by Mary Hoffman
As the couples walked slowly back up the aisle, accepting the greetings and congratulations of their friends, Camillo leapt in front of Prince Carlo and stabbed him in the chest.
The church erupted. Lucia snatched a candlestick from a side chapel and brought it down hard on Camillo’s head. Fabrizio, who had been just in front of them, swiftly slit the Nucci’s throat. Filippo Nucci, howling with rage, hurled himself into the fray. And then all was a confusion of knives and swords.
More soldiers pushed into the little church. But Sky, Nicholas and Luciano, alerted by the cries from within, were before them. The Grand Duke and Fabrizio were both fighting with Filippo but he wasn’t without supporters. There had been more Nucci and Nucci-sympathisers in the church than anyone had realised. The priest and the Pope and his chaplain were trying to herd the women up to the altar and away from the fighting, but Luciano arrived in time to see a young man strike at a slender figure in a pearl and silver dress.
Luciano ran through the crowd, his rapier drawn, but a red-haired figure had already tackled the assailant and was engaging him in fight. Before Luciano had reached them the Duchessa’s maid had whipped out a merlino-dagger and stabbed her mistress’s attacker.
Out of the corner of his eye the Grand Duke saw the famous silver dress, stained with bright blood, and saw its wearer collapse in the arms of two young men. He had time only to notice that one of them was the black-haired Bellezzan who had been Falco’s friend, before he had to fight off the opponent who pressed him.
Fabrizio and Alfonso were also in single combat with Nucci. Nicholas snatched up a fallen blade and went to fight beside them. Guido Parola left the wounded woman with Luciano and ran to the side of Lucia, who was lying over the body of her dead husband, and dragged her with him back to the altar. She was hysterical. The clergymen were having the greatest difficulty keeping Caterina and Francesca out of the fray.
When the frantic Georgia at last managed to get into the church, ducking between blades, she saw a scene of chaos. She ran to Luciano, who was uninjured, but stricken, holding the body of Arianna in her fantastic dress.
‘She isn’t dead,’ said the Duchessa’s maid in a familiar voice and Georgia found herself looking into violet eyes. ‘She mustn’t be dead,’ repeated the maid, who was not Barbara at all. Luciano continued to hold the inert body of the real Barbara, who was still breathing. Arianna in the maid’s dress was holding a wicked-looking blade, still dripping with blood.
‘We must get you both out of this madness,’ said Georgia.
She could see Sky fighting beside Gaetano, the two of them assailed by three Nucci, and Gaetano went down even as she watched. And then Rodolfo was there, wielding a sword that she had assumed was merely ceremonial, defending Sky and wounding two of the attackers.
But gradually the Nucci riot was put down, as more and more di Chimici men got into the church. The remaining Nucci, including old Matteo, were held; they had suffered many casualties. Camillo was not the only one dead and Filippo was seriously injured. But the di Chimici had lost Prince Carlo and both Fabrizio and Gaetano were badly wounded. It looked as if three of the new brides could be widows before the day was out.
The Grand Duke strode round the church from body to body, blood welling from a gash on his forehead. Flowers lay trampled and stained underfoot. Sulien came and stood by his side, laying a hand on his shoulder.
‘All my sons,’ said the Duke wildly. ‘They want to take all my sons!’
‘Prince Carlo I cannot save,’ said Sulien. ‘But trust me with the others. Let me take them back to Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and I will do all I can.’
But by the time litters had been made for the wounded and they had been carried out into the square, they found it inches deep in flood water – and rising rapidly. All the spectators had left, running back to save what they could of their own property. But such had been the noise and chaos within the church that no one had heard the shouts of warning outside.
‘Quick,’ said Giuditta, who had been out in the square with Dethridge and had organised everything. ‘We must get the survivors to the upper floors of the orphanage.’
The door of the Ospedale was already open and the nuns waiting to help nurse the injured. One by one they were carried up – Fabrizio, Gaetano, the Duchessa and even, at the insistence of Beatrice, Filippo Nucci. Four soldiers carried the dead prince and laid him in a room on his own. The body of Camillo Nucci was tossed unceremoniously into a corner. The walking wounded followed, including Sky and the Grand Duke, but not before the latter had ordered any surviving Nucci to his dungeons, even the women.
