The Undrowned Child Read online

  Teo turned to face a snaggle-toothed man in moth-eaten breeches and a velvet jacket that looked a hundred years old. His face was deeply etched with misery.

  “You can see me?” she asked eagerly.

  “And why not? I’s dead. I’s got the pleasure of watching all the living. Lucky sods. They don’t know they’s born. What I wouldn’t give for an hour in their sweaty shoes …”

  At that moment Teo noticed that the man’s feet hovered an inch above the floor of the boat. She reached out a hand towards him. “Wait! So you’re a ghost?”

  “Which bit of ‘dead’ are yer not understandin, girlie?”

  “But I can see you.”

  “Children can always see us ghosts. But it don’t bother ’em, not s’far as I can see. They don’t usually see any difference between grown-ups, living or dead. Children is always bound up with their own affairs—all adults is in another world, s’far as they’s concerned.”

  “But you can see me. Adults … just … can’t at the moment. How is it that you can see me? Does that prove that I am a ghost?”

  “Whoa there, girlie. Pedro-the-Crimp don’t know what yer is. There’s something missing about yer, s’true. Yer cold, but yer isn’t cold enough … how did yer die?”

  “I didn’t die! At least, I don’t remember dying.”

  “Doesn’t even know if she died, does she?” jeered Pedro-the-Crimp. “Is it mad yer are? Well, I can tell yer that yer’s not prop’ly alive, girlie, else the grown-ups would see yer. Yer don’t look much like an angel to me. Tell me what yer did, and I’ll tell yer if yer is a ghost.”

  “What I did?”

  “What bad thing?”

  “You mean to be a ghost you have to do a bad thing?”

  The thin man looked shifty. “Well, some people, the lucky ones, the simple ones, they goes straight to their reward when they dies. But some of us has a bit more … homework to do on earth before we can be at rest. A bit of straightening out, yer know. Now, I don’t suppose yer’d like to help an old man.…”

  Teo felt uneasy. “What bad thing did you do? What’s a crimp?”

  The man was suddenly furious. He flapped his hands, snarling, “He killed my horse! What could Pedro-the-Crimp do? I loved that mare! Let me show you her daguerreotype … it’s in me back pocket.”

  Instead of reaching around to the seat of his trousers, Pedro-the-Crimp thrust his hand right through his body. It came back outside with a plop and a faded picture of a soft-eyed dappled mare was in his fingers. She stood beside a much younger version of Pedro-the-Crimp with the Church of the Mendicanti in the background.

  Pedro-the-Crimp stroked the picture with a grimy finger. “That mare was my life,” he moaned. “She would of brung me a cup of hot chocolate in bed if she could. My neighbor poisoned her on account of his own nag losin a race to her on the mainland. Should that spiteful tick be allowed to live after that? Yet I’s sorry for what I did. I wishes I had not. I’s sorry as all-get-out, I am. I wishes I could get out of this cold.… So now yer know, girlie.…”

  Suddenly his face contorted. He took a step towards her, his hands outstretched.

  She could smell his rotten breath as she teetered on the edge of the boat and the shark-haunted water beneath.

  Over the ghost’s shoulder, Teo saw the other side of the canal approaching fast. When it touched the poles at Ca’ Rezzonico, she leapt out ahead of all the other passengers and pounded down the narrow alley to San Barnaba, with Pedro-the-Crimp’s cries ringing out behind her.

  “I’s sorry, girlie, I wunt hurt yer for the world, I wunt. I jest wants to get out of the cold.…”

  What a sorrowful collection of faces came to inhabit Teo’s photographic memory in the next few days! She learnt to recognize that sudden chill at the back of her neck that meant a ghost was walking nearby. Like Pedro-the-Crimp, the other ghosts of Venice were sunk in their own miseries. Some, however, were curious about Teo.

  “What are you? And why are you so sad-forlorn, girlie?” an old-lady ghost asked Teo. “That’s a bone-deep grief you’re carrying.”

  Some ghosts patted her hand consolingly with their chilly fingers—or paws. Teo had a feeling that they were also checking to see how cold she was. When they found her skin still faintly warm, they always jerked their hands back, confused.

