Stravaganza: City Of Stars Part 8

Then, she had plotted to become one of the city's mandoliers and had spent the night crouching on the loggia of the great silver basilica of the Maddalena. This year, she had appeared on that same loggia, standing between the two pairs of bronze rams, waving to her people down in the Piazza, before returning to her palazzo next door for a fine wedding feast.

Last year Arianna had found Luciano standing in that Piazza, looking dazed and lost. This year he had sat at her side, dressed in velvet and silver. Last year she had thought her parents were a simple museum curator and a comfortable housewife. This time she knew they were the previous d.u.c.h.essa and the present Regent, sitting on her other side, guiding her through the formalities of the occasion.

Today she had visited a school for orphan girls, received pet.i.tions from citizens with problems ranging from a dispute over a consignment of flour to a marriage contract between cousins, she had dined with a visiting prince from eastern Europa and received an emba.s.sy from Anglia on the subject of a trade agreement. She had also held a meeting with the admiral of Bellezza's fleet, who suspected that aggression was building up in the countries bordering the lagoon's eastern sh.o.r.es.

It was now time to be undressed by her women and allowed to sink into her comfortable bed. Her personal maid, Barbara, was brushing her hair when there was a knock on the door. It was Rodolfo.

'I'm sorry to trouble you, my dear, but we have not had a moment to talk all day. Are you too tired to stay up a little longer?'

'Of course not,' said Arianna, dismissing her maid. It was always a relief to be on her own with her father and away from the cares of state.

He sat on one of the little tapestry-covered chairs which had belonged to Arianna's mother Silvia, the last d.u.c.h.essa. Rodolfo used to visit her in her chamber by means of a secret pa.s.sage from his own palazzo, which was next door to hers. Now that route was even more of a secret, but not closed up. It could be useful again in an emergency. Both he and Arianna were always aware that Silvia had supposedly been a.s.sa.s.sinated, and the fact that she was alive and well and living in Padavia was neither here nor there. A woman had died in that explosion, and danger surrounded any d.u.c.h.essa.

'I have two pieces of news,' said Rodolfo, as Arianna continued to brush her hair herself.

'Good,' she said. 'Is one about Luciano?'

'It is indeed,' said her father, smiling. 'Doctor Dethridge contacted me today by means of my mirrors. They are both safely arrived in Remora and already having adventures.'

'Adventures?' said Arianna longingly. Then her face clouded. 'But they aren't in any danger, are they?'

'No more so than any of us would be in a stronghold of the di Chimici,' said Rodolfo. 'And that brings me to my other piece of news, which I think you will be less happy to hear. I received an emba.s.sy today from Duke Niccol.'

'Oh, about the Stellata, I suppose,' said Arianna. They had stalled on replying to the Pope's invitation to watch the race, until Luciano and Dethridge had checked on the safety of accepting.

'Not this time, my dear,' said Rodolfo. 'The purpose of this emba.s.sy was to seek your hand in marriage with the Duke's son. Apparently Gaetano di Chimici would like to marry you.'

Chapter 9.

Written in the Stars They had spent a long time in Santa Fina, and by the time they got to Remora it would be getting late. Georgia knew she must go home in less than an hour. She and Cesare were to ride with Gaetano, even though they saw Luciano was not too happy about it. He knew what the di Chimici were capable of and, although he was beginning to like the two brothers, he thought it was too early to trust them. They didn't yet know that he and Dethridge and the Horsemaster were Stravaganti too, but Gaetano was unlikely to forget Georgia's outburst and would certainly pump her for information.

Before the party broke up at the stables, Luciano took Cesare aside.

'Be careful,' he said. 'And if he brings the conversation around to the Stravaganti again, don't let Georgia give anything else away.'

Cesare nodded. He was not about to put his father in danger.

'I know the di Chimici,' he said. 'Trust me.'

The three riders made good time along the road to Remora. Each was at home on horseback and enjoyed the physical sensation of the exercise. There was no opportunity to talk until they slowed outside the Gate of the Sun, waiting their turn to enter the city through its busy portal. Gaetano manoeuvred his horse next to Georgia's.

