Talina in the Tower Read online

  ‘This is exactly the sort of thing that will make Great Uncle Uberto say it’s time to take you to the tower, kitten,’ her papà warned, his face pale and his eyes almost wild. ‘Just one more bad report from your school … that’s all he needs.’ Her mother had uttered a faint protesting cry, hugging Talina tight to her chest.

  ‘She’s just a little fractious, Marco!’

  When Talina was a baby, Great Uncle Uberto had offered to pay for her education. Her parents could not afford to refuse. There was no one else to help: their own families had been carried off by a cholera epidemic. Uberto Flangini already owned the lease on their tiny house in the Calle del Teatro near Santo Stefano. So, reluctantly, they’d signed a contract which stated that Talina would be ‘taken in hand’ if she proved dull-witted or failed to take advantage of her schooling or ‘fell into bad, mad or impudent habits, as certified by her educational institution’.

  ‘As if a child of ours could ever fail to be clever!’ the Molins had reassured themselves. And indeed, Talina had proved a remarkably clever baby, and an even cleverer little girl. But her parents had not bargained for her being quite so impudent. Or being quite such a mistress of the ‘little flouncy’.

  The contract also specified that Talina must be ‘made available for studying’ whenever the Guardian wished to observe a real child for descriptive purposes in his books. So at least once every six weeks, Talina was required to attend Great Uncle Uberto’s tower, where she had to submit to his commands to ‘sag against the door as if you’ve just heard your best friend is dead’ or ‘lie down and look mortally ill with a wasting disease’. Worst of all, she hated climbing the stairs between the parlour and the best parlour, where she was obliged to perform her tragic enactments. Because as she rounded the last stair she always came face to face with a huge stuffed animal, something like a hyena, with a lot of wolf in it as well. Its fur was riddled with dust, and the stitching was gruesomely visible. She’d nicknamed it ‘The Child-Mauling Thingy’. The sight of it never failed to make the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

  And in the fine print at the end of the contract, Talina’s parents had pretended not to notice – because it was quite unthinkable that it should ever happen – there was a clause that appointed Great Uncle Uberto as Talina’s Guardian in the event of their own deaths. Both Talina’s mother and father were decades younger than the Guardian, who was already an old man when Talina was born. In fact, he was so old that it was never fully established just how he was related to them. If the truth were known, each parent had thought that he belonged to an outer branch of the other’s family tree. (In fact, Venice being tiny Venice, he was distantly related to both.)

  When Talina first found out about her Guardian, she’d shuddered. But then she asked hopefully, ‘Shouldn’t my education include all the books I can read?’

  Her parents had politely put that suggestion to the Guardian. His reply had been curt. ‘Certainly I shall pay for the child’s books. The ones I choose, that is. The ones least likely to encourage impudence.’

  And so a boat had arrived stacked with all his own grisly tales in their expensive morocco bindings and with their horrid illustrations of wretched and ailing children. Talina raked through the crates, but all she found were multiple editions of A Fatality in the Family, The Ruin of Rosato, and The Downfall of Davide.

  There was not a single book on magic, which was fast becoming Talina’s favourite subject. For each birthday and Christmas, she begged another volume by the young Professor Marìn, a friend of her parents’, who was causing such a stir in Venice with titles such as Magical Means on a Budget, Beastly Tongues and Enchanted Eggs.

  Her parents worried about Talina’s attraction to magic. Magic also seemed attracted to Talina. It even came off on her fingers.

  ‘Show me your hands, dear,’ Talina’s mother would say at bedtime. ‘Look, there’s another bit of spell on your thumb! Where’s the book?’

  And Talina’s mother would patiently find the smudged page, and press her daughter’s thumb down upon it until the full text of the spell was restored to the paper.

  ‘My goodness,’ she would say. ‘I worry about you, kitten. What if you got mixed up in the wrong kind of magic?’

  ‘Is there a wrong kind?’ wondered Talina.

  At the memory of her mother’s gentle hand on hers, Talina’s eyes filled. She wiped them with a wrist coated in flour.

  Apart from magic books, Talina loved recipe books. She adored to cook, favouring sugary dainties rather than savoury and wholesome dishes like Cream of Lima Bean Soup or Pressed Chicken. She also had a tendency to make terrible messes, spoil her clothes and burn her fingers.

