City of Masks (15 page)

Lucien understood. ‘It’s a guy!’ he said. ‘They’re going to burn a guy, Doctor Dethridge, not a person. You know, just as we do in England on Guy Fawkes Night. “Remember, remember, the fifth of November” and then we have the fireworks – though they’re nothing like as good as Rodolfo’s.’

He looked up and saw two blank expressions. Lucien’s knowledge of history was really being tested by all this stravagation. ‘I suppose Guy Fawkes hadn’t happened when you left England,’ he said to Dethridge. ‘He tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. I think it was a Catholic plot.’

Dethridge was obviously amazed.

‘Ah, yes, Catholics,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I wanted to talk to you about them, Dottore. But to return to Montemurato, the figure on the bonfire is indeed that of a witch as the Dottore surmised. It is a harmless festival – the Festa della Strega – always held in the walled city at this time of year. It is connected with a story of a witch, a ‘strega’ who flew over the walls a hundred years ago and brought a curse on the city. They keep the curse at bay by ‘burning the witch’ once a year and drinking a lot of the liqueur called Strega too. You must have moved to Montemurato shortly after the last Festa, Dottore. That’s why you haven’t come across it before.’

Dethridge relaxed. ‘So ye doe not burn peple for magicke in Talia?’

Rodolfo did not answer straightaway. He obviously did not want to alarm the old man. ‘We used to,’ he said at last. ‘And then things got better. There is so much of what you call magic in your world and what we call science in Talia. But the di Chimici have been stirring up fear and hatred against the kind of thing I do here. I think it will not be long before they start to persecute the Stravaganti, if only to wrest their secrets from them. But for now, you have nothing to be afraid of.’

‘Come on – we’ll miss the plane,’ said Dad, as Mum checked for the umpteenth time on passports, tickets and money. Lucien havered for a long time about whether to take the notebook, but it didn’t feel safe to leave it behind. He liked to have it with him.

At last, they were on their way to the airport. Lucien spent most of the flight dozing. He had had a busy day in Bellezza the night before, studying stravagation principles with two masters, one from each side, and spending his last afternoon with Arianna exploring the south of the city, before heading back to the laboratory to get home for an early start in his own world.

They landed at a much smaller airport than Heathrow and, using Mum’s guidebook, went into Venice by a variety of means. As their bus travelled across the causeway, Lucien thought of his boat-rides with Rodolfo when they went to Montemurato. The causeway made travel to the city so much easier.

‘Now we get a vaporetto!’ said Mum triumphantly. She had done her homework and led them to a landing stage to catch the number 82. ‘It will take us all the way down the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco,’ she said confidently. And it did.

Lucien could not volunteer a word for the whole water journey. His heart was in his mouth. This was, and was not, his city. The canal was so busy with vaporetti, barges and motorboats it took a while to notice the gondolas. But there they were, black and sleek. If Lucien concentrated on them alone, it seemed as if he really were in Bellezza. Except that most of the gondoliers were much too old and fat to please the Duchessa. It made Lucien laugh out loud.

‘What’s so funny, Lucien?’ asked Dad.

Lucien just gave a big grin.

His parents exchanged contented looks. They didn’t know what he was laughing about but they could see the happiness radiating out from him.

Lucien could see his shadow on the floorboards of the vaporetto and it filled him with joy.

The knock on the door was loud and urgent. The maid answered it and was roughly elbowed aside. The two city guards pushed past her and out into the water-garden, where Leonora sat attempting to teach her niece how to embroider a border of strawberry leaves. Arianna was almost relieved to see them, until one said, ‘We have a warrant for the arrest of Arianna Gasparini on a charge of treason.’

Leonora dropped her frame. ‘What nonsense is this?’ she demanded. ‘My niece is not yet sixteen. How could she be any threat to the dukedom?’

‘By flouting one of its most ancient laws,’ said the guard sternly. ‘There is evidence that she was in the city on the Giornata Vietata and that she is not a citizen of Bellezza.’

