City of Stars

by Mary Hoffman

  ‘Then what would you have?’ asked Falco bitterly. ‘That I should stay here and become like Uncle? Only I should probably need servants to carry me round the Papal palace if I grew to his size; my sticks would not support me.’

  ‘We could find a way out of Father’s plans, surely?’ begged Gaetano. ‘You could come and live in Bellezza with me and my Duchess.’

  ‘I have heard they have no horses in Bellezza,’ said Falco, his lip trembling.

  ‘But I will be there,’ said Gaetano, taking his brother in his arms. ‘To love you and look after you. Who would be there to love you in the world of the Stravaganti?’

  ‘Georgia will look after me,’ said Falco stubbornly. ‘I’m going to do this, Gaetano. Don’t make me do it without your blessing.’

  Gaetano held Falco for a long time, then looked into his eyes and sighed.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If your mind is set on this and there is nothing I can say or do to change it, then I must accept it. But how I shall miss you, my Falconcino! More even than I have these last two years. We shall no longer grow up together but I shall always imagine you at my side, just as when we were boys in this palace, playing our sword-games.’

  When Duke Niccolò entered the room, he didn’t notice the two brothers’ sombre mood. He himself was elated.

  ‘Gaetano, I have heard from the Regent,’ he said, his dark eyes glittering. ‘They are ready to receive your suit. You must leave for Bellezza at once!’

  *

  Up in his room William Dethridge took a small package wrapped in black silk from his jacket pocket. He unwrapped the package and spread the black silk on a clothes chest in the corner of the room. Then he shuffled the cards in his hands and dealt a clock shape on to the silk, beginning at the nine o’clock position and moving counter-clockwise. The first card to be set down was the Princess of Birds, immediately followed by the Prince of Serpents. Dethridge paused before going on.

  ‘Thatte will bee the stravayging mayde and one of the young nobles of the Ladye,’ he muttered. The circle continued to grow.

  Two of Fishes, the Magician, Two of Salamanders, Two of Birds, The Knight (‘aha, thatte woll bee younge Caesar’) then the Tower, Two of Serpents, the Moving Stars, and the Princess and Prince of Fishes.

  Dethridge dealt the thirteenth card into the middle of the circle. It was the Goddess.

  He sat back and contemplated the pattern. It was most unusual to get so many trump and court cards. And all the number cards were twos; he had no idea what that might mean. But the Princess of Fishes was the young Duchessa of Bellezza and he was glad to see her next to her own Prince. It was partly to read her fate that he had consulted the cards. The Moving Stars clearly indicated the race, but why was Cesare next to the Tower? And was it a comfort to know that the Goddess was in the centre, controlling everything?

  Dethridge decided to speak to Paolo about this reading and to reach Rodolfo through the mirrors; he had no idea which of them the Magician card represented but the sooner the Stravaganti were all together, the better.

  *

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’ said Luciano.

  It had been hard for him and Georgia to cross the threshold of the Papal palace in Remora. It felt like entering the enemy’s lair, even though it was a cool and graceful building of marble and mirrors. Luciano was no stranger to elegance after his time in Bellezza but Georgia felt awkward and out of place, acutely conscious of her coarse clothes. The Pope’s footman clearly thought she was some kind of servant of Luciano’s and that made her feel even worse.

  Falco’s eyes lit up when they were shown into a small ante-chamber where he sat at the window, and he greeted them both warmly, using the boy’s form of Georgia’s name while the footman was still there. But the minute the man had withdrawn and before they could even ask where Gaetano was, Falco burst out with the news that his brother had already gone.

  ‘He left for Bellezza an hour ago,’ he said excitedly. ‘He’s gone to meet the Duchessa.’

  ‘Why so soon?’ Luciano pressed him, suspiciously.

  Falco sighed. ‘You might as well know. It’ll come out soon enough when they’re married.’

  Georgia saw the colour leave Luciano’s face till he looked like the marble statue of Apollo in the niche behind him. But then it came flooding back and he was flushed with rage.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded. ‘Who’s getting married?’

