The Undrowned Child (44 page)

What is true, and what’s made up?

Bajamonte Tiepolo

Renzo’s account of Bajamonte Tiepolo is accurate historically, though a little drawn out. After all, it’s Renzo who is telling it.

The Tiepolo family palace at that time was in the Campiello del Remer at Sant’Agostin. But in this story Bajamonte’s palace is at another Campiello del Remer, on the Grand Canal, where there is today a hotel called Palazzo Lion Morosini.

Lussa’s account of the Column of Infamy is also true. One of Bajamonte’s henchmen knocked it down soon after it was put up. That accomplice paid for his vandalism dearly—he wasn’t as noble as his patron, so his punishment was to have a hand cut off and his eyes put out, and to be perpetually banished from Venice. The damaged column was re-erected by the church of Sant’Agostino, sold to a nobleman in 1785, and finally ended up in the garden of an antiquarian’s villa by Lake Como on the mainland. The column now belongs to the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and is stored in their depository.

The Column of Infamy was inscribed with the words:

Di Baiamonte fo questo tereno

E mo per lo so iniquo tradimento

S’e posto in chomun per l’altrui spavento

E per mostrare e tutto sempre seno.

(“This land belonged to Bajamonte

And now, for his iniquitous betrayal,

This has been placed to frighten others

And to show these words to everyone forever.”)

Although the column is no longer to be seen at Sant’Agostino, there’s a stone to mark where it must have stood. The place where Bajamonte Tieopolo’s palace once stood is now called Calle Bajamonte Tiepolo.

Bajamonte Tiepolo died in exile. Or so it is said.

The Butcher Biasio

In the early fifteen hundreds, a sausage-maker called Biasio Cargnio had a shop in the Santa Croce sestiere of Venice. He was famous for a kind of stew known as sguazeto, which was very popular with the local people.

Then children from that part of the town began to disappear. And one morning a workman found in his bowl of sguazeto the top part of a small human finger, complete with fingernail. He took it to the authorities.

Biasio, or Biagio, as he is also known, confessed to having kidnapped and slaughtered children to make his stews. He was beaten with a horse-tail from the prison to his shop, where he had both his hands cut off, and was tortured with pincers all the way back, to be finally decapitated between the two columns of San Marco, and cut into quarters that were hung at various crossroads of the city. His house and shop were razed, and the riva where he had lived was from that moment onwards known as Riva di Biasio.

The Bubonic Plague

The Black Death ravaged Venice several times, killing vast numbers of the population. The city was particularly vulnerable because its people lived at close quarters, and because merchant ships arrived daily from plague areas around the Mediterranean. Plague never completely disappeared. At the time this story is set there was a terrible outbreak of the disease in Asia, and it had only just been discovered that the bites of rat-fleas were the means of transmission of the plague bacillus to humans.

In fact, Venetian Treacle was not very efficacious against the plague.

Venetian Treacle and Venetian Apothecaries

Theriaca, otherwise known as Venetian Treacle, was held in high esteem by the apothecaries of Europe for centuries. Venice was famous for its Treacle. It was exported as far away as Arabia and India. Its manufacture was closely regulated to the point that the making of it became a kind of performance art, with the apothecaries in their robes mixing some sixty-four ingredients in front of health magistrates and a fascinated public. The ingredients included ground-up vipers, and apothecaries kept their own tanks of snakes. According to the Oxford English Dictionary of 1693, “The chief use of vipers is for the making of treacle.”

Venetian Treacle was said to be good for every ailment, including seasickness, although originally it was intended as an antidote to poison. Treacle-manufacture flourished wherever poisoning was rife. Another thing that would have made Teo unhappy: the state of Venice was once famous for using poison to dispatch its enemies.

The Venetian apothecaries began as spice-shops and so were originally called spezier. These fragrant establishments often had very picturesque names, such as Golden Head at Rialto, the Ostrich at Ponte de Baretteri, Adam and Eve in the Frezzaria, the Salamander at San Pantaleone and the Column and a Half at San Polo.

Some, like the Madonna at Campo San Bartolomeo, are still in business but under modern names: in this case the Morelli Pharmacy.

