Stravaganza: City Of Stars Part 4

'It is my son who spent more time with her for it is a young woman this time,' said Paolo.

They were in the comfortable sitting room of Paolo and Teresa's house in the west of the city, near the Gate of the Ram. The visitors had made a hearty breakfast indeed, of fresh baked rolls and fig jam and great bowls of milky coffee. The little children were playing in the yard under Teresa's supervision as she fed the hens and collected eggs for a lunchtime frittata.

Cesare and Luciano, after the stiff politeness of their first greetings, were beginning to relax with each other. And now that Luciano knew Cesare had met someone else from his world, all constraint was gone. It made him feel very strange. It was true that Talia was his world now but he couldn't just forget that he had been a twenty-first-century boy, and the idea that he might meet someone from his own time was excitingly disturbing. Even Doctor Dethridge, Luciano's foster-father, who had left that same world, albeit from a time many centuries before, was affected by the news.

'Is she coming back?' asked Luciano.

'I'm sure she will if she can,' said Cesare. 'She was so interested in the flying horse.'

That of course raised more questions than it answered and the hors.e.m.e.n of the Ram had to explain everything about the black filly, the visit of Duke Niccol and their night-time expedition to Santa Fina to hide Merla and her mother.

'It lyketh me noghte thatte such a felawe is in the citee,' said Doctor Dethridge. 'The Duke is up to noe goode, I trowe.'

'He is officially visiting his brother the Pope,' said Paolo. 'But taking the opportunity to check on horses in his rivals' stables at the same time.'

'It's all just a show, though, isn't it?' asked Luciano. 'Rodolfo told us that the race is rigged every year for one of di Chimici's favourites to win.'

'That's what usually happens,' admitted Paolo. 'But we don't usually have a winged horse born in the city. I'm hoping that means victory for the Ram.'

'The d.u.c.h.essa of Bellezza?' said Gaetano stupidly; he was too surprised to stop himself. 'What for?'

His father sighed. 'It will take a lot to make a diplomat of you,' he said. 'To make you Duke of course, and bring Bellezza into the fold.'

'Into the family, you mean,' said Gaetano, playing for time. But he didn't hate the idea. Surely as Duke of Bellezza he would have ample time for his books and his music? 'What is she like?' he asked.

'Very pretty,' said Niccol dryly, 'and I should think about as easy to handle as Zarina.'

It took Gaetano a moment or two to remember that Zarina was the Lady's spirited grey mare.

Supper was fish and chips, followed by ice cream. It was usually Georgia's favourite because there wasn't anything Maura or Ralph could do to ruin it. Only tonight she just wasn't hungry. She wanted to rush through her homework and get an early night. Even Russell wasn't making much impression on her.

'Homework on a Friday night?' was all he could manage to hiss at her. 'You're turning into a real geek as well as a freak.'

She didn't remind him that it was her Sat.u.r.day for riding tomorrow. She just wanted to keep her head down and not draw attention to herself. But the evening dragged on interminably. Maths, English, French, then bed. And once in bed no chance of sleep. She had the winged horse in her tracksuit pocket and a clear vision of the hayloft in Remora in her mind, but sleep refused to come. Perhaps it was because she was so eager to get there. Or it might have been something to do with Russell's metal music blaring out in the room next door.

'Please,' she wished as hard as she could. 'Let me be in the City of Stars.'

Luciano was pacing excitedly up and down the room. 'I bet it has something to do with Arianna's visit here,' he said. 'I don't know how much you know about my stravagation, but Rodolfo thought I was brought to Bellezza to save the last d.u.c.h.essa. Perhaps this girl from my world is needed because of a plot against Arianna? You know that's why we are here, because she has been invited to the Stellata?'

'Yes, wee are supposed to lerne al thatte we canne about the citee,' nodded Dethridge, 'and its wayes and maneres during this race of such grete importe.'

'And I bet the Duke is up to something too,' added Luciano. 'It's too much of a coincidence that he's here at the same time as us.'

There was a light tap at the door. Paolo went to open it while Luciano continued his pacing.

'I really don't think it's safe for her to come here,' he was saying. 'Everything we know about the city makes it seem a hotbed of villainy I mean, it's the centre of the di Chimici's world, isn't it?'

His pacing had brought him opposite the door. His jaw fell open when he saw the slight short-haired figure with the silver eyebrow ring.

And the effect on Georgia was no less dramatic. She recognised the black-haired boy. She had been staring at his photograph only a few hours ago at her violin teacher's house.

'I promised you two more Stravaganti, didn't I, Georgia?' said Paolo smiling.

'Lucien!' said Georgia and vanished.

Chapter 5.

