by Mary Hoffman
His mother, the dowager Duchess Isabella, had thrown off her widow’s weeds and was entering into the spirit of the forthcoming celebrations.
‘We must find out what your cousins are planning, my dear,’ she said to Caterina. ‘As bride to the Duke’s heir, you must be the most splendid, mustn’t she, Fonso darling?’
‘My own bride must not be neglected, however, Mother,’ the Duke said mildly. ‘How would it look if the new Duchessa of Volana were cast into the shade by her sister-in-law?’
‘These are delicate matters,’ said the dowager, now in her element. ‘But the weddings will be in Giglia, where the “figura” of their prince will weigh more than ours.’
‘Still, we must do honour to our family too,’ said Caterina, who secretly had no objection to outshining her new sister-in-law, though she had no reason to dislike Bianca herself. ‘Perhaps we should take advice from Duke Niccolò?’
Her mother snorted in a most unducal manner. ‘I think we’ve had quite enough advice from him.’ Isabella would have preferred her son to marry the Duke’s daughter, rather than the Fortezza girl, but she had seen the wisdom of going along with his plans for her family. And she quite understood that Niccolò was not ready to part with his Beatrice yet, after his recent bereavement.
Isabella sighed. She did not relish losing her own daughter to Giglia, even though it was such an advancement for Caterina. The dowager must learn to make do with her daughter-in-law.
*
‘Brothers!’ called Sandro when he saw them descending from the cart. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Collecting herbs,’ said Sulien. ‘And I must unpack and store them quickly, so perhaps you two would like to get yourselves something to eat in the kitchen.’
The two boys were drawn into the warmth of the kitchen, where Brother Tullio wielded the knife and ladle, assisted by two nervous novices. He was disposed to be cross till he heard Sulien had sent them.
‘Ah, so the pharmacist is back,’ he said. ‘Brother Ambrogio, take him some refreshment to the storeroom. He won’t stir from there till all his herbs are stowed. And as for you two, well, boys must be fed, I suppose.’
He gave them bread and sheep’s milk cheese and tomatoes and hard little pears which were as sweet as they were tough.
‘You know what he does with his plants?’ said Sandro casually, as they took their booty out into the cloister and picnicked sitting on its low wall.
‘Makes medicines, of course,’ said Sky. He didn’t want always to know less than Sandro.
‘And?’ persisted the little spy.
‘Well, he makes perfume from the flowers, I know,’ said Sky. ‘And all sorts of lotions and potions.’
Sandro tapped the side of his nose. ‘Close,’ he said. ‘But not just potions – poisons too.’
*
When they got back to the Palazzo Ducale in Bellezza, Arianna was tired but pleased with the day. She was sure that Francesca’s dress would be magnificent. Luciano left her at the door and returned to his home with Doctor Dethridge and Leonora, while Francesca went to change her dress for dinner.
Arianna and her maid Barbara were chatting about lace in her private room when Rodolfo came to see her. His expression immediately spelt trouble; she had rarely seen him look so disturbed.
‘We have had another message from Duke Niccolò,’ he said abruptly.
‘He has no sons left unengaged to sue for my hand,’ said Arianna, more lightly than she felt.
‘It is not a marriage proposal this time,’ said Rodolfo. ‘It is a request to know your measurements. Niccolò di Chimici wants to send you a dress to wear at the weddings.’
Chapter 7
Deadly Nightshade
Sky found concentrating on his school work very hard the next day. Sulien had urged him to stravagate home early and he hadn’t been reluctant. Sandro’s information had knocked Sky for six. Could the friar possibly be a poisoner? Or at least a maker of poisons? It didn’t make much difference really; if you made them, you knew what they were going to be used for.
Sky tried to remember what Brother Sulien had said to him in the Great Cloister on his first visit. ‘The laboratory is where I prepare the medicines – and the perfumes, of course.’ He hadn’t said anything about poisons. Sulien was a good man – Sky was sure of it. But were good and bad the same in sixteenth-century Talia as now in London?
