by Mary Hoffman
And Charlie was thinking that Laura, who had always seemed rather a wimp to him if he’d thought about her at all, was looking quite hot in her night things. Suddenly he felt very aware of his bare chest and jumped up to go and put on a T-shirt.
‘Sleep well, girls?’ asked Sarah Evans, unaware of all the hormones sloshing around her kitchen.
They mumbled something non-committal and went to take showers and get dressed. It was a relief to Laura that Charlie then disappeared to do some revision. It was her first chance to talk properly with Isabel about what had happened the night before.
‘After I got to Fabio’s shop,’ she said, taking up the account where she had left off when Mrs Evans had brought the girls early-morning tea, ‘we got a message from Rodolfo.’
‘Through a mirror?’ asked Isabel. “I remember thinking it was a bit like having a mobile-phone system that only works for Stravaganti.’
‘Yes. And I saw the famous Luciano,’ said Laura.
At that moment Ayesha phoned to see how Laura was.
‘How was it?’ she asked.
Although Ayesha had never stravagated and didn’t want to, she was intensely interested in what the others did in the parallel world.
‘It was fine,’ said Laura. She put Ayesha on speakerphone. ‘I was just telling Bel I’ve seen Luciano.’
‘Did you give him Nick’s mother’s message?’ asked Ayesha.
‘No. I haven’t actually met him, just seen him in a mirror,’ said Laura. ‘And I can tell you it’s really weird looking into a mirror and seeing someone else’s face, not yours!’
‘Be careful how you tell Georgia,’ said Isabel. ‘Nick can be a bit off about him.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. She had a huge crush on the old Lucien before he died and Nick’s still a bit jealous.’
‘Even though he has sort of replaced Luciano here?’ said Laura. ‘I mean, he’s even been adopted by Luciano’s parents!’
‘But you saw how Vicky still yearns for Lucien,’ said Ayesha. ‘It’s not an easy business changing worlds, and Nick has issues.’
‘But what happened after you’d seen Luciano in the mirror?’ asked Isabel. ‘And where was he?’
‘He and Rodolfo were quite near Fortezza. They’d just seen the army.’
‘I can’t imagine that,’ said Ayesha.
‘I think I can,’ said Isabel. She had seen a sea battle and the results of a land one and was not keen to see another.
‘Anyway, Rodolfo wants me to stravagate into the castle tonight,’ said Laura. ‘That way I can find out what’s happening with Lucia and Guido.’
‘Can you do that?’ asked Ayesha. ‘Decide where to end up in your city?’
‘Seems like it,’ said Laura. ‘You just have to think about where you want to go and I have been inside the castle. I think it would be difficult if I hadn’t.’
‘Will you try it tonight?’ asked Isabel.
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘If it’s OK with your parents for me to go on staying here.’
‘I don’t see why not. But I’ll get Charlie to wear a T-shirt tonight. I saw the way he was looking at you this morning.’
Enrico had no magic spells or tricks to make his horse go faster, but he was an expert horseman and light in the saddle. He also did not take long stops on his journey, so he was only a day and half behind the two Stravaganti when he arrived at the plain near Fortezza.
The di Chimici army had gone but the plain was full of people, mainly women, picking through the discarded things they had left behind them. To most, the debris in the field would not have told much of a story, but Enrico was not most people.
The scrawny spy dismounted and walked through the scavengers, leading his horse, nodding and smiling. When they saw that he wanted to take nothing for himself, they accepted him well enough.
‘A big force has been this way, by the look of things,’ he said conversationally to one of the women.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Maybe tens of thousands of them. Di Chimici.’
‘Heading for Fortezza?’
‘So they say.’
The woman was supremely uninterested in where the soldiers were going or what they would do when they got there. She was one of those with a sack and a shovel, gathering up manure from the army’s horses to fertilise her small strip of land.
Enrico was looking at the deep ruts in the ground, churned up by the wheels of carts carrying something very heavy.
