The Undrowned Child (36 page)

“Brustolons!” whispered Teo, suddenly puzzled. “What are they doing here in 1310? Aren’t they from the sixteen hundreds? The doctor in the hospital told me …”

For once Renzo did not seem too pleased that Teo had absorbed some Venetian history. “Ye-e-es,” he admitted. “Brustolons are from just two centuries ago. But of course the figures they represent are much older.” He looked away.

“Why would Brustolons help Bajamonte Tiepolo destroy Venice, Renzo?”

There was a silence.

“Why?” Teo insisted. “Every time I mention the Brustolons you go very quiet.”

Renzo sighed. “I am afraid that the Brustolons represent the enemies of Venice who were … well, enslaved and traded here at market.”

“You mean there were slave traders in Venice?” asked Teo, genuinely shocked. “That’s perfectly disgusting!”

“It was a shameful period in our history, and not much talked about, but yes, Venice once had a profitable slave trade.”

“And profit meant more than those people’s freedom? No wonder the Brustolons want revenge!”

They proceeded in silence, passing through a medieval-looking kitchen that reeked of something sickly sweet. The first shaft of dawn sun revealed long trestle-tables holding trays of the green liquid that would become the Baja-Menta ice cream. On the mantelpiece were two Murano glass goblets labeled The Mayor and The Minister for Tourism and Decorum.

“He plans to poison them too!” cried Teo.

“If he hasn’t already. Just think how they have behaved these last few weeks, as if they were blind or drunk. They positively refused to see the danger, even when it was screaming at them. I think Il Traditore got to them before anyone else.”

The next room showed them how the mayor and the minister were to be rewarded for their complicity. A diagram pinned to the wall showed a terrible scene between the two columns of the Piazzetta. Renzo reminded Teo, “Where traitors to Venice were traditionally executed.”

Two prisoners were standing on a wooden platform. Their top hats were nowhere to be seen, but twin mustaches showed that they were the mayor and the minister, with expressions of terror on their faces. Bajamonte Tiepolo presided over the scene, with his hands raised high in triumph. Next to him a woman proffered the two poison goblets, her face alight with malice. Her cruel features were familiar.

“The nurse from the hospital!” cried Teo. “She was working with Bajamonte Tiepolo all the time! Those poor children! Shaving their heads, making them sick!”

And displayed in San Marco, impaled and trapped in every kind of torture device, were Venetians: those, it seemed, who had tried to resist the return of Bajamonte Tiepolo. Each wore a white linen cravat on which was scrawled Ha! Ha! Ha! apparently in their own blood. Here too, the children of Venice had not escaped. Rows of small corpses dangled from the lampposts.

Revolted, Renzo and Teo backed out of the room. Teo said quietly, “I thought I hated the mayor, because he sent me out of Venice and then he tried to pretend that nothing was happening. But I don’t hate him anymore … I am sorry for him. He’ll be the first to die if Il Traditore succeeds.”

“Teo,” said Renzo slowly, taking off his mask. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that Il Traditore’s palace doesn’t seem to be defended?”

Teo pulled off her mask too. “If Bajamonte Tiepolo is hiding out here, anyone could get to him.”

It was only now that they had walked right into the heart of the building that the children realized that this might be just what Il Traditore wanted.

not the morning that was hoped for, June 15, 1899

Sure enough, a metal gate smashed down to the floor behind them, locking them in.

Teo wailed, “He’s lured us in here, Renzo. Now he can finish us off in the privacy of his own home.”

“And another thing, Teo—we didn’t tell Lussa where we were going. If history repeats itself, which of course it will, our side shall soon be besieging this palace. They don’t know we’re in here. They’ll try to finish off Bajamonte Tiepolo and raze his house to the ground again—but this time with us inside.”

Renzo had barely finished speaking when the attack started. The arrows of Enrico Dandolo’s foot-soldiers pattered against the windows. An axe flew through an open window and embedded itself in a tapestry just inches from Teo’s ear. The children fled away from the windows and deeper into the palace. In the distance, over the thudding of their own footsteps, they heard the sound of someone crying.

“Maria!” shouted Teo, running towards the noise.

At the threshold of the room that shook with sobs, Renzo grabbed Teo’s shoulder. “Don’t rush in there. It could be another trap.”

Cautiously, they peered around the massive doorway.

