City of Masks (20 page)

Round a bend in the Great Canal, Lucien and William Dethridge were among the watchers. Lucien felt the unreality of the spectacle and stood dry-eyed as the funeral mandola passed by. But William Dethridge wept openly for the Duchessa, even though he knew her to be alive.

‘She was a grete ladye,’ he said to Lucien, who knew he was not play-acting. ‘What will the Citie doe without hir?’

And then Lucien found himself caught up in the great wave of emotion. He knew that Silvia still lived, but in a way it was true that the Duchessa had died. Never again would he see her in one of her fantastic masks, wearing her beautiful jewels and gorgeous dresses. She was just plain Silvia Bellini, a citizen of Bellezza, and he couldn’t imagine what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

The crowds remained, still and silent at their posts, while the funeral mandola, the mourners and the Barcone went out to the Isola dei Morti. The interment there was short and solemn and then the funeral mandola returned the way it had come. There was not a sound as it retraced its way down the Great Canal, now empty of its burden, except for the occasional soon-stifled sob from the banks. No more flowers were thrown and the musicians had ceased playing.

When the mandola reached the jetty, the bell stopped tolling and all Bellezza seemed to let out a collective sigh. The Duchessa was gone indeed.

*

In the north of the city, the little party held their own wake. They were soon joined by Lucien and Dethridge. Bellezza was now like a ghost town. There was no one on the streets. It would change later, when everyone had consumed enough wine at home. Then the streets would be full again and eventually the citizens would start to sing and some sort of impromptu parties would break out, but for now each home needed time to recover from the emotions of the morning.

Gathered in Fiorentino’s house were under a dozen people who knew that the Duchessa had survived. Silvia herself, Arianna, Valeria and Gianfranco, Lucien, Leonora and Dethridge, who were now firm friends, Egidio, Fiorentino, Guido Parola and Susanna the waiting-woman. They were soon joined by Rodolfo, who had absented himself from the funeral banquet. No one had questioned his decision, assuming he was too overcome by grief to remain longer in public.

With his arrival, the group was complete and there was a sense of expectation. Everyone looked to Silvia to make some sort of speech, but in the end it was Rodolfo who asked, ‘What happens now?’

‘First,’ said Silvia, ‘we drink to the memory of the Duchessa, like all the other loyal citizens of Bellezza.’

‘To the Duchessa!’ The voices overlapped and the group drank their red wine.

‘And now—’ Silvia tried to go on but Rodolfo stopped her.

‘Before you say any more, we should drink to the unfortunate woman whose remains are in that coffin, and pray for her soul.’

Silvia looked for a moment as if she was going to argue, but raised her glass anyway. ‘To Giuliana, family name unknown, may she rest in peace.’

They all drank again.

‘May I continue?’ asked Silvia, looking around the room. There was silence.

‘As most of you know,’ she resumed, ‘when the explosion happened, I was in my chamber alone. I ran to Rodolfo’s by a hidden passage, terrified by the noise and the smell of burning. I had no plan about what to do next. But I am tired. I have been Duchessa of this great city for twenty-five years, serving it as well as I could. I decided that I would take this opportunity to lead the life of a private citizen again.’

Lucien still had not got used to seeing her without her mask, but it was a perfect disguise. Hardly anyone outside this room had seen her without it for quarter of a century. With the action of a moment, she had rendered herself invisible.

‘But I shall not give up my opposition to Remora and the di Chimici,’ she continued. ‘It will just take a new form, working behind the scenes.’

‘Where will you live?’ asked Fiorentino. ‘You know you can always have a home here.’

‘Or with me,’ added Egidio hastily.

‘Or me,’ said Leonora. Rodolfo said nothing, though Lucien could see that William Dethridge was very obviously nudging him in the ribs.

‘Thank you all,’ said Silvia. ‘But I shall not continue to live in Bellezza. It will be too dangerous, even on the islands. I was thinking of going to Padavia. It is less than a day’s journey away, so that I can return here easily if I am ever needed. Susanna has brought me enough of my private fortune through the secret passage for me to set myself up under a new identity, as a wealthy widow from Bellezza. Susanna will come with me and, I hope, young Guido.’

Parola blushed and leapt to his feet. He bent over Silvia and kissed her hand. Lucien felt fiercely jealous. The last time he had seen Parola he had been trying to kill the Duchessa and it was hard for him to believe that he would now be her protector, even though he had been told the assassin was a reformed character. Lucien wanted to offer his own services but what could he do? He wasn’t even sure that he would be able to come to Talia for much longer.

‘What about di Chimici?’ asked Fiorentino. ‘Are you going to let him get away with it, like last time?’

