by Zizou Corder
The chamber was lined with red and gold silk; its ceiling was studded with gold and turquoise rosettes. Though small compared to the others Charlie and the Lions had passed through, it was still bigger than most rooms Charlie had ever seen before he came to Venice. But as they entered, Charlie and the Lions did not notice the chamber’s grandeur. They hardly even noticed the Doge himself, papery pale and ancient on his throne. What they noticed was that on each wall of this room was an immense, gold-framed, vivid painting of a lion.
The lion.
In each picture he held his book, and his wings lifted elegantly from his shoulders. In each picture he faced to the left, so the effect was of a procession of him, circling the room. In each picture he had a halo, and his front paws were on the land, and his hind paws in the sea. He seemed to be standing on the end of the Giudecca, opposite San Giorgio Maggiore … i.e. on a place which was now under water. All the things that Charlie had seen so far in that palace seemed to be show-off things – about power, and how far the Venetians had travelled, and how great they were – but this suddenly brought them down to size. Their great lion was standing on a piece of land they had lost back to the sea. There was a rose bush beside him, which somehow made it even sadder.
And between these painted lions and the real Lions, who had gathered, breathing and twitching at Charlie’s feet, sat the astounded Doge.
He stared at them. At all the Lions, then at each in turn. Then at Charlie and Claudio, then, particularly, at Primo, who lay in the middle, with the Lionesses at his left, and the others on his right, and his creamy wings folded gently along his massive back.
The Doge said nothing. Edward waited.
The Doge sighed.
And then Primo glanced at Charlie, and slowly, languorously, he stood up. He turned sideways to the Doge, and fixed him with a deep stare. As Primo lifted his paw, Charlie pressed the button on the little remote he had in his pocket. The beautiful wings rose up, the feathers shifting gently with the movement.
Primo was the fifth of the old lions painted on the walls. And he was alive.
The old man closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
‘Ahhh,’ he said. ‘My god, my god.’
And then: ‘What’s the matter with his head?’ he asked.
‘A hurt jaw,’ said Edward. ‘It will soon be better.’
The Doge nodded.
‘And what do you want in exchange, Edward?’
‘We wish simply to be friends again,’ said Edward. ‘Please, be a friend to King Boris, to Bulgaria and to the Bulgarian Security Forces.’
The Doge grinned a nasty old grin.
‘I understand,’ he said.
‘The young men will stay,’ said Edward. ‘They look after them.’
Charlie was pleased to be called a young man, even by a double-crossing weasel like Edward.
‘I understand,’ said the Doge again. ‘Foscarini, how long to prepare a pageant?’
‘A few days, sir,’ said one of the advisers.
‘Prepare,’ said the Doge. ‘We will introduce the Lion of San Marco back to his people of Venice. It will be a miracle. They will all be very grateful to me and stop complaining. Is his face as beautiful as the rest of him?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Charlie, who was picking up Italian quite quickly.
Edward frowned at him.
‘Will it be … visible, after tomorrow?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Charlie blandly. None of these people knew Primo’s secret. Only he and the Lions knew.
They were put in a huge room on the first floor, with a thickly ornamented golden ceiling, more fancy icing on the cake. It was covered with pictures of gods bringing tribute to Venice: great hairy sea-gods with big forks and green beards; beautiful goddesses in delicate nighties and thin gold crowns. In each one, Venice was an even more beautiful lady, golden-haired and long-faced like Signora Battistuta, lying about half-dressed, with a great curly golden lion at her feet, or under her hand, or, sometimes, she was sitting on it.
This chamber lay alongside the arcaded balcony overlooking the piazza where the two columns were. (Claudio had told him never to walk between them, because in the old days that’s where criminals were hung.) When Charlie went out he could see the white-eyed lion on top of his column quite clearly, grinning in at them in the moonlight. They were on about the same level now. He called the Lions to look, and they grinned back at their bronze brother.
