The Undrowned Child (29 page)

“Do we want to be followed by lions?” muttered Renzo.

The children climbed back out to the garden. The nuns of the House of the Spirits were moving quietly among the praying saints, tidying the rags of their robes, even dusting them with little feather brushes. The saints continued to pray, but acknowledged their groomers with sad sweet smiles.

“So gentle!” Teo longed to talk to the nuns, to see if there were any among them that remembered her from the weeks she spent in the House of the Spirits as a baby. But the old ladies were absorbed in their task, their faces lit up with the joy of being kind to so many martyred saints.

On the cover of The Key to the Secret City, Lussa rubbed two fingers together impatiently. A map inside glowed with stashes of small black-and-white banknotes.

“Moneta patriottica!” Renzo exclaimed. He explained to Teo that this money dated back to the Siege of Venice in 1848, when the Austrians had pummeled the city with cannonballs. The besieged Venetians had pulled in their belts and fought bravely while the Austrians tried to starve them to death. The Venetians had even printed their own currency—the moneta patriottica. But then cholera raged through the city, and food stocks dwindled.

“Finally,” Renzo pronounced with disgust, “the Austrians blocked our supply of fresh water. We had to surrender then.” He grinned. “But my mother always told me the Venetians buried their moneta patriottica in their wells and gardens in case the city ever needed it again.”

Guided by The Key, Teo’s and Renzo’s fingers grew filthy from poking into secret holes in walls, the backs of dog kennels and under flowerpots to pull out wads of fragile notes. Soon rustling stacks of money filled Teo’s pinafore pockets and Renzo’s satchel. But all the while both children silently fretted about the same thing. Renzo finally voiced it: “But how can we use this old money? No shop will take it now! The siege was over fifty years ago.”

The Key to the Secret City rattled until Teo opened it, to find the words Give me the money! written across the page. When she closed the moneta inside the book, it turned into modern Italian lire, acceptable at every shop.

At dawn, the children used the transformed moneta patriottica to buy cuts of meat at the abattoirs. The Key guided them to the winged lions in every sculpture, every painting, every relief in the city. Renzo and Teo whispered their well-worn speech in those short, fluffy ears, offering each lion a newspaper cone of minced innards.

The stone lions were the most frightening. On scenting the meat, they twitched their noses. Then they flexed their wings. A few mouthfuls of meat brought them instantly back to life, the stone on their backs softening into luxuriant if slightly musty fur. The children were subjected to suspicious sniffs and even experimental licks.

“Ugh, cat breath!” shuddered Renzo.

“To the House of the Spirits!” the children urged each wakening lion. “If you please.” The lions nodded, stretched enormously, shook out their ears and set off, brandishing their tufted tails behind them. Teo was pleased to see a few magòghe disappearing in midair as the lions flew over the city.

Finally, every last lion awakened, Renzo and Teo returned to the House of the Spirits triumphant, hopeful and exhausted. In the garden, a tall, devastatingly handsome man in a top hat was already drilling the lions in battle formations. Their heads on one side, the golden beasts listened respectfully. He, in turn, bowed and spoke to them with warm affection.

Renzo guessed, “That must be the circus-master. What was his name, Teo?”

“Sargano Alicamoussa, for his pains! The Gray Lady told us he’s a member of the Incogniti. He might have known my …”

“Best not disturb,” said Renzo hastily, as the lions roared. “Let’s go down.”

As they had hoped, a spicy feast awaited them at the end of their labors. They explained their successes with their mouths half full of Hot & Sour Broth, Char-crusted Sea-Gherkin, and Moon-viewing Noodles. Finally, they pushed their bowls aside, feeling satisfied.

“A good morning’s work.” Renzo smiled at Teo.

“And we didn’t even go to bed.”

But Lussa sighed. “Children, our Task is just beginning. All your Herculean Labors of this Night have merely balanced the Good Magic against the Baddened Magic. We teeter upon a Pivot. And the Signs are all against Us, and against Venice, at this Moment.”

From the back of the water chamber came the sound of scampering. Millions and millions of little paws, pounding across the stone above their heads.

Renzo and Teo spoke aloud the line of the prophecy:

“When Rats flee town on frightened paws.”

“Where are the rats going?” Teo asked. “Whose side are they on, anyway?”

“The Rats?” Lussa answered. “Alas, their Own, Nobody else’s. They leave now because They believe Venice is already Lost.”

“Have you noticed how quiet it is?” asked Renzo.

