The Undrowned Child Read online

  “Why all white?” she wondered. “So creepy!”

  “You ain’t niver e’en seen the half of it, child! There’s bliddy doings afoot now.”

  The rough female voice came from an antiques shop next door. Teo peered into the gloomy window. An unusual chalice rocked on top of an old sideboard. It was in the shape of a porcelain mermaid holding up a scrimshawed nautilus shell. As Teo watched, the chalice filled up with a dark red liquid that brimmed and then cascaded down the edges of the nautilus. Teo backed away.

  At last she came upon a narrow triangular sign that read CAMPO DEI MORI, the square of the Moors.

  “I know the Campo dei Mori!” Teo clapped her hands with relief. “That’s where Signor Rioba lives!”

  Not everyone agreed with the mayor that Venice was perfectly safe.

  In the days after Teo’s arrival in Venice, single pages had begun to appear all over the city, printed in an old-fashioned typeface on thick antique-looking paper that had a beautiful pearly sheen to it and a slight smell of fish too. Teo had picked them up whenever she saw them—on the tables of cafés, in gondolas, on the steam ferries—because they always made her laugh even though the contents also upset her.

  The handbills warned: People of Venice, the bursting wells are just the beginning. Your city is in danger. Don’t listen to that yellow-waimed scut of a mayor. If he weren’t so spineless I’d make soup out of his bones! You shall see more honest faces than his upon a pirate flag.

  The handbills were signed Signor Rioba. The newspapers were full of speculations about what this could mean.

  “Why,” demanded the newspapers, “should ‘Signor Rioba’ come to life again right now? Signor Rioba would not appear for nothing. What is going on???”

  For Signor Rioba was at once a mystery and no mystery at all. Signor Rioba was the life-size marble figure of a man with an iron nose. The original Signor Rioba had passed a colorful and not terribly respectable life in Venice seven hundred years before, as a soldier and spice merchant. But ever since then, whenever the rulers of Venice needed a little reminding of what was what, the statue of Signor Rioba would appear with a handbill stuck on the front of his stone tunic. This handbill would expose cheats who were trying to trick the honest citizens of the town. Or it would warn of hidden dangers, in terms that left nothing to the imagination.

  Now here he was again, louder and ruder than ever. And instead of a single sheet, his handbills were these days fluttering all over the city, literally tripping her citizens up.

  Some people insisted it was none other than Signor Rioba who had caused ghostly bells to ring out from the empty towers of abandoned churches.

  “No doubt about it,” declared one fisherman. “A bell chiming without a human bell-ringer to tug on the rope—that’s an absolutely cast-iron sign of evil luck! I reckon that Signor Rioba knows what he’s talking about.”

  Listen to the bells! Signor Rioba had urged, on the very day that Teo was taken ill. Take heed, Venetians! Lest your enemy torment the living hearts out of ye! Starting with the children. Are you all blind? Methinks the whole of Venice has fewer eyes than my esteemed rear end.

  And now there he was! Teo had seen his picture in the papers: the stone figure was unmistakable. Teo walked across the Campo dei Mori and stood in front of Signor Rioba. For a long time she gazed at his glaring face and the great iron nose that protruded from it. Triangular in shape, it would have been formidable even if not made of iron, the kind of nose that would keep you at a distance, and cast a long shadow at lunchtime.

  The stone man clearly had no very noble opinion of the world. His motionless body seemed to trap centuries of anger inside it, like a prehistoric fly caught forever in a drop of amber. Teo leant forward and daringly ran her finger down the sleeve of his short stone tunic. There was a musty smell to it. Then she put her hand on his chest.

  Under her fingers she felt a distant thumping, like a stout heart beating far away. Then a drop of moisture, like a tear, trickled down his nose and onto Teo’s own cheek.

  “Why, Signor Rioba!” She smiled courteously. “I am so pleased to meet you!”

  And she was. His looks were tough, but something about that strapping heartbeat gave her a warm feeling towards him, as if he was an old friend.