It is said that the grooves one can see in the pavement outside some of the old apothecaries in Venice are from the Treacle cauldrons used for the public displays of concocting the drug.

A cheaper form of Treacle, without vipers, was made in England at one time, and went by various names, such as Poor Man’s Treacle, the Countryman’s Treacle, London Treacle and the Churl’s Treacle. It was supposed to be full of garlic.

The Brustolons

Andrea Brustolon (1662–1732) was indeed a famous sculptor in Venice. His rather terrifying statues can be seen in Ca’ Rezzonico and other noble homes. Sadly, it is also true that there was at one time a thriving slave trade in Venice, and equally true that this fact is not much mentioned by the historians.

The Language of Moles

Fake facial moles were used as makeup during the glory days of Venice. You can still see some streets by the name of Mosche, or “Flies”; these beauty patches were made of velvet and backed by a sticky gum. And it was true that there was a secret language of moles, though like any secret language, it was never quite fixed in certainty. Many people used to think that you could learn much about a person’s character or destiny from the position of their natural facial moles. Such information was to be found in books like Every lady’s own fortune-teller, or an infallible guide to the hidden decrees of fate, being a new & regular system for foretelling future events, published in London, 1791. This book warned, for example, that people with a mole at the corner of either eye would be liable to a violent death, whereas a mole on the nose meant good luck. But a mole on the belly meant that the person was addicted to sloth and gluttony. Of course, there is no scientific basis to any claim that a mole beside the nose indicates a murderer. The author has one there herself.

Mermaid Language, Curry and Parrots

Many sailors’ slang words had their origin in India and were spread from there throughout the British Empire by British sailors, as was the taste for spicy exotic foods. The Rialto Market in Venice was famous for its spices from the East.

Sailors often used their long voyages to train parrots to speak. They did so by hiding behind a mirror and talking to the bird, which would then think another parrot was conversing with it and be encouraged to mimic in reply.

Mahogany Mice

This is an old sailors’ term for very large brown cockroaches. The scolopendre of this story are really to be found in Venice, unfortunately, as they love the damp. They are not true cockroaches, though they resemble them, but torpedo-shaped millipedes that move very fast indeed. They can bite, if handled. Scolopendre feed on insects smaller than themselves, using poisonous jaws to kill their prey.

Boats, Trains and Horses

The railways arrived in Venice in 1846. Steam ferries (vaporetti) began to transport passengers from 1881. Gas-lamps were first introduced in San Marco in 1843. The first road-bridge to Venice, now known as the Ponte della Libertà, was not built until the 1930s, running parallel to the old railway bridge. Given the topography of Venice, horses have never lived in great numbers in the city, though a few rich noblemen did keep them at the Cavallerizza by the Mendicanti church. And it is said that the stairway of the Campanile was made wide enough for a horse to walk to the top.

The most famous horses in Venice are the four bronze ones from the façade of the Basilica of San Marco. They have lived an adventurous life. They were plundered from Constantinople in the fourth crusade by the blind warrior Doge Enrico Dandolo. Then they were stolen by Napoleon after he conquered Venice in 1797, and taken to Paris. When Napoleon fell from power, the horses returned to the city. Now excellent replicas look over the square, but the real horses may be visited inside the church.

Venice in 1899 and 1310

The population of Venice was more than twice what it is today—130,000 in the 1880s. It is now 60,000 and shrinking. Yet the annual tourist population is 21 million, and rising. Modern Venetians do make their way “per le fodere,” through the linings, to avoid the tourist crowds. A tranquil parallel universe is secreted in Venice, often just yards away from the thronged tourist haunts.

In many ways the Venice of 1899 would be recognizable to modern eyes. All the famous palaces, even the vaporetti, were part of the Venetian landscape in Renzo and Teo’s time. However, the Venice of 1310 would have been very different. Many of the buildings, including the Rialto Bridge, were made of wood in those days. The great Gothic palaces were not built until the fifteenth century, and the vast Renaissance palaces a hundred years after that. Gondolas would have been painted in many colors—it was not until several hundred years later, in 1562, that a law decreed they must all be black.

In Chapter 16, Renzo mentions Venice Beach, California. In fact, the famous American resort was not established until 1905. But it had an arcade of “Venetian” architecture and even gondolas.