Aunt Leonora coloured and her hand flew to her mouth. But Arianna stood immobile. She had always known of the risk, when she decided to hide in the Maddalena three months before. Now she knew she must face the consequences of her action.

*

Two different guards were hammering on the door of Rodolfo’s laboratory.

‘Open! In the name of the Bellezza City Watch! We have an arrest warrant!’

They were about to kick down the door when Rodolfo let them in. They looked round the room, expecting a boy, and found only a cowering old man.

‘Where is the boy?’ demanded the senior guard. ‘We have a warrant for the arrest of one Luciano, surname unknown, on a charge of treason.’

‘Yonge Lucian!’ said the old man, uncurling from the armchair. ‘What treasoun colde sich a yongling doe? Ye are mis-taken.’

‘There is no mistake, old man,’ said the second guard. ‘Senator, you are in charge of the youngster?’

‘He is my apprentice, yes,’ agreed Rodolfo.

‘Then where is he? Shouldn’t he be here at his lessons?’

‘He is somewhere in the city,’ said Rodolfo, almost truthfully. ‘Show me the warrant.’

He read the scrap of vellum and his heart sank when he saw the words ‘Giornata Vietata’, but he stayed outwardly calm.

‘We do not have lessons in the afternoon,’ he said, handing back the warrant. ‘You cannot wait here.’

‘Yes we can,’ said the first guard.

‘In that case, my friend and I shall go out,’ said Rodolfo calmly.

‘You can’t do that,’ said the second guard.

‘Oh,’ said Rodolfo, raising an eyebrow. ‘Do you have a warrant for my arrest too? And for that of this eminent Anglian Dottore, Guglielmo Crinamorte?’

Dethridge gave the Senator a quizzical look, but stood up and walked to the door with him.

‘Alfredo,’ said Rodolfo to his manservant, who was just behind the door. ‘Please take care of my guests. They will be here some time, so see they have everything they need. After you, Dottore.’

And the two Stravaganti swept out of the room.

It wasn’t till they got to the bottom of the stairs that Rodolfo said, ‘Quick, into my mandola. I’ll scull us. We need to find Silvia as soon as possible. Thank God the boy is not in Talia.’

The Mulhollands were staying in a little hotel on the Calle Specchieri. The lift was so tiny that only three people could fit in it together. So the family went up in it while a red-jacketed bellboy ran up the stairs with their bags. Their rooms were next to one another on the third floor. Dad gave the bellboy a huge tip.

The boy was back a few minutes later bearing a tray with three slim glasses and a bottle in an ice-bucket. Lucien was in his parents’ room, opening their shutters to see what they had a view of.

‘I didn’t order anything,’ said Dad. ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘
Offerto dalla casa
,’ said the bellboy, grinning.

‘It’s prosecco,’ said Lucien. ‘It’s a bit like champagne. And I think he said it is on the house.’

‘The ’ouse,
sì
,’ said the bellboy. ‘
Salute
!’

And he was gone. Dad shrugged and opened the bottle with a pop. He poured three glasses of the cold wine and handed the smallest to Lucien.

‘I can see you’re going to be very useful here. Your very good health!’

‘Cheers!’ said Lucien.

In Talia the door slammed in one of the Duchessa’s dungeons. Arianna waited until the guards’ footsteps had faded away before she flung herself on a heap of straw and burst into tears.

Chapter 14

The Bridge of Sighs

The Mulhollands were up early for their first morning in Venice, determined to beat the crowds in the Piazza San Marco. They were almost first in the queue for the Basilica and spent some time in its shadowy interior. Lucien was not as bowled over by the mosaics as his parents were. They seemed garish to him in gold, used as he was to the cool silver finish of the mosaics in Bellezza’s Basilica of the Maddalena.

He soon retreated up the steep precarious stairs to the museum, with its gilded bronze horses, and stepped out on to the loggia with the copies, and looked out over the square from what had been Arianna’s hiding-place in Bellezza. It was breathtaking. The sky was an incredible postcard blue, swirled with sudden flights of pigeons over the square and wheeling white gulls out over the lagoon. Elegant black gondolas bobbed on the water along the Piazzetta and the Saint and the winged lion stood on their tall columns guarding the city.

