After Maddie dropped Serephene and the silks off at Nonna’s water-gate, she went back to the Gritti. The concierge hurried from behind his counter with an envelope. “Signora, an invitation has come for you. A man has brought it.” A human messenger, his voice stressed, meant very important. “He says it is for tonight. He will take a risposta for you if you wish to write it now.”
Risposta? Maddie at first thought he said riposa, and wondered why he’d offer to take a nap for her. But a return message made sense. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She took the sealed envelope into the ladies’ withdrawing room off the lobby. It wasn’t from Obie; he would have sent TC. Who else did she know in Venice? She turned the envelope over, considering, and then slit it open.
The note within was a hasty scrawl in a large, looping hand. The signature started with a W and ended with a y. In between were a lot of squiggles and what might be an M. Or an H. Or both. She tilted the page to catch more light. It read, approximately:
“Dear Miss Hatter, My fabric formula is turned over to Madame F. I am freed to attend Carnevale, which will not be enjoyable to me without Miss AcquaTiempe and your good self. Please send word if we three may promenade this evening and tell me where to meet. Yours in haste, W(scrawl) McH(scribble).”
Maddie set down the note and contemplated the seahorse fittings on the gleaming radiator. Was Serephene attending a private party or having a free evening? She would probably move the very stars to spend another evening with Scottie. Scribbling a few words to her friend, Maddie enclosed Scottie’s missive, sealed the whole, and hurried to the concierge.
“Send this at once, please. I require a risposta. I’ll await it in my chamber.”
AFTER AN UNFASHIONABLY early supper, the two young women stepped out of the hotel with their elegant costumes covered by sombre cloaks of warm wool. Tonight, Serephene wore the new purple gown, the bodice of which she had finished with golden chains linked by amethyst gears. It was all the more striking beneath the tumble of vivid teal AcquaTiempe hair, but she tucked the length into a purple snood and added a hat to conceal the rest. She’d opted for a full-face white mask tonight, and brought a second for Maddie.
“We can’t risk recognition by someone who might tell Madame Frangetti they saw us with Scottie.”
Tying the mask’s ribbons into her hair, Maddie felt at once claustrophobic and liberated. The porcelain did not touch her skin except in a few supporting spots, and elsewhere left a half-inch or more of air, allowing her to breathe and blink and talk without constraint. She surreptitiously tucked TD into her high collar, drew up her hood and followed her friend out of the hotel.
Scottie was waiting for them only a few paces from the Gritti’s street entrance, once more in his Pinocchio costume with his green tartan kilt. Again, his well-formed legs appeared immune to the chill night air. His shirt remained open at the throat and he wore the cuffs of his brown jacket turned back. Despite the strictures Maddie placed about him not risking kidnap, he was in high fettle indeed.
“All finished, my lovely lass,” he told Serephene after kissing her hand for what seemed to Maddie an inordinately long time. “Madame is making silk as fast she can in those locked weaving rooms on the top floor, and she’ll have my pay tomorrow.”
Serephene, her voice muffled behind the mask, asked, “Will you be away back to Scotland, then?”
“Not while you remain, my lass.” He’d probably have stood gazing at her half the night if Maddie hadn’t interrupted.
“The water parade is passing. Let’s go watch.”
“A moment, Miss Maddie.” Scottie handed her a slender, silk-wrapped packet as long as her hand. “You’ll no be writing about this until Madame Frangetti has made her big splash, but I want to give you some samples, as a wee thanks for all you’ve done for me and my lass.”
“Your spider-silk? Truly?” Maddie gazed on the parcel with great excitement. “Will you tell me what the secret is now?”
“Och, no.” He grinned at her startled look. “You’ll be seeing for yourself soon enough. Tuck it away now, and let’s be off.”
Maddie slid the packet into her pocket and tried to reach the vantage point she’d picked out earlier. But the wide street was crammed with revellers all trying to see the water at once. She led her friends back into the hotel and took them through to the Gritti’s canal-side landing stage. It was fairly full but they found a spot that gave a view up toward the open lagoon. Scottie planted himself behind the girls, easily able to look over their heads, while his broad shoulders and general appearance of brawn kept anyone else from trying to crowd into their small foothold. Safe from being accidentally pushed off into the water, Maddie was finally able to view the parade.
She let slip a gasp of sheer delight. The water swarmed with gaily lit and decorated vessels. Some contained dancers in gilded garb and others carried musicians. A few carried actors or opera singers giving full-throated performances to the cheering crowds. Boats towed huge gilt balloons from which dangled beauties and courtiers, all waving to the crowds in costumes that rivalled the English Consul’s for sparkle. A low-flying airship made its ponderous way along the route while acrobats on trapezes swung below it, whirling and leaping and snatching each other from mid-air with nothing below them but the frigid waters that glittered tonight with the dancing coloured stars from fireworks. The last airborne float passed, carrying a Carnevale queen on a flower-decked swing. She blew kisses and scattered flower petals over the flotilla of sea-monster boats that made up her surface escort.
Scottie stretched out his neck. “An eye-opener and no mistake. Where away now?”
“There’s an operetta of Pinocchio being performed in the Piazza San Marco,” Maddie said. “You should see how the story is told for Venetian children. It’s a mite less cheery than the version we learned in our English nursery.”
“Less cheery than being sold into slavery and eaten by a whale?” Scottie laughed. “This I must see.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE WALK TO Venice’s largest square should only have taken ten minutes, but revellers thronged the calli. Some lanes were blocked off by temporary stages, on which all manner of performances were going on. After they’d been forced off their route twice, Maddie felt completely lost. Not that she was complaining; there was so much to see, hear, taste, and even smell. Meats and vegetables roasted on grills and sizzled in hot pans. From a balcony high overhead, a woman in a primrose fairy costume was setting loose bubbles that floated long distances, reflecting all the colours of the revels, before popping in a shower of perfume. Attar of roses and parma violet mingