Catalina, her chef’s hat limply at half-mast, mourned, “They will not permit us to cook our spicy foods. They say the smell of onions makes them bilious.”
“Lackaday,” moaned Flos, clutching her belly, which did indeed look flatter than it had before.
Lussa said abruptly, “We squander Precious Time in this Fruitless Banter! Children, the Bad Ship Bombazine is moored—Invisible to Humanfolk, of course—by St. Katharine Docks, scarcely a Mile distant. You must hide Yourselves at all Costs.”
“I knew they were here. I’ve started to have nightmares again,” Teo groaned.
“Teo and I have pretty much, ahem, buried ourselves,” began Renzo.
“But the boys on the Scilla.…” Teo bit her lip. “They’ve nowhere to hide.”
“All Children are at Risk in London now,” Lussa informed them. “The Parrots have been abroad and report that Human Criminals & Ghost-Convicts from the Hooroo roam the Streets looking for Child Victims to press-gang into Service for their Mistress. Children without Parents are the First to go. And the Plumper the Child, the more likely ’Tis to disappear, strangely.”
Turtledove emitted a low grunt. “Ain’t they ashamed of thesselves, stealing little childer? I is at yer service, Yer Wetness, pertikular agin all child-hurters an’ pye-rats.”
Lussa nodded graciously, yet she did not appear overencouraged by Turtledove’s offer. “The problem is that these Ghost-Convicts are in-the-Slaughterhouse.”
Renzo quickly itemized for Turtledove the various kinds of malevolent ghost with whom they’d had to deal in the battle to save Venice. The dog knitted his brows. “So, if I unnerstand correct-like, these slaughter’ouse-type pye-rats is the sort that ain’t sorry for what they done in life, even though it got ’em killed?”
“To a Man, they were imprisoned or hung for Piracy & Slave-Trading, Murder & Kidnap,” Lussa explained. “And They’d like Nothing Better than to continue with More of the Same. And for some Unknown, yet surely Evil Reason, They want Human Children for their Victims now.”
Turtledove raised his snout and howled.
Lussa moved on to better news: Signor Alicamoussa had escaped from the Venetian jail with the help of his resourceful Irish wife, Mercer, who had sent in some tame beavers from their menagerie to gnaw a hole in the door. At the mention of the circus-master’s name, the Venetian mermaids began to coo and bat their eyelids.
Even the London mermaids were not impervious to the circus-master’s charms, whispering eagerly among themselves.
Lussa continued smoothly, “Yar, Signor Alicamoussa arrives in London this very Night.”
The London mermaids produced hand mirrors from their Constrictive Belts and began to primp.
“But where is the noble Scilla?” asked Lussa suddenly. The turtleshell cleared to show the boat at St. Mary Overie Dock.
“So the Field-of-Excluding has faded on your Voyage. This is where You have been?” Lussa smiled. “So close to Us all these Days! We never thought to look for You Here! Well, the Circus-Master shall lodge Himself forthwith at the Scilla and take the remaining Boys into his Care. And You must join Them there: You & your Estimable new Allies, Turtledove & his London Children.”
“But we Londoners has a perfickly good ’ome at the Mansion Dolorous,” protested Turtledove, “bed, board an’ steadyish employmint too.”
“Who is that Duchessly Girl?” Lussa asked sharply, as Sibella, dressed in an explosion of lace, promenaded into view in the turtleshell. “This Mincing Miss is not Venetian, I detect.”
“A hostage taken by Miss Uish,” explained Renzo quickly. “Sibella.”
“In my Opinion, that Small Female could bear watching with a Close Eye. There is something about Her.…”
“Renzo’s eye is very partial to her,” remarked Teo bitterly.
“Oooh, who pulled your chain?” guffawed Tobias. “Not your favorite girlie, that one?”
“Supper is served,” Nerolia’s voice simpered from the darkness. She reappeared, wheeling a silver trolley of fine bone china around a track beside the pool by means of a golden shepherd’s crook hooked into the handle.
“Antispasmodic Tea, anyone?” offered Nerolia. She proceeded to dispense into tiny china cups a faintly yellow liquid from a squat object she proudly announced as “ROYLE’S PATENT SELF-POURING TEAPOT: ‘NO MORE ACHING ARMS.’ ”
“Caulk me dead lights!” moaned Flos.