  As Teo turned to leave, the sky suddenly darkened and the air filled with an unbearable din. A dense flock of seagulls had come wheeling in from the lagoon, screaming and flapping their wings like windmills in a storm. In the clashing flurry of feathers and beaks, Teo thought she glimpsed something exceedingly strange happening in the Campo dei Mori. She could have sworn that she saw Signor Rioba shake his stone fist at the gulls. And that over their shrieks she had heard a voice of gravel and honey utter a hideous curse.

  “Death and smothering upon ye, magòghe! May the devil tear ye sideways, ye vile ones, servants of a viler master!”

  And then the swearing really poured out of his stone mouth. Teo had never heard the like. But instead of words, she saw squiggles and curves dancing in the air. Arabic? She guessed, “Moors are from Morocco and speak Arabic, and that is what this is? Or is he from Morea, as I’ve read? So is that ancient Greek?” Whatever the language, there was no mistaking the furious intent.

  She called to Signor Rioba, “If I had a swearing tongue as nasty as yours I’d take a soothing syrup for it, sir!”

  Signor Rioba’s mouth snapped shut. The next moment the seagulls had gone and the little square was once more quiet as a grave.

  break of dawn, June 3, 1899

  Teo had been walking for what seemed like hours. Her feet burned with blisters.

  The spire of a vast brick church soared above narrow streets strung across with washing lines. High over Teo’s head, chemises and long-johns waved their empty sleeves and legs like a troupe of dancing ghosts in the ambiguous predawn light.

  Even though it was so early, the side door to the church gaped open as Teo approached it. Sounds came from inside, of stone scraping, and, oddly, some most ungodly cursing.

  Wearily, Teo walked up to the door. “I’ll just sit down in there awhile,” she told herself. “Maybe the workmen can tell me how to get back to the hotel.”

  Whoever was working in the church was doing so without the aid of gas-lamps or candles. The dark air smelt of mold and drains. Stumbling over the threshold, Teo held her ears against the painfully loud screech of stone-cutting. When her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out a scene so bizarre that she supposed she must still be in the grip of a tisana-flavored dream. Instinctively, she flattened herself against the door, veiled by its shadow.

  Stone gargoyles crouched in a circle around an ornate tomb like a temple embedded in the wall. Just below the pediment stood a black casket topped by a man’s head in marble. Above him were grim paintings of a torture scene; below, an inscription picked out in gold on slate. The gargoyles—lynxes, wolverines and lizards—were leaping up at the casket, trying to pull its heavy stone lid away. But their grainy gray bodies were far softer than the black marble, and they were all severely chipped. Sharp snouts were blunted; fragile ears were falling off all over the place.

  Teo saw an old Gothic script hovering in the air. There was something familiar to it, something she must have seen in a library book, perhaps?

  The voice purred venomously, “You’ll pay dearly for your feebleness.”

  Teo started violently then, for inside her pinafore The Key to the Secret City began to wriggle as if trying to get out. “What, you can move too?” Teo whispered to it.

  A sharp corner dug into her ribs. She suppressed a cry of pain and clamped her hand down on the bib of her pinafore, hissing “Shhhh.”

  Meanwhile, the gargoyles scrabbled at the marble in a blur of paws and snouts, only to lose more of their toes and noses. Panting, they leant back against the tomb, staring fearfully into the dark recesses from which the terrible voice had come.

  “Must I perform every task myself?” the voice howled with fury. “Begone t
o your posts, before dawn comes and the foolish Venetians see you!”

  They did not need to be told twice. Those that still had enough limbs to do so slunk away from the tomb, scampering up into the rafters of the church. They pushed themselves out through holes to their perches above the street. Those that were too mutilated lay on the ground, their little stone rib cages juddering in and out with fear.

  Teo cowered in the shadow of the door. She ached with pity for the poor creatures, but she dared not rush to their aid.

  The voice taunted the wounded gargoyles, “Missing our tiny legs, are we? Shall I tend to you myself? Or shall I send my Butcher to lend you a hand?”

  The gargoyles shook their heads violently, making begging motions with their poor shattered paws. One of them looked over towards Teo, and its round stone eyes widened. It opened its mouth as if to say something. Teo froze. At that moment the book in her pinafore suddenly grew unbearably heavy, like a huge stone on her chest.