  Then, if they noticed the old book under her arm, they nodded at her, and gazed beseechingly, as if she might be able to solve whatever bitter mysteries enfolded them. Teo wished with all her heart that she could do something for these unhappy creatures, but The Key to the Secret City did not offer any explanation. No matter how often she asked why the ghosts were sad, or what could be done for them, the book always wrote the same reply: This and many other things shall be revealed one day.

  It was only on the third afternoon of her ghostly existence that Teo remembered that there was someone in Venice who might know what had happened to her. She mentally kicked herself very hard indeed for not thinking of him before. The old bookseller at Miracoli—he had given her the book! He must know something about it.

  She ran directly to the bookshop. By now Teo knew the streets so well that she hardly needed to consult The Key to the Secret City for directions. Her heart was in her mouth all the way. At last she would have answers. She would insist on them!

  As she galloped through Santi Apostoli, it crossed Teo’s mind that the old bookseller might not be able to see or hear her. He was an adult, after all, and alive. No, she argued with herself, he lived among magical books, and handed them out to children! But what truly sent Teo hurtling in his direction was the memory of his face. He had looked at her as if she was family, or somehow dear to him. She was in sore need of a look like that right now.

  She was out of breath when she rounded the corner of Campo Santa Maria Nova. The bookshop was boarded up. Glass from its smashed windows lay glittering on the ground. Tattered books flapped feebly in the breeze. Teo picked one up. The cover was familiar—it was one of the books she had seen on the day that The Key to the Secret City fell on her head: The Best Ways with Wayward Ghosts by “One Who Consorts with Them.” Then she scooped up Mermaids I Have Known by Professor Marìn.

  Raising her eyes, Teo cried out with shock: there was a poster nailed up to the boarding of the ransacked shop:

  FATAL INCIDENT ON THE NIGHT OF JUNE 1.

  ANYONE WHO WITNESSED THE ROBBERY AND MURDER IN THIS BOOKSHOP PLEASE CONTACT THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY. YOUR HELP COULD BE VITAL IN SOLVING THIS BRUTAL CRIME.

  the afternoon of June 5, 1899

  June 1: that was the very day that the kind bookseller had given Teo the book! So it was also the same night that she had disappeared from her hospital bed. Was it a coincidence that both of them should have been snatched out of the world at exactly the same moment?

  Teo peered into the shop through a gap in the boards. There were red streaks—of blood?—on the floor. She could not bear to think of the frail old man being hurt. And yet he was more than hurt. He was dead.

  She was suddenly aware of The Key to the Secret City hard against her chest. Tucking the other books under her arm, she wrenched The Key out of her pinafore and flung it to the ground.

  “Murderer!” she shouted at it. “What have you done to us? Shame on you! That nice old man! And me just a child!”

  And for a moment she had a childish desire to stamp on The Key and to rip out its pages and scatter them all over Campo Santa Maria Nova. Perhaps then she would break its spell, and come back to life, and be visible to her parents.

  The book landed face-upwards on the hot stone of the square. The girl on the cover looked surprised and hurt. She folded her arms and lowered her eyes. The book opened itself to a spread of blank white paper. New words wrote themselves across the page: We are sorry, Teodora-of-Sad-Memory. Your burden is great.

  “But why?” Teo moaned. “Why me?”

  To find that out, we must hasten to Campo San Zan Degolà.

  The page flicked itself over,
and a map appeared, with Teo’s own boots in miniature on the page. The boots started walking through the map. She was to cross the Rialto Bridge and head towards the station.

  Why should she follow those little black footsteps? The bookseller was dead. She was possibly dead. The Key to the Secret City had something to do with both those facts. There was something else too: the name Campo San Zan Degolà rang a disturbing bell in Teo’s head.

  But she picked up The Key and began to trudge towards Rialto, first tucking Wayward Ghosts and Mermaids I Have Known into the side-pocket of her pinafore. As she passed over the Rialto Bridge, a black boat passed beneath her, stacked high with hundreds more of those sinister blank white masks with black spots by the nose.

  Teo grumbled all the way to Campo San Zan Degolà.