The skulls in the graveyard were silent now, and that silence was sadder than their sobs.

the morning of June 13, 1899

Lussa told the children to go home and to rest. “You shall know,” she said quietly, “when the Battle is about to start, for You shall hear Seven Snorts of the Siren that warns of High Water.”

“The gondolier children shall fight to the death!” growled Renzo. Teo stared at him with surprised admiration.

But Lussa looked sad. “Let Us hope that It does not come to That. Too many Venetian Boys & Girls have succumbed to the plague already. Perhaps it is Wrong to send more Children into Battle. We need more Venetians, not fewer of Them.”

To get to the Hotel degli Assassini, Renzo and Teo were forced to walk over a dawn carpet of rats. The rats were all heading in one direction: out of town, and as fast as they could.

The rats jumped onto vaporetti and scuttled among the feet of the shrieking passengers. They leapt from gondola to gondola, finding the quickest route down the Grand Canal. They scrambled onto the trains at Santa Lucia station, springing out of the lavatories at terrified travelers. Thousands more left Venice aboard carriages, many of them riding pillion with the coachmen.

The newspapers screamed in war capitals: RATS DESERT THE SINKING CITY!

The mayor smiled smugly in his photograph. “At last we have solved our pantegana problem. Venice is the cleanest, safest city in Europe for tourists.”

Renzo threw the paper down in disgust. “If only he knew how untrue that is!”

The papers also reported the latest handbill from Signor Rioba: Flee! Flee the ancient enemy! Your Mayor already has. He’s hiding out on the mainland now. Didn’t mention it, did he? I thought I would.

In the absence of the mayor, “out of Venice on business,” the minister for tourism and decorum had given an interview under a headline that read: SIGNOR RIOBA DAMAGES TOURIST TRADE. INQUIRY.

“If all the tourists leave Venice now,” asked the minister, “who is going to pay compensation for their ruined holidays? The city would be bankrupted.”

Renzo said grimly, “And who is going to pay compensation if they stay and Bajamonte Tiepolo murders them all?”

“Look.” Teo pointed to a single paragraph lost amid the advertisements on the back page. It read, “An unusual number of fever cases have been reported, with patients complaining of black swellings in the neck, groin and under the arms.”

“Meet you at ten tonight?” said Renzo. “We need to go and get some Venetian Treacle for the wounded, and we’ll go to the Gray Lady to tell her what has happened, and …”

His mouth formed into an involuntary yawn. Teo waved him goodbye, her lids dropping down on her cheeks.

Back at Teo’s hotel, everything was in disorder. The palace appeared to be wrapped in a private bandage of mist. Under cover of the soft whiteness, the building’s transformation was almost complete. The plaster was peeling inside, revealing old frescoes. Confused waiters arriving at tables with great silver domes opened them up to present repulsive food from older, crueler times. Instead of pasta with tomato sauce, there was a whole pig’s head grinning in jelly or a castle carved out of thick white fat.

Teo fell on her creaking bed—it too appeared to be changing itself from a simple iron bedstead to an elaborate four-poster. In her dreams, she rode an antique iron horse into battle.

She was awoken by a shriek outside. It was dark again.

She leapt out of the bed, now hung with towering black drapes. From the window she glimpsed Renzo rushing into the courtyard of the hotel, just as a man ran past him shouting, “The Rialto Bridge is on fire! And they’re looting the Cassa di Risparmio!”

Renzo looked up at Teo, white-faced. Minutes later she was down by his side, and he was explaining, “That’s the biggest bank in Venice. It’s started, Teo, just like the night in 1310.”

“How can the Rialto Bridge be on fire? It’s made of stone.”

“Remember, Teo, in 1310 it was still made out of wood.” There was no triumph in Renzo’s voice for knowing that fact. “The bridge went up in minutes. Shopkeepers were burnt alive at their stalls.”

Teo exclaimed, “Let’s go straight to the Gray Lady and see if there are any spells written under her fur that could help us now.”

“But we don’t know how to cast spells, do we. It’s more than just saying them aloud. You have to say them with your soul, or something.”

“We can learn,” said Teo, grim-faced. “We’ve learnt a great many things lately that we didn’t think possible.”

Sadly, the children had even harder things to learn that night.

nighttime, June 13, 1899

The door was gaping open when they arrived at the Archives. Papers blew about the deserted street. The library looked like the scene of a violent robbery. Shelves had been stripped, with the books lying all over the floor, pages ripped out. Boxes had been emptied over the tables and the contents roughly rifled. The scent of varnish filled the air. The Brustolons, meanwhile, had been rearranged in different postures, all together in the main entrance. “What’s that, on the floor?” cried Teo.

