by Mary Hoffman
‘Oh, hello, darling,’ said Rosalind. ‘You have a visitor. We’ve been waiting for you. Hello, you lot. Make yourselves at home – I’ll get another chair.’ She went off to the bedroom to fetch one.
‘Alice,’ said Sky. ‘This is Giuditta Miele. I’ve told you about her.’
‘It’s Alice I’ve come to see,’ said Giuditta. ‘I’ve brought something for her.’
She took out a piece of paper, smaller than A4, with a red crayon sketch on it.
‘Oh, that’s Georgia, isn’t it?’ said Rosalind, coming back in with a chair. ‘It’s very good.’
‘Thank you,’ said Giuditta.
Alice took up the sketch, which showed Georgia hiding from the world’s gaze behind a long sweep of tiger-striped hair.
‘You made her look sort of Renaissance,’ said Rosalind, ‘in spite of the hair. How did you do that?’
‘I drew what I saw,’ said Giuditta simply.
‘Well, I must leave you all to it,’ said Rosalind. ‘I have a client to visit. Sky will look after you.’
‘Is that my talisman?’ asked Alice when she had gone. ‘The drawing of Georgia?’
‘Yes,’ said Giuditta. ‘It will bring you to my workshop in Giglia.’
‘And I’m to go tonight?’ said Alice, stunned. She no longer had any doubts that her friends had been telling the truth and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to go to Talia any more. It seemed to bring nothing but trouble. But the others were all looking at her eagerly, as if something wonderful had happened, so she just said, ‘Thank you.’
Wherever Beatrice went, her father’s agent was at her elbow; she was beginning to think that the Duke had ordered this man to be especially helpful to her and she wished fervently that he had not. Enrico had a rank body odour – as if he rubbed himself with onions – and he stood too close. She took to applying more of the cologne that came from the pharmacy in Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines, so that she moved in a cloud of her own scent. But although it kept something of the man’s smell at bay, it did not get rid of the man himself.
Today she was trying to arrange what would be necessary by way of flowers for the weddings, and it was no small task. Beatrice set off for the Garden of the di Chimici, a large tract of ground near their old palace, where Dukes as far back as Fabrizio the First, a hundred years ago, had grown flowers in the heart of the city. She had a key to the iron gates in the bunch hanging from her girdle, so she let herself into the garden, reluctantly allowing Enrico in after her.
‘Paradise on earth!’ he exclaimed. ‘Just look at those colours!’
‘I like it for its sweet scents,’ said Beatrice.
‘Never had much of a sense of smell myself,’ said Enrico cheerfully. ‘But I like flowers. You get plenty of them in this city but I’ve never seen anything like this garden.’
The garden was full of bees and butterflies. Gardeners worked in beds of all shapes – crescents, circles, octagons, diamonds, trefoils – divided by gravel paths. But Beatrice walked straight to the glass hothouses, where she knew the head gardener would be. Here were plants which would normally flower later in the year, like roses and carnations and lily-of-the-valley, brought on to bloom early and grace the Duke’s dinner table. Here too were the exotic flowers collected by her father, not her favourites, because of their fleshy petals and their absence of scent. But they needed specialist care so the senior gardeners looked after them.
‘Principessa!’ said the head gardener, coming towards her wiping his hands on a sacking apron. ‘We are honoured. What can I do for you?’
‘I have come to talk about the wedding flowers,’ said Beatrice.
‘I think I’ll wait outside, if you don’t mind, your Highness,’ said Enrico, mopping his brow with a lace handkerchief. ‘It’s too hot for me in here.’
Beatrice watched him go with relief. It was indeed stifling in the hothouse but it was worth it just to be rid of the man’s presence.
‘We need flowers for each bride, of course,’ said the princess. ‘And for their attendants. The cathedral itself must be a mass of blossoms and we shall need more flowers for the palazzo and the procession to the Church of the Annunciation that comes after the wedding ceremony.’
