Talina in the Tower Read online

  ‘But imagination means that we humans paint pictures and write books and make music …’

  ‘I’ll bet my front teeth against your petticoat ribbons that pictures, stories and melodies aint going to help the Venetians against the Ravageurs. The only way they can save themselves is to find that inscription and show the powers that be that it’s all true,’ he chuckled. ‘But they haven’t got the slightest idea, those clowns in Venice.’

  ‘What inscription?’

  ‘The one what tells how the Venetians really got Venice from the Ravageurs.’

  ‘Where is it!?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Altopone, ‘well, that would be telling, missy.’

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘Of course. It is hardly buried out of sight.’

  ‘So have I seen it?’

  ‘No doubt. But humans don’t ever really see anything, I find. The inscription is hidden where any creature may see it.’

  ‘Hidden where any creature may see? Why must you talk in riddles, you irritating creature?’

  ‘Altopone likes a riddle.’ The rat tapped his chest comfortably.

  ‘You are the most maddening rat I ever met. You are totally infuriating! You are—’ She waggled a reproving finger at him, only to see that her hands – now seeming yellowy blue in front of her – were shrinking to the dimension of a rat’s paws.

  ‘I simply mustn’t have a flouncy now. I do not want to be a rat,’ Talina told herself.

  ‘And an impudent not-quite-Ravageur, not-quite-rat is not something what you can have a civil conversation with,’ grumbled Altopone, glowering. ‘Especially with a lapful of cat-brats. You can get out of my boat right now. Out, out!’

  ‘But—!’

  ‘No buts. Just leave.’

  Talina changed her expression to a pleading one. ‘If you row me to San Marcuola in Venice, I’ll consider you absolutely the most charming rat of my acquaintance. And recommend you to others … And I can pay.’

  ‘I hope you change your underwear as often as you change your mind, missy.’

  ‘And … there’s something you should know – I’m the not-quite-cat from the song, Talina who was in the Tower. Uberto Flangini’s tower … You should help me! I’m supposed to save the Venetians,’ she added. ‘And that includes the Venetian rats, of course.’

  The rat whistled. ‘Dr Raruso’s prophecy. The not-quite-cat! Well, well, well. That’s starting to make sense. Flangini’s tower? The one by Our Lady of the Sparrows at Quintavalle? Well, then you should know all about—’

  Talina interrupted rudely, ‘So will you take us or not?’

  ‘If you’d only let me finish—’

  A drumming of paws could be heard on the shore.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Climb in. I can see there’s no telling you anything, missy. You’ll have to work it out for yourself, more’s the silly pity.’

  Talina scrabbled under her pinafore for some coins. But under her breath, she growled, ‘Ludicrous animal!’

  ‘Say, missy, is that your own nose?’ the rat whistled.

  ‘Of course it’s mine,’ blustered Talina, her good intentions forgotten.

  ‘It’s just that, well, it’s a bit longish and pointy – and that tail is a bit, well, bald.’

  With a cry of horror, Talina saw something pink and scaly thrash out from under her skirt.

  ‘Welcome to the club,’ smiled the rat. ‘San Marcuola, you say?’

  ‘Or Santa Croce.’ Talina thought of Professor Marìn’s house. ‘I desperately need some Desperate Measures to top up my human-ness,’ she whispered to herself. ‘But no, first, these kittens need their mother. Even if she isn’t very motherly.’

  Altopone put a paw into his mouth and gave three sharp squeaks. Eleven elderly rats tottered from behind stones and bushes.

  ‘We’ve got a job on,’ Talina’s new comrade told his friends. ‘We’re taking this young missy to Venice. Full fee. Get to it.’

  There was some back-leg scratching, and one rat muttered, ‘If you say so, Altopone, but this aint one of your better ideas. That girl-thing looks like trouble. Never heard of a human leaving the island.’

  Grumbling, the old gentleman rats unhitched the ropes, pushed the gondola away from the jetty and set to rowing with their miniature oars.

  Waves beat against the gondola. The ring of fog loomed ahead and suddenly devoured the front of the boat. Dr Raruso had been right – inside the fog, Talina could see nothing – not even the prow. But Altopone’s comrades rowed in silent confidence, the large rat occasionally consulting a compass and barking an order. After twenty minutes, the boat broke through the curtain of fog into bright winter sunshine. The gondola sped through a part of the lagoon Talina was sure she’d never seen, dotted with islands where a fierce wind blew the reeds into the shapes of men praying and had bent the shrubs backwards.

