He held a jar aloft. ‘Look, it’s full of sand.’
‘Empty it then, you idiot!’ called Ambrogio, breaking into a radish-red blush at the realization that he’d just said these words to Venice’s most famous historian.
A cascade of sand sprayed the floor with glittering fragments.
‘Where’s the scorpion? Is it alive?’ Ambrogio slid down his ladder and began raking through the particles of sand with his bare fingers.
‘Careful, boy,’ urged the professor, joining him. ‘Oh, here it is – a fine handsome specimen.’ He flicked the scorpion free of the sand. The black insect lay inert upon the marble floor.
‘It’s not moving,’ moaned Ambrogio. ‘It’s dead. And that must mean that Talina is too.’
There was a long silence. The crowd drew back, embarrassed to be caught spectating on the tragedy evidently unfolding.
‘Who’s died?’ murmured a boy.
‘Ssh,’ whispered his mother.
Tassini’s voice was drained of expression: ‘I should have got to the jar quicker. It was in my section to search. I was too slow.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, old chap,’ said Professor Marìn thumping his arm so hard that the historian’s spectacles fell unheeded onto the floor.
‘Oh yes it was. To think we’ve come so far, and we’ve lost the dear girl. Ambrogio, can you ever forgive me? I know you—’
‘Wait a moment,’ said the professor, bending down to pick up Tassini’s spectacles from the sand. ‘Where’s the scorpion gone?’
‘There it is, running into that mouse hole!’ Ambrogio pointed. ‘It must have been playing dead.’
Back in the Chamber of Conversation, Talina was sitting up between her parents, accepting scintillating hugs from Righteous Wraiths, damp ones from the Penitent Hags and manly handshakes from the three Admirals of the Fleet.
The small Doge smiled. ‘Meanwhile, the sentence has been carried out. That cage is now empty in every way. And the Ravageur Lord is already far away. He can be a trouble to no one any more.’
‘Except to anyone edible,’ squeaked a rabbit.
‘Listen,’ said the small Doge, with a mysterious smile. ‘It is more interesting than that. The Chamber of Conversation can capture conversations even many miles distant. Listen.’
Far away on the plains of northern Italy, the pack of Ravageurs had halted in its pounding gallop. In the Chamber of Conversation, their rasping breaths and howls were as audible as if the beasts were in the room. There were shuffles and snarls, a whimper, and then the sound of one set of paws running away, with howls of derision following them.
Then, surprisingly, barks of laughter echoed around the Chamber. Finally, Talina clearly heard Frimousse say to Rouquin, ‘Don’t you feel as if we have been in a bad dream? An itchy, irritable, unnatural sort of dream?’
‘Mange and Furious Rabies’ll do that to you, they say,’ came the answer. ‘To think Old Baldy-Chops Grignan deliberately spread those afflictions among us, so we’d serve ’is little plans.’
‘Isn’t it good to feel ze land under our feet and ze wind in our fur?’
‘And to have fur at all! Give me another swig of the yellow juice, Frimousse. The mange is almost gone, zanks to that. The humans were kind to supply us with zis Dandelion & Daisy, no matter what Grignan said about it. Grignan! Boh! Miserable specimen!
‘And isn’t it beeautiful to be away from swampy old Venice! I can’t think why we ever wanted anything to do with zat benighted place.’
‘It was ze idea of Grignan. Didn’t he look ridiculous wizzout ze fur?’
‘And tiny! He was all fur! All fluff! We didn’t realize. But he won’t be ’aving any more smart ideas on our behalf again, will ’e?’
‘Jamais. I mean, neverrrr. We don’t have to talk French any more!’
‘Hooray!’
The conversation faded. The Righteous Wraiths rose to their transparent feet and saluted the small Doge. ‘Justice is done,’ they said, ‘and seen and heard to be done.’
Then they disappeared into a pale miasma, becoming part of it.
the tower at Quintavalle, June 3rd, 1867,
Saint Clotilde’s Day
‘CAN YOU EVER forgive me, Talina? You must think me a monster. As bad as a Ravageur. I am surprised and delighted that you agreed to visit me. Does it … perhaps, mean that you might forgive me?’
Talina pursed her lips. ‘That depends.’