The moonlight shone on smears of blood with four six-toed pawprints dragging through them.

“Bajamonte Tiepolo hates cats,” whispered Renzo.

They followed the trail to the room where Bajamonte Tiepolo’s papers were kept. There they found the Gray Lady, lying on the ground, panting shallowly. A thin line of blood coated her lips and nose.

The Gray Lady gasped, “He has got hisss strength back. He animated the Brustolons … and they pillaged … and … I did not expect that, even though you tried to warrn me, children. I have grown arrogant, the great fault of ssso many noble Venetians. And catsss. In consequence … I have failed in my duty.”

Even as the children stroked her with the tips of their fingers, she flinched with pain. Teo brought the little bottle of Venetian Treacle out of her pocket, but the Gray Lady groaned, “No, it is mossst kind of you, but I am not human. Your excellent snake oil cannot help me, or any cat, dearrrr girrrl.”

“What have they done to you?” cried Teo.

“Bajamonte Tiepolo’sss Brustolons believed I was a common cat,” the Gray Lady spat weakly. “So the biggest one did not think … to look at me closely … when he ssstrangled me with one hand … and threw me against the shelves. It was just sheer brrrutishness. Childrrren, he did not guess the truth … about my role … as the Spell Almanac’s guardian and bearerrr. They may have dessstroyed me, but that mattersss not. What mattersss is that Il Traditore’s bullying minions … did not get what he sent them here to find.…”

The Gray Lady was fighting for breath. The children tried to make her comfortable with a book under her head, but she told them, “You arrre sweet crrreatures, but you must leave me and tell the mermaids what has happened. They must send messages to the Incogniti! And I must … imprint the spellsss … on another Being … before it isss … too late.”

“What other Being?”

“A living Being, that can be trusted. A native Venetian beast. A pantegana, if necessary, a bird, if I can catch one.”

The Gray Lady was so seriously wounded that she did not seem to realize that catching a rat or a bird was completely impossible for her now. Her voice wandered between a miaow and human speech, as she warbled—as if to some bird in a tree—“Come here, little one.”

Teo whispered to Renzo, “Can we catch her a bird?”

“Us? Have you ever caught a bird? And all the rats have left Venice.”

“I’ll do it,” said Teo. “She can use my body to imprint the spells.”

“Are you mad? That will make you Bajamonte Tiepolo’s number one target.”

“I’m already Bajamonte Tiepolo’s number one target. Someone has to carry the spells. The Gray Lady …” And Teo sobbed as she gently held the cat’s paw. “… cannot do it anymore.”

Renzo exploded. “Teo! You’re not like the Gray Lady. You cannot transform yourself into a cat and cover up the spells with fur! What are you thinking of?”

“I am thinking of my family,” answered Teo, and it felt strangely beautiful to say the words “my family” to describe her real parents, Marta and Daniele Gasperin, who had also dedicated their lives to saving Venice from Bajamonte Tiepolo.

“Renzo,” she said calmly, “this is what my family does.”

“And they died for it, Teo.”

“Hush, Renzo! Don’t talk about dying now.”

Then Teo whispered tenderly into the cat’s delicate ear, “Can you transfer the Spell Almanac to my body, Signorina Grigiogatta?”

The cat pushed her wet muzzle against Teo’s hand. “Yesss. You are right. Thisss is the only way now. You are a Gasperin. It is yourrr destiny to protect the Spell Almanac, even though you are ssso young … and now you may neverrr grow old.…” The Gray Lady’s voice had collapsed to a hoarse rattle. “None of the Gasperin Incogniti lived to an old age … but none of them … shirked theirrr duty. Neverrr grow old.…”

“She’s fading away,” whispered Renzo. “It’s too late anyway.”

“Never grow old?” thought Teo wildly.

The cat groaned, a low rattling noise deep in her throat. But she raised her paw and opened her eyes to look directly at Teo. “Lie down next to me, child, and put your arms around me. Ohhh! No, more gently than that. Now close yourrr eyes.”

Teo did as she was bid, sobbing as she felt the Gray Lady’s warm blood on her cheek. She held the Gray Lady as gently as she could, her arms circling the trembling, shattered rib cage. She felt the breath rasping out of the cat, all unevenly now.