‘We cannot supply so many from our own beds,’ said the gardener. ‘But the brides’ flowers and those for the banqueting table, those we can provide from among our finest blooms here. The rest will come from the meadows outside the city, picked fresh on the day.’
Beatrice bent to smell a white orchid with purple splotches: no scent, as usual. She had a sudden vision of her father’s own wedding, perhaps only a few months away, to the beautiful young Duchessa. He would want her to wear these waxy, lifeless flowers, as like real ones as statues to living, breathing people. And what then? Would the Duchessa look after Niccolò the way his own daughter had?
Beatrice feared there would be no place for her in the Grand Ducal palace once it had its Grand Duchessa; it pained her to think of her little riverside sitting room turned into a dressing room for a stepmother some years younger than herself. Best to leave for a new home of her own, with a husband. But who? The only unmarried di Chimici cousin left after the coming weddings would be Filippo of Bellona, Francesca’s brother, unless you counted cousin Rinaldo. Beatrice’s mouth curled up at the very thought. But Filippo was all right, thought Beatrice, a kind man and not unhandsome. She would try to find out if her father’s plans tended that way.
All this flashed through her mind in the time it took to sniff an orchid.
They were all going to stravagate separately that night. Alice had reasoned that, since she wouldn’t arrive in the same place as Georgia, there wasn’t much point in their leaving together. And she felt shy about being watched. Giuditta had promised to have clothes waiting for her in the workshop, but she hadn’t much confidence in what they might be like.
Her relations with Sky were still strained and Georgia was obviously worried about Nicholas, who was still muttering darkly about translating back to Giglia full time. Alice was happy to spend some time on her own. But she found an unexpected complication.
It was one of the rare evenings when Jane Greaves didn’t have a committee meeting and she was disposed to stay up late and chat. Normally this would have made Alice happy, but she wanted to get an early night in case the stravagating took a long time to get the hang of. Giuditta had said she must arrive in the workshop before the apprentices were up and she didn’t want to be late.
‘What’s the hurry?’ asked her mother. ‘You’ve got another week off school. You can lie in after I’ve gone to work – lucky you. Besides, we haven’t talked properly for ages.’
It soon emerged that what she wanted to talk about was Rosalind Meadows.
‘I gather your boyfriend’s mother made a big hit with your dad,’ she said, a little bit slurrily, since she was drinking her way through a bottle of red wine.
‘Well, she’s nice,’ said Alice defensively.
‘I’m sure she’s lovely,’ said Jane, waving her glass. ‘She’s Laura’s best friend, you know, the one who’s on the same scrutiny committee as me? Known each other since they were at school. She told me about Sky’s father.’
Alice was burning to ask about him but thought she shouldn’t; Sky would tell her when he was ready, she supposed.
‘Doesn’t it make it a bit awkward for you, though, his mother and your father being together?’ asked Jane.
‘Don’t exaggerate, Mum,’ said Alice. ‘They’re not “together” like that – they just got on well in Devon. That’s all.’
‘Not what I heard,’ said Jane. ‘I spoke to Laura this evening and she told me they spent last night at Rosalind’s flat. Sky was out or something.’
Yes, thought Alice; he was at Nick’s, stravagating to Talia. It made her feel very peculiar to think of her father and Rosalind as a couple, and she wondered what Sky would say. Her brain was buzzing with thoughts. What was her father doing in London without contacting her? W
as he going to be here all weekend? And where had he been when they called round at Sky’s flat this morning? Had he left before Giuditta arrived?
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’m dropping. I really must go to bed.’
Giuditta was always up before her apprentices. She was still working on the Duchessa’s statue, polishing, chipping minute fragments off it, polishing it again. It was always hard for her to decide when a piece was finished. Sometimes she felt that something was complete only when it left her workshop, collected by the patron who had ordered it. At other times the finishing point was the moment when she started something else. Certainly, she didn’t yet feel that her connection with Arianna was over.
