in the heat of the afternoon, June 14, 1899
“I have nothing to lose,” thought Teo.
She lay staring at the white ceiling while Bajamonte Tiepolo took the impression of the spells on her left ankle. Each touch of his icy hand made her shiver, even in the sweltering air of the close room. She could hear the Butcher Biasio’s labored breathing behind him and the impatient tapping of that hideous backwards foot.
The spells, as far as Teo could see, were written in a flowery old-fashioned Latin mixed with some ancient Venetian dialect. Some were in Greek; others in Arabic. Of course, she now remembered, they had been collected from all over the Mediterranean.
So far Il Traditore had extracted a Tickling Malediction, a Pain as if Toenails are Being Extracted Spell and a long curse involving leprosy and fingers dropping off that started “ulcus acre … foedi oculi.” Teo recognized the Latin words for “a nasty sore … festering eyeballs.” There was a diarrhea spell, something rather disgusting about avèr la mòssa. There was a spell for Making Wood Alive. A very short spell for Sudden Death at a Distance read simply, “Eminus repente nunc morere!”
Il Traditore was in a fury of impatience, his hands trembling, his eyes straining. He whispered to himself, “Calm, calm! There’s no help for it. I must print the child methodically, from the feet up, or I risk missing the one spell I truly need.”
That spell, Teo knew, was one that would allow his soul to migrate back into a permanent form, in which it could make use of its full murderous memory again.
That spell could be on Teo’s other foot, on her ankle or at the top of her head. It could take him all day, dipping the paper in ink and pressing it on to Teo’s flinching skin. He had already slashed off the hem of her skirt and pinafore with his sword so that he could print from her feet without anything flapping in his way.
“If this goes on, he’ll remove all my clothes!” Teo shuddered at the image of being naked and vulnerable on that table in front of Bajamonte Tiepolo. And the Butcher’s head, a step away from her, was already looking at Teo as if she were a nice cut of meat on a slab. In the silence of the room, the sound of the Butcher swallowing was horribly loud.
Desperation stirred a new notion in Teo’s mind. “Surely anyone who read these spells,” she speculated, “could make use of them?”
Bajamonte Tiepolo was busy with her right foot now. Teo tilted her head to the side of the table where he had laid out his printed spells. She could read the Tickling Malediction tolerably well, but he had placed upside down (from Teo’s viewpoint) the spell for a Pain as if Toenails are Being Extracted.
“You can do this,” Teo urged herself silently. “You have your library trick of reading upside down.”
A smaller, scared Teo replied, “Yes, works well in the library. Will it work on a table with a murderer inches away?”
And what of the spell itself? Things were different today. It was 1899, not 1310. Nearly six hundred years had tumbled over and over, smoothing the rules, breaking them. Baddened magic had come to Venice. There were new rules.
Anyway, Lussa had said that it was not as simple as just reading out the words of the spell, Teo recalled. You had to send your soul out with it. She thought desperately, “I don’t know how to do that. Do I?”
Bajamonte Tiepolo had his back to her. She inched her hand out towards the Toenail spell and pulled it two inches closer to herself. Il Traditore did not pause in his work. She craned her neck over as far as she dared. Now she could read the spell, even though it was upside down. Fortunately it was a short one.
She felt the desperate beginning of hope, which was in fact more upsetting than blanket despair. Then she thought of Renzo, and of Venice. Almost delirious, she thought she heard the sound of angry miaowing in the distance.
News of the Gray Lady’s demise had spread through the town on the wings of the two loyal cocai seagulls who had mourned at her grave. The Syrian cats of Venice, after centuries tucked away in the Giardini and Sant’Elena, were not immune to the delicious possibility of avenging their dead sister the Gray Lady. And a fine feed of magòghe was a not unappetizing prospect.
So it was that Renzo, lying in his ditch, was the first Venetian in centuries to see that the Syrian cats of Venice were no myth, but absolutely palpable. Moreover, in their long period of seclusion, they had developed useful wings.
Flying cats! Like the winged lions of Venice, only smaller, and in all colors and shades of tabby. Even silvery, like the Gray Lady. And like the Gray Lady, these cats were many times the size of a normal house cat, and carried themselves with enormous dignity, even when swooping down on their furry wings.