The Pope brought the four brides up too, since there was nowhere else safe to take them in time, above the level of the swirling waters. So, gradually, all the remaining guests at the most splendid weddings the city had ever seen found their way to the upper floors of the orphanage. Babies were crying, temporarily abandoned by their nurses, who were all needed to tend the wounded.
Giuditta corralled the shocked Georgia into tearing up bandages, cutting away clothes and fetching basins of warm water. Silvia materialised as if from nowhere, ashen when she heard that Arianna had been wounded.
‘Where is she?’ she asked, tight-lipped.
‘Luciano is with her and her maid,’ whispered Georgia. ‘I think they swapped clothes.’
Silvia closed her eyes and Georgia thought for a moment she was going to laugh. But she just hugged her and said, ‘Goddess be thanked!’
Sulien was going back and forth among the wounded. Fabrizio, Gaetano and Filippo were the most seriously injured and were unconscious. Sky had a slash on his arm that hurt like hell but he knew he had been lucky.
‘Have you seen Nick?’ he asked the friar.
‘No,’ said Sulien. ‘Is he not among the uninjured?’
Duke Alfonso of Volana, though he had fought bravely, had suffered no hurt and had been put in charge of the women and of the other unwounded who had been taken up to the top floor.
‘I’ll go and look,’ volunteered Sky. ‘How’s Gaetano?’
Sulien looked worried. ‘They are all badly hurt. I don’t know how I’m to help them if I can’t get back to my pharmacy.’
‘How bad do you think the flood will get?’ asked Sky. ‘When will we be able to leave here?’
‘Not today,’ said Sulien. ‘We have had many such floods in the city before. Some are worse than others – usually the spring ones are less severe than the autumn ones. But even they can rise to six feet or more.’
Sky knew that would mean he and Nicholas couldn’t stravagate back from the friary but he decided not to worry about it yet. He had more pressing worries, such as where Nicholas was.
*
In the Piazza Ducale the water had risen above the level of the loggia steps and invaded the banqueting platform. Servants had carried all they could into the palazzo as soon as the flood hit the square, and wedding guests who had not been invited to the Annunciation blessing had taken shelter inside the building, swarming up the great staircases to the upper floors. They now looked down over the wreckage of the feast and the shining surface of the waters, where only the day before young nobles had jousted in the sun.
Some startled guests came face to face with two large spotted cats who had been brought up to the roof by their handler. But the beasts were well-behaved and chained to a pillar by their silver collars. They shared a side of meat that the cooks had provided.
The soldiers who had been entrusted with the Nucci had not been able to march them back to the palazzo, whose dungeons were anyway flooded. The squad had broken up into a second riot as soldiers and prisoners scrambled for their lives out of the way of the incoming waters. Matteo and Graziella ran with their daughters and remaining supporters to a nearby tower of the Salvini family, who were sympathetic to their faction. They hammered on the doors for entrance, the water now up to their waists. Ladders were let down from an upper floor and they climbed up, the women hindered by their sodden w
edding finery. But at last they were all safe, at least until the waters went down, and could give way to their grief for Camillo and their fears for the only remaining Nucci son.
*
Arianna tended Barbara herself, undoing the fastenings on the dress that had betrayed her into danger. Luciano refused to leave them, even though the maid was now in her shift and her white breast exposed, with an ugly bleeding gash in it.
‘It was my fault she got hurt, Luciano,’ sobbed Arianna. ‘I didn’t mean anyone but the Duke to think she was me. He said if I wore the dress, he’d know my answer to his proposal.’
‘So he did ask you, then?’ said Luciano, thinking how odd it was to be talking about this while people lay dying and the waters swirled through the city.
‘You knew he was going to?’
Luciano nodded.