‘Did you see them?’ he asked.
The woman shrugged. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘It took me a day to get here. But some of the others would have been here in time to see the tail end of the army. If you ride forward, you’ll find some of them.’
He took her advice and soon found a group of scavengers who had seen the rearguard of the huge di Chimici force disappearing in a cloud of dust towards the City of Swords.
‘It was a grand sight,’ said one of the men. ‘Horses and armour and plumes and all.’
He had a more romantic view of war than the woman scavenger. And than Enrico, who knew what sharp weapons could do – indeed had done some of those things himself.
‘What was on the carts?’ he asked.
The man clearly thought that the spy was a powerful magician for knowing there had been carts, but he had seen only one. It was almost beyond his powers to describe what he had seen.
‘I can’t tell you, signor,’ he said. ‘I’ve not seen anything like it before. Like a gigantic metal tube, open at one end.’
Enrico had seen one before and as he stood on the edge of the Fortezzan plain he remembered what they had done at the land battle of Classe not so long ago.
‘Well, friend,’ he said, ‘be thankful that they were going away from you. I can tell you that the poor citizens of Fortezza will be sorry to see them arrive.’
He mounted his horse again and rode off towards the city, still unsure what he would do when he got there. But he felt sure that a great story, of which he had been a part ever since he had been set by a di Chimici to spy on a Stravagante, would soon be reaching a climax under the walls of Fortezza.
Chapter 11
The Girl from the Future
Isabel couldn’t get over the change in Laura. Only a few weeks ago, when the situation in Classe had been coming to a head and Isabel had been stravagating nightly, her conscientious friend had been anxious about the coming AS exams. And now – even after the disastrous day when Laura had cut herself so badly she ended up in A & E, she had managed to do a History paper in hospital that afternoon without any lastminute revision.
Both girls now had a long stretch of study leave till the next exam and Laura could catch up on sleep over the coming weekend but what was so striking was that it had been Isabel who had been worried about her friend, not Laura herself.
She was much more concerned about seeing the therapist that the hospital psychiatrist had referred her to.
‘I mean, what can I tell her?’ she asked Isabel. ‘That I travel to another world every night, where there’s a man I really like but he’s been dead for about four hundred years? She’s going to get me sectioned, isn’t she?’
‘So what will you say?’ asked Isabel.
Laura shrugged. ‘I’m only going to please my parents,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll tell her that.’
‘But what about – you know – what you did?’ said Isabel. ‘Can’t you talk about that?’
Laura’s face closed up. ‘No. I know that’s what they all want but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s over.’ There was no way she was going to talk to a strange therapist about her reasons for self-harming.
The first appointment was that afternoon and Ellen was coming to collect Laura and take her to the therapist’s office. But she had agreed to bring her back and let her stay on at the Evans house over the weekend.
‘As long as you get down to your revision,’ she had said. ‘You’ve got a lot of catching-up to do.’
‘Don’t worr
y,’ Isabel’s mother had promised. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on them.’
But during the weekdays Sarah Evans was at work and as well as revision, it gave Laura a chance to catch up on missed sleep.
She woke up an hour before her appointment to find Isabel bent over her books.
When Isabel saw she was awake, she fetched Laura a juice and said she was ready to take a break from her revision. They went out into the garden at the back, ignoring Charlie, who was working on Business Studies in the dining room.
‘How are you feeling?’ asked Isabel.
Laura stretched and yawned. ‘OK. In fact it’s odd, but ever since becoming a Stravagante, I’ve been feeling a lot better physically – in spite of the lost sleep.’
‘What about otherwise – you know, mentally?’ asked Isabel.
‘Well, it’s going to sound mad, but better that way too.’
‘So why …?’
‘It was the whole thing with Ludo,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. I mean, you’ve got Sky and he’s gorgeous – just as good-looking and glamorous as anyone in Talia – but I’ve never had anyone of my own.’