'I should like to visit you tomorrow. You are staying in the Twelfth of the Ram?'

Georgia had learned her lesson and turned to Cesare as if to ask his advice. He shrugged. The young n.o.ble would be coming to see the Manoush anyway that had already been arranged. And Georgia could decide not to be there. But she couldn't avoid him for ever, not if she wanted to keep coming to the city. And it would seem as if that was what she was meant to do.

'Yes,' she said, after a pause. 'You can find me and Luciano at the Horsemaster's house. But I don't think I can do anything to help you.'

'Believe me,' said Gaetano, leaning closer so that Cesare couldn't overhear. 'I'm not interested in the secrets of your brotherhood. I want to help my brother. That is all.'

'He's very ugly, isn't he?' said Arianna much more calmly than she felt. She was looking at the miniature of Gaetano di Chimici which had been brought from Remora by the envoy. 'And he must be even worse than he looks here,' she added. 'The court painter must have tried to make the best of him.'

Rodolfo looked at her. 'We are not seriously entertaining this proposal,' he said.

'But what are we going to do about it?' asked Arianna. 'We can't just ignore it and we can't offend them by a flat refusal.'

'Now you are thinking like a d.u.c.h.essa,' said Rodolfo, smiling. 'It is a tight corner, but we will get out of it. They are sending him here, to escort you to the Stellata.'

Arianna's eyes widened.

'They want you to have the opportunity to get to know one another,' said Rodolfo, 'and you must take it.'

Duke Niccol was pleased to see his youngest son and happy to see the two brothers back in accord. His two older boys and his daughter were in Giglia and Niccol loved his children. He was feeling particularly pleased with Gaetano, who had raised no objections to the marriage scheme with Bellezza, and now he had brought him his heart's darling. Niccol had hoped that Falco would come with him to the Papal palace when they left Giglia but, perhaps because of the awkwardness with Gaetano or perhaps because of his love for its great lonely expanses, the younger boy had insisted on being left at Santa Fina.

Of course, Niccol could have overridden Falco's wishes; he was only a boy. But ever since the accident, the Duke had been so eaten up by grief that he could not deny the boy anything that might give him pleasure. And now here he was, by choice, reconciled to his brother and smiling. Niccol felt as if a long winter was drawing to an end, even though the spring could bring no real hope of an improvement to Falco's condition.

'You must hear Aurelio, Father,' Gaetano was saying. 'I tried to persuade him to come here, but he said he doesn't play for money. I'm sure he will play though, and you must hear it. It will make you feel as if you are in heaven.'

'Yes, Father, do try to hear it,' said Falco, his delicate face flushed with pleasure at the memory. 'He does play like an angel.'

'Sorry, boys,' said Niccol, dragging his attention back to what they were saying. 'Tell me again who this musician is.'

'He's called Aurelio,' said Falco patiently. 'And he and his sister are Manoush. They won't come here because they don't sleep in buildings. But we can visit them in the Ram.'

The Ram! Everything seemed to lead Niccol's thoughts in that direction. He had a nagging feeling that he had missed something important on his last visit there. He would have to get Ferdinando's spy to dig further. And it made him uneasy to hear the Ram linked to the Zinti. Niccol did not like the tribe. They did not conform to the di Chimici philosophy of growth and acquisition. There had to be something wrong with people who disprized possessions and did not own land.

Out loud he said, 'That is because all Zinti must be conceived under the stars. Even their unmarried women will not sleep indoors, in case a chance encounter leads to the beginning of a child. Foolish in the extreme, since it is more likely to lead to rape than if they stayed safe inside a house.'

Falco looked shocked, and Niccol wondered if this would be a good time to bring up his plans for his youngest son. Better for him to accept a life of celibacy before he had experienced the force of desire.

Georgia spent most of Sunday in bed.

'Told you she was sickening for something,' said Russell, adding, 'or just is something sickening,' under his breath.

'There's no need to fuss,' Georgia told her mother. 'I'm fine. I just had a bad night. I'll take my schoolbooks to bed and get ahead with my coursework.'

