Talina in the Tower Read online

  ‘Ha, ha, ha, Ratfood!’ the Ravageurs grinned and guffawed.

  Grignan glowered at Talina. ‘If you’re not going to entertain us, why shouldn’t I kill you immediately?’

  ‘Because I have questions.’

  The Ravageurs whistled and growled, while their Lord stared at Talina. ‘But this one can speak like—’

  Now that Talina had started to talk, the words tumbled out so fast and furious that she could scarcely believe her own ears. She declared, ‘Yes, I have interesting questions. Such as – such as … Who gave you the right to kidnap Venetians and cats? And by the way, why don’t you even bother to pretend a French accent like all your minions? Not very well either, I may say. But most of all I want to know what you’ve done with my parents. Because …’ She quailed into silence and confusion. Her vision was changing alarmingly. All the yellow bones in the chandeliers glowed but the brown fur of the Ravageurs had grown dull and misty.

  ‘Oh no!’ she thought. ‘I must keep calm somehow. Sweet, serene and reasonable, as the professor said.’

  Grignan wasn’t even looking at her. She followed his eyes to a piece of paper nailed to the wall near his altar. It was a highly accurate drawing labelled ‘French Monster on the Crooked Campanile’. And it was signed ‘Ambrogio Gasperin’.

  ‘Oh!’ escaped from Talina’s mouth.

  Grignan’s eyes narrowed. ‘So do you happen to know this Ambrogio Gasperin?’ he drawled. ‘Perpetrator of this insulting drawing? We intend to get him. We’ll take all the boys in Venice until we find him. And when we do, he’s for the pot.’

  ‘Oh my … I mean, no, never heard of him,’ gabbled Talina. ‘Or her. Funny name, Ambrogio, don’t you think? Um—’

  She breathed deeply, whispering urgently to herself, ‘Sweet, serene and reasonable. At all times.’

  The Ravageur Lord inspected his claws. Something red clung between two of them. He sucked it out loudly.

  ‘Vile,’ muttered Talina under her breath.

  ‘Delicious, actually. But how would you know? What a gristleless untasty life you humans live. Why so silent now, Ratfood? Speak up!’

  ‘You make me … nervous,’ she faltered. ‘Don’t you know how that feels?’

  ‘Can’t say that I do.’

  It was his casual disdain that did it. A wave of heat suffused Talina’s face and her head suddenly emptied of ‘serene and peaceful’ and filled with fire. ‘Give them back!’ she shouted. ‘Give them back, all the fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers and children and aunts and cats you have taken!’

  ‘Oi, what’s that growing on ’er nasty little face?’ called Rouquin.

  ‘Oh no,’ thought Talina, ‘whiskers! And my heart is beating fit to burst, and I bet my eyes are turning green and round.’ She dared not touch her nose.

  Her voice sounded husky. The reds and greens had drained from the Ravageurs’ capes and jewels – again, the blue of the fire and the yellow of the tallow candles were the only colours she saw clearly. ‘I’m turning into a cat again,’ Talina wailed. She found herself squatting on all fours.

  ‘But this isn’t like before,’ she thought. ‘I’m not a cat. My hair’s sticking up like a mane – just like the mane of a Ravageur! My collar is so tight! And why do I feel so much like fastening my teeth into something meaty?’

  She repeated to herself, ‘Sweet, serene and reasonable. I must stay—’

  Grignan bounded off the stage and gripped Talina by the back of the dress that now strained across her back. He shook her hard, throttling the breath out of her. The fumes of smoked sage-leaf made her dizzy.

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ Grignan bayed. ‘One of us?’

  ‘One of you?’ cried Talina. ‘That’s the last thing in the world I want to be.’ She held up her hand, screaming, ‘Stop!’

  But that hand was now a paw, thickly furred with grey. Yet her legs were still her own and her arms and body were human.

  Grignan slammed his own massive paw down on hers, pinioning her to the floor. ‘What are you?’ he roared.

  one intake of breath later

  BEFORE TALINA COULD collect enough wits to answer, a Ravageur trotted in from the next room and whispered something to Magisterulus.

  ‘Second Breakfast is served in the Sala del Sangue,’ announced the Vizier.

  Two hundred dripping red tongues lolled out of two hundred black muzzles.