  Falco was taken aback. ‘Why, Gaetano and the Duchessa,’ he said nervously. ‘The Regent has received our suit and my brother is to speak of it to the Duchessa before bringing her back here for the Stellata.’

  ‘Never!’ said Luciano. ‘Arianna would never marry a di Chimici. There must be some mistake!’

  Now it was Falco’s turn to colour up.

  ‘And why shouldn’t she? We are one of the oldest families in Talia and we have made alliances with Dukes and Princes all over the North. In fact my family rules by right in six cities.’

  ‘A very good reason not to make Bellezza the seventh,’ snarled Luciano. ‘Come on, Georgia. It was madness to come here. There can be no dealings between us and the di Chimici. As you can see, they aren’t interested in anything except feathering their own nest.’

  ‘Wait!’ cried Falco, seeing that Luciano was about to sweep Georgia away.

  Georgia was as upset as the other two. Luciano’s outburst left no room for doubt about his own feelings for Arianna and that was hard enough, but seeing Falco’s stricken face made it difficult just to leave.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, putting her hand on Luciano’s arm. It was the first time she had touched him.

  ‘I’m sure Luciano didn’t mean to insult your family,’ she said to Falco. She felt Luciano’s muscles tense under her hand. ‘And I’m sure that if there has been a misunderstanding, it will be sorted out. But surely a Duchessa would have to listen to such a proposal?’ she said to Luciano. ‘I mean, this is not my world, literally, but from what I’ve seen of Talia, you don’t just say “get lost” if one member of a noble family asks to marry another.’

  She felt Luciano relax slowly. ‘No-oh, I suppose not,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘And if it’s any consolation,’ said Falco anxiously, ‘I don’t think he wants to marry her. I think he’d prefer our cousin Francesca – they always said when they were little that they’d marry each other when they grew up.’

  Luciano laughed bitterly. ‘Francesca di Chimici? I think you’ll find she’s already been married off to suit your family’s plans. That’s if she’s the young woman Rinaldo di Chimici put up against Arianna in the Ducal election.’

  ‘Rinaldo is my cousin too,’ said Falco stiffly. ‘I don’t like him much, but he is a member of my family and I can’t choose my relatives.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Georgia. ‘None of us can. Be fair, Luciano – Falco can’t help what his family does or who they are, come to that.’

  ‘But Gaetano will do what your father tells him, won’t he?’ asked Luciano.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Falco, calmly. ‘I’m not going to, am I?’

  There was a tense silence and then Luciano seemed to regain control of himself.

  ‘I know we agreed to consider helping you,’ he said at last. ‘But I am not happy about it. I don’t even know whether what you want to do is possible and it is certainly dangerous. And you would have to accept that it means leaving your family for ever. I don’t know if you fully understand what that means.’

  ‘I have thought of little else,’ said Falco, ‘since our ride to Belle Vigne.’

  ‘But the thinking is one thing,’ said Luciano. ‘The experiencing would be much worse.’

  ‘It would be different for me from your experience,’ said Falco. ‘Because you got stuck here by accident. And I am choosing to go to the other world.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Georgia. ‘Surely that does make a difference, Lucien?’

  ‘Perhaps it does,’ he answered slowly
. ‘But I want you to think this through properly. It won’t be like a spell which can be reversed. If you travel to my old world – and we don’t yet know if you can – you will be worse than an exile in a strange country. Remember that I knew Bellezza quite well before I ended up there permanently. You will arrive in a world so different from this that I don’t think you can imagine it. A world where the speed of a galloping horse is considered slow, where you could travel the length of Talia in a few hours or speak to someone on the other side of the world by using a machine.’

  ‘But it is just because your world has such wonders – magic, I would call them – that I want to go there,’ cried Falco. ‘If so much can be done so quickly, then surely I could be made whole again?’

  ‘Maybe you could,’ said Luciano. ‘But what then? You won’t be able to come back here. You won’t be with your friends and family. At least I knew some people in Bellezza. But you will have to make a completely new life among strangers. And think what it will do to your family. I know what it did to mine.’ He stopped abruptly, unable to carry on.