  She’d insisted on bringing her books to the tower of Quintavalle when she was forced to go and live there. The Guardian had allowed her just one official visit to her old home in the Calle del Teatro. In her parents’ empty bedroom, Talina had climbed inside a wardrobe and shut the door, so she could breathe in the perfume of her mother’s dresses. She’d pushed her hands inside her father’s gloves. She’d laid her head on her mother’s dressing table. But eventually, as the sun set in a blaze of red wine poured into orange juice, and the house grew dark, she’d gathered a few clothes and many books – mostly on cooking and magic – and dragged them in a trolley through the streets and over the bridges back to the twittering tower.

  ‘Don’t even think about it!’ At Quintavalle, Talina shook her fist at the circling sparrows. She took off her coat and spread it over the books. She didn’t care if they spattered her corn-husk hair. The evening light threw the tower’s sharp shadow over the ruins of the church beside it in a menacing manner, making the tendrils of ivy seem to twitch and slither. But back inside her circular bedroom, the books made her feel very slightly more at home, as did the framed photograph of her parents that she’d hung above her bed.

  Her tower bedroom being without even a fireplace, Talina spent as much time as possible in the kitchen. Cooking kept her warm. Although she still burnt her fingers and spoilt her dresses, Futfallo, Gierch-it and Razin nearly always devoured the messes these days. They’d have preferred to eat Drusilla, but they seemed to like burnt tarts and blackened toffee too.

  That evening, Talina was unable to sleep. She’d been reading Magical Means on a Budget with one eye, and Substantial Cakes for the Working Classes with the other. Lying on her book bed, an idea came to her. She worked out that she could magically stretch two eggs, half a cup of slightly weevilly flour, a handful of sugar and a chocolate bar with dog tooth-marks in it into a ‘Delicious Family-Sized Triple Layer Chocolate Sponge Cake’. She leapt out of bed as the bells of San Pietro struck midnight, and padded down to the kitchen with her lamp, Drusilla yawning and complaining behind her.

  She’d closed the door to keep out the dogs, and lit the gilt-brass three-light chandelier that hung from the kitchen ceiling. The last of the flour had been emptied from the Farina Fellina sack with a little picture of a cat on it. The wood-burning oven was blazing, the cake-tin already buttered. Talina’s dark-gold hair, eyelashes and mouth were ghostly with flour. And she was chatting nineteen to the dozen to Drusilla, whose fur too was bedecked with egg and sugar. Perhaps this was how Talina came to mix up the words of the two books she was reading at once.

  Instead of ‘fold in the Farina Fellina’, Talina murmured abstractedly, ‘fammi felina’ – ‘make me feline’.

  In other words, ‘make me a cat’.

  As she uttered the final syllable, she felt herself simultaneously shrinking, yowling and arching her back.

  ‘Miaow,’ said Talina. And no one could have been more surprised than Talina herself to hear it.

  She tried to say, ‘What the … !’ But all that came out was another ‘Miaow!’

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. Or she would have done, if it had not turned into a little furry paw.

  The top of the table disappeared. The floor was suddenly closer.

  ‘I’m shrinking!’ thought
Talina as the two books clattered on to the floor beside her, along with the wooden spoon. Her clothes tumbled off her like the leaves of an over-ripe artichoke.

  ‘Miaowwww!’ screeched Talina, struggling out of a tangle of linen and wool, to find herself face to face with Drusilla.

  ‘I warned you,’ said Drusilla.

  ‘You can talk?’ Strangely, when she addressed her cat, Talina found that she could speak in words as well as miaows. ‘Drusilla, why did you never talk before?’

  ‘I talk Felish,’ said the cat. ‘Now so do you, apparently. I whispered warnings to you in your sleep! I told you not to read two books at once when you were playing with spells. But would you listen or understand? No. It was bound to get us into trouble. And it has. Your parents always used to call you “kitten”. Now look what’s happened.’

  In the mirror over the mantelpiece, Talina caught a glimpse of the kitchen. The room was as she’d last seen it: chairs, oven, buttered cake-tin, cake drippings and eggshells on the table.