The Guardian poured Talina a steaming cup of hot chocolate and offered her a slice of jam sponge from the best pasticceria in Castello.
‘I know you’re not like a Ravageur,’ Talina wiped the crumbs from her mouth, ‘though I thought you were for a long time. You’re not even a really terrible man. You’re just a poor, weak, frightened old man who lost his family. I had a taste of what that feels like, as you know. But I do have a question … if you once had children that you really loved, why didn’t you treat me better? You were never fond of me. So why did you make provisions to get me, if something happened to my parents? Then, once you had me, you were so unkind! You exercised your rights over me, but you didn’t care about me. You were remote and horrible, and you never wanted to spend time with me, unless it was to harvest my little sorrows for your books.’
‘Actually, I used to come to try to talk to you when you were asleep. Sometimes I stood a long time at your door, just looking at you.’
‘I remember. But I supposed you were hoping to find me weeping or foaming at the mouth in a fit brought on by awful impudence.’
‘No! It was the only time I dared to come and see you. The only time I could be sure not to feel the sharp side of that tongue of yours, which can be a little beastly at times. I knew you hated the sight of me. I hoped that you might eventually grow to be fond of me, but I feared that I did not have what it takes to make a child care for me.’
‘Oh my,’ said Talina in a very small voice. ‘I suppose I didn’t do much to convince you otherwise.’ Then she blustered, ‘And when you came to get me at the Archives, when I was terrified and had lost my parents … you were colder than ice!’
‘How could I have acted sweetly then? For a start, my conscience was wracked. I was the cause of your parents’ disappearance. To have been affectionate with you at that moment would have been hypocritical. Even I was not capable of that. Truly, would you really have wanted me to smile at you? I have always thought that a mere smile from me would make you run away screaming. Anyway, my smiles had grown rusty and grotesque … since I lost my wife and babies.’
Talina nodded slowly. Then she said fiercely, ‘You pulled my hair that night! Like a brute!’
‘Forgive me, I was a brute. This may be hard for you to believe, but I was as frightened as you were. I was in a state of shock too. My instincts and habits of being a writer made me see good material in your suffering. That’s the kind of writer I was: a horrible parasite. Then I suddenly realized that I had to get you safely home as quickly as possible. I did not trust the Ravageurs not to come for you too.’
‘I have never been afraid of Ravageurs!’ said Talina proudly.
‘You have never been afraid of anything, Talina. It was I who was afraid of you. You were so determined, so aggressive … I never knew that a child could be so impudent. My little boys—’
‘Were so little when you lost them that they hadn’t had time to be impudent. They hadn’t even learnt to talk. I am sorry, but it is true. All babies are angelic. It is only when they grow up a bit that they start to be a bit more lively. Or impudent, as you prefer to call it.’
‘Indeed, they are a little impudent now. They simply won’t come and live in the tower. They want to stay on the island of Pescatoria and they want to keep fishing, in spite of everything that I can offer them by way of comfort and luxury here! But, Talina, we were speaking of you … I was troubled by you, for you are such a fanciful child, to the point of being, well, ridiculous …’
Talina drew up to her full height indignantly. ‘An
d your own writings are of course perfectly sensible, reflecting most accurately a high death rate among naughty children?’
‘I shall never write another story like that. I shall no longer write for children. Who am I to approach such grave subjects as Goodness, Fairness and Evil? From now on, I shall simply write books for adults, about grown men talking about themselves, fighting with each other and losing their money or their hair. I shall lower my ambitions and my register. I already wrote to tell my publishers. They inform me that they shall be bankrupted.’
‘I’m not sorry for them! But, Great Uncle Uberto, my fanciful and ridiculous ways were not really sufficient reason to treat me so badly, were they?’
‘As I said, at first I was paralysed by the shame of what I had done to you. I saw how you grieved for your parents. All your bold and clever attempts to find them! The letters in bottles! The kites! But I was trapped: Grignan told me that he was going to deal with the situation very quickly, and yet the weeks and months dragged past. I watched you, bravely making your lonely life in the tower. And I saw that you did not expect any affection from me.’
‘So you did not offer any?’
‘I did not think that I was worthy of it. And anyway, I saw that you loved that cat of yours more than you could ever care for me.’
‘And you hate cats. Enough to drown them!’
