Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta

by Jayne Barnard

  “And he doesna?”

  “The husband she’s referring to─if the marriage was legal at all—is a dead-broke baron in Cornwall who hasn’t a hay bale to his name. It was a ruse. I’m sure she wants your formula. Don’t go anywhere with her again.”

  “Och, aye that.” Scottie took Serephene’s hand. “I fear, my lass, that if she wants my research I’d best be getting back to my lab. Those door porters are no’ the most reliable lads at their best.”

  “We’ll all go,” said Obie. “No better way to see the sights of Carnevale than on foot.” Off they walked, two by two. As Scottie’s longer legs drew him and Serephene a little ahead, Obie asked Maddie in a low voice, “Are you sure that was our Sarah?”

  “Yes. There’s no other blue fairy around with those high, angular, wings. And when she turned, just before the firework went up, I saw the dazzle on her breast where that diamond collar from Cairo is sewn on.”

  “Now we know for certain what she’s after. Or who.”

  “But not for who. She could be working for anyone. I wish I had a better idea what’s so marvellous about Scottie’s new silk.”

  Obie yelled, “Hey, you. Don’t get away on us.” He hurried her forward until they caught up, and all four set off across the Ponte dell’Accademia. They paused at the top of the wide span to watch a collection of small boats straggle underneath, the occupants tossing a ball or stuffed bag back and forth. “It’s like the gondola cricket the English play,” said Obie. “But not as organized.”

  “Gondola cricket?” Maddie asked.

  “It’s an annual tradition. An English team against a Venetian one. They play boat to boat. Batter on one boat, bowler on another, with a few craft in between that the batter has to ‘run’ between if he makes a hit. If you mistime your leap, you swim. It’s like falling into the North Sea, I hear. If it wasn’t salt it would be frozen. I’ll get you an invitation if you like.”

  Maddie peered down at the dark water rippling a dozen feet below. A faint mist was curling up toward them. “Do they at least do it in daylight?”

  “They start in daylight. But you know cricket. It goes as long as it goes.”

  All along the Campo Santo Stephano were entertainers in fabulous costumes: Pulcinellos shrieking at the passersby, acrobats flipping and leaping, stilt-walkers duelling each other, fire-dancers whirling. So many full-face white masks that Maddie felt quite dizzy. Although she kept a sharp eye out for Sarah’s high wing-tips, there were too many enticing distractions. She wanted to stop and stare at everything. It was impossible to go quickly through the glittering throngs anyway; half Venice’s population and as many visitors again were all out to enjoy every moment of opening night.

  As they reached the end of the campo, she realized she’d been seeing the same sets of cat-ears each time she looked behind them. She nudged Obie.

  He nodded. “We’re being followed. I’ll move off a bit with McHoughty and we’ll soon see if they’re after him, or the usual rogues with an eye on your bag.”

  Scottie grasped the situation quickly. He towed Serephene to a gaudy pavilion. There were fire-dancers out front and fortune tellers inside, as well as a number of swarthy men armed with cudgels who kept spectators from crowding the swinging fire-ropes. Maddie couldn’t see what Scottie did but he must have made some kind of sign for one man nudged his neighbour and they each stepped aside. Scottie and Serephene passed straight into the fortune-telling area, with Maddie and Obie following.

  “Stay in here,” Scottie told Serephene. “We’ll be back for you.”

  “But—”

  “We’re being followed,” Maddie told her. “You and I must identify whoever is trailing Scottie.” She felt Obie’s clockwork bird, TC, creep up under her long sleeve. TD hadn’t found a good hiding place in this Arlecchina’s sleek hood and tight collar, and had been forced to remain in the hotel. Fortunately, TC would accept the image command from her, although he didn’t have TD’s newly augmented night-sight. As the men walked out into the throng, she perched TC on her shoulder and moved to a shadowy corner of the pavilion. The fortune tellers didn’t so much as glance in their direction.

  “Huh,” said Serephene. “When Scottie told me he’d been raised by gypsies, I thought he was kidding. Look! Isn’t that the Fox from the Consulate party?”

