City of Ships

by Mary Hoffman

  ‘How’s the essay going?’ asked her mother, popping her head round the door.

  She was carrying a tray of juice and biscuits. Isabel noted one glass; she had been to Charlie’s room first.

  ‘You’re being a storybook mother,’ she said.

  Sarah Evans laughed. ‘No. If I was, the biscuits would have been rustled up in our kitchen this morning instead of being Sainsbury’s finest. What are you writing about?’

  ‘What is the ghost’s motivation in The Woman in Black?’ Isabel read from her homework sheet.

  Sarah grimaced. She had been with the school party to see the play in the West End and they had both been terrified.

  ‘Rather you than me,’ she said. ‘Only . . . you don’t seem to have got very far.’

  They both looked at the blank white screen on Isabel’s computer with the essay title typed at the top.

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve been thinking,’ said Isabel, cramming a big bite of chocolate cookie into her mouth. ‘These are better than if you’d made them,’ she said.

  ‘Cheek,’ said her mother. But she got the message and left her daughter to it.

  Try as she might, Isabel couldn’t wrest her mind away from sunny Remora and back to the misty fens of the novel she was supposed to be writing about.

  Even in early March the Reman sunshine had warmth in it and she could just imagine what it would be like in high summer when the Race of the Stars would be run. She wished she could be there to see it but her task in Talia might be over by then, one way or another.

  Even if she could stravagate to only one city of her choice it would still be Classe, however much she had fallen in love with the City of Stars. It was Georgia’s place, not hers.

  Isabel shook herself. ‘The ghost’s motivation is . . .’ she typed.

  Rinaldo had paid spies to look for Princess Beatrice in every city in Talia. So he was not best pleased to hear that she had been in Bellezza all the time.

  ‘Why there, of all places?’ he muttered under his breath, dismissing the messenger who had brought the news. The Cardinal was going to have to give his spy network a new task and that involved sending out messengers of his own: a costly business.

  But he cheered up when his local spy from Remora was shown in with a very reluctant-looking stable-boy.

  ‘Tell His Eminence what you told me,’ prompted the spy. ‘He’ll be very interested, I promise you.’

  ‘I work in the stables of the Lioness, signor,’ said the boy.

  ‘Your Eminence,’ corrected the spy, cuffing him round the head.

  ‘Ouch! Sorry, Your Eminence,’ said the boy. ‘And yesterday we had a couple of ladies visit.’

  The Cardinal couldn’t think what on earth interest a ‘couple of ladies’ might be, but he motioned to the boy to continue.

  ‘Very keen on the horses they were, Eminence. And one of them, the one in the red dress, she was very knowledgeable about them.’

  ‘And?’ asked Rinaldo. When would this oaf ever get to the point?

  ‘It was strange,’ said the boy. ‘They both seemed quite ordinary and normal, but when they left the stable I noticed that, well, that they didn’t have any shadows!’

  And then he curled his right-hand thumb to little finger and touched it to his breast and brow, like someone trying to ward off danger or the supernatural.

  ‘Now that is very interesting,’ said the Cardinal more kindly than before. ‘You are quite sure? No shadow for either of them?’

  ‘Not a one, sir, I mean Eminence,’ said the boy, relieved to have got his story out and not been told off for wasting the time of the man in red.

  ‘Now would you describe both these ladies to me?’ said the Cardinal. ‘Every detail you can remember – what they wore, what they looked like, where they were going when they left you?’

  ‘The one in the red dress had a tattoo on her shoulder,’ said the boy. ‘It was of the flying horse. You know, the one that was born in the Ram.’

  The Ram! Rinaldo’s instincts had been right. The Horsemaster was a Stravagante; he was sure of it now. These must have been people of his.

  The boy went away happy, with several of the Cardinal’s silver coins in his pocket.

  Isabel somehow managed to scramble through her essay and her History revision for a test on Monday and be ready in time to go to the cinema. She and Charlie had the usual wrangle over what film to see; Isabel would have quite liked Date Movie, but Charlie insisted they should go to Islington’s little art house cinema, which was showing The Life Aquatic. Isabel let him have his way – after all, this was supposed to be an evening to placate him.

