks like Venice, except that everything gold in Venice is silver in Bellezza. They don’t value gold here, you know; it’s silver that is the most precious metal. Bellezza is a city visited by people from all over this world – not just Talians – because of its incredible beauty. And as soon as I arrived in it, I felt really well again. My hair had grown back and I was strong, just as I was before the cancer came.’ He stopped and took a deep breath, then plunged back into his story.

  ‘I can’t tell you everything in one day. I have spent months as apprentice to Rodolfo – he’s wonderful, the cleverest, most magical person – and he taught me about being a Stravagante. He had been expecting me, because he took my talisman to our world.’

  ‘What was your talisman?’ asked Georgia curiously.

  An expression of pain passed over his face. She could see that this new Luciano was not quite as she remembered Lucien. He looked older and as if scarred by experience. He said he hadn’t been ill in Talia and yet he looked as someone might who has had a serious illness and recovered from it in body but not yet in mind.

  ‘It was a notebook from Bellezza,’ said Luciano. ‘But I can’t use it any more.’ He stood and paced up and down in front of the wall. ‘As you see, I have a shadow now. I am still a Stravagante, but from this world to yours. I have made that journey only a few times and it is very difficult for me.’

  ‘Is that because of, you know, what happened in our world with your illness?’ asked Georgia, feeling stupid and tactless even as she said it, but she had to know.

  ‘Yes,’ said Luciano. ‘As you know, in your world, which is no longer mine, I died.’

  Cesare looked at him with awe; he had heard Luciano say he was dead in his old world but he still couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Is that what happened to Doctor Dethridge too?’ asked Georgia quickly, to disperse the tension.

  ‘In a way,’ said Luciano. ‘He stravagated to Bellona, his city in Talia, to escape a death sentence in England. And then later, he found he had a shadow here and realised he must have died in his old life.’

  ‘Why did you think the Dottore talked funny?’ Cesare asked Georgia. ‘He sounds quite normal to me.’

  ‘He sounds old-fashioned to us,’ said Georgia.

  Georgia looked to Luciano for explanation, but he just shrugged. ‘But do we sound normal to you?’ he asked Cesare. ‘Because we don’t speak Italian or Talian and yet we can understand and make ourselves understood here.’

  Georgia tried another tack. ‘What did you do in Bellezza,’ she asked, ‘besides learning about stravagation?’

  ‘First I was chosen by the Duchessa to be a mandolier – that’s like a gondolier in Venice,’ he said, ‘but then Rodolfo got me out of that and I made fireworks. I visited the islands, dived in the canal, fought with an assassin, was given lots of silver, had a warrant out for my arrest, got drunk, was kidnapped, helped get a new Duchessa elected, danced with her at Carnival . . .’

  His expression had changed again and Georgia felt a tightening round her heart.

  ‘How old is the new Duchessa?’ she asked.

  ‘About my age,’ said Luciano. ‘About a month older.’ His tone was super casual; Georgia recognised it. It was the same tone in which she had asked Vicky Mulholland how Lucien was when she went for violin lessons.

  ‘How exciting!’ said Cesare. ‘You’ve had so many more adventures than me. And I’m nearly a year older than you. I’ve done nothing except ride horses and help my father in the Twelfth. And you’ve met the Duchessa of Bellezza – both of them. It makes my life here seem very dull.’

  ‘I have a feeling it’s not going to stay dull,’ said Luciano grimly. ‘You can’t be the son of a Stravagante in one of the main cities of the di Chimici clan and not be in danger.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was a Stravagante till yesterday,’ said Cesare. ‘And I still don’t know what it means.’
r />   ‘You and me both,’ said Georgia. ‘And I’m supposed to be one!’

  ‘It’s a traveller between worlds,’ said Luciano. ‘At least, one between Georgia’s world and ours.’ He turned to Cesare, deliberately identifying himself with him rather than with Georgia. ‘The travel can be in either direction, but the talisman – the device that helps the Stravagante make the journey – comes from the world that is not the Stravagante’s own.’

  ‘But you said you’ve been back to the other world, since – you know,’ said Georgia. ‘Have you got a talisman from there now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luciano, but he didn’t elaborate.

  ‘Why do you think you two were chosen?’ asked Cesare, rather shyly. ‘You must be very special in some way.’

  Luciano and Georgia snorted in unison.

  ‘Not at all, in my case,’ said Luciano.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Georgia.

  ‘Unless . . .’ said Luciano and then stopped, confused.

  ‘What?’ said Georgia.

  ‘I’ve had plenty of time to think about this,’ he went on reluctantly. ‘I have wondered whether my talisman found me because I would have been doomed in my own world anyway. I mean, although I got stranded here because the di Chimici kidnapped me and I couldn’t stravagate back because I didn’t have the talisman, I think I would have died in my world anyway. The cancer had come back, you know.’

  Georgia nodded.

  ‘So I wonder if it was somehow connected – if it was because I was already dying. And now, I wonder ... I hate to ask, but are you quite well in your own world?’

  Chapter 6

  The Youngest Son