City of Flowers (5 page)

‘I do,' said Sky. ‘Look how beautiful it is. But why is it silver?'

Sandro really thought Sky must be a bit touched in the head.

‘Because silver's the most precious metal,' he explained patiently, as if to a child.

‘More than gold?' asked Sky.

‘Course,' said Sandro. ‘Gold goes black – gets the
morte d'oro
. Silver just keeps on shining.' He gave one of the candlesticks on the altar a bit of a rub with his cuff. ‘Nah, you keep gold for a knick-knack to give your lady love if you're not really serious about her. Silver's only for the likes of the di Chimici.'

Sandro's words made Sky think about the quiet fair-haired girl at his school. What would Alice Greaves say to a gold bracelet brought back from Talia? He didn't think she'd see it as a trinket. Then he remembered he didn't have any money here and didn't even know what currency they used. He shook his head. The small dark chapel, with its lingering scent of incense, was beginning to feel stuffy. He wanted to get out into the fresh air again. Suddenly he panicked. How long had he been roaming the city with Sandro? A gnawing feeling in his stomach told him it must be getting late. He didn't want to miss the sunset.

Sky looked at his wrist but of course his watch was on his bedside table at home. He looked up and saw Sandro regarding him with his head on one side. With his bright, alert eyes, he did look a bit like a sparrow.

‘What time is it?' Sky asked, feeling really alarmed. ‘I must be getting back to the friary.'

‘Oh yeah, you brothers have to say your prayers every few hours, don't you?' said Sandro. ‘You've probably missed some already. Do you want me to take you back?'

*

Gaetano had spent several happy hours helping Sulien in his laboratory. The young di Chimici prince was attending the university in Giglia and was interested in all new branches of learning. But he hadn't been in a laboratory for a long time and was fascinated to see how the friars distilled perfume from flowers. It would take many cartloads of irises to produce a tiny phial of the flower's intense yet delicate perfume. And Sulien was easy to work with, calm and authoritative. Gaetano fell into the rhythm of the laboratory without even noticing.

He looked at tall glass bottles containing cologne, with labels like frangipani, pomegranate, silver musk, vetiver and orange blossom. Then there were pure essences like amber and jasmine, lily-of-the-valley and violet. There was almond paste for the hands, Vinegar of the Seven Thieves for ladies' fainting fits, Russian cologne for men's beards and almond soap. There was tincture of white birch and hawkweed, infusions of fennel and mallow and lime blossom, liqueurs and compounds of willow and hawthorn.

Cupboard after cupboard full of jars of lotions and glass bottles of jewel-like coloured liquids. No wonder the place smelt like heaven! But Gaetano knew that somewhere in the friary was another, secret, laboratory, where herbs were brewed that were not so healthy – his family's source of poisons.

But for now he tried to forget about that and to lend a hand stirring and measuring and mixing and adjusting flames under glass alembics like any other apprentice. Gaetano was the only one helping Sulien; the usual novice helpers had been dismissed so that the two of them could discuss the real reason for the prince's visit.

‘Luciano told me where to find you,' he said, steadily pouring a clear green liquid from one container to another.

‘And how is he?' asked Sulien. He had brought his recipe manuscript into the laboratory and was carefully recording what they were doing to make infusion of mint. ‘I know Rodolfo is worried about his coming anywhere near your father the Duke.'

Gaetano sighed, concentrating hard on his task. ‘My father has his reasons for not trusting Luciano too. Do you know what really happened to my brother Falco?' he asked.

Sulien nodded. ‘Doctor Dethridge told me,' he said. ‘He was translated, like him, but to the other world.'

‘Where he lives and thrives, as far as we know,' said Gaetano. ‘I miss him terribly, but it was his decision. He wanted passionately to be healed by their medicine and be whole again.'

The two of them were silent over their tasks for a while, Gaetano remembering the last time he had seen his youngest brother, miraculously grown tall and straight again, riding a flying horse in Remora. His father had sat beside him, white and rigid at what other spectators took for an apparition of the dead prince. Duke Niccolò, in his ceremonial armour, had vowed vengeance on the Stravaganti but he had not moved quickly. Gaetano wondered whether the wedding invitation to Arianna was partly a ruse to bring Luciano to Giglia.

