City of Secrets

by Mary Hoffman

  The porter who showed him around, a man called Gobbi, explained that the corpses for dissection were those of recently executed criminals, though they must be those born outside the city.

  ‘What if there are no executions when the Professor wants to demonstrate to his students?’ asked the Cardinal.

  ‘Well, then he would postpone the demonstration till there were some, Eminence,’ said the porter. ‘Or use an animal.’

  Rinaldo was getting nowhere; he decided to see what the power of silver could discover.

  On Wednesday, two days after Chrissie’s party, Matt sought out the other Stravaganti in a corner of the common room.

  ‘You’re looking better,’ said Georgia.

  ‘I feel it,’ said Matt. ‘I got a good night’s sleep last night, instead of stravagating. How about you guys? Have you recovered from Monday?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nick. ‘More or less, except that Alice still isn’t talking to Sky.’

  Sky glared at him.

  Matt noticed that the fair-haired girl wasn’t sitting with them. She was usually so quiet that he didn’t notice whether she was there or not. But now he could see that she was over the other side of the room, having a heart-to-heart with Lucy. She wasn’t Matt’s type at all but he could see that Sky was a bit upset.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I seem to have caused a lot of trouble.’

  ‘You couldn’t help getting caught,’ said Georgia. ‘Can you tell us more about it now?’

  Ayesha had orchestra practice, so Matt was able to tell them the whole story, not leaving out the beating this time.

  ‘That’s awful!’ said Georgia. ‘But you went in Luciano’s place?’

  ‘Maybe that’s what you were sent to Padavia for?’ said Sky. ‘My mission turned out to be about saving his life in Giglia, though it wasn’t by any act of bravery.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘I’m going back tonight to find out. The thing is, I wonder why my bruises don’t show here in this world? Alice told Ayesha that you two got stabbed in Giglia and your wounds came back here with you.’

  Sky and Nick exchanged glances, their animosity of a few moments ago forgotten as they remembered how they had fought on the same side in the Church of the Annunciation and both received sword cuts. Surreptitiously they both rolled up their sleeves to show Matt their scars. Sky’s was much more noticeable against his dark skin.

  ‘I don’t know why you left your injuries in Talia and we didn’t,’ said Sky. ‘Maybe it’s because our wounds were deep and Brother Sulien had to stitch them?’

  All three of them peered at Matt’s face.

  ‘I can sort of feel them,’ he said. ‘I mean I know they’re there but they don’t really hurt and there’s nothing to see.’

  ‘My cousins are brutes,’ was all Nick said. ‘I never liked Rinaldo but I thought better of Filippo.’

  ‘I think he’s acting on orders from above,’ said Matt. ‘No offence, Nick, but I think your big brother’s behind it.’

  Georgia put her arm round Nick. ‘You can’t help your family,’ she said quietly. ‘Remember how nice Gaetano and Francesca are? And Fabrizio and Filippo are their brothers.’

  Matt remembered something else. ‘It must have been Filippo who stravagated to the party,’ he said. ‘He was holding the book while that thug was hitting me and his face got in the way. Filippo was knocked out but only for a few seconds.’

  ‘Do you think they know what that means then?’ asked Georgia. ‘Do the di Chimici know that all you need is a talisman and losing consciousness while thinking of the other world?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘But they haven’t got a talisman any more.’ He drew the book from his jacket pocket. ‘This is the real thing.’

  Fabrizio read his cousin’s letter eagerly.

  ‘Thirty goddess-worshippers!’ he said. ‘They will have to burn them two or three to a pyre!’

  He felt that the tide was beginning to turn in his favour. That the whole uncontrollable mass of magic and superstition, which it was his duty to stamp out, had received a significant blow.

  And surely now was the time to strike to get rid of the young Bellezzan? He and his family had been too restrained so far.

  The Grand Duke took up his pen to write to Filippo and sent the messenger for refreshment.

  ‘The Duchessa of Bellezza must find herself a new lover,’ he muttered. ‘The Cavaliere Luciano Crinamorte’s days are numbered.’

