City of Secrets

by Mary Hoffman

*

  Matt went back to the secret room, pondering on dissecting dead bodies.

  ‘Time to swap,’ said Biagio, grinning through his curly moustache.

  Matt was pleasantly surprised. So far he had always been the beater, if he hadn’t been doing even more menial tasks like making ink or washing it off the type in the forme with hot lye and water, before the compositors redistributed the letters in their cassetini. Now, after washing all traces of his lunch off his hands, he took over the damping and laying of paper on the tympan of the press. It was delicate and precise work, fixing the paper exactly in place and laying over it the frisket – the thick paper template with cut-out shapes that made sure no ink got on the margins of the page to be printed.

  They were printing the other side of the pages they had done in the morning and, to his surprise, Matt found that he was good at this work and enjoyed turning the rounce and pulling the bar. As with beating, he got into a rhythm with Biagio and Constantin and, at the end of their afternoon session, felt he had done a good day’s work.

  The candles were giving off their usual aroma of cooking fat, which made Matt feel a bit queasy after his lunch.

  ‘Why do they smell like that?’ he asked.

  Biagio looked surprised; all candles in Talia smelt the same except for the expensive church ones. But Constantin answered, ‘They are made from tallow – it’s a kind of animal fat.’

  I wonder if I could be a printer, Matt thought but almost immediately dismissed the idea. It must all be done by computers and photography in twenty-first century England and his experience in Talia would not help him. And who had ever heard of a dyslexic printer? he thought. But even that didn’t diminish his sense of achievement as he stretched out on the floor in Constantin’s studio, holding his spell-book and thinking of his own bed. He was asleep in minutes.

  Matt woke late on the Tuesday, suddenly remembering that he was going to see Ayesha. She had said she’d come on his driving lesson with him. Brian didn’t mind; she’d done it before. So she sat in the back seat, revising her History notes, while Matt practised his three-point turns in a cul-de-sac.

  ‘Good,’ said Brian. ‘You’re really getting the hang of that. ‘It’s doing you good having all these extra lessons and practising with your dad.’

  He dropped them both outside Matt’s house but they didn’t go back in. Instead they wandered aimlessly down to the High Street, Matt carrying Ayesha’s bookbag. He wanted to ask her what she’d been doing with Jago the day before but couldn’t quite bring himself to and in the end their conversation petered out. He couldn’t tell her what he’d been doing and he was afraid of discovering what she had been up to.

  Suddenly she stopped and held out her hand for her bag.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere, Matt,’ she said.

  He felt as if he’d just stepped off a cliff.

  ‘You mean literally?’ he said, trying to keep things light. ‘We could go for coffee.’

  ‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean that you don’t talk to me any more. I don’t know what you’re thinking.’

  That was true; he couldn’t deny it. But it still hurt to hear her say it.

  ‘I think we should take a break,’ she said. ‘Just to cool it for a while.’

  ‘You mean you’re dumping me,’ said Matt bitterly. ‘Don’t dress it up in all that “it’s not you, it’s me” stuff.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ said Ayesha. ‘It is you. Not me. You’re the one that’s changed. You’re moody and irritable and jealous and suspicious. I saw the way you looked yesterday, in the car, when you saw me with Jago. I can’t carry on like this. Sort out whatever it is that’s bugging you and then let’s see where we are after a few weeks.’

  And she turned and walked away from him. When she got to the corner, he saw a red car take the turning and knew that this had been planned.

  The worst of his imaginings was coming true.

  If Filippo was unaware he was being followed, Enrico was even more so. His skills as a spy had been eroded by months of worry and hardship. While Filippo strolled along the street that led to the University, Enrico suddenly found himself grabbed from behind and bundled into an alley.

  Luciano and Cesare had forgotten how bad he smelt! The spy ceased struggling as soon as he saw who they were and sagged alarmingly in their grasp. Now that they had got him, they were at a loss what to do with him. He was a pathetic figure, unshaven, dirty, with his clothes hanging loose on his scrawny frame.

