City of Swords

by Mary Hoffman

  Laura stuck the knife in her belt, aware of how much trouble she would be in if it was taken from her. She walked towards the panicking servants with her hands held up palms outward in the universal ‘I come in peace’ gesture.

  But things might have gone badly wrong if it hadn’t been Guido who ran into the room next.

  *

  ‘It looks a bit different from the last time we saw it,’ said Gaetano.

  The di Chimici army was bivouacking in front of the walls of Fortezza. Thousands of men were moving efficiently, unpacking weapons and tents, feeding and watering horses, making cooking fires. Another whole city was springing up outside the City of Swords.

  ‘When we left, we thought it was all settled that Lucia was Fortezza’s ruler,’ said Fabrizio. ‘Now look at it! A city taken over by a ragtag army of rebels.’

  ‘There has never been a siege like this one, has there?’ said Gaetano.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked his brother.

  ‘Well, usually the besiegers are trying to take the city for themselves, aren’t they?’

  ‘We are taking it for ourselves,’ said Fabrizio. ‘For our family anyway. Lucia is the rightful ruler of Fortezza, and we’re not leaving here until that upstart is well and truly beaten.’

  ‘What will you do if Ludo is taken alive?’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Fabrizio. ‘He has to be eliminated. There can be no further question of a challenge to her right.’

  ‘I see. So where do we go from here?’

  ‘We get General Tasca to meet us in my tent as soon as it has been set up.’

  *

  ‘Laura!’ said Guido. ‘Thank goodness! I thought we’d never see you again.’ He turned to the group of guards that had followed him in. ‘It’s all right. This is a friend. Take a good look at her. She is always welcome.’

  ‘Guido!’ said Laura. She was shaking at her narrow escape. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know I was coming. We didn’t know if it would work.’

  ‘Stay here,’ he said, guiding her back to a chair. ‘I’ll get Lucia.’

  He ordered the servants to bring refreshments and Laura groaned inwardly. It would be more wine, toothachingly sharp red or sweet white with tiny pastries. She felt like licking the spilled chocolate off the carpet.

  Princess Lucia came running in looking flushed and pretty, and Laura saw she had abandoned her black mourning dress for one of vivid red and purple stripes. With her red hair all dishevelled she looked like a burning brand.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when Guido told me,’ she said, taking Laura’s hands in hers. ‘How did you get in? No, don’t tell me. It is part of that magic I don’t understand. But I am very pleased to see you. Do you bring us news?’

  To Laura’s delight, the little maid who had dropped the tray came in with another one, laden with pots of hot milk and melted chocolate and plates of something that smelt like croissants but was round like a bun.

  It’s breakfast, Laura thought. In the middle of the night for me.

  Soon she was taking breakfast with Guido and Princess Lucia as if they were old friends.

  ‘What is going on in the city?’ asked the Princess as Laura licked crumbs from her fingers. ‘We can get so little information, shut up inside here.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only just got back,’ said Laura. ‘I couldn’t come here for over a week. But the city is full of armed men and Fabio is working overtime to make weapons for … you know … Ludo’s army. But he wants me to teach you how to use a mirror to get in touch with him and the other Stravaganti. Some of them are coming here, you know.’

  ‘A mirror?’ asked Lucia.

  ‘I have seen them do it,’ said Guido, ‘but those of us not in the Brotherhood can’t set it up for ourselves. We need Laura to do it.’

  ‘Quickly then.’ Lucia rang a bell on a long satin rope and a maid came. ‘Bring me the hand looking-glass from my chamber,’ she ordered.

  Laura noticed she didn’t say ‘please’. I suppose you just don’t to servants, she thought. And thought how glad she was not to be a princess.

  It was hard enough being a Stravagante. Fabio had given her instructions about the mirror, but he had got them from Rodolfo and when the glass came Laura had the strangest feeling that she was like the photocopy of a photocopy of an instruction manual.