  All the way back to Venice, Altopone tortured her with jokes and hints about the mysterious inscription. Hard as she tried, she would keep rising to Altopone’s bait. After uncountable hours of banter, Talina had shrunk to the size of a large rat. She was the same size as the kittens, who eyed her with professional interest.

  When it was clear that Altopone was not going to reveal the secret of the inscription, Talina changed the subject. She challenged him: ‘So who really owns this boat?’

  ‘Well, I own it now.’

  ‘But if it was lost at sea, do you know how to build another?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t know how. I am a rat.’

  ‘So the humans who built this boat actually own the idea of a boat.’

  ‘Well … what about the tree what it is made of?’ Altopone asked triumphantly.

  ‘Who owns the tree?’

  ‘Exactly! Whoever owns the land owns the tree. Speaking of which, land-ho!’

  The towers of Venice were just visible in the distance, silhouetted against the setting sun.

  ‘What …’ Talina asked, ‘should I do if I ever need to get back to the Ravageurs’ island?’

  The rat whistled. ‘That’s not a question I’ve ever been asked before. I seen more little girls than your nose has seen lace handkerchiefs, but I never met a one like you.’

  ‘I haven’t finished with those Ravageurs. I haven’t found my parents yet. I need to make them tell me—’

  ‘You really are something. You don’t know the meaning of fear, do you? A little thing like you! You’re human, aincha? With the big imagination to match? So don’t you imagine those Ravageurs seizing you by the throat, shaking you till your jugular bursts and spatters the walls with your blood, then dismembering you while you is still living and fighting over your beating heart …’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Talina. ‘I didn’t imagine those things until you mentioned them. I thought you said they were cowards.’

  ‘As I said, they’re plenty brave with someone smaller or weaker than themselves.’

  Fear had conquered anger by the time they rowed down the Cannaregio Canal. It was more as girl than rat that Talina slipped off the boat just by the Due Sirene pharmacy near the Ponte delle Guglie. She counted the coins into Altopone’s hand. ‘Really – I have to know how to find you if I need to come back,’ she whispered.

  ‘Just ask for a spazzino called “Ettore”. Santa Croce’s where he sweeps the streets. Tell him Altopone is wanted. And I’ll be at this exact spot at midnight the same night.’

  Nodding, she waved goodbye. He saluted her with a cynical grin.

  ‘Let me know when you work it out about the inscription, why don’t you, not-quite-cat? Keep your sights high, that’s what I’d suggest, heh heh heh! You’ll get it eventually.’

  No sooner had she turned her back on him than Talina saw by her shadow that she had fully returned to her human shape and dimensions, though two rat whiskers remained, as she discovered by looking at her reflection in a shop window.

  She was pulling them out, one by one, when Altopone’s voice floated across the
water: ‘Jest had a thought. You didn’t let that Grignan take any of your hair, did you?’

  ‘Why?’ called Talina.

  ‘Oh dearie me,’ came the answer, and not a word more.

  Venice, the evening of the same day

  TALINA’S FIRST STOP was the ostello in the Rio Terra Farsetti. She could not wait to return the kittens of the Contessa. The arrogant little creatures nipped her thighs through her pinafore all the way, and complained loudly until Talina found herself sprouting more whiskers with frustration.

  ‘I’ve got two words to say to you,’ she said. ‘Cat bacon.’

  After that the kittens sulked and sniffed, not condescending to talk to her.

  Outside the ostello’s window, Talina mewed loudly until a battered head appeared at the window. As she leant over towards it, the familiar stink nearly knocked her over. She managed to say ‘Good evening’ in a civil fashion.

  Bestard-Belou hissed. ‘Dog-bite-my-ear! That not-quite-cat is now a not-quite-girl wid whiskers. And she still talks Felish. And looks a bit rattish. Wass goin’ on? I doan like it, I sez.’

  ‘I’ll be caterwauled!’ muttered Albicocco, joining Bestard-Belou at the sill. ‘Dares to show her face round here after robbing the Contessa of what was rightfully hers – a good ’ome. Stoopendous cheek of it!’

  ‘Actually,’ whispered Talina. ‘I’ve brought the Contessa back something that is in fact rightfully hers.’

