The Undrowned Child (21 page)

It was still very early in the morning when a desperate Teo followed them to the square of San Marco, where the torture instruments still hung on the lampposts. Workmen had been despatched to remove them, but they had been unable to cut through the chains. Then the mayor had lit upon a happy idea. Posters were now affixed to each entrance to San Marco:

NEW ATTRACTION!

OPEN-AIR CHAMBER OF HORRORS.

5 LIRE ENTRANCE FEE.

Teo’s parents paused on the edge of the square to watch a workman fixing a newly painted sign to the wall. Teo read over her mother’s shoulder:

INCREDIBLE NEW EXHIBITION BEGINS JUNE 15!

“So what is this new show about?” Teo’s father asked the workman.

“Something about some chap called Baja—Bargaminty Tiepolo,” the man answered. “Whoever he is.”

“Whoever he was, presumably.” Teo’s father laughed. “Name like that, must have been some kind of clown.”

Under the arches above the square an ice-cream trolley had set up for business.

“Would you care for a gelato, Leonora?” asked Teo’s father.

It was clear that Teo’s mother felt far too wretched to be hungry. But for her husband’s sake she exclaimed cheerfully, “Oh yes, lovely! Vanilla, please.”

But it seemed that the vendor, a pallid human skeleton, had only one flavor to sell. The gelato was a vivid emerald green that glinted in the sun.

“That looks refreshing,” said Teo’s father. “Mint flavor, I dare say.”

“That sounds nice,” thought Teo, drawn to the strong sugary smell that came from the trolley. Pillowy mounds of cool green gelato were piled up in metal trays. Teo squeezed herself between the people queuing up to buy it under the beating sun. Some were coming back with empty paper cups for second helpings. They had an aggressive glint in their eyes.

“I don’t think so, after all, Alberto,” her mother said, uneasily. “It’s too crowded. Let’s just go back.”

“Leonora, look!” called her father. “This ice-cream is to promote the new exhibition.”

“What do you mean?” asked Teo and her mother in one voice, except that Teo’s was unheard.

“See the sign on the side of the trolley? It’s called Baja-Menta gelato. Don’t you see? Menta as in mint.”

“It’s certainly going down a treat. Look at those people trying to get more,” exclaimed Teo’s mother. “They’re going mad for it! We should make ourselves scarce.” They hurried away.

The queue had turned into a clamoring mob. Intent on gelato, adults were pushing and elbowing and trampling little children. Teo burrowed among the customers. As she reached the front of the crowd, a strong whiff of the ice-cream caught her. It made her dizzy, like Maria’s perfume did. There was a sour undertow to that sweet smell. That green! It was exactly the same shade as Bajamonte Tiepolo’s emerald ring. The trolley was emblazoned with the Tiepolo crest! Now that she stood within two feet of the trolley Teo was chilled by a cold gust of air. Was the ice-cream vendor a ghost? From the look of him, he’d be the ghost of an experienced poisoner, an in-the-Slaughterhouse ghost who was happy to continue with his crimes in death as in life.

“Stop!” she screamed at the eager throng. “Don’t eat that ice-cream! It’ll poison you. It’ll do something to your minds. Just leave it alone!”

None of the adults heard a word, of course. But the little gray pigeons of San Marco seemed to understand Teo’s plight. Normally they waddled complacently around the square, but now they took to the air, wheeling around the customers of the ice-cream trolley, flapping and pecking.

No one took the slightest notice of Teo or the pigeons. Even the children had eyes only for the green gelato. Teo took a little girl’s hand and pleaded, “Please, don’t eat any more. You’ll be terribly ill, I’m sure you will. For your mother’s sake, don’t …!”

But the little girl snatched her hand away and pushed closer towards the trolley. She already had green gelato smudged all around her mouth.

Teo cried out, “It’s as if you’ve all been enchanted by this ice-cream!”

She sat on the steps of San Marco and put her head in her hands. A dull rumble forced her to look up. The tall brick Campanile was shaking like a blade of wheat in the wind.

Lussa had told the children that the Creature’s poison was decaying the poles that held up the city. Was this the beginning of the end? People screamed with terror as the pavement shook beneath them. In two seconds, the vast square emptied.