But the London mermaids took their teacups eagerly and immediately stuck their little fingers out at right angles to the delicate handles.
Next, bone china plates of pallid greenish mush were distributed.
“Wot you call dat, missis?” demanded Flos, poking her finger into it.
“The common people give it a rather amusing title,” tittered Gloriana, “ ‘Pig-in-a-swamp,’ I believe.”
“Oh hie-ly amusing!” mimicked Flos. “What is it when it’s at home, missis?”
“An extensively boiled potato in a lake of marrowfat peas,” answered Nerolia.
“Yeeuccch! Looks like what ye’d cough up if ye had the bronchitis.”
The parrots burst into a juicy chorus of coughs.
“Have some WAUKESHA ARCADIAN GINGER ALE,” offered Pucretia. “It counteracts the bile, you know.”
The Venetian mermaids’ eyes brightened at the thought of something spicy.
“Without the ginger or the bubbles, both highly prejudicial to the digestion.”
“Without, without, without …,” chanted the parrots.
“Ye drivelswigging bootless bladders!” Flos began, “Prithee—”
“Flos,” giggled Gloriana, “you would profit from some CARTER’S LITTLE NERVE PILLS. They would render you more comfortable in yourself.”
Exasperation sharpened Lussa’s voice, “Ladies! You squander Priceless Time in these Perpetual Squabbles while We face the Deadliest of Enemies once more!” She turned to the London mermaids, “And yet again, I ask You, Sisters, will You not take up Arms? It is clear that your City too faces Destruction at his pitiless Hand.”
But the London mermaids downed the contents of their teacups, folded their thin arms over their narrow chests and stared at Lussa with stubborn expressions.
“How’s yew goin’ to get ’em to fight when these pallid gels—savin’ their graces—can’t even lift a teapot,” inquired Turtledove, “Yer Scaliness?”
Catalina and Marsil now approached, pointing to the turtleshell. One of them whispered to Lussa, who turned to the dog with a worried expression. “I regret that even while You have been Here, your London Refuge has been Discovered.”
“Discovered by whom?” Renzo asked tightly.
The two mermaids swiveled the turtleshell toward them. It turned cloudy, and then filled with a scene of dark London streets.
“I’ll be dognabbed if that ain’t a cunning device,” Turtledove said, and sniffed admiringly. “Do it come in other flavors outside o’ turtle?”
The shell began to trace the Southwark byways that led to the Tristesse & Ganorus mourning emporium. Inside, a scene of devastation was revealed. Dresses lay torn and trampled. Cabinets were smashed. Mourning brooches were shattered like crushed insects. The Improving Tomes Library lay in ruins.
“Yoiks!” remarked one of the parrots.
“Who did that deed?” growled Turtledove. “I’ll tear him leg from liver! And where’s me childer?”
The shell closed in on a pair of Ghost-Convicts from the Bombazine. They were ransacking the jewelry cabinets. Their daggers glinted in the gas-lit gloom of the Mansion Dolorous. Lussa commented scathingly, “One cannot take the Gold-Lust out of the Criminal Soul.”
Now a taller Ghost-Convict in a lieutenant’s hat approached the looters. He kicked both of them across the room and advanced on the nearest one, his cutlass raised. A shark’s tooth was to be seen sticking out of his back. He shouted hoarsely, “What are you doing, yer prize drongoes?”
The looter lifted his scarred hand to protect his face, begging
piteously: “No, no, think on me poor Mammy.…”
Any further words were prevented by the lieutenant cutting off the Ghost-Convict’s head. But as he was already dead, the ghost simply rose and saluted toward his empty neck. As he did so, the lieutenant shouted, “Children! We’re looking for children. A boy and a girl. From Venice.”
“A girl,” said Teo flatly. “Then they know that I am not a boy and that I am here.”
She felt a tremor fork down her spine and thought she might faint.
“Hey, where did young Teodora git to?” exclaimed Turtledove.
“Nowherth. She’s righth beside Renzo,” affirmed the District Disgrace. Tobias nodded vigorously and pointed. Teo, feeling herself again, smiled.
“For a minute there, she was vanished into thin air,” marveled the dog. “What a doings!”
“That was Teo going between-the-Linings. Between-the-Linings means she’s still here, but she’s not visible to ordinary adults now. Just to children, animals, mermaids and ghosts,” Renzo told him. “And to the Incogniti too, of course.”
