by Mary Hoffman
‘Not simple for him,’ said Sky.
‘It isn’t simple for anyone, is it?’ said Georgia. ‘Why don’t you ask Alice out?’
Sky was gobsmacked. It wasn’t where he thought the conversation was going at all.
‘You’ve wanted to for ages, haven’t you?’ asked Georgia. ‘And she likes you, you know.’
Sky suddenly felt as if the sun had come out and all the birds were singing. His lungs felt too full of air to breathe properly. He grinned at Georgia and she smiled back at him.
‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘She’s over there. Do it before she gets the wrong idea about you and me. But I’ll want to talk to you about Nick again.’
All was chaos in the Nucci palace. The brothers had carried Davide home, his blood staining their fine clothes, and laid him in the family chapel. Now their mother and sisters had begun to lament and their cries were heard through all the surrounding streets. The men left the body to the women and were huddled in Matteo’s study. Servants brought wine and Camillo was drinking deep.
In a corner of his grief-maddened brain, he knew that he was in a way responsible for Davide’s death. No di Chimici would have stabbed the boy if Camillo hadn’t poisoned the Duke. But he simply couldn’t afford to think like that. The only way to retain his sanity was to tell himself that the hated di Chimici had struck again. They had killed his little brother, just as they had killed his uncle, and only shedding more of their family’s blood would make him feel any better.
The servant pouring wine for Matteo Nucci whispered something in his master’s ear. The merchant started and fixed his eyes on his eldest son.
‘I hear there was an attempt on Duke Niccolò’s life today,’ he said, slightly slurring his words.
‘Hah!’ snorted Camillo. ‘Rather more than an attempt, I should say.’
‘You had better say nothing!’ snapped his father. ‘The Duke lives. And my boy lies in the chapel.’
Camillo gaped. ‘Impossible!’
The mild evening when Camillo had gone swaggering out into the square, puffed up with his success in ridding the city of an arrogant tyrant, had turned to a black night of despair.
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ said Matteo. ‘But you don’t know that the Duke has been healed by the Senior Friar at the church here. Don’t you know better than to try and poison a family named for being chemists? They have remedies at their disposal that no one else has. And do they bother with poisons now? No, they avenge their wrongs with a knife.’ And the old man wept.
‘Forgive me, Father,’ said Camillo, in anguish. ‘But I shall avenge him. I shall avenge Davide’s death. I shan’t rest till the streets of Giglia run with di Chimici blood!’
‘And what good will that do?’ came a voice from the doorway. Graziella Nucci had already donned the black clothes she would wear for the rest of her life. ‘Will that give me back Davide? No. All you will achieve is more deaths in both families, more lamenting women, more work for priests and gravediggers. I envy Benedetta di Chimici her place under the earth, where she no longer has to fear for the death of her children.’
Camillo loved and honoured his mother, but even as he respected and shared her suffering and promised her that he would not pursue the vendetta, he had every intention of breaking his word.
*
Sandro was rattled. He had never seen a man die before and this one was not much older than him. He picked up the little dog and carried him back to his lodgings. He didn’t feel like eating much himself and was glad to give the animal half his dish of liver and onions. The dog wolfed it down and wagged his tail.
‘You’re as bad as me, I reckon,’ said Sandro. ‘Just a street stray, ready to do anything for a meal.’
He knew that it had been Prince Carlo who struck the blow, but he had seen the Eel lead him to the place and give him the nod when the boy got separated from his brothers, like a wolf singling out a vulnerable lamb.
So his master was a murderer as well as a spy. Well, he should have known. Giglia was a violent city, used to such things. Hadn’t he himself always been fascinated by the stabbing in the little square? But now that he had actually seen blood spilt on the cobbles, Sandro’s ghoulish imagination had drunk its fill.
The little dog was dozing on a rug.
‘It’s all the same to you, isn’t it?’ said Sandro. ‘Blood and gravy. But that was a real boy, like Tino. Someone with a mother and father who loved him. Not like us. I don’t reckon anyone would miss either of us.’