But, though she was propped up on a heap of cushions and pillows and surrounded by books and files, she spent a lot of the morning trying to sketch out a plan of Remora. She drew a rough circle on her lined pad and bisected it top to bottom. 'Strada delle Stelle,' she wrote, 'Road of the Stars.' She put in the Gate of the Sun at the north and that of the Moon in the south and drew a little circle halfway down the great thoroughfare to represent the Campo she had crossed with Cesare.

She drew lines across the bigger circle until it was segmented into twelve. She knew where the Twelfths of the Ram and the Twins were and roughly where they had escaped from the Fishes into the Twelfth of the Archer. But filling in the other sections was harder.

She muttered an old rhyme that she remembered from childhood: g The Ram, the Bull, the heavenly Twins And next to the Crab the Lion shines The Virgin and the Scales.

The Scorpion, Archer and He-Goat, The Man who carries the Watering-pot, The Fish with the glittering tails.

g The only difference between Talian signs of the zodiac and the ones Georgia knew was that the Reman lion was a lioness and Remorans always referred to Virgo as 'the Lady'. When she had filled it all in, it was clear that Remora was arranged like an astrological map of the year, with the Twelfth of the Ram at the centre left, in the west of the city.

'Good, I should be able to remember that,' thought Georgia. Paolo had told her that she mustn't bring anything to Talia with her except the talisman and the clothes she wore at the time of stravagation. She had always found herself dressed in her Talian boy's clothes on her arrival, but they were on top of her night things, just as she had put them on the first time.

She wouldn't be able to take her map with her, but it made her feel better to have drawn it. On a fresh sheet of paper she wrote down what she knew about each of the Twelfths, but there were huge gaps. She knew more about the Ram than any of the others. 'Their adversary is Fishes,' she wrote, 'and their allies are the Archer and the Lioness.'

Suddenly she understood why. Georgia didn't believe in astrology, but she read her horoscope in the paper every day, like the rest of her family, and she remembered Maura once telling her that each sign of the zodiac was linked to Earth, Fire, Water or Air three signs for each element.

'We're both Air signs,' she had told Georgia. 'Gemini for you and Libra for me.'

'Oh no,' said Georgia now. 'I'm Gemini the Twins! I belong with the di Chimici!'

But a moment's thought showed her this must be wrong. However pa.s.sionate the Remorans felt about belonging to their Twelfths, they couldn't arrange for their children all to be born under their matching signs.

Still, she was right about the pattern of alliances. As soon as she had remembered that Aries, Leo and Sagittarius were Fire signs, it made sense that the Lioness and Archer were allied with the Ram. Just a quarter of an hour's work produced allies for all the other Twelfths. Adversaries were harder, but she remembered what Cesare had said about the Twins and the Lady.

'Your adversary is the opposite to you, like Fire and Water,' she murmured, 'so Earth and Air must be the other opposites. And your adversary seems to be the nearest opposite to you in the city Ram and Fishes, Bull and Twins, Crab and Lioness.'

'Can't you shut up while you work?' yelled Russell, thumping her door as he went past.

'Adversaries!' hissed Georgia. It was what she and Russell were, no doubt about that. The Twelfths of Remora had a history going back hundreds of years, but Georgia and Russell had packed enough hatred and opposition into the last four to make up for centuries.

'But who are my allies?' thought Georgia, and a vision of Mortimer Goldsmith in his half-moon gla.s.ses came into her mind, making her smile. She wouldn't fancy his chances in a showdown with her stepbrother.

The enmities and alliances in Remora were complicated by this funny attachment of each Twelfth to another city, which Georgia didn't really understand. How could you live in one city but give your allegiance to another? It was like living in London but thinking of yourself as Liverpudlian. Still, you could live in London and support Liverpool football team, or Man U, or Aston Villa, come to that. She remembered first thinking that the Twelfths were like rival football clubs.