He was glad that school was breaking up soon for Easter. Georgia had warned him that he would get very tired during the day if he spent every night stravagating to Talia and today he understood what she meant.
Nicholas Duke was as good as his word and was waiting for Sky in the gym in the lunch break. Georgia had come along to watch. Nick handed Sky a mesh mask to protect his face and a foil with a sort of button on the end.
‘You won’t need padding for a trial session,’ he said. ‘I promise not to hurt you.’
Arrogant little prat, thought Sky, I’ll show you.
But Nicholas was good, very good, and Sky couldn’t get his foil anywhere near the younger boy’s body. By the end of the session, he was sweating and panting and Nicholas seemed as cool as at the beginning. As Sky towelled his streaming face he was very glad that Alice hadn’t joined Georgia to watch them.
‘Good,’ said Nicholas. ‘You’ll be a good fencer.’
Sky stopped, astonished. ‘What do you mean? I was rubbish.’
‘What do you think the point of fencing is?’ asked Nicholas, looking at him intently.
‘To slice your opponent,’ said Sky.
‘No,’ said Nicholas. ‘It is to prevent him from slicing you. Only assassins fight to kill the other person.’
Great, thought Sky. That’s all I need – another younger kid to tell me what’s what.
‘It’s true you didn’t touch me,’ continued Nicholas. ‘But you didn’t let me touch you many times either – your defences are instinctive and that’s good to work with.’
‘Look,’ said Sky, turning to Georgia for support. ‘I’m not really going to learn to fence, am I? I just made that up to explain our being together.’
To his surprise, Georgia didn’t back him up.
‘Nick and I think it might not be a bad idea for you to learn,’ she said. ‘True, it will give us an excuse to spend time together – I often watch him in practice and matches – but we also think it might be useful for your protection in Talia.’
Sky felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
‘What? You think someone may try to kill me?’
‘Why not?’ said Nicholas with a shrug. ‘You’re a Stravagante, aren’t you? Let’s go and get some lunch. I’m starving.’
Rodolfo, Luciano and Doctor Dethridge worked together late into the night in Rodolfo’s laboratory in Bellezza. Luciano had been an apprentice to both older men and had learned a lot. Although he had been released from his apprenticeship and was supposed to be going to university the following year, he still felt he had much to learn. Now they were working together to see whether it would be possible for Stravaganti from the other world to travel to cities in Talia other than the ones their talismans came from.
‘Wee coulde sende more thane one talismanne to eche Stravayger,’ Doctor Dethridge had suggested, ‘but it does not seme ryghte to mee to do such a thynge.’
‘Nor to me,’ agreed Rodolfo. ‘But it does limit the usefulness of other-world Stravaganti to be able to travel to only one city. Luciano we now have with us always and everywhere and we are heartily glad of it, but he is one of our Talian Brotherhood now and no longer a traveller from the other world. Suppose we needed Georgia in Bellezza? Or this new one, Sky, might need to come here from Giglia.’
‘Sky?’ said Luciano, interested. There had been only one person with that name at his old school. He could just remember the young Sky Meadows from Year 10, but of course more than a year had passed since he had been ‘translated’ to Talia and then there had been that time lurch when Falco had died in Remora. Sky mu
st be in the Lower Sixth now, he calculated, with Georgia.
‘I saw him through Brother Sulien’s mirror,’ said Rodolfo. ‘This time it is a young man and he is a Moor, like Sulien. I am very glad that Sulien has brought us another Stravagante. There is trouble brewing in the city.’
‘Aye,’ said Dethridge. ‘Where the chymists have their home there will alwayes bee daungere. In especial where the Duke ys to bee founde.’
‘We had a message from him today,’ said Rodolfo carefully, not looking at Luciano. ‘He wants to send Arianna a dress to wear at the weddings.’
Luciano felt uneasy. ‘Is that usual?’ he asked.
‘He has sent gifts before,’ said Rodolfo. ‘It is common between Heads of State. But he intends her to wear this garment and it is a much more personal gift than ever before.’
‘Well, what does that mean?’ asked Luciano.
‘Yt meyneth somethinge ill, yow canne be certayne,’ said Dethridge.
