City of Ships

by Mary Hoffman

  Filippo was glad to be directing this operation; he had felt useless during the fighting and he was worried about Isabel. She wasn’t in the crow’s nest and he hadn’t seen her for ages. But it was hard to keep track of time during a battle. How long had it been since the signal to fire had been given? It was impossible to see the sun to gauge how far it had passed over the sky since noon.

  But gradually, as the galleasses continued to fire on all the Gate ships that had not closed in for a melee, and the liquid fires were put out as soon as they started, the battle began to turn the Talians’ way.

  Ay Adem in his brilliant robes was fired on and killed. Admiral Gambone, raising his visor so that he could shout his orders more clearly, was shot through the eye by an arrow; he died before hitting the deck.

  Adem Dolmay, commanding the left flank of the Gate people, led his squadron south of the Talian fleet, aiming to encircle them and attack from behind. But the Captains of the Santa Maddalena and the Silver Dolphin led the Talian right squadron chasing after him, thinking he was fleeing. And their heavier guns did such destruction to Dolmay’s ships that the threat was averted.

  *

  Up on the battlements, things were not going so well for Classe. The Duke was everywhere, trying to encourage his men and helping his General by carrying orders from one part of the defences to another, as if he were a young ensign and not the city’s elected ruler.

  The Giglian army had made several breaches in the wall and it was only a matter of time – what with those and the men on the scaling-ladders – before they would be inside Classe’s defences and hand-to-hand fighting would begin. There had been no battle of that kind in Classe within living memory.

  It was to put such thoughts out of his mind that Duke Germano rode back and forth under the walls. He was on his way to the easternmost part of the city’s defences, when he was deafened by the sound of cannon and a ball punched through the stones of the wall. His horse shied, terrified by the noise, and threw his master out of the saddle. The horse bolted back to the centre of the city where he knew his comfortable stable was; he had no experience of being a warhorse.

  Germano lay in front of the breach, winded and concussed by the fall. And then a second cannon-shot, aimed at the same spot, found its target and massive stones from the rift bombarded his inert body.

  *

  The Tiger and the Duchessa limped back into port, gradually followed by all that remained of the fleet. It would be many days before it was known how many ships and men had been lost. But their side had carried the day!

  Isabel stumbled ashore, dazed and confused. How could this be victory? The harbour was still full of the sickening debris that was the aftermath of a sea battle. She was not inured to the horrible sight even after her two swims through the bloody water with its flotsam of human remains. The men who were still alive were worse than the corpses and body parts. Very few Talians could swim and they were begging, screaming to be rescued before they went under for the last time. There had been nothing she could do for them. Some had been pulled out of the water only to die on board of their injuries and be thrown back into the water to bob about among the living and the dead.

  Arianna had found Luciano on the side of the harbour and they embraced, wet and filthy as they both were. They clung on to each other with all the relief of two people who had not expected ever to see one another again. Then they saw Isabel and called out to her.

  ‘It was brilliant, what you did,’ said Luciano. ‘I think you really did save the day for Talia. If we hadn’t known how to put those fires out, we’d have lost most of the fleet.’

  Isabel could only nod; he might be right. But just now she felt too numb to react. She turned towards the sea. The remnant of the fleet was coming back in as organised a formation as it could manage. But there was no sign of the Raider’s Revenge. Had it sunk? Was Andrea still alive?

  As they walked back towards the trading part of the harbour, they found a crowd gathered round a messenger. Someone recognised Luciano and called out to him.

  ‘Cavaliere! Cavaliere! The men on the walls need reinforcements. The Duke is dead!’

  The three young people were stunned. While they tried to take this news in, they were joined by Filippo, who miraculously had acquired no further injuries in the battle. He was the one who galvanised the weary arquebusiers, pikemen and archers into action. Then he and Luciano rounded up the least injured as they came off the ships and, after a swift swig of spirits which Filippo ordered all round, he led this impromptu and very wet army up to the walls.