  She placed one white kitten on the window-sill. It mewed plaintively.

  ‘My baby!’ The Contessa’s airs and graces disappeared. She rushed to the sill and licked the fluffy white bundle through the grate with unabashed tenderness. ‘One survivor! My darling!’

  ‘In fact,’ said Talina, ‘they’re all here.’ One by one, she pulled them out of her pinafore pocket. ‘I think I can roll up this wire enough to let them in.’

  ‘Do that thing, why doancha,’ said Albicocco, ‘Not-quite-cat.’

  The Contessa said quietly, ‘I owe you, Talina.’

  Talina turned away, unable to watch the spectacle of the Contessa’s motherly joy at the safe return of her kittens. It reminded her too painfully of what she herself had lost, and was still no closer to finding.

  Albicocco sighed, ‘Aw! Aint that beautiful, but, them kitty-babies? Smart and sweet, both. I’m a fool for a kitten, dat’s da troof. More fun than a barrel of blind mice, a good litter.’

  ‘I feel a cry coming on,’ sniffed Bestard-Belou. ‘Make wid de hankies, fastish. So what’s the story, not-quite-cat?’

  Quickly, gulping back tears, Talina told the cats about her visit to the Ravageur island and what she had found there.

  ‘And ’ow eggsackly do this pertain to us?’ asked Albicocco.

  ‘I thought you would want to help,’ Talina cried in frustration. ‘You are Venetian cats after all. Your friends are the Ravageurs’ prisoners and slaves. And … worse. Don’t you want to save them?’

  A shameful tear flew from her eyelash and clung to the grate, glittering like a dewdrop. She had not meant to resort to it, but she now told the horrified inhabitants of the ostello about cat bacon.

  Albicocco whistled through his whiskers. ‘Some o dem poor cats in da gibbets is probably our uncles and nevvies. But I doan see what we kin do for ’em. Even you can’t see, can you, girl?’

  She shook her head, ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Yew’s still lookin’ remarkably rattish for a human, girlie. Yew want to get yesself sorted out,’ sniffed Bestard-Belou. ‘Yew want to stop being a not-quite-somefing. Otherwise yew is an orphan in all the world, ye know, not nuffink and not the other thing neither.’

  Albicocco said, ‘Come back when yew’s got a plan, I sez.’

  But the Contessa looked over her shoulder and mouthed, ‘Just come back when you need us, Talina. We’ll be ready.’

  at Professor Marìn’s crooked house in Santa Croce,

  nearly bedtime, that same long day

  THE EMPTY SUPPER plates had been pushed aside; new candles had been lit on the stumps of the old ones. Over a final deep swig of Desperate Measures, Talina contemplated her fingernails – fully human, at last, but still grey with the dirt of the Ravageur palace, the ostello, and a nasty fall she’d taken as she ran over the Rialto Bridge back to the professor’s house. Her bruises from the Ravageur kicks and punches had been soothed with Venetian Treacle. Her hair was matted with dust. At Professor Marìn’s, she’d just realized, no one was ever going to tell her to wash her hands or brush her hair before eating. The strange thing was that not being told to do these things made her long to do both.

  Hours had passed. She’d finished recounting her latest adventures to the professor, Mademoiselle Chouette, Ambrogio, Giuseppe Tassini, Drusilla and Brolo. She’d told them of Grignan’s rabble-rousing speech, and his absolute certainty that the humans had stolen Venice from the Ravageurs. She’d explained about Altopone and his boat-for-hire. Her throat was stiff and sore with speaking. As she struggled to remember every detail, she couldn’t help noticing how close together the professor and the French mistress sat, or how Ambrogio’s eyes seemed to have lost their ability to blink.

  ‘Yes, it’s really me! Stop staring!’ she snapped at him.

  Mortified, Ambrogio petted Drusilla rather more vigorously than she cared to be petted. She informed him of that fact with a reproving paw.

  ‘I’m still worried about why Grignan wanted your hair,’ fretted Professor Marìn. ‘And put it in a scorpion tank, you say? There are so many spells—’

  ‘Grignan’s historic claims to Venice have no basis in the record books,’ Tassini fretted. ‘Yet, from what you say, Talina, he is so sure.’

  ‘What about Talina turning into a Ravageur when she got angry!’ Ambrogio marvelled. ‘And into a rat! Ugh!’

