The Undrowned Child (28 page)

“Try to be sorry for him,” advised Teo in a trembling voice. “That’s what it says in The Best Ways with Wayward Ghosts. And if we’re feeling sorry for him then maybe we won’t be so scared. Er, excuse me … Doge Dandolo … sir …,” she called.

“Who’s that?” thundered Dandolo. “Come here and have your throat cut!”

Teo swallowed hard. Dandolo had not scrupled to send children to slaughter before.

“What do you want with me?” he bellowed, charging past the children, sword aloft. Fortunately the burning brands did not serve as working eyes. He missed them by a yard. The servants dodged wearily, clearly used to the Doge’s irascible temper.

“Make it good, whatever you’ve got to tell,” he ordered, returning for another attack. “May be the last thing you say.”

This time he passed so close that Teo felt the heat of his burning eyes on her face and Renzo heard the whir of the sword near his ear.

“Oh, I’m really sorry for him,” muttered Renzo.

“Sorry for me?” shouted Enrico Dandolo. “A mere wretch of a boy?”

The ferocious old Doge stood dumbstruck for a moment, and then he dissolved into noisy tears.

“No one was ever sorry for me before,” he sobbed in a broken voice.

The children seized their chance. They spoke soothingly of redemption, and of the glory of saving Venice. Enrico Dandolo snuffled and sneezed, but listened attentively. Renzo spoke economically. Teo practiced the dramatic pause. It was one of their better performances. At the end of the speech, he commanded, “Again!”

At the second rendition, he implored, “Mercy!”

By the end of the third performance, he had drawn himself up into a manful posture, and spoke with a voice firm with resolve. “Enough! The Ottomans, you say? Attacking Venice? Kill the Ottoman enemy? That’s what I do best! It’ll be like old times again,” he sighed sentimentally.

Teo dared, “But you’re supposed to show remorse for what you did before.”

“Don’t push your luck, girlie! Would you rather have me with you or against you?” Dandolo drew himself up, and spun around in a perfect circle with three murderously graceful slashes of his sword.

“With us,” admitted Teo.

“And what do you care if I get redeemed or not? I’ll do it, but only if you fetch the Rioba brothers!”

Renzo whispered to Teo, “The statues on the Campo dei Mori.”

“I know.”

The Doge growled, “They were with me in Constantinople. Signor Rioba’s an indispensable lieutenant! Though he would curse the bladder out of a weasel.”

Dandolo had a copy of Signor Rioba’s latest missive poking out of a sleeve of his tunic. He dragged it out and waved it at them. “Now my minions have been reading this stuff to me, and they say there’s a lot of fancy doings going on with the lettering. Tell Rioba to desist immediately. Plain soldier style’s what’s wanted here.”

The thought of explaining the mermaids and the Seldom Seen Press was too daunting to contemplate. Renzo murmured placatingly, “Certainly, Your Greatness.”

As the children rushed off towards the Campo dei Mori, Enrico Dandolo shouted to them, “And tell ’em to bring the camel who’s carved on the wall of the Palazzo Mastelli. That is one wily beast to have on your side.”

After just ten words of their speech, Signor Rioba creaked to life and jumped off his column full of energy, his chin and nose jutting forward. He smoothed out the pleats in his tunic. Then he spat on his hand and polished his iron nose with his fingers. The chalky dust of centuries flew off him when he flexed his sword arm while listening to the children tell their story.

“My brothers, Sandi! Afani!” he shouted at the other Moors, who were already climbing down from their pedestals. “Prepare yourselves for war!”

Signor Rioba had the same gravel-in-honey voice Teo remembered from her first encounter with him all those days—those lifetimes—ago, when she had woken on a tombstone, wandered through the city, come across his silent statue and felt his heart beating under the stone. And Signor Rioba was no more serene than when she’d seen him before. He snarled, “Typical of this wimbling woman of a town! Leaves it to the last lingering minute to summon the folk who can save her!”

Renzo mumbled an apology.

“She’s a beauty, but this giddy city has never known what was good for her,” Signor Rioba grumbled. “Anyway, yes, let me have at him, that Traditore! I’ll fry his kidneys in a pan!”

He tossed imaginary kidneys in an invisible frying pan in his left hand.

“And as for that scullion-brain the mayor … Where is he? I’ve a craving to crack his napper and let out his puddings!”