  Chapter 23

  The Condemned

  When Matt arrived in the studio the next morning, he was still wearing the clothes he had stolen from the di Chimici palace. Worse, his face throbbed with all the aches and bruising he had been shielded from in his own world.

  There was no sign of Constantin. The presses in the Scriptorium were still and there was no sound from the secret room. Matt knocked on the cupboard that hid the secret door but here was no answer from inside. He went back into the studio, wondering what to do next. It was the third day of the Church’s Festival of the Dead and so the Scriptorium was enjoying its last day of rest. So he couldn’t understand why Constantin wasn’t working in the secret room, taking advantage of the holiday.

  He tried the door of the Scriptorium but it was locked from the outside. Matt had only two choices: stravagate back home or climb out the window of the studio as he had done the last time he was here. Curiosity dictated his decision.

  As soon as he was out on the street, Matt wasn’t sure he had done the right thing. He had lost his hat at Filippo’s and passers-by stared curiously at his short hair. Then they did a double take at the sight of his face. Matt thought he must look pretty bad.

  He wanted to keep out of Filippo and Rinaldo’s way and the University was shut; in the end, he went to Cesare’s lodgings, in the hope of finding the Remoran and getting hold of the news. The streets were strangely silent, with hardly anyone about.

  Matt walked through the market square, which was still without its stalls and traders. There seemed to have been a big party there the night before; people were picking up litter and putting it in canvas sacks. He saw the burnt-out ends of rockets and Reman candles scattered on the ground and there was the smell of gunpowder in the air.

  Feels as if Padavia itself is hung-over, he thought.

  What he saw in the next square pulled him up short. He stared unbelievingly at the ten huge bonfires which had been built there. Rising starkly out of each were three wooden stakes and it didn’t take much imagination to guess their purpose. Each pile of brushwood had a long ladder propped against the side.

  Matt hurried to Cesare’s and rapped on the door. The woman who answered it was one he had seen on a few other occasions but she didn’t seem to recognise him; in fact she shrank back and tried to close the door.

  ‘It’s all right, signora,’ said Matt. ‘I am looking for my friend, Cesare Montalbano. I have been here before.’

  She opened the door wider and peered at his face.

  ‘You have been in a fight, I see,’ she said. ‘And seem to have come off worse.’

  ‘You should see the other bloke,’ said Matt trying to smile but it ended in a wince and a groan.

  ‘We don’t want any of your student vendettas here,’ she said.

  ‘I promise I am Cesare’s friend,’ said Matt. ‘And there is no one else with me or behind me. Is he in?’

  The woman let him in rather grudgingly and Matt went up to Cesare’s room.

  ‘Dia, you look terrible,’ said Cesare.

  ‘Do I really look that bad?’ asked Matt. ‘I haven’t seen myself in a mirror yet.’

  Cesare gestured to a glass propped up on a chest in his room. Matt bent down and inspected the damage. His eyelids were no longer swollen and his lip had gone down a lot too, but he had a rainbow of bruises around his eyes and along his jaw.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to see in my world, you know. My face is completely normal. I suppose I should be glad t
hey didn’t break my nose or knock a tooth out. That might have been difficult to repair during stravagation.’

  ‘Have you heard what’s happened?’ asked Cesare.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone,’ said Matt. ‘Constantin isn’t at the Scriptorium and the streets are deserted. What’s going on?’

  ‘The Manoush are in prison,’ said Cesare. ‘They were arrested the night before last and tried yesterday and –’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Matt, horrified. ‘I saw the bonfires on the way here.’

  ‘You’ve guessed it,’ said Cesare. ‘All of them condemned to burn. All those who celebrated their Day of the Dead.’

  ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Rodolfo and Dethridge have a plan. We had a meeting about it last night. But it’s a risk. I don’t know that it will succeed.’

  *

  Luciano had been busy with the other Stravaganti, making arrangements in Bellezza through means of the mirrors. It wasn’t easy, because the women were not as expert at think-speaking and sometimes Rodolfo wrote important instructions backwards and held them up to the glass.