  But where, before, there had been a girl and a cat in the room, now it was occupied only by two cats: one small, stunned-looking tabby and the majestic black creature who was Drusilla.

  the tower kitchen, a few minutes after midnight,

  April 30th, 1867, Saint Pio’s Day

  DRUSILLA’S EYES ROUNDED with alarm. Talina felt something jab painfully at her rear. She spun around, to face the toe of the Guardian’s pointed black shoe. Behind him, Futfallo, Razin and Gierch-it strained and gagged on their triple leash. Talina and Drusilla cowered by the oven, their tails intertwined for comfort.

  ‘Owning a tail is the strangest feeling!’ thought Talina, twitching it experimentally. And, under almost any other circumstance, she was sure it would have been rather nice.

  The Guardian was glaring down at her. ‘A vile, thieving stray cat in my kitchen at midnight! Shall I feed it to the hounds?’

  Futfallo, Razin and Gierch-it leapt into the air, baying with joy.

  ‘Why did he come in here right now?’ wondered Talina aloud. ‘He never comes into the kitchen. And why is everything such a strange colour?’

  Drusilla whispered, ‘Remember, cats see differently. We are colour-blind to red and green, for example.’

  The Guardian asked the dogs, ‘When did you last taste cat flesh?’

  Talina tried to shout, ‘Can’t you guess what’s happened? Look at the magic book and the recipe! This is exactly the kind of thing that happens to children in your horrible stories.’

  But when she opened her mouth, all that came out was a whining mew.

  The Guardian, smiling horribly, dropped the leash that restrained the three dogs. Futfallo, Razin and Gierch-it stampeded across the room towards the cats, slavering with delighted bloodlust.

  ‘Jump!’ screamed Drusilla, sailing smoothly up to the mantelpiece.

  ‘I can’t. I’m not a—’ but somehow Talina too was flying through the air, impelled by her strangely powerful back legs. As the dogs leapt after her, one strut of the triple leash snagged on a corner of the table. Futfallo’s huge head struck the solid oak leg and he rolled over, whimpering, dragging his companions with him.

  ‘Idiot hounds! But I suppose,’ mused the Guardian, ‘there’s not much eating on a cat. And you dogs would only make a mess.’

  He gave the dogs a look that made them put their tails between their legs. Then he glanced at the table. ‘Even more of a mess. Filthy child. Where is she?’

  ‘Here!’ yowled Talina.

  The Guardian grabbed her mid-yowl by the scruff of her neck, so she had to swallow hard. He thrust her into the empty Farina Fellina flour-sack.

  Talina choked and sneezed on the flour dust. Through the mesh, she saw the Guardian turn towards Drusilla. He hissed, ‘She loves you more than anything, doesn’t she, cat? You worthless beast! Who deserves no love at all.’

  The mouth of the sack was tugged open. Drusilla was thrown in on top of Talina. The two of them grappled for a way not to bump noses or claws, ending up wrapped around one another, each with a head over the other’s shoulder and each throbbing to the heartbeats of the other. Then they felt themselves lifted and swung over the Guardian’s back.

  ‘How can my heart beat so fast?’ Talina panted to Drusilla.

  ‘Didn’t your books tell you that we smaller mammals have faster heartbeats than humans?’

  ‘Of course! That,’ Talina recalled, ‘must be why cats have shorter life spans. They live faster.’

  ‘In other words, we die sooner,’ observed Drusilla grimly.

  The door creaked open. The cats felt a shiver of the bora wind through the mesh. They were in the street. The Guardian strode forward. The door slammed behind him and the sound of waves filled the air.

  The Guardian cursed, ‘Incoming tide. Damnably inconvenient. I’ll just have to go where the tide will work for me.’

  It had been another cold and humid day, a combination possible only in waterbound Venice. The stones had sighed their salty breaths, which had dried into tiny crystals. Talina heard the salt crunching like splinters of glass under the Guardian’s shoes. All the Venetians were inside, tucked up by their fires. There were no footsteps other than the Guardian’s. Not a single one of Talina’s honorary grannies poked her head out of her door to bid good evening. Not a single granny’s cat left its fireside cushion to come outside and mew in sympathy.

