Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta

by Jayne Barnard

  “Absolutely. I could be the first English reporter to see the English Consul’s wife’s Carnevale costume. CJ loves a scoop like that.”

  Following a brisk walk around the campo, in a breeze too sharp to let them dawdle, they said goodnight. Maddie went upstairs in a happier frame of mind. Things always came out right when Obie was at hand. He was resourceful and, being male, could hunt for Sarah in sectors that Maddie, as an unescorted female, could not safely go.

  The breeze was even sharper the next morning, sending icy needles through her veil. Dawn, when it came creeping over the sullen waves, was uniformly low and gray. Fanto, handing Maddie and Serephene out onto the slippery stone steps near Frangetti’s, warned of snow by noon and a high tide that would take his gondola out of service if they were not headed home soon after that.

  “We’ll be here,” Serephene assured him and Maddie both. “Nonna is having guests for afternoon coffee and demands my presence.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course, they have an eligible son.”

  Frangetti’s had experienced no further disturbance and the morning passed quickly enough. Zaneta smuggled Maddie down to the fitting rooms to see fairy costumes being tried on. Not Sarah’s blue one with the high wings; it was long since gone. Others from the Pinocchio collection delighted their new owners, who pirouetted and pranced, fluttering their wings with the press of a bulb sewn into the fabric of each wrist. Perhaps they were practicing for the English Consul’s party?

  Maddie told Serephene about the party as they climbed the stairs to the roof for the daily visit to the airship-lab. “You should come, and bring Scottie. If he were masked, he’d be simply another reveller.”

  Serephene glowed. “Nonna could not refuse to let me dance with him at a Consulate event. Only the best people get invited to those.”

  “I’ll ask my friend, Mr. O’Reilly, if I can bring you two along.”

  While Serephene vanished into the airship, Maddie gave TD the message. The chill breeze off the lagoon threw hard snow-pellets across the tiles. Waiting for a hawk to appear, she looked up at the last baskets of workers passing overhead and shivered in sympathy. However cold she’d been on the way here, the buildings had shielded her from the wind. Up there above the rooftops, swaying along in wind-propelled wicker baskets, the workers had no protection at all. She saw the hawk coming, hurried to a parapet where it could land, and bent her head for the immediate transmission of the message. Then she hurried into the airship-lab, her ankles aching from that short wait in the freezing wind.

  As the door shut behind her, a burst of music rang along the laboratory. She shook her head clear of the veil and put her ear near the transparent tube. No, it wasn’t coming from there. She looked along the tables, peering through a gloom augmented by the dim day outside. At first, she didn’t see either McHoughty or Serephene, and she hoped they were not getting up to anything they shouldn’t. But then Serephene hurried out from the tiny spinning room in the prow while the music swelled behind her. It was clearly Spanish music, yet there was no space at all to play a guitar in there. And Scottie’s worn guitar still hung on the wall.

  “Oh, good, you’re here.” Serephene rushed along the narrow aisle. “Go fetch water from the break room. Quickly!”

  “But—” Maddie meant to say she’d go when she was warmer, but Serephene shoved a litre glass beaker into her hands and rushed away, yelling over her shoulder to make the water as hot as she could stand to carry. “Is someone hurt?” Maddie called after the fleeing girl, but the only answer was another burst of flamenco as the prow door opened again.

  Returning with a full beaker swaddled in her muff, Maddie crept precariously up the folding steps and called out. Serephene came, retrieved the water, and dashed off again. The music was still playing, more frantic than before. What above the earth were they doing in there? Following her friend, she reached for the door handle on a militaristic crescendo in the music.

  Scottie’s voice yelled, “Dinnae open that door.”

  After a few minutes of standing there, she tapped hesitantly. “Can I open it now?”

  “In a minute,” Serephene called back. “Once the music stops it should be safe.”

