The Undrowned Child (37 page)

Il Traditore’s voice rose joyfully. “They shall no longer be living, on ground floors or anywhere. They shall be corpses floating out to sea, while Venice, my Venice, is shipwrecked in her own slime.”

Teo remembered the maps of Venice that were printed by the Ca’ Dario Press. Bajamonte Tiepolo had always planned to hurt and humiliate Venice by half drowning her. The rest of the city, chastened by the dreadful punishment, decimated by the plague, would be obedient to him ever after.

“Now, I shall be ready in one hour, and I shall leave this palace in a gondola, for the lagoon. Such a lovely day for a wedding, do you not think? My bride, Venice, awaits me.”

Between the massive shoulders of the Brustolons, Teo glimpsed her comrades down by the Grand Canal. A collective shiver went through the mermaids and the gondolier children as they took in the faceless words of Bajamonte Tiepolo, which boomed out through the air like the ranting of an angry and wicked god.

Il Traditore continued smoothly, “In thirty minutes I desire to see my own bones waiting in the gondola below this palace. The girl Maria shall accompany me. Should my enemies make trouble, then my private retinue of sharks shall make a light supper of her. I presume there is someone here who’d prefer for that not to happen?”

Maria’s parents? Teo thought of their cold faces. Maria, tears rolling down her cheeks, was clearly remembering the same thing.

“And in case you think the girl Maria a necessary sacrifice, I have other hostages too. My dear fishwives, when was the last time you laid your pretty green eyes upon your Undrowned Child, eh? Or your Studious Son? Yes, they too are currently enjoying my famous hospitality, and their lives will be the price you pay if you fail to cooperate.”

Teo heard a howl of “Lackaday!” go up among the mermaids across the water.

“Yes indeed, your Teodora Gasperin, your Lettrice-delcuore, your Vedeparole, came all the way here to my humble home to give me back my Almanac,” gloated the voice of Bajamonte Tiepolo. “Sweet of her, no? There shall be time enough for me to print the contents of her body when I return in triumph from my wedding. I fear, good people, that her release may not be a part of the bargain. I have a fancy to disprove her title, the Undrowned Child.”

He added, “You may have your Studious Son back in the end, though I cannot be sure how gentle my Brustolons shall be with him. I’m delighted to offer them some sport, after so many years of suppression. And they do most comprehensively hate a good Venetian, which I understand he is.”

Renzo flinched. Teo reached for his hand. She felt a constriction in her chest and a wave of hateful sickness all over her body.

“What a coward!” she whispered fiercely, as if that might make her feel better. “Always someone else to do his dirty work.”

The Brustolons surrounded them. Droplets of varnish fell down their black shoulders and their arms opened wide.

a moment of optimism, June 15, 1899

“Don’t worry,” whispered Renzo to Teo.

“Don’t worry? You’re crazy. We’re done for.”

“No!” said Renzo. “If we can only get you out of here, I’ve come up with a way to dispose of Bajamonte Tiepolo forever.”

“Simple, then. Why didn’t I think of that? Of course we have nothing to worry about.”

“I mean it … listen to me.”

“No, listen to them. The winged lions are roaring outside the window.”

The children held their breath and listened. The lions flew back and forth between the mermaids and Bajamonte Tiepolo. Graphic threats and insults were exchanged between the two sides. Thirty tense and silent minutes passed, and there was a shout below. The bones had appeared in a gondola moored right in front of the palace. They were still wrapped in chains.

“To save our lives, they’re giving in to him,” moaned Teo.

Bajamonte Tiepolo himself strode into the torture chamber. Even after hearing his voice, it was a bodily shock for Teo to see him again. He was wrapped in his white-furred cloak, for he still had no real skin, except for the hand. It was only an almost visible, almost touchable fury that held his bones together in that unformed mass. He pushed back the hood of his cloak and looked around. His tongue flickered like a lizard’s. His blank white eyes were rimmed with fire. Renzo, who had not seen Il Traditore’s face before, took a step backwards, swallowing hard.

Their captor threw open a window, focusing an ornate telescope on the skeleton in the boat below. He bellowed, “You are not above trickery, fishwives, though you pretend to be so honorable. Let us make certain that you have brought my rightful remains.”

Then he howled, “Why do you present my bones in ignominious chains! And to show them to me in such a position, with the legs crossed like a woman!”

Bajamonte Tiepolo examined every inch of his bones with the telescope. He recognized all the scars of his murder back in 1310. Indignantly, he counted off each item of damage, the old splinter of a sword in his left leg, the little corner of his right elbow damaged by a stiletto dagger, and the broken bones in his neck where the state assassin had strangled him. A scream rose out of him, a scream of outrage and self-pity. “Look! This is what Venice has done to me. I shall avenge every single way that Venetians hurt me! Venice shall be made to feel my every abasement!”

Bajamonte Tiepolo threw down the telescope and turned away from the window. Maria whimpered, which was a mistake, for it drew Il Traditore’s attention to her. Terrified at his poisonous glance, she started to hobble away, but the chain fell out of her pocket and Bajamonte Tiepolo stamped his foot down on the trailing end. Tethered to the spot, Maria turned back to look at him and promptly fainted away. Two glaring Brustolons placed themselves between the unconscious girl and Renzo and Teo.

“Well, that makes it easier for me,” remarked Il Traditore, scooping Maria up. “But first, a little treasure hunt, I think.”

With the limp Maria tucked under his arm, Bajamonte Tiepolo made a circuit of the room, pulling gold and jewels out of secret crevices in the wall. Trapdoors opened in what seemed like smooth mirrors. Secret hinges swung apart to reveal stashes of silver. At the sound of a low whistle, a suit of armor in the corner of the room creaked to life. It followed its master stiffly, holding open a decorated coffer into which Bajamonte Tiepolo threw the treasure. When the mirrored chamber was stripped, Il Traditore could be heard moving through nearby rooms. He shouted gleefully, “Doge Gradenigo’s men were not such skillful looters as my own!”

A few minutes later he returned, the suit of armor staggering under the weight of treasure. Bajamonte Tiepolo laughed. “There’s more gold to be found in the lower regions of the palace. Don’t want it getting drowned.”

He raised his single hand to the Brustolon statues and pointed to the children. Then he shook his head and pointed to the door, making the sign of a throat being cut. A dozen pairs of white eyeballs rolled fiercely under brows like hairy caterpillars. Bajamonte Tiepolo swept out of the room.

Renzo shouted at the top of his voice, “Thank goodness for that!”

“Shhhh! Not that much to be grateful for, if you ask me,” Teo murmured, looking at the Brustolons.

Renzo cried, “The statues are deaf! I suppose Brustolon never carved inside their ears. Didn’t you notice? Il Traditore spoke to them with gestures. They can’t hear us now.”

“But they are three times as big as us, Renzo. If we move, any of them could kill us both with one hand.… They’re great clumsy creatures, though,” she speculated.

Renzo pointed to her pockets, and his own. The children were still carrying some bottles of Venetian Treacle.

“Oh! I see what you mean. Time for some of that famous Venetian charm?”

The children now stood smiling at the statues with as much cherubic innocence as they could paint onto their faces.

The Brustolons creaked their enormous heads to one side, bemused by these beams of girlish and boyish happiness. Meanwhile Teo and Renzo quietly emptied bottles onto the floor until the liquid spread in a pool on the polished marble. Those bottles were very small, yet infinite amounts of liquid kept coming out of them. The Brustolon statues, whose mystified eyes were fixed on the children’s inexplicable smiles, noticed nothing.

“Are you ready?” asked Renzo.

“No, but I’ll just have to pretend I am,” said Teo.

“Now! Jump!”

Teo and Renzo leapt over the puddle of liquid and sprinted for the doorway. They did not wait to look behind them but they could hear what was happening. The statues clattering after them had slipped in the sticky Treacle and were unable to get up. Again and again, they crashed heavily to the floor. There was the sound of wood cracking, and the smell of sawdust billowed through the air.

The children reached the corridor.

“Which way? We don’t want to run straight into Bajamonte Tiep—”

Renzo did not finish because one statue had slid out into the hall on its belly and grabbed his leg in an iron grip.

“Go on!” shouted Renzo, as Teo turned back to help him. “Don’t be an idiot! It doesn’t matter about me. We’ve got to get you out of here.… Oh!” Even as Renzo spoke, the statue was dragging him right back into the room of mirrors and torture instruments. The torso of another statue appeared in the doorway, and a mighty wooden hand reached out for Renzo’s other leg.