And yet. Lucien could no longer think of this as the real city and Bellezza as the alternative. It was stunningly beautiful and a great deal cleaner than the Talian city, but to Lucien it was like a painting in a gallery compared with its subject. It was hard to believe that the water was really moving, the birds flying and the tourists milling around the square.

He rejoined his parents in the doorway of the cathedral. His mother had her guidebook in her hand. ‘That was lovely. Now let’s go and see the Doge’s Palace.’

They set off towards the water, threading their way between other tourists and the pigeons underfoot, avoiding the stalls with their gaudy jesters’ hats and gold-sprayed plastic gondolas. The rose-coloured palace along the side of the Piazzetta was attracting its own share of visitors and a queue was forming.

The high spot of the tour was walking through the covered Bridge of Sighs to the Doge’s dungeons, following the route of the despairing condemned prisoners. People were queuing to get through. But ever since they had entered the palace, Lucien had been feeling uneasy. The State rooms were all so dark and gloomy with their panelled wood and huge paintings grimed with age. Even the Doge’s private apartments were nothing like the Duchessa’s. There was no Glass Room, and nowhere a room like the one with the peacock sconce and the secret passage. In fact, Lucien had been able to see from outside that there was no palazzo corresponding to Rodolfo’s. The differences between the two cities were giving him a headache.

But his parents were already lining up for the Bridge of Sighs, so he tagged along. Half-way across the bridge the pressure inside Lucien’s skull became unbearable but strangers had interposed between him and his parents. He was borne along by the crowd. On the other side of the bridge were the tiny cells. They were now filled with T-shirted and shorted visitors ghoulishly imagining the previous inhabitants.

Lucien didn’t know what was happening to him. It wasn’t like being ill before. He had difficulty breathing and his head pounded. He was propelled into one of the cells and immediately thought he was going to be sick. A feeling of dread and terror had hold of him. And he had a strong sense of someone else’s fear, someone who had been incarcerated here before a horrible death.

‘Whoa there!’ said an American. ‘What’s with the kid? Looks like he’s going to pass out.’

That brought Mum and Dad to Lucien’s side in a flash and soon there was a flurry of people saying, ‘Stand back’ and ‘Give him air’ like extras in a film. His parents got Lucien back across to the other side of the bridge. The further away they were from the dungeons, the better he felt.

‘I’m OK, really,’ he said to his parents, who were muttering about doctors.

‘It’s the atmosphere in that place,’ said the American, who had caught Lucien just as he was about to lose consciousness and come with them across the bridge. ‘Hundreds of men went from there to their deaths. Something like that’s pretty well bound to leave its mark. Your boy’s just more sensitive than most, I’d say.’

The young woman took a boat to Burlesca, with a heart as full as her purse. There were some in her family who had doubted that Enrico would ever name the day; they had been engaged rather a long time. But now, with her money from the Duchessa and the extra silver that her fiancé had given her, she was in a position to order her wedding-dress. And where in the lagoon would you go for white lace if not Burlesca?

There was one old woman whose work was so light and delicate that her fame had spread beyond her island. Paola Bellini might charge more than the other lacemakers of Burlesca, but then she was the best. Giuliana’s friends had told her how to find the lacemaker. ‘Look for the white house,’ they said. ‘It’s the only one.’

*

Rodolfo sculled Dethridge swiftly, by the backwaters, to a convent in the north of the city where the Duchessa was presenting a gift of silver for the orphan girls in their care. As she came out, her eyes widened when she saw him at the stern of his own vessel. In a moment, she had dismissed her own mandolier and stepped instead into the Senator’s craft. She looked curiously at the white-haired man already seated in the cabin. He doffed his hat and introduced himself as Guglielmo Crinamorte, though his tongue stumbled over the name.