He was surprised to find tears running down his cheek. He rubbed them away fiercely with his sleeve. But he was glad not to be on his own that night. Even a scruffy stray dog was better than no company at all. He stretched out on the rug beside the sleeping dog.
‘It looks as if we’re stuck with each other,’ he said, yawning. ‘I’d call you after that young Nucci, but I don’t know his name. Still, he was someone’s brother. I’ll call you Fratello.’
*
When Sky returned to Talia that night, he found Sulien pacing his small cell in deep thought.
‘It has begun,’ he said. ‘The Nucci tried to kill the Duke and now someone has succeeded in killing the youngest Nucci. From now on, Giglia will be in a state of civil war.’
Chapter 9
Angels
Over the next few weeks tensions rose in Giglia. There were no more deaths but plenty of fights between the Nucci and di Chimici factions. It wasn’t just family members; the majority of the city took sides with one clan or the other. Over the generations, hundreds of people had owed their livelihood to one of the two warring families. Now every night in the city bands of young men roved around, looking for trouble, and when rivals met, jeers and insults broke out. By day, many youths sported black eyes, bandaged heads and bloody noses.
The old Nucci palace was fortified with an ancient tower; many palazzos had such towers, left over from earlier days when life in Giglia had been even more violent and unpredictable. Now, ever since Davide had been buried, Matteo Nucci and his two remaining sons had been building up a supply of weapons to defend their family, in case those days returned.
Family members had gathered from all over Talia, rallying round the bereaved Nucci and filling the palazzo with strong young men. Di Chimici too would soon be assembling in the city for the weddings. Rumours were flying round that the Nucci would avenge the loss of Davide as soon as their period of mourning was ended.
Sandro’s spying tasks increased but he wasn’t happy about it; he kept out of the Eel’s way as much as possible, just giving his reports and leaving. He no longer wanted to hang round Enrico and certainly no longer wished he had a father like him. Sandro passed most of his days up at Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines, which was convenient for spying on the Nucci and meant he could spend more time with Brother Tino.
Sky was relieved when the Easter holidays came and his mother was still getting better. It meant he could lie in late in the mornings like a normal teenager, which made up a bit for his nightly trips to Talia. His social life was becoming more normal too. He had taken Alice out twice before the end of term, once to the cinema and once just to a coffee bar, when they had talked for hours and really begun to relax with each other. Now he was looking forward to spending more time alone with her.
But a new problem had developed; Georgia, Alice and Nicholas often did things together and didn’t mind Sky tagging along, but when he was with them he was torn between wanting to be with Alice and responding to frantic signals from the other two to tell them the latest news from Giglia. Seeing them on their own was difficult to organise too. Thank goodness for fencing! Alice was bored by it and had never come to watch Nicholas practise. Now that they couldn’t use the school, Nicholas and Sky booked regular times at the local gym and it was natural for Georgia to come and watch. Meeting up in the cafe afterwards was their best time for exchanging news.
Nicholas was in a permanent state of agitation about his Talian family. Although Sky had assure
d him that the Duke had suffered no ill consequences from the poisoning, it had made the boy restless and the news about the stabbing of Davide Nucci had only made things worse. ‘How is Gaetano?’ – always his first question – had acquired a new urgency.
And worse was to come. Georgia dropped the bombshell at their first fencing session. ‘You know I’m spending Easter in Devon with Alice? My parents are going to Paris.’
‘What about Russell?’ asked Nicholas.
Georgia snorted. ‘As if I’d stay in the house with him!’ Two terms at Sussex University had slightly improved her stepbrother but she still wouldn’t want to spend any time with him. ‘Anyway, he’s back off to Greece. I think he’s got a girlfriend there.’
Sky was stunned. No Alice and no Georgia. He tried out in his head the thought, ‘My girlfriend’s going away.’ At least it sounded more normal than, ‘My fellow Stravagante won’t be around.’ And he would still have Nicholas. But a day or two later even that ground was cut away. Nicholas had been down to Devon with Georgia before, where they all rode horses, and Alice had asked if he’d like to join them that Easter. The Mulhollands had no objections and Nicholas couldn’t think of a convincing excuse, so he was going too. Sky was a bit hurt that Alice had asked Nicholas and not him.