  The Ravageur Lord stroked his nose. ‘It’s always fun to play with the little ones – but more amusing, of course, when one’s appetite’s already slaked.’

  The Vizier simpered, ‘And, Lord, this girl – or whatever she’s turning into – is very thin and no doubt particularly bitter in flavour. We should fill our bellies with something more appetizing first.’

  Fear and rage battled inside Talina. Rage won. She stuck out her tongue. She was appalled to see that it flopped out so far of her mouth that she could see it, twice its normal length and much redder than she ever remembered it from the bathroom mirror. She felt the left side-seam of her dress give way from armpit to waist.

  A door slammed in the distance. A rich smell of meat wafted into the room. In spite of herself, Talina’s mouth filled with water, and she sniffed greedily at the air. Some of the Ravageurs moaned with pleasure, and a long filament of saliva dropped from Grignan’s jaws. He told the Vizier, ‘You’re right. Tie the prisoner up. Whatever she is, dealing with her will be sweeter with … dessert!’

  Frimousse knocked Talina to the ground and dragged her across the hall until her head collided painfully with the corner of a table. She sprawled on the floor, her legs splayed in front of her, her back against a table leg. At a nod from Magisterulus, some of the rats ran around Talina with ropes, fastening her to the table leg. One of the rats from the boat winked at her as he scampered off. Another tucked one end of the rope into her left hand, which he had just tied behind her.

  ‘It’s a bow, not a knot,’ he hissed. ‘Wait till they start eating. They’ll forget everything else in the world. Then just pull.’

  She thanked him with her eyes.

  The rat nodded. ‘Good luck, not-quite-cat. No one told us you’d also be a not-quite-Ravageur.’

  ‘Things happen to me when I get angry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m beginning to think that what happens is that I start to look like whatever or whomever I’m angry with.’

  ‘Tricky, that,’ the rat sympathized. ‘Plenty to raise anyone’s hackles round here.’

  From across the room boomed Grignan’s stern voice: ‘Is it done properly? Rat-work can be so shoddy.’

  The rat froze. Talina could see his heart pumping in his chest.

  ‘Oh no,’ thought Talina. ‘If they see what he’s done, we’ll all be killed! They won’t wait for dessert.’

  Reluctantly she let go of the trailing end of the rope. The rat’s face suffused with relief. ‘Pretend you’ve fainted,’ he whispered.

  Talina closed her eyes and let her head loll forward. Frimousse inspected the coils, but his eyes were glazed and his mouth open, releasing a long spool of dribble onto Talina’s shoulder.

  ‘She’s out!’ Frimousse reported. ‘Dead to ze world!’

  Then he forgot her entirely. Three wide doors swung open. Frimousse joined the other Ravageurs swarming through the opening, nipping and snarling at each other in their haste to get what were evidently considered the best seats on the far side of the room. Talina felt the breeze of two hundred Ravageurs rushing past. Against her will, she breathed in the rancid cloud of fur and skin flakes they left behind.

  Despite their hurry, each Ravageur paused for a second in front of a niche just inside the Sala del Sangue, where he spat with deadly accuracy at a crude portrait of a man in antique costume etched into a ragged piece of parchment. The portrait was ringed by a rope of living blue fire, which snarled and pranced around it. Talina thought she could see tiny malicious faces and little punching arms in those flames. She wondered who the man could be, but his featu
res were all frayed and blistered with violent applications of Ravageur saliva.

  Grignan strolled after the Ravageurs, accompanied by the Vizier. They too paused to spit at the portrait, hitting it precisely in the middle of the sticky face. They did not cast a look backwards to where Talina slumped, doing her best to look unconscious. Breathing through her nose, she stared under semi-closed lids through the open doors.

  The Sala del Sangue was dominated by a long, narrow table in a U shape, at human-knee height. Bloodstained leather skins were laid over it. On those the rats swarmed, setting out hundreds of black spoons, glistening with a dark liquid. The Ravageurs perched on leather cushions, little growls of hunger escaping from their jaws. Talina was disgusted to see that some lapped from bleached human skulls, cut in half and mounted on black stones. Others scratched themselves, raising more puffs of skin and fur, or snapped at their neighbours.

  ‘First,’ commanded the Vizier, ‘your medicine!’

