Ahead of her, Teo caught sight of an insubstantial figure carrying a black tin. He wore a battered felt hat from which corks dangled improbably. She drew back into a doorway when she saw a shark’s tooth embedded in his back. “A ghost!” she shuddered, as he bent over a doorknob. “What’s he up to?”
Baddened magic was abroad in Venice again. Even without seeing the ghost, Teo would have known it, from the prickling between her shoulder blades and the dragging feeling around her heart.
“Hark! ’Tis the Undrowned Child at last!” cried Flos, as Teo flew down the stairs and into their chamber. The mermaid’s blond hair crackled with ice as she swam eagerly in Teo’s direction.
“Teodora!” Lussa greeted her. “We’ve worried greatly about You!”
Marsil, one of the smaller mermaids, observed, “Lackaday! She’s in poor fig, the little maid! The flesh has dropped offa her. Thin as a rasher of wind! And where’s the Studious Son? Is he also in a parlous state? Give her some warm sea-cow juice! Roundly!”
Breathlessly, over sips of hot sweet milk, Teo asked, “Is Professor Marìn with you? Is he with the nuns?”
Flos shook her head glumly. Crushed with disappointment, Teo sorrowfully explained the disappearance of the professor and the arrival of Miss Canidia Uish.
“But did you not see her in the turtleshell?” she asked. “Look now!”
At a motion of Lussa’s hand, two butler-mermaids held up the polished shell. Teo winced to see Miss Uish reflected there, dimpling and smiling in purple-and-red-striped silk under the unmistakable chandeliers of the frescoed ballroom at the Palazzo Barbaro.
“That’s her.” Teo pointed with distaste. “But what about inside the Scilla? Haven’t you seen what she gets up to there?”
“Sweet fadoodle on da Scilla since New Year’s Eve!” lamented Flos.
Lussa explained, “When We try to summon the Ship, the Shell gives Us Nothing but a Black Emptiness & the Sound of Children’s Tears. It shows your Miss Uish only when She ventures upon Dry Land. And now You say the good Professor has disappeared? Yes, Child, I see It in your Face: You are Right to suspect Baddened Magic. The Woman Uish has Access to It. ’Tis my Guess that She has cast some Kind of Field-of-Excluding around the Ship.”
As Lussa spoke, the Mayor strode into view inside the turtleshell. Miss Uish curtseyed to him with perfect grace, her face illuminated by a coquettish smile.
Flos muttered, “Undrowned Child, dat’s da clinchpoop’s what’s mistreating ye? We’ll knock her bandy-legged!”
“Savin’ her grace, of course,” added Cara, generally milder than her sisters.
“God’s elbows, that’s an ugly woman,” cried Pianon, one of the butler-mermaids. “Ugly to the core.”
“Sink me, wot a bagger!” cried Flos, explaining to Teo, “Face like dat should be covered with a paper bag.”
Marsil insisted, “Two-bagger, more like! Needs second bag in case the first one falls off.”
Teo explained, “Well, the school inspectors think she’s a raving beauty. They go weak at the knees when she flirts with them.”
Marsil cried, “Looks like da Mayor’s gone da same way. He’s makin’ da goggly eyes at her.”
Lussa observed shrewdly, “Yet I fear that the Captivating Miss Uish has but a Gristly Gizzard for a Heart.”
“If he’s not here, where can the professor be? You see”—Teo gulped—“I might have heard a pistol shot. But I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to think … And what about my …?”
Lussa shook her head gravely. “And I am sorry, Teodora, We have not been able to locate your adoptive Parents either. Which makes Me believe They have been taken Away beyond the Lagoon.”
“And Signor Alicamoussa?” asked Teo. “What is happening to him?”
Lussa pointed. The turtleshell showed the dashing circus-master sitting despondently on a bare plank inside his jail cell. Even in his despair, the glossy curls on his head fell unerringly into the most fetching arrangement on his handsome brow. Suddenly, he shook his shapely fist, and shouted, “That scorpion spawn, the Mayor! Reckon he’s done me like a dinner!”
“ ’S a dirty shame!” cried Marsil. “That gorgeousness shut ’way where nobody can see ’im or ’ave the use of ’im.”