  She paused at the corner of the entrance to the desolate little square. And there was Maria. Maria, whom Teo had not seen in all the days since she had woken up in the graveyard; Maria, whose bed lay mysteriously empty at night.

  And Maria was again talking to the young man with the mole by his nose. Her teardrop earring sparkled in the sun, though her ear was red and swollen. Her fingers were busy as usual, making little touches to her perfect hair. Even so, Teo’s first instinct was to rush to the girl and throw her arms around her.

  But a powerful feeling of fear swept over Teo as she looked at the young man. Like last time, there was something about him that made her feel dreadfully uneasy. Her stomach churned and a nasty taste washed into her mouth. Purple and green spots floated before her eyes. She feared that she might faint. His profile and the back of his neck were visible to her. Teo suddenly saw that the collar of his shirt did not quite hide a thick growth of white hair, a furry, dirty matting like the hide of a wild animal. Even as she watched, the fur was growing, creeping up towards his ears.

  Teo panted, holding herself upright by leaning against a newspaper stand. She was concealed from view, but close enough to hear Maria chattering. At that moment The Key to the Secret City pushed itself open in Teo’s hands. Instead of its usual white, the page was black as night. White, spidery writing crawled over it, showing in diagrams a whole new language for Teo: the language of facial moles.

  In the old days, the book explained, Venetians would buy little fake moles made of gummed velvet to stick on their faces. They were considered beauty marks. For the blackness of the mole made the Venetians’ white faces look more luminous. Positioning these moles in different places was a way to send messages. Some moles were signals of love, or showed that the person was blessed with good luck. Other moles were not so fortunate. They meant “false friend” or “liar.”

  The last mole was one Teo recognized with a shock. The Key to the Secret City showed that a perfectly oval mole by the side of the nose meant—a murderer.

  So those white masks Teo kept seeing, with the black spots, were murderers’ masks! Teo flicked the page, impatient to learn more about the murderous moles and people who had them. But the paper turned white again, and a strange kind of poem started to write itself out line by line.

  When flows the tide against all reason

  And swells the flood all out of season

  When the wells gush fountains hot and sour

  And ghost bells ring in bell-less towers

  When streets turn black as the armpit of Hell

  And unnatural beasts in the canals do dwell

  When the House of Darkness fills with light

  And Signor Rioba begins to write

  When someone steals a second skin

  And the Butcher Biasio prowls again

  From its ruins the razed palace rises

  And sweet cake a bitter taste disguises

  When Rats flee town on frightened paws

  When the books close under Lions’ claws

  Come to life are Black Death’s ancient spores

  Our old Foe’s once more abroad.

  Where’s our Studious Son? Who’s our Lost Daughter,

  Our Undrowned Child plucked from the water,

  Who shall save us from a Traitor’s tortures?

  That secret’s hidden in the old Bone Orchard.

  The wells gushing fountains! And bells ringing in bell-less towers! That was exactly what was happening now. Signor Rioba was certainly busy writing again. The High Water was doing the opposite of what it should—flowing “against all reason.” And the town was dark as death by night! Teo wouldn’t have thought to describe it as “the armpit of Hell”—but old poems were always rather melodramatic. What could be more unnatural than the sharks in Venice? There was no doubting whose skin had been stolen. So who was “our old Foe”? And who exactly was the Lost Daughter, the “Undrowned Child”? Or the “Studious Son,” for that matter?

  By the time Teo looked up from the poem, both Maria and the young man had vanished. She barely registered that fact.

  Teo’s hands prickled with pins and needles. For it was in that moment that she remembered just why she had flinched when she saw the name of this square, Campo San Zan Degolà—this was where the Butcher Biasio had kept his shop and slaughtered children for his famous stews!

  “Would serve you right if I left you here,” Teo remarked to The Key to the Secret City, but she tucked it back in her rather crowded pinafore before running away as fast as she could.

  dawn, June 6, 1899

  Ghosts, it seemed, did not need much sleep.

  On Teo’s fourth morning as a living ghost she woke before dawn.

  She had hidden The Best Ways with Wayward Ghosts and Mermaids I Have Known in her wardrobe, but The Key to the Secret City, on her bureau, had opened itself in the night. Throbbing footsteps showed her that she should hurry straight down to San Marco.

