“She said she was ‘Miss’ Uish,” Teo commented.
“She wasn’t wearing a diamond solitaire engagement ring either,” added Renzo. “Mind you, I can’t imagine any man in his right mind wanting to marry her. In fact, I’m not even sure she’s human.”
“Do you think she’s a ghost? But she doesn’t make you feel cold around her.”
“How can we tell? We’re always cold since the ice storm.”
The desk was littered with magazines: The Ladies’ Gazette of Fashions, illustrated with color plates, and the Court Circular, which described Queen Victoria’s daily engagements.
Piled in one corner were boxes labeled FINEST AUSTRALIAN LAMINGTONS and HOADLEY’S FRUIT JELLIES.
“Where’s Professor Marìn?” lamented Teo. “He wouldn’t just abandon us.”
Renzo, visibly thinking of his mother, murmured, “Unless something … happened to him.”
Teo threw him a sympathetic look. “He certainly wouldn’t leave us to a creature like her by choice. I think she’s raving mad! Did you see how she changes from second to second: one minute acting sweet as pie, the next minute, like a wolf?”
“And how can we be sure she’s even qualified to run a sailing school? I don’t see any certificates or official papers here.”
“What about the school inspectors and the magistrates?” demanded Teo. “If she’s an impostor, surely they will see through her? And the mermaids? Won’t they have seen all this in the turtleshell?”
The mermaids’ turtleshell showed moving stories. They used it to see beyond their cavern, and sometimes even back into past events. Via that shell, Teo had learned the whole history of the wicked life and sorry death of Bajamonte Tiepolo.
“It seems not. Well, there’s still Signor Alicamoussa. He won’t let this happen. He’ll find Professor Marìn.”
“He has to. And Renzo, I’m worried about Cookie,” Teo added. “Did you see how strange he looked? So pale, too. And he didn’t speak.”
“Go and see him. Maybe he knows something. I’m going to sneak ashore and see if I can find Signor Alicamoussa.”
Then they jumped in terror, for the cuckoo clock suddenly struck the hour. Instead of a wooden bird, a black bat shot out of its carved chalet. It did not sing. It spat tiny droplets of black ink that smelled strongly of ancient, rotten fish into a chamber pot positioned below.
In the galley, Cookie was hunched over a saucepan, one hand nursing his jaw. He shuffled through cooking pots tumbled ankle-deep on the floor. The gravy-stained calendar hung askew.
“What’s happened in here?” asked Teo. “Do you know where Professor Marìn’s gone?”
Cookie shook his head despairingly.
“How did she get on board?”
More head shaking, and a pair of tears trembled on Cookie’s swollen eyelids.
“Why don’t you say anything?” cried Teo, in exasperation.
At this, Cookie’s face crumpled completely. Teo put her arm awkwardly around the man. He smelled of boiling water and blood. Sobbing, he opened his lips and showed her what was inside.
Someone had rammed crude wooden casings over his teeth, upper and lower. The contraption was welded with wires so that Cookie could not open his mouth more than a quarter of an inch.
Teo backed away in shock. His gums were lividly swollen where they were not covered by the tight wooden casings.
“The pain must be unbearable!” she cried. “You poor dear! If only I had some Venetian Treacle!”
But The Two Tousled Mermaids Apothecary, where the medicine was to be found, was far distant, at the old gates of the Ghetto, just about as far as it was possible to be away from the Scilla’s mooring on the Zattere.
Now Teo remembered the night before: how she had heard a scream and smelled burning. Could that have been Cookie’s poor jaws being welded together? And the other noise—now, in retrospect, she was sure that it’d been a pistol shot she’d heard just as she slipped into sleep. Was that what had happened to Professor Marìn? Had Miss Uish shot him and thrown him overboard?
If she could torture Cookie, then murder was not beyond the woman.
“Did she shoot Professor Marìn?” she asked Cookie. “Miss Uish?”
He made inarticulate sounds of distress.
“Write it down!” Teo ripped the galley calendar from the wall and pulled a pencil from her pocket.
Cookie shook his head helplessly.
The unwelcome face of Malfeasance Peaglum inserted itself through the galley door.