  At first, Talina had tried to follow where the Guardian was taking them. She consulted the map of the city’s winding streets that all Venetians kept in their head.

  The echoes told them that the streets were narrowing. The Guardian must have walked southwards, into the most densely inhabited parts of the city. They heard the crunchy flap of washing on lines overhead. Drusilla and Talina howled with every footfall but still no one poked their head out of a window or a door to demand, ‘Where are you going with those cats?’

  Only the sparrows seemed alert to what was happening. They twittered urgently, and sang loudly, despite the dark hour.

  ‘What’s he planning to do with us?’ quavered Talina.

  ‘Why,’ asked Drusilla gloomily, ‘do humans generally put cats in sacks?’

  After the Guardian’s eighth shift to the left and the ninth turn to the right, Talina could no longer tell if they were near la Fenice or the square of San Zaccaria. He turned again, and again. Eventually, the quiet gurgling of small canals turned into the insistent whispering of waves.

  ‘I think we’re near the Grand Canal,’ she told Drusilla.

  ‘And I think that is not good news,’ Drusilla replied tersely.

  That was when the Guardian paused, lifted the sack off his thin shoulders and tied the neck in a double knot. He spun it around his head once before he sent it flying into the air.

  They travelled through the emptiness for five long seconds, Drusilla and Talina tumbling around in a painful tangle of claw, tooth and fur.

  They landed with a splash.

  The cats scrambled towards the nose of the sack, desperately gnawing and tearing at the fabric. The water had already soaked through, immersing them in its iciness up to their muzzles. Talina’s legs hung limply, too cold even to kick. There was no time, no breath, no energy to cry out.

  Their teeth had no effect on the sturdy hessian. Inside the Farina Fellina sack, the canal was closing over their heads, and both of them were mumbling on mouthfuls of salt water.

  Talina cried, ‘Drusilla, can you do one last thing for me? Please can you call me “kitten” like Mamma and Papà used to?’

  ‘Kitten,’ gasped Drusilla. She put a tender paw on Talina’s ear.

  Talina felt her eyes shutting. Her limbs had already given up. Now her brain and heart had stopped believing that they could survive. Beside her, Drusilla’s lithe body fell limp. Talina felt the air rushing out of her lungs, and salt water rolling in instead.

  A wave pushed the sack over and the two cats, deeply unconscious, floated inside like specimens in a bottle at a natural his
tory museum.

  the canals of Venice, the early hours of April 30th, 1867,

  Saint Pio’s Day

  THE SADDEST WORK of the members of the Company was to retrieve unknown drowned bodies from the water: that’s why its full name was ‘The Company of Christ and the Good Death’.

  Venetians were prone to drowning: it was an ancient superstition among them that it was better not to learn to swim.

  ‘The sea must have what the sea wants,’ they were fond of quoting.

  And, every so often, the sea took. When the stones sweated slippery danger, there were always drunken, clumsy – or just plain unlucky – Venetians who slipped and fell into the canals. Some time later, the kind, quiet men of the Company of Christ and the Good Death would pull their corpses out of the water and take them to the cemetery island of San Michele for a decent burial.

  But on the chilly night of April 30th, the men of the Company were set to a most unusual job: rescuing not the waterlogged bodies of young and old Venetians, but the skulls, mummified fingers and shrivelled arms of saints who had been dead for a thousand years or more. Balled fists of waves punched the fragile bones to and fro, breaking them into even tinier fragments, all gently glowing with centuries of goodness. They floated in the slipstream of the moonlight.

  Inside the churches, terrible damage had been wrought on the glass cases and reliquaries that once held the saints’ remains. There were teeth-marks on the golden casings and paw prints in the shattered glass.

  Saintly relics had been plundered from all over the town: the head of Saint Ulderico and the thigh of Saint Eliseo from the Carmini, the finger of Saint John the Baptist from Sant’Alvise, the rib of Mary Magdalene and the arm of Saint Bartholomew from San Geremia, the bones of Saint Trifone from San Felice, the finger of Saint Hermagoras from San Marcuola, the arm of Saint Ametisto from Santi Apostoli.

  And their splintered bones now floated out of the city on icy waves that were every shade of black: pigeon, panther, jet, coal and unlucky cat.