Read Online City of Flowers by Mary Hoffman - Free Book Online Page B

Titles and honours were of no significance to the sculptor; she saw all people as shapes and volumes, curves and relations between lines. Young and beautiful subjects rarely held much interest for her, since she had left her own youth behind and was now more interested in character and the way it stamped its mark on features and bearing.
    Her last portrait statue had been of young Prince Falco and for that she had had no model. But she had seen the boy on several State occasions and been struck by his delicate beauty. And something underneath that – a kind of steel that made him interesting to her in spite of his youth. The funeral statue of Prince Falco was already attracting visitors to the palace in Giglia, as its fame spread. A slight boy with his hand resting on the head of a favourite hound, his gaze attracted by something in the distance. It was intimate, informal, domestic, as different as possible from the classical statues that lined the loggia in the Piazza Ducale.
    And now the Duchessa. Giuditta grunted, looking at the copious sketches she had made. It was hard, this business of works of art commissioned by nobles. You had to show them still and dignified. She would have liked to sculpt Arianna in full flight, running forwards with arms raised and one foot off the ground, her hair tumbling loose down her back, like an Amazon or a nymph. But that would never do for the ruler of a great city.
    My next statue, thought Giuditta, will be of a peasant in his eighties.
    *
    In Bellezza, a formal ceremony was taking place in the Senate. The Regent, Rodolfo, and his daughter the Duchessa were conferring an honour and title upon a young man.
    â€˜I wish to announce to the Senate,’ said Rodolfo, ‘that my late wife, the previous Duchessa of our great city, was subjected to an earlier assassination attempt, on the night of the Maddalena Feast two years ago. It was kept quiet at the time because it failed and the Duchessa wanted to find out more about who was responsible. Alas, the second attempt was successful, as you know, and we have concluded our investigations without finding definite proof of the identity of those who wished to rob us of her gracious presence.’
    He paused to let the other twenty-three Senators take in the new information.
    â€˜In the need to keep our investigations secret, it was also necessary to keep from public knowledge the name of the person who prevented the first attempt on the Duchessa’s life.’
    He motioned Luciano forwards.
    â€˜But it is now possible to identify him as my apprentice, Luciano Crinamorte.’
    There was enthusiastic applause from the Senate.
    â€˜In token of the great service he did to our city, I hereby release him from his apprenticeship. And the Duchessa, honouring the memory of her late mother, bestows upon him the title of Cavaliere of Bellezza.’
    Luciano knelt at Arianna’s feet and she put over his head a purple satin ribbon with a large silver seal with the city’s emblem of a mask embossed on it.
    â€˜Arise, Cavaliere Luciano Crinamorte,’ she said in her clear, musical voice. ‘Serve your city well and it will always serve you.’

    The three teenagers sat in Sky’s flat, quite exhausted. They had talked themselves to a standstill. Each was now wrapped in private thoughts.
    For Sky it was still all too fantastic to take in. Yesterday he had been an ordinary Barnsbury student, living next to the school in a little flat with his sick mother. Today he was a time and space traveller, living over an alchemist’s lab from more than four centuries ago. And his mother seemed to be getting better; could these two things possibly be linked?
    They had pooled information and Georgia had told him that Luciano had always felt well in Talia. And Falco had taken the enormous step of becoming Nicholas in order to be healed. Yesterday Sky had arrived in a place of healing, which also produced perfumes. What did that