Maria was standing in a room full of mirrors that was furnished with a vast array of frightful devices for torture. There was a stout chair carpeted with thousands of nails, with straps and weights to impale its victim for a slow death. The iron maiden was there—the wooden sarcophagus with long spikes in the lid. Hanging on the walls, like nightmarish sculptures, were helmets that would choke as they were fastened on. Thumbscrews were laid out in readiness on a table that was stained with what looked horribly like old blood. And in the fireplace, thrust into roaring flames, three branding irons were glowing white hot.

“One for me, one for Renzo and one for Maria,” counted Teo. “And look! Brustolons too! At least a dozen of them. Stinking of varnish.”

“All the tools of his trade,” hissed Renzo. “And with all these mirrors, he can have the pleasure of watching himself at work.”

“But Renzo, where did he get these atrocious things? Surely they were never used in Venice?”

Renzo hung his head, mumbling, “The Inquisition … important state secrets.”

“To justify cruelty like this?” Teo was outraged. For the second time in a few minutes she was full of anger against Venice. The beautiful city had secretly traded in slaves and tortured her citizens.

Renzo seemed to understand her thoughts. “Don’t be a baby, Teo. Nothing in this world is perfect. Only a spoilt child expects it to be.” But he squeezed her hand and said quietly, “You’re a Venetian now. You have to take the good with the bad. And there is more that could be perfect about Venice than there is about any other city. That is what I believe, and I hope you can believe it too.”

“Unless we can do something, you will have to rephrase that in the past tense,” Teo replied flatly. She did not think she would ever forget and possibly would not ever forgive the things she had seen today.

Maria still had not noticed Renzo and Teo. She appeared unaware of the hideous tools that surrounded her. Instead, she was staring in disbelief at her reflection in one of the mirrors. She was now the very picture of a classic hunchback dwarf, stooped over and bursting out of her human clothes. There were actual carbuncles on her nose. Where the teardrop emerald once hung from her earring, an ugly black chain tethered her to a hideous basalt fireplace big as a cottage. A pewter bowl at her feet contained dry bread and greenish cheese.

Finally Maria tore her gaze away from her own image in the mirror.

“Teo! Renzo!” she screamed, rushing to embrace Teo. But the chain tugged at her ear and she winced, drawing back. “You were right! Look what he’s done to me! He acted so nice but he’s horrible, and not young, like he pretended to be. I’ve seen his real face now. It’s awful. But Teo, what are you doing, wearin’ cosmetics? I thought you hated them? It don’t suit you, you look appallin’. But who’m I to talk?”

She started crying again. While Maria talked, Renzo had been using his ferro penknife to work at the little padlock that had chained her to the fireplace. It snapped apart. Renzo wound the chain neatly around his wrist and then dropped the coil in Maria’s pocket so that it would not drag on the floor. Renzo held out his hand. “Come, Maria, let’s get you out of here.”

Maria pushed him away. “How can I let anyone see me like this?” she moaned.

“This isn’t the time to be thinking about your precious looks!” shouted Teo.

Renzo said more gently, “Ordinary people won’t see the change in you.”

“Do not be too sure about that, Studious Son.” The words boomed out of a Tiepolo crest on the wall. Teo knew that voice, full of hatred, superiority and sarcasm.

Renzo whispered, “That’s …?”

She nodded. Bajamonte Tiepolo’s disembodied voice continued, “Soon every living being in Venice shall see everything in the way that I tell them. And you, young man, delighted to make your acquaintance. I hope to know you better very soon, and indeed your most special secrets too. All with the help of my little black toys here.”

Renzo’s and Teo’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to the white-hot branding irons in the fire. Maria, noticing them for the first time, squealed.

Il Traditore continued, “And you, Teodora Gasperin, piece of adder-spawn that you are, did you know that I had the acquaintance of your dear parents some years ago? Not so greatly to their advantage, I fear. And frankly, if I had known the trouble you would cause me, I’d have made sure of doing the deed properly. It was a foolish indulgence to leave your progenitors’ little heiress alive to trouble me. Except, of course, by an irony, you have in fact acted as my own true and faithful servant, Teodora Gasperin, in bringing me my indispensable Spell Almanac not just once but twice!”

He laughed long and heartily.