Strange Art in Venice

The art Biennale started in 1895, and its artists have often produced weird displays around the town. In 2005 huge red penguins were lined up on various balconies on the Grand Canal. In 2007 twenty-foot-long purple crocodiles climbed buildings at Rialto.

Venetian “Bone Orchards”

“Bone Orchard” is an old sailors’ term for “cemetery.” Until Napoleon came to Venice at the end of the eighteenth century, Venetians used to be buried in the historic center. Many churches had a “campo dei morti”—a field of the dead. Napoleon closed these local cemeteries and insisted that all further burials be on the island of San Cristoforo in the lagoon. The island, despite expansion to join up with its neighbor San Michele in 1837, has not proved big enough for all the Venetian dead, so after a dozen or so years their bones are usually dug up and taken away to another island, making room for new corpses.

The Big Flood

Venice suffered a disastrous flood on November 3, 1966. It was very like the 1866 one described in this story. A tidal barrage called MOSE is currently under construction, to try to deal with a similar set of circumstances should they ever occur. Many conservationists are against MOSE, believing it will harm the lagoon’s wildlife.

The Spell Almanac

Some of the spell fragments are borrowed from the classics:

ulcus acre

“A nasty sore” (Martial, Epigrams XI.98)

nunc morere

“Now die!” (Virgil, Aeneid II)

The curses laid on Bajamonte Tiepolo at the end of the book are based on a Papal malediction recorded by James Grant, in his book The Mysteries of All Nations, the Rise and Progress of Superstition, Laws Against and Trials of Witches, Ancient and Modern Delusions Together With Strange Customs, Fables, and Tales, 1880. Teo might have found this volume in her school library.

Italian witches were thought to use seashells to send out their spells. They would inscribe the shells with words and then leave them on the shore to be taken away by the tide.

The Incogniti

There was a group of intellectuals in Venice in the seventeenth century who called themselves L’Accademia degli Incogniti, the Academy of the Unknowns. It was founded by Giovan Francesco Loredan. The academy fostered publishing, lectures and debates. Friendship was at the core of the Academicians’ philosophy.

Syrian Cats

Renzo’s account of their origins is true. There used to be a great number of wild cats in Venice, but in the last few decades a charity called DINGO has taken them off the streets and to a sanctuary, once on the island of San Clemente, and now on the Lido. Sadly, it is rare to see a wild cat on the streets in Venice these days. But a few shops have their resident cats, and the author knows where they are, if anyone wishes to ask.

Acknowledgments

A profound thank-you to Sister Fiorangela Teruzzi at the House of the Spirits (otherwise known as the Piccola Casa della Divina Providenza “Cottolengo”) for permitting me to write the scenes set there in situ, and for explaining about the ghostly echo. And a deep thank-you to Dottore Camillo Tonini of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia for his generous help in hunting down the column of infamy of Bajamonte Tiepolo.

This is my first book for younger readers, and I welcomed the help especially of Emily Pentreath, my very first reader, and Jake Peri, Sarah Zachs-Adam (thank you, Sarah, twice over!), Elliot Tassano, Malcolm Drenttel, Marcelia Benson, Alice Appleton, Helena Moore and Holly Bookbinder. And I’m grateful to all their parents, for lending me their children (with apologies for the shark nightmares).

This book would never have come to life without the enthusiasm and kindness of Sybille Siegmund-Stiefenhofer. Patricia Guy, Jeff Cotton and Jill Foulston offered perceptive advice on early manuscripts. Rose La Touche put to rights the characteristics of the Gray Lady. Paola de Carolis and Ornella Tarantola helped with the Italian, Bruno Palmarin and Tiziano Scarpa with the Venetian. Bill Helfand, as ever, injected my pharmaceutical history with a dose of realism. Vladimir Lovric advised on medical matters. Any inaccuracies or exaggerations in this book are mine alone.

I’ve been most fortunate in the generosity of my children’s book agent Sarah Molloy.

No one writer could ever sufficiently thank the dedicated staff at the London Library and the Wellcome Library, but I think we should all try. The excellent books of Alberto Toso Fei were of enormous help, as was the indispensible Curiosità Veneziane by Giuseppe Tassini.