Luciano was used to the Elizabethan’s antiquated way of talking by now and agreed with him that anything Duke Niccolò was planning would be bad news.
Alice was waiting for them in the cafeteria and seemed surprised that the chance meeting of the day before had already led to fencing lessons for Sky and a friendship among the three. But she didn’t mind. It gave her the chance to get to know Sky better.
‘Does Alice know about you two?’ Sky asked Nicholas quietly as they walked back to lessons.
‘What do you think?’ said Nicholas. ‘Would you ever have told anyone about Talia, if you hadn’t known I came from there?’
‘It must make it hard, though,’ said Sky. ‘Doesn’t she wonder about your friendship?’
‘Georgia told her she felt responsible for me,’ said Nicholas, his face suddenly creased with pain. ‘And Alice believes her, because Georgia was supposed to have found me in this world and taken me to Luciano’s parents – Lucien, as you knew him.’
Sky saw how it was with the younger boy and felt sorry for him. Nicholas was obviously devoted to Georgia but feared she would never feel more than concerned friendship for him.
Quickly he changed the subject. There wasn’t long before afternoon school and their lessons were in different buildings.
‘Did you know Brother Sulien in your old life?’ he asked. ‘Do you think he could possibly be involved in making poisons?’
To his surprise, Nicholas continued to look agonised. He shook his head.
‘No, I didn’t know him then. There was a different friar in charge of the pharmacy when I last was there. But I know that Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines does supply poison. There is a second, secret laboratory somewhere in the friary. My family has got poison from there in the past.’
Duke Niccolò took Carlo into his confidence first. They had finished their weekly business meeting and were eating a private lunch together in the small dining chamber of the old palazzo, with only one servant.
‘The weddings are less than two months away now,’ said the Duke. ‘On their eve, I shall make an important announcement.’
Carlo looked expectant, helping himself to polenta. He took a generous helping of wild boar stew but refused the dish of mushrooms proffered by the servant.
‘The legislation is already in place,’ said Niccolò, allowing the servant to add mushrooms to his much smaller helping. ‘I intend to adopt the title of Grand Duke of all Tuschia.’
Whatever Carlo had expected, it was not that. ‘Can you do that?’ he asked, rather tactlessly.
His father raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘We have family members ruling in all the main city-states of the region of Tuschia – Moresco, Remora, Fortezza – and they would not dispute my claims to create such a title, as head of the family.’
‘Of course not, Father,’ said Carlo hastily. ‘I’m sorry. I was just surprised, that’s all.’
And the two men began to eat their meal in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts.
It took Sky a long time to stravagate that night. Normally he had no trouble sleeping; the busyness of his life at home ensured that. But that night he tossed and turned, thinking about poisons, fencing, unrequited love and all sorts of other things. Eventually, he got up and fetched some water from the fridge. He carried Remedy back to bed with him and settled down again with the cat in the crook of his arm and the glass bottle in his hand.
Then he had second thoughts and moved the tabby down to his feet; it would never do for Brother Tino to turn up in the friary with a miniature tiger in tow.
As soon as he arrived in Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines, Sky could see from the light that it was about midday. Sulien wasn’t in his cell or the laboratory or the pharmacy. Sky wandered out into the cloisters; all was eerily quiet. He could hear the faint sound of chanting coming from the church.
And then a messenger burst into the Great Cloister from the yard. He took Sky for a novice and grabbed him by the arm.
‘Where is Brother Sulien? He is urgently needed in the Via Larga – Duke Niccolò has been poisoned!’
*
Sandro was having his lunch bought for him in a tavern near the market. The Eel was in an expansive mood, as a result of soup and pasta and a large quantity of red wine.
‘The Duke is up to something,’ he was saying. ‘You mark my words, Sparrow. There’ll be an announcement soon.’
A flutter of movement in the corner of the market caught Sandro’s eye. Black and white robes flapped as two figures ran through the square at an undignified pace.
‘Look,’ said Sandro. ‘There go Sulien and Tino. What on earth can they be doing?’
