The Undrowned Child (40 page)

But Bajamonte Tiepolo leapt to his feet again instantly, jeering, “This has been slightly more amusing than I thought it would be. But enough is enough.”

“Renzo!” sobbed Sergio. “He’s going to be killed.”

“Just keep holding my wrist. Just there. Hard as you like,” Teo said fiercely. She covered her eyes and tried to bring her mind to focus on Ways with Wayward Ghosts.

She found the page again. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered, shaking her head. “It cannot be that simple.”

midday, June 15, 1899

Professor Marìn had written, “When you need to destroy a spirit in-the-Meltings, the thing to do is to drown him in ink. Be the weapon. Curse him to death.”

“Press my wrist harder!” Teo whispered to Sergio. Renzo stole a moment from combat to read Professor Marìn’s last sentence hanging in the air. He looked at Teo despairingly. She could see what he was thinking: exactly the same thing that she was thinking. What did she know about cursing? She knew only two really bad swearwords. It was Signor Rioba who could curse the bladder out of a weasel. Had he even survived the battle? The light went out of Renzo’s eyes and he took another savage blow from Bajamonte Tiepolo, this time across the knees.

Teo’s heart lifted. Her thoughts appeared in the air: “I am the weapon. I am the Spell Almanac. I am written all over with spells and curses and baddened magic. We just have to turn them on Bajamonte Tiepolo.”

She whispered, “Sergio, Lussa—I’m afraid that I’m going to say some absolutely terrible things now. Cover your ears.”

Teo closed her eyes and tried to think through her skin. At first, nothing came to her; just an unpleasant tingling in her fingers and toes. Then the tingles grew into sharp stripes of pain, as if she was being peeled in strips or cut by a whip. The agony spread all over her body. Suddenly, it was too strong to hold in. Teo started to speak in a voice that sounded nothing like her own: it was hoarse, old and full of hatred.

“Bajamonte Tiepolo!” the voice called.

For the first time he turned to face her.

“Teodora Gasperin!” he shouted. “What are you doing …?”

He did not finish his sentence because words had begun to pour out of Teo like a fountain of black ink. As she spoke them, they hung in the air, hovering over the head of Bajamonte Tiepolo.

“I curse you,” said the dark voice that came out of Teo’s mouth. “By the Lagoon, by this City, by the Good Dead Beneath it, by the Unresting Spirits you Roused to Evil, by the Moon and by the Stars, I curse you unto death, Bajamonte Tiepolo.”

Il Traditore sagged under these words as if he’d been struck by an iron bar.

One of the mermaids whispered hopefully, “Aye, his rigging’s slack. His rattlin’s are fray’d.”

A new voice came from between Teo’s lips now—a light, menacing young man’s voice from another age, centuries before: “Bajamonte Tiepolo, I anathematize thee, Malefactor. May the Heavens and the Earth, and all the Good Creatures remaining thereon, curse Thee, Dregs of the World. Be Thou cursed wherever Thou be, most Heinous of Villains. Be Thou cursed in living, in dying, in breathing, in drowning, in weeping, in speaking, in screaming.…”

“Why these different voices?” Teo asked herself. And then she remembered. The Spell Almanac was a kind of anthology of baddened magic conceived by thousands of witches and magicians from hundreds of years past.

The words flowed out of her. She was barely aware of what she was saying. Some of it was in Latin, some in Venetian. She knew only that it was deadly. Such curses as these, which were supposed to be used one at a time, she was now flinging at Bajamonte Tiepolo all together in one lethal string.

Bajamonte Tiepolo groaned and toppled backwards. He lay palpitating on the floor of the gondola. Yet another voice issued from Teo’s lips—this time that of an old woman, low, sibilant and with a heavy foreign accent, “May you be cursed in all the faculties of your body. May you be cursed inwardly and outwardly. May you be cursed in each hair of your corrupt head. May you be cursed in your vile brain. May you be cursed in your evil forehead, in your damned ears, in your dark eyebrows, in your hollow cheeks, in your jawbones, in your nostrils, in your teeth, in your lips, in your throat, in your fingers, in your breast, in the interior parts of your rotten stomach, in your veins, in your groin, in your thighs, in your knees, in your feet, in your joints, and in your nails. May you be cursed in all from the top of the head to the sole of the foot, and most particularly, and forever, in your heart. So be it.”

There was one more curse left to say. Teo saw it written on the air above her head, but she could not bring herself to open her mouth and let it come forth. To utter it would be a cold-blooded act of murder. She felt Sergio fanning her with his hat, Lussa reaching over the prow to hold her hand. But Teo’s eyes had filled up with red fire, her head drummed unbearably.

