The Undrowned Child (24 page)

“Could you,” Teo asked, “tell us how …?”

The Gray Lady explained that she had been appointed by Doge Gradenigo back in 1310, to make sure that neither Bajamonte Tiepolo nor his followers could get their hands on the Almanac.

“So you are …?”

“Yes, I approach my six hundredth birthday imminently.”

Renzo said politely, “May I say that you look remarkably elegant on it?”

The Gray Lady threw him a flirtatious glance, and delicately licked the underside of one paw. “You may.”

Teo thought, “You don’t need to keep pouring on the charm now, Renzo.”

Then she realized that it was not an act. Renzo was simply being himself, being a Venetian. Compliments and elegant behavior were part of it, even in the midst of a crisis. Still, it had been going on too long! There was a real and urgent danger to deal with. She interrupted, “How did Doge Gradenigo get hold of the Spell Almanac?”

“You children know the ssstory of the conspiracy, I assume? That on that drrrreadful day, Bajamonte Tiepolo, Querini and Badoerrr set off from different pointsss in the city? But that Doge Gradenigo had been forewarned about the attack, ssso he wasss ready?”

Renzo and Teo nodded.

“What you may not know isss that the Doge had guardsss hidden at the back of the Tiepolo palace. As soon as Il Traditore left, the Doge sent hisss men in. While Bajamonte was burrrning the Rialto Bridge, unbeknownst to him, the Doge’s soldiers were rrran-sacking his own home. The Spell Almanac was among the booty. Doge Gradenigo immediately guesssed that the book could be verrry dangerous if Il Traditore got his hands on it again. So it was hidden firssst at the Doges’ Palace and then laterrr here.”

Teo asked, “Wasn’t it rather obvious to put the Almanac into the Archives of Venice? Surely it would be the first place Bajamonte and his friends would look?”

“It is a worrrthy question, little girl. In fact, it was deliberate. You sssee, anyone interested in Bajamonte and his Almanac would inevitably come here, and then we would know who was still sssupporting him. And indeed we have seen off a couple of, as it were, ‘copycat’ conspirrracies that way,” the Gray Lady said smugly. “Most recently in 1822 and in 1829 …”

Teo interrupted, “Has Bajamonte Tiepolo himself been here, or his spirit, or one of his servants?”

“Il Traditore himself has not set foot here, because he would sussspect a trap. He’s not yet strrrong enough to face the spells that Doge Gradenigo borrowed from his own Almanac to protect its hiding place. But our enemy has sssent plenty of his accomplices in search of it over the centuries. Human sacrrrifices, so to ssspeak. It’s easy to recognize them, the unfortunate crrreatures—he’s usually deformed them in some way.”

Renzo asked, “Have you had anyone recently, since all the bad things started happening in Venice? I mean, apart from the Brustolons turning up?”

“Ugly brrrutes! Useful for sharpening claws but otherwise they just clutter up the library. But they don’t frrrighten me. Inanimate wood.”

“They can move a little,” Teo pointed out.

“Oh yes, just for a second. I hear them crrreaking sometimes. Quite pathetic! And the cleaner is tired of mopping up all that nasssty leech blood. But you refer to other guestsss courtesy of Il Traditore? Yes, in fact, yesterrrday. A poor silly little girl who had been turned into a dwarf. Her bluff for getting in was even more risible than yoursss … she claimed she was rrresearching dwarves in Venetian history! I let her wander into the fourteenth-century corridor and then rrroughed her up a little with my nailsss, and she fled. Sniveling. I felt quite sorry for her. I imagine Bajamonte won’t be ssso gentle when he hearrrs of her failure.”

“Maria!”

“Oh, you know about her? Sssomeone ought to put her out of her misery.” The Gray Lady sniffed casually, flicking the tail which, in her excitement, kept escaping from her dress. “It’sss the only way.”

“Not the only way,” protested Teo. “The mermaids told us that … people could redeem themselves. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made more than a few myself.” Teo squirmed silently at the thought of the mermaids in their cavern, still hoping that their existence was safely secret from Bajamonte Tiepolo.

Renzo asked, “Can you tell us where the Spell Almanac is? The mermaids think there might be something inside it that will help us. Anyway, it is no longer completely safe here. Bajamonte Tiepolo is getting stronger. He has a hand now. The one with the emerald ring. He might dare to make a raid.”

The Gray Lady didn’t look at all afraid, merely miming the long scratch of one of her elegant fingers. She added airily, “I have waysss of keeping him out. And frrrustrating him if he getsss in here.”