‘And then you found someone you really liked in a world you can only visit?’
‘Yes. It suddenly seemed so cruel. And I can’t even see him in Talia any more.’
‘What’s it like in Fortezza now?’
‘Quite different. No one can go up on the walls because they’re full of soldiers and lookouts and big guns. And everyone you see in the street is armed to the teeth – even civilians. Fabio says he has never had so much work. He’s had to take on two more men in the shop.’
‘So there’s no way you can even get a message to Ludo?’
‘Well, whenever he sends someone to the shop for weapons, apparently they ask about me, so he’ll know I’m back.’
‘Maybe he’ll send you a message then?’
‘Maybe. But it won’t help, will it? I’ve just got to keep my head down, do what I’m supposed to do there and then come back for good and forget about it and him.’
‘Forget about who?’ said Charlie. He strolled out through the French windows carrying a bag of biscuits.
‘Mind your own business,’ said Isabel automatically.
But her twin knew about Talia; he had even been there, though he was not one of the regular Stravaganti. It had been accidental in his case.
‘You’ve got a talisman, haven’t you?’ he asked Laura. ‘You go to Talia at night. Is that where the person is you want to forget?’
Just before midnight Rodolfo and Luciano stopped a mile from Fortezza. By using words only known to Stravaganti, whispered softly in their horses’ ears, they had got there before the approaching army. It was eerily quiet, as if the city was waiting for something. Indeed it was; but not two Stravaganti from Bellezza.
‘We still have time to get inside the city,’ said Rodolfo, ‘before the siege begins. But is that the best strategy? We might be more use to Lucia outside the walls.’
‘You think Ludo’s men will let us in?’ asked Luciano.
Rodolfo looked at him, a small smile playing on his lips.
‘If I could convince a di Chimici that Matteo was you, I think I could cast a glamour over us that would make the guards believe we were a part of their army.’
‘Of course! I shouldn’t doubt you. What shall we do?’
‘The important thing is to get a message to Fabio. If he thinks we are more help inside the walls, we’ll go in. Once Laura has got inside the castle we’ll have three-way communication between castle, city and the outside world.’
‘I can’t help feeling we will be a bit vulnerable if we stay out here though,’ said Luciano, straining to hear any sounds of an approaching army. ‘We could be caught between Fabrizio and Ludo like walnuts in a pair of crackers. Especially me. I know how much he’d like to crush me.’
Her conversation with Charlie had been so weird that it was hard for Laura to concentrate on what the therapist was saying to her. The other Barnsbury Stravaganti had filled her in on all their travels, including the one visit to Talia of Sky’s ex-girlfriend Alice and Charlie’s accidental stravagation to Classe. But she had never considered that he might guess her secret – one of her secrets.
Isabel hadn’t wanted him to know anything about Fortezza but Laura herself had felt strangely comforted that someone outside their magic circle knew what she was and what she had been doing. It was a bit strange though, because Charlie was the only boy she had ever fancied in her world so she couldn’t tell him about her feelings for Ludo.
She had no idea how attractive her reluctance to talk had made her to her friend’s twin.
‘Would you say your parents had high expectations of you?’
Focus, thought Laura. This woman must think I’m on another planet.
Then she smiled – because she almost had been, thinking about Talia.
‘Why does that amuse you?’ asked Ms Jewell, the therapist.
‘Sorry,’ said Laura. ‘I was thinking of something else. No, I don’t think so. I mean they want me to do well but so do I.’
‘You told the doctor in the hospital that you cut yourself when you felt pressure building up. Can you tell me a bit more about that?’
Laura realised that Ms Jewell might have been quite helpful if she had started seeing her months earlier. As it was, it felt as if they were both talking about someone who no longer existed. She described how she had used to feel before Talia and how cutting had helped. But the episode that had ended with her trip to hospital already seemed years ago. Going back to Fortezza and seeing everyone armed had taken her a long way from her own problems. Even the great and unsolvable heartache about Ludo no longer seemed like something that could be made to go away by hurting her body. And nor could anything else.