“Please let him be dead now,” she begged. “I cannot bear to say any more. Please let Renzo and Maria be alive.”

Her first wish was not granted. For the next thing she heard was the voice of Bajamonte Tiepolo. It was weaker, and it was halting, but it was still there. It howled, “Teodora Gasperin, I have not finished with yo-o-o-o-o-o-u.…”

She opened her eyes. Bajamonte Tiepolo’s gondola was starting to turn around in a circle. The turn gathered momentum. Soon it was creating a dark whirlpool around itself. The sharks disappeared like spiders down a plughole. Bajamonte Tiepolo, still howling, reached to clamp his hands around Renzo’s neck just as a cloud of winged lions with dirty paws came flying back from their mission to bury his bones. Roaring hungrily, they swooped down towards Il Traditore’s gondola. Renzo slipped backwards into the crab basket and crouched down low.

“Renzo!” yelled Teo. “Maria!”

“Don’t look!” cried Sergio, and he put his hand over Teo’s eyes.

Then he lifted them off. “Look!” he shouted, pointing.

The winged lions dipped down into the frothing waves. One of them hovered over the crab basket and picked up Renzo by the scruff of his jacket. Another ripped the cords off Maria’s body and lifted her into the air. Maria’s legs dangled lifelessly from the lion’s huge jaws.

One of the mermaids cried out hoarsely, “Gorblimey, she’s a goner, for sure.”

Another observed, “Nay! ’Tis just the vapors.”

Renzo’s lion flew over to Teo’s gondola and gently dropped him onto the velvet cushions at the prow. Renzo rolled over on his side and smiled through hair matted with blood and seawater. The lion spat hugely into the water, and wiped his whiskers repeatedly to get the taste of boy blood out of his mouth. The breeze from his beating wings blew the gondola further away from the whirlpool.

Teo leant over Renzo, and gently brushed his hair from his face.

“Hello, Napoletana!” he croaked. “Having a nice holiday in Venice?”

Teo only realized that there were tears streaming down her cheeks when Sergio handed her a sodden, salty handkerchief. He murmured, “I can see why Renzo likes you so very much, Miss Teodora.”

Teo’s fears surfaced above a brief warm moment of happiness. “Bajamonte Tiepolo could still escape. He lived under the water for so long—he might be able to swim away from the whirlpool.”

A heavy thudding, like the footsteps of giants, shook the floor of the lagoon.

“It’s the bricole!” cried Lussa, pointing to the three-legged poles that were now, at last, approaching the whirlpool. They gathered in a circle around it until a solid wall of wood stood sentinel over the dark pit of water. The howls of Bajamonte Tiepolo could still be heard over the barricade.

Tears and pleading were the last things heard from Il Traditore. That dark masterful voice was reduced to a pathetic splutter. He whimpered. He cajoled. He promised kingdoms and riches to any rescuer.

Then came words that took Teo’s breath away. “Undrowned Child! I know that you are there. I feel you watching.”

Teo flinched to hear her name again from that dark voice, even though this time it had a wheedling tone to it.

“Teodora Gasperin, I wouldn’t hurt you a hair’s breadth. I spared you when you were but a babe. You are the Undrowned Child because of my mercy. Take pity on me now.”

Renzo growled, “Teo, you are an orphan because of his so-called mercy!”

Teo leant forward in the boat. The whirlpool had sucked the gondola and its occupant below the level of the waves. Only Il Traditore’s white head was visible above the water. His black mouth opened in a bellow of despair. “Come, Lettricedel-cuore, read my heart. You shall find nothing written upon it but pure remorse! Say the word, Undrowned Child, and I shall live! Do not have my death on your conscience.”

The words hung in the sky. A heavy, sweetish perfume flowed through the air, making her feel drowsy. She whispered, “I never killed anyone.…”

Her hand twitched. Could she touch Bajamonte Tiepolo’s heart and save him? She could swim across to the wall of the bricole in a moment. Her feelings teetered on a knife-edge. Il Traditore had been treated badly by Venice, like the Brustolons. He’d been spat on, hounded out of town. His home had been razed. His remains had been mutilated. He had made mistakes, certainly, but then so had she. Chissa was dead because of Teo, but Teo had been forgiven. When had Bajamonte Tiepolo ever been given a chance …?