“Aye,” sighed her companions. “Prithee put me down for some of that!” and “Always does a body good to see them blue-blue eyes, and that pretty-kissin’ mouf.…”
“Ladies!” warned Lussa. “Such Expressions are not appropriately Uttered by any Female other than Signor Alicamoussa’s own Estimable Wife.”
At the word “wife,” there was a quiet hubbub of disappointed mutterings. The turtleshell showed an earnest young woman, evidently not Venetian, passionately scribbling a long letter while the tears ran freely down her pale cheeks.
Lussa leaned forward eagerly. “What does The Key to the Secret City tell You to do, Teodora?”
Teo groaned. “Renzo says the book was taken by the flood.”
Silence fell on the cavern. The parrots hung their feathered heads in misery.
“That,” sighed Lussa quietly, “is a sad Blow to all our Hopes.”
She looked more closely at Teo. “Child, ’Tis true, you are much Diminished in Substance & Spirits.”
Teo quickly recounted what had happened to the young sailors’ rations in the last seven days—everything down to the cod sponge.
“Dat’ll put da woefuls in yer gormy-ruddles rightaway!” exclaimed Flos.
“Pore mite!” cried the other mermaids. “No wonder she’s a whittled stick o’ herself. Bring food alongside, Catalina!”
A platter of fragrant curried seaweed was placed in front of Teo, whose eyes watered with hunger. Catalina implored, “Put that in yer breadbasket, girlie. And have yesself a taste o’ these ’ere rib-stickin’ jerk split peas wiv turmeric mash.…”
“And our Kitchen shall prepare some nourishing Eatables for You to take back to the poor Boys on the Scilla. Swallow sparingly, Teodora,” warned Lussa. “Do not gorge. After Malnourishment, ’Tis Perilous to fill your Belly with rich Tidbits.”
Teo’s nose hovered ecstatically above the dish, reveling in the exquisite odor. She tried to nibble slowly, but the spicy leaves were too tempting. She surreptitiously filled her mouth again and again while Lussa ordered, “Bring The Book of Enemies!”
A sandalwood skiff was floated in across the cavern. On it reposed a book bound in black seaweed and glinting with green wax seals. Lussa consulted the pages with a slender gold-embossed finger. “No, a Miss Canidia Uish is not listed Herein as an Enemy of Venice. We have not encountered Her, or Her Like, before.”
“Perhaps it’s not her real name?” wondered Teo. “And anyway, what can an Englishwoman, who says she’s a representative of Queen Victoria, have to do with Bajamonte Tiepolo? And where is he?”
“Teodora, I am as Mystified as Yourself. You must do All You can to investigate this Miss Canidia Uish. The Seldom Seen Press shall meanwhiles alert all Good-Hearted Venetians to the Young Sailors’ Plight. By Dawn, It shall be Done.”
Teo emerged from the cavern into a molten lagoon sunset. A satchel slapped against her side, heavy with parcels of food and clinking bottles.
The sky and sea coalesced into a vivid orange glaze, with the skeletons of buildings spindly and black against it.
There was no doubt that Teo had overindulged on the curried seaweed. The bilious colors of the sunset merged with the vivid sensations inside her belly. She felt rather faint, somewhat removed from the world.
It was then that she noticed the cormorants. There were hundreds—no, thousands—of them, clad in their severe glistening livery, perched on top of palaces, churches and masts, and on the nets out in the lagoon. Each bird stood in the same posture, hanging out its gaunt, ragged wings, its slim beak pointing to the sky.
The birds looked too much like bats for Teo not to think of Bajamonte Tiepolo. He had taken a batlike form when he was between human and ghostly states. Teo t
ried to reassure herself with page 354 of Professor Marìn’s Winged Creatures: “Cormorants spread their wings to dry, because their feathers are not waterproofed with oil like those of other seabirds.” Yet it still seemed menacing: this infestation of motionless black birds, staring up with their small black eyes as if into a bleak future. Teo hurried on.
A narrow street took her uncomfortably close to a newsstand on which perched another cluster of cormorants. A headline below the birds caught Teo’s eye. For the first time since the ice flood, Venetian newspapers were showing an interest in the outside world.
STRANGE CREATURES FOUND DEAD IN LONDON! screamed the headlines. MASSACRE OF “EXTRAORDINARY” SEA MONSTERS!