Rosalind noticed that Sky was unusually quiet. ‘What’s up?’ she asked, after he’d got off the phone with Nicholas.
‘Everyone’s going to Devon this holidays,’ said Sky, trying to look positive about it. ‘First Alice and Georgia and now Nick too.’
Rosalind was thoughtful. ‘Perhaps it’s time we visited Nana?’ she said.
Giuditta Miele was virtually unaware of the mounting tension in Giglia. When she was beginning a statue, she thought of nothing else, day or night. She had made her first cautious cuts with the chisel on the Duchessa’s block of marble. The young woman was in there somewhere, she knew, and her job was to uncover her. In spite of Duke Niccolò, the Duchessa would be portrayed as a symbol of her city’s independence and autonomy.
Giuditta had decided to carve her almost like a ship’s figurehead, standing at the prow of her state barge, as she did after her Marriage with the Sea. Arianna would be masked, with her cloak and hair streaming out behind her as she faced her city, returning to it after the ceremony that ensured its prosperity for the forthcoming year.
Now the sculptor worked all day, gradually excavating the statue she could already envisage. Her young apprentices watched and kept her supplied with food and drink. They were supposed to be working on a marble sarcophagus of a simple but effective design. It was like a large basket with rope handles – a style made fashionable by a tomb of a di Chimici ancestor in their family church of Sant’Ambrogio. It wasn’t difficult and it kept them occupied, but there wasn’t a would-be sculptor in the workshop who wasn’t more interested in what Giuditta was doing.
‘Come here, Franco,’ she said to the best-looking of them now. ‘Stand straight, looking towards the window. Pretend you are on the open sea at the front of a ship.’
Franco posed diffidently, trying to look like a sailor.
‘No, no,’ said Giuditta impatiently. ‘You are a young woman. Don’t plant your feet so sturdily. You are graceful, dignified, but also wild.’
It was a tough assignment but young Franco did his best. His skin was pale and his hair an unusual silvery blond; his mother came from northern Europa. He was much in demand by Giglia’s many painters as a model for angels, but he was far from angelic and not effeminate at all. He adored Giuditta, who was the only artist he had met who was completely impervious to his charms.
‘Mm,’ said the sculptor. ‘What would you do with your hands?’
‘Grasp the ship’s rail, Maestra?’ hazarded Franco.
‘Good,’ said Giuditta, snatching up her pile of drawings and swiftly making some strokes with a piece of charcoal. ‘You can go back to your basketry now.’
Then, to herself, ‘I need the Duchessa here.’
*
The next time Sky arrived in Giglia, he found Sulien smiling.
‘What’s happened?’ said Sky.
‘Reinforcements,’ said Sulien mysteriously. ‘Can you manage to stay later tomorrow? It would mean sleeping through the morning in your world.’
Sky thought about it. It wouldn’t be too difficult. Rosalind had a client the following morning, her first for ages, and she had arranged to have lunch afterwards with Laura, who still worked in the House of Commons. It would be perfectly easy to say that night that he wanted to sleep in.
‘I think so,’ he answered. ‘Why?’
‘Duke Niccolò wants us to come to dinner at his palazzo,’ said Sulien. ‘I think he wants to thank us for saving his life. And he will have some important visitors.’
But he would say no more, however hard Sky pressed him.
‘Today I need your help in the laboratory,’ said the friar. ‘We are going to distil perfume from narcissus flowers.’
*
The Duchessa of Bellezza was entertaining some dear friends when the messenger arrived from Giglia. Doctor Dethridge and his wife Leonora, the woman Arianna had been brought up to believe was her aunt, had arrived with Leonora’s great friend, Silvia Bellini, Arianna’s mother. The disguised former Duchessa had often sat in this same reception room, entertaining important foreign visitors. But plain Silvia Bellini did not miss the days of State occasions and gorgeous gowns. Now mask-less, she enjoyed a freedom that she had given up for twenty-five years in order to rule the city.