At first sight of the cats, the seagulls took off in an undignified and disorganized rabble. They crashed into each other and tangled their wings in an effort to escape the grim-faced felines now just seconds away from them.
A shower of nervous droppings rained down on Renzo in the ditch.
“Yeuuch!” he shouted, as his clothes turned green with slime. Whereupon he realized that it was better to keep his mouth closed.
Suddenly the grass around Renzo’s ditch was a mass of writhing fur and feather, a din of desperate caws and angry yowls. The cats rolled over and over, crushing as many gulls with their great bodies as they killed with jaws and claws.
Finally, all was quiet. A hundred birds lay dead, foam bubbling out of their beaks. The cats were sitting up on their haunches, grooming themselves vigorously. They bestowed the odd quizzical look on Renzo. They were acting for all the world as if they had just happened upon a crowd of annoying seagulls and that it was the merest coincidence, nothing to do with them really, that they had saved his life.
“Thank you!” exclaimed Renzo. Then he understood that this hardly sounded impressive, coming from a filthy boy lying in a ditch. He climbed up, clinking his bottles of Venetian Treacle. He bowed low. “O incomparable Felines, you have delivered my almost entirely worthless self from our mutual enemies, and I am eternally grateful.”
The cats stopped grooming and stood with their tails straight up in the air, just slightly kinked over at the tip, an unambiguous sign of satisfaction in the cat world, winged or otherwise.
“I hesitate to ask you another favor,” groveled Renzo. “But …”
The cats sat back down on their haunches and swished their tails in unison.
Renzo started again. “Your Feline Majesties, Venice has need of your noble help. Being omniscient, you will already know all about the terrible plot of Bajamonte Tiepolo.…” Here he was interrupted by loud hissing. “Well, we must make an urgent plan to stop him and get his Spell Almanac back.”
The cats gazed at Renzo with expressions deeply tinged with cynicism, for cats know that all human plans are exceedingly likely to go wrong.
the afternoon draws on, June 14, 1899
The words of the toenail spell were complicated, in both Latin and Venetian. Teo knew less than half of them. “Pedes …,” she read. “Now, that’s ‘foot’ in Latin … and ferii … that’s ‘hurt’ in Venetian, isn’t it?”
Her imagination filled in the grammatical gaps. So she would need to read aloud, from upside down, a spell that she did not completely understand. If she got it wrong, it might be her own toes that felt the searing pain of having their nails rent off. Or she might simply alert Bajamonte Tiepolo to her idea, and get herself killed even more quickly.
“He wants my body moist and fresh,” she tried to reassure herself. “But it would stay that way for a while after I was dead, surely? Even in this heat? If the Butcher … and the eels …”
Outside in the pavilion, she could hear stamping feet. The creatures out there had been promised Venetian blood, and they were in a hurry for a taste of it.
A bead of sweat dropped from Il Traditore’s bony forehead onto Teo’s foot. He muttered, “Rascals! Cutpurse bungs! Be patient, animals!”
“He’s under pressure,” she realized. “They’ve no idea that he’s not yet recovered his full powers
. He must have lied to them, to get them here; otherwise they would not dare attack Venice like this.”
In the absence of Bajamonte Tiepolo, the crowd outside had evidently found a leader of its own. The harsh accent of a Serb commander echoed through the pavilion. “Bajamonte Tiepolo, show yourself to us. We have waited long enough. We shall not be denied our chance to raze Venice to the ground, just because you falter in courage and resolve.”
“Human latrine!” hissed Bajamonte Tiepolo. “You shall not come home from the battleground, scullion. And it shall not be the pretty fishwives that do unto you.”
Pretty fishwives! Of course, the scolopendre had told him about the mermaids.
The wobbling forehead of Il Traditore was slick with sweat. His hands shook as he pressed the strips of paper on Teo’s ankles. Cowardice, the old rumor, was coming back to haunt Bajamonte Tiepolo. In his first attack on Venice, he had cut and run. His new troops would not let him forget it now.