  Luciano went with them but ordered Arianna and Isabel to stay behind.

  ‘Keep her here, Isabella,’ he said. ‘Even if you have to rope her to a chair!’

  But Arianna was not about to fight another battle today. The two women went to Flavia’s house, where they were fussed over, given hot baths and a change of clothes. It was still only early evening; the sea battle had taken five hours.

  *

  Up on the walls the ragtag army of Classe couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the fighting men of the fleet coming to stand alongside them.

  They were just in time. Giglian soldiers were pouring in through the breached walls and the cannonfire had paused so that the foot soldiers could do their work without danger from their own side.

  Grand Duke Fabrizio, in his silver armour, sneered when he saw the men ranged against him: a makeshift army mingled with a disreputable collection of armed men smeared with blood and clad in sodden battle-kit.

  And then he realised what that meant. These were the men who would have been fighting at sea with the Gate people. The battle must be over, but where were the conquering Gate people, who were to deliver the city to him?

  ‘Get back, Your Grace,’ said his General, not too politely. He had sized the situation up immediately and seen that the defending forces had been almost doubled by these reinforcements.

  And there would be no help coming from the sea.

  The land battle went on for another couple of hours. There had been nothing like it in Talian history. For fighting men to come straight from a sea battle into an encounter on land was unheard of. But these men were desperate; they had lost their ruler, although their enemy didn’t know it, and now they hurled themselves at the Giglians, shouting ‘Duke Germano!’ as their battle-cry.

  Filippo was everywhere, not allowing his limp to stop him from urging and encouraging his raggle-taggle army. And whenever he stopped, he was with the men firing on the enemy.

  The arquebusiers and archers fired down on the Giglian forces from the walls, while the pikemen and sword-and-buckler men fought bravely at close quarters. It was too much for the invaders and, after losing many men, the Giglian General sounded the retreat. He didn’t consult Fabrizio or even care if he lost his rank as a result; he was not prepared to sacrifice more men to what was obviously a lost cause.

  The Battles of Classe were over.

  Charlie didn’t have to cover for Isabel. She was down to breakfast at about the average time for a teenager in the school holidays and her parents were at work anyway. Charlie was in the kitchen making toast.

  ‘Put some in for me, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Bel!’ he said. ‘What happened? Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just hungry. But it was bloody awful. I mean, we won – I think – but it was literally bloody.’

  ‘And you’re not injured? I mean there as well as here?’

  Isabel shook her head. She had been drenched and buffeted and had used every ounce of energy she possessed to do what she had to do in Talia but she was unhurt, at least in body.

  Her mental state was different. If only the memories of sights and sounds and smells didn’t travel with her from the other world to this!

  Charlie came and put his arms round her.

  ‘Toast,’ she said, blinking back the tears, ‘and butter, and marmalade.’

  ‘It shall be yours
, little sister,’ he said.

  ‘Duke Germano is dead,’ said Isabel. ‘And probably Andrea too.’

  And then she really lost it.

  Flavia hurried down to the harbour as soon as Isabel had stravagated back. She left Arianna sleeping in a comfortable bed, with strict instructions to a servant to get her anything she might need but not to let her leave the house. But the merchant couldn’t stay at home herself, not while in doubt about what had happened to Andrea.

  The smoke was slowly clearing from the harbour but that only made the gruesome sights in the water more visible. Ship after ship came back into port, even the Santa Maddalena and the Silver Dolphin, who had chased down the left flank of the Gate people’s fleet.

  Rumours were rife of the number of casualties on each side. And there was no sign of a black galleon. Flavia helped at the improvised dressing station that sprang up near the quay.

  An innkeeper gave his downstairs room over to the enterprise, providing free food and drink to the wounded and the helpers. Numbers swelled as the survivors of the land battle joined them. But no man in black with silver teeth was among them.

  While women tended to the injured, the men of Classe set themselves to the hideous task of dragging bodies and limbs from the harbour. They would continue to drift in for weeks but for now they were laid on trestles and washed and their jaws bound up. A trail of wooden boxes came from the coffin-makers to give the victims their last home.