  Enrico held his hands up as if to say he gave in.

  ‘Do what you like,’ he said dejectedly. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a meal first?’

  The man’s effrontery was staggering but they both felt rather sorry for the wretch.

  Luciano didn’t want to be seen with him in public and he didn’t want Enrico to know where he lived. In the end, after whispered consultation, they frogmarched him to Cesare’s lodgings.

  The woman who cooked for Cesare and his four housemates was not best pleased to have to prepare extra food at an unexpected hour but she softened when she saw Luciano’s silver and heard his polite words. While she was in the kitchen, Luciano and Cesare took Enrico out to the yard pump and stripped him.

  To hear his howls, anyone would have thought he was enduring the worst of tortures. Indeed for Enrico, soap and water were torture. While he stood bedraggled and sneezing under the cold water, Cesare went up to his room and brought down a towel and some spare clothes for him to change into.

  They were too big for Enrico and he was still shivering when they brought him into the kitchen where the cook put a steaming bowl of soup in front of him. He ate it swiftly, with big chunks of bread, bolting it like an animal, as if someone might snatch it from him before he could finish it.

  And then he drank two more bowls, ate a chicken leg, downed three mugs of ale and finally burped long and luxuriously.

  Sitting at the wooden table with his hair still damp from the swabbing, the scrawny spy looked – and smelt – halfway decent. But Luciano and Cesare were not deceived. They had both been kidnapped and held captive by this man. Cesare had missed only a horse race, albeit an important one. But Luciano had lost his old life; it was a consequence he lived with every day.

  Still, he had to admit that he would probably have died in his old life anyway and his capture by Enrico had just made it happen sooner. Who knew whether he would have had the option of living in Talia if Enrico hadn’t kidnapped him when he did?

  ‘Well then, masters,’ said Enrico. ‘I feel better for that. And I’m ready to take my medicine. What are you going to do with me?’

  ‘Never mind about that,’ said Cesare gruffly. ‘What about what you did to us?’

  Enrico spread his hands. ‘Only acting on orders,’ he said. ‘But that’s all over now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Luciano. ‘You’re a reformed character, are you?’

  ‘Not especially,’ said Enrico. ‘But I’ve given up working for the di Chimici.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’ asked Cesare.

  Enrico spat in the fireplace. ‘Because they are bad news,’ he said.

  ‘We could have told you that,’ said Cesare.

  ‘You accepted money from them to kill the Duchessa,’ said Luciano sternly. ‘That’s worse than kidnapping either of us.’

  ‘Yes but I didn’t, did I?’ said Enrico reasonably.

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Kill the old Duchessa. I saw her with my own eyes, watching you and the Duke at the duel. And I heard that black monk with the long hair call out “Silvia!” That was her name, wasn’t it? Silvia, the Duchessa of Bellezza.’

  So Rodolfo was right, thought Luciano. He had told them after the duel that he thought it was Sky’s calling out that had given the game away.

  ‘And that was when I knew,’ said Enrico. ‘It was me that killed Giuliana. My own fiancée. She was acting as the Duchessa and I didn’t know.’

&
nbsp; ‘So you made sure I killed the Duke,’ said Luciano.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Enrico. ‘And you know what? I’d do it again. Or perhaps I’d just stab him myself. That’s why I don’t want anything more to do with the di Chimici.’

  ‘But they couldn’t have known that Silvia was going to use a double on that day,’ said Cesare, who hadn’t heard this part of the story before. ‘You’re both just as guilty of the death of the other woman as you would have been if the Duchessa had really died.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ demanded Enrico wearily. ‘Perhaps I should just stab myself too?’

  Matt stood paralysed on the pavement for some time. Now that the worst had happened, he felt frozen. He knew that, just as if he had been stabbed or shot, the minute he made a move, it was going to hurt like hell. For now he just wanted to stay very still and pretend that she hadn’t said what she had and that he hadn’t seen the red car. And there was a tiny distant other Matt that looked down at the real one and felt just a bit relieved because, now that it had happened, he didn’t have to dread it any more.