She stoked the fire that heated the stove in her little kitchen at the back of the workshop and put on a pan of milk to simmer. Giuditta had a bedroom of her own above the workshop, but the apprentices slept on the floor among the statues and blocks of stone. She had stepped over them on her way to the kitchen and none had stirred. She made a mental note that Franco was not among them – catting about with one of his many conquests in the city, she supposed.
Giuditta was about to sit down in the kitchen’s one chair, when an ethereal figure materialised in it. A fair, slender girl in a long blue shift with the mysterious word ‘fcuk’ written on the front of it, solidified in the chair. She looked terrified.
Giuditta silently gave her some warm milk and stirred honey into it. Alice drank it gratefully, thankful too that she recognised this large, calm woman as the sculptor who had brought the drawing of Georgia, which Alice was still clutching, rolled up in her hand.
‘I am in Talia?’ she whispered.
Giuditta nodded. ‘Stay quiet here,’ she said. ‘I’ll fetch you some suitable clothes. And don’t go in the workshop – there are boys sleeping in there.’
She was back soon, holding a simple blue cotton dress. ‘My niece’s,’ she said, helping Alice into it and giving her a pair of dark blue ankle boots. ‘You and she are much of a size, as I guessed.’
The dress had a complicated bodice with laces and Alice suspected she might look a bit like the soppy love interest in a pantomime, but there was no mirror in Giuditta’s kitchen and at least now she could go out into the street.
‘I must give the boys their breakfast,’ said Giuditta. She seemed almost motherly, warming bread in the oven and pouring spiced milk. Alice helped her carry bowls and platters into the workshop. One apprentice was opening the shutters and letting in the bright morning light. The other two were stretching and yawning. A fourth boy, older than the others, slipped in through the door and was cuffed round the head by Giuditta before being given his breakfast.
They were all amazed by the sight of Alice.
‘My new model, Alice,’ said Giuditta, only she gave the name three syllables – Ah-lee-chay. She gestured to Alice to keep out of the sun; the girl jumped back quickly when she saw she had no shadow.
She was suddenly ravenous and ate bread and butter and a delicious preserve made from berries. They all breakfasted in silence, but when the apprentices were rolling up their bedding, Sky and Nicholas arrived. Alice had never been so glad to see anyone before.
Giuditta gave them a sheaf of drawings and said, ‘Please take these to Brother Sulien. Alice, you can go with them and bring me back any comments he has.’
The three Stravaganti waited outside the workshop for Georgia to arrive. Alice flung her arms around Sky.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘It’s all so strange.’ She was gazing up at the vast cathedral, unable to accept that she was here and not in her bedroom at home.
‘It’ll be stranger still if anyone catches you embracing a friar,’ said Nicholas. ‘I think we’d better work out a different cover story.’
Chapter 20
The River Rises
After that once, Alice never stravagated again. Sky and Nicholas and Georgia all looked at home in Talia, as if they understood their role there. But she felt out of her depth the whole time. They took her to meet the other Stravaganti and they were perfectly welcoming. But Alice felt nervous of them; she was acutely aware of being an intruder into someone else’s world.
She didn’t like the way the city and its people smelt, the fact that all the men carried swords or daggers unnerved her and, worst of all, she had the feeling all the time of arriving in a play where she hadn’t seen the earlier acts. Everyone seemed tense and worried about these weddings and she still couldn’t sort out everyone’s names and which person was getting married to which.
‘Even my talisman isn’t really for me,’ she told Georgia the next day. ‘It has your face on it.’ And she took Giuditta’s sketch and had it framed and hung it on her bedroom wall.
At least the tension had gone out of her relationship with Sky and the others. She was in on their secret, which would prove useful in providing future alibis, and she now understood why they all spent so much time together. She was included in their conversations and even joined Georgia when she watched the boys fencing. It no longer seemed boring now that she knew why they needed those skills.
Gradually, as they went back to school and started revising for exams, Alice felt her world swivel so that from being an outsider she became someone who was included, who could be told secrets that no one else in the world, literally, would understand. She didn’t want to go back to Talia herself but she wanted to hear all about what was going on there. And with a part of herself she knew that the life the others were leading in the City of Flowers would come to a climax in less than two weeks’ time and, for good or ill, Sky’s role there would be over. And she would still be here, waiting for him.