“Is this piece of scum interfering with you, Cookie?” he demanded in a threatening tone. “Teodoro Ongania, isn’t it? The Nestle Tripe! You’re already on Miss Uish’s list, skinny boy.”
“Cookie can’t do his letters,” Teo improvised quickly. “I’ve come to read him the new recipes.”
The cook nodded eagerly. Teo had no idea if this was true or not, but she had an instinct that it might prove useful.
“As you were, then,” snapped Peaglum, “and be sharp about it. Here’s the new provisions for the job.”
He dumped a bloodstained sack on the floor and scuttled off. The sack stank of old fish and putrid meat. A thin line of blood ran from it across the floor to Teo’s feet.
Teo opened the recipe book. “ ‘Mock fish soup,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Take ten loaves of old bread and boil in water alongside a sailor’s boot for flavor.
“ ‘Cod sponge: take ten loaves of old bread and ten cod. Let one codfish lie on top of each loaf for a few hours to drip. When the fish is dry, remove. Save the skins. The cod sponge is to be served cold. The fish is to be sautéed with thyme and butter for Miss Uish’s supper with an accompaniment of rosemary potatoes, and a marmalade pudding to follow.
“ ‘Cod jelly: take one paper of Nelson’s Opaque Gelatine (supplied) and pour boiling water over day-old cod skins. Leave to set.
“ ‘As a special treat, pork heart soup: take the heart, lungs and liver of a young piglet, preferably with the organs still attached together with nerves and veins. Boil with sailor’s boot until the heart dissolves. Strain and serve.’ ”
Teo wailed, “Utterly revolting! And there’s nothing at all for me. I don’t eat meat or fish, as you know.”
When Professor Marìn was with them, Cookie had prepared a thick pea soup for Teo, and spaghetti with intingolo of walnuts and cream. “Will you save me some bread, before the fish gets put on it?” she begged.
He was nodding as Renzo ran into the galley, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper. Before he could speak a word, Teo cried, “Something really dreadful has happened here.”
She turned to Cookie: “Please open your mouth and show Renzo.”
Renzo blanched and grasped the man’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Cookie.”
Teo said soothingly, “We’ll have Signor Alicamoussa bring a dentist … or a blacksmith for you.”
“No, Teo, that won’t be possible.” Renzo sighed, handing her the Gazzettino. The headline read:
CIRCUS-MASTER ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF RELEASING DANGEROUS ANIMALS
Signor Sargano Alicamoussa, Venice’s famous circus-master, is today cooling his heels behind bars after several lions were allegedly seen roaming around the city. A deliberate release of the man-eaters is suspected. The Mayor issued this statement: I hope Alicamoussa will serve a long sentence. I cannot think of anything more calculated to keep tourists away than the sight of those beasts strolling around our San Marco. Shame on the circus-master!
“Lies! ‘Allegedly seen,’ my foot! This has been set up by the Mayor! Who will look after the poor animals,” breathed Teo, “if Signor Alicamoussa is locked up?”
“His wife, Mercer, is more than capable,” Renzo reminded her.
“What are we going to do without him? First Professor Marìn, now Signor Alicamoussa. It’s as if someone is hunting down the Incogniti. And the same people must have taken my parents.… And what doesn’t she want Cookie to tell us?”
A clack of heels above their
heads announced the return of Miss Uish.
“We mustn’t be seen talking together,” warned Renzo. “We don’t want her to know we are friends. She’ll find a way to use it against us.”
That evening, the young sailors sat down to their cod sponge in shocked silence. They were too hungry not to try it, especially as they’d been tortured by the smell of Miss Uish’s delicious supper being cooked. At least she ate it away from their covetous eyes, in Professor Marìn’s stateroom.
Evidently, Miss Uish dispatched her food with the crisp efficiency of a lizard eating a fly. For it was a very short time later that she appeared in the mess, smoking a Cuban cigar and blowing smoke in everyone’s faces.
“So you’re not hungry, whelps?” Miss Uish asked. “Delicate appetites? Perhaps a little bilious this evening?”
To Peaglum, she sneered, “I would say that these boys look worm-ridden, wouldn’t you?”
“Riddled wiv ’em, ma’am. Crawlin’ wiv ’em. Disgustin’ they are, ma’am.”