‘Well, admittedly less so, now that I know that a cat did not kill my babies … And to think I nearly drowned you … because of that.’
He buried his head in his hands.
‘Cats are not baby-killers,’ said Talina severely. ‘But, Great Uncle Uberto, do you know what one of your worst deeds was? It was the way you emptied my room in your tower after I turned into a cat. When I came back here, it felt dreadful to see how you had stripped it of everything that made that room mine. Ambrogio was quite shocked to see it. Of course, I did not own that room – a child owns no place in the whole world, really. I knew it was yours, your tower, your walls, your everything – but I had made it mine, my refuge, the only way I could, with my little things, my pencils, my hanging books, my pictures. I’d hardly been gone a few days and you – you – you – expunged me, as if I were dead. As if I had never existed. You did to me what Grignan wanted to do to Venice. What had I ever done to deserve that?’
Talina’s eyes grew hot with the bitter memory.
‘Is there nothing I can do to make you forgive me, child? You are very young to be so very determined not to do so. I beg you, do not spend a lifetime hating me. Hate is so corrosive … worse than water on iron.’
This seemed like the right moment.
‘There is,’ Talina smiled severely, ‘something you could do that would make me think the absolute world of you, Great Uncle. Something that might even make me want to give you a hug.’
Uberto Flangini blushed with hopeful pleasure, asking eagerly, ‘What is that, Talina?’
‘Well, you know that the Ostello delle Gattemiagole was terribly damaged in the fire, and it was so tucked away that the Runic Rain did not restore it. Poor Signorina Tiozzo has no money to hire a new place, and her landlord will not permit her to keep the cats in her little apartment. He has sent her an eviction notice.’
‘So I have read. It was in the Gazzetta.’ He pointed to the newspaper open on his desk, with its headline of ‘Cat Woman Faces the Streets. “Who will help my pretties now?”’
‘Well, given that you are all alone in this tower now … By the way, I was sorry that Razin did not survive those wounds. He was so brave and so loyal. To you, anyway.’
‘Even to that poor dog, I showed lamentably little affection,’ mourned Uberto Flangini. ‘And now it is true. Without you and without the dogs, this tower echoes like an empty shell at night.’
‘And without Drusilla, of course.’
‘Drusilla, yes. How could I forget her?’
‘So,’ wheedled Talina, ‘I was wondering if you would not like to welcome back your old maid, Signorina Tiozzo? And her cats? Some of them seem a bit rough, I grant you, but they are really very nice animals, who would prosper so in such a cultured environment. You would never be troubled by a rat again. Your sons have agreed to deliver fresh fish three days a week for the cats … and Ambrogio says he’ll come to help me empty the litter trays and Signorina Tiozzo would cook your meals again, and take care of you as well as the cats … You would never have to buy your jam sponge in a shop again!’
During this long speech, the Guardian’s expression changed a dozen times – from shock, to disbelief, to laughter, to pain and finally to a kind of wonderment. His thin lips loosened into something that might almost have been a smile.
‘That is quite a big thing to ask, child,’ he said.
‘It is quite a big thing to say “no” to, as well,’ retorted Talina. ‘Especially,’ – she briefly put her fingers in her mouth and whistled – ‘as I had quite counted on you saying “yes”. And Ambrogio says you cannot very well say “no”.’
Albicocco and Bestard-Belou marched into the room, bearing a large dead rat between them. Talina’s chest clenched with horror. It was not a rat she knew personally, she quickly ascertained. But it had been a living creature. She frowned so fiercely at the cats that a long white whisker appeared under her nose. Hastily, she plucked it out.
‘Found it in the pantry, mister,’ said Albicocco. ‘A foin big fella too. Grown-up cat’s portion.’
‘This seems to me a tower wot is in serious need of derattizzazione,’ declared Bestard-Belou.
‘Yer not wrong, Bestardo,’ asserted Albicocco. ‘And we would do it too, disregardless of expense.’
Great Uncle Uberto actually smiled. It was not a sinister smile, or a sad one. It looked like the kind of smile that might even turn into a laugh. Seeing it, Talina clapped her hands and explained, ‘The cats are showing willing. They are offering you the best rat they could find, in exchange for accommodation. I hope you will accept?’
‘It appears that the deal is already done, Talina. How could I possibly destroy such a perfect scenario?’
