by Mary Hoffman
*
It was beginning to get dark, and Georgia was wondering how much longer she dare stay in Giglia. But she didn’t think she should leave with Nicholas still unconscious. How was he going to get back to his own world? Sky and Luciano had brought back the medicines, and a delirious Fratello had hurled himself at the filthy wet bundle which was Sandro. Sulien was even now administering his precious ‘Drinking Silver’ to the most seriously injured patients. There was very little of it because it was so costly and time-consuming to make; it was a secret process, taking months. He gave five drops each to Fabrizio and Gaetano and then made his way to where Filippo Nucci lay moaning and feverish.
‘I forbid you to give it to that wretch,’ said the Grand Duke.
But Sulien took no notice and measured out a dose for Giuditta to administer to the young man. Princess Beatrice herself restrained her father’s hand or he might have attacked the friar in his grief.
‘Very well,’ he said, struggling to collect himself. ‘Let him live. There will be one more Nucci for me to hang.’
Sulien went next to the Mother Superior’s room, where he had hidden Nicholas, and gave him a drop of the valuable liquid. The boy’s eyelids fluttered and Sulien breathed a sigh of relief. But he could not rest. Now that his medicines had arrived, he moved among the patients, stitching wounds and giving soporifics to ease pain.
By the time Georgia climbed wearily up to the roof, everyone who needed treatment had received some. But there were a lot of cold, wet and exhausted people for whom there was no food; all the stores had been on the ground floor and only a few bottles of wine were still usable. Merla was waiting for her, her wings drooping. She didn’t like the water. Raffaella sat patiently with her, soothing the horse with one of her strange-sounding songs.
The two of them lifted off on Merla as she made her run off the roof, relieved to be heading back out of Giglia and towards dry ground.
*
It took all Sky’s powers of persuasion to get Nicholas to leave with him. As soon as he was awake, the boy was determined to stay and see his brothers recover.
‘Look,’ said Sky. ‘It’s already getting dark outside and we’re going to have to leave from here rather than the friary. Who knows if we’ll even arrive back in the right place? And what do you think it’ll do to Vicky if she finds you unconscious in the morning? Don’t you care about your new family at all?’
‘I won’t be able to go to sleep anyway,’ said Nicholas. ‘Not with Gaetano and Fabrizio like that.’
‘You can’t be with them,’ said Sky. ‘You’d be recognised by your father or sister. And you can come back tomorrow.’
‘I’ll give you both something to help you sleep,’ said Sulien. ‘You do have your talismans with you? All you have to do is think of your home in the other world. And I promise you I shall do everything in my power to keep your brothers alive until you return.’
‘What on earth have you done to your arm?’ said Rosalind when she went to wake Sky up. She thought he had just overslept but of course he had stravagated back late. Sky was so relieved to find himself in his own bed that it took him a few minutes to register what she meant about his arm. There was a very un-modern looking bandage round it and he could see the flesh round it was swollen.
‘I cut it fencing,’ he said, which was the best he could manage.
‘Well, why didn’t you say something last night?’ demanded his mother. ‘Let me see if it needs stitches. We must get you to the hospital if it does.’
‘It’s been stitched, Mum. Don’t fuss,’ said Sky. He felt awful – deathly tired and his arm was throbbing – but he had to find out what was going on at Nicholas’s and somehow get through a day at school.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rosalind. ‘When did you go to the hospital?’
He was saved any more questions by the phone ringing. He sat up groggily, nursing his arm. Remedy came and head-butted him. Sky felt like bursting into tears – delayed shock, he supposed. He was just beginning to realise that he could have been killed in Talia, stabbed like Carlo. He couldn’t get the image of the dead prince out of his mind.
‘Well, that’s that!’ said Rosalind from the doorway. ‘No more fencing for you! That was Vicky Mulholland on the phone. She says that Nick’s been injured too and won’t tell her how it happened. You’re both going to have the day off and we’re taking you to the doctor. I want those stitches looked at – Nick told Vicky he’d had some as well.’
She let him have breakfast first though, and he was ravenous. Sky managed to ring Alice on her mobile.