This little group and less than a dozen others were the only ones in Talia who knew that the old Duchessa still lived. Now they were drinking the blond sparkling wine for which the city was famous and catching up with the news. Silvia’s constant companion, a tall red-haired servant, hovered behind her chair.
‘Wants to give you a dress?’ Silvia was saying, when the messenger was shown in. ‘He never sent me one.’
Guido Parola coughed over her last words, so that the palace servant wouldn’t hear them. Silvia was getting careless. The messenger being shown in was carrying a long box. He bowed as best he could and then presented the box to the young Duchessa.
‘With the compliments of my master, the Duke of Giglia,’ he said. ‘His Grace, Duke Niccolò, asks that you wear this unworthy garment at the forthcoming nuptials of his sons.’
Arianna’s startled eyebrows appeared above her rose-coloured mask. So soon? she thought. But she courteously thanked the messenger and sent him to get refreshment, while Barbara, her waiting-woman, took the box. The little group of people was expectant.
‘Shall I open it, your Grace?’ asked Barbara.
The tasselled silver cord was undone and the lid lifted, while Arianna resisted an urge to get down on her hands and knees and rummage in the tissue paper herself. Barbara lifted the dress out reverently; it was very heavy. ‘Oh, milady!’ she whispered.
It was an extraordinary garment. The cloth was a stiff silver brocade but it was almost invisible under the gems stitched into it. The wide skirt was criss-crossed with lines of pearls and amethysts, so that the whole dress sparkled and shone like the moon at dusk. The bodice was tight and the neckline cut low and square, the tops of the sleeves high in the Giglian style.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Leonora.
‘The gemmes do matche thine eyes,’ agreed Dethridge.
‘You’ll not be able to sit down in it,’ said Silvia, casting a practised eye over the jewel-encrusted dress. ‘But you’ll look wonderful in it – fit to have your portrait painted.’ She shifted her direct gaze to Arianna’s eyes, so like her own.
‘What do you really think?’ the young Duchessa asked.
‘I think you should contact Rodolfo and Luciano as soon as possible,’ said Silvia.
*
Rodolfo and Luciano were already in Giglia. They entered the city as quietly as they could, but all visitors had to give their names in at the gates at a sensitive time like this, and news soon sprea
d that the Regent of Bellezza and his assistant had arrived. They went first to their lodgings then set out to call on Giuditta.
The sculptor met them abstractedly and Luciano was immediately overawed by her. He had seen her just briefly when she came to sketch Arianna in Bellezza. She was the only female Stravagante he had met, apart from Georgia, and she was as different from the twenty-first-century girl as could be. Giuditta was tall and well-built, deep-bosomed and broad-shouldered. Her brown hair was streaked with grey – though whether from age or marble dust it was hard to tell – and was tied loosely back just to keep it out of her eyes. Her coarse working clothes made her look like a washerwoman rather than an artist and possessor of occult knowledge.
‘Greetings, sister,’ said Rodolfo, and Luciano saw a kind of transformation creep over the sculptor. Her spirit swam up to the surface of her eyes and it was as if she had suddenly woken from a deep dream.
‘Rodolfo!’ she exclaimed, smiling, and Luciano saw that she was attractive, with a lively intelligence and that total self-confidence that all Talian Stravaganti seemed to have. ‘Does this mean the Duchessa is here too?’
‘Not yet,’ said Rodolfo. ‘You remember my apprentice, Luciano, from your visit to Bellezza? He is a Cavaliere now and works with me as my assistant. We have come first, to ensure the city is safe for her.’
‘I am told the city isn’t safe for anyone,’ said Giuditta, her eyes flicking back to the marble even as she spoke to them.
‘Is that it?’ asked Luciano. ‘Arianna’s statue?’
‘It will be,’ said Giuditta. ‘I am still trying to find her, but I know she’s there. Go on, touch it. You know her. See if you sense the Duchessa inside.’
Luciano went and laid his hands on the white marble. It was cold and rough; only the polished marble of finished statues was smooth and shiny. He closed his eyes and thought of Arianna; it wasn’t hard to do. But he saw only the warm, laughing girl of their first friendship, and this statue would have to be of the formal, public city-ruler who was still a stranger to him.