But it was even more serious than that. She had seen Cesare's fear when the Fishes were following them, and he was not a coward. And she had seen the dagger at Gaetano's belt. Luciano carried one too, although he was the least aggressive boy she had ever known. Talia was a dangerous place, in a dangerous time, and Remora seemed to be the most dangerous city in it. And the tension would presumably get higher during the Stellata. Still, she preferred the dangers of the Talian city to those of sharing a house with Russell.

The Manoush rolled out their bedding in the main courtyard of the stables of the Ram and settled themselves as comfortably as if they lay on goose-down mattresses instead of cobbles. The hospitable Teresa was perplexed and bustled out with extra pillows and blankets, which were courteously accepted but not used.

Georgia had disappeared to her hayloft just before sunset, so she missed the sight of the tall blind man and his companion stretching out their arms in farewell to the west as the red sun sank behind the city wall somewhere behind the Ram. They chanted softly in their own language. Later the whole household fell asleep to the sweet sound of notes struck gently on the harp.

Cesare was up early and saw them soon after they awoke, this time with their faces turned to the rising sun, towards the region of the Lady and the Scales, kneeling and chanting what seemed like a greeting to a wanderer returned. He didn't know the words they spoke but there was no mistaking the joy in their expressions. They never used the word 'sun', only referring to it as the G.o.ddess's companion. They were weird folk, the Zinti, as he had heard tell, but it filled him with pride that they were here in his Twelfth, in his home, or rather outside it.

But Aurelio evidently had no objections to eating breakfast indoors and Teresa was eager to demonstrate how guests were treated in her house. She was delighted to have the Manoush at her table with the visitors from Bellezza. Raffaella offered to help and was soon busy spooning semolina into babies. Cesare had three sisters much younger than himself and twin baby brothers, who crawled everywhere, including over the feet of the blind harpist, who took no more notice of them than if they had been house dogs.

Cesare rescued one of the twins from under the table and set him on his knee. This was Antonio, the more adventurous baby, and he reached his fat arms out to Cesare's face, crowing with delight. Cesare smiled back. Antonio and the others were not his full brothers and sisters. Only Cesare remained of Paolo's first marriage. Cesare's mother had died when he was very little and Paolo had married Teresa ten years ago. The other twin, a.r.s.enio, started to wail loudly because he had got himself wedged into a corner. Teresa swooped down to pick him up but that set off one of the little girls who had already been holding out her arms to her mother. Soon all the younger members of the family were raising their l.u.s.ty voices in lament. This was the sort of thing that usually drove Cesare out to the stables.

Aurelio turned his head to the source of the sound.

'Shall I play? Would it soothe the children?' he asked. Not waiting for the answer, Raffaella brought him his harp and the glorious ripple of its notes was soon filling the kitchen so that there was no room for sadness. The twins sat round-eyed on Paolo's lap, with their thumbs in their mouths, and the little girls twirled their fingers in their hair and snuggled into Cesare, Luciano and Dethridge as their sobs subsided. Teresa and Raffaella finished bringing the food. All was peaceful in the stables of the Ram.

Georgia heard the harp as soon as she arrived back in the hayloft. The last sounds she had heard before drifting off to sleep in London had been Russell's favourite pounding beat and amplified guitars. It wasn't even as if she hated that kind of music, but she knew Russell got as much pleasure from disturbing her sleep with it as he did from listening to it. By contrast, just from the sound of the harp she knew that Aurelio was playing it for the sheer pleasure of making music.

When Georgia slipped quietly round the kitchen door, she found that all the little children seemed to be in a dream. Cesare smiled at her over the tousled head of little Emilia and she smiled back. This was a real family. She saw her own wistful thought reflected in Luciano's eyes, as he stroked the curls of chubby Marta. And the identical expression on the face of Doctor Dethridge, who held Stella. Again she wondered if she would ever know the full story of what had happened to them and what they had given up to live permanently in Talia.

The music came to an end and the spell was broken, but there was no more crying. Paolo saw Georgia and got up to get her a plate and cup, with a twin under each arm.

'Good morning,' said Aurelio to the air near her place. It was hard to accept that he couldn't see her, that his eyes so clear and dark blue sent no messages to his mind.