  ‘It would be better for my family to lose me,’ said Falco. ‘I know that they love me, even my father. But every time he looks at me I see the pity in his eyes, the memory of what I used to be. I have already said goodbye to Gaetano. He is the only one who knows what I intend and it was a bitter parting. But, I told you, my mind is made up. I want you two to help me stravagate to Georgia’s world.’

  *

  ‘A horse with wings?’ said Duke Niccolò. ‘That’s absurd. A child’s story.’

  ‘Would I lie to you, Master?’ said Enrico. ‘I’ve seen her with my own eyes and she’s as pretty a little filly as you could wish to see in a month of Sundays.’

  ‘And in the Ram, you say?’ The Duke saw the implications immediately. If word got out that the Ram had been blessed with such a good omen, it would sway public opinion in their favour and make it harder to do deals with the jockeys of the other Twelfths in the race. Remorans were a superstitious lot. The Ram would undoubtedly keep their piece of good fortune secret until just a few days before the race.

  ‘Born in the Ram, yes, but taken to Santa Fina with her mother where she is now,’ said Enrico.

  Duke Niccolò remembered the black filly with the blanket and cursed under his breath. He had been within inches of this secret himself and yet he had to rely on a grubby little spy to tell him what had been under his nose.

  ‘Just say the word, my Lord, and she can be yours. And all the luck that goes with her.’

  ‘And you’re sure it’s not a fake?’ the Duke persisted. ‘Not some sort of bird’s wings stuck on to a young horse?’

  ‘I saw her fly last night,’ said Enrico. ‘Round and round above the stable yard when Roderigo thought there was no one there but his faithful groom Diego. But Diego is my friend and I was hiding behind some hay bales. Of course they had her on a lunge line, but suppose it got caught in some trees and broke? They wouldn’t know where she had got to then, would they? Wouldn’t even know she had been stolen.’

  Of course the horse was real. Niccolò had known it really, even when he queried the spy’s story. Everyone who had any connection with Remora knew the stories about flying horses. But it made the Duke uneasy to hear that one had been born in his time, to the Twelfth with the strongest allegiance to his toughest rival. He didn’t like things to happen that were beyond his control. Well, there was something he could do to get the situation back under his control before the news leaked out.

  ‘How much?’ he asked.

  *

  ‘You will need a talisman,’ said Luciano.

  It was the first time he had used that word in front of a di Chimici and Georgia realised what it meant: they were really going to take Falco to their world. No, she corrected herself, to my world. Falco had been right to refer to it as that; Luciano was a Talian now. She resolved to stop thinking of him as Lucien. From now on, even to herself, she would call him Luciano. It would help.

  ‘How can I get one?’ asked Falco simply, without even questioning what the word meant.

  ‘Georgia will have to bring one for you,’ said Luciano. ‘It has to be something from the other world, brought from there to here. Then when you are ready to stravagate, you must hold it in your hands and fall asleep in Talia thinking of the other place. You should wake up in Anglia, in England, I mean, in the twenty-first century. Though Goddess knows what will happen to you after that. That’s Georgia’s department, too, I suppose.’

  Both boys looked at her as if she could solve all the problems that they were going to set her.

  ‘Well, what sort of thing should it be?’ she asked. ‘Mine is a horse and Luciano said his was a book. But they were both from Talia. I won’t know what I’m looking for in England.’

  ‘May I see the horse?’ asked Falco.

  Reluctantly, Georgia drew the little model of the winged horse from her pocket and showed it to him.

  ‘A cavallo alato!’ he said excitedly. ‘The Rassenans used to have them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see one!’

  Georgia and Luciano exchanged glances.

  To distract him, Luciano said, ‘Rodolfo’s talisman comes from the other world. It is a silver ring that Doctor Dethridge brought him.’

  An idea was beginning to form in Georgia’s mind.

  ‘I thought I wasn’t supposed to bring anything from my world except my own talisman,’ she said now.