Sulien had been thoughtful too. He knew this young sprig of the Duke's family only by reputation, but he seemed quite unlike his father and his proud brothers. He was aware that Gaetano knew about the Stravaganti, had been on friendly terms with several of them, and would not betray their secrets to the Duke. And he was handy with tongs and glass vessels, something that made a good impression on the friar.

Brother Sulien came to a decision. ‘I must tell you,' he said, ‘that I have today been visited by a new Stravagante from the other world.'

Gaetano put down the vessel he was holding very carefully on the wooden bench. ‘But that is fantastic!' he said, trying hard to contain his excitement. ‘Where is he now? Has he gone back?'

‘No,' said Sulien, getting up from his stool and walking over to the door into the cloister, to assess the quality of the light. ‘He should be here soon. I told him he must go back before sunset.'

As if on cue, a flustered young man in a novice's robes burst into the room from the inner door. Gaetano thought him remarkable-looking with his skin like chestnuts and his long hair like golden-brown catkins.

‘I hope I'm not too late,' said Sky, casting an anxious look in the direction of Sulien's visitor. ‘I lost track of time in the Duke's chapel.'

‘Ah, that is easily done,' said Gaetano, smiling. ‘It has happened to me often.'

Sky looked at him properly. He was clearly a noble, dressed in fine clothes and wearing silver rings. But, if it had not been for his clothes, he would have seemed rather plain. He had a big nose and a very big crooked mouth. He reminded Sky of someone he had seen recently. And then he remembered. One of the kings with a silver crown in the chapel fresco had looked like that.

‘Let me present myself,' said the young man. ‘I am Prince Gaetano di Chimici, youngest surviving son of Duke Niccolò. And if you have been looking at the frescoes in my father's chapel, you have seen a likeness of my grandfather, Alfonso. I am supposed to look rather like him.' And he made Sky a deep bow.

Handsome he might not be, but he seemed so warm and friendly, and not a bit conceited, that Sky liked him immediately. He glanced towards Sulien as he replied, ‘And I am Tino – Celestino Pascoli. I come from Anglia.' And he tried to copy the prince's graceful bow.

‘It's all right, Sky,' said Sulien. ‘Prince Gaetano knows you are from a lot further away than that. In spite of his father, he is a good friend to us Stravaganti.'

‘Indeed,' said Gaetano eagerly. ‘Do you come from the same place as Luciano? Or Georgia? Perhaps you know my brother, Falco?'

A strange feeling was creeping over Sky. ‘Georgia who?' he asked.

Gaetano thought for a bit. ‘When she was here – well, not here in this city, but in Remora – she acted as a boy and was known as Giorgio Gredi. I don't know what her real surname was.'

‘I think I do,' said Sky slowly. ‘You must mean Georgia O'Grady. She goes to the same school as me.'

His head was spinning. Georgia O'Grady was Alice's fierce friend, the girl with the red hair and tattoo.

‘But if you know Georgia then you must know Falco!' said Gaetano, his eyes shining. He came round the bench to grasp Sky by both arms. ‘A beautiful boy, not like me. A boy with curly black hair, a fine horseman and fencer . . .' His voice broke. ‘He is my little brother,' he went on, ‘and I shall probably never see him again. Please, if you know anything of him, tell me.'

It had been the talk of the school at one time, Sky remembered, the friendship between Georgia and the boy who fitted that description. There had been all sorts of rumours, because Georgia was in the sixth form and the boy was only in Year 10, two years younger than her. Such things were not unheard of, but it was still unusual. Still, both of them had shrugged off all comment and remained friends.

Now Sky said, ‘There is a boy like that, Georgia's close friend, but he isn't called what you said. His name is Nicholas Duke.'

The image of the marble boy with the dog floated into Sky's mind, even as he said it, and he felt the world turning upside down. It was like trying to walk up an Escher staircase and finding you were going downwards, and it gave him vertigo. But Sky knew that the boy he thought of as Nicholas could be this nice, ugly prince's lost brother. But if he was, what on earth was he doing at Barnsbury Comprehensive? Then he remembered something else he knew about Nicholas. He lived with the parents of the Lucien who had died – or who was now living in Talia.