Charlie was thinking: Sergei knows that I am here. He could come to this balcony without too much trouble. If I hang out on the balcony Enzo might come, and I can send a message to Sergei to say I’m sorry, I meant no offence … He stared out over the Piazza San Marco, sending silent messages to Sergei, begging him to come back. From way across the piazza came the lilting strains of a beautiful tune. Charlie recognized it: it was the song about Elena which Claudio sang as he punted, played by the small orchestra outside the grandest café in the piazza. It seemed to yearn and dance at the same time, and Charlie felt it in his bones.
Charlie had been thinking a lot about his responsibilities. And about what Sergei had said. He had come to the conclusion that if his parents were all right, and free, then they might track him to Venice, in which case perhaps going off to Morocco was not the best thing to do. Or at least, perhaps now was not the moment to go off to Morocco. Perhaps he … well, perhaps he should stay.
But what about the Lions? How could they get away without him?
Could he ask them? Would he be letting them down?
He had lost sleep over this.
When they went back indoors, Claudio took Charlie to one side. He was troubled. Normally so relaxed and confident and elegant, he was nervous now. He was picking at his fingers.
‘What is it?’ Claudio said finally.
‘What is what?’ answered Charlie he with concern.
Claudio stared at him.
‘My friend – how do you do it?’ he burst out. ‘Please – if I am to be here with these wild creatures, trusting they not so wild they eat me – how do you do it?’
Charlie considered this. It seemed to him reasonable that Claudio should want to know. And at least he asked in a fair and straightforward way. And he was going to help them. He was helping them. Without him, they’d be stuck here forever. And splendid though it was here – especially after they were brought a little late snack of beef for the Lions and gianduiotto (it’s like chocolate only better, and comes swimming in whipped cream) – Charlie and the Lions did not want to stay forever.
‘Do you talk to them?’ asked Claudio. ‘Just say yes or no. I have seen you – I think you are talking. Just say. I never never never never tell nobody. Nobody. Never.’
Charlie couldn’t lie. He couldn’t even deceive.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Claudio’s pale eyes doubled in size. Then he started dancing around the huge golden room, he was so pleased. He did a backflip worthy of Signor Lucidi. He hugged Charlie, hugged himself and almost – but not quite – hugged the Lions.
Then he knelt down in front of Elsina and said to her, very slowly, ‘Hello, beautiful girl Lion, how are you? I like you very much.’
Charlie laughed out loud. The Lions twitched their ears and the Silvery Lioness started to cough. The Old Lion put his nose on his paws.
Elsina replied, equally slowly, ‘I am very well thank you, handsome Gondolier. How are you?’
When Charlie translated this back to Claudio, Claudio was so happy that you would think he was in love. In fact, perhaps he was.
The Young Lion snorted with laughter. For a moment Charlie, sitting with the Lions, felt as if he too were a Lion and Claudio were the only human.
Merriment filled the room.
Only Primo didn’t join in.
The Young Lion noticed, and nudged Charlie.
Claudio noticed too.
‘What is it, Primo?’ Charlie asked.
‘Tired,’ said Primo. ‘Just tired.’
They had been provid
ed with beds for the humans (huge carved ones, with angels on the headboards and high mattresses with rough thick linen sheets), and rugs and bales of sweet-scented straw for the Lions. Claudio pulled the straw from one of the bales and laid it out so it was comfortable for Primo. When Primo went to lie on it, with a gracious inclination of his head, Claudio stood over him for a moment, watching him.
‘Strange beautiful beast,’ he murmured.
It was time for the Lions to sleep. For Charlie too, but first he and Claudio had to talk and plan.
How peculiar it was to sit on the Doge’s own balcony, plotting his downfall. The moon gazed down, but Charlie felt that even the moon was on their side, and wouldn’t tell on them.
‘It’s like this,’ said Claudio softly and urgently. ‘The Doge is bad. Many many people want to be rid of him. Many have planned, many wish only for a leader, an opportunity, someone to say NOW! Here, now, we have an opportunity. If we, the boatmen, the gondolieri, tell the people that the Lion has come and the Doge has locked him up, then the Venetians will follow the Lion and say, Arrivederci, Doge. We can do what the Doge is planning to do. We can grab the symbol of good luck.’
‘That is very risky,’ whispered Charlie.