Teo flinched. It was true. She, who was supposed to be so clever, had foolishly wandered into a trap that would not have deceived a perfectly stupid child.

Bajamonte Tiepolo snarled, “The second time you’ve crossed my path shall be the last time.”

“He’s admitting that he drowned your mother and father and your grandparents and everyone!” whispered Renzo. “The monster! He’s actually gloating.”

“Your mother and father?” yelped Maria. “Are they dead? Are mine …?”

“Fine!” hissed Teo. “So long as he’s gloating, he’s not actually killing us. Or torturing us. Or taking the spells off me. We could get away. There are no guards, are there?”

Her answer was a loud groaning and creaking of wood. The sinews and muscles of the Brustolon statues strained and trembled, the rich dark wood glowing in the lamplight. One by one, the statues lurched into life, burst off their carved chains and surrounded the children. Their leeches, jolted by the strenuous shaking of their wooden joints, sent copious streams of blood splashing out of their thick lips. Maria’s mouth opened and closed again silently.

Teo whispered, “Renzo! At Sant’Elena he printed a Making Wood Alive spell from my body! There are Brustolon figures in all the palaces and houses and hotels in Venice. If these ones can do it, they’ll all be coming to life now!”

Renzo nodded wordlessly. Now no one in Venice was safe from the vengeful former slaves.

There was a scrabbling of claws against the window. The voice of Bajamonte Tiepolo was mercifully silenced for a moment. Teo and Renzo edged closer to the light and looked down to the banks of the Grand Canal below them. Gathered on the opposite bank, at the Naranzaria, they glimpsed the mermaids, the gondolier children, the lions, the English Melusine and the saints. Teo’s heart yearned to be with them.

At the next window the face of a lion appeared, his wings beating behind it.

“The mermaids have sent him to negotiate with Bajamonte Tiepolo,” guessed Renzo. “We’ve got to let them know that we are here.”

But the Brustolons moved to stand between the children and the window, blocking the sight of them. The lion fluttered at the window, attending to Bajamonte Tiepolo’s disembodied voice with an expression of deep distaste written all over his noble muzzle.

Il Traditore announced, “Tell your people I have a human girl, temporarily turned into a dwarf. It’s all the same to me whether she stays a dwarf or goes back to being a dull little girl. But unless your people deliver what I ask, she won’t be anything much anymore. Just a small, worthless heap of bones somewhere.”

Through the crest on the wall, Bajamonte Tiepolo’s tone changed from mirth to an icy determination. “I demand the word of the fishwives that I shall pass unhindered, and that I shall have my own bones back. My enemies were so rabbit-brained as to decently leave my corpse in one piece. And so, reunited with my bones, I shall become my old self, the one and only Bajamonte Tiepolo.” The old conspirator mused, “That’s where I was mistaken before, in the splitting of our forces. Badoer going his way, and Querini the other … Damn them.”

Renzo whispered fiercely, “No, it was because you were too greedy and insisted on looting before fighting. It was your fault the forces did not meet together.”

Il Traditore pondered on, unhearing, “And what would have happened if the three of us had won our victory? It would have been another bloody war of succession then. This time there is only me and only one conclusion. When I marry the sea with my emerald ring, there shall be no more disputes about who is the ruler of Venice.”

“Marry the sea?” asked Teo. “What does he mean?”

“It was something the Doge used to do every year, on Ascension Day: row out into the lagoon and drop a gold ring into the water. He would then say, ‘Desponsamus te, Mare,’ which means, ‘We marry you, Sea.’ ”

“But isn’t that good?” theorized Teo desperately. “That Bajamonte Tiepolo wants to keep the old tradition going? He must not want to destroy Venice, then.”

Il Traditore had been listening to them after all, for his voice boomed out now. “My little fools, I plan a rather different manner of wedding. This wedding shall be of the style of 1866. That was a mere rehearsal of my great Nuptial Feast.

“Now, once again, I plan a wedding party to which all the waves in the sea are invited, one after another. Yes, the very tides shall do my bidding once I have my bones. And when my celebrations are over, Venetians shall have no more streets to walk upon. This time the waters shall not recede. Ah, proud Venice shall eat mud! And choke on black water. One ton of mud for every Venetian.”

Renzo hissed, “What about the people who live on the ground floors? The poor people, the people in hospitals, the people who haven’t been able to get away?”