  The spell was broken when someone bumped into him on the pavement and said, ‘Watch yourself, mate.’

  Everything snapped back into focus. He could see and hear the traffic, smell the petrol fumes, mixed with coffee, incense, Indian spices and honey-scented candles coming from the shops around him. He forced his feet to walk back towards his house.

  If he was honest with himself, he couldn’t really blame Ayesha; he had been a lousy boyfriend ever since he had become a Stravagante. Maybe that happened to them all? He should ask Sky; Alice certainly didn’t seem enamoured of the whole thing. And maybe that was why Georgia and Nick had given it up?

  But the way he felt now, Matt didn’t want to be honest about it. He wanted to blame someone other than himself and Jago Jones was the obvious choice. He wished that he could really do magic. What was the use of being able to travel in time and space as part of a secret brotherhood, if he couldn’t make Ayesha love him again? Or at least make Jago sorry to be alive?

  Matt picked up speed and ran the rest of the way home. When he got there, he rushed upstairs to his room and rummaged in his desk. Somewhere he had Jago’s address; he couldn’t remember why any more. Something about meeting Harry after an orchestra rehearsal and fetching him home from the Jones’s house after they’d picked him up, or something. He didn’t trust his memory to find the house again without the address and it would be dreadful to make a mistake.

  At last he found it. His heart was beating faster than usual but whether from running up the stairs or because of what he was about to do, he didn’t know.

  He took some deep breaths, then ran down the stairs again.

  ‘I know you aren’t what you seem,’ said Enrico to Luciano. The impromptu bath and meal had given him strength and he had recovered some of his old swagger. ‘So I’ve made up my mind. I want to be on your side. I want to work for the Stravaganti.’

  Luciano and Cesare looked at each other in horror. The idea of this cold-blooded mercenary working for people like Rodolfo and Dethridge was not just ludicrous but alarming. Yet Luciano didn’t want to turn him down straight out.

  And an idea was forming in his brain. Perhaps Enrico could be useful to him after all?

  Matt was out of breath when he arrived at Jago’s house but he had plenty of time to get it back. After a quarter of an hour a fine drizzle started to fall. He sheltered in the doorway of a block of flats opposite. No longer warmed by rage and determination, he was shivery and miserable, like someone coming down with flu. He didn’t even know if what he was planning would work. And he certainly knew it was wrong.

  He pushed down all thought of what Constantin might say and instead ran through what he needed to know for his theory test in his head.

  Matt lost track of the time; he seemed always to have been standing in the rain outside Jago’s house waiting for him to come home. Several people had pushed past him to put their keys in the front door or buzz the entry-phone to the flats. Once, when a dog looked as if it was going to lift its leg against his jeans, he decided to move out into the rain and just get wet.

  But eventually a red car pulled up across the road and parked outside the house. Matt didn’t stop to think. He hunched his shoulders and ran across the road, rain slanting into his eyes.

  Jago was just locking the car, pressing a remote control on his key. The car lights flashed once. Jago looked up startled as Matt loomed over him.

  Then he smiled slowly. ‘Hello, Woody,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Matt saw Jago’s eyes widen as he realised that he was going to hit him. But he was wrong. Matt fixed him with his gaze and put into the look everything he had ever felt about people like Jago. People who read and wrote effortlessly, who could talk about literature and write poetry and would probably leave university with first-class degrees and get jobs in journalism or the BBC.

  If he was wrong and this didn’t work, he was going to look really stupid. But it was working, just as he knew it would. He was putting the evil eye on his enemy.

  Chapter 12

  Consequences

  ‘Don’t forget Eva’s coming to stay for a few days this week,’ Matt’s mother said at dinner.

  Matt groaned inwardly. He didn’t dislike his great-aunt but he had a horrible feeling that her vagueness concealed a shrewd mind and he worried that she might be able to tell just by looking at him what he had done.