‘It was last night, during the dance. He put the vile crown on my head.’ She shuddered. ‘And now Barbara may die because I was too much of a coward to say no straightaway.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Sulien, coming to the girl’s bed. He examined the wound carefully and asked one of the nuns to bring him the remedies he needed. ‘It’s not too deep,’ he said. ‘A little lower and the blade would have pierced her heart. The attacker cannot have had a clear aim.’
‘Parola foiled him,’ said Luciano. ‘But Arianna finished him off.’
Arianna was shaking. Her mother ran to her and caught her in her arms. ‘You are all right?’ she asked.
Arianna nodded. ‘As you see,’ she said, ‘Barbara took the blow meant for me.’
‘Quickly,’ said Silvia. ‘Get into that wretched dress and lay the maid’s one across the bed.’
‘Why?’ asked Arianna.
‘Because we don’t know who attacked you and why,’ said Silvia.
‘It was one of the Nucci,’ said Luciano. ‘I saw him.’
‘And you know a Nucci sympathiser from a di Chimici agent?’ asked Silvia. ‘The Grand Duke must have taken your wearing the dress as assent, Arianna. Let him go on thinking that for a while.’
Silvia helped Arianna out of the plain green gown and into the Grand Duke’s gift. Her daughter hated it even more now that it was slashed by a dagger and stained with blood.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ Silvia said to Luciano, who was trying to keep up with the turn of events. ‘Get Arianna’s hair out of those plaits, while I try and turn Barbara back into a maid.’
Arianna’s hair tumbled down as Luciano uncoiled and released the braids. He passed her the silver mask and veil while Silvia undid the elaborate coiffure Arianna and Barbara had constructed together a few hours earlier. While she gently teased out the curls of it, Barbara revived. She looked at Silvia out of cloudy eyes.
‘Brave girl,’ said Silvia. ‘You have saved the Duchessa’s life.’
‘And Parola saved hers,’ said Luciano. ‘He deflected the blade.’
‘Did he now?’ asked Silvia, interested. ‘What a remarkable young man he is. Sulien, what can you do for the girl?’
Brother Sulien was bathing the wound with an infusion of herbs brought by the nun.
‘This will help,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need to sew the wound together. It will hurt, so I must give her a soporific. But I am greatly hampered by not being able to fetch things from my pharmacy.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Luciano. ‘Make me a list.’
‘It’s too dangerous,’ said Arianna. ‘The flood waters are still rising. How will you get there?’
‘Don’t worry – I’ll find a way,’ said Luciano.
*
Georgia ran into Sky on the stairs up to the higher floor of the Ospedale.
‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘You’re all right?’
‘I’ve got a slash in my arm,’ he said. ‘But not too bad. Did you see what happened to the others?’
Georgia nodded. She didn’t want to think about the bodies which she had seen carried out of the church.
‘How’s Nick?’ she asked instead.
‘I’m looking for him,’ said Sky. ‘I’m hoping he’s upstairs with the uninjured people.’
They clung together for a moment on the stairs.
‘It was so horrible,’ said Georgia. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it – the blood and the smell.’
‘Me neither,’ said Sky, patting her back awkwardly. He thought again how glad he was that Alice had decided not to return to Giglia. It hadn’t been exciting and glamorous when the wedding attack came. It had been the most horrible quarter of an hour of his life. And in the end the Stravaganti had been powerless to stop it.
‘Do you know if Gaetano is going to be OK?’ asked Georgia.
‘No,’ said Sky. ‘I reckon if anyone can save him, Sulien will. But he’s cut off from his medicines.’
They walked up to the top floor, where Duke Alfonso had organised some fortified wine for the women and the other people who had not been hurt. His bride, Bianca, clung to his arm, terrified. He was the only uninjured groom and she could not believe that he had survived unscathed. His mother fussed over all the girls, especially her own daughter, Caterina, whose new husband lay badly hurt on the floor below.
Lucia, who had fought so bravely to save Carlo, though in vain, sat shocked and cold on the far side of the room. There was no sign of her parents, Jacopo and Carolina. Guido Parola had put his cloak over Lucia’s shoulders and was trying to get her to sip the wine. The Pope, revived by the strong drink, turned to Alfonso.