'Did you sleep well?' asked Georgia.

'Excellently well,' said Aurelio. 'I always do, with nothing to separate me from the moon and stars. Did you?'

Georgia wondered if he knew that when she climbed into the hayloft it was to stravagate back to another world. He seemed to know something about the Stravaganti, but would he have guessed about her if she hadn't revealed it yesterday? And did he know that there were three other Stravaganti in the room?

'Not very,' she answered truthfully.

The twins soon fell asleep on Paolo's knee and the little girls had been quieted with food and music. The others breakfasted companionably in silence. Georgia wondered if she would put on weight eating rolls and jam so soon after supper in her own world. Teresa was a better cook than Maura; even her simplest meal was fresh and home made. Georgia had debated long and hard about whether to stravagate again that night she couldn't spend Monday catching up on sleep. But she was drawn to Remora. The cheerful uncomplicated family life of the Horsemaster, the stables and being able to ride whenever she wanted, her growing friendship with Cesare and the chance to see Lucien again were all too much to resist. School would just have to take its chances.

A commanding knock at the door broke up the harmony of the gathering. Paolo laid the twins in their cradle and opened it. There stood the Duke of Giglia, with Gaetano and Falco. A grand carriage with the di Chimici crest waited behind them in the yard.

'Greetings, Capitano,' said Niccol, using the term which strictly speaking was Paolo's only during the week of the Stellata. It was a sign of favour. He seemed to be on his best behaviour. 'And to the lovely mistress of the house,' he added, kissing his hand in Teresa's direction.

'A thousand apologies for inflicting my presence upon you again so soon, but my sons told me about your visitors and I could not wait to meet them myself.'

His eyes flickered round the table. It was obvious who the Zinti were, with their exotic clothes and brilliant colours. He ignored Georgia, taking her for another of Paolo's teeming household. But he was at a loss to place Dethridge and Luciano. Their clothes told him that they did not belong to the stables.

'May I present our guests?' Paolo was saying. 'You have doubtless been drawn by the music of the Zinti, or the Manoush as they prefer to be called Raffaella and Aurelio Vivoide.'

The two travellers made their obeisance to the Duke, who cordially waved them to sit.

'And here are two other distinguished guests from Bellezza,' Paolo went on smoothly. 'Doctor Guglielmo Crinamorte and his son Luciano.'

Much bowing followed and the Duke then presented his two sons to the a.s.sembled company. His mind was racing, trying to work out where the two Bellezzans fitted into the stables of the Ram. Their surname was unfamiliar to him but there was something about them that tugged at his memory and, as often before, he felt there was something going on in the Ram that he ought to know about.

During the introductions, Falco leaned on his sticks and looked hungrily at the family, much as Georgia had earlier. Her heart was touched by his obvious unhappiness. His own family were the lords of Talia and yet they could not make him well and she doubted if mealtimes in the di Chimici palaces were such warm and friendly occasions.

Falco manoeuvred himself to sit on a bench next to Aurelio.

'Will you play again?' he whispered. 'We have told my father so much about you.'

Aurelio frowned and Georgia could see that he was about to demur, but Raffaella whispered something to him and he changed his mind.

'I will not come to your palace,' he said courteously to Niccol. 'I mean no disrespect, but my people are not minstrels. We play for our own pleasure. Nevertheless, we favour music-lovers and your Grace's son is one such. If Signor Paolo permits, I shall play outside and you are welcome to listen.'

Niccol was not pleased, but he knew it would be fruitless to argue. The di Chimici went out into the yard where Cesare and Teresa found chairs and benches for them all and a recital began, the like of which had never been heard in the Twelfth of the Ram.

While it went on, Luciano beckoned to Georgia and Cesare and they retreated into the stables.

'What do you think of the di Chimici now?' he asked.

'Those two youngsters are very different from their father, I think,' said Cesare.

'I wonder if we can trust them,' said Luciano. 'They seem all right, but that man out there, Duke Niccol, he ordered the death of Arianna's mother I'm sure he did. There's blood on his hands.'