Teo bent to look at the blurred illustration. Corpses were shown floating down London’s River Thames. They might have seemed extraordinary and monstrous to the Londoners, but these poor dead creatures were all too familiar to Teo. They were her friends and allies, the English Melusine, a two-tailed kind of mermaid, and the Sea-Bishops, man-sized jellyfish with pointed human heads. As far as Teo could see from the picture, the Melusine and Sea-Bishops had been attacked by something that had left great sores and weals on their bodies, and had somehow deflated them, as if all their blood had been sucked out.
“And the poor South Sea dolphins too!” Teo recalled the sad news that had arrived in Venice on the same day as the ice flood: that schools of these gentle creatures had been found floating lifeless in the Pacific Ocean.
The South Sea dolphins, the Melusine and the Sea-Bishops had one thing in common, apart from their dreadful deaths. All had come to the aid of Venice, when Bajamonte Tiepolo tried to destroy the city two summers before.
“So,” Teo groaned aloud, “these murders can mean only one thing.”
And where was the murderer now?
As Teo had run off toward the House of the Spirits, Renzo had stared after her retreating figure, his hands clenched in frustration. He would not let Teo outdo him in daring! He quickly decided to sneak back into Miss Uish’s stateroom.
A lovely fug of warmth hit him as he opened the door. He’d left Emilio posted outside as watch. The rest of the Scilla was icy, but in her stateroom, Miss Uish had allowed herself the luxury of a handsome Rippingille’s enameled oil stove.
Despite Miss Uish’s immaculate appearance, her cabin had quickly descended into chaos. The walls and floors were festooned with clothes; the floors were strewn with confectionery wrappings.
“ ‘HOADLEY’S FRUIT JELLIES. BEST AUSTRALIAN LAMINGTONS,’ ” read Renzo, picking up a handful of crumpled papers. They were all written in English: “ ‘LIGHTEST SPONGE-CAKE ENROBED IN RICH CHOCOLATE AND ROLLED IN SUCCULENT PACIFIC OCEAN COCONUT.’ ”
Renzo sniffed the empty wrapping appreciatively. But how to find anything useful in this midden of silk and waste paper? Taking a step toward the disordered bed, he noticed that there was something strange about the far end of it. Miss Uish slept not on a pillow, but on a slender wooden box.
“A pillow box!” he exclaimed. Renzo, whose knowledge of history was encyclopedic, knew that this long, thin object came from China. Such boxes were used by travelers, who slept with their heads upon their most precious possessions in order to protect them from thieves. Miss Uish’s pillow box was beautifully decorated with a swirling design of flowers, white serpents and graceful black bats, in ebony and mother-of-pearl inlaid in green lacquer.
Renzo was reaching a shaking hand toward the lid when Emilio poked his head around the door. “She’s back from her party! Get out of there!”
Renzo fled, crashing into Teo, who was sliding down the booby hatch into their sleeping quarters, her arms full of packages and a greenish look on her face.
That night, at least, the sailors dined famously well in the privacy of their cabin. The only one who showed a meager appetite was Renzo, whom Teo quietly told what she’d learned from the mermaids and about the poor dead Melusine and Sea-Bishops. He was also embarrassed at the lack of success of his spying mission to Miss Uish’s room.
“But I did notice that there are bats and white snakes on her pillow box,” he whispered to Teo.
“White snakes or Vampire Eels?”
“Exactly.”
Few of the sailors could manage more than a mouthful of cod sponge for breakfast the next morning. Miss Uish castigated them, “Think you’re too good for your rations, whelps? Or are you sickening for a dose?”
With their mouths still pleasantly a-tingle with chili flakes, the young sailors submitted almost cheerfully to BUMSTEAD’S WORM SYRUP, with VERMIFUGE for afters.
Venetians who rose at dawn on January 7 found a notice printed on sea-scented paper pinned to the breast of a certain statue in the Campo dei Mori in Cannaregio.
The statue was of a man with a sharp iron nose and an irritable look to match. His name was Signor Rioba. At moments when something was amiss or being hidden by those in authority, he traditionally “spoke” to the Venetians in angry antique lettering printed on slightly damp paper. Signor Rioba had been most vociferous when Bajamonte Tiepolo tried to destroy Venice, reserving particular and eloquent scorn for the Mayor, who had tried all along to pretend nothing was wrong. Signor Rioba’s missives were, of course, printed by the mermaids on their Seldom Seen Press.