“And so it would be a kindness to dose them, don’t you think?”
“You are too good to these wretches, ma’am,” simpered Peaglum.
“Get the bottle.”
BUMSTEAD’S WORM SYRUP, announced the label on the tall green bottle Peaglum produced from his pocket. And the contents were unspeakably bitter. The sailors were still coughing and retching when he approached them with a second bottle, this time blue. From that, he forcibly administered two drops of DR. C. MCLANE’S VERMIFUGE.
“Give the Nestle Tripe an extra dose,” ordered Miss Uish, “and perhaps it’ll think twice about opening its impudent mouth in future.”
Miss Uish wore a row of lacquered kiss curls across her forehead. On January 2, when the school inspectors came aboard the Scilla, Teo noticed with wonder how grown men fixed on those curls. And how they stared at Miss Uish’s eyelashes, which curled like palm fronds. And how they followed her swaying walk with their eyes on stalks. And how every one of her radiant smiles apparently detonated their brains, until there was nothing but bewildered liquid swishing about inside their grinning heads.
Most certainly, these men came aboard with the best intentions. Venice was proud of the Scilla. And the men from the school board were known to be fastidious about how their orphanages were run, by land or sea. They had questions prepared. Their notebooks were flipped open eagerly.
Miss Uish deflected every difficult question by flirting until they were weak at the knees.
As for the little sailors, they were silent as the grave. When a mustachioed inspector inquired jovially, “So what do you think of your charming new captain?” they answered in a tight chorus, as if they’d been drilled, “Very nice, thank you, sirs!”
What the four inspectors could not have known was this: for the occasion of the inspection, Miss Uish had singled out Sebastiano dalla Mutta, the boy who’d been so impertinent to Teo on her first day. Gagged and bound, he’d been hung in a weighted cage above the icy water below the forecastle, so he could not be seen. To the assembled sailors, Miss Uish had announced, “Any one of you brats utters a word of complaint in front of our guests, or makes any sniveling mention of your Professor Marìn—and Peaglum will cut the ropes. If the plunge doesn’t kill your friend, the cold water underneath will. Is that understood, you warts?”
With downcast eyes, the sailors had nodded.
So now the crew stood in tense, silent ranks while Miss Uish guided the inspectors around the polished decks, the immaculate galley, the sleeping quarters and the provisions store. Cookie had been set to preparing a particularly delicious-smelling fish stew. The perfume of roasting butter, onions and caraway seeds floated over the deck. Alfredo drooled.
“An idiot-child,” remarked Miss Uish, kicking him discreetly. “He shall be receiving special treatment.” Alfredo shuddered.
The inspection went superbly. The inspectors pronounced themselves fully satisfied with discipline, cleanliness, educational excellence and comfort aboard the Scilla. They snapped shut their notebooks, beaming at Miss Uish. The most senior of the men concluded, “Queen Victoria may be proud to be represented by such a fine woman as Miss Canidia Uish. And how kind of you to step into the breach …”
“When Marìn irresponsibly deserted his post,” Miss Uish inserted crisply.
“And she a mere slip of a lovely girl,” his deputy added tenderly.
“Too kind, too kind,” she murmured, dimpling. Each dimple was a visible bullet to the heart of the deputy. Then she opened her mouth and buried him entirely: “One does one’s best for the little dears, yet I still long to do more, bless them. All cruelly orphaned at such a sensitive age. My heart goes out to each one.”
“I’d not object to being an orphan,” joked the second inspector, “if I had a vision like you to tuck me into my hammock at bedtime!”
Miss Uish purred, “That reminds me, there is one boon I crave for my darling boys. I fear that they are very cold at night. Shipboard life tends to dampness, and it is difficult for me to keep all their little sailor suits warm and dry, try as I do. May I request an extra supply of heating oil, so that I can keep their cabin cozy?”
While the inspectors took their leave, saying, “You are kindness itself, madam,” Renzo was muttering, outraged, “But she has taken the oil stoves out of our cabin. What does she want that oil for?”
The inspection accomplished, the Scilla became a very different kind of place. Instead of studying sailoring, the crew was put to work on what Miss Uish described as “profitable enterprises.”