‘How was the wedding?’ she asked.
‘Awful,’ he whispered. ‘We’re all right, but Nick and I were both wounded and his brother Carlo was killed.’
‘Wounded?’ gasped Alice. ‘Are you OK? What happened?’
‘I’m OK but Mum’s suspicious. Other people were hurt too – I can’t say any more now. Mum and Vicky are taking Nick and me to the doctor. Get Georgia to tell you everything and I’ll see you after school.’
Silvia looked out of the orphanage window over the dark city. She was no longer worried about Arianna; even Barbara was sleeping peacefully, her wound having been stitched. But it was going to be a long night, with no lights in the city and no warmth in the orphanage and very little food. And then she blinked, unable to believe what her eyes were seeing.
Prince Jacopo was standing in the prow of a large boat, lit with torches and laden with supplies. At the other end stood a tall dark figure holding aloft a glowing red stone.
‘Rodolfo!’ said Silvia and ran down to meet him.
The barge was too big to get in through the main door, so the little rowboat found by Georgia was used to ferry people and provisions into the orphanage in stages. Jacopo left his men to unload and demanded to be taken to his daughters. Lucia flung herself into his arms and wept properly for the first time. It shocked Jacopo to see her and Bianca dressed as nuns, reminding him of his sisters. He knew that Lucia’s bridegroom was dead but he was relieved to see Alfonso alive and looking after Bianca.
‘Where are the other princesses?’ he asked Beatrice.
‘With their husbands,’ she answered. ‘Oh, Uncle, we don’t know if Fabrizio and Gaetano will last the night.’
‘We have brought food and drink and dry clothes and blankets,’ he said. ‘The Regent of Bellezza has been helping. You must all take heart. Things will look better in the morning.’
‘Not for me,’ said Lucia. ‘Nothing will ever be better again.’
Rodolfo went from room to room, placing his firestone in hearths and warming whole wards of patients. He found Arianna sleeping fitfully on the floor beside Barbara’s bed and covered her with a warm blanket. Her bodyguards were still on duty around the screen. All those who were awake were given food and wine. Sulien was still working, his face looking grey with fatigue in the candlelight. The Grand Duke and his daughters-in-law kept vigil over the unconscious princes.
Rodolfo and Silvia made Sulien sit down and have something to eat. Dethridge, Giuditta and Luciano joined them.
‘You have done all you can tonight,’ said Rodolfo.
‘And yet we failed,’ said Sulien. ‘Eight Stravaganti and we could not stop the slaughter.’
‘Perhaps it would have been worse without us,’ said Giuditta.
‘And you and Doctor Dethridge were marvellous about getting this place turned into a hospital,’ said Silvia.
‘Thatte was just physicke,’ said Dethridge. ‘Brothire Sulian is righte. Wee sholde have bene able to forestalle the murthers.’ He cast his cloak over his head.
‘Do not despair, old friend,’ said Rodolfo. ‘There is work yet to do and other deaths we may prevent. The Duke will need restraining even if both his remaining sons survive.’
Doctor Kennedy was completely perplexed by the two sword wounds.
‘They have both been expertly stitched but with very out-of-date materials. Where was this done?’
Nei
ther Sky nor Nicholas would answer.
‘I doubt if the wounds were even sterile,’ she said, frowning. ‘Were you given anti-tetanus?’
The boys shook their heads and were both given shots by the nurse. Doctor Kennedy wrote out prescriptions for antibiotics and strong painkillers.
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ she said. ‘But it would cause more trauma than it’s worth to restitch the wounds. Whoever was responsible for this bit of fancy embroidery knew what he was doing.’
The boys would say nothing more than that they had both been hurt fencing, however much the women nagged them. Sky couldn’t explain the scratches on his other arm, from the broken glass, and Nick had the beginnings of a black eye.
Vicky said she was going to phone the school and complain to Mr Lovegrove but Nicholas stopped her.