The Shadow of Doubt Georgia woke suddenly in her bed in London, her heart racing, but it wasn't morning. The house was quiet and dark. She was in a whirl of confusion. Dreaming of a city with flying horses was one thing even if it turned out not to be a dream and the city was real. But coming face to face with someone from her own world, someone she knew to be dead that was something else again.

She lay in the darkness, holding the flying horse in a tight grip, waiting for her heart to slow and her thoughts to settle. Half of her wanted to go back to Remora immediately, but the other half was still terrified. It had definitely been Lucien that she had seen in Paolo's house. There was no way she could have mistaken him, even in his sixteenth-century Talian clothes. Georgia was an expert where Lucien Mulholland was concerned.

He had been in the year above her when she joined Barnsbury Comprehensive, and she had seen him once or twice at his mother's when she went to violin lessons after school. But it had been only in Year 10 that she had begun to feel differently about him. Russell was quite wrong about her; she was interested in boys at least in one boy. But Georgia was shy as well as unhappy and her butch image had been developed to protect her feelings.

If Lucien had been aware of those feelings, he had never shown it. They both played in the school orchestra and the irony of being second fiddle to Lucien wasn't lost on her. But once Georgia had joined the orchestra, it not only gave her more chance of seeing him, it meant that when they met at his house, he would actually talk to her. Gradually she had realised that he was shy too. He didn't have girlfriends; that was one blessing at least.

But just when she was hoping that they could be friends and that perhaps one day he might return her feelings, he had become ill. Lying there in the dark, Georgia re-lived last year's agony of discovering that Lucien was seriously ill, that he had to be off school for weeks having chemotherapy, that he had lost his beautiful hair. His mother stopped teaching and Georgia was cut off from all news of him, except what she could glean from the school gossip machine.

There had been a few weeks last summer when she had believed that he was getting better, that he would return to school in the autumn term cured. Georgia had even seen him again when she had resumed violin lessons. He seemed older somehow and a little remote, but not unfriendly, just preoccupied. She had made up her mind to tell him how much she liked him, but then terrible news had filtered through and put an end to all her plans: Lucien was in hospital, he was in a coma, he was dead.

She had gone to the funeral like a zombie, not believing that the only boy she had ever liked could be lost to her for ever. Only seeing his grieving parents and hearing his best friend Tom's voice cracking as he read a poem convinced her that Lucien had really gone.

And now there he was again in Talia, looking gorgeous and as healthy as when he sat in front of her in orchestra and she watched his hair curl over the collar of his shirt. What could it possibly mean? She now began to wonder if Talia was a fantasy world which her unconscious had created for her to escape to. Horses, flying ones even, and now the resurrection of a boy she had had a huge crush on it was all too symbolic for words.

But what was she to do? Seeing Lucien was going to be painful a quick glimpse had convinced her of that but how could she give up going to Talia? Georgia looked down at the little black horse in her hand. It had to mean something, the way it had come into her life. There must be something she was meant to do in Talia or she wouldn't have stravagated there. Was that what Lucien had done? Why was he there, and did it have anything to do with why he had died?

Georgia felt seriously frightened. In her short experience of Remora, she had been like a member of the audience at a play, watching the story unfold. But seeing Lucien there had felt like being dragged up on the stage and made to partic.i.p.ate in the action. From now on, if she went back to Talia, she knew she would have an active role in whatever drama was being played out there. And now she realised that it was dangerous.

In Paolo's house chaos reigned. Luciano had turned deathly white, Cesare was clearly terrified and both Paolo and Dethridge were completely at a loss. 'Do you know her?' asked Paolo, and Luciano had just had time to say he did, when Georgia was back.

Luciano was the only one who understood what had happened. He led Georgia to a chair and asked Paolo to bring her a drink. Georgia sat in silence gulping some rough red wine, letting herself be looked after, enjoying the sensation of having Lucien's attention focused properly on her for the first time.

She was feeling a bit woozy now and didn't really understand why she had re-entered the same scene she had left so precipitately. It had taken hours to get back to sleep which was what Paolo had explained that she had to do to stravagate back to Talia. She must go to sleep holding the talisman and thinking of Remora. It had been much easier earlier in the night, before her fright over seeing Lucien.

Back in Talia it was as if someone had pressed a 'Pause' b.u.t.ton and the scene had been frozen at the point where she had left it.

'If you stravagate twice during the same period of time,' Luciano was saying, 'the same day or the same night, you end up back in Talia only moments after leaving it.'

'But why did she leave us at all?' asked Cesare, looking warily at Georgia as if she were a ghost.

'I think she must have fainted when she saw me,' said Luciano. 'And she must have been holding her talisman. If you lose consciousness in Talia, while you have the talisman, even if you aren't thinking of home, you will end up in our world. It's a sort of default setting.'

He was speaking directly to Georgia now, who nodded; it made a sort of sense.

'Georgia comes from the same part of our world as I did,' continued Luciano. 'We went to the same school. She knew I was dead. I expect you thought you had seen a ghost,' he said, looking straight at her.

Georgia nodded again, incapable of saying anything yet.

'Can I see your talisman?' Luciano asked gently.

She uncurled the fingers of her right hand. The wings had cut into her fingers leaving red marks; she had been clinging on to it so hard. She let Luciano take the little horse and examine it.

'It's just like our Merla,' said Cesare.

'Is she safe?' asked Georgia. 'Did you get her away?'

'Yes,' answered Paolo. 'She and Starlight are in Santa Fina. We trust that the di Chimici won't find her there. Though there is still a risk. Unfortunately, they have a summer palace in Santa Fina too, but they won't use it while they're visiting the city. And we can trust Roderigo.'

'Could I go and see her?' asked Georgia.

'I'm sure you can,' said Paolo. 'It's not far. You could be there and back in hours.'

Luciano gave her back the little model.

'Keep it safe,' he said. 'The di Chimici would be as interested in your winged horse as in the real one.'

'And in the mayde hirselfe, I trowe, if mayde she bee,' said Dethridge. He had been looking at Georgia's stable-boy's clothes in some puzzlement.

'She is a boy in Talia,' said Paolo, 'even though a girl where she comes from.'

'Ah,' said Dethridge. 'It is a disguise. I understonde. We use such a devyse in monye of the playes in our citee playhouses.'

'Why does he talk like that?' Georgia whispered to Luciano.

He smiled. 'You hear it too? It's because he comes from our world, from England in Elizabethan times four-and-a-half centuries ago. Let me present to you Doctor William Dethridge, founder of the Stravaganti. Though here in Talia his name is Guglielmo Crinamorte and he is a great man in Bellezza.'

Dethridge bowed.

'My name here seems to be Giorgio,' said Georgia.

'I have been re-named too,' said Luciano. 'I'm Luciano now, Luciano Crinamorte. Dottore Crinamorte and his wife Leonora are my foster parents.' Quickly he looked away from Georgia.

But she had noticed something else.

'There's something I don't understand,' she said. 'I'm a Stravagante from another world, or so Paolo tells me and he could tell that because I don't have a shadow. But you and Doctor Dethridge both clearly have shadows and yet you come from the same world as me, even if he is from centuries ago. Will someone please explain it all?'

Rinaldo di Chimici was profoundly glad to be back in Remora. His sojourn in Bellezza had been uncomfortable and at times frightening and he was not a brave man. He had hated the city with its smelly ca.n.a.ls and the unreasonable cheerfulness of its citizens. And its unnatural absence of horses. Above all he had hated its d.u.c.h.essa, so clever and beautiful and so much more experienced at diplomacy than him that she made him feel like a callow boy.

Still, he had got his own back on her with a vengeance. The formidable d.u.c.h.essa of Bellezza was no more and, even though he had not succeeded in replacing her with one of his family, the daughter who had taken her place was only a girl, and surely no match for his uncle, Duke Niccol?

Rinaldo made his way down to the stables of the Twins. He wasn't sure what direction his career would take him in next, but in the meantime, there was nothing he wanted more than a fast ride on a fresh horse.

Since his father's death two years ago, when his older brother Alfonso had become Duke of Volana, Rinaldo had been at a loose end. There was no other t.i.tle for him to inherit and no obvious work for him to do, so he had drifted to Remora and settled in one of the many rooms of his uncle Ferdinando's palace, until Duke Niccol had sent him to Bellezza as his amba.s.sador.

Rinaldo now felt as at home in the Twelfth of the Twins as he ever had in the rather gloomy family castle in Volana many miles to the north-east. He had stopped off there on the way back from Bellezza, to visit Alfonso and their younger sister Caterina, but it no longer felt as if he belonged there. His brother had been preoccupied with the idea of getting married, wondering whether the Duke had someone in mind for him. Rinaldo was supposed to find that out.

He wondered whether to suggest their cousin Francesca, his failed candidate for d.u.c.h.essa of Bellezza. The di Chimici were quite keen on inter-marriage, so Niccol might look kindly on the idea. One of Rinaldo's current missions in Remora was to get Uncle Ferdinando to dissolve Francesca's first marriage, which Rinaldo had rather hastily arranged to a much older Bellezzan Councillor, in order to qualify her for election to the city's rulership.