“I can’t leave you!” Teo sobbed.

“I’ll die anyway if you don’t. We’ll all die. Run!”

Teo ran blindly down the dark corridors of the Palazzo Tiepolo. She ran until she was out of breath. It seemed that she had been running for days, and yet still she had not seen a window or a door that looked familiar. She sprinted forward, and then paused, choking on the stale air. She was sure she had heard someone cry out nearby.

Another scream. And this time, unmistakably Renzo’s voice! Teo had run in a complete circle and was back near Bajamonte Tiepolo’s torture chamber.

“The Brustolons are torturing him, the monsters!” Teo saw a red glare behind her eyelids and felt a fiery pain in her heart.

Teo was too angry to pause and think up a safe or clever plan. She charged straight into the room. She glimpsed the backs of all the Brustolons gathered around Renzo, trying to force down on his head a strange donkey-eared helmet with a cruel lever for the tongue. Renzo’s arms were pinioned. He was kicking and biting ferociously. His teeth made no impression on the Brustolons’ wooden skin, but his violent wriggling stopped them from pushing the helmet down over his face.

That was all Teo had time to see. She had forgotten about the pool of sticky Venetian Treacle on the floor. First one leg jerked behind her and then she was hurtling flat on her stomach through the Treacle across the room towards the fireplace, straight at branding irons glowing white-hot in the fire.

The Brustolons, distracted by the squirming Renzo, had not noticed Teo’s arrival and lightning progress across the wet floor. Renzo, however, saw her. Their eyes met for the briefest moment. He did not give her away. He just inclined his head violently towards the fireplace. Above his head she saw the words written in his unmistakable writing. Wood burns.

“Wood burns,” thought Teo, “when you set fire to it.”

Half a second later Teo reached the fireplace. She threw her hands in front of her to grip the stone surround and stop herself from landing straight in the flames. Her face blazed with the white heat of the three branding irons. She gripped one of the glowing handles and flung it at the nearest Brustolon. Pain seared her hand, and she felt the flesh open up where the handle burnt into her skin. The statue immediately exploded into flames.

Teo plunged her other hand into the fire and grabbed the second branding iron, throwing that across the room at another cluster of Brustolons. And the third followed immediately after. Five of the Brustolons were now aflame, filling the room with thick black smoke. They lumbered around, crashing into their companions, and setting fire to them as well. The children were forgotten. Within seconds all the Brustolons were alight.

It was then that the agony of her burnt hands first came home to Teo. She held them up to her face. Blackened skin swelled over deep open cuts. But all she could think was, “Did I burn Renzo too? Is he on fire?”

Renzo appeared at her side, the donkey-eared helmet hanging off the side of his head. He took both of her hands and plunged them into the big puddle of Venetian Treacle. The relief was instantaneous. Renzo flung the helmet among the smoldering remains of the Brustolons.

Outside in the corridor, they leant against the wall, panting. Renzo’s face was suffused with shame. “Teo, it was horrible when they burned. They could not scream, but they writhed around in agony. I felt like a murderer.”

“They wanted to hurt you.”

“Teo, Venice misused them. You were right, what you said back there. They could only right their wrongs by violence. They can’t talk, so they can’t negotiate. Bajamonte Tiepolo only continued the tradition of exploiting them as if they were dumb beasts.”

“Could they have learnt to talk?” Teo mused. “Could we have taught them?”

“Now is not the time … we have to get out of here.”

Halls, stairwells, vast chambers stretched off in all directions. They hesitated on the threshold of a vaulted dining room. Teo groaned, “It’s a maze! We could run straight into Bajamonte Tiepolo! Or end up back with the Brustolons!”

“Teo!” Renzo tugged her hand. “Use your memory. Concentrate. Pretend each room is a page of a book! You can do it.”

Teo closed her eyes. For the first moment all she saw behind her eyelids was blackness. Then she forced her mind to walk calmly through Palazzo Tiepolo, corridor by corridor, retracing their steps from the moment they entered the building.

She opened her eyes. “This way.”

The barred gate that had dropped down behind them was open now, as Il Traditore must have made his way past it on his happy treasure hunt. Pausing at every doorway, looking fearfully over her shoulder, Teo led Renzo past the murderous kitchen and the ripped tapestries and out the open door to the Campiello del Remer. They skirted around the edge of the palace and crept down to the waterside.