‘Venetians are good people! And we all know each other. We will put the word out and everybody will want this. And of course, Charlie, there is you too – the famoso Brown Angel of the Sick Children –’
‘I don’t want to be famous,’ said Charlie.
‘Help us,’ whispered Claudio, ‘and we will help you. We can prepare everything for your escape. You want to go to Africa? We can give you a boat, supplies – if you like I can come too!’
‘What about Primo?’
‘He goes with you! Once he has given Venice a big blessing and we have the Doge and his people all put away in prison, then he can go to Africa with you. No one will mind. A miracle doesn’t have to go on forever.’
A boat, thought Charlie. Supplies. And a boatman! Now that’s more like it.
Chapter Eleven
Before dawn, after the long discussion with Charlie, Claudio slipped out on to the balcony, down a column to the piazza, and off to a bar where the gondoliers met to drink little cups of strong coffee before starting the day’s work. There, he spoke to his friends.
Within the hour, all the gondoliers and half the other boatmen of Venice and the surrounding islands knew that the stupid old Doge, who had let their city fall down and been no better than the fascists, had, in his palazzo, miraculously, the Lion of San Marco, and was keeping him prisoner (along with his Lion friends and the brown boy who looked after him). They knew that the Doge planned to impress the whole of Venice by producing the Lion in a pageant, but that the Lion wanted only to visit and bless the city on his way back to – well, Claudio hadn’t quite worked that bit out. But the boatmen got the gist. The Lion had come on an honest and miraculous visit to his beloved Venice after all these years, with his brothers and sisters, to remove the curse and bless the city in her time of trouble, and the Doge had locked them all up.
‘He what?’ exclaimed Claudio’s cousin Gabriele.
‘What a snake!’ cried Gabriele’s girlfriend’s brother Vittorio.
‘We’re not having that!’ expostulated Vittorio’s uncle Leon.
‘Why should the Doge claim the Lion’s glory for himself?’ sputtered Leon’s brother Franco.
‘The Lion is for Venice, not for the Doge!’ declared Franco’s niece Carlotta (yes, there are female gondoliers). ‘Our Lion must be free!’
‘And while we’re at it,’ said Claudio, ‘why isn’t Venice free? Why are we always talking about how bad this Doge is and yet still putting up with him?’
‘This porco of a Doge!’ muttered Carlotta’s brother Alessandro. ‘Enough is enough!’
The others agreed.
Claudio hummed his tune as the word spread. Then: ‘So here is the plan,’ Claudio said. ‘Listen …’
Alessandro, whose job was changing the light bulbs in the electric lights on the buoys all across the lagoon, had left his phone at home. His mother, knowing that he would be sad without it, unable to talk to his girlfriend as he sped about in his little boat, and knowing that he would be taking a coffee at the bar on his way to work, brought the phone to him. On the way she ran into her friend – Gabriele’s mother – who came too as they were both heading to the market afterwards.
Overhearing the talk, the boatmen’s mothers were very interested. Particularly when Claudio mentioned the brown boy, and how the Lions had been at Palazzo Bulgaria.
‘L’angelo!’ they cried. ‘The Brown Angel of the Children of the Asthma is the friend of the Lion of San Marco!’ The boatmen’s mothers were amazed and delighted.
The boatmen were not at all surprised to hear that the Lion’s human companion was in fact an angel – what could be more likely? The Lion of San Marco had returned to Venice with a miracle-working angel to bring blessings on the long-suffering people of his city, and to get rid of the selfish, greedy, unimaginative, useless, corrupt, old Doge … of course!
It was all Claudio and Alessandro could do to stop the boatmen’s mothers from going straight down to the Doge’s Palace and setting up candles and flowers and deckchairs there.
‘Not yet,’ they said. ‘Not yet. We have a plan.’
‘Really?’ said the boatmen’s mothers.
When they heard what the plan was, the boatmen’s mothers said, ‘About time too!’ Then they hared off to the Rialto, to the market, to church and to the piazza behind Palazzo Bulgaria to tell everybody all about it.
By the end of the day, all of Venice knew that at the Doge’s big pageant they would finally have the chance to tell him what they thought of him. All of Venice knew that something big was about to go off.