'Good morning, Excellency,' said the Twins' Horsemaster. 'I have a mount saddled and ready for you Bacio, the bay mare.'

'Superb!' said Rinaldo, looking affectionately at the mare. She was his favourite horse in the Twins' stables, not a race-winner like Benvenuto, but a smooth ride and a beautiful animal.

'In good shape, isn't she?' observed a familiar voice from the shadows, and Rinaldo jumped at the sound.

He flinched when he saw the speaker. Enrico had been picked up in Bellezza like a bad smell that the young amba.s.sador could not shake off. The city had not been a place that either of them wanted to stay in after the d.u.c.h.essa had been a.s.sa.s.sinated. The di Chimici and anyone a.s.sociated with them were highly suspect after the explosion, even though there had been no evidence to link them with the crime.

Rinaldo had not been able to deny Enrico a job in Remora and had recommended him to both his uncles: to the Pope as an experienced horseman and to Duke Niccol as an unscrupulous spy. But the very sight of the man unnerved him. He had carried out an act of cold-blooded murder, more than one probably, and even though the most recent such act had been on Rinaldo's orders, he looked on the a.s.sa.s.sin with fascinated horror, knowing that he would just as easily slit his own master's throat, if paid enough.

'Ah, how are they treating you here?' he asked Enrico nervously, anxious to get away from him and out of the city for his ride in the hills.

'Very well,' said Enrico. 'It's good to be back among horses. They're more reliable than humans, if you know what I mean.'

Rinaldo thought he did. This scruffy spy had a grudge; his good-looking fiancee had disappeared and the man had got it into his head that his old employer knew something about it. Rinaldo had met the girl only once and knew nothing at all of her fate, which had in fact been very different from what Enrico suspected. The amba.s.sador had no time for young women himself, beautiful or otherwise. They were quite alien to him, apart from his sister and cousins. And the last thing he wanted was for Enrico to harbour any malice against him. He could do Rinaldo a lot of harm, and not just physically.

'Excellent, excellent!' he now said vaguely. 'Let me know if there's anything you need.' And he led Bacio out into the yard, with Enrico's mournful brown eyes following him.

'Where shall I begin?' asked Luciano. He, Cesare and Georgia had left Paolo and Doctor Dethridge closeted together, and taken the road west out of the city walls through the Gate of the Ram. They had been sent off with instructions to spend the day continuing Georgia's education about Remora and sharing information.

'Well, how did you get here, for a start?' asked Georgia. They were sitting on the small wall of a farm just outside the city.

'Today I arrived by carriage,' said Luciano, smiling. 'But I suspect that's not what you want to know. I came from Bellezza. That was the city I first stravagated to last May.' His smile faded. 'That is where I live now it is my home.'

The three young people remained silent for a while. Cesare was rather in awe of this elegant young man, who was a year younger than him and yet had known such wonders. Luciano was a Stravagante and Cesare still wasn't sure what that meant. Cesare had been told that Luciano was apprentice to Signor Rodolfo, the most distinguished Stravagante in Talia, and that he lived in Bellezza with Doctor Crinamorte, who had founded the brotherhood. And now he had turned out to be not only a visitor from another world, but a friend of Cesare's own personal Stravagante, the mysterious girl with a boy's hair and no shadow.

'There is nowhere in our world like Bellezza,' Luciano eventually continued. 'It looks like Venice, except that everything gold in Venice is silver in Bellezza. They don't value gold here, you know; it's silver that is the most precious metal. Bellezza is a city visited by people from all over this world not just Talians because of its incredible beauty. And as soon as I arrived in it, I felt really well again. My hair had grown back and I was strong, just as I was before the cancer came.' He stopped and took a deep breath, then plunged back into his story.

'I can't tell you everything in one day. I have spent months as apprentice to Rodolfo he's wonderful, the cleverest, most magical person and he taught me about being a Stravagante. He had been expecting me, because he took my talisman to our world.'

'What was your talisman?' asked Georgia curiously.

An expression of pain pa.s.sed over his face. She could see that this new Luciano was not quite as she remembered Lucien. He looked older and as if scarred by experience. He said he hadn't been ill in Talia and yet he looked as someone might who has had a serious illness and recovered from it in body but not yet in mind.

'It was a notebook from Bellezza,' said Luciano. 'But I can't use it any more.' He stood and paced up and down in front of the wall. 'As you see, I have a shadow now. I am still a Stravagante, but from this world to yours. I have made that journey only a few times and it is very difficult for me.'

'Is that because of, you know, what happened in our world with your illness?' asked Georgia, feeling stupid and tactless even as she said it, but she had to know.

'Yes,' said Luciano. 'As you know, in your world, which is no longer mine, I died.'