  “Wha-a-t …?” she whispered, as The Key to the Secret City dragged her all the way down to the floor behind a pew just as something yellowy-white and indistinct came swooping out of the back of the church. To Teo, crouching on the cold stone, it seemed like a giant albino bat, big as a man. Its head and body were furred in a dirty white pelt. It shied sharply away from the altar with a hiss, then settled on a confessional box and folded up its tentlike wings. Something green glittered on one of its talons. Teo could not see its face; just its pointed ears and head in silhouette.

  At the same time another figure came stumbling out of the sacristy. It was a man in a bloodied butcher’s apron. Teo covered her mouth when she realized that he was carrying his head under one arm. Both his arms ended in bleeding stumps: his hands dangled from his neck on a chain. From his torn neck came a bubbling, grunting noise, but no words. Somehow worse was the fact that his feet were attached to his body from the backs of his legs, though his thick arms swung from the front of his body. The gargoyles mewed and squeaked piteously at the sight of him.

  “Thank you,” Teo whispered to the book. “I guess you were saving me from that. What if those two had seen me?”

  The bat-creature growled an instruction to the headless man. He shuffled on his back-to-front feet towards the tomb. The gargoyles arranged themselves in tiers so that he could step over their backs up to the black sarcophagus. With a single blow of his handless arm, he smote the marble lid off the sarcophagus so that it dropped on the gargoyles and crushed them instantly to fragments and powder. He tumbled to the ground on top of them, landing heavily. His head rolled away into the aisle.

  “Is he dead?” Teo asked herself, and the book. “Or he was already dead?”

  Then the bat-creature swooped up and dragged something fragile and leathery from the opened tomb, something that was definitely not a skeleton. It flew straight out of the church door with its prize flapping from its jaw. Outside, a flock of gulls saluted its appearance with a cacophony of shrieks.

  As the creature passed over Teo she felt a violent rush of freezing air that knocked her flat in its wake. She glimpsed its face, briefly—it was almost human, with a large nose, eyes and mouth like a man’s but not quite settled in their shapes. A black spot floated near the nose. The features seemed carved out of a milky jelly that had not set. The eyes were lividly rimmed with red, but smooth and blank as pure white marbles.

  Teo lay trembling on the stone flags. The bat-creature did not come back. The headless man stirred, rose to his knees and crawled with unerring instinct towards his head. Soon he was busy greedily gathering the remains of the gargoyles and pushing pieces of stone into the mouth of the head he had tucked again under one arm.

  Teo had never wanted her parents so badly.

  midmorning, June 3, 1899

  Teo could have wept with relief when she finally glimpsed the marble curve of the Rialto Bridge. The hotel was close by, and her parents, and a warm bath and food and safety, and normal life.

  She half staggered, half ran the last hundred yards down the narrow alley that led to the hotel, and pounded up the steps to Reception.

  The manager did not look up as Teo approached his desk. Instead, he hunched over his newspaper and hugged himself, as if he had suddenly felt a chilly draught. Teo caught sight of her own picture on the front page. With her habitual skill at reading upside-down, she made out a headline: NO SIGN OF MISSING GIRL.

  “Oh yes there is!” Teo sang out cheerfully. “Are my parents in?”

  The manager ignored her, and pulled a jacket over his shoulders.

  “Are my parents not here?” Teo asked, and, “Aren’t you exceedingly warm, signor?”

  The man acted as if she wasn’t there at all.

  “I suppose not everyone likes children,” Teo said pointedly, “but it is polite to answer questions. Even from children.”

  The manager pulled the newspaper rudely up in front of his face so he could not see Teo anymore. June 3 was written at the top.

  “That means,” thought Teo, “that I’ve lost a whole day. Where was I?”

  Teo ran up the stairs and knocked on the door of her parents’ room. Her heart thrashed painfully when she heard her mother sobbing inside. Her father spoke low, comforting words.

  They did not seem to hear her knock, so Teo let herself in.

  “Don’t worry, I’m back!” she trilled joyfully. “Everything’s fine!”

