The Undrowned Child

by Michelle Lovric

  “It’s worse than the sharks!” screamed Teo.

  “Shhh!” whispered Renzo. “No noise! Signorina Grigiogatta will hear us.”

  It was too late to be quiet. The ladders on which the children perched were already teetering dangerously. One more assault by the parchment arrows and they tumbled noisily to the ground. Teo fell on top of Renzo, who grunted in pain. The white arrows were now zooming straight down at them.

  “Can paper kill you?” gasped Teo.

  “I don’t know,” moaned Renzo. “But I think that can.” He pointed.

  A colossal gray cat had hurtled into the room. It was bigger than any cat Teo had ever seen. Outside of the tiger-cage in the zoo, that is.

  The cat arched its back like the Rialto Bridge and hissed. Then it crouched on the floor, waving its tail violently from side to side. Its rear quarters trembled as it coiled up all its energy to pounce on the children.

  Springing high into the air, it howled at them, “The papers of Bajamonte Tiepolo arrrre touched only on pain of death. Pre-parrrre your horrrid little selves to die!”

  Even as the cat sailed through the air towards them, Teo recognized that voice and the writing above the spitting creature’s head.

  “Signorina Grigiogatta!” she shouted. “Don’t hurt us!”

  The cat dropped back down on her haunches, her tail still lashing. She looked at Teo through eyes narrowed to glassy green slits. “How do you know who I am? And, morrre importantly, why shouldn’t I kill you?”

  “I … saw … you in the bathroom,” stammered Teo. “And your voice …”

  “One point to you forrr observation. But that’s not nearrrly enough points to save you. Can’t you read, children? ‘On pain of death.’ And a painful death too.”

  She flexed her claws.

  Renzo spoke up bravely, “We are here because all of Venice is threatened with death, Your Grace.”

  “Your Grace?” Teo started. But Renzo’s respectful tone seemed to give the cat pause for thought.

  “In what way is the city threatened?” she asked Renzo in a menacing, cynical tone. “Make this good, little boy, or it will be the lassst thing you say.”

  Renzo fell silent. Teo understood: their mission was supposed to be a secret.

  “Well? Is it death, then? I sssuppose it shall have to be.”

  “Was that a purr?” wondered Teo. The Gray Lady seemed uncommonly happy to do them the service of slaughtering them.

  “There is … something you should know,” faltered Renzo, looking at Teo.

  “Yes,” Teo realized, “we have to tell the truth. It is the only thing that can save us. Plus, if this cat is angry with us for looking for the Almanac, then she must be against Bajamonte Tiepolo.”

  Teo gabbled, “Bajamonte Tiepolo is abroad again. We need to find his Spell Almanac before he does. We think it might be here.”

  “In that case it may interest you to know,” remarked the Gray Lady, “that I myself am entrusted with protecting the Spell Almanac of Bajamonte Tiepolo.”

  “So you see! We are on the same side!” cried Teo.

  The misunderstanding was explained in moments, and Signorina Grigiogatta turned herself back into a woman. At least, her human face reappeared on top of her cat’s body. “Tell me everrrything,” she commanded.

  The children took turns to explain about the hot fountains, the chimneys, the sharks, the Baja-Menta ice-cream, the Creature, not in any particular order but just as they remembered it. The Gray Lady listened with her head on one side. Occasionally she interrupted with a question.

  “To think that it is a pair of children who come to enlighten me! Never liked the little beasssts before. Tail-pullers! Yet now …,” she marveled. “So it’s true about what is happening in Venice. Sequestered here, I am never sure what to believe when I hear humans jabberrring. They are ssso unsubtle and they exaggerate ssso.”

  Lastly the children told her about the mermaids and The Key to the Secret City. Teo produced the book from her pinafore, and Lussa smiled from the cover. This news brought a little wobble to the Gray Lady’s deep voice. She stroked the book with a reverent paw.

  “Ah! Ssso I am not alone after all!” The cat had tears in her beautiful almond-shaped eyes. “Merrrmaids in a secret cavern!” she exulted. “Ha! Bajamonte Tiepolo shall never know of them, till it is too late! Please tell your mermaid friends that the Spell Almanac is safe. They sound like sssplendid creatures. If it were not for the mutual incompatibility of our elements …”

  “I beg your …?” asked Renzo.