Rodolfo took the mandola into a side canal and tied it to a pole. He jumped down into the cabin.

‘Why all the mystery?’ asked the Duchessa. ‘And who is your companion?’ But the smile died on her lips when she saw Rodolfo’s expression.

‘It’s not often that I tell you something is a matter of life and death,’ said Rodolfo. ‘But today that is exactly the case. Did you know that a warrant has gone out for a foreigner seen in the city on the Giornata Vietata?’

The Duchessa nodded. ‘Yes, I signed it this morning. Unusual, isn’t it? I suppose it will turn out to be a misunderstanding.’

‘I hope so,’ said Rodolfo. ‘Do you know who it was for?’

‘No,’ said the Duchessa. ‘You know how many papers I have to sign every day. I didn’t look at the name – just noted the offence.’

‘It was for Luciano,’ said Rodolfo, and was astonished by her reaction. All colour drained from her face and she clutched her throat as if unable to catch her breath.

‘It is al righte,’ said Dethridge, patting her other hand. ‘The yonge mann was not at home. Hee is goon backe to his own worlde and will not bee backe hir for a while.’

‘But, I’ve remembered something,’ said the Duchessa, still in distress. ‘I signed
two
warrants. I’m sure the Commander of the Watch said that one was for a girl. I didn’t look at the name on that one either, but wasn’t it the day after the Marriage with the Sea that Luciano first came to Bellezza? And wasn’t that when he met that girl Arianna?’

Rodolfo was surprised. He had never told the Duchessa who it was that was teaching Lucien about the city. And he didn’t know about Giuseppe and her own investigations.

‘We must get back and I will go to see the girl’s aunt, Leonora,’ he said. ‘It is a terrible fate to hang over so young a girl.’

‘No, Rodolfo, you don’t understand,’ said the Duchessa bitterly. ‘This is not just any girl. There is something I have to tell you.’

Lucien’s parents took him to the coffee bar in the Doge’s Palace. It was a place worthy of Bellezza, where you could watch gondolas skimming past the window while drinking your cappuccino. The American tourist had shown them where it was before going back up to finish his tour.

‘Now, what was all that about?’ asked Dad, when they were sitting down with their frothy coffees and hard little almond biscuits.

‘I think it was just the heat and all those people,’ said Lucien. ‘I suddenly felt claustrophobic.’ But he knew it had been more than that. For now, though, he had to convince his parents that he was completely well and didn’t need to be taken straight back to the hotel.

Lucien wondered how long it would take, if he recovered from his cancer, for his parents to stop treating him like a piece of Merlino glass. Would they always have that anxious, haunted look every time he sneezed or yawned? And what about if he didn’t get better? Lucien didn’t usually mind being an only child but now he longed for a sibling to take from him the pressure of being the sole vessel for all that parental love. ‘I know how Arianna feels,’ he thought.

In a white house on the island of Burlesca an old woman was showing piles of lace to a young one. The bride-to-be was cheerful and chatty, choosing the material for her dress, her veil and various undergarments for her honeymoon, as well as lace edging for the linen already stacked in a cedar chest in her parents’ house. The old lacemaker was curious as to how this admittedly pleasant and attractive but clearly uneducated girl could afford such a luxurious Corredo dalla Sposa.

But choosing and commissioning such a quantity of material took time and over the course of the day, Giuliana became communicative. Being so close to the achievement of her ambition made her careless and she dropped so many hints that it wasn’t difficult for Paola to fill in the gaps. And she did not like the sound of that Enrico or his wealthy di Chimici employer.

If Giuliana was surprised at the number of fittings the old woman thought would be necessary, she didn’t show it. She was quite content to spend more days such as this, sitting among the foaming lace and chatting to a sympathetic person about her wedding.

*

Arianna wanted her mother. So far she had been treated quite kindly, but not allowed any visitors. She was in an agony of uncertainty. Had Lucien been arrested too? Or had he stravagated back home before the guards came? At least he would have been with Rodolfo, who had more influence than Aunt Leonora.