Teo thought, “The skin of the hero Marcantonio Bragadin is a poor fit in more ways than one.”
The creatures outside roared in support of the Serb commander, “Bajamonte Tiepolo, show yourself!”
Teo took her chance. Under the cover of the din, she read the toenail spell aloud as quickly and as clearly as she could, given the violent trembling of her whole body and the feeling of faintness that swept through her. As she spoke the words, she deliberately pictured Venice drowned in black water, Renzo lifeless under the yellow beaks of the magòghe, her real parents dragged to the bottom of the sea, all by the evil of Bajamonte Tiepolo. She saw Chissa lying dead in the cavern, the Gray Lady’s bloodied muzzle disappearing under the soil when she and Renzo had buried her. A feeling surged up inside Teo like a scream. She could feel it tingling on the end of her tongue and her fingertips.
“Pedes …,” she murmured desperately. “Ferii …” The words forced their way out of her mouth like drops of blood.
“Is this casting my soul?” she wondered. It felt like emptying her heart. She felt, as she spoke the words, bleached and scoured of every emotion.
“But do I have enough soul to make this work?”
The effect was instantaneous. Bajamonte Tiepolo dropped the piece of paper in his hand and crouched down on the floor, screaming in a high, tortured voice, “My foot, my foot! Desist! Do not do it, aaagh!”
Teo pulled her legs up and stood on the table, poised to jump. The Butcher too had collapsed onto the floor, where he writhed in agony, emitting high-pitched grunts. The Vampire Eels crowded to the nearest corner of their tank.
But Bajamonte Tiepolo was rising back to his feet. He shrieked, “May your lips rot off, you cur of a female!”
His sword flashed out of its scabbard. Il Traditore plunged it straight into Teo’s heart …
… where it met resistance. Such strong resistance that it arched up and snapped in half, throwing its owner against a filing cabinet. He slumped back to the ground.
For The Key to the Secret City was still there, secreted between Teo’s layers of shirts. Somehow the book had taken the whole force of Il Traditore’s murderous blow. Teo had the sensation that someone had punched her quite lightly in the chest. The little bottles of Venetian Treacle in her pockets had not even shattered.
Hardly able to believe her luck, she hurtled off the table and out of the room. At the end of the corridor were two doors. One, ajar, led out to the pavilion. The Serb commander was still braying his demands, and the roaring from the seats had reached a deafening pitch.
The other door opened on a dark dank stairwell; not an inviting prospect, but better than the other two possibilities available. Teo ran though, slammed it behind her and started climbing down the steps. She had reached the tenth one when, back at the top, the door opened. Light rushed through the aperture and she could see the silhouette of Bajamonte Tiepolo glaring into the gloom. She flattened herself against the wall, just out of the light.
Il Traditore stood there for a long time.
He too, she calculated, was unwilling to go through the other door, the one that led out to the pavilion.
But the Serb commander’s tone had now risen to the imperative. Even from his outline, Teo could see that at that moment something in Bajamonte Tiepolo stirred, a call of his ancient noble blood, which would not tolerate orders from a mere soldier, which would not accept the leadership of anyone else but himself. He was, after all, a Venetian, a lord among men. He shook with anger, raised his fist, and stormed back into the corridor, and out of the door into the pavilion.
Teo crept back up the stairs and peered out across the corridor. Through the open door to the pavilion, the outline of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s back was black against the sea of angry faces.
Il Traditore scanned the crowd until his gaze rested on the dark, bearded face of the insubordinate Serb. Then he raised his hand and the emerald ring sent a jet of green light into the man’s eyes. Teo heard Bajamonte Tiepolo hiss the spell he had just printed from her body, the one for Sudden Death at a Distance.
As Il Traditore spat the final words, “Nunc morere!” the Serb commander crumpled to the ground, screaming in agony. His body twitched for a moment, and then fell still. His head lolled to one side.
“Now, those gentlemen whom I am currently permitting to live,” Bajamonte Tiepolo whispered, “your attention please.”
The very quietness of his voice had an electrifying effect on his audience. All tongues fell silent. All heads turned to him. Down the hallway, Teo strained to hear him.