The new notice read: Venetians! Do ye not know that there’s a sack of Venetian children being tortured and starved on board the Scilla? A thousand shames on ye snibbling buffers that ye leave ’em there to perish of cruelty. The Mayor will tell ye all is well, of course. Shame on his lying mouth!
More copies of the same notice were to be found in baskets floating down canals in every part of the city.
Although the Mayor knew nothing of the mermaids and the Seldom Seen Press, he was far from delighted to hear that his old enemy Signor Rioba was up in arms again. “That ruffian Rioba,” he was heard to say with a sniff, “has such a coarse way with words. And such an inconvenient tendency to bother the general public with matters that should be handled discreetly by their betters, such as myself.”
The Mayor expanded on this theme for the evening paper:
Under our present calamity, naturally troublemakers seek to draw attention to the most far-fetched and crazed notions. It is ever thus. How dare Rioba insult and libel Queen Victoria’s adorable representative, such a loving mother to our orphans? If the shining masts of the Scilla had tongues, what happy tales they would tell. Lucky, lucky children!
And polite Venetian society merely tittered at the rudeness of Signor Rioba. No one in Venice took the notice seriously.
The conditions on the Scilla were not reinvestigated.
Queen Victoria’s health had taken a lurch for the worse. She lay in deathly silence upon her bed at Osborne House, too weak to raise her head.
The end of Queen Victoria would be the end of the world as most people knew it. And so the world held its breath, waiting for the blow.
But there were also people observing Queen Victoria’s decline with happy excitement.
To the island of Hooroo, to a black-rigged ship in a remote part of the Venetian lagoon and to a dark northern barn, relays of cormorants brought daily bulletins of the Queen’s failing health.
Harold Hoskins, the Pretender to the British throne, turned his thoughts toward Osborne House with the glee of a shark smelling blood. As a member of the royal family, he was entitled to be present at the old Queen’s death. It was on January 7 that he stepped aboard the new boat that would carry him back to the old country.
“Just in time, with luck,” he gloated, stroking his sandy beard.
As the Kingmaker’s Dame glided over the waves—at four times the speed of any ordinary vessel—the Pretender kept a notebook of comforting statistics by his side. It recorded the number of new warships sliding into the docks at Hooroo’s secret lagoon. And he reread the letter of his subtlest and most secret spy, Lieutenant Rosebud, who was currently commanding that black-rigged ship in the Venetian lagoon.
Trave
l appears to agree with Signor Pipistrelly. Since the interesting events of Christmas Eve in Venice, and his journey to Calais, our Signor Pipistrelly has grown in strength, wrote Rosebud. The birds tell me he will be ready to sail for our rendezvous on the Thames as soon as we ourselves get there. Meanwhile, thanks to that clever device of his, our own Bombazine waits undetected in the waters just outside Venice, and our two new recruits are feeling very motivated—shall we say?—to share their researches. Our colossal comrade has, with due encouragement, developed a taste for the soft sweetness of human flesh. Indeed, we shall be hard put to satisfy its appetite if things continue as they do.
And our colleague in Venice continues to expand her field of influence with the highest and noblest. The lady will shortly be in a position to remove the Scilla to a place of convenience without drawing any suspicion whatsoever.
The Pretender smiled. His pale blue eyes sparkled with delight. He would have danced about the deck, but he knew he must be careful. The sea was swollen, and he must not risk jolting against the taffrail. In his case, given the family malady, the slightest mishap could be fatal. No, the future King of England must take care of his health. Harold Hoskins took up the letter again.
Everything’s coming up roses, quipped Lieutenant Rosebud, unless you are unfortunate enough to be a Londoner or a Venetian. Or a Studious Son.
“There shall be no more vulgar Venetian spoken aboard my ship!” announced Miss Uish, as the Scilla creaked out to the lagoon mudflats for what she had described as “a most interesting training exercise.”
“My ship!” thought Teo indignantly.
“Vulgar Venetian?” spluttered Renzo.
Miss Uish bestowed one of her most toxic smiles upon the bewildered crew. “From now on, all lessons will be conducted in English, the language of Empire. Punishments shall apply for failure to obey.”
Teo and Renzo exchanged apprehensive glances. Both of them had always got excellent marks for English, but what about the others? Professor Marìn’s bedtime stories were unlikely to be the kind of English lessons that Miss Uish meant.