  The Ravageurs screwed up their muzzles with distaste. But they lowered their heads and lapped the black spoons clean.

  Talina was puzzled. ‘Gripe Cordial? Worm syrup? Whatever it is, it’s not working. Those Ravageurs are horribly mangy. Some have more bald patches than fur!’

  A dozen doors opened simultaneously on the far side of the sala, where the favoured seats were. As if kicked from behind, a large sheep rushed in from every door, each wearing a kind of harness with an elaborate saddle strapped to its back. On the saddles sat silver salvers heaped with food. As the sheep trotted around the U-shaped table, Ravageurs turned and dragged whatever they fancied from the nearest salver onto the filthy leather tablecloths.

  ‘Well, I can see why they don’t bother with plates,’ thought Talina, watching the Ravageurs tearing at their meat and guzzling the sauces. Between courses, they impatiently sucked the spilt juices that had soaked into the leather tablecloths.

  One course appeared to be delayed. Howls of frustrated hunger rang through the Sala del Sangue. Talina watched in horror as a Ravageur’s jaws closed around a woolly waiter’s neck. His companions turned on him in fury.

  ‘Lay off, Nochin Quinchou! You barbarian!’ the two Ravageurs on either side of him shouted, nipping him until he let go of the sheep.

  ‘I forgot myself, Croquemort. Sorry, Fildefer,’ muttered Nochin Quinchou, hanging his mange-ridden head, while Croquemort slapped him repeatedly on one side of it. ‘Ouch, ouch, you’ll have my ear off!’

  Evidently this was the only form of table manners that the Ravageurs observed: not to eat the waiters.

  The Vizier announced each new dish as it arrived on sheepback from the kitchen. In spite of her disgust, Talina leant forward with interest. Years of poring over French cookbooks made nearly all these dishes familiar to her – though she’d never had the luxury of tasting them.

  Timballes de queues d’Ecrevisses Mantua

  Prawn-tail mousse

  *

  Terrine de foie gras avec sa gelée

  Goose livers with jelly

  *

  Faisan à la Financière

  Bankers’ Pheasant

  *

  Tournedos de Rat Mort

  (one Talina had not seen before)

  *

  Canard Pompéien

  Pompey Duck turned out to be a cold duck stuffed with foie

  gras, its flesh decorated with spices painted on in a design

  of red and black on a white background.

  *

  Consommé Vivant

  This was wriggling with live lobsters, which the Ravageurs

  picked off with terrible relish, smashing the crustaceans on

  the table and tearing their tails off.

  For dessert there was:

  Le Soufflé aux taupes caramélisées, ses Macarons et Chantilly

  Souffé of Caramelized Moles with macaroons and

  whipped cream

  The Ravageur Lord was the only one to eat off a kind of plate. He was seated at the ruins of an altar above the open ends of the U-shaped table. Talina was horrified to see that a beautiful old illustrated book served as his place setting. A sage-leaf cigar lay smouldering perilously close to one corner of it.

  ‘No doubt stolen from the Archives at the same time as my father!’ thought Talina.

  A butler Ravageur clamped a tarnished silver ladle in his jaw to serve Lord Grignan reverent helpings of every delicacy – straight onto the book. Occasionally, when the page became so saturated with bloody sauce that the food slipped off it, the butler deftly spread a new chapter open with his claw. Beside the book was a large glass jar of Spiced Mostarda from Golosi’s. Grignan picked up the pot with his jaws and emptied a splash of the orange fruit mustard onto his food.

  The final course was announced as La Corbeille de ‘Fruits’. In this fruit basket, instead of apples and peaches, however, there were squirming frogs and toads. This was accompanied by a foaming red liquid in buckets placed at intervals around the table. The Ravageurs plunged their heads into them with gusto.

  The rat’s voice came from beside Talina. ‘Thank you for covering for us. You’ve got a cool head, not-quite-girl. Now don’t move. That Rouquin is still keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘Thank you for looking out for me,’ she whispered. ‘What are they drinking?’

  ‘Hot raw rabbit juice,’ the rat wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Don’t they know that you can get tapeworms from raw meat?’