  Luciano shrugged. ‘Those are the rules. But Doctor Dethridge brought Rodolfo’s talisman. And Paolo’s. And Giuditta Miele’s. And the talismans of countless other Stravaganti from Talia to the other world. It’s something we do. I am being trained so that one day I will be adept enough to take talismans to bring Stravaganti from the other world to this. It is a heavy responsibility.’

  ‘Whoa!’ said Georgia. ‘You mean Doctor Dethridge, who invented the whole art of stravagation, is the only one who has ever brought talismans from my world to this and you’re being trained to do it, and yet you expect me to pick up a little something and bring it for Falco just like that? Isn’t that going to upset the whole space-time-continuum-thingy?’

  Luciano smiled at her and she knew that she would do whatever he asked. ‘I used to compare it to Star Trek too,’ he said. He sighed. It sometimes seemed to him that hundreds of years had passed since he first stood on Rodolfo’s roof garden and found he had no shadow. He missed him intensely. And Arianna too.

  Quickly, he said, ‘It would be used only once, if Falco is really determined to be what Doctor Dethridge calls “translated”. Just the one journey – like a one-way ticket.’

  ‘But wait,’ said Georgia. ‘Doesn’t the talisman have to find the right person? I mean, our talismans came to us and brought us to where we were supposed to go. Can we just give something to Falco and hope it will work to help him stravagate?’

  Luciano looked serious. ‘We can’t be sure,’ he said. He turned to Falco. ‘Do you understand? It’s one thing for you to make up your mind that you want to go to our world. But it’s another for it to work. You have to accept that even if Georgia brings you something, it might not take you away from Talia.’

  Falco nodded. ‘I am willing to take the risk,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t we ask someone?’ said Georgia. She knew she had already missed an opportunity to tell Paolo about it. ‘What about Doctor Dethridge? Or you could try contacting Rodolfo?’

  Luciano’s face set hard. He didn’t really believe that Arianna was seriously considering marriage to a di Chimici, but he was hurt that neither she nor Rodolfo had sent word to him about the proposal. He had a vision of them getting on with the business of governing Bellezza and making important decisions without him. He felt left out and angry. And that was when he decided not to tell anyone about Falco.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll handle this ourselves. After all, we are both Stravaganti.’

  ‘And now I shall be one too,’ said Falco, smiling his angelic smile. �
��At least, for a little while. I shall make one beautiful flight and then hang up my wings. And Georgia will look after me.’

  Georgia had to come home early from school on Tuesday; she was tired and groggy. Maura was so worried about her that Georgia decided not to stravagate for a couple of nights. She was sick of feeling tired and there were only a few days till the end of term. It would be easier in the holidays and Luciano had assured her that it was perfectly possible that she might not miss any time in Talia at all because of the way that the portal worked.

  But she had reckoned without Russell. All the time she was stravagating nightly, she had been super-careful about the winged horse, transferring it from day clothes to night clothes and back again and never letting it out of her possession. But on the Tuesday night she had been exhausted and she had known that she was not going to need it that night. So she had left it in the pocket of her jeans in the washing hamper in the bathroom. And on Wednesday morning it had gone.

  Chapter 13

  A Courtship

  Georgia was paralysed with shock and fear. At first she tried to believe that Maura had taken the horse, but the jeans were still in the hamper and not in the washing-machine. And Maura had gone to work, leaving strict instructions for Georgia to ring the doctor for an emergency appointment. The house was silent and still, with that reverberating quiet that comes after chaos. Ralph had gone to work too and Russell to school. Georgia had heard the clatter and low murmur of their breakfast, through the fug of her exhausted sleep.

  Now she sat on the side of the bath with her jeans crumpled in her lap and felt as if she really might be ill. It had to be Russell who’d taken it. Georgia knew it was useless, but she went and tried the handle of her stepbrother’s door anyway. It was locked. Russell had demanded his own lock at the same time as Georgia got hers. Now she was sure that the winged horse was somewhere behind the locked door.