“This befalls Her when It becomes too Dangerous for Teodora to be Visible,” explained Lussa. “As the Undrowned Child of an antique Venetian Prophecy, She is the most Hated Object of our Enemy.”
“And me own dear childer?” Turtledove’s voice shook.
“Nearly all escaped,” Lussa answered, turning back to the shell.
“Nearly?” howled Turtledove. “Nearly, yew say?”
The shell showed the terrified faces of Greasy and Marg’rit as a circle of Ghost-Convicts closed in on them. This was a sight that deprived Turtledove of coherent speech. He choked and whimpered, turning around in circles in his distress.
Still speechless, he merely nodded when Lussa said, “So You see why You cannot return There. The Scilla awaits You, Comrades. Teodora, ’Tis for You to find and cast a Protective Spell upon the Vessel from Professor Marìn’s Book The Best Ways with Wayward Ghosts, to keep the Scilla hidden from Humanfolk & Spirits alike. And Spying Birds.”
Teo breathed, “The whole ship? The Scilla must be inaudible as well as invisible.”
“Can anyone smell you,” asked Tobias with interest, “between-the-Linings-loik?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Gardyloo!” cried Marsil. At that moment a swarm of rats rustled into the cavern and ran along the lower shelves. This had the London mermaids shrieking for their patented “verminicide,” ROUGH ON RATS, as they splashed out of the cavern.
“That’s terrible stuff!” exclaimed Turtledove, outraged. “I doan like rats any more than the next dog, but the trouble wiv ROUGH on Rats is how it makes ’em die so slow an’ cruel. I doan hold wiv it.”
Pucretia, the last to leave of the London mermaids, pushed an ovoid box of CHARLES FORDE’S BILE BEANS FOR BILIOUSNESS on the District Disgrace, who was still sobbing and clutching her stomach. The sight of Greasy and Marg’rit in peril, closely followed by the rats, had reduced the girl to a pitiable state.
Pucretia urged, “Bile Beans positively cure headache, constipation, despondency, fatty and waxy degeneration of the liver, debility, lack of ambition, buzzing in the head and stomach ailments.”
“Don’t do nuffink to save ye from Bajamonte Tiepolos, do it, though?” blustered Flos. “Ye know? Da kind what is intent on murdering Undrowned Childs and Studious Sons? And mermaids? And layin’ waste to whole cities? Thought not.”
Another heavy fog had descended on London while they’d been underground. Leaving the cavern, the Mansion Dolorous party caught a glimpse of two Ghost-Convicts trotting through the night mist. Deep in conversation, the ghosts did not notice the Londoners hiding behind a pilaster. Both had shark bites on their necks. One was missing his nose. An unpleasant bubbling noise issued from the blackened hole. He carried a billycan that sloshed with liquid. Both continuously brushed with their skeletal hands at the corks hanging from their hats.
The District Disgrace clung to Renzo’s hand with her grimy little fingers, and he clung right back. Turtledove growled, “I’ll smash the two of ’em in one.”
“Shhh. They mustn’t realize we know about them,” pleaded Teo. “And what about your childer? We’ve got to find them and take them to the Scilla.”
“Why do they keep thwiping their handths in front of their hats like that?” asked the District Disgrace.
“I guess they’re in the habit of brushing off flies,” said Teo.
The scene of destruction at the mourning emporium was worse even than the turtleshell had shown.
“My childer!” howled Turtledove. “They is all took!”
A muffled violin note sounded from inside one of the coffins.
“Fossy!” cried Teo. Turtledove rushed to nudge open all the wooden lids. The Mansion Dolorous boys and girls were still cowering inside. They had hidden there from the Ghost-Convicts, who had not thought to lift the lids, being much too busy raking through the stock for anything with a bit of glitter to it.
The shaking Londoners explained how only Greasy and Marg’rit, too slow to reach the coffin showroom themselves, had bravely led their pursuers away from their friends. They had paid a terrible price for their selflessness.
Ann Picklefinch whispered, “I peeped out from under my lid. Them ghoosties put our Greasy ’n’ our Marg’rit’s heads in sacks and tieded them up and carried ’em off, squealin’ loik little pigs. ’Twas verra bad.”
No one argued about leaving the Mansion Dolorous with all possible haste.
