City of Swords

by Mary Hoffman

  Ye give me muche to think on, said Dethridge. I wol let ye know my mynde anon.

  *

  There was a disturbing hush in the city. Word had spread that Ludo was about to surrender his claim to Fortezza and that, after weeks of delay, Lucia would be crowned Princess and ruler over loyal and rebellious citizens alike.

  Many of the soldiers had deserted, stripping from their uniforms the favours which would identify them as traitors, and were heading to the Rocca to throw themselves on the Princess’s mercy.

  Shopkeepers were sweeping the rubble from the roads and carters were coming to collect it, hopeful that the gates would soon open and let them take it away to distant spoil heaps. It seemed as if Fortezza couldn’t wait to revert to life in peacetime and forget everything that had happened since Prince Jacopo died.

  ‘It won’t be as easy as that,’ said Fabio, looking out from his workshop door at the silent industry.

  ‘What do you think will happen?’ asked Luciano. ‘You don’t think Lucia will take vengeance on the rebels, do you?’

  ‘Not Lucia,’ said Fabio. ‘Though she has advisers that might recommend it. But I can’t see Fabrizio di Chimici letting the rebels go unpunished.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Rodolfo. ‘And that’s where we might come in.’

  ‘Why would he listen to us?’ asked Luciano. ‘He hates us. Especially me.’

  ‘He listens to Gaetano,’ said Rodolfo. ‘And I think we should try to bring Fabrizio’s feud with the Stravaganti to a peaceful end. This might be the perfect opportunity.’

  *

  Over in the di Chimici camp, Fabrizio did not seem in a peaceable mood. Although he was glad the siege had ended without further loss of life on his army’s side, he was frustrated at having gathered such a great force without doing more damage to the rebels.

  And as for having to let Ludo the upstart go free without any retribution … He was sorry that his brother, Gaetano, had persuaded him to such a lilylivered response. He would have liked to string up all the leaders of the rebellion.

  It was just unlucky for Enrico Poggi that he crossed the Grand Duke’s path while Fabrizio was seething with frustrated vengeance.

  The spy had relaxed his guard a little when he heard that the siege was coming to an end and was sitting in the improvised stables on a mounting-block, whittling away at a piece of wood, when the Grand Duke of Tuschia came personally to fetch his horse. Fabrizio had decided that a good run behind the battle lines would do him and his stallion good.

  Enrico scrambled to get out of the di Chimici’s way, but his blue clothes and his pungent smell had given him away.

  ‘Guards!’ called the Grand Duke. ‘Arrest this fellow! He’s a spy and a murderer. Put him in chains till I can decide by what means he should die.’

  ‘We’ll go in Laura’s place,’ said Georgia. ‘Nick has been in the castle of Fortezza. He can describe it to me and we’ll stravagate together.’

  Nick looked at her gratefully. And Laura was just as relieved. She just couldn’t face stravagating tonight with her arm throbbing and her head still muzzy from the disturbed sleep of the night before. It would do her good to get an early night at Isabel’s and then sleep through for nine or ten hours. She would go the next night.

  ‘Will you find out what you can about Ludo?’ she asked. ‘I want to know – even if it’s the worst.’

  Then she groaned. ‘I have to go and see my therapist,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten it was Thursday. We’d better get back to your house, Bel. My mum’s coming to collect me.’

  Ms Jewell looked at Laura intently when she arrived for her session.

  ‘You’ve not been sleeping,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t get up till midday today,’ said Laura, hoping to throw her off.

  ‘Then you didn’t get to sleep till late,’ said the therapist.

  She was altogether too perceptive. Laura shrugged. But the movement caused her to wince.

  ‘Have you been hurting yourself?’ Ms Jewell asked.

  ‘No!’ Laura almost shouted. ‘I’m never going to cut myself again.’

  It wasn’t till that moment that she realised what she had said really was true. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks.

  Ms Jewell silently handed her a box of tissues. ‘What would you like to tell me?’ she asked.

  Laura sobbed herself to a standstill. What could she tell this nice, sympathetic woman?