Maestro! said Fabio when he saw Rodolfo in the mirror. Where are you?
Just outside the city wall, thought-spoke Rodolfo. Luciano is with me. What is happening in the city?
Nothing. I have explained to Laura about getting into the castle. She is going to try on her next stravagation, tomorrow.
Is there anywhere safe we can lodge outside the walls?
No, came the answer very quickly. You must find a way through Ludo’s soldiers before the army gets here.
We can do that. We have seen the army.
How many men?
More than ten thousand.
Dia! May she save us all.
The guard on the main gate didn’t stand a chance. Even though Rodolfo had no idea what the Ludo faction wore by way of colours or distinctive armour, he persuaded the man to let him and Luciano through ‘with an urgent message for the General’.
You and your Jedi mind-tricks, thought Luciano as they found themselves on the inside of the massive fortifications.
Rodolfo misinterpreted his smile. ‘It’s a fine city, isn’t it?’
Luciano had not visited it before and was impressed by the wide streets and the noble buildings. In the centre was the cathedral, which could be viewed from many of the side roads. It was a surprising marble confection of twisted columns and architectural fantasies.
The Street of the Swordsmiths was one of those side roads and Rodolfo led the horses to it unerringly.
‘You seem to know it well,’ said Luciano.
‘I have spent time here,’ said the older Stravagante. ‘I have travelled to all the city-states in Talia, in order to meet other members of the Brotherhood.’
It was lucky for them that Fabio was still in his workshop. He opened the door to them and led them to where they could stable their horses, then showed them by candlelight to a room above the shop where they could sleep. The three Stravaganti picnicked on food from the saddlebags and a strong red wine that Fabio had brought.
‘When do you think they’ll get here?’ he asked the Bellezzans. There was no need to say who ‘they’ were.
‘By tomorrow, I should think,’ said Rodolfo.
&nb
sp; ‘Then we must hope the girl from the future will get inside the castle tomorrow too.’
*
It hadn’t been easy. Laura had tried hard to get to sleep holding the little sword and concentrating on the parlour where she had met Lucia and Guido what seemed like years ago. The more she tried not to think of it, the more an image of Fabio’s workshop floated into her mind and she didn’t feel at all sleepy.
Isabel was watching over her and was wide awake too.
‘Would it help if you described the room to me?’
Laura thought hard. ‘It was a bit like a stately home, only without the ropes cordoning bits off and the signs on the chairs saying, “Don’t Sit Here”,’ she said eventually. ‘It was a room big enough to be really grand in our world but the footman called it the “small salone” or something like that.’
‘What would all those people we’ve met in Talia say if they could see our houses?’ said Isabel.
‘I don’t know. We should ask Nick,’ said Laura. ‘Anyway, although it’s quite a big room compared with this, it’s one of the smaller ones in the castle. It’s got pale blue sort of brocade-y wallpaper and little chairs to match. There was a bunch of chairs up at one end and a thing like a sofa with one arm.’
‘A chaise longue?’
‘God, I should know that – I’m the one doing French. Anyway, yes, a chaise longue or whatever that would be in Talian. And there was a … I can’t describe it … a sort of sewing box on legs with a … bag made of blue silk hanging underneath it.’
‘Sounds like a cow’s udder,’ said Isabel.
And while Laura was still giggling about the piece of furniture with udders, she woke up and saw it.
She was lying on the chaise longue, in her Talian dress, in the small salone of the castle. The room was empty.
I’m here, she thought. I’ve done it! Now what?
The door opened and a servant came in with a tray. She screamed and dropped it when she saw Laura. The delicious smell of hot chocolate rose from the carpet. A footman rushed in shouting to raise the alarm: ‘The intruder has a weapon!’