‘We weren’t in school,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’
Even that cost him a lot, letting Vicky and Rosalind think that they had done this to each other when all their injuries were the fault of the Nucci. The two women didn’t know what to make of it, but it seemed clear to them that there was no hard feeling between Sky and Nicholas and that it was safe to let them be together. The two boys spent the rest of the day at the Mulhollands’ house. Their foils were taken from them and locked in a cupboard, though Vicky was surprised to find them unstained and still bated.
Chapter 24
God’s Puppy
Dawn broke in Giglia over a dismal scene. The flood waters had retreated and the fine city was filled with evil-smelling sludge and mud. For the new Grand Duke, however, it was a welcome sight. He didn’t want to sit by his ailing sons’ beds any more; he had lived through that experience once before. He had a city to organise. And Enrico was at hand to help him.
Beatrice was left in charge of the sick and injured at the orphanage while her father strode about giving orders, marshalling his army to collect sodden debris into heaps that could be dried out in the sun and then fired. Then every bucket and broom in Giglia was commandeered to bring well water and wash the squares and streets. The bodies that had been left in the Church of the Annunciation were brought out – those of the Nucci faction to be hung by the heels on display in the Piazza Ducale, those loyal to the di Chimici washed and clothed in silk and laid in the chapel of the palazzo in the Via Larga. And first among them Prince Carlo.
The Pope was dispatched to purify the church itself from the bloodshed within, but not before he had gone to his Residence for a change of clothes and a large breakfast.
Damage to houses was less than it would have been in an English city; very few people had carpets or soft furnishings on the ground floor. And the Talian sun, which had so often been absent of late, was now back in full strength, shining into doors and windows, dispelling all mustiness from the wet floors and walls. The whole city seemed to steam in the morning heat.
Guido Parola had been sent by Silvia to the Bellezzan Embassy, for the State carriage, and he came back to the orphanage to collect Arianna and the wounded Barbara. Silvia went with them and Luciano rode on top with Parola. Gradually the nuns were losing their unexpected guests and were able to concentrate on cleaning up and looking after their usual charges.
A fleet of Ducal carriages took the exhausted princesses back to the Via Larga, to be tended and cosseted by their maids and their families. Soon the only ones who were left at the Ospedale were the two di Chimici princes and Filippo Nucci, being nursed by Beatrice, Giuditta and Sulien. Rodolfo and Dethridge had volunteered to go to the friary to see whether it could be made suitable to receive the patients. Sulien was anxious to have them near his supplies of medicine, depleted though they were.
He administered a second dose of Drinking Silver to the three injured young men but there was little of the precious liquid left. Both princes had intermittently regained consciousness, but not Filippo, who had lost even more blood than they had.
It did not take long for the Grand Duke to realise that his prisoners had escaped. He sent one team of men to comb the city for Nucci; they went from palazzo to palazzo and tower to tower of those families known to be sympathisers. It would be only a matter of time before they were brought to justice.
The new palace, into which the Nucci should have moved on that very day, had escaped damage altogether. It had been built on raised ground on the far side of the river and the flood water had not reached even up to its front gate.
Matteo Nucci doubted that he would escape with his life, let alone be allowed to take possession of his new home. He knew that they would not remain safe for long in the Salvini tower. He didn’t fear so much for himself – what had he to live for now if all his sons were dead? – but he couldn’t be sure that Graziella and his daughters would be spared Niccolò’s wrath.
‘Go now, my dear,’ he told his wife. ‘Take the girls and leave the city with what you stand up in. See if you can get to Classe and my brother’s family. Amadeo Salvini will lend you some money, I’m sure.’
But Graziella wouldn’t hear of it. ‘With Camillo’s body and perhaps Filippo’s too still lying unburied in Giglia?’ she demanded. ‘Am I a mother or a monster? I am going nowhere, unless the . . . Grand Duke of Tuschia,’ she spat, ‘chooses to dispatch me.’
Alice and Georgia went round to Nicholas’s after school, where he and Sky were still recovering from the Giglian battle. Alice couldn’t rest until she’d seen their wounds.
‘It’s all right,’ said Sky. ‘Sulien did a good job of stitching us up and we’ve got all sorts of pills from the doctor.’