So it was that Teo, unimpeded by the usual tourist hordes, witnessed the dreadful sight of the Campanile swaying from side to side. The bells of the poor clock tower clanged tonelessly. The ground groaned, and the tower seemed to sigh. The brickwork opened up, the steeple and its gilded angel dropped down through the center of the tower. Then the whole building telescoped neatly into itself, collapsing into a jagged heap from which rose a vast cloud of dust. Café tables overturned, glass shattered, pigeons tumbled through the air and a dusty cat streaked away.

When the dust settled, the angel was lying with broken wings on the threshold of the basilica. Then a vast wave crashed into the square, filling it with foamy, dark water dotted with top hats, torn parasols and the baskets of the flower-sellers. Teo backed up the stairs, splashed and buffeted.

After a moment’s stunned silence, soaked Venetians huddling at the edges of the square burst into tears, keening, “Il povero morto,” “Our poor dead one.”

From the back of the basilica came a terrible sound of low, unearthly screaming.

“What is it?” a petrified tourist asked. “Where is that coming from?”

An old Venetian flower-seller, her face wrinkled like the sea, called out, “That will be the old graveyards, dearie, the campi dei morti, around the city. And that is the sound of all the skulls buried beneath this earth since the Campanile was first put up a thousand years ago. They are mourning il povero morto too.”

Teo clamped her hands over her ears and fled.

And the people around the edges of the square clutched their cups of green ice-cream, seeking comfort in its sweet taste. Their eyes were glazed with craving. They pushed it into their mouths greedily. The more they ate, the more they wanted.

nighttime, June 10, 1899

The Key to the Secret City had insisted that their journeys must be by night. That was Teo’s excuse for waiting the whole of the rest of the day until she went to tell Renzo all that had happened. With the sound of the screaming skulls echoing all around the city, and her own spirits so desperately low, it was easier to stay indoors with a pillow over her head.

When a wan moon finally rose, Teo quietly left her room. She listened briefly at her parents’ door. They were discussing her in low, sad voices. But their typewriting machine clicked away. They were working on the next day’s lecture, even while they grieved.

Teo made her way to Renzo’s house. The screaming skulls now sobbed quietly but inconsolably for the Campanile, making the air throb with their pain. Teo’s mood matched their misery. She was, she realized, a very different girl from the one who had arrived in Venice just two weeks before, tougher and about a hundred years older. She would have given so much just then to be one of those ignorant top-hatted tourists sitting in cafés complaining equally hard about the price of coffee and the screaming of the skulls, all absolutely ignorant of Bajamonte Tiepolo, the Creature, the ancient prophecy and the true danger to Venice.

She was Venetian; she belonged at last, but to something so fragile that it might not even exist very soon—it did not seem fair.

“Fair and unfair are for children,” Teo reflected, arriving at the courtyard in front of Renzo’s house. Her plan was to climb the wisteria vine right up to his room and find out what he was up to.

But it seemed that Teo was not alone in wanting to know Renzo’s whereabouts. She watched from a shadowed doorway across the narrow alley as two boys arrived at the door—not very nice-looking boys, who cuffed and nudged one another while waiting for their knock to be answered. A pretty woman with an anxious expression opened the door.

“Where’s Renzo?” one boy asked. “Teacher sent us, didn’t she? Why did he miss school today? And yesterday, isn’t it?”

They shifted from foot to foot, not quite meeting her eyes.

The woman seemed upset. “You’re out very late, boys. Poor Renzo has a fever. I think he might not be going to school for a while.”

The boys gave each other nasty smiles that did not reach their eyes. They swaggered off, passing close by Teo. They didn’t look clever. They looked mean. Mean and stupid hates clever, as Teo had reason to know. So these were the school bullies come hunting their prey. Well, given his studious habits, Renzo was hardly likely to be in with the fashionable crowd, was he?

She made her way round to the back entrance to the house. The craggy wisteria vine climbed up to the first floor, offering a sore trial to someone as clumsy as Teo. What choice did she have, though? Gingerly, she pulled herself up to her full height, clambered onto the thick stalk, and then shimmied ungracefully along the winding branch until she found a room, entirely lined with books, where she could see the unmistakable outline of Renzo lying in his bed. He looked small and vulnerable. She tapped at the open window to warn him of her arrival, and climbed in.

Strangely, Renzo made no motion to get up, or even raise his head. His eyes glittered: he was awake. His blankets were weighed down with open books.

With all the drama, Teo had forgotten her own cold. Renzo had probably been suffering from the same sore throat and snuffling nose.