  And it had been frustrating seeing Arianna without being able to touch her or kiss her.

  ‘She seems to be trying to tell me about kittens,’ Luciano said to Rodolfo. ‘Big spotty kittens is what I’m getting. She seems very excited about it.’

  Rodolfo laughed. ‘We are trying to organise a dangerous escape plan for thirty people and Arianna wants to tell you about her cats! It is the one called Florio and it turns out to be a female. Expecting babies. Arianna is thrilled.’

  ‘Then I must be too,’ said Luciano, smiling. ‘Perhaps she will have a whole collection of them to be her bodyguard? It’s not a bad idea.’

  ‘Well, they won’t be born in time to help protect the Manoush,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I wish my daughter would concentrate.’

  ‘Ye sholde be gladde she has some thynge to be light of herte aboute,’ said Dethridge. ‘I am happye that she is not livinge as we be, in the shadowe of the stake.’

  ‘You are quite right, Dottore,’ said Rodolfo. ‘And wise as always. I would not want her or our wives to live in a city where it is possible to burn men, women and children, just because they follow their religion.’

  ‘You forget,’ said Luciano. ‘Arianna knows as well as any of us, except the Dottore, what it is to be condemned to death by burning. If she had not been shown to be your daughter and Silvia’s, she would have been executed for being in Bellezza on the forbidden day.’

  ‘You both instruct me,’ said Rodolfo. ‘My master and my apprentice. I am justly rebuked.’

  ‘Your daughter’s tender heart has room for the Manoush as well as for her cats,’ said Constantin. ‘But I am glad she has not had to see them in prison. They are a terrible sight.’

  At that moment, Cesare arrived with Matt; they had come by a circuitous route avoiding both the Piazza dei Fiori and Filippo’s palazzo.

  Everyone’s attention was diverted by Matt’s face. Luciano felt a sharp thought penetrate his mind.

  Who is that thug? He looks terrifying!

  He was glad that Arianna could only think the thought and not speak it aloud.

  It’s Matteo, the new Stravagante, he thought-spoke. You’ve met him. He was beaten up by the di Chimici.

  ‘I just heard about the Manoush,’ said Matt. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here. What can I do?’

  ‘You can both go and visit them in prison,’ said Rodolfo. ‘But we’ll have to find Matteo a hat to cover his hair. And perhaps it should have a broad brim to conceal his face.’

  *

  Filippo was sure that the di Chimici were close to finding the secret of stravagation. He was in favour of imprisoning Luciano and finding his talisman, then torturing him till he told them what they wanted.

  Rinaldo preferred a more direct course of action. Fabrizio wanted the Bellezzan dead and Rinaldo wanted to be the one to feel the Grand Duke’s gratitude. He might be a cardinal, but he was a complete hypocrite: he had no qualms about ordering another man’s death, if it would benefit him. But as a human being and a squeamish one, he was reluctant to wield the knife himself.

  Yet he could not forget that both his attempts to hire assassins to do his dirty work for him in the past had ended in failure. So he had devised a method of dispatching the Cavaliere that was both ingenious and, he thought, impossible to trace back to him or his family. And he would enjoy watching him die, in spite of his qualms about physical violence.

  But what the Cardinal did not know was that Enrico, his former spy, had been following him as he went about making his arrangements.

  Enrico did not know exactly what was being plotted but he had a pretty good idea about the main plan and it made him feel sick. He was on his way now to Silvia’s house to tell the Stravaganti and warn Luciano.

  *

  Cesare and Matt went to the prison to see the Manoush. Their task was to let them know about the rescue but it was difficult with the guards listening.

  Ludo was in one cell and Ottavio in the other; by tacit consent they had become the two leaders of the group. Cesare went to talk to Ottavio, leaving Matt to communicate with Ludo.

  ‘I’m so sorry about what happened,’ said Matt. ‘I didn’t know till this morning.’

  ‘You look as if you have had troubles of your own,’ said Ludo.