‘Only one way to find out,’ slurred the Eel, throwing silver on the table. ‘Come on!’
The two spies, master and boy, hurried after the friars. It was clear where they were heading. The great palazzo on the Via Larga almost backed on to the market and the square provided a short cut to it from the friary.
By the time Sulien and Sky had reached the palazzo gates, a small knot of people had gathered outside; news travelled fast in Talia and the rumours were already flying. The Duke was dead, the di Chimici had all been poisoned; the weddings were off.
Sky hadn’t had any time to think. When the Duke’s servant had arrived with his alarming news, Sky had found Sulien in the church and hurried with him to the pharmacy to collect bottles of medicine, before running all the way to the di Chimici palazzo. Now another servant led them, panting, up the great staircase to the Duke’s bedroom, where he had been carried after his collapse.
The room had a foul stench of vomit and the figure on the bed was thrashing around on soiled sheets, in paroxysms of agony. His sons stood beside him wringing their hands, though the only one Sky recognised was Prince Gaetano. And he supposed the young woman trying to bathe the Duke’s face was his daughter Princess Beatrice.
Brother Sulien took command as soon as he entered the room.
‘Who was with the Duke when the poisoning took place?’
‘I was,’ said one of the young men. ‘We were having lunch together.’
‘Did you eat the same things?’ asked Sulien, who had already crossed to the Duke and was trying to take his pulse.
‘I didn’t have the mushrooms,’ said the prince, ‘I don’t like them. But Father had some.’
‘And when did the signs of poisoning come on?’
‘Almost immediately. He complained of stomach pains while we were eating some fruit. And then he started to vomit.’
‘Can you hold him down, please?’ said Brother Sulien. ‘I’d like to examine his eyes.’
Sky was impressed by how the friar was taking over; there were no ‘your Highnesses’ or ceremonious bows. He could see that speed was essential if the Duke’s life were to be saved.
‘I’ll need clean linen and plenty of water heated up,’ said the friar, after looking into the Duke’s eyes, which kept rolling alarmingly back into his head. ‘And warm coverings.’
He sniffed the bo
wl by the Duke’s bed. ‘Open the windows and air the room,’ he ordered.
Princes and servants alike hurried to do the friar’s bidding.
‘Will he live?’ asked the princess, pleading.
‘It is not certain,’ said Sulien. ‘But if he can be saved I promise I shall do it. Now, Tino, hand me the phial with the purple liquid.’
Sky rummaged in the bag and found the right phial.
‘I’ll need a small glass of clean drinking water,’ said Sulien, and Beatrice poured the water with an unsteady hand.
The friar took the stopper from the phial and added four or five drops of the dark purple tincture to the water, which turned a purplish black. It reminded Sky of the water he cleaned his paintbrushes in at school.
‘He has to drink all this,’ said Sulien. ‘It’s not going to be easy.’
The Duke was still racked with spasms and his teeth were bared in a ghastly rictus. It took all three princes and Sky to hold him still while the friar forced the purple liquid into his mouth. Niccolò struggled like a wild cat and Sky wondered if he thought he were being poisoned anew. After what he had heard from Sandro, the awful thought crossed Sky’s mind that Sulien might actually be trying to finish the Duke off. But he thrust it away again as he watched the Stravagante straddling the poisoned Duke on the bed, determined to get the antidote into the Duke’s failing body.
Within minutes Niccolò di Chimici’s struggles ceased and the whole room seemed to be holding its breath. The friar got off the bed and smoothed his robes down. The glass was empty.
‘You can let him go now,’ said Sulien. The princes rested their father back gently against the pillows. His white hair was plastered to his head and his eyes were staring, the pupils hugely dilated, but he lay still and the spasms seemed to have stopped.
‘It is a miracle,’ said Princess Beatrice, crossing herself.
‘Just science,’ said Sulien. ‘I have given him extract of belladonna to calm the spasms. The poison was one of the muscarines found in some species of mushrooms. He will need rest, and no nourishment but water and some warm milk for twenty-four hours. You must see that he is washed and given clean linen and kept warm and that the room is well aired.’