‘That’s more than my brothers have,’ said Nicholas. He was very pale.
‘But that stuff Sky brought back from the friary must be pretty good,’ said Georgia. ‘I’d back Sulien against Doctor Kennedy any day.’
‘Really?’ said Nicholas. ‘I seem to remember I had to give up my entire life in Talia because no one there could cure me and your doctors could.’
Georgia was really worried about Nicholas. Ever since his first stravagation to Giglia and his wild idea about translating back, he had been a different person. She and Sky had both talked endlessly to him about the craziness of this idea, about the hurt he would inflict on the Mulhollands, the danger that his disability would return, the impossibility of taking up his old life in Giglia. And he had seemed to listen to them and accept what they said.
But now that he had seen his family attacked, it was different. There was a hardness and determination about him that reminded Georgia of his stubbornness when he had first decided to leave his world and come where he could be cured. Only this time she was not in his confidence; he said nothing to her about what he was planning and that made her very uneasy. And she didn’t like to admit how hurt she was that he could think of abandoning her so easily to return to his family. Georgia had got used to being all-important to Nicholas.
‘Are you going back tonight?’ asked Alice.
‘Of course,’ said Nicholas, though it was Sky she had been asking.
Niccolò agreed to let his sons be moved to Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines, once he had inspected the infirmary. He had sent some of his own men to help with clearing up the mess left in the friary and its church. But he did not want Filippo Nucci to be nursed with them. In this, however, he was completely overruled by Beatrice.
‘He is a young man as precious to his people as Fabrizio and Gaetano are to us,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t you remember how our two families played together when we were children? Why, Mother herself used to take him on to her lap and tell him stories. Where is his own mother now – dead or missing? For pity’s sake, we should care for him, as we would want others to care for my brothers if we were not by.’
Niccolò was not used to this fierce side of his daughter and he let her have her way. But Sulien did not trust him and ordered three of his friars to keep a round-the-clock watch by Filippo’s bed.
Giuditta had at last made her way back to her workshop, where she found that her apprentices had made a
start on the clearing up. Their bedding was hung out to dry from the balcony outside her bedroom and the kitchen stove had been re-stocked with dry logs. The mud had been swept and washed from the tiled floor of the studio. But they had not touched the statues, which were all stained with a muddy high-tide mark, even the beautiful white Duchessa of Bellezza. Fortunately, she was on a raised plinth and looked as if she had been gazing out over the flood waters from her state barge.
‘Maestra,’ said Franco. ‘We are glad to see you safe. We didn’t know what had happened to you – there were rumours of bloodshed in the Piazza of the Annunciation.’
‘Not rumour,’ said Giuditta. ‘Cruel fact. I have been tending the wounded.’
Stories about the slaughter had spread through the city. The bodies of the Nucci hanging in the Piazza Ducale and the black ribbons on the doorknocker at the Palazzo di Chimici had told some of the tale, and it was soon embroidered. But nobody expected the sight that was to be seen in the late morning. Matteo and Graziella Nucci, still in their bloodstained and muddy wedding finery, walked proudly from the Salvini tower to the Palazzo Ducale to demand the body of Camillo Nucci. It was not among the corpses displayed in the piazza, much as it grieved them to see nephews and brothers hanging there.
The Grand Duke himself came to the door when he heard who his petitioners were.
‘It is not often that the fox comes willingly back to the trap,’ he said, when he saw Matteo Nucci.
The old man knelt then in the muddy square.
‘Do with me what you will,’ he said. ‘I care not. But let us first bury our son and tell us whether there be another body, that of his brother, to bury with him. Then you will have robbed us of all our sons and we shall be ready to join them.’
‘I rob you?’ said Niccolò, incensed. ‘I have a son of my own lying dead in my chapel and a daughter-in-law made a widow on her wedding day. And two more whose husbands’ lives are in the balance, all because of your murdering boy. But you shall have his body, if someone cares to remove it from where my soldiers threw it in the orphanage. And as for the other, he lives and may yet survive to feel my vengeance.’