Talina murmured suspiciously, ‘Well, I hope you’re not just pretending to be happy, because, well … Ambrogio says—’
Bestard-Belou butted her ankle. ‘Don’t go gittin yer gussie up, girlie. Da man’s fully agreeable to da notion. It’s nearly a done deal.’
The Guardian insisted, ‘I’m perfectly happy, Talina. If I were a poet – instead of a very bad storyteller – I would say that it was poetic justice for me to end up in a tower full of cats.’
‘You’ll learn to love them,’ said Talina.
‘Won’t take a minute,’ concurred Albicocco.
‘The cats can have the first four floors of the tower, provided they agree – on their oaths – to leave the sparrows alone. After all, this is the tower of Our Lady of the Sparrows. The cats must live and let live.’
Albicocco growled, ‘“Live and let live” won’t butter any chickens, but I suppose we’ll be fat on rats and fish, wot is plenty toothsome in itself.’
‘Not much eatin’ on a sparrow, anyways,’ conceded Bestard-Belou.
Talina translated from the Felish: ‘The cats agree to your terms. But—’
The Guardian continued, ‘Talina, I am truly happy. You mustn’t worry about me. I have my sons back. Venice is saved. My family’s dark history is open to the light, and our shame has been cleansed by the dishonest sale being reversed. But most of all I am happy because you came to see me, Talina, when you didn’t have to. You know that I tore up the contract with your parents when I gave them the deeds to the house I bought back for them? I have no claims over you any more.’
‘Ambrogio says a court would never have enforced it anyway …’
‘Oh he does, does he? It seems that “Ambrogio says” comes into the conversation quite frequently.’
Blushing hotly, Talina said, ‘My parents say he is a very acceptable friend and, well … he’s a highly quotable boy.’
‘Did your pare
nts tell you that I have a present for you?’
‘They didn’t.’
‘Good. I wanted it to be a surprise.’
Great Uncle Uberto lifted a leather volume from his desk. He showed her the title stamped in gold on the maroon leather: Talina in the Tower Part II.
Inside, the pages were blank.
‘What the … ?’
‘He’s gonna write my bografy,’ quipped Albicocco. ‘Plenty to tell there!’
Bestard cuffed him. ‘You ain’t even worf a limerick.’
The Guardian, oblivious to the Felish that was curdling into a quarrel at his feet, smiled at Talina and handed her the book. ‘This is going to be better than anything I ever wrote.’
‘Really? No dead children? No mutilated ones? No mortal or disfiguring illnesses?’
‘Not unless you want them.’
‘What kind of book is that?’ asked Talina suspiciously, fingering the cover.
‘This, child, is the book you are going to write,’ said Great Uncle Uberto.
Ravageurs – What Are They?
The Ravageurs are not, of course, exactly wolves, but they are quite like a very nasty version of those noble animals, with a bit of hyena thrown in: according to this story, they resulted from the interbreeding of migrating Siberian wolves with hyenas escaped from a circus in Marseilles.
Like wolves, Ravageurs eat meat, fruit and vegetables. A wolf can ‘wolf down’ twenty-two pounds of food in one sitting. But a Ravageur needs to keep eating constantly, or he dies.
Also like wolves, the Ravageurs can run, climb and swim. Wolves have been known to swim up to thirteen kilometres. As Bidet shows in this story, wolves do indeed have webbed skin between their claws.
Wolves – and Ravageurs – usually live in packs, though of no more than forty individuals. (She-wolves are not, however, locked away like the poor female Ravageurs.) Wolves are extremely territorial. They mark their territory by urinating and howling. The sound of their howls can travel for kilometres.
Like the Ravageurs, wolves suffer from tapeworms. They become infected when they ingest the eggs in the raw flesh of their prey. (The Ravageurs like their meat extremely rare, if not still twitching.) Tapeworms can grow up to seven metres long and cause intestinal blockages. European wolves get a kind of tapeworm called Taenia crassiceps. Wolves are also the victims of ‘mange-mites’ – Sarcoptes scabiei. Advanced mange can cause emaciation and even death. As described in this book, there are two forms of rabies, an infectious disease of the central nervous system: Dumb and Furious Rabies. The latter makes the sufferer more dangerously aggressive. Both forms are fatal.
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