  ‘Tell me about it! No, I’ll tell you. See that one over there, next to Lèche-bottes, him – Crassiceps?’ The rat pointed a shaking paw towards a scrawny Ravageur whose head was all but buried in a haunch of lamb. Crassiceps raised a bloodied muzzle, and seemed to stare straight at Talina. She dropped her eyelids. The rat whispered, ‘They made us pull a seven-metre tapeworm out of his rear end! That’s why they call him Crassiceps – after the Taenia crassiceps, that fearful tapeworm, which had got wrapped round his insides. They’re all infested, the Ravageurs, and with the mange too. Except Grignan, of course.’

  ‘Ugh!’ Talina hurriedly changed the subject. ‘And another thing – aren’t there any girl or lady Ravageurs?’

  The rat said, ‘Yes. They keep them … aside.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Talina. ‘Are they even more vicious than the males? Or uglier, even?’

  ‘Not at all. But the he-Ravageurs don’t think much of them.’

  Talina felt sorry to have insulted the females. She asked, ‘Don’t they even eat with the males?’

  ‘They feed in their quarters. The Ravageurs send them their leftovers, if there are any. Look to your right.’

  Talina observed Croquemort and Échalas leaving the room with buckets of leftovers in their jaws.

  ‘Off to feed the females,’ said the rat.

  ‘With buckets? Where are their silver platters?’

  ‘Oh no, when they remember – which isn’t always – they just empty the food into the females’ trough, or throw the cakes through the bars. They enjoy watching the females scuffle for morsels.’

  ‘How horrible. But troughs? Bars? They treat them like prisoners? They leave them hungry?’

  ‘As far as the Ravageurs are concerned, the females are worthless except for breeding. They give them a lot of sweets, because it keeps them giggly and stupid. That’s how they like them.’

  Talina was feeling far from giggly or stupid. An idea was surging through her brain like an electric shock. She demanded, ‘Speaking of slavery, who prepared all this food? Ravageurs could not possibly pluck those tiny little birds, or stuff the foie gras into the duck, or roll the butter into those garlic-and-parsley breadcrumbs! Only humans have hands clever enough to do that.’

  ‘Oi, we’re plenty clever,’ the rat bristled. ‘But hey, you are starting to look like—’

  Talina barely heard him. ‘I knew it! So now the kidnapped humans are forced to work in the Ravageur kitchens?’

  At the thought of her studious father toiling at a stove, instead o
f at his old rosewood desk in the Archives, Talina felt an immense pity, mixed with anger. How dare they reduce him to this! How could they enslave and humiliate that quiet, dignified man!

  She turned her head to rub her nose, which was itching badly, against the table leg, too upset to notice that it was distinctly longer and bristlier than normal.

  Talina calmed herself. ‘But they’re not actually killing the humans. As long as the humans are useful to the Ravageurs, they will keep them alive.’

  She took a deep breath and looked longingly towards the nearest sheep passage. That place where the sheep came from – her parents were almost certain to be there.

  But now it was not just Rouquin who kept staring at her. Nochin Quinchou could not take his eyes off Talina: pale and crazed, they swept over her again and again, while their owner feverishly scratched at his ear, which really did seem to be hanging by a thread since Croquemort’s beating. Some of the other Ravageurs were still worrying the leather tablecloths with their teeth, or scratching at their mange.

  The meal was drawing to a close. The Vizier rose and trotted to the stage where Grignan sat, wiping a shaggy paw over a mouth greasy with Golosi’s Mostarda. Magisterulus announced, ‘Lord Grignan’s speech!’

  The Ravageur Lord rose.

  ‘Soon,’ he told his creatures, ‘we shall have the pleasure of making an example of a Venetian brat. This prompts me to speak to you once more of the greatness of the Ravageurs and the blind folly of the humans. The Venetians are such fools! They refuse to find out why we Ravageurs are punishing them: they prefer to pretend we do not exist! They put their heads in the sand like stupid ostriches.’

  ‘Big brainless birdies, zat’s what zey is!’ shouted Rouquin.

  Grignan silenced him with a look and continued. ‘We Ravageurs have a worthy grievance. The humans stole our ancestral land and forced us into exile. They are low, dirty thieves. It is their kind who are the beasts.’

  ‘Huh, beasts!’ sneered the Ravageurs.

  ‘This,’ thought Talina scornfully, ‘sounds like a rehearsed speech. From a script.’