“Them ghoosties might coom back,” whimpered Rosibund. “They knows where we is, an’ might coom back at any time.”
The move to the Scilla was accomplished in less than an hour. After cleaning up as best they could, Renzo was set to writing an exquisitely regretful letter to Messrs. Tristesse and Ganorus, apologizing for their lack of attendance at funerals. Subtly, yet without actually writing any lies, he implied that a late-night raiding party from the rival Jay’s might be responsible for the damage, and for driving the boys and girls themselves into hiding.
Please do not give our coffins to other children, the note concluded, at Tig’s urging. We’ll be back in a few days. We promise.
“How we goin’ to git on board yon boot, then?” From behind a wall, Ann looked fearfully at the two sleepy officers slumped on a bench in front of the Scilla.
“The Incogniti are here to help us,” said Renzo, waving at Uncle Tommaso and a handful of pumpkin-sellers standing with their braziers in Clink Street.
Uncle Tommaso winked, shouting, “Free hot zooky! Late-night special!”
The guards roused themselves and sauntered toward the trays of glowing orange pumpkin. The boys and girls slipped up the Scilla’s ladder undetected.
From the depths of Signor Alicamoussa’s hay-scented hug, Teo noticed that Fabrizio cast a rather interested eye on the District Disgrace and that Sebastiano seemed to find a soul mate in Bits Piecer. It was good to be aboard the Scilla again, to feel wood beneath her feet and to smell the salt of the not-too-distant sea.
Turtledove eyed Sibella, daintily dressed in a white musquash cape with a fox boa and sable muff. “This is the Sibellant siren? Wot the mermaids warned us to keep an eye on? I see there ain’t no bamboozable he-person can be safe when this female puts her ‘come hithers’ upon ’im. Look how she snicker-snackers them eyelashes! Can see why yew’s a bit spoony on her, lad.” He grinned at Renzo, who turned into a boy-shaped fire-hydrant.
“Ah,” remarked Sibella with a smirk, “an English bulldog. A dog of breeding is not absolutely detestable.”
Turtledove growled low in his throat, unable to decipher the traces of a faint compliment inside the overwhelming impression of insult. He remarked to Renzo, “Doan know why yew wants to get all snoodled up to that. I’s not one to cast asparagus, but I’d say she ain’t a truster. Yew got the smarts, son, yet I think she’s one too many for yew.”
Then he leaned in closer to Sibella. “Them ain’t dogskin gloves yer a-wearin’, g
irlie?”
She drawled, “Finest Parisian poodleskin, I believe.”
“Speed the wombats!” Signor Alicamoussa was startled into saying. “That blondie girlie reminds me of someone, but feather me if I can remember who.”
“Poodleskin!” howled Turtledove. “This miss has the heart of a vulture!”
“Reckon that is the kind that most makes a hash of young men’s bosoms,” observed Signor Alicamoussa.
There was also some accommodation to be made between Turtledove and Sofonisba, both of whom slightly lost their heads on introduction, to the extent that Sofonisba finished halfway up a repaired mast, spitting like a fishwife, and Turtledove split his black velvet waistcoat jumping after her.
The boys and girls watched in silence as the cat and dog suddenly realized the indignity of their situation.
Cool apologies were exchanged, and Turtledove bowed low. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
If a cat could give a weasel’s smile, Sofonisba gave one now, mewing, “Certainly you are.”
“Yew know wot dogs is. Hot-heads. I blame me edikation. They allus taught us that any cat would murder yew for a fish supper.”
Sofonisba conceded graciously, “I myself have known several cats who would do just that.”
Tig took one look at Sofonisba and pronounced her “the most helegant creetur alive!” Thereafter Sofonisba would make a point of sleeping on Tig’s hammock.
The others shyly introduced themselves. The Venetian boys’ English proved adequate to express themselves, but not quite good enough to understand the varied street dialects of the Londoners. Teo and Renzo found themselves busy with simultaneous translations.
Sebastiano asked, “So are you two Londoners now, then?”
The awkward silence was broken by the bells of St. Mary Overie tolling ten o’clock. Then Teo was struck by inspiration: “How about some games?”
“At this hour?” Renzo asked.
“It’ll warm us up quicker than anything. And it’ll help everyone learn the words they need to get on! Pylorus, what do London children play in the street?”