‘No,’ said Silvia smiling, ‘but there are better ways of punishing him than taking him to law. Besides I could hardly give evidence in Council of my own death, could I?’

Lucien could stand it no longer. ‘But I don’t understand what is going to happen. Who is going to be the next Duchessa? What will happen to Bellezza? How can you just walk away from it? Surely the di Chimici will make it part of the Republic now?’

‘I don’t doubt that Rinaldo di Chimici has a candidate of his own lined up, Silvia,’ said Rodolfo.

‘You are probably right,’ said Silvia, turning her violet gaze on him. ‘But then so do I.’

‘Who do you mean?’ asked Lucien.

‘You don’t know much about our political system, do you, Luciano?’ asked Silvia. ‘But perhaps you have heard that Duchesse can be succeeded by their daughters. They have to be elected, of course, but no other candidate has ever won against a Duchessa’s heir. And I think that Arianna will make an excellent Duchessa!’

Chapter 18

Viva Bellezza!

Lucien woke with a start. His alarm clock was ringing violently in his ear and for a moment he couldn’t remember why he had set it. Then it came back to him; today was the big day – his check-up. It seemed almost impossible after what he had been through earlier in the year, but he had been so caught up in the events in Bellezza that he hadn’t been giving today any thought, even though he’d had another scan two days before.

Not so Mum and Dad. But they tried not to show their nervousness throughout breakfast and the journey to the hospital. Somehow that made Lucien more apprehensive.

He knew that he felt a lot better than when he was having treatment. He had lost that awful tiredness, which had been replaced by a much more healthy feeling of never having quite enough sleep, because of his night-time activity in Bellezza. And the returns from Bellezza were no longer as agonizing as that first one, when it felt as if he were re-clothing himself in a suit of lead.

But as he entered the swinging rubber doors to Outpatients, all his old fears returned. It was something to do with the smell, he decided. It was a mixture of disinfectant used on the floors, the pink Hibiscrub liquid that the doctors washed their hands in and the distant smell of overcooked cabbage coming from the kitchens. It was irrational but it made Lucien’s stomach bunch into a knot.

As they sat in the Oncology waiting-room, he tried to take his mind off the appointment by thinking about what had happened in Bellezza last night. At first, Arianna had been furious with the Duchessa. ‘You can’t just boss me around the way you do everyone else!’ she had fumed. ‘You’re no longer the Duchessa so I don’t have to obey you. And don’t think it makes any difference that you are my blood mother. You abandoned me. My real mother is the one who brought me up. And she wouldn’t dream of announcing decisions for me without even asking me my opinion first!’

Everyone but Silvia had been embarrassed by this outburst. The Duchessa had just let it run its course, until Arianna collapsed sobbing and exhausted in Valeria’s lap. The two women’s eyes met over the tousled brown curls.

‘What would you have then, Arianna?’ the Duchessa had said, very mildly for her, Lucien thought. ‘Bellezza must have its ruler. And it must stay independent of Remora. You agree, don’t you?’

The curly head nodded in Valeria’s lap.

‘Then who is it to be? I have not been grooming anyone to follow me. It is only recently that I have thought of stepping down. And then these assassination attempts convinced me that I could do more good behind the scenes. You will have to have a Regent – you are too young to rule on your own. But Rodolfo could do that. And I shall be only a few miles away in Padavia, willing to help you whenever you need me. I have only ever wanted what was best for you, Arianna, that was why I had you raised in secret. You would have made the perfect hostage to get me to sign the di Chimici treaty, or anything else they wanted. There will be several people in Bellezza who know the real situation. The people in this room and your grandparents. You will not have to do this alone.’

Lucien remembered these last words as his name was called. He flashed a glance of gratitude at his parents. ‘I’m glad you’re both here,’ he whispered, as they went into the consulting room together.

Enrico was completely unprepared for the visit from Giuliana’s father. Vittorio Massi was a big, broad-shouldered man and he was in a bad mood. He forced his way into Enrico’s lodgings, demanding, ‘Where is she?’ He followed this up with various incomprehensible threats, involving horsewhipping and calling his daughter ‘trollop’ and other even less complimentary names.

Enrico was astonished. ‘Do you mean Giuliana?’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen her for days. Not since before the Duchessa died, goddess rest her.’

Vittorio automatically crossed himself and made the hand of fortune to be on the safe side, but he was not placated. ‘Nor have we,’ he said. ‘She told us that morning she was off to Burlesca for another of her wedding fittings, but the dressmaker has sent to say that she missed her appointment and to ask if she was unwell. So I guessed she had come here to you. Although shame on my family name that she should do such a brazen thing and the wedding only ten days away!’