Sky felt two pairs of strong arms catch him as his knees gave way and he sank on to the bench.

‘Time to go home, I think,' said Sulien. ‘That's quite enough for one visit.'

Chapter 4

Secrets

Rosalind had to shake Sky to wake him up the next morning. Normally he was first up, leaping out of bed as soon as the alarm went off and heading straight for the shower before he was really awake. But today he looked at her as if he had no idea who she was, sleep still fuzzing his brain.

‘Come on, lovely boy,' she said. ‘I know we live right next door to school, but you'll still have to hurry. It's quarter past eight already!'

‘Mum!' said Sky, finally dragging his mind away from Giglia in the past and back to the present of his life in Islington.

‘Who else?' said Rosalind, smiling. He registered that she was looking well again. That was two days in a row.

‘You should have woken me sooner,' he said reproachfully, though it was himself he was cross with. ‘I can't just go off to school and leave you with all the chores.'

‘What chores?' said his mother. ‘There's nothing urgent. Breakfast is made – you just have a quick shower and then come and eat. Everything's under control.'

Under the hot jet of the shower, Sky thought about this. It seemed to him that everything he had taken for granted about his daily life was spiralling wildly out of control. If what Sulien and Gaetano told him was true, he was a traveller in time and space, not an ordinary twenty-first-century boy with a sick mother.

The girl he fancied – yes, he acknowledged it now – was best friends with another such sci-fi traveller, whose other closest friend was a dead prince from centuries ago. And that prince seemed to have changed places with another school student who now lived in a world of magicians and duchesses, silver and treason.

He shook the water off his thick locks. He was going to have to go to school knowing that neither Georgia nor Nicholas was what they seemed. This was a much bigger secret than having a rock star for a father. But Sky had already promised to take messages between Gaetano and Nicholas; he hadn't been able to say no when he saw how moved the Giglian prince had been by the loss of his brother.

It was what everyone who had ever lost anyone to death wanted, Sky supposed. To believe that they were in a better world – and that it might still be possible to communicate with them.

Sandro was well pleased with his new friendship. A friar, even a novice one, was a perfect cover for nefarious deeds and Sandro had seen straightaway how useful Sky could be. But it was more than that; he liked the tall brown boy, so interested in everything he was told and so innocent about how things worked in Giglia. Sandro loved knowing more than someone else and telling them about it. The new friar was like a newborn lamb when wolves were about in a place like the City of Flowers. And then, secretly, he had the added satisfaction that, as a friar, Sky must know all sorts of things that he, Sandro, didn't – like all that book-learning clerics had to have.

Sandro had never had a brother, as far as he knew, but he had imagined lots of family for himself – a father like the Eel, a mother like the Madonna, a big brother to protect him and a little one to boss about. Now he felt he had found both brothers in Sky.

‘Never thought he'd be a Moor, though,' Sandro said to himself. ‘I wonder what the real story is there? The Eel is interested in Sulien. Maybe this Tino is the result of some secret scandal of his?'

He resolved to look into it. But not necessarily to tell his master. After all, he had always been well treated by Brother Sulien, who had more than once taken him into the kitchens at Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and fed him, in the days before he was the Eel's man. And as for Tino, Sandro felt protective of any secret that might concern him. Even after one meeting, the strange Anglian was definitely his friend. And Sandro had never had a friend before.

Nicholas Duke was the school fencing champion. He was legendary in Barnsbury Comprehensive, having arrived at the beginning of Year 9 with a twisted leg and able to walk only with crutches. Several operations, months of physiotherapy and a punishing training programme in the gym had resulted in a growth spurt, an athletic frame and a grace of movement that would have been unbelievable a year and a half ago.

Nicholas had been a bit of a mystery. He had been found abandoned, apparently having lost his memory. But he was clever and was soon in the top group for maths, French and English literature. Science and ICT were not his forte but he was picking them up well enough. And he was good at art and music. But the real surprise was that, as soon as he could balance and walk without crutches, he joined the fencing club and proved to be as skilled as a professional.

‘You must have done this before,' Mr Lovegrove, their fencing teacher, had said.