  But the most elaborate was saved for the battered body that was borne into the centre of town on an improvised stretcher by six soldiers. Citizens came out into the streets to pay their respects as Duke Germano was carried to his palazzo and to his Duchessa, widowed along with so many women of Classe that day.

  Isabel went back to bed after her toast and slept through till mid-afternoon. After a shower, she felt almost human. Charlie told her that her friends had called but he had sent them away, telling them to come back at teatime. On cue, the doorbell rang and the Barnsbury Stravaganti were all there, together with Ayesha.

  Perhaps her presence encouraged Charlie. Anyway, he stayed to hear Isabel’s account of the battle.

  ‘So that’s it,’ said Isabel. ‘There’s so much I don’t know. But I think I must have done what I was supposed to in Talia.’

  ‘Are you going back tonight?’ asked Sky. He was massaging her hand, which he had taken during one of the most difficult parts of her story.

  ‘I don’t think I can help myself,’ said Isabel, conscious of his touch. ‘I need to know the rest of what happened. Particularly to Andrea.’

  ‘I can’t believe that the Duke died,’ said Georgia. ‘It seems so unfair.’

  ‘I know. And that’s what it’s like in a real war,’ said Isabel. ‘It’s not like a computer game where if you have the right skills you’ll win. There might be other people I know who have died.’ She put her head in her hands.

  ‘And it doesn’t matter if you don’t know them,’ said Nick unexpectedly. ‘Somebody did. From what you say, there must have been hundreds – maybe thousands – killed.’

  ‘And not just Talians,’ said Ayesha. ‘The Gate people who died are just as dead. And they had families just like the people on your side.’

  Isabel was somehow glad that she hadn’t said ‘our side’. She was pleased to have two more neutral people present.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘People’s nationality doesn’t seem to matter any more when there’s only bits of them left.’

  ‘And you did all that?’ asked Charlie. ‘Swam through that – that horror scene – twice?’

  ‘If I’d known what it was I’d have to do in Talia,’ said Isabel, ‘I think I’d have left that talisman where I found it.’

  Sky squeezed her hand.

  ‘But when I actually had to do it,’ said Isabel, ‘it wasn’t too bad, because it was the only thing to do. And I was the only one who could do it.’

  When Luciano got back from the walls, bloody and exhausted, he automatically went to Flavia’s house. The merchant wasn’t there but it wasn’t her he was looking for.

  Arianna was just waking up. Flavia had given her one of her sleeping draughts and she felt back to normal. But she gave a little gasp when she saw Luciano.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, forgetting she didn’t know that expression. ‘It’s not my blood – at least not much of it. I’ve got a few small cuts – that’s all.’

  ‘And the battle?’ asked Arianna, hugging him, all filthy as he was.

  ‘Grand Duke Fabrizio has a nice new reason to hate me,’ said Luciano, smiling. ‘And to hate Filippo. He was wonderful. He got a horse from somewhere and took Germano’s place.’

  ‘Is he “Oo-kai” too?’ asked Arianna.

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Luciano. ‘Just tired, like me. Do you think Flavia would mind if I had a bath?’

  Arianna immediately became all Duchessa and ordered Flavia’s servants around, getting them to heat water and fetch towels and scented oils.

  After half an hour’s soak and a glass of Bellezzan red, Luciano was feeling much better.

  ‘I suppose I should go down to the harbour and see what the news is,’ he said, but even as he tried to get up all his limbs screamed at him to stay where he was.

  ‘I absolutely forbid it,’ said Arianna imperiously. ‘You are my Cavaliere and I am your ruler and I say you must stay here. And let me remind you that you made me stay behind when you went off playing soldiers on the city walls.’

  ‘I give in,’ said Luciano. ‘Your word is my command and I am your miserable slave. But can I at least tell Rodolfo about the battle?’