First, they wore their fingers raw unraveling the warm sweaters that Professor Marìn had given them, and knitting the good bits of wool into neat socks. Those who had skills at scrimshaw, like Renzo, were set to carving pieces of ivory with skulls-and-crossbones. Speaking-parrot production went on in shifts, twenty-four hours a day. Peaglum dragged crates of birds up on deck. Rosato and Alfredo fashioned birdcages with pagoda-like turrets out of wood threaded with cruelly cold wire pillaged from the ship’s chicken coop.
Meanwhile, Miss Uish lost no opportunity to ingratiate herself with the English community in Venice, or at least its upper crust. On Sunday, she attended the English Church of St. George at San Vio, dressed in one of her strident silk dresses with naval piping and a cape frill trimmed with Vandyke ribbon velvet. She clearly made a favorable impression. By Monday, there arrived an invitation from Lady Layard, widow of the famous archaeologist, to attend her soirée musicale at Ca’ Cappello. After that, new invitations arrived daily for Miss Canidia Uish: to an “at home” at Horatio Brown’s Ca’ Torresella, and even to exclusive teas in the home of the Eden family, set like a fairy-tale cottage in a frozen garden on Giudecca.
British high society in Venice had no idea that their new favorite, Miss Uish, left behind her on the boat a tribe of young people who were quite literally starving, whose legs were bruised from her casual kicks, and who slept with ice crusting their hair in the damp hold of the unheated boat.
On January 6 came the feast of the Befana, when all Venetian children were accustomed to receiving gifts and sweets. Miss Uish, dressed in purple-and-red-striped silk, presented her orphans with giftwrapped boxes. Inside were new scrubbing brushes. Down in their cabin the sailors fantasized about Befana feasts of the past when their parents were still alive: stockings full of toffee and caramel, foaming hot chocolate and crunchy fried galani biscuits dusted with sugar.
Miss Uish gave them stone-hard lard sandwiches on stale bread, a dose of BUMSTEAD’S WORM SYRUP, and a slap in the face.
Teo and Renzo passed every unsupervised minute searching the ship, quietly calling out Professor Marìn’s name belowdecks and in the passages that led to the cargo hold. All they heard in response was the dejected creaking of the Scilla’s timbers.
“Perhaps he escaped,” Renzo said hopefully.
“If he had, he would have done something about Miss Uish. He would have told the mermaids.”
“We have to get to th
em somehow.”
“Here’s how …,” whispered Teodora.
On the afternoon of the Befana, Miss Uish was attending a party at the Palazzo Barbaro and Peaglum was to be seen waltzing around the deck, cradling a bottle of BEST NAVAL RUM in his arms.
As arranged, Teo, hiding in the shadows of the forecastle, stuck out her booted foot. Peaglum reeled forward, hit his head on a stanchion and collapsed like a dead spider. A moment later, heavy snores suffused the air.
“I’m off. Cover for me,” whispered Renzo.
“But I thought we’d both go.” Teo was surprised. “The Undrowned Child and the Studious Son together.”
“Two is too risky,” Renzo argued.
Sofonisba, passing by, observed, “The smaller the boy, the less he’ll be missed.”
“That’ll be me, then,” said Teodora. Renzo opened his mouth, but closed it as Sofonisba walked up to him and stared him in the eye, waving her tail. Teo slid down the ladder and headed west.
“That was unkind of Sofonisba,” Teo thought. She would have been glad of Renzo’s company as she thudded through the lonely streets. Venice was a ghost town, inhabited by miserable ghosts. Laundered sheets hung like frosted glass, not drying but solidifying. Each bridge, each windowsill, carried its pillow of hard snow. The flowers and vines wavered crystal white on delicate stalks, as if pure essence of cold had replaced their sap. Even though it was only late afternoon, the lamps shone like the eyes of clustered creatures hiding in the dark. And the tops of the buildings were licked away by greedy tongues of fog, the chimneys dimming first and then the pediments slowly unbuilding in the blankness.
The mist took all the smells and rubbed them with its white fingers, extracting even keener stinks from the dead fish and seaweed thrown up by the ice storm. It hurt Teo to see beautiful Venice look and smell so depressingly like something not just dead but rotting.
The Mourning Emporium Page 7