  And he did seem mellower as they walked home, sharing chips from a paper bag. But he still kept looking at Isabel in a funny way. Finally, he stopped in the middle of the pavement.

  ‘Are you having sex?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘No!’ said Isabel. ‘Are you?’ She felt completely wrong-footed. Charlie was so far off the mark.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Charlie. ‘I mean, you’ve changed. You’re more, I don’t know, attractive, I suppose. And you hang out with those guys at school . . .’

  ‘Listen,’ said Isabel. ‘If I were having sex with Matt or Sky, or Nick Drake – or all three at once, come to that – it would still be NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! But, as it happens, I’m not.’

  They glared at each other for a bit. Then Charlie relaxed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bel,’ he said, offering her the chip bag. ‘It’s just that I didn’t know what to think and you don’t tell me anything any more. You’re right. It’s none of my business what you do.’

  ‘Too right,’ said Isabel, still glowering. But she took another chip. ‘Why should I tell you things if you come out with stuff like that?’

  They walked the rest of the way home in silence, both wrapped up in their own thoughts.

  ‘There is something that’s been happening,’ said Isabel as they reached their front door, ‘but I can’t tell you what.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Charlie, then stopped, alarmed. ‘It’s not something dodgy, is it?’

  Isabel sighed. ‘No. At least not exactly. It’s not illegal. But it’s private and it’s not my secret so I can’t tell you.’

  She didn’t know she was echoing something Georgia had said nearly three years ago.

  And with that Charlie had to be satisfied.

  Isabel hadn’t meant to stravagate that night but the conversation with her twin had unsettled her so much that she did. But she didn’t get very far from the Baptistery before someone came up behind her and put his hand over her mouth.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ said Andrea.

  Isabel felt like biting him hard but she just nodded and he took his hand away. She spun round and glared at him.

  ‘What is it with you?’ she hissed. ‘Just because you’re a pirate, you can’t come up and say “hello” like an ordinary person?’

  Andrea put his fingers to his lips. ‘There’s no need to tell everyone,’ he whispered. ‘I thought you might like to come pirating with me.’

  The idea was so outrageous that Isabel suddenly found herself thinking, Why not? She was a different person in Talia, much more reckless than in her everyday life. Not that anyone had ever offered her a day’s pirating in Islington; her lips curved at the thought. The closest she got to piracy at home was dodgy DVDs in the local market.

  Andrea was watching her and could see she wanted to go with him. He smiled back at her, showing his ridiculous silver teeth. ‘Come on then,’ he said, taking her arm, and walked her briskly down to the harbour.

  They boarded the same light caravel on which he had kidnapped Isabel before and sailed out into deep water and round into a bay along the coast from the harbour. Then Andrea let down a small rowing boat and took her over to everyone’s idea of a romantic pirate ship.

  It was a galleon, a medium-sized roundship, painted regulation pirate black.

  ‘Where’s the skull and crossbones?’ Isabel
asked Andrea. ‘It’s all that’s missing.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, surprised. He didn’t seem to have heard of that basic pirate symbol.

  It was all that Isabel could do not to giggle; Andrea’s ship was about as piratey as you could get. If the Walt Disney Company had been able to get their hands on it, they would never have needed to build the Black Pearl for Johnny Depp.

  She had to climb a rope ladder up the side of the Raider’s Revenge, as the ship was called, tucking her skirts into her waistband to do it. Andrea’s crew were lined up on the deck to greet them. Isabel untucked her dress quickly, embarrassed; she hadn’t expected a reception committee.

  She remembered that in her world there was a superstition that women were bad luck on a ship. That didn’t seem to be the case in Talia.

  ‘Anchors aweigh!’ ordered Andrea, and took her to his cabin, which was much bigger than the one on his caravel.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, used to his style of entertaining by now.

  ‘Out into deeper water for a start,’ said Andrea, ‘so we can’t be shot at from shore. And then east to see what merchant ships we can find.’

  ‘Are you really going to board one?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Andrea. ‘Not much point in pirating otherwise.’

  ‘I thought you’d become a respectable government agent for Bellezza,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Spy, pirate – we’re all outside the law,’ said Andrea. ‘And I don’t think the authorities will arrest me while I’m doing important work for the Duchessa and Regent of Bellezza, do you?’

  ‘You mean, you’d use your safe-conduct thingy they gave you to get away with piracy?’ asked Isabel.

  Andrea just shrugged.

  ‘How did you become a pirate in the first place?’ she asked, but Andrea’s good-natured face closed up.

  ‘I might tell you one day, Bella Isabella,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken quite a shine to you. But not today.’

  Georgia did her best to avoid Nick on Saturday. It wasn’t one of her days for going riding and she had her own English essay to write. But really she just didn’t want to talk to him. Her knew her so well, especially where Talia was concerned, that she was sure he would guess she had been back there as soon as he looked at her.

  But after a while, she couldn’t bear being shut in her room any more and went out to the market. She’d offered to do some shopping for her mother and was looking at a big pile of oranges when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She spun round but, to her relief, it wasn’t Nick. It was Matt.

  ‘No Nick?’ he asked.

  ‘No Ayesha?’ she replied.

  He grinned. ‘She told me to keep out of her hair till this evening. You?’

  ‘I told Nick I wouldn’t see him till tomorrow because of my English essay,’ said Georgia. ‘But I can’t seem to concentrate so I volunteered to do the shopping.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Matt. ‘I mean not shopping but not being able to concentrate. It’s Maths in my case but I keep wondering if Bel got to Remora all right – and back all right too.’

  ‘Oh, she got back all right,’ said Georgia quickly. ‘I spoke to her this morning. But she’s working today too. We won’t see her till Nick’s tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Shall we go for a coffee then?’ said Matt. ‘There’s plenty of time to do the shopping.’

  But Georgia didn’t want to risk running into Nick at their café so she suggested going to see Mr Goldsmith instead.

  Mortimer Goldsmith ran an antiques shop not far from the market. Georgia’s and Matt’s talismans had both come from there and he knew all the Barnsbury Stravaganti – even if he didn’t know that’s what they were. They all regarded him as a sort of honorary grandfather.

  As Matt fell into step beside Georgia, she realised she had never been alone with him before. And there was something she had been dying to ask him for months.

  ‘Will you tell me about Arianna and Luciano’s engagement party?’ she asked.

  ‘I did,’ said Matt. ‘You remember – I went to it with Constantin just after New Year. I still had a hangover in this world from New Year’s Eve but at least the party in Bellezza didn’t give me another one to bring back with me.’

  ‘I know you told us you went,’ said Georgia, ‘but none of the details. I mean, what everyone was wearing and how Luciano and Arianna behaved to each other.’

  Matt looked at her as if she had asked him to explain the movements of stars and planets. Actually, he would have found that easier than remembering what someone had worn over two months ago.

  ‘Erm, Arianna looked very nice,’ he hazarded.

  ‘Very nice?’ said Georgia. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘Rodolfo made a sort of announcement and then he tied their right hands together with a silver ribbon.’ Matt was rather pleased with himself for remembering this detail.

  Georgia could see she wasn’t going to get any more than that out of him.

  The subject of her probing was feeling a bit disgruntled with life. Luciano had got into terrible trouble with Professor Constantin and his other teachers for taking a week off in the middle of term without leave. He had been given a hefty fine and had to find other students whose notes he could copy to make up for what he had missed.

  Cesare was able to help him with some subjects and came round to his house to share notes.

  ‘You have terrible handwriting,’ said Luciano.

  ‘That’s not very grateful,’ said Cesare. ‘Why didn’t you hire someone to take notes for you while you were malingering in Classe? All the rich students do that all the time.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Luciano. ‘I was in such a hurry to get away. I didn’t think I’d miss a whole week.’

  ‘You’ll never make a nobleman,’ said Cesare. ‘What kind of a duke forgets to pay people to do his dirty work for him? You’d never catch a di Chimici doing that.’

  ‘You’re right,’ sighed Luciano. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be a duke. I never expected to become one.’

  ‘Arianna didn’t expect to be a duchessa, did she?’ said his friend. ‘But she does a good job.’

  ‘She does indeed. But even she needs to get away sometimes and come here dressed as a boy,’ said Luciano. ‘It’s too much of a strain for her, being genteel and fashionable all the time.’

  ‘It must be weird having your girlfriend – I mean “betrothed” – visiting you in boy’s clothes,’ said Cesare.

  ‘Not really. She was dressed as a boy the first time I met her,’ said Luciano, throwing down his pen and smiling at the memory. ‘I thought she was a boy. And she was furious with me, though I didn’t understand why.’

  ‘You two,’ said Cesare, smiling himself. ‘You have such a complicated story. When is she coming here again?’

  Luciano’s face clouded. ‘I don’t know. Not for ages now she has this war with the east to worry about.’

  ‘But it isn’t long since you saw her in Classe.’

  ‘No, but we were hardly ever alone together.’ Luciano fiddled with the feather on his quill. ‘I can’t wait till all this studying is over and we can get married. Then we’ll always be together – for the rest of our lives. However long that may be,’ he added.

  ‘I can’t imagine spending my whole life with anyone,’ said Cesare, who had been very popular with girls in Remora ever since he had come riding through the sky over the campo on the winged horse.

  ‘Neither could I when I came to Talia,’ said Luciano. ‘I hadn’t even had a girlfriend before Arianna. But now I feel as if I’m just marking time till we start our life together. I mean, why wait till after the Gate people attack? Any of us might be killed. Or Arianna might lose Bellezza.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t have to be a duke after all,’ said Cesare grimly.

  *

  ‘If you’re going to be a real pirate, you should have a tattoo,’ said Andrea.

  They were way out to sea now and up on deck, the coa
st of Classe faint in the distance, but Isabel didn’t feel afraid.

  ‘I’m not though, am I?’ she said. ‘Anyway, my mum would have a fit if I came back with a . . . I don’t know, cutlass on my arm.’

  ‘Nothing so obvious,’ said Andrea, rolling up the sleeve of his black shirt. And there was a perfect little dolphin, done in tiny squares, like a mosaic. ‘We all have them on this ship. She was called the Blue Dolphin when we took her.’ He gestured to the figurehead. ‘We kept her sign but changed her name and painted her black.’

  ‘Who did it?’ asked Isabel, admiring the detail.

  ‘My first mate,’ said Andrea, nodding to a burly man with arms like hams. ‘Salvatore. He’d make a nice little dolphin for you.’

  ‘But would it hurt?’ asked Isabel dubiously.

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Andrea, taking a bottle from his jacket pocket. ‘You drink some of this and put some on your arm, then a bit more when it’s done and you won’t notice a thing.’

  He leaned in close to her, silver dazzling in his mouth. ‘And when you are back in your safe little world and your brother starts lording it over you, you can roll up your sleeve and remind yourself you’ve been on a pirate ship with the Black Raider.’

  Chapter 13

  War

  Rodolfo was overseeing the building of warships at the Arsenale. The shipwrights and gunmakers had got used to him and no longer got self-conscious when he was around, the way they had when the Duchessa visited them. There were about a thousand people working flat out at the Arsenale and yet Rodolfo doubted they would have enough new ships ready if the attack came in April.

  There was a shortage of wood in the lagoon city; it all had to be brought in from the mainland and transported down the Great Canal on barges. And the warships needed many different kinds of wood – oak, pine, larch, ash, fir, beech and walnut. The woods of the mainland were not near the coast in that part of Talia and orders had been given to transport large loads from further inland; the coffers of Bellezza would be much lighter after the war with the Gate people.