  Teo explained, “She means that mermaids live in water, and cats cannot bear water.”

  “As I was sssaying, were it not for that mutual elemental incompatibility, I would adore to visit the dear merrrmaids and ssstrategize with them. One candle does not hurt itself by lighting another, as we sssay in Venice.”

  A fleeting greedy look crossed the Gray Lady’s face. “Mermaids are a little like fisssh, yes? Like a very large tuna? Fisssh is verrry good for catsss.…”

  The Gray Lady shook out her ears. “But no, they are my allies! My sissters!”

  “Could you,” Teo asked, “tell us how …?”

  The Gray Lady explained that she had been appointed by Doge Gradenigo back in 1310, to make sure that neither Bajamonte Tiepolo nor his followers could get their hands on the Almanac.

  “So you are …?”

  “Yes, I approach my six hundredth birthday imminently.”

  Renzo said politely, “May I say that you look remarkably elegant on it?”

  The Gray Lady threw him a flirtatious glance, and delicately licked the underside of one paw. “You may.”

  Teo thought, “You don’t need to keep pouring on the charm now, Renzo.”

  Then she realized that it was not an act. Renzo was simply being himself, being a Venetian. Compliments and elegant behavior were part of it, even in the midst of a crisis. Still, it had been going on too long! There was a real and urgent danger to deal with. She interrupted, “How did Doge Gradenigo get hold of the Spell Almanac?”

  “You children know the ssstory of the conspiracy, I assume? That on that drrrreadful day, Bajamonte Tiepolo, Querini and Badoerrr set off from different pointsss in the city? But that Doge Gradenigo had been forewarned about the attack, ssso he wasss ready?”

  Renzo and Teo nodded.

  “What you may not know isss that the Doge had guardsss hidden at the back of the Tiepolo palace. As soon as Il Traditore left, the Doge sent hisss men in. While Bajamonte was burrrning the Rialto Bridge, unbeknownst to him, the Doge’s soldiers were rrran-sacking his own home. The Spell Almanac was among the booty. Doge Gradenigo immediately guesssed that the book could be verrry dangerous if Il Traditore got his hands on it again. So it was hidden firssst at the Doges’ Palace and then laterrr here.”

  Teo asked, “Wasn’t it rather obvious to put the Almanac into the Archives of Venice? Surely it would be the first place Bajamonte and his friends would look?”

  “It is a worrrthy question, little girl. In fact, it was deliberate. You sssee, anyone interested in Bajamonte and his Almanac would inevitably come here, and then we would know who was still sssupporting him. And indeed we have seen off a couple of, as it were, ‘copycat’ conspirrracies that way,” the Gray Lady said smugly. “Most recently in 1822 and in 1829 …”

  Teo interrupted, “Has Bajamonte Tiepolo himself been here, or his spirit, or one of his servants?”

  “Il Traditore himself has not set foot here, because he would sussspect a trap. He’s not yet strrrong enough to face the spells that Doge Gradenigo borrowed from his own Almanac to protect its hiding place. But our enemy has sssent plenty of his accomplices in search of it over the centuries. Human sacrrrifices, so to ssspeak. It’s easy to recognize them, the unfortunate crrreatures—he’s usually deformed them in some way.”

  Renzo asked, “Have you had anyone recently, since all the bad things started happening in Venice? I mean, apart from the Brustolons tu
rning up?”

  “Ugly brrrutes! Useful for sharpening claws but otherwise they just clutter up the library. But they don’t frrrighten me. Inanimate wood.”

  “They can move a little,” Teo pointed out.

  “Oh yes, just for a second. I hear them crrreaking sometimes. Quite pathetic! And the cleaner is tired of mopping up all that nasssty leech blood. But you refer to other guestsss courtesy of Il Traditore? Yes, in fact, yesterrrday. A poor silly little girl who had been turned into a dwarf. Her bluff for getting in was even more risible than yoursss … she claimed she was rrresearching dwarves in Venetian history! I let her wander into the fourteenth-century corridor and then rrroughed her up a little with my nailsss, and she fled. Sniveling. I felt quite sorry for her. I imagine Bajamonte won’t be ssso gentle when he hearrrs of her failure.”

  “Maria!”