And Nicholas had grinned, delighted. ‘I suppose I must,' was all he would say.

Nick Duke had almost single-handedly made fencing fashionable at Barnsbury. He was popular with girls because of his dreamy good looks, especially now he had added height to his lithe slim figure, angelic smile and black curly hair. They were pretty annoyed that he was so obviously smitten with a girl two years above him that none of them got a look-in.

He was popular with boys too; even those who might have bullied him because of his girlish looks were impressed by his rigorous fitness training and a bit alarmed by his skills with a foil. And Nicholas was beginning to put on muscle too – he was a fine horseman and went riding every weekend. By the time he was a sixth former he was going to be a dangerous person to tangle with, even when unarmed.

The fencing club had never had so many members, male and female. Soon the school had been able to enter a team, first in the local championships, and then in the regional ones, which they won. National achievement was the next aim, and Mr Lovegrove and Nicholas Duke were training the team almost equally between them.

Now Nicholas was in the school gym, before lunch, doing a hundred press-ups. In a rare lapse of concentration, he glanced towards the door and saw a brown face encircled with chestnut locks, looking through the glass panel. And then it was gone.

‘I shall move to the Palazzo Ducale as soon as the wedding ceremonies have been performed,' said Duke Niccolò. He was addressing his three sons and his daughter in the magnificent salon of his family's palace on the Via Larga. ‘And I shall take Beatrice with me, of course.'

His daughter made a little curtsey. She had not been allocated a husband in the recent spate of di Chimici engagements and she did not mind. She was still young, not yet twenty-one, and she knew her father needed her. Beatrice had felt even more tenderly towards him since the death of her little brother Falco the year before. So she smiled in acceptance of the Duke's plans for her.

‘I have ordered the changes necessary to give Fabrizio and Caterina a wing of the Palazzo Ducale,' continued the Duke, nodding to the architect Gabassi, who was clutching his usual armful of plans.

‘I trust that meets with your approval?' Niccolò said to Fabrizio, but it was a formality. No one in the room dreamt of raising any objection to their father's plans. The only di Chimici prince to defy him now lived in another world, though only his brother Gaetano knew that.

‘Carlo and Gaetano will live here in the Palazzo di Chimici, of course,' said the Duke, inclining his head towards his second and third sons, ‘with their wives Lucia and Francesca. It is a large enough palace in which to raise children, I think.'

The Duke was looking forward to his grandchildren, lots of them. He believed with all his heart that it was the destiny of his family to rule all Talia, and he wanted all twelve city-states secured by having their titles in family hands. Preferably in his lifetime, but if not, he wanted to know before he died that there was a good supply of di Chimici princelings and dukelets in waiting.

Fabrizio was content. To live in the Palazzo Ducale was fitting for a prince of his family and future. And he would have more opportunity to study his father's ways of doing things, feel more like the Duke-in-waiting. The palazzo in the Piazza Ducale had been commissioned and paid for by the di Chimici, but no member of the family had ever lived in it. It was the seat of Giglian politics, where the city Council met, but a very grand building and quite large enough to house a Duke and his heir. And it would help with achieving his father's political plans to be living right above the place where the laws were passed.

If Fabrizio was heir to Duke Niccolò's title and political ambition, Prince Carlo was his natural successor in financial acumen. The di Chimici had made their fortune initially from perfecting the art of distilling perfume, but over the years it had grown through their role as bankers to the great families of Talia and the crowned heads of Europe.

‘And our business meetings, Father?' Carlo now asked.

‘Will continue as normal,' said Niccolò. ‘It does not matter whether here or in the Palazzo Ducale.'

Gaetano said nothing. There was, as far as he knew, no part for him in his father's plans. He had feared once that he would be forced into the Church and groomed to be the next Pope when his uncle Ferdinando died. But then Niccolò had ordered him to propose to the beautiful Duchessa of Bellezza. Arianna had turned him down but encouraged him to ask the woman he really loved, his cousin Francesca. Gaetano's father had raised no objections to their marriage, so presumably he had given up the idea of his third son as a celibate priest, but doubtless he had something in mind for the young prince; Niccolò had a plan for everyone.