  Matt did not stravagate that night. He told himself it was because he had done it twelve nights in a row and was exhausted. But really he didn’t want to see Constantin. And he didn’t want Constantin to see him. He didn’t want to look the Professor in the eye, or Luciano, or any other Stravagante; he was sure they would know what he had done.

  So in a defiant mood he set the spell-book on his desk and went to bed at ten and slept soundly for ten straight hours.

  He woke refreshed in body but restless in his mind. There was a dull sense of doom hanging over him, made up of having really been dumped by Ayesha and of what he had tried to do to Jago. He hadn’t hit him, hadn’t touched him in any way. But he had tried with all his might to put the evil eye on him.

  And Jago had staggered under the onslaught of his gaze. Making a dash for his front door, he had looked back at Matt, shaking, and said, ‘You’re mad, Wood. Do you know that? Stark raving. No wonder she wanted shot of you.’

  Matt thought he would never forget those words. He had to shake his head to get the sound and image of Jago out of his mind; a part of him felt he was right.

  There was no driving lesson that morning and he didn’t feel like practising with Andy. Instead he phoned Chay and they went for a run, followed by a long training session in the gym. It was just what he needed; pushing himself to the limits of his physical endurance meant he didn’t have to think.

  They went for cold drinks, still out of breath and hot, even after their showers.

  ‘All right, Matt?’ asked Chay.

  ‘Not really,’ said Matt. He swallowed hard. ‘Ayesha’s called it off.’

  ‘What? Oh, man. I told you to sort it out,’ said Chay. ‘I warned you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Matt. ‘And I tried. But what chance have I got with Jago around?’

  ‘He’s always been around though, hasn’t he?’ said Chay. ‘They broke up long before you and Yesh became an item. So what’s new?’

  Matt shook his head.

  ‘I reckon you’re mad,’ said Chay after a while.

  ‘That’s what he said,’ said Matt.

  ‘She likes you better than Jago,’ said Chay. ‘Otherwise she’d have gone back to him, not started with you.’ Then he realised what Matt had said. ‘You didn’t go and see him, did you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Matt. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it was a dumb thing to do,’ said Chay. ‘Did you punch him out?’

  ‘No, I’m not a Neanderthal,’ said Matt. ‘Even if I look like one.�
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  ‘Only . . .’ Chay trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I heard he was in hospital.’

  Luciano had a Rhetoric class with Constantin that morning and afterwards the Professor asked him to stay behind.

  ‘Matteo didn’t stravagate today,’ he said quietly. ‘I had to tell the pressmen that he was sick.’

  ‘Perhaps he is,’ said Luciano. ‘But he seemed OK yesterday.’

  ‘You don’t know anything then?’ asked Constantin. ‘I thought he was all right too. We had a good day working in the Secret Scriptorium.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Luciano. ‘It’s always awful, not knowing what’s going on in the other world.’

  He was remembering the times that Georgia had failed to turn up in Talia. The first time, it was because her stepbrother had stolen her talisman and she was away only a few days. But then he had taken it again and Georgia hadn’t been able to stravagate for a long time. By the time she found the talisman and returned to Remora a whole year had passed in her world even though only a few weeks had gone by in Talia.

  Matt hadn’t any enemies, as far as Luciano knew. But suppose something had happened to his talisman – who knew when he might be back? The portal between the two worlds was notoriously unstable.

  ‘You are worried,’ said Constantin.

  ‘Do you think I should stravagate myself and see what’s happened to him?’ asked Luciano.

  ‘Leave it for a day or two,’ said Constantin. ‘I can cover for him in the Scriptorium till the end of the week.’

  Luciano missed having lunch with Matt. He went back home and, to take his mind off Matt, Luciano told his foster-father about Enrico.

  ‘And ye and yonge Caesar lette thatte scoundrel Henry goe?’ Dethridge asked.

  ‘We didn’t know what else to do,’ said Luciano. ‘I suppose we could have reported him to the Governor but I don’t have any evidence that he has committed crimes, except his own confession – and I don’t know if he would repeat that in a court of law.’