Lussa’s bell-like voice rang out from the stern of the gondola. “Teodora, He uses Baddened Magic & Perfumed Potions to hypnotize You! This is a Despicable Blackmail & a Base Ploy. To touch his Heart would be Instant Death for You. Just think, Teodora, What You would feel? A Bolt of Hatred deadly as Lightning. Moreover, ’Tis not in your Power to bestow Life on Il Traditore. Or Death. All Venice, which He wished to kill, has decided upon This Course.”

A tear-strangled moan came from the water. “It’s so cold.…”

Bajamonte Tiepolo was dying a second time, in just the same way as he had lived—as a coward.

Renzo protested, “He’s taking the skin of Marcantonio Bragadin down with him!”

“That will not do!” Lussa lifted a conch to her lips. A winged lion swooped down. Deftly, it seized the fragile skin in its muzzle, pulling it off Bajamonte Tiepolo’s body without tearing it. Then it flew off in the direction of the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

Finally, only the skeletal hand, fingers open in a begging gesture, remained above the water. The hand spoke with Il Traditore’s voice. It rasped, “Spare me.”

Then it too disappeared below the water, taking the emerald ring down with it to the depths.

Excited mermaids shouted, “He has handed in his tally!” “He has gone to Davy Jones’s locker!” “Aha, he has the Davies On!” and “Yes, he’ll be eating his Seaweed Salad by the root from now on!” until Lussa clucked over them, “Belay, pretty ladies, that will be quite enough.”

Sergio shouted, “Hurrah!” He pointed back at the Salute Church and the Piazzetta. The waves that had engulfed them were draining away, dragged towards the black mouth of the whirlpool. Down it swirled, rivers and showers and storms of water that Bajamonte Tiepolo had summoned for his murderous wedding with the sea.

Then Renzo cried, “There’s Maria!”

She was standing on one of the three-legged poles out in the lagoon, with little cocai seagulls twittering around her head and a solitary small shark leaping up to snap at her ankles. Lussa motioned for two mermaids to bring her to the gondola.

“That reminds me,” exclaimed one of the mermaids. “Anything here by way of eating? I could murder a Piri-Piri Pea Pie, and a little Curried Butter on top wouldn’t do me no harm neither.”

“Me too! I’m fixin’ to croak of hunger!” the other mermaids chorused.

A clump of seaweed floated loose from the bricole and wrapped itself around the prow of the gondola. The first mermaid scooped it up and sniffed. “Makings of Hot-and-Sour Stew, don’t ye think? See if I can’t wrastle somethin’ up …”

the rest of the day, June 15, 1899

Then everything happened very fast. Teo used the last drops of Venetian Treacle to wash away Renzo’s wounds. While she was doing so, a school of mermaids swam in from the lagoon to report that the Creature had been sung back to a sleep from which it would never again wake up.

“ ’Twas ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ that finally bedded it down but good,” one mermaid mentioned, somewhat throatily. “We got da notion to change the words a bit.…”

The Vampire Eels had been gathered, dragged to shore and burnt in a pyre on the old Plague Island of the Lazzaretto Vecchio. The magòghe had repented and pleaded for mercy. They were now helping to round up the last of the scolopendre, a particularly fine redemption as the brown insects tasted exceedingly nasty and were very wrigglesome to swallow down.

“Seein’ as it takes ’em some time to put their socks on in the morning,” one mermaid observed sagely.

The dolphins, who had scoured the furthest-flung outposts of the city, came leaping in to shore with the glad news that the pirates, the dwarves, the Ottomans, the Genoans, the Serbs, had fled far beyond the lagoon, and not a trace of them remained except a few stinking tunics floating in the water.

“And Doge Falier? Doge Dandolo?” asked Teo.

Lussa said soberly, “They are no longer in-the-Slaughterhouse. They are Redeemed & Whole, and their Spirits are at Rest.”

Renzo asked quietly, “You mean that they died in the battle?”

“They died for Venice. They shall be Honored once more.”

“And Signor Rioba?” asked Teo anxiously.

A stream of curses answered her. “Do ye think that I’d be such an anchovy as to get myself killed to death by a rabble of baboon-faced ghouls?”

Signor Rioba stomped into view, dragging a brace of dead werewolves.

“What’re ye staring at? There’s creatures worse off than me!”

He pointed at the rescued Maria, who lay wrapped in blankets in Sergio’s gondola. So many wrongdoers had redeemed themselves and gone to their reward, but Maria was still a hunchback dwarf, and now her beautiful hair had gone. What was left stuck out of her head in short clumps, as if a rat had gnawed it off. She lay limp and silent, breathing fast and shallowly.

“All the Venetian Treacle is gone!” wailed Teo.