  ‘I have seen what real cutting can do,’ she said. ‘I understand now that it’s not the way to solve a problem.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Ms Jewell. ‘So what will you do instead?’

  Enrico spent a very uncomfortable night in a guard tent, shackled hand and foot to a wooden pole in the centre. He had a leather bottle of coarse wine and a heel of stale bread and plenty of time to think over his situation.

  He had been captured as a spy and a murderer and he knew himself to be both. He had no illusions about what was going to happen to him; he just hoped that Prince Gaetano would persuade his brother not to have him tortured. He would confess everything freely and pray also for a quick execution.

  Pray! Enrico didn’t know if he would go straight to hell or be made to see his beloved Giuliana first – the woman he had not meant to murder. He was not afraid of seeing Duke Niccolò in another life; he had deserved to die. But the thought of Giuliana’s lovely eyes reproaching him made him writhe in agony.

  A guard came in with a bucket so that the prisoner could relieve himself.

  ‘Please,’ said Enrico. ‘Does Prince Gaetano know I am here?’

  ‘No idea,’ said the guard but then softened. If this poor blighter could be saved from any of the torments he had heard the Grand Duke devising for him, and the younger Prince could bring him any easement, it was worth a try.

  ‘I’ll make sure he does,’ he said.

  Enrico slumped with relief. He didn’t believe Gaetano or anyone else could save him. Maybe he would mercifully cut his throat? That would be better than Fabrizio’s idea of justice.

  *

  When Georgia and Nick arrived in the Rocca of Fortezza, they were lucky to stravagate into an empty room. Nick had remembered the room he had stayed in as Prince Falco, and no one was using it at present.

  But Georgia soon realised the flaw in their plan.

  ‘We’ll have to get out of the castle in order to meet Rodolfo and the others. Or even to get any news about Ludo. But suppose his men are still guarding it and not letting anyone out?’

  ‘Didn’t Laura say she had set up mirror communication between the castle and Fabio’s workshop?’ said Nick.

  ‘True, but either way, we’re going to have to find Lucia and Guido, without getting ourselves killed as aliens.’

  They looked down at their twenty-first-century nightclothes.

  Nick grinned at her. ‘We didn’t plan this very well, did we?’

  *

  Fabio was surprised when two elegant young people he had never seen before came into his workshop, one of them looking suspiciously like a di Chimici prince.

  But that one, the handsome boy, said, ‘Are you Fabio? We told Laura we would come to see you.’

  ‘You are friends of Laura’s?’ he asked. ‘Then welcome. Tell me how she is.’

  ‘She is getting better,’ said Georgia, looking round with interest at the tools of Fabio’s trade. How bizarre that Laura had stravagated to this world of sharp blades!

  ‘This is Georgia,’ said Nick. ‘And I am … well, I am Nicholas now but I used to be Falco.’

  ‘The young prince?’ said the swordsmith, making the Hand of Fortune. He had heard the story, but seeing the young man with the di Chimici features in the flesh was a different matter.

  And when Luciano came in and embraced them both, he knew that it was no story.

  ‘Why are you here?’ asked Luciano, when he had disentangled himself. ‘Is Laura worse?’

  ‘No,’ said Georgia. ‘But she’s too exhausted and sore
to stravagate tonight.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ asked Luciano. ‘You didn’t come straight to the workshop?’

  ‘No,’ said Nick. ‘We went to the Rocca. I have been there before and could describe a room to Georgia.’

  ‘And before you ask,’ said Georgia, ‘we found Lucia and Guido before their guards found us – fortunately.’

  ‘And they gave you clothes, I can see,’ said Fabio, looking admiringly at Georgia’s green silk dress and Nick’s velvet doublet.

  ‘We were a bit conspicuous in what we have on underneath,’ said Georgia.

  ‘But were you just able to walk out of the castle?’ asked Fabio. ‘Then the Princess herself must be free to leave.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite as easy as that,’ said Nick. ‘But it’s true that the Rocca is guarded by fewer men and we were able to sneak out of a postern gate. But Guido wants Lucia to stay put until she is officially released by the army. He thinks the Grand Duke, my brother, would be very annoyed if she just walked free.’