He raged around the room, but it was clear as day that there was no young woman in it and nowhere to hide one. Enrico felt a gnawing fear. Suppose she had run off with the silver?

‘Has she taken any of her things?’ he asked.

‘Come and see for yourself,’ said Vittorio. ‘As far as I can tell, everything is where it should be.’

Vittorio, who had never liked his future son-in-law, was beginning to understand that he really did not know where Giuliana was. He felt mollified. And then began to be even more worried. If his daughter was not with her fiancé, then where in the lagoon was she?

*

The clearing up at the Palazzo lasted long after the funeral. The Glass Room was totally wrecked, of course, but all the pieces had to be sifted through, first for the grisly business of identifying the Duchessa’s remains, then to look for clues to the assassination, finally to see if there were any pieces of the costly glass that could be saved, repaired or preserved. Only after that could the unwanted débris be carted away.

And there was extensive damage to the rooms around the audience chamber too. The Duchessa’s own private chamber, the Council room, the map room with the two great globes, one of the earth and one of the heavens – all would need repair and redecoration. But no decisions could be taken until a new Duchessa was appointed.

Meanwhile, no one took any notice of Susanna, as she quietly packed and removed her mistress’s personal possessions. People just assumed she was following orders to take bequests to the Duchessa’s heirs, whoever they might be. Caskets of jewellery and silver, fine undergarments and nightwear, books and papers and a precious portrait by Michele Gamberi, but none of the fine dresses and masks that would have given Silvia away in her new life.

Mr Laski, the consultant, had Lucien’s bulging file on the desk in front of him. He spent a few moments refreshing his memory about its contents, once he had greeted them. Lucien could tell that those moments seemed an age to his parents, but he felt quite detached about it. Mr Laski didn’t have his fate in his hands; that was already decided. He was only the messenger.

‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ said the consultant. ‘The MRI scan shows the tumour is growing back.’

Lucien felt his blood go cold and noticed with detachment that that was what really did happen; it wasn’t a figure of speech. He heard his mother gasp.

‘What does that mean exactly?’ asked Dad. ‘Can you get rid of it again?’

‘The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,’ said Mr Laski. ‘Patients always want to know the answer to that and I simply can’t give it. We shall resume treatment, of course, and we hope to gain further remission from the disease, but I have to warn you that this recurrence is a bad sign.’

There was silence in the room while everyone tried to take this in. Lucien thought wearily about more chemotherapy, more exhaustion, losing his fine fuzz of hair again. He wished he could use a body double like the Duchessa. But this was London, not Bellezza, and he knew he had to face up to the treatment himself.

‘Is there anything else you’d like to ask?’ said Mr Laski, gently. Sometimes he hated his job.

‘There have been a couple of times lately when I haven’t been able to wake Lucien up when I’ve called him in the morning,’ said Mum, talking fast to conceal her anxiety about the diagnosis. ‘I don’t just mean he was sleeping deeply. The first time it was only a few minutes. But the second it was nearly half an hour and I had to call our GP. Then he just woke up as usual.’

‘Oh, Mum!’ said Lucien. ‘What does that matter now?’ But Mr Laski was very interested and asked lots more questions and looked into Lucien’s eyes with a little torch.

‘I can’t explain it,’ he said at last, ‘but I’d like you to keep an eye on it and bring him in if it happens again. You can call my secretary for a quick appointment. I’d like to examine him on the day that something like that happens. Meanwhile, I’ll make the arrangements for Lucien to start chemo again as soon as possible.’

There seemed nothing else to say, so they shook hands and left.

Arianna’s head was in a whirl. In a few days she had gone from being a simple island girl, in danger of execution, to the potential next Duchessa. When the Duchessa had first told her about her birth, her emotions had been a mixture of disbelief, resentment and excitement. Now she was contemplating ruling the city she loved and she just couldn’t imagine what it would be like.

About the Duchessa, she still felt the same. She simply could not think of her as her mother. That role would always be Valeria’s, the lovely, squashy warm presence, smelling of baking bread and herbs, who had been with her all her life. The Duchessa was a ruthless, selfish, stubborn, bossy woman, who couldn’t be bothered to raise her own child.

But as the days went by, Arianna began to feel that perhaps she did have something in common with her blood mother after all. Although the thought of becoming Duchessa a bit short of her sixteenth birthday terrified her and the prospect of Rodolfo advising her was scarcely more comforting, she was beginning to be attracted by the sheer glamour of it.

Something similar had happened when she first discovered the secret of her birth: an initial revulsion followed by a fascination with the idea of a life so different from the one she had thought mapped out for her. It seemed a very long time since her highest ambition had been to train as a mandolier.