“So where is it, anyway?” Renzo persisted. “The Almanac?”

“You’rrre looking at it, young man,” the Grey Lady replied.

“We’re looking at you,” observed Teo.

The Grey Lady preened. “Exactly so, my dearrrrr—Doge Gradenigo ordered his court magician to make use of the Spell Almanac itssself to transfer the book to a living thing. Bajamonte was of courrrse a master of magic, though he preferred the baddened kind. He’d found out ways to make his crest work as a hypnotic device, and he was becoming tolerably accomplissshed in transferrring inanimate substances into the fabric of living beingsss. So the court magicians made use of one of those spellsss, and recruited me, the Doge’s favorite and most courageous Syrrrian cat, to carry the burden. For centuries I lived among the sssecret papers in the Doges’ Palace. Then Napoleon moved all the archivesss to these hallsss by the Frari Church, so I came with them.”

“You mean you are the Spell Almanac?”

“The spells are tattooed on my ssskin beneath the fur.”

Teo asked shyly if they might look. The Gray Lady extended a paw and the children gently parted the soft gray fur. Very faintly on the skin, they could see long lists of incantations with magical symbols.

“Bajamonte Tieplo would never guesss it,” said the Gray Lady proudly. “And anyway, I transforrrm into a cat whenever he or any of his minionsss come near. No one thinks anything of a librrrary cat, who stops the rrrats from gnawing the books. Least of all Bajamonte Tiepolo, who hatesss cats.”

“Does he really?” asked Teo. “The mermaids said that cats disliked him. Because they hate a dictator.”

“Indeed. Cats make verrry poor minions.”

“The words are in different languages,” Teo observed, looking closely at the spells. “And different kinds of handwriting.”

“This Almanac,” explained the cat, “is not the original work of Bajamonte Tiepolo. He was never crrreatively brilliant. As a governor of Venice’s prrrovinces, he collected baddened magic from arrround the Mediterranean Sea and put it all together.…”

“Like an anthology of poems?” asked Renzo.

“Like a verrry bad anthology of poems. The poets were the witches who sssmeared the door handles of innocent people with plague spores, or those who grew evil familiars from rock cryssssstals.…”

“Familiars?”

“Immortal servants who were unutterably loyal because they were crrreated, not born. Bajamonte Tiepolo has made himssself Dark Elves and the Folletti. They are a ssscurvy mixture of insssect and wicked fairy.”

“The mermaids showed us those creatures in a turtle mirror,” breathed Renzo.

Teo said proudly, “The mermaids say that we are their ambassadors.”

“Forgive me, but a Napoletana?” The Gray Lady could not quite keep the scorn out of her voice.

Renzo explained, “In fact, Teo was born here, but she was orphaned and brought up in Naples. Now she is living between-the-Linings for a while.”

“Ah, poverina.” Teo wasn’t sure if the Gray Lady was sorrier for her being orphaned, living between-the-Linings or having to live in Naples. “What were your real parents, my dearrrr?”

“I don’t know. The only thing I know about them is what I read on their tombstone. Just their names and the date of their death,” whispered Teo. It was hard to keep the self-pity out of her voice.

“Well, we can at least give you that,” offered the Gray Lady kindly. “We are in the Archives now. Everything that’sss happened in Venice is rrrecorded here. What were yourrr parents’ names? We shall consult the ledgersss.”

“Marta and Daniele Gasperin.”

The Grey Lady jolted her head. “The Gasperins? My dear Gasperins? My poor lost friends! Che tragedia! Young lady, do you realize that yourrr parents were both scholarrrs and librariansss, and that they worked here in the Archives—with me—for most of theirrr all-too-short livesss?”

Teo sank to the ground. The cat rubbed against her sympathetically.

“It was their dessstiny, poor creatures,” continued the Gray Lady sadly. “You sssee, for nearly six hundred years, every generrration of Gasperins has supplied a new pairrr of guardians for the Spell Almanac of Bajamonte Tiepolo. Yourrr parents defended the Archivesss from the incurrrsions of his underlings many times—and they paid for it with theirrr lives, in the end. As will you, little girl, if you come out frrrom between-the-Linings. Forrr Bajamonte Tiepolo will find you then, and I frankly don’t care a great deal for your chancesss if he doesss.”

Teo flinched. “Do you know what happened the night my parents died?”

“Your parents were sssafe with me inside the Archives. But it isss my theory that the night they took you to be chrrristened, sssomeone out in the lagoon must have said sssomething about the Archives, or mentioned that they worked here. The wordsss would have floated on the air and must have been hearrrd by the malignant ssspirit of Bajamonte Tiepolo beneath the wavesss.…”

The Gray Lady was actually weeping now. “Marta and Daniele never knew my trrrue identity, of course, but they were kind friendsss to me, whether I appeared as a woman orrr a cat. Sometimes I thought that they, and Professor Marìn too, had guessed that the woman and the cat werrre one, but they never sssaid it aloud. It was too dangerousss. They knew it might compromise me. And them.”

“So Professor Marìn from the bookshop also knew about the Spell Almanac?” asked Teo.

“Of course. He was another of the secrrret guardians. They are called the Incogniti, the Unknowns. Your parrrents, of course, werrre Incogniti, young lady.”

Teo interrupted. “Does that mean …?”

“Of course, you and yourrr young man are Incogniti too. There are others … the nunsss at the House of the Spirits, a rrrather delectable cirrrcus-master by the name of Sargano Alicamoussa has come to my attention recently.”

Renzo whispered, “Lussa talked of a circus-master!”

“But it’s sssafer if the Incogniti are not known even to each other. Professor Marìn’s bookshop has always been a meeting place and a kind of post office for people who needed to exchange information secretly. He has always kept a stock of living booksss that could pass messages more discrrreetly than humans.”

“That’s how the mermaids found me,” explained Teo, remembering how the old man had talked mistily of the scholars who used to come to his bookshop. The professor must have known her parents! Perhaps he had recognized something of them in her? That was why he had been so kind to her?

“The good professor has not been to sssee me lately. I worry …”

“I am afraid,” quavered Teo, “that your friend Professor Marìn has also paid for his involvement. He too shall be avenged,” she added, with an edge to her voice.

The Gray Lady looked at Teo with dawning respect. “I can see now why you were called back to Venice. I see great deterrrmination in you. Of course, you will have received certain giftsss, to help you with your tasssk. Are you, like your parents, a Vedeparole? You see wordsss written in the air?”

“She is,” confirmed Renzo, struggling to keep the envy out of his voice. “And a Lettricedel-cuore.”

“She reads heartsss too? Ah, the Undrowned Child of the old prophecy! So you, young man, must be the Studious Son of the sssame!” The Gray Lady bowed low to the two children and offered each of them a velvet paw to press in turn, keeping the scimitar nails well inside. Close up, Teo heard the Gray Lady purring loudly.

She was quivering to ask the cat about her parents, about their lives, what they had worked on in the Archives, where they had lived. She dared only one question.

“If you please, might I just enquire … what were my parents like?”

“Like candles, joyful like the sssun, tender, clever, quick. Borrrn for each other. When they brought their firssst child to show me—how extraordinary! Now, we cats are the earth’s tenderest mothers. I had never seen a human child adorrred like that. It was as if that little baby was quite luminousss from being gazed at with love.”

Teo felt as if she’d been given the most wonderful unexpected gift, a little piece of happiness that she could pack up and keep by her for the rest of her life.

But the Gray Lady was already guiding them to the door, and holding it ajar with her paw, so that Venetian moonlight spilled in on the stone floor.

“Be safe, children,” she mewed. “And fassst. So much dependsss on you two now.”

nearly midnight, June 11, 1899

Outside the Archives, Teo put her hand on Renzo’s arm. “I know,” he agreed. “We need to tell the mermaids about the Gray Lady. And the Baja-Menta ice-cream. And the plague.”

They set off at a fast trot towards the House of the Spirits. It was not long to midnight and the next day’s newspapers were arriving in the newsstands. The children paused in their tracks when they saw the headlines in the Gazzettino: THE WINGED LIONS, DRAMATIC CHANGE. There were photographs of before and after.

All over Venice, while Teo and Renzo had lain on their beds the previous afternoon, the sculptures of the winged lions had suddenly changed shape. No one saw it happen, but by teatime a general transformation had taken place. The tamest, sweetest lions now bore the fiercest expressions. The ones who had always been fierce were now opening their mouths to roar. The winged lions all had one thing in common. The books on which they rested their paws no longer stood open, showing the words of God to Saint Mark, Peace to you, Mark my Evangelist. Instead, in every case, the book had snapped shut, showing just a blank stone cover.

In old times, the newspapers explained, this meant that Venice was at war.