  It was. The Fox’s pointed nose and the flat faces of two Cat masks shoved through the crowds toward the side calle where Pinocchio and Obie were heading. Maddie whispered to TC and leaned to one side so he’d have a clear angle on the Fox. She heard the faintest of clicks as his beady little eye collected the first image. Fox and Cats charged into the darker side-street. A large Owl’s head surged after them. Maddie frowned. Obie was good in a fight, but even he couldn’t protect Scottie against four attackers.

  “Come on,” she said to Serephene. “They might need us.”

  She slipped out the rear of the pavilion and hurried to the dark side alley. With the noise and light of the campo behind her, she could see little down there, and hear nothing at all, not even footsteps. Serephene pushed past her. Maddie followed, holding TC carefully in one hand and wishing she had brought her sturdy parasol. Or any other weapon.

  The noise faded before they’d taken ten steps. Except for two sets of footsteps almost directly behind them. Maddie whirled. Silhouetted against the brilliance of the square were two gypsy men, light winking from their golden earrings and from the brass studs on their cudgels. They must have had excellent night-vision, for one of them raised his free hand and motioned her onward. Scottie’s friends. Relieved, Maddie rushed after Serephene.

  The calle ended at a narrow strip of paving along a dead-end canal. To the right, the two Cats and the Fox stalked Pinocchio and Obie. A steam-launch burbled along the black water, barely at walking speed. And where had the Owl got to?

  From behind a dustbin, Owl rushed after the Cats, flapping and squawking. One of them tripped over it, then fell on it. A bin toppled with a clang that rattled up the high walls. A balcony door opened above and someone leaned over the railing. Scottie and Obie looked behind them. The Fox and Cats ran at them.

  As Maddie and Serephene rushed forward, a man dressed as Pinocchio’s friendly Cricket appeared out of nowhere, a huge bowler hat perched incongruously between its antennae. Ignoring the flapping Owl, Cricket yanked the downed Cat upright. His cane, stretched out behind him, tangled in Fox’s legs. Down that creature went. Cat #2 bumped against Cricket and fell into the water with a yell. The steam-launch veered to avoid him and crunched against a boat moored opposite. More people peered over balconies.

  Fox, scrambling to his feet, stumbled over the tipped bin. Cricket’s helping hand yanked him upright so hard he overshot, straight past the pavement’s edge. He landed with a thud on the stern of the steam launch. Cat #2, in the midst of being hauled aboard at the bow, fell backward as the launch lurched. Cat #1 shook the Owl’s clutching hand off its ankle and leapt for the boat too. With a mighty roil of bubbles, the steam-launch shot away down the narrow canal, its wake crashing over the paving. Boats thrashed at their moorings. Someone above yelled curses at the pilot. On the far side of the canal, Cat #2 crept out and ran away, shedding soggy bits of its head.

  As Obie splashed after the disappearing boat, Maddie lifted the white-and-black skirts of her costume well above the soaked paving and picked her way over the slippery stones beside Serephene. The gypsies behind her melted away. Cricket was helping Owl to his feet, apologizing profusely in a distinctly English voice, slightly muffled by the mask.

  “I’m grateful,” Scottie told Cricket. “It’s no’ all men who’d step into a fray for a stranger.”

  “One must keep up the side.” Cricket’s voice had the light, foppish diction Maddie associated with Old Nobility sons who’d gone to Oxford or Cambridge. Had he chanced upon them, or had he followed them for reasons of his own?

  Obie came back then, and Maddie realized the Owl had vanished. When she turned around to question Cric
ket, he was gone as well, far along a tiny alley she’d not even noticed. She led the others after him, single-file, wrapping her borrowed gown close. They came out into Campo San Stephano a few strides from the gypsies’ tent. This time, because she was watching, she saw Scottie’s signal to the swarthy men, and their miniscule blinks of acknowledgement.

  Scottie yelled over the fire-dancers’ drums. “We might get a launch at the Rio de San Luca.”

  Fanto’s boat was against a landing stage, letting off costumed passengers. Waving to him to wait, Maddie hurried over. “We have to get to the atelier by the speediest route. Do you know any of the launch-pilots around here?”

  “I take you fast way, if you don’t mind a little noise.”

  “The gondola’s not fast enough for tonight.”

  “I use motor. You see.”

  “This has a motor? But you’ve never used it before.”

  “Before dawn is too noisy. Wakes people up. Tonight,” the gondolier gestured widely at the fireworks, the revellers, the approaching Napoleonic-era battle, “who is to notice a little more noise?”