  Maddie looked at Gus, who sat on the neck of his violin. The rat looked back. As he scurried along the tube to sit on the spider-bats’ box, she saw the bandage she had fixed yesterday was gone. She leaned over for a closer look. It seemed to be healing nicely. Remembering Serephene’s attempt to fix Gus an escape route, she lifted one corner of the black covering. There on the box’s bottom lay Serephene’s tube, both ends open to the interior. The leather gasket lay flat over another leather gasket that opened beneath the box. From inside, the rat had only to reach either end of the tube—which was plenty long enough to get all of his body plus his long tail away from the spider-bats—and drop through the gasket back into the lab. Ingenious.

  “I bet you’re happy about that,” she told Gus, and realized that the music had stopped. The door opened as she straightened up. First Serephene and then Dr. McHoughty came edging out, through the narrowest possible gap. Their faces were damp and the previously perky knot on Serephene’s working kerchief had sunk limply to her forehead. Strands of spider-silk lay across her wrists. “What happened in there?”

  “Low humidity,” Scottie said, and went back to whatever interrupted experiment he’d left on the table.

  “The spider-silk threads don’t twist well when the air gets too dry,” Serephene explained. “They get brittle and can even break. It’s horribly difficult to re-thread those tiny looms if that happens. So Scottie has a humidity alarm that plays his favourite music when the air gets dry enough to be dangerous. Then we have to stoke up the miniature boiler to send out enough steam into the room to keep everything moist enough to be spun and woven without splitting or snapping.”

  “And is there music for when it’s damp enough to turn off the boiler too?”

  “Of course.” Serephene smiled. “A piece with castanets. His foster-mother used to dance to it in the evenings around the fire. Or so he says. Come on. We have to get home before it starts snowing for real.” She retrieved their cloaks and, huddling into hers, led the way out.

  A hawk awaited them, perched on the angle of the rooftop door. Maddie exclaimed at once, “I’ve dropped a glove. You go on down. I’ll catch up.”

  As soon as Serephene was gone, Maddie hurried to put her hat up to the hawk. Obie’s return message said, “Yes, it’s fine to bring your friends. I’ll meet you all outside the Consulate at six o’clock tomorrow.”

  The girls huddled together before Fanto’s wind-shield, and didn’t complain when he extended it to wrap almost completely around them. They could see next to nothing, but Maddie by now had complete faith in him to get them across all Venice without any guidance from her. She reached her hotel half frozen anyway, partook gratefully of a steaming bowl of hearty minestra, and then retired to her warm bed for a long nap. Three too-early mornings in a row were almost too much for her, and she wanted to look good for tomorrow’s party even though she’d be wearing a mask.

  A mask? She sat bolt upright in the shuttered bedchamber. What was she going to wear to the English Consul’s party?

  Chapter Twelve

  THE COSTUME PROBLEM was easily solved the next day by Zaneta, who showed her a black-and-white Arlecchina in medieval style, with a high collar and long sleeves that could be pulled over her hands to hide the very necessary gloves. It also came with a matching capelet, mask, and scarf, warm enough for the customary Venetian February weather. “It was the costume of my English mistress,” she explained. “She gave to me this when departing, but it fits me not exactly and I have not the time to alter this year.”

  Thus, Maddie arrived outside the English Consulate on the Dorsoduro at sundown, stepping from Fanto’s gondola in her elegant black-and-white gown, accompanied by Serephene in an Arlecchina made with the customary jewel-toned patchwork, and a stalwart Pinocchio, his long-nosed mask around his n
eck and his kilt replacing the leather lederhosen that usually went with the costume. His bare knees showed no sign of registering the frigid air seeping from the water. Obie, in his white dress uniform with his earl’s colours across his chest, was scanning the crowds from the entrance. Maddie smiled under the black-and-white demi-mask, but his gaze swept on past. He didn’t recognize her. Suppressing a grin, she handed in the pass he’d given and then, as she stepped through the garlanded portico, called over her shoulder, “Are you coming, Mr. O’Reilly?”

  Obie hurried over. “You look amazing!”

  After being introduced to Serephene and Dr. McHoughty, Obie led them up the main stairs to pay their respects to the English Consul and his wife. The Consul’s coat glittered with rubies in the light from a dozen candelabras; he wore rubies on his hands and in his high, snowy wig. His face seemed rather plain behind a gilded half-mask he held on a beribboned stick, but then diplomats were chosen for their cunning more than their looks. Maddie gazed eagerly ahead. Would the wife match her husband’s Sun King splendour?