‘We must get them warm. They are all soaked and shocked. Where are all the nuns?’
‘Tending to the wounded, I expect,’ said Alfonso. ‘Perhaps Cousin Beatrice could help?’
‘I’ll find her,’ said Sky. ‘I know what she looks like.’
‘Well, I have no idea who you are,’ said the Pope. ‘But if you can find my niece, I’ll be grateful.’
‘Have you seen a young Dominican friar anywhere?’ asked Georgia. ‘He was fighting in the church and we don’t know if he’s all right.’
But no one had seen Nicholas.
They found Beatrice with the Duke, who was sitting, dazed, while she bound his head. Sky ducked out of Niccolò’s view and Georgia delivered the message.
‘I’ll come,’ said Beatrice. ‘Will you be all right if I leave you, Father?’
‘I shall go to my sons,’ he said, his voice slurred, as if from strong drink.
‘That’s probably where Nick is,’ said Georgia to Sky. ‘With Gaetano.’
They followed the Duke at a distance to a separate cell. Gaetano and Fabrizio lay very still on beds next to each other. Sulien stood over them with a grave face. But there was no sign of Nicholas. They looked into the room next door and Georgia could not suppress a cry. There was just one bed in this cell and on it lay the body of Prince Carlo, his wedding finery soaked in blood. Curled up between the bed and the wall, looking like a bundle of black and white rags, lay Nicholas.
*
Enrico’s first instinct when the flood waters had entered the square was to climb up to the top of the orphanage. From the roof he had seen bodies and wounded people carried out of the church and he knew that everything had gone horribly wrong, even though he couldn’t tell who had been hurt. His first thought was that he might be held to blame – his intelligence hadn’t helped to prevent a slaughter. But he didn’t even know if the Grand Duke had survived; he waited alone on the roof for some time before deciding he would have to find out.
Cautiously he descended the stairs, looking into a room which he at first thought was full of nuns. But they had curled hair and their pale faces still bore rouge and they wore jewels at their throats. It was the princesses, who now looked like the widows they might be, for all Enrico knew, clad in black robes brought for them by the nuns. Their sumptuous wedding dresses lay crumpled and sodden on the floor, including one that had once been of gleaming white lace. It reminded Enrico of the one his Giuliana had ordered for their wedding.
; His eye was drawn to the little red-headed princess; she was being comforted by a similar-looking tall young man, who must be some relative. The only prince in sight was Alfonso, who seemed to be all right. Enrico sighed with relief; there was one di Chimici bridegroom left standing at least. There was no sign of the Grand Duke.
He went down another flight, to the first floor. There, the large dormitory, usually full of babies and children, had been cleared and the wounded laid on their beds. Enrico couldn’t see any of the di Chimici princes. Sulien was busy among the wounded. A flash of silver suddenly caught the Eel’s eye. He moved slowly into the room.
A screen was partially obscuring the bed beside which the Duchessa sat and she was surrounded by bodyguards, but Enrico could see that, although the silver and gems of the dress she was wearing were encrusted with blood, the Duchessa herself did not seem hurt. She was holding the hand of her maid, who clearly was wounded. The squeamish spy stuffed his fist in his mouth when he saw the mutilated breast. There was another, older woman, sitting by the bed, whom he scarcely registered. But his mind was racing. Why would the maid be hurt and the Duchessa be unharmed? And why was the Duke’s gift-dress so stained if no one had attacked the Duchessa?
*
Luciano didn’t leave Arianna until Silvia had rounded up the remnants of her bodyguard and posted them round the bed where her daughter sat, holding her servant’s hand. Then he went to look out of the window and was shocked by what he saw. The piazza where he had so often fenced with Gaetano was a sheet of water. The tops of the two fountains stuck up out of it and gave him some idea how deep the flood was. About five feet, he calculated, and probably still getting deeper.
The tops of the buildings were all full of people waving and shouting in a kind of parody of the way they had behaved when the wedding procession entered the square. Luciano couldn’t believe how much had changed in such a short time. But, in spite of his promise to Sulien, he didn’t see how he was to get to the friary, collect medicine and bring it back here.