  “If you’re sure.” Maddie took his hand and settled on the first of the red leather seats. “Why are you working still, instead of celebrating?”

  “Is good pay tonight.” He helped Serephene aboard. “I live here all my life. Many Carnevale before now. Besides, I take the turn with my brother. Tomorrow he is gondolier and I go for the dancing.”

  Maddie couldn’t quite figure out how a legless man could dance, but it would be impolite to ask, especially in front of people Fanto didn’t know. She tucked her gloved hands into her trailing sleeves and leaned back as Fanto extended the semi-circle of wind-break around her and Serephene. The two young men took the forward seat, out in the breeze. Then Fanto did something that sounded like winding a very large clock and across the water they went with a rapid click-click-click that crackled from the walls like a string of small fireworks going off. The wind tore Pinocchio’s hat off. Serephene grabbed it before it whisked overboard, and tucked it under one arm for safety. Then she hunched down, trying to keep Scottie’s broad back between her and the chill wind pouring over the bow.

  The gondola fairly zoomed up the Grand Canal. It swung wide around the next great curve, heading for the white arches of the Ponte di Rialto. The bridge was crowded with costumed revellers waiting for the parade. They were throwing small fireworks that snapped and sparkled on their way to the water. The gondola’s prow spouted a golden trumpet that sang out a phrase in full-throated operatic magnificence. Someone on the bridge pointed, then another, and soon the fireworks stopped falling. The gondola zipped under the wide span and out the other side, slowed for the tighter turn to the north, and was off again.

  As the Rio di Noale approached, Fanto swung the gondola in a wide arc, sending out a huge wave that splashed over the side of a barge filled with revellers. Their shouts rang through the night. The craft entered the narrower rio and its madly ticking clockwork echoed from both side walls like the innards of an immense timepiece. Fanto ducked his head as he sped beneath the next bridge.

  At last, the gear wound down. He pulled the craft neatly alongside the usual landing stage. This far from the main festivities, the waterside campo and the narrow calli that led from it were mostly deserted, but not now as dark as Maddie had seen them in the pre-dawn hours. Flambeaux glowed beside many doorways and, high above, fireworks flashed. Fanto retracted the wind-shield and Obie, leaping ashore, helped the girls out while Scottie steadied them from behind.

  “Can you wait a few minutes?” Maddie asked Fanto. “We’re just seeing Scottie in and then we’ll need to be taken all the way home.”

  “Not up the Grand Canal, signorina, for the parade comes. And not so fast as now. Is too dangerous in side canals.”

  “Slower is fine,” Obie assured him. “I want to take in the sights.”

  “Assi, signor.” Fanto shoved the gondola off the steps to make way for an approaching launch. “I wait at mooring poles.”

  The four made their way quickly across the pavement to the alley where Madame Frangetti’s staff entrance lay. No flaring torches here. Scottie took back his Pinocchio jacket from Serephene to hunt for his latchkey. His hand rattled the doorknob.

  “It’s unlocked.” He pushed. Light spilled across the stones. Maddie, peering past his elbow, saw a man sprawled across the floor within. He wasn’t moving.

  Obie shoved past them both to crouch over the fallen man. After a moment he called back, “He’s alive, but passed out. Drunk, I think.”

  Maddie hurried over. The tang of cheap liquor bit at her nose. “Whew! Definitely drunk. It’s one of the door porters. Where’s the other one?”

  Serephene led the way past the laundry rooms and dying vats to the front lobby. There, beside the main stairs to the piano nobile, they found the other porter slumped against a wall, snoring, his head and arms propped on a stool. Beside him the front door gaped open.

  Scottie leaped three stairs at a time in his race to reach his lab. “Ring the alarm.”

  As Obie sprang toward the porters’ cubby, Maddie and Serephene lifted their skirts and followed Scottie as fast as they could scramble. He was already in the airship when they reached the rooftop. As she clutched her splitting side, Maddie heard his yell. She forced herself onward, up the steps and then the flimsy fold-down stair, and peered into blackness. Broken glass crunched under her boot.

  “Scottie?” She groped her way inside with Serephene almost treading on her heels. “Hello?”