  She did not. Lady Brae was a long-faced pony of a woman, short-legged and barrel-bodied, who would have been completely buried inside a pannier gown. Instead she had opted for a crown of ivy and a simple white drapery, which suited her without overpowering. “An English forest spirit,” she explained to a woman further up the receiving line.

  Curtsying to the Consul and his lady, Maddie moved along the line to meet Obie’s current employer. The Earl of Kinbiskit looked bemused in a green costume that was clearly supposed to be Robin Hood. As he’d added a fat emerald hat-pin and matching rings, he seemed more suited to the rapacious villain, Prince John, than to the outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor. No Pinocchios in this lineup, and no costumes worth writing about beyond the Sun King. She was rather inclined to like the English Consul’s wife for not getting caught up in the costume wars. Perhaps she’d mention the simple grace of that forest-spirit costume in her column, to sneakily promote the idea that women’s clothing need not be a competition.

  The marbled reception room was swept with a persistent draught about their ankles, combated by steam radiators that rose up through the floor at intervals. Their gleaming pipes were twisted into fantastical sea-creatures, sculptural as well as functional. Made by English craftsmen, no doubt, for one purpose of all government buildings abroad was to showcase the cultural treasures of the nation they represented. Clustered around the heaters, guests chattered merrily, Cats and Foxes beside Punch-and-Judy pairs, Renaissance lords murmuring to bird-like heads a-flutter with bright feathers. Maddie could not begin to take in all the elegant and comic costumes, much less write about them. How was she to choose?

  “The best-dressed are invited to watch the parade from the library and the dining room,” said Obie. “Where it’s warm and dry, unlike the roof where we lower beings will view it. May I fetch you ladies a refreshment?” He and McHoughty went off together.

  “I hope Scottie enjoys himself a little bit tonight,” Serephene confided. “Convincing him to leave his work at all was difficult. He’s worried that his formula will be stolen, now that it’s so close to perfection.”

  “I’ve sent for some security measures to install in his lab,” said Maddie. “That should help. Meanwhile, watch out for a blue fairy costume with a diamond-and-lapis Egyptian pattern around its neckline.”

  “The woman who was impersonating you?”

  Maddie nodded. She accepted a cup of mulled wine from Obie. He’d also brought along a plate of appetizers. Cicheti, they were called, bite-sized morsels of squid, meatballs, olives, and a host of less identifiable comestibles. Scottie also had a plateful to share. The food vanished, the warm wine followed, and following the English Consul’s speech of welcome, they trooped up three flights of stairs to the rooftop. There they crowded to the side facing the Grand Canal, away from the mooring tower guarded by British marines, above which swung an air-yacht flying a crest of green with a silver bowl: the Kinbiskit crest like the one across Obie’s chest.

  The wind whipped their capelets and flapped Maddie’s trailing sleeves up into Obie’s face. Someone’s gilt-trimmed jester hat blew off with a jingling of bells, over the parapet and down, down to drift on the black water. A hush fell.

  Over the far shore the first firework burst in a shower of pink stars. The explosion echoed back and forth between buildings. Another followed it, and then, in quick succession, other flashes rose from both sides of the water, lighting up a long line of decorated boats below. These threw open their own lanterns, setting the Grand Canal brilliantly afire with all the creative joie-de-vivre Venice could muster.

  “There’s the whale.” Maddie whipped her little oculex from its sleeve and focused on the immense creature. It surged along with its newly repaired upper jaw opening and closing, ever threatening to gulp down a spry Geppetto who paddled comically on a small raft and managed to keep just ahead, thanks to the plank that, just below the waterline and only visible through the oculex, attached his wooden platform to the larger boat. The Napoleonic boat came later, its living soldiers engaging in lively battle against two Venetian galleys. Boats of great variety drifted past: bowers of flowers, floating castles, stage-coaches drawn by sea-horses. Crowd favourites were greeted by whoops and cheers. Maddie yelled to Serephene over the noise. “Isn’t this fabulous?”