  She put her hands on the glass and closed her eyes, concentrating hard and trying to remember everything she had been told. Guido and Lucia were both looking over her shoulder and she tried to ignore their breathing.

  But a small gasp made her eyes open and there in the mirror was the face of her Stravagante.

  Fabio! she thought-spoke. I am in the castle with Guido Parola and the Princess.

  That’s wonderful, he replied. You are in the nick of time. Please tell them the army has arrived.

  Chapter 12

  Siege

  It was Ciampi who alerted Ludo to the arrival of the di Chimici forces. The Manoush was soon out on the wall looking down at the impromptu city-building going on so near Fortezza that he could see each individual going about his business as if under a magnifying glass.

  Ludo more or less lived in one of the guardhouses now, though he supposed a real claimant to a throne should have been occupying the Palazzo della Signoria. He was still Manoush enough to feel uncomfortable sleeping inside buildings and from the guardhouse he could slip out at night and roll out his bedding on the grassy wall.

  ‘It is as we expected,’ he said to Ciampi as they both gazed out over the rival army. ‘Our men are ready, are they not?’

  ‘Have been for days,’ said Ciampi, rubbing his hands together in the cold early-morning air. ‘I’m relieved they’re here really. Can’t wait for it to start.’

  ‘But it won’t be like a battle, will it?’ asked Ludo. Secretly he was appalled by what he had unleashed. Imagining a di Chimici army was very different from seeing one camped out below the walls.

  ‘No, but Fortezza was built to withstand a siege,’ said Ciampi. ‘Of course, they’ll use their siege-engines and there will be some deaths, but we can deploy our cannons straight away and do a lot more damage to them.’

  It sounded precise and calculated but that ‘damage’ would mean blood and guts and blown-off limbs.

  ‘We leave it to them to make the first move, I suppose?’

  Ciampi nodded. ‘Excuse me, signor, I must visit all the gun emplacements.’

  Ludo watched him go, confident that he had chosen a good military leader. But one of his men had told him that the usual enquiry at the swordsmith’s had at last brought a positive response. Laura was back!

  Now he felt he must get a message to her before the attack started. He had a terrifying vision of a huge rock from a ballista sailing over the walls and into the city where one of Ciampi’s casually mentioned deaths could be that of the pale girl with the dark cloud of hair. And it would be his – Ludo’s – fault.

  He turned back to the guardroom and called for paper and ink.

  *

  The next time Laura stravagated, she arrived in Fabio’s workshop and found herself looking straight at the person she had once seen in a mirror instead of her own reflection.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You must be Laura.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Are you … Luciano?’

  ‘That’s me. Good to meet you in person.’

  They shook hands awkwardly. This was the ideal opportunity to give him his mother’s message, but Laura couldn’t quite come out with it. On the surface, to say ‘Your mum wants you to visit’ shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was when that son was supposed to be dead!

  Laura looked at the boy who had made such a big transition from one world to another and wondered what that made him: a ghost? He looked substantial enough and, unlike her, he had a shadow. In fact he looked amazing. Was it that Talians were just betterlooking? But Luciano hadn’t always been a Talian.

  Laura wondered whether some of this Talian glamou
r would rub off on her and come back with her to her everyday life.

  ‘How are you?’ he was asking, and she knew here was another person who knew about her cutting.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘What’s been happening here? I didn’t know whether to stravagate to the castle again, but I thought I’d better report to Fabio first and see if he has any messages for me to take.’

  ‘I’m glad you came here first,’ said a tall man appearing in the doorway, and Laura realised this must be Rodolfo.

  ‘You’re both here,’ she said, with relief. It was somehow less daunting to think she would do whatever it was she had been chosen for with more Stravaganti around. And this man had been talked up to her by the others at home as the most powerful as well as the most terrifying one of all.

  ‘We came as soon as we could,’ said Rodolfo, taking her hand. ‘It is always a privilege to meet one of our number from the other world.’

  He didn’t seem particularly scary, though Laura felt glad he was on the same side as her.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here, though I do realise it must be something to help Princess Lucia.’