  Mademoiselle Chouette observed, ‘Très ironique. The most impudent girl in Venice, and every time she is impudent, she turns beastly, mais littéralement. Drôle!’

  Talina retorted, ‘Not so very droll for me! Anyway, I was never fully a Ravageur or a rat. I just started to get a bit that way. Ambrogio, you absorbed the Spell Steam too. You never know. It might happen to you as well.’

  ‘Tell us again – where did the rat say the inscription was?’ Ambrogio hastily changed the subject. ‘The one that says how the Venetians got Venice from the Ravageurs?’

  ‘He said, “It’s hidden where all creatures may see it”. But of course he may just have been trying to annoy me at that point.’

  ‘Where all creatures may see it,’ repeated Mademoiselle Chouette softly, looking around her.

  ‘What can everyone see in Venice?’ Ambrogio mused. ‘Sky. Water.’

  Talina objected, ‘You cannot inscribe something on air or water. Not so that it lasts.’

  ‘Not “where all creatures can see it”, we must note,’ said Tassini, ‘but “may see it”. In other words, they may see it, if they do something in order to see it.’

  ‘Humans like to write on stone,’ remarked Drusilla.

  ‘And Venice is built out of stone. So the inscription is in a building! It must be! You’re a genius, Drusilla.’

  Drusilla licked her paw, modestly.

  ‘Talina,’ Ambrogio murmured, carefully not looking at her, ‘do you know how many buildings there are in Venice? How many walls? Hundreds of thousands. How many inscriptions? We can’t get inside every palace and house in Venice! It would take a lifetime to find the right inscription. How would we know it if we saw it? We are just as badly off as before.’

  ‘And the sea-level has risen,’ said the professor despondently, ‘in these last hundreds of years. What if it’s below the waves now? Or covered in moss?’

  ‘Or high up, so you’d have to be a bird to see it?’ offered Tassini.

  ‘High up,’ mused Talina. ‘Altopone said, “Keep your sights high.”’

  ‘Like at the top of a tower?’ suggested Mademoiselle Chouette.

  ‘Where it would always be safe from water, and p
rying eyes!’ Ambrogio clapped his hands.

  Talina jumped up. ‘When I mentioned that I lived in Uberto Flangini’s tower, the rat said, “That’s starting to make sense.” Of course it does!’

  ‘Could Flangini know?’ Professor Marìn knitted his brows. ‘Could he be part of this?’

  ‘Wouldn’t put anything past him!’ muttered Talina. ‘Ambrogio,’ Talina looked at him warmly, ‘do you know where we’re going now?’

  Blushing, he lifted his spectacles from his nose, held them up to the light with a critical expression, polished one lens on his sleeve and then answered in his most lawyerly manner – in a quite unsuccessful attempt to hide just how delighted he was to be included in Talina’s plans this time. ‘We shall proceed from this place to the top of your great uncle Uberto’s tower. All the way to the top floor, where we can climb out of the windows and have a look.’

  Then he faltered. ‘But Talina, you can’t just prance in and say, “Hello there, Great Uncle Uberto. I’m not dead after all.”’

  Talina interrupted, ‘Then I’ll say, “Yes, the Ravageurs took me, but they spat me out. I’m too impudent to eat. So do you mind if I have a look at the wall outside your study at the top of your tower? I don’t suppose what one might see there is secret, is it? That’s not the reason why you never let me, or anyone, come higher than the best parlour, obviously. Can’t be. Thanks so much, Uncle Ubie … ”’

  Ambrogio breathed, ‘So what are we going to say to him?’

  Talina’s face split into a grin. ‘We’re going to say precisely nothing to him. There are forty minutes a day when my Guardian is never at home.’

  Every afternoon at exactly four o’clock, Uberto Flangini took his three dogs for a walk, usually to the post office and back. He would be gone for forty minutes precisely. And the next day, at exactly 3.45 p.m., a boy and a girl were hiding in the clammy ivy-haunted shadows of the ruined Our Lady of the Sparrows next to the gently twittering tower at Quintavalle.

  As soon as the Guardian’s narrow back, clad in a long black coat, retreated down Quintavalle’s single winding street, Ambrogio and Talina parted the curtain of ivy, sprang to the drawbridge and ran to the door. Talina snatched the spare key from its hiding place behind a loose brick. They crept into the tower.