  *

  It was late evening before Flavia found her son. He had been brought in on a stretcher, pale as death. His left leg stopped at the knee and there was a terrible smell of blood and tar about him. But he was alive – just.

  The Raider’s Revenge was at the bottom of the sea, holed by the Gate people. But Andrea’s remaining men had saved him, lashing him to a spar and two of them floating him back to land, hanging on to their own pieces of broken ship. One of them was Salvatore. They had been swept off course far to the south of Classe and got ashore there. They had found a smith to strike off the pirate captain’s mangled lower leg and apply hot tar to the stump.

  Then a cart had taken them all back to Classe. Andrea was delirious by then, muttering about unquenchable fire and Isabella – and Ay Adem coming to get him.

  ‘The Gate people’s leader is dead,’ Flavia told him, soothing his brow. ‘Our fleet won the battle. Isabella was very brave.’

  She had him moved to her house and washed and laid in clean sheets and she nursed him herself, through the fever and out the other side when they both wept for the mutilation of his body.

  ‘But you are alive,’ she said. ‘And so many are not. Duke Germano was killed.’

  Andrea immediately cursed himself for being an ungrateful dog and tried to get up to see Germano’s widow, to pay his respects. But it was too soon.

  He fell back, raging at his own weakness.

  ‘He was going to give me a pardon if we both survived,’ he said.

  ‘I have it here,’ said Flavia, showing Andrea a piece of vellum with the ducal seal. ‘Germano wasn’t the sort of man to wait to fulfil a promise. And I’m sure he knew there was a strong likelihood he wouldn’t return.’

  ‘He was a good man,’ said Andrea. ‘May Classe find another even half as good.’

  *

  The Duke’s funeral was attended by the rulers of all the city-states not governed by the di Chimici. Though they too were represented in a way by Princess Beatrice, who came from Bellezza with Arianna, Rodolfo, Luciano, Silvia and William Dethridge, who all wanted to say their farewells to a great ruler.

  At the service in the cathedral, Rodolfo delivered a tribute, which he began by making an announcement.

  ‘I know that Duke Germano would wish all those gathered here to know the final outcome of the sea battle of Classe,’
he said. ‘So I shall start by saying that, in spite of being outnumbered, the combined fleets of Classe and Bellezza, under the leadership of Admiral Borca, defeated and routed the Gate people’s fleet.’

  If they hadn’t been at a funeral in a church, the congregation would have cheered.

  ‘The Talian fleet lost four vessels to the Gate people’s fireships,’ continued Rodolfo. ‘And a further ten of our ships were lost and twenty more seriously damaged. We sank twenty Gate ships and captured thirty more. But a further sixty of their vessels are damaged beyond any hope of immediate repair. And our brave captains captured thirty more of their ships as they fled. Only sixty of the Gate people’s ships reached Ladera and only thirty of those ships rowed back to their own country.’

  Isabel, sitting near the front of the congregation, thought it sounded like the football scores on TV. But without any mass communications, she supposed this was how news was disseminated in Talia.

  ‘Many brave men died on both sides in the sea battle,’ said Rodolfo, ‘including Admiral Gambone of Bellezza. We lost two thousand men. The Gate people lost seventeen thousand.’

  The terrible figures reverberated round the hollow cathedral.

  ‘And then in the further battle for the walls,’ said Rodolfo, ‘two hundred more men. Among them the man we are here to mourn, Classe’s beloved Duke and leader, Germano Mariano.’

  Isabel scarcely heard the rest of the speech. She was still stunned by the thought of all those dead men. And they were all men; Arianna had been the only other woman who had fought in the Battle of Classe. It was hard to believe, looking at her now in a sombre purple robe and black velvet mask. Her shorn head was covered by a black lace veil.

  One of those men might have been Andrea, thought Isabel. He was there in the cathedral, pale and thin, leaning on Flavia’s arm and using two sticks. Isabel could hardly bear to look at him. He was so unlike his old piratical self.