  “Oh, you know about her? Sssomeone ought to put her out of her misery.” The Gray Lady sniffed casually, flicking the tail which, in her excitement, kept escaping from her dress. “It’sss the only way.”

  “Not the only way,” protested Teo. “The mermaids told us that … people could redeem themselves. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made more than a few myself.” Teo squirmed silently at the thought of the mermaids in their cavern, still hoping that their existence was safely secret from Bajamonte Tiepolo.

  Renzo asked, “Can you tell us where the Spell Almanac is? The mermaids think there might be something inside it that will help us. Anyway, it is no longer completely safe here. Bajamonte Tiepolo is getting stronger. He has a hand now. The one with the emerald ring. He might dare to make a raid.”

  The Gray Lady didn’t look at all afraid, merely miming the long scratch of one of her elegant fingers. She added airily, “I have waysss of keeping him out. And frrrustrating him if he getsss in here.”

  “So where is it, anyway?” Renzo persisted. “The Almanac?”

  “You’rrre looking at it, young man,” the Grey Lady replied.

  “We’re looking at you,” observed Teo.

  The Grey Lady preened. “Exactly so, my dearrrrr—Doge Gradenigo ordered his court magician to make use of the Spell Almanac itssself to transfer the book to a living thing. Bajamonte was of courrrse a master of magic, though he preferred the baddened kind. He’d found out ways to make his crest work as a hypnotic device, and he was becoming tolerably accomplissshed in transferrring inanimate substances into the fabric of living beingsss. So the court magicians made use of one of those spellsss, and recruited me, the Doge’s favorite and most courageous Syrrrian cat, to carry the burden. For centuries I lived among the sssecret papers in the Doges’ Palace. Then Napoleon moved all the archivesss to these hallsss by the Frari Church, so I came with them.”

  “You mean you are the Spell Almanac?”

  “The spells are tattooed on my ssskin beneath the fur.”

  Teo asked shyly if they might look. The Gray Lady extended a paw and the children gently parted the soft gray fur. Very faintly on the skin, they could see long lists of incantations with magical symbols.

  “Bajamonte Tieplo would never guesss it,” said the Gray Lady proudly. “And anyway, I transforrrm into a cat whenever he or any of his minionsss come near. No one thinks anything of a librrrary cat, who stops the rrrats from gnawing the books. Least of all Bajamonte Tiepolo, who hatesss cats.”

  “Does he really?” asked Teo. “The mermaids said that cats disliked him. Because they hate a dictator.”

  “Indeed. Cats make verrry poor minions.”

  “The words are in different languages,” Teo observed, looking closely at the spells. “And different kinds of handwriting.”

  “This Almanac,” explained the cat, “is not the original work of Bajamonte Tiepolo. He was never crrreatively brilliant. As a governor of Venice’s prrrovinces, he collected baddened magic from arrround the Mediterranean Sea and put it all together.…”

  “Like an anthology of poems?” asked Renzo.

  “Like a verrry bad anthology of poems. The poets were the witches who sssmeared the door handles of innocent people with plague spores, or those who grew evil familiars from rock cryssssstals.…”

  “Familiars?”

  “Immortal servants who were unutterably loyal because they were crrreated, not born. Bajamonte Tiepolo has made himssself Dark Elves and the Folletti. They are a ssscurvy mixture of insssect and wicked fairy.”

  “The mermaids showed us those creatures in a turtle mirror,” breathed Renzo.

  Teo said proudly, “The mermaids say that we are their ambassadors.”

  “Forgive me, but a Napoletana?” The Gray Lady could not quite keep the scorn out of her voice.

  Renzo explained, “In fact, Teo was born here, but she was orphaned and brought up in Naples. Now she is living between-the-Linings for a while.”

  “Ah, poverina.” Teo wasn’t sure if the Gray Lady was sorrier for her being orphaned, living between-the-Linings or having to live in Naples. “What were your real parents, my dearrrr?”

  “I don’t know. The only thing I know about them is what I read on their tombstone. Just their names and the date of their death,” whispered Teo. It was hard to keep the self-pity out of her voice.

  “Well, we can at least give you that,” offered the Gray Lady kindly. “We are in the Archives now. Everything that’sss happened in Venice is rrrecorded here. What were yourrr parents’ names? We shall consult the ledgersss.”

  “Marta and Daniele Gasperin.”