  ‘The end of a siege can be a delicate and dangerous time,’ said Fabio. ‘You must be careful; the streets are not safe.’

  ‘We won’t stay long,’ said Georgia. ‘But Laura is desperate for news of Ludo.’

  ‘Then you will have much to tell her on your return,’ said Rodolfo from the doorway. ‘The Manoush has just surrendered to the besiegers. And the loyal citizens are opening the gates to the army.’

  Luciano joined him, looking anxious.

  ‘What will they do to Ludo?’ asked Georgia.

  ‘Grand Duke Fabrizio is letting him go to Romula under safe conduct,’ said Luciano.

  Nick snorted. ‘As if that can be trusted! Fabrizio will have posted ruffians at every stage on the way.’

  ‘Gaetano is going with him,’ said Rodolfo. ‘If you don’t trust one brother, then have some faith in the other.’

  Nick brightened but then sank back into despair. ‘All that means is that Gaetano will be in danger as well as Ludo,’ he said.

  At the mention of the Prince’s name, Fabio looked like a man who has heard a phone ring.

  ‘I think he is trying to get in touch with us.’

  He fetched his mirror but Nick took it from him.

  There was his beloved brother’s ugly face, wearing a worried frown. The Prince was as thrilled as he was confused to see his young brother back in Talia but he had some urgent news to pass on. Nick couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell him. Gaetano wasn’t a Stravagante and Nick was not experienced with the mirrors.

  Nick gave the mirror to Luciano, who looked alarmed.

  ‘Gaetano says that Fabrizio has Enrico prisoner, as a spy,’ he told them. ‘And he can’t do anything to help him because Fabrizio has ordered the convoy to leave for Romula straight away. He says Ludo needs him more than Enrico, that he fears for the Manoush’s safety if he doesn’t accompany him.’

  ‘He’s right to,’ said Nick grimly.

  ‘But without him, he says that Fabrizio will kill the spy most horribly,’ said Luciano.

  They all looked at him in horror.

  ‘Just as soon as the Grand Duke has entered the city and reinstated Lucia,’ he added. ‘We have no time to lose.’

  Chapter 19

  Treachery

  Fabrizio was keen to set Ludo on his way out of Fortezza with Gaetano as soon as possible but there were traditions and conventions of war to be observed. First, he must enter the city in triumph and his best armour, flanked by his General, his condottieri and, most importantly, the princes and the duke from his noble family, his brother and cousins.

  Next the Princess Lucia and her mother must be handed over to the protection of the Grand Duke, and the Manoush must show suitable contrition and deep submission to his conqueror (Fabrizio was already considering commissioning a painting of this very subject to hang in his Giglian palazzo).

  After that, the pretender to Fortezza would be festooned in chains – more symbolic than necessary – given a guard of ten armed men and handed ceremonially into the safeguard of Prince Gaetano, the Talian noble second only in importance and grandeur to his elder brother, the Grand Duke.

  The party under Fabrizio’s safe conduct – an elaborate document bearing the seal with the Lily and Perfume Bottle that was the device of the Giglian di Chimici – would set out the next morning, after the victors had enjoyed the best banquet a besieged city could afford.

  And then I can get on with the business of executing the ringleaders, thought the Grand Duke. Not to mention that murdering little spy who stinks of his own wickedness. I shall have him led in chains at the back of our triumphal entry.

  It took most of the morning to array the nobles in a manner satisfactory to their young leader. General Tasca was made to forgo his usual battered armour and find a shinier helmet from among the ranks.

  Finally the Grand Duke led his five condottieri, preceded by his army’s chaplain, Cardinal Rinaldo di Chimici, and accompanied by Princes Gaetano, Ferrando, Filippo and Duke Alfonso di Chimici, all resplendent in gleaming armour with plumes in their helmets and standard-bearers riding before them.

  Duke Alfonso rode close to Prince Gaetano, since he was husband to Princess Bianca of Fortezza and brother of the Grand Duke’s own wife, Caterina.

  ‘I shall be glad when this farce is over and I can return home to Bianca,’ muttered the Duke under his breath.