  ‘We are here to help Lucia too,’ said Rodolfo, ‘though it pains us to work against the Manoush. He has been a friend of ours in the past.’

  Laura was comforted to hear him say it.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Luciano. ‘No one from the other world has known in advance what they’d have to do here, but they all managed to do whatever it was.’

  She noticed that he said ‘the other world’ as if it had nothing to do with him, and was glad that Rodolfo’s presence was now stopping her from passing on Vicky’s message. She sensed it would be painful for Luciano to receive it.

  Fabio came bustling into the workshop.

  ‘Ah, Laura, you’re here,’ he said, seeming really pleased to see her. ‘Have you been to the castle this morning?’

  ‘No. I came straight here.’

  ‘Good. We can get Laura to take them more details of the army and a map of its formation, can’t we?’ Fabio looked to the other Stravaganti.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Though now Laura has set up the mirror, we can communicate with them direct.’

  ‘Any map would come out backwards though,’ said Luciano.

  Laura thought silently about how useful modern technology would have been, with photocopiers and scanners.

  While Rodolfo and Luciano started sketching out a plan on Fabio’s table, the swordsmith drew her to one side and spoke quietly. ‘I have a message for you,’ he said. ‘Ludo sent it by one of his men early this morning.’

  Laura took the note from him and read it privately. It was the first letter she had ever had from a man and was full of feeling. At that moment it felt like her most precious possession in the world. Then realisation struck.

  ‘You said I couldn’t take anything back to my world from Talia, except my talisman,’ she said to Fabio. ‘So I can’t keep Ludo’s note?’

  ‘You’ll just have to memorise it,’ he said. Then he realised what was wrong with his earlier plan.

  ‘Wait,’ he said to Rodolfo. ‘Laura will have to stravagate back home and then return to the castle, so she can’t take the map.’

  ‘You’ll have to memorise it,’ said Luciano, not realising Laura had a far preferable memory test ahead of her.

  ‘How stupid of me,’ said Rodolfo. ‘But, listen, if Laura studies it and draws a new version of it to fix it in her mind, when she gets to the castle we can hold it up to the mirror and that will at least help to remind her of the layout. Then she can draw a third version for Guido and the other defenders.’

  It didn’t sound as easy to Laura as remembering Ludo’s words, which were already searing themselves into her mind, but she came to study the map, wondering if this was her big task in Talia.

  ‘How is she?’ asked Ellen. She was phoning Sarah Evans on Friday night.

  ‘Fine. Doing lots of French revision.’

  ‘She seems to have moved in with you permanently!’

  ‘It’s OK by us. I think the girls help each other with their work.’

  ‘What about your son? He doesn’t mind having Laura round all the time?’

  ‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘In fact, I think he rather likes it!’

  ‘I used to think Laura had a bit of a crush on him,’ said Ellen.

  ‘It might be more the other way round now,’ said Sarah. ‘How did she get on with the therapy yesterday? I didn’t like to ask her.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me much about it,’ admitted Ellen, ‘but she did say she liked the therapist.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good start.’

  ‘Just as long as she never does it again.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Bel’s keeping an eye on her.’

  It had been much harder to make a second stravagation in the course of the same night. Laura had woken, explained what was happening to Isabel and then waited ages to get back to sleep. And of course she had first written down everything she could remember of what Ludo had said in his note. But when she did eventually drop off again, it was much easier to make the journey to the castle, perhaps because she had done it before.

  This time the guard knew who she was and went to fetch the Princess straight away. Lucia arrived with Guido and the mirror and for the second time Laura soon found herself redrawing the map of the army’s configuration.

  ‘Good. Now we know as much as Ludo does!’ said Guido.

  ‘But how does that help us?’ asked Lucia. ‘It’s my family that has mustered the army; they aren’t going to attack the Rocca, are they?’