  Her parents gave not the slightest sign of having heard or seen her. Teo shuddered to see that a Brustolon had appeared in their room. It glowered in a corner next to her parents’ travel trunk, giving off a strong smell of varnish.

  “Do close the door, Alberto,” implored her mother. “It must have blown open in that cold draft. Where did that come from, in this heat?” She dabbed her face with a handkerchief.

  Teo ran over to her mother and sank to her knees in front of her. She put her head in her mother’s lap and wrapped her arms around her mother’s knees. She rested her cheek on the warm silk of her mother’s skirt. It smelt of soap, and perfume, a trace of laboratory formaldehyde and, well—home.

  “It’s all right!” Teo cried out, her voice choked up with emotion. “You can stop crying now.”

  But her mother stared blankly over Teo’s head, and a new tear trickled down her face.

  Teo jumped up and tugged at her father’s waistcoat. “But I’m here!”

  His voice was stony. “I’ve said it before—we should never have come. There is something not right at all about this city, and not just the water.…” He turned on the Brustolon and gave it a heartfelt kick. The statue’s expression of livid hatred was already adapted for such treatment. Teo trembled, remembering the Brustolon in the hospital. But this one remained motionless. A ray of sunshine blazed over its ivory eyes for a moment, but then the sun passed behind a cloud and the Brustolon’s face went blank again.

  Teo’s mother sobbed, “It’s the not knowing that’s the worst. Whether she’s dead or alive.”

  “Dead or alive? But I’m here right in front of you!” Teo expostulated.

  “And Maria’s quite sure she hasn’t seen our Teodora?”

  “She swears she knows nothing, Alberto. Why would she lie to us?”

  “Maria would lie to you as soon as look at you,” protested Teo. “What about me? Look at me, Mamma!”

  “If only we’d never gone into that bookshop,” Teo’s father groaned.

  “If only!” wept Teo, clinging to his hand, unseen.

  Teo backed out of the room.

  The manager had not been snubbing her. He had simply not seen her.

  Teo was invisible.

  How had this happened? The newspaper! Perhaps that would fill in the part of her story that she had clearly missed? She ran down to Reception. The manager had his head bent over his ledger. Behind him lay a stack of newspapers with a red banner: SPECIAL AFTERNOON EDITION!

  Teo quietly lifted the top copy and made her way to the hotel kitchen. No one shouted at her, although
it was supposed to be out of bounds to children. When the chef’s back was turned, she helped herself to some bread rolls and an apple. Then she ran up to her bedroom. It was untouched, all her things still on the bureau, her clothes in the armoire, her books by the bed.

  She drained the stale water in her ewer, saving just a few drops to wash her hands in the basin. Then she gnawed hungrily on the rolls and bit into the apple. She threw herself on the bed and scanned the front page for news about her disappearance.

  She instantly recognized the picture of the tall brick church under the headline.

  BRAGADIN’S SKIN STOLEN FROM TOMB!

  Someone, Teo read, had done something unspeakable with the tomb of the Venetian hero Marcantonio Bragadin. The great Bragadin, the paper explained, had been murdered in a particularly cruel way by the Turks after the Battle of Famagosta in 1571. They had cut off his nose and ears, and skinned him alive. Bragadin had withstood all his tortures in noble, uncomplaining silence. When he finally died, the Turks stuffed his skin with straw and paraded it through their streets. In the end, the Venetians had managed to steal their hero’s body from the enemy and had laid it to rest in their Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. But now—such an outrage!—during the previous night, some intruder of superhuman strength had prised open Bragadin’s casket and taken out the skin. As if the poor hero had not suffered enough!

  The newspaper printed a copy of Signor Rioba’s newest handbill:

  Venetians! Are ye all bone from the knees up like His Swineship your mayor? What are ye thinking of? Find ye the skin of Marcantonio Bragadin if ye want to save your own! There are worse enemies than the Great Turk afoot! Remember the Butcher Biasio! The cannibal who slaughtered children and sold ’em in stew at Campo San Zan Degolà? Had his hands cut off and got beheaded between the columns of the Piazzetta, you say? But take a care for your children, Venetians—he’s still got a taste for them.