  Her friend nodded, then looked over her shoulder. “Do you see Scottie?”

  “Did he go for more food?” Maddie peered across the roof. She spotted six Pinocchio hats almost immediately, all on people too short for the large Scotsman. When a firework popped almost immediately overhead, she finally saw a seventh. It was heading into the building, accompanying a blue fairy with high, pointed wings. Sarah? As the pair disappeared, Maddie pushed her way through the throng.

  When she reached the stairs, the wings were nowhere in sight. She hurried down, thankful for the electrical illumination along the corridor, and thought she caught a glimpse of a blue wingtip heading toward the water-entrance. She rushed after, skirting a seahorse-radiator and ignoring Obie’s call. He’d follow. He always did.

  Outside the noise was deafening, fireworks and boat horns bouncing and rebounding from the walls, boatmen yelling, spectators cheering. People on the balcony overhead were tossing flowers at the boats, covering the water in drifting blossoms. The landing stage stretched across the full front of the Consulate. The tail end of a kilt was just vanishing around a corner. She picked up her black-and-white skirts, prayed she wouldn’t trip over the trailing sleeves, and ran after it.

  The side calle was surprisingly dark. Her feet told her when she left stone and hit a wooden platform. She slowed, peering ahead. A firework flared high above, revealing Pinocchio amid a seething mass of whiskered masks, and one set of high blue wings standing aloof, their platinum lightning seeming to flicker with colour from the sparks high above.

  “Scottie, come back,” Maddie shouted. “Sarah! I know it’s you.”

  Behind her Obie said, “Stay here.” He ran past, bounding down a set of wooden stairs she hadn’t noticed, and raced toward the melee.

  Maddie started down after him, her eyes fixed on the wings, but stopped when Serephene called out behind her, “Maddie? Scottie? Where are you?”

  “Around the side,” Maddie called back, and yelled at Sarah again. Obie yelled too, and at last Pinocchio turned.

  A firework split the night around the group. It spat sparks as it surged upward, exploding at rooftop height with a terrific bang. Dazzled, Maddie shielded her eyes with one forearm. Echoes ricocheted along the buildings, deafening her. Orange sparks rained down on the walls, the stones, the wooden platform, and on her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MADDIE FLAPPED A fizzing spark off her borrowed skirt and stepped out of the way as a squad of British marines jogged down the stairs. Each carried a bucket of sand. Obie and Scottie were stamping on sparks that fell near them, slapping at their own and each other’s clothin
g. The marines joined in, flinging their sand and stamping their boots. Another squad flung the end of a hose into the Grand Canal, ran it along the walkway and began hosing down wooden shutters. Venice, Maddie had learned, was mostly old wood beneath the plaster and marble veneers. It would burn like historic London-town if any fire got a good hold.

  “Excuse us, ladies,” said a young captain. “We need this platform for the big pump. Can’t burn down all Venice on the first night of Carnevale. Her Majesty would disapprove.”

  With a last, hard look for Sarah’s blue wings, which had predictably disappeared in the confusion, Maddie pulled Serephene back to the Consulate’s entrance. “Obie’s got Scottie. He’ll be fine.” Her Knott brain whispered,

  “Despite being wanted by the British police for her part in the affair of the diamond, the daring adventuress penetrated the British Consulate in Carnevale disguise and attempted to lure the naïve inventor out to waiting kidnappers.”

  A moment later, the two young men came tramping around the corner. Scottie said, a bit louder than usual, “Like dancing the flamenco, that was. But yon music was a titch loud.”

  “What?” Obie said, also too loud. He shook his head and tapped on one ear. “That rocket went off right over our heads.”

  Out on the Grand Canal, more boats floated past. Serephene shivered. Scottie yanked off his brown corduroy jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

  “Come away, lass. Let’s get you warm.”

  “Just a minute.” Hands on hips, Maddie stared at Scottie. “Why did you go off with that woman?”

  “She said she could get me aboard that whale to see the jaw hydraulics.”

  “She’s the woman who came to your lab two days ago, spying around under the pretext that her husband wants to invest with Madame Frangetti.”