The first thing he said was, “You look very nice, Teo. Have you done something with your hair?” His voice was strained.

“I listened to what you said the other night.”

“I was worried you would take it the wrong way. Very decent of you not to.”

These pleasantries were ridiculous, but Teo was so embarrassed to be in Renzo’s bedroom that she could not stop herself gabbling. Renzo, on the other hand, seemed like a count or a duke receiving a minion in his bedchamber.

Teo turned to the more serious matters. She explained her news in whispers, with Renzo exclaiming aloud about Maria’s betrayal, the Baja-Menta ice-cream and the exhibition at the square at San Marco.

“But Teo—I don’t understand one thing.”

Renzo’s question was the one that Teo dreaded. “Didn’t Maria’s words look different? You know, when you saw them above her head?”

“I didn’t notice properly.” Teo sighed. “I was bamboozled by her perfume. Lussa said it was like a drug.”

“I see.” Renzo did not rush to support that theory.

When she told him about the fall of the Campanile, he turned his head aside, unwilling to show his tears. “That I knew. I heard the rumbling. My mother told me.”

“We’ve got to go and tell the mermaids. I’ve been thinking about it all day. Don’t you see, at least Signor Rioba could warn the people against the ice-cream,” Teo concluded. “They could print new handbills tonight and get them out by the morning so that no one else buys any more Baja-Menta.”

“The mayor and the minister for tourism and decorum will simply scoff at that. No one will listen.” Renzo’s voice was painfully hoarse. “I’m more concerned about Maria, anyway. What’s she up to? What if she told Bajamonte Tiepolo about you and where the mermaids are?”

That thought haunted Teo too, but she still could not bear to confront it. Anyway, Renzo wasn’t the only one wanting explanations.

“And why,” she hissed, “didn’t you get out of bed and come to find me? I’m sorry I wasn’t there the first day at the usual time, but honestly, I was sick too … you shouldn’t sulk with me.”

In answer, Renzo lifted his collar and showed Teo such a hideous sight that she had to put one hand over her mouth so as to hold in the scream. On his neck was a throbbing lump the size of a small apple. It was black.

“What is that?” All this time Renzo must have been in agony, and he had listened to her patiently, without saying a word about his own problems.

Renzo pointed to the books spread out on his bed. Each of them was open at a page about the epidemics of the black death in Venice.

“Renzo! Do you think you have the plague?”

“The bubonic plague. Otherwise known as the black death. And this,” he said heavily, gesturing to the swollen lump on his neck, “this is a plague bubo. And so’s this one on my leg. Remember the prophecy in The Key to the Secret City?”

“Come to life are Black Death’s ancient spores.”

Renzo nodded. “I think the Creature carries the spores of the black death in its tentacles, and I believe that Bajamonte Tiepolo plans to infect all of Venice with it. That’s how he will empty the city of Venetians. Listen.”

Renzo struggled to pick up one of the heavy books. He moved a lamp closer to him, and read: “ ‘The spores of the bubonic plague can live for centuries. Symptoms usually appear two to five days after exposure to the source of infection. The onset manifests in chills and a high fever.’ ”

Teo thought of her own fever, and flinched. Renzo continued, “ ‘Swollen lymph nodes called buboes appear in the armpit, neck or thigh along with the fever—’ ”

“Do you also …?” interrupted Teo fearfully.

Renzo nodded, and turned back to the book. “ ‘The buboes may fill with pus and turn black. Then death is usually not far away.’ ” His voice trembled.

“What can we do, Renzo?” Teo remembered what the doctor had said, that the hospital was full of children with mysterious high fevers. The little boy who had run into her room—he’d had a swelling on his neck, just like Renzo’s. The doctor had checked her neck and arms—now she knew why. Lussa had explained that the plague was already starting to spread among the children of Venice. And the mayor, of course, was covering it all up.

Renzo read from the book in a monotone: “ ‘More than sixty percent of untreated people die. The mortality rate is higher in children.’ ”

“We have to get help! We’ll get a doctor! No, we’ll go to the mermaids! They’ll fix it with that chili jelly. Or the book! The Key will tell us where to go for help, I’m sure of it. Can you walk?”

“I haven’t tried yet. I didn’t want my mother to see me out of bed. I told her that I had a bad head and an upset stomach—so I had to go without dinner—anyway, it worked and she hasn’t seen the buboes.”