The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“And what can you say?” Irritation prickles Signor Prandi’s voice. “What, pray, is that in your hand?”

“A letter, sir. Addressed to you.”

The messenger hands it over quickly, before the Italian can snatch it, or make disparaging comments about his mistress.

“Hmm…” Tearing open the seal, Prandi flicks a glance over it. “Not signed, I notice.”

“She… Since the matter of the Royal Mail, sir…”

The Italian’s private letters have been intercepted in the past: an absolute scandal to the British public who had assumed their personal correspondence was sacrosanct. But then, Signor Prandi is a known spy, and a foreigner.

“Don’t worry.” Reading the note more carefully, he adds: “Do you know anything of this favour she wishes me to grant?”

A pause, then: “No, sir. I do not.”

But that hesitation told its own story. There is a flash of gold, as Prandi hands over two sovereigns. The messenger gulps, then secretes the coins in his waistcoat’s watch-pocket.

“I only… The bairn’ll need a wet-nurse, sir, if it is to survive.”

“A child? Ah, I see. Very good, my friend.”

“Sir.”

The messenger gives a stiff nod, then leaves the small snug, closing the door behind him.

After a decent interval, to make sure the messenger has left the club, Fortunato Prandi sits back in his overstuffed armchair, and uses the silver point of his cane to ruffle the green drape at the small room’s rear.

“You can come out now, Aldo.”

“Thank you.” The drape is pulled aside, and a lean-faced man steps into the room. “This message… It’s from the countess?”

“The very one.” Prandi taps his teeth with the envelope’s edge. “And I wonder what kind of trouble she’s in now.”

But they both heard the messenger’s comment: there’s a newborn child involved. The Countess of Lovelace has been touched by too many scandals in the past; one more would be disastrous.

“The countess knows”-Aldo Guillermi’s face is tightly drawn: his long hair and wide shoulders bespeak an athlete’s grace, but his body is fairly vibrating with tension-“of my sister’s misfortune.”

How else would anyone associate an Italian spy with a wet-nurse? For Guillermi’s sister Maria, so young and beautiful, has but recently lost her firstborn to a raging fever no English doctor could identify, no apothecary could cure.

“We spoke,” says Prandi, still in English, “in general terms, no more. The countess knows of your sister’s plight, but not her identity.”

“That is good.”

For a moment, as the two men face each other, it is not certain where the power in this room really resides. Then Prandi’s glance slides away. Though he is nominally senior in the republican movement, his forte is solo, diplomatic espionage: moving among the drawing-rooms of the rich and the good, gleaning gossip, recruiting admirers. It is Aldo Guillermi who is the soldier, used to bearing the responsibility of command.

“Mazzini,” he says, “has mixed feelings about the current furore.”

Guillermi pronounces the last word in the Italian way.

“The republican cause”-Prandi shakes his head-“can only benefit.”

Both Mazzini, the true figurehead, and Prandi are in exile: the public face of agitation. Prandi’s work as a spy has been both hindered and helped by his now-public identity. Mazzini proved, to most intelligent readers’ satisfaction, that the British Government caused their personal letters-his and Prandi’s-to be opened, by the supposedly untouchable Royal Mail.

Hence this handwritten note from Ada, which reads:

Dear Prandi. I have a more important service to ask of you, which only you can perform… and goes on to arrange a rendezvous, without specifying the new favour’s nature. Ada identifies herself anonymously, thus: I am the person you went with to hear Jenny Lind sing. I expect you at 6-

“Y our mother,” adds Prandi, as Guillermi finishes reading the unsigned note, “has raised more funds for the cause.”

“It will be good to see her again.”

Guillermi’s mother is French, and France has been home to many for whom Italy is too hot a place to be in these troubled days. More than anything, Guillermi wants to remove his sister from this cold benighted country.

“Since Maria lost the child”-his gaze turns bleak-“I have feared for her sanity. And since her husband Higgs seems lost at sea…”

“She had best set sail for southern France, where your mother can take care of her.”

“Yes.” Guillermi’s hand goes to his hip as though to rest upon a sword-hilt which is not there. “That would be best.”

“And the Countess, it seems, needs a newborn child to disappear.”

Guillermi looks at Prandi. The overweight spy looks unduly pleased with himself.

“How can you be so certain? There might be another explanation.”

“Ah, my friend. It is not the first time”-with a flashing grin-“I have caused a member of her family to vanish.”

OXFORD, 2001

Gus was twelve in the December when she took home that end-of-term report card: the last report before everything changed.

A withdrawn child, the summary read, who needs to interact more with other children. It was the kind of report which Louisa had come to expect.