  ‘Me too,’ said Gaetano. ‘I am missing Francesca when she needs me most, at the start of her first pregnancy. And now I have to take a long journey to Romula, just to keep the Manoush safe.’

  ‘But she is well as far as you know?’ asked Alfonso, who had hopes of his own young wife in that direction.

  ‘She is in the care of Brother Sulien from Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines,’ said Gaetano. ‘He has sent word of her continued good health.’

  Alfonso sighed.

  ‘We could have achieved what we have done here with a quarter of this force and far fewer deaths,’ he said.

  The Grand Duke shot them both an irate look; his procession should enter the city without speaking.

  The defenders had lowered a drawbridge over the moat at the city’s main entrance. To Fabrizio the gateway was a triumphal arch. It was only weeks since he had left Fortezza, safe in the hands of his cousin, as he thought, through this very portal.

  Waiting inside the gate was the Signore, the head of the Signoria, who held the keys of the city in his hand. Symbolic keys only, made of silver, too soft to turn the iron locks of the massive gates. But symbolism was what Fabrizio was after: the public recognition that a di Chimici grand duke was going to restore the rule of Fortezza to a di Chimici princess, a legitimate member of his family.

  The Signore was safe; the Signoria had voted in favour of Lucia. Fabrizio would have to look further inside the city for vengeance. Doubtless the Signore would furnish him with the information he needed.

  As the Grand Duke passed through the gate, his family members five paces of a horse behind him, the Signore took hold of his stirrup, kissed his shining foot armour and making a deep obeisance, presented him with the keys. Fabrizio brushed them with his fingertips and indicated that they should be handed on to his General.

  The prisoner was, by arrangement, in the hands of General Bompiani, the army leader loyal to Lucia. The General had been free to leave the Rocca, which was no longer encircled by Ludo’s rebel army. The Manoush himself looked as dishevelled, tired and as dejected as any conqueror would hope to see his victim.

  Behind him, radiant as the day, was Lucia, her red hair seeming to be reflected in that of her protector, Guido Parola. Fabrizio frowned on seeing the tall Bellezzan. He could have wished that there had been another, more suitable escort for his cousin, but of course all the suitable people had been outside the walls. The Grand Duke hoped to remedy that soon.

  Carolina, the Dowager Princess, was on Guido’s other side and leaning heavily on his arm. The bereaved woman wore her black clothes lik
e a uniform. She seemed at home in them already, while on Lucia they were still shocking.

  As the cavalcade crossed into the city, there was a gasp from its leaders. Although they had inflicted the damage and the citizens had already started to clear it up, it was still a shock to see how many fine buildings had been affected by the bombardment in this civil war.

  ‘What have we done?’ said Gaetano, half to himself, half to Alfonso. ‘This was one of our family’s greatest cities and it was di Chimici who reduced it to this!’

  Georgia and Nick were describing the same devastation to Laura, Isabel and Sky. Matt had a Maths exam and Ayesha Psychology, but the rest of them had gathered in Nick’s attic to hear what had happened on their stravagation. For the first time Charlie had accompanied his sister and her friend to one of these meetings at Nick’s; he had insisted. He still found it strange that Isabel had suddenly become so popular, even though he did now know about stravagation.

  ‘Thank goodness Ludo has surrendered,’ said Nick, ‘or there would be nothing of Fortezza left.’

  ‘But it had such strong walls and defences,’ said Laura.

  ‘I think,’ said Georgia slowly, ‘that this attack happened just at the point where old methods were being overtaken by gun power. Both sides had cannon but the di Chimici weapons were newer and superior.’

  ‘That didn’t help in the Battle of Classe,’ said Isabel. ‘Fabrizio was defeated by a much smaller force there, modern weapons or not.’

  ‘He seriously underestimated the enemy in Classe,’ said Nick. ‘And he was expecting victory from the sea, remember. Maybe he has learned from that defeat. He has a good general.’

  ‘But what will happen to Ludo now?’ asked Laura.

  They told her about the safe conduct to Romula, leaving out Nick’s doubts about his oldest brother’s trustworthiness.

  It was Charlie who asked, ‘What is the Grand Duke’s promise worth?’