  By now, she’d been there many times. But this time something was different. As she approached, she saw Venetians stopping dead as they entered the square. Then they shouted in horror.

  Teo stole to the front of the outraged crowd. All San Marco was decorated with a dreadful display of antique instruments of torture swinging gently from the lampposts, like the bodies of hanged men.

  Automatically, Teo sat down on the stairs at the edge of the square and opened The Key to the Secret City.

  These appalling tools are shameful objects from the darkest days of human history, explained the book. Then an illustrated key explained what each of the tools could do, even the horribly obvious ones like maiming storks, knee splitters, tongue rippers and eye pincers. There were garrottes for slowly strangling people to death, inquisitional chairs with nails and leather straps, and iron maidens—grim coffins spiked on the inside to impale living people for a lingering death.

  “How disgusting!” thought Teo. “And surely not in Venice!”

  The book was mute on that point.

  The town had also awoken to fresh handbills festooned everywhere: jammed into letterboxes, pushed into railings, tucked into pots of red geraniums, littering the bottoms of boats. No one could avoid Signor Rioba’s new messages, illustrated with crude woodcuts of a huge shark, its jaws clamped over the Rialto Bridge, which was shown in flames. Underneath were ominous sentences: Remember your past, Venetians, and learn from it! Do not ye listen to that hyena of a mayor. He’s not honorable enough to spit on.

  “So when in the past did the Rialto Bridge burn?” wondered Teo. The handbill’s image of the Rialto market tweaked her empty stomach. She hurried across on the Santa Sofia traghetto, keeping a wary eye out for Pedro-the-Crimp. She grazed at the fruit stalls, helping herself to a sunset-colored apricot and a fistful of fat red cherries. None of the grown stall-keepers could see her, though when Teo passed, their dogs strained at their leashes, sniffing and mumbling into their little beards. And all the stallholders’ children glanced at her with a single dismissive expression. It said simply, “Thieving foreigner.”

  The white hump of the Rialto Bridge drew Teo’s eyes. How could a stone bridge burn? The Key to the Secret City stirred restlessly inside her pinafore. The girl
on the cover looked like someone who was about to go to the dentist. When Teo opened up the book it showed her a date, 1310, and the words, the past is catching up. A line of ink slid down the page like a long blood-red tear. Teo felt cold, in spite of the fierce June heat. A gray fin sped past her down the Grand Canal.

  “Don’t ye be thinking on those dogs-of-fish, but of him what summoned ’em,” squeaked a young female voice.

  Teo’s eyes lit on a miniature mermaid lying on her side, with her head propped up on her hand, among the branzini. She was no bigger than a doll.

  Teo looked left and right. The fishmonger was busy with customers, his back to her. No one else had noticed the mermaid. Teo bent down to peer at her. The mermaid’s hair was blond and her eyes were green. She was exquisitely beautiful. Her voice, though, was not exactly refined.

  “And have ye a care to those pretty poles, girlie! Proper ’orrible, they is. Yew knows what I is talkin’ about here, don’tcha, Teodora? Da past is catching up! Wot a rigor-mole!” the mermaid added warningly. Then she burrowed among the fish on the stall and disappeared.

  “Pretty poles”? All along the Grand Canal colorful striped poles stood at the edge of the water. In olden days, the noblemen had kept their fleets of gondolas tied up to them. The Venetians still used the painted poles to moor their little boats. Teo glanced across at the red and white poles of Santa Sofia’s traghetto. Then she started. She could have sworn that two of those poles twisted around in front of her eyes, as if they were completely flexible—alive, even. In the sunlight they seemed to glisten. They looked just like huge tentacles.

  after breakfast, June 6, 1899

  The LOST GIRL posters were curling up on their lampposts. Teo’s disappearance had been relegated to the bottom of page one, and now to inside the newspaper. Fresher horrors had claimed the headlines.

  Teo sat down to read the papers at an old-fashioned café in San Giacomo dell’Orio, where no one seemed to clear the tables before lunchtime. A surprisingly large number of people forgot to finish their brioches or drink half their hot chocolate. Or perhaps it was not so surprising, given what they were reading as they ate their breakfasts.