  Luciano had lent Matt one of his hats, his favourite elaborate plumed and purple number which made Matt feel more conspicuous than his bruises did. He had taken it off as soon as he had been let into the prison.

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘A bit of a brush with the di Chimici. But at least we’ve convinced Luciano that Filippo is not on his side.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Ludo.

  Matt was just amazed that this Manoush could care so much about other people when he was doomed to die a horrible death the next day. Matt was a bit ashamed to remember that he had once not liked Ludo much.

  The guards seemed to have lost interest in the prisoners. They were quiet throughout the day; it was only first thing in the morning and at nightfall that they became difficult. Matt leaned closer to Ludo and whispered to him.

  ‘There’s a plan to rescue you tomorrow. You must watch Doctor Dethridge for the signal. Then all the Stravaganti, and Cesare and Enrico, will release you. We may get one or two others to help, like Biagio the printer. As soon as you are outside the city walls, head for Bellezza. All right? Is there anyone in the city you can trust to bring your people’s belongings to them at the city gate?’

  Ludo clasped hands with him through the bars. It was only the fierceness of his grip that made Matt realise that Ludo was indeed scared of dying and putting on a brave show to keep his people’s spirits up.

  ‘I thank you,’ he said. ‘For my people and myself. And if you can get a message to Giunta, the Governor’s wife, I’m sure she will organise the gathering of our belongings. But if the goddess does not look favourably on us and the plan fails, I want you to promise me something.’

  ‘Anything,’ said Matt recklessly.

  ‘Take this ring,’ said Ludo, pulling a small bag from a thong round his neck. ‘No, don’t look at it now. It belongs to my father. I don’t know who he was but he was a member of the di Chimici family. I am ashamed of that now. But I used to be proud of it. If I perish in the flames tomorrow, find him for me and tell him that his son died bravely.’

  The guards came to usher them out at just that moment and Matt could do no more than close his hand over the little bag and nod his assent. ‘I’m sure what you ask won’t be necessary,’ he said, putting all the meaning into the neutral words that he could.

  But it was a heavy burden he took out of the prison. He couldn’t even take the bag with the ring back home with him. He had been told very firmly about the rules that Stravaganti mustn’t take anything between worlds but their talismans. He would ask Luciano what to do. Perhaps he or one of the other Stravaganti would know what to do wi
th it.

  *

  Giunta had refused to share Antonio’s bed ever since the passing of the anti-magic laws. Or rather she had turfed him out of his own chamber.

  ‘You would surely not want carnal knowledge of a pagan?’ she had said. ‘A goddess-worshipper and sympathiser with the heathens? No, as long as this city sets its face against the Lady, then I must set my face against you.’

  It made the Governor acutely miserable and short-tempered with his staff. But his domestic discomfort was as nothing compared with the open strife that followed the arrest and condemnation of the Manoush.

  ‘Women and children!’ Giunta spat at him after the trial. ‘You would burn not only the men but the weakest of the tribe, just for following their religion?’

  ‘It is the law, woman,’ said Antonio. ‘What would you have me do? It is the parents who are to blame for leading their children into such known danger.’

  ‘I would have you repeal the laws,’ said Giunta. ‘They weren’t your idea to begin with. And why should you dance to the tune of a Grand Duke in Tuschia? Is Padavia not an independent city-state? Classe and Bellezza are our nearest allies and they have both resisted introducing the di Chimici laws.’

  ‘You know we have always disagreed about goddess-worship,’ said Antonio.

  ‘I’m not talking about our personal opinions,’ said Giunta. ‘I’m talking about what’s right for the city. Will you follow our tradition of learning and liberality that has existed for three hundred and fifty years or will you be under the thumb of a family that thinks they have the right to determine what is known and believed? Because if so, Padavia might as well give in and become another di Chimici principality.’

  *

  As well as planning for the reception of the rescued Manoush, Arianna had also made a formal plea to her ally, Governor Antonio, to show clemency and reprieve the travelling people from their death. Swiftly his reply had come, stubbornly sticking to the letter of the law. There was nothing left to be done except hope that the plan of the Stravaganti in Padavia would succeed.