City of Masks (27 page)

He never wrote anything about not seeing his friends or his family because his mind still shut down whenever he started to think about them. But gradually, with the help of Rodolfo and his new foster-parents, Luciano had begun to see that there were pluses to spending the rest of his life as a citizen of Bellezza. One of the best things was that he already had friends here, good friends. He had a comfortable home with Dethridge and Aunt Leonora, who were now married.

And his work continued as Rodolfo’s apprentice, which he had to admit was better than any job he could have hoped for in his old life. There was talk of sending him to university in Padavia when he was a bit older too. He realized that he was one of the most privileged people in Bellezza, close friends with the young Duchessa and her Regent. Best of all, of course, was that he had a life of any kind at all.

And he was quite rich in his own right, with the silver he had dredged up from the canal and the reward the last Duchessa had given him for saving her from assassination. The Duchessa! He was sure he had glimpsed her at the ball, dancing with Rodolfo.

That was quite typical of her. Although she now lived in Padavia, with Susanna and Guido Parola, the reformed assassin, as her confidential servants, she sometimes slipped back quietly into Bellezza, revelling in her new freedom to roam the streets unattended, picking up gossip which might prove useful in the ongoing struggle with the di Chimici. And to see Arianna.

It was a strange family, Luciano reflected, finishing his ice, where parent didn’t live with child and husband lived apart from wife. But he had to admit that the three of them got on better than many families he had known in his old life. The longer she was Duchessa, the better Arianna seemed to understand her mother. And, although she was still somewhat afraid of her new father, she respected him and trusted in him completely.

And yet, when her State duties became too much for her, the young Duchessa escaped back to the islands. She wasn’t allowed to go alone, so Luciano went with her and Barbara, her waiting-woman, and a boatload of guards followed them. They ate cakes with Arianna’s grandparents on Burlesca, and huge fish dinners with Valeria and Gianfranco and the gentle fishermen she still thought of as her brothers on Torrone.

‘I would pay to know what you were thinking,’ said Arianna now.

‘What? Oh, yes, “a penny for your thoughts” is what we say,’ said Luciano.

‘Who’s we?’ teased Arianna. ‘You’re a Bellezzan now.’

‘I know,’ said Luciano. ‘That’s what I was thinking about.’

He touched the talisman which hung on a thong round his neck. It was a pressed white rose, encased in resin, something which Rodolfo had done for him. He had used it three times now to get back to his world. But he had only glimpsed his parents because stravagating was much harder now he was Bellezzan and he had been able to stay only a few minutes. Rodolfo had promised him it would get easier. He sighed.

‘Listen!’ said Arianna.

She held his hand as the bell of the campanile tolled midnight in the silence. At the last stroke a great cry went up from the crowd in the square as the bonfire was lit: ‘It’s going, it’s going, Carnival is going!’

‘Luciano?’ said Arianna inquiringly. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Luciano’ was how he thought of himself now; Lucien belonged to the past, for all he was a twenty-first-century boy. Luciano lived in Talia. He had even had his sixteenth birthday here, a few weeks after Arianna’s. Remembering hers, he smiled.

The Duchessa snorted in a very unducal manner. ‘You can be so maddening!’ she said. ‘What now?’

‘I was thinking of your first mask,’ said Luciano.

It was Arianna’s turn to smile. As Duchessa, she had had a very formal birthday celebration, culminating in the ceremonial fastening on of a white silk mask by Rodolfo, as her father and Duke Regent. How she had hated it! Thereafter she had had to wear a variety of elaborate masks whenever she appeared in public.

She still hated them but gradually had come to see that they had their uses. It was hard to see what someone was thinking behind a mask, even though you could see their eyes. That didn’t mean she had given up the idea of changing the law, but she accepted Rodolfo’s advice to go cautiously with the Senate. It was enough that they had passed her new law about girls being mandoliers.

For now, girls of sixteen would continue to wear masks until they married.

‘Are you getting used to it then?’ asked Luciano. ‘That silver lace one is really pretty, you know.’

‘Mmm,’ said Arianna. ‘Not exactly. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’ll be wearing a mask for long.’

And she gave Luciano a smile that was pure Duchessa.

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A Note on Stravagation

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William Dethridge, the first Stravagante, made his first journey to another dimension by chance, as the result of an alchemical accident affecting the rules of time and space. This happened in 1552, when Dethridge was officially teaching mathematics at Oxford University, but spending a great deal of time on his private study of alchemy.

The copper dish which he was holding in his hand while trying to commute base matter into gold, became his talisman enabling him to travel between the two worlds and was a reliable key to that travel for nearly quarter of a century.

But although Dethridge always arrived back from his journeys to Talia in his own time, the gateway he had accidentally opened was very unstable. Since his first journey, other Stravaganti, from the Talian side, have found themselves arriving in much later periods than Dethridge’s Elizabethan England. Rodolfo left the notebook talisman in the twentieth century, for example.

All talismans work in both directions but must come originally from the opposite dimension to the traveller’s. That is why Lucien needs a new one after his death in our world. And for this reason, his Talian notebook would not actually be usable by the di Chimici, but they don’t know that. Dethridge’s copper dish is the only exception to this rule. Of course, once Dethridge has been ‘translated’, which happened when he died in his own body in England after fleeing in terror to Talia, his journeys to our world, if undertaken, would be subject to the same temporal instability of the gateway.

When in Talia, Lucien speaks and understands the Talian language, although he doesn’t know Italian in his own world. Dethridge’s language sounds old-fashioned to him, and only him, because they are both English, born about 450 years apart. And this is still true even after they have both been translated to Talia. For consistency I have kept Dethridge’s words in Elizabethan English throughout, even when Lucien is not present.

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A Note on Talia

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The country of Talia is both like and unlike the Italy of this world. It exists in a parallel dimension and diverged hundreds of years ago from the Italy we know. The significant moment came during the dispute between the brothers Romulus and Remus. In the history of our world, which at that stage is not fully distinguishable from its mythology, Romulus won the contest and founded the city of Rome. In Talia, Remus was the victor and founded the city of Remora, capital of the Reman Empire and situated roughly where Siena is in our world.

One change leads to others and there are marked points in Talia’s history, particularly in relation to Anglia, which is what they call our England, which differ from Italy’s. The most obvious one is that Anglia never split from the Reman Church. Henry the Eighth of Anglia had a son by his only wife Catherine, who became Edward the Sixth but died young and was succeeded by his two full sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom died childless. There is no equivalent of the Church of England.

Talia is in some ways more advanced than Italy, in that in the sixteenth century it enjoyed Strega and Prosecco, and had cultivated the potato and tomato, as well as importing coffee and chocolate. However, it did not have tobacco.

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Acknowledgements

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Many thanks to my three consultants, Dottoressa Silvia Gasparini of the University of Padua, Abele Longo, my Italian teacher, and Edgardo Zaghini of the Young Book Trust. Thanks also to Stevie and Jessica for being such a good audience. And to Scottish Widows, whose windfall took me back to Venice for a quick reality check.

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Mary Hoffman

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Mary Hoffman has written more than ninety books for children and young adults. She also reviews regularly for the
Guardian
and other newspapers and journals. She blogs weekly at www.maryhoffman.co.uk, where you can also find her tips on writing.

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Mary’s passion for Italy is well known and she still studies Italian once a week in Oxford. She has three grown-up daughters and lives with her husband and three Burmese cats in a converted barn in the Cotswolds. And yes, she does have an Aga.

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www.stravaganza.co.uk

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www.maryhoffman.co.uk

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www.bloomsbury.com