In Talia, preparations for the big di Chimici event were in full swing. An additional kitchen was being built on to the back of the Palazzo Ducale in order to cope with all the planned feasting. The tournament on the day before the weddings was going to be held in the great Piazza Ducale, followed by an open-air banquet, and one of the main worries of the Duke’s steward was the weather.
For the first two weeks in April, it rained steadily in the city, causing the already swollen river to rise even higher. The Duke’s men were erecting a wooden platform on one side of the square, which was to hold tables seating hundreds of guests. It was to have a canopy bearing the di Chimici arms, but the weather was too wet to put it up yet.
When Arianna walked through the square, the sight of all the preparations made her heart sink. So far she had met only two or three times with the Duke and he had said nothing of his intentions towards her, but by the time the banquet was held he would surely have made his proposal formally and she would have to give him an answer. And she still didn’t know what to do about the extravagant dress.
She picked her way through the puddles, attended by Barbara and her bodyguards, glad of a break in the rain to get out of the Embassy and visit her mother. The sky was still dark with rain clouds.
‘If I believed in augury,’ said Silvia after their greetings, ‘I would think the gods were against at least one of these marriages.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be that of Gaetano and Francesca,’ said Arianna. ‘I never met such a lovesick swain. Gaetano hasn’t stopped talking about her since I arrived. I’ll be glad when Francesca gets here herself, so that she can look after him.’
‘And give you more time to look after your own swains?’ asked Silvia.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Arianna. ‘You are surely not referring to the Duke? He’s a little old for a swain, I think.’
‘Well, he is one of them, though he has made no declaration yet,’ said Silvia. ‘And I wish you would pay some thought to what you will say to him when he does.’
‘I think about it all the time,’ said Arianna. ‘But to no avail.’
‘Perhaps because your affections are already engaged,’ suggested Silvia. ‘That need not determine how you handle the Duke.’
‘But he has no feelings for me,’ said Arianna, exasperated. ‘It is
my city he wants, not me. It’s all politics.’
‘So it must be dealt with politically,’ said her mother. ‘Not romantically at all. It must not matter that he doesn’t care for you – or that you don’t care for him.’
‘How could I care for him? He was behind the plot to kill you, and as far as he knows he was successful. I think he was also involved in killing that young boy in the Nucci family and goodness knows how many others.’
‘All the more reason to be careful how you refuse him,’ said Silvia. ‘You know what a dangerous man he is. And if he suspects that it is because you prefer another, that person’s life would not be worth a scudo.’
*
Enrico hadn’t been able to find out anything about the new novice, and it bothered him. Sandro had been quite useless in bringing him information on Brother Benvenuto, or anything else at the friary recently, come to that. Though he was still keeping an eye on the Nucci.
Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines niggled at the back of Enrico’s mind whenever it wasn’t occupied by the arrangements for the wedding, helping the Principessa or spying on the Nucci. He knew that the pharmacy used to be the seat of the di Chimici’s experiments, which were only partly into distilling perfumes. It was common knowledge that the family continued to be supplied with poisons from there for generations. But what about now? Enrico couldn’t quite see Brother Sulien handing out deadly potions to the Duke if he asked for them. And yet he had no reason to suppose that the friar wasn’t loyal. He had been prompt enough to save the Duke in his hour of need.
No, and besides, Sulien definitely had a shadow; Enrico had checked. He could not be one of those occult masters that the Duke feared and hated. So why did he entertain two novices who were under suspicion of belonging to that secret Brotherhood? It was one of those things that irked Enrico – like what had happened to his fiancée.
The Warrior had been in London for nearly two weeks and had not yet plucked up the courage to go and see Sky. Loretta knew he was worried about something and wisely said nothing. She had known what she was taking on when she married him and knew that if they were to have any future she mustn’t be jealous of his past.