Between violent parries with a jeweled dagger he’d drawn out of his belt, Signor Rioba demanded, “So where are the saints, then?”

“What saints?” asked Renzo nervously.

Signor Rioba thundered, “Didn’t that dunderhead Dandolo tell ye that we’d need the saints?”

Renzo and Teo shook their heads mutely.

“Well then, I’ll be off to remind the Old Heathen myself. What are ye staring at? Get on with it! Saints! I tell ye! Donato, Nicolo, Onofolo, Taraise, Zaccaria, Anathasios, Marco, Stefano, Damiano and Cosmo. But above all Saint Lucia. Most of her’s in one piece! I’ll go and get the ghost horses myself.”

“Horses?”

“The nobles’ horses from the Cavallerizza, ye lunar fools!”

“Horses in Venice? With all the canals?” Teo asked.

Renzo mumbled, “Once there were seventy stallions near the Mendicanti. Horse riding was forbidden at the end of the thirteenth century. I don’t think we’ll mention that to him, though.”

Teo remembered Pedro-the-Crimp with his horse. That daguerreotype had been taken by the Mendicanti!

Signor Rioba was looking under his tunic. “The old underwear has stood up well,” he remarked. “Get one more battle out of that, I believe. And good work with the Press,” he added in a friendlier tone. “Tell the Mermaids that I am liking the new fonts. They have captured me to a tee.”

“You know about the handbills?” Renzo asked. “You don’t mind that they use your name?”

“Proud as a galleon, actually,” Signor Rioba almost purred.

“But how are we going to find the saints?” called Teo. “Where are they?”

Signor Rioba was at war again in an instant. “Have ye not got a book to guide ye, ye whey-faced girlie?”

“Sorry,” agreed Teo hastily. “Of course I do.”

all through the hours of darkness,

June 12–June 13, 1899

On the cover of The Key to the Secret City Lussa waved what looked like a little white wishbone at them. The book opened to a most peculiar and rather morbid map—tiny images of the organs, fingers and limbs of saints glowed above churches all over Venice: the leg of Saint Tryphon, the foot of Saint Catherine of Siena, the kneecap of someone else.

“There must be seventy of them. Where do we start?” worried Renzo.

The Church of San Geremia lit up on the page, showing a miniature mummy of Saint Lucy.

“Oh dear!” Teo wrinkled her nose. “Must we? I feel like a body snatcher!”

The church doors groaned open as they approached. They hesitated on the doorstep until The Key to the Secret City literally tugged Teo over the threshold. At the back of the church, light streamed from a chapel where the remains of Saint Lucia lay in her glass casket. Above her bloomed trees fashioned from gold, bearing round red lanterns like apples.

Gingerly, they approached the casket.

“Oh!” gasped Teo. Saint Lucy lay with bare feet and hands, dressed in a red robe stiff with gold braid. Her face was covered with a silver mask, as if she’d just been dancing at a Carnevale ball.

“Now what are we supposed to do? How do we wake her up?”

The Key to the Secret City spread itself open to a sheet of music with words. A pair of painted eyes danced over the first notes, encouragingly.

“We’ve got to sing?” asked Teo. Of all the embarrassing things she’d been forced to do since this adventure began—this was surely the worst. Her singing had been compared to a sick toad mourning his mother by a boy at her school in Naples. The most pitiful thing was that the comparison was undeniably apt.

Renzo lifted the book and raised his eyes to the rafters. Heavenly music poured out of his mouth, pure and perfectly pitched.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” breathed Teo.

Renzo paused to say modestly, “Weak swimmer, but I can sing a little, yes. Gondoliers need to, you know.” He returned to his song.

Inside her casket, the skin and bones of Saint Lucy rustled like dry leaves. The saint raised one skeletal foot—with the merest papery covering of transparent skin—and then the other. As Renzo continued to sing, she sat up and hit her head, from which tatters of hair still hung, against the roof of the casket. The mask dropped off, showing the surprised remains of a face with the eyes sewn shut. She lay down again, looking dazed. Then she raised herself more carefully and scrabbled at the glass with her frail, leathery fingers. But the casket was sealed tight.

“Help me!” mouthed the saint. She didn’t really have much of a mouth—it was more like a leathery gash in her face. Renzo, still singing, gestured frantically to Teo. “What are you waiting for?” he hissed, taking breath for another burst of melody.

With the greatest reluctance, Teo approached the rim of the casket.

There were no hinges, no loose seals and no concealed mechanisms to Saint Lucy’s enclosure. The saint tapped impatiently on her window. Then she mimed a hammer crashing down on the glass.

“You want me to smash it?”

The saint nodded vigorously, and curled herself into a ball, ready to shield what was left of her face from the impending fall of glass shards.

Teo seized a chair from the aisle and approached the casket. With all her strength she hurled the chair at a corner of the glass box. Glass rained down and Saint Lucy sprang out, shaking herself like a wet dog.

“I’m ready for war,” croaked the wizened little lady. She immediately knelt on the ground, folded her hands together and started to pray fervently.

“Is this how you do war?” Teo asked.

A clatter of metal and a smell of burning announced a new visitor to the church. The voice of Enrico Dandolo boomed to the rafters. “Aha! I hear you’re making a fine start on rounding up our saints!”

“Go, girl!” he urged Saint Lucy.

“Is that what you wanted?” asked Teo. “For the saints to pray?”

“For the success of our enterprise, yes. Not much of a one for the praying myself,” explained Dandolo. “It’s always better to have the experts in.”

And so Teo and Renzo turned into reluctant body snatchers.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Teo murmured under her breath as they carefully released the delicate relics of the army of saints from their reliquaries in churches all over the city.

When Renzo sang, the pieces of saints grew their missing parts. From the fragment of a tooth or a toe, entire saints appeared. The reincarnated saints were all just a little smaller than ordinary people, and apart from their mummified appearances, they had one other notable quality—their bare feet never quite touched the ground.

On returning to their full form, the saints did the same thing as Saint Lucy. They fell to their knees (an inch above the floor) and prayed for Venice.

One by one, Teo and Renzo led their seventy saints to the garden of the House of the Spirits, where they arranged themselves on pedestals and niches. They took up their rosaries, and bent their heads. Then they prayed. The echo of the House of the Spirits carried the pure sound of their voices and the soothing click of their beads all over the city.

Just as the last saint had been bedded in among the rosemary bushes, from the near distance came a rumbling sound, like thunder but lasting far longer.

“It sounds like …,” Teo began.

“Horses!” finished Renzo. “Signor Rioba has roused the stallions!”

“And here they come!”

The clatter of hooves filled the air. Then splashing drew their eyes to the lagoon.

“And what’s that, in the water? They don’t look like our mermaids. Look at those double tails!”

“They must be the English Melusine. Lussa summoned them with seashells, remember. And those sea horses—they’re called Little Steeds of Neptune, aren’t they? And those creatures with the long pointy heads …”

“The London Sea-Monks and Sea-Bishops!”

The stallions were soon grazing in the orchard, and their warm farmyard smell floated out through the night mist. At the far end of the trees, Teo recognized the tattered coat of Pedro-the-Crimp, who was lovingly tending a dappled mare. He waved at her, and then put his hands together, bowing.

“He’s asking my forgiveness, for frightening me,” she realized. She waved and smiled back.

The children left the saints praying and walked wearily down the stairs to the cavern to report their progress to the mermaids.

“… and the Doges are with us, Signor Rioba and his brothers are on our side!” exulted Renzo.

Teo concluded, “And Enrico Dandolo’s agreed to lead the battle party to the Creature in the lagoon. And Doge Marin Falier says he’s really sorry.”

If they expected praise, rest and sustenance, they were disappointed. Lussa sent them straight back on the streets. “Lorenzo and Teodora, now we need Money. And Lions. You need Money to obtain the Lions. The Book will guide You, Children. Our dear Circus-master Signor Alicamoussa has softened the Beasts’ Attitudes in our Regard.…”

“He’d soften anyone, that Signor Alicamoussa,” remarked a young mermaid longingly.

Lussa silenced her with a look. She warned the children, “Take care. The Lions are known to be somewhat Tetchy.”

And Lussa had turned back to her own work. For the cavern under the House of the Spirits was now engaged in war production. Every surface was covered with jeweled armor, which the mermaids, using tiny tools, were inlaying with slivers of coral. Other mermaids hammered rings into shape.

“Coral protects against Enchantment & Insect Stings,” explained Lussa. “Rings made from the Nails & the Screws of a Coffin or Sea Horse Teeth are said to protect against Drowning, in Your World & Ours. Now off You go!”

She pointed to the stairs, adding, “Feed the Lions well and They shall follow You.”