  ‘If Laura and Fabio can keep us informed about every move of the army and countermove of Ludo’s defence, we can be ready to take any chance we get to lead our forces out and attack him from within the city,’ said Guido. ‘And he won’t know that we have inside information.’

  He looked sternly at Laura as if he thought she might turn into a double agent. She hoped she didn’t look shifty, because she had been thinking about getting a message to Ludo – but not about military tactics.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Laura. ‘I mean, absolutely not. He won’t hear it from me.’

  They looked at the map she had recreated from memory and the promptings of the one in the mirror. Rodolfo and Luciano had put in estimates of the numbers of men in each division and their guesses at how many siege-engines and cannons had been trundled into place.

  ‘What will happen first, do you think?’ asked Lucia.

  ‘A parley,’ said Guido. ‘Fabrizio will send an ambassador – maybe Gaetano – for a discussion with Ludo. It has to be someone senior and with the ability to make concessions, even though that won’t happen at the parley.’

  ‘And what concessions do you think Ludo will make?’ asked Lucia.

  Guido looked grim. ‘I would say – none at all,’ he said.

  *

  It was not difficult for Enrico to infiltrate himself into the di Chimici army. Not only was a champion lurker and loiterer, he was an experienced ostler and his skill around horses meant that he could act as if he had always been part of the team looking after the cavalry’s mounts. There were so many different divisions that no one could know all the people who looked after the horses.

  He had made himself popular with the other grooms by knowing what he was doing and being ready to lend a hand with all the daily jobs of feeding, grooming and mucking out in the temporary stables at the back of the line. Here also were the women, the camp-followers who had come with their men when they were enlisted in the Fortezzan enterprise.

  There was even a small child or two and some babies, and Enrico was good with children. In fact, within a day of his catching up with the army, it had unsuspected in its midst a spy who had been responsible for the death of the father of that army’s commander. Fabrizio di Chimici would not have been happy to see how well ensconced the man in blue was in the heart of his troops
.

  ‘You’re from Volana, are you?’ Enrico asked one woman conversationally. ‘Here, let me hold the baby while you hang out the washing.’

  ‘Volana, yes,’ she said, handing her youngest over. ‘My man came with Duke Alfonso’s division.’

  ‘Good man, that Alfonso,’ said Enrico, jiggling the baby till it laughed gummily.

  ‘He had to come,’ said the woman. ‘After all, Duke Alfonso is the Grand Duke’s brother-in-law now.’ She was puffed up with borrowed importance at the idea of her leader’s significance in the present situation.

  ‘And isn’t his wife Princess Lucia’s sister?’ asked Enrico innocently.

  ‘Quite right,’ said the woman. ‘So you see our Duke had to be here and my man with him.’

  She made it sound as if her husband would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Alfonso, handing him his sword and pistol when he needed them.

  ‘What about the Duke’s brother?’ asked Enrico, walking up and down with the baby, who was now falling asleep on his shoulder. ‘Man of the cloth, isn’t he?’

  The woman pulled a sour face. ‘Cardinal Rinaldo,’ she said. ‘Not a patch on his brother. But he spends hardly any time at home in the city now. He’s supposed to be chaplain to this army – can you believe?’

  Yes, Enrico could believe it and determined to find out where his old master and enemy was lodged in this vast company. He handed the sleeping baby back to its mother and wandered off through the camp.

  *

  When Ludo got Laura’s note, he stuffed it in his jerkin to read later. He could not be distracted by thoughts of Laura now; he had to appear on top of the military situation, even though he had a sinking feeling that he had taken on a task that was beyond him.

  A soldier came up from the main gate to tell him the latest news. ‘There is an envoy wanting to speak with you, signor,’ he said. ‘He comes under a white banner and says the di Chimici force want to parley.’

  Ludo should have been prepared for this. A real military leader would have known what to expect. Hastily he conferred with his General and then agreed to meet the di Chimici representative. Ludo had a feeling this should be done somewhere grand, with all the appearance of a proper setting for the future Prince of Fortezza, but he didn’t have any such quarters on the walls.