“Gentlemen,” he lied, “as you have just seen, I have performed the needful thing to restore every single one of my old powers. Spring is rioting through my veins. I feel a lovely little war coming on!”
Except for the Serbs, who stood sullenly around their commander’s corpse, Il Traditore’s forces bellowed with joy.
Their leader spoke over them: “Take your positions and prepare for the destruction of Venice. First, do you all have your masks?”
The crowd roared its assent.
Teo turned to look back down the murky stairwell. But what if it was a trap? Just a dead end, a room down there?
Slow footsteps slithered along the corridor behind her. The Butcher!
Teo did not wait to hear any more.
Down, down, down went Teo. Venice floated on water, so there were no basements. She expected to hit rock bottom at any moment. But the stairs descended so low that she was certain that the stone walls were just a thin crust against a lagoon full of water that could at any minute gush in and sweep her away. There was a hollow sound to her footsteps, as though she was in a tank. The cool darkness was welcome, but the shambling, awkward footsteps of the Butcher, just a few hundred yards behind, echoed in the dark, empty tunnel. Her thoughts were just as hollow.
Eventually the stairs bottomed out and she felt her way along a damp, stifling corridor. The rats down here could not have heard the prophecy that had sent their cousins streaming out of Venice. Every few minutes, rough pantegana fur brushed past Teo’s skirts, accompanied by hysterical twittering.
At last she stubbed her toe on a step. With a new burst of energy, Teo started climbing rapidly upwards. Where did this tunnel lead? Would she emerge right in the path of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s forces? Perhaps he had simply set an arduous trap for her, something that would keep her occupied—and exhausted—until after he had subdued his rebellious army. Teo tried to put that idea out of her head but it forced itself back in.
She bumped her head on the low ceiling. Another unhelpful thought crossed her mind—this tunnel was more likely to have been built for dwarves than human beings. And lately the dwarves were the friends of Bajamonte Tiepolo.
She trudged on and on, the Butcher’s steps echoing hers. Teo fought to breathe. She simply couldn’t walk any faster in the dark.
Another tight swarm of rats dashed past her, heading back into the darkness. She heard the Butcher stumble and fall. There came a slithering sound and a thump, as if he had tried t
o raise himself and failed. Something rolled audibly down the stairs. With a shudder, Teo realized that it must be the Butcher’s head. More of the pantegane rushed between her feet, hurtling to the place, perhaps a hundred steps back, where the Butcher now moaned in terror. The rats squealed with delight and hunger.
A fine-rimmed outline of light appeared above her, in the shape of a door. The mere idea of breathing fresh air again was enough to make Teo reach for the handle, whatever was waiting for her outside.
Renzo was not getting anywhere with the cats.
He had tried flattery, courtly manners, low bows. He reinforced his words with the appropriate mimes, acting out the whole situation like a one-man theater company. He mimed the evil creatures, the pavilion, poor Teo—at best—trapped inside with Il Traditore. At worst—that did not bear thinking of.
But either the cats did not wish to understand him, or they understood him all too well, and had taken a silent decision among themselves that thirty winged cats, however efficacious at massacring a flock of magòghe, were unlikely to score a notable victory against a hundred thousand bloodthirsty pirates, Ottomans and Serbs, all led by an evil being who was a known murderer of felines.
Finally Renzo shrugged. “Well, I’ll just go on my own then, shall I?”
He secretly hoped that this would appeal to the cats’ natural contrariness, and that they would contradict him merely for the pleasure of doing so. But it was just then that events had taken a new turn inside the pavilion: when Bajamonte Tiepolo returned to his forces and pretended that he had regained all his powers by killing the Serb commander. Bajamonte Tiepolo’s voice could then be heard grating distantly and at length. Renzo guessed that Il Traditore was outlining his battle plan. There was a brief silence, like an intake of breath. The sea gates of the pavilion swung open, and the forces of Bajamonte Tiepolo streamed out. All eyes were fixed on the flag of their standard-bearer. No one saw one young boy and thirty cats standing transfixed on the Sant’Elena side of the peninsula.