  A glimmer far down at the prow answered her. As it strengthened she saw the inventor’s shadow climb the wall near the spider-bats’ box. Setting the light right under the cage, he drew on one heavy glove and groped inside. The spider-bats’ irate hisses and agitated flapping buzzed along the tube by Maddie’s head. The black draperies hid Scottie’s fumbling but after a moment he withdrew his hand.

  “It’s safe.” He pulled the lamp from beneath the cage and lit another lantern on the nearest table. “They didn’t get it.”

  As the light grew, chaos appeared: beakers overturned, brass tubing bent and disconnected, instruments in shards on the floor. Serephene pushed past Maddie and hurried along the tables to crouch near a back corner. When she stood, she was cradling the lab-rat. One of Gus’s goggles was smashed and his fur was matted with some dark liquid. Blood?

  “Hi, Gus.” Scottie lifted the rat from Serephene’s hands. “Dinna be getting these oils on your fair skin, my lass. Rat’s fur protects it but you’ve nothing. You’ll need a good wash right away.”

  “But—isn’t that blood?” Maddie pulled the borrowed Arlecchina skirts close and edged along, trying to avoid contact with all the chemicals that drained, dripped, or plopped off the tables.

  “Dyes and setting agents,” said Scottie. “Some are caustic. They’ll burn skin if left. Do you take Serephene away and wash her. I’ll fix the rat.”

  “Your experiments?”

  “All safe. The formula’s still in hiding and they didn’t see the rest.” Scottie pointed toward the prow, and Maddie realized with a start that the little door had vanished. She blinked.

  Serephene said shakily, “Sub-light projector. I rigged it this afternoon to disguise that door. I didn’t trust Madame Frangetti not to steal the samples herself, to avoid paying Scottie for his work.”

  “And a fine job you made of it, my lass.” Scottie found a smile for her, standing there in the wreckage of his lab. “Do you go and clean up, and discover if the police have been summoned. Then off home with you.”

  “I’ll stay and help you set everything to rights.”

  “That you will not,” he answered, before Maddie could. “It’s not fitting for a noble lady to be spending all night with a man, not even during Carnevale.” Serephene seemed prepared to argue, but Maddie took her arm and pulled her to the exit.

  “He’s right, you know. I’m sure Obie will stay to help sort things out. Fanto will get us home safe.
”

  By the time they’d scrubbed the slick, oily colours off Serephene’s forearms and found their way to the front stairs, Commissario Bruciato and his long-suffering sergente were coming up. The Commissario popped the last corner of a pastry into his mouth and held up one chocolate-smeared hand.

  “Witnesses? Or thieving employees? Detain them, Vaniglio.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE COLD, GRAY dawn was fully fledged when Maddie and Serephene, both white with fatigue, stumbled out onto the campo. Fanto had long since been sent home to his own bed and so they stood, shivering, reviewing the night’s events while Obie went to find them a boat.

  Sergente Vaniglio, burping politely behind his white glove, had kept Maddie and Serephene in the porters’ cubby until his Commissario finished examining the porters, the airship, and the door-locks. Bruciato sneered when Maddie put forth the theory that the doors might be a distraction. The real threat, she’d tried to explain, came from someone who frequented the premises, a customer or even a member of the staff who could have taken Madame’s keys. Vaniglio had nodded thoughtfully when Serephene added that the porters would hardly accept liquor from someone they’d never met, much less gulp it down fast enough to pass out. But il Commissario said “Pah” and waved the idea away with his third zaleti, scattering powdered sugar over the tired and hungry girls.

  Madame Frangetti’s arrival was a mixed blessing at best. She verified their identities—naming Maddie only as the chaperone of her noble apprentice—but when the police left the room the storm broke. Madame was shocked and horrified that Serephene had been in the building at night with not one but two young men. No chaperone on earth could lend respectability in such circumstances. And to be found by police? The reputation of Madame’s entire business, her whole family’s reputation going back to the dawn of time, was now teetering on the knife’s edge, and she did not at this moment think she could have such a flighty young lady as her apprentice any longer. She would not expect Serephene back until an apology from both young ladies had been delivered, in writing, by Serephene’s Nonna’s own footmen, to signify that la familia did not hold her, Madame, responsible for the shocking behaviour of their young lady or their chosen chaperone.