Including a baldy-bottomed, milky-eyed, wonky-eared cat, foraging for fish-heads over at the fishmarket.
Really? he thought. And munched, and thought.
And also including a handsome, tired-looking young man with a bad arm, recently arrived on the Orient Express, who was taking his morning coffee in a café up by the station. An Empiregirl, leaving that afternoon to return to the Homelands, talking half in English half in Italian to her Venetian boyfriend, was saying that she really didn’t want to leave with all this excitement about the Lions and everything. The boyfriend was trying to persuade her to stay. ‘We make history now!’ he said. ‘With the Lions, and the Brown Angel – fate loves Venice now! We have a big chance now! Stay here! You can help Venice to be free with her Lions!’
‘Questi Leoni,’ said the waitress. ‘E’ l’angelo, credi sia possibile, che è vero, e che abbiamo ancora il nostro Santo qui a Venezia?’
The rest of the café joined in. Lions, Brown Angel, Doge’s Palace, grand pageant …
Rafi got the gist. Charlie and the Lions were incredibly famous, everybody knew about them and loved them, and they were imprisoned in the ruler’s palace.
He was going to have to think of a very clever plan indeed to snitch this adored boy from under all these Venetian noses. Force would not work. Sneaky cleverness was the only possible way.
But at least they would come out for the pageant.
Rafi finished his coffee and set off for the Doge’s Palace. He would have a look at this luxurious prison, and he would find a way …
For a moment, as he started out, he looked round for Troy. For a moment, remembering that his dog had run away from him, he felt a tiny sadness. Then he sneered. ‘He travels the fastest who travels alone,’ he said to himself.
Magdalen and Aneba reached Paris soon after dawn. The truckerguy dropped them off near the Bastille.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘My brother lives on the riverbank just here – I was coming this way anyway to deliver him some scrap. The Circus is down there.’ He pointed over the edge of the bridge. ‘See that big pink ship? That’s the Circus of Monsieur Thibaudet. Good luck!’
Magdalen and Aneba stood on the bridge and star
ed down at the Circe, the amazing circus ship. The Big Top was up amidships, its crimson and white stripes glowing slightly in the early-morning mist. The big, beautiful figurehead was visible, with her golden-red hair and her elusive smile. A dim light shone from her eyes, from the strange-shaped little cabin within which the twins, Lara and Tara, were starting to get up. Its funnels stood proud, and there was movement in the rigging: Charlie could have told them that it was Signor Lucidi and his family practising their acrobatics, as they did every morning at dawn. Soon the whole ship would be full of activity, as everybody woke and washed, ate their breakfast and greeted their colleagues, cleaned their animals’ cabins and started to practise their routines.
Aneba was all for going straight to the Circus, waking everybody up now and making a big fuss. Magdalen stopped him.
‘Let’s get a hotel room, bathe, have breakfast, go out and buy some clean clothes, and visit them at a decent hour looking thoroughly respectable,’ she said.
Reluctantly, Aneba agreed. Turning up smelly and hungry at five a.m. probably wasn’t the best approach. But now that they were out of the clutches of the Corporacy, he just wanted his boy. He wanted him very very badly.
‘Me too,’ said Magdalen. ‘That’s why we must go about this carefully. Remember, Charlie ran away with their Lions. They’re probably not very pleased with him.’
Three hours later, Aneba and Magdalen approached the gangway of the Circe. Aneba was wearing a clean white shirt and an elegant black suit: they had had to go to five shops to find one big enough for him. He had shaved – chin and scalp. His gold tooth gleamed. He looked handsome, impressive and not to be messed with. Magdalen had bought a white shirt, a pair of jeans, and a beautiful pair of boots. They reached the deck. There was a chain across the entrance.
‘The Box Office isn’t open yet,’ said a pretty woman with a curling black beard, in French. ‘You need to come after midday for tickets.’
‘We haven’t come for tickets,’ said Aneba nicely. ‘We’ve come to see Major Thibaudet.’
The Bearded Lady looked at him. She looked at Magdalen.