  The Grey Lady jolted her head. “The Gasperins? My dear Gasperins? My poor lost friends! Che tragedia! Young lady, do you realize that yourrr parents were both scholarrrs and librariansss, and that they worked here in the Archives—with me—for most of theirrr all-too-short livesss?”

  Teo sank to the ground. The cat rubbed against her sympathetically.

  “It was their dessstiny, poor creatures,” continued the Gray Lady sadly. “You sssee, for nearly six hundred years, every generrration of Gasperins has supplied a new pairrr of guardians for the Spell Almanac of Bajamonte Tiepolo. Yourrr parents defended the Archivesss from the incurrrsions of his underlings many times—and they paid for it with theirrr lives, in the end. As will you, little girl, if you come out frrrom between-the-Linings. Forrr Bajamonte Tiepolo will find you then, and I frankly don’t care a great deal for your chancesss if he doesss.”

  Teo flinched. “Do you know what happened the night my parents died?”

  “Your parents were sssafe with me inside the Archives. But it isss my theory that the night they took you to be chrrristened, sssomeone out in the lagoon must have said sssomething about the Archives, or mentioned that they worked here. The wordsss would have floated on the air and must have been hearrrd by the malignant ssspirit of Bajamonte Tiepolo beneath the wavesss.…”

  The Gray Lady was actually weeping now. “Marta and Daniele never knew my trrrue identity, of course, but they were kind friendsss to me, whether I appeared as a woman orrr a cat. Sometimes I thought that they, and Professor Marìn too, had guessed that the woman and the cat werrre one, but they never sssaid it aloud. It was too dangerousss. They knew it might compromise me. And them.”

  “So Professor Marìn from the bookshop also knew about the Spell Almanac?” asked Teo.

  “Of course. He was another of the secrrret guardians. They are called the Incogniti, the Unknowns. Your parrrents, of course, werrre Incogniti, young lady.”

  Teo interrupted. “Does that mean …?”

  “Of course, you and yourrr young man are Incogniti too. There are others … the nunsss at the House of the Spirits, a rrrather delectable cirrrcus-master by the name of Sargano Alicamoussa has come to my attention recently.”

  Renzo whispered, “Lussa talked of a circus-master!”

  “But it’s sssafer if the Incogniti are not known even to each other. Professor Marìn’s bookshop has always been a meeting place and a kind of post office for people who needed to exchange information secretly. He has always kept a stock of l
iving booksss that could pass messages more discrrreetly than humans.”

  “That’s how the mermaids found me,” explained Teo, remembering how the old man had talked mistily of the scholars who used to come to his bookshop. The professor must have known her parents! Perhaps he had recognized something of them in her? That was why he had been so kind to her?

  “The good professor has not been to sssee me lately. I worry …”

  “I am afraid,” quavered Teo, “that your friend Professor Marìn has also paid for his involvement. He too shall be avenged,” she added, with an edge to her voice.

  The Gray Lady looked at Teo with dawning respect. “I can see now why you were called back to Venice. I see great deterrrmination in you. Of course, you will have received certain giftsss, to help you with your tasssk. Are you, like your parents, a Vedeparole? You see wordsss written in the air?”

  “She is,” confirmed Renzo, struggling to keep the envy out of his voice. “And a Lettrice-del-cuore.”

  “She reads heartsss too? Ah, the Undrowned Child of the old prophecy! So you, young man, must be the Studious Son of the sssame!” The Gray Lady bowed low to the two children and offered each of them a velvet paw to press in turn, keeping the scimitar nails well inside. Close up, Teo heard the Gray Lady purring loudly.

  She was quivering to ask the cat about her parents, about their lives, what they had worked on in the Archives, where they had lived. She dared only one question.

  “If you please, might I just enquire … what were my parents like?”

  “Like candles, joyful like the sssun, tender, clever, quick. Borrrn for each other. When they brought their firssst child to show me—how extraordinary! Now, we cats are the earth’s tenderest mothers. I had never seen a human child adorrred like that. It was as if that little baby was quite luminousss from being gazed at with love.”

  Teo felt as if she’d been given the most wonderful unexpected gift, a little piece of happiness that she could pack up and keep by her for the rest of her life.

  But the Gray Lady was already guiding them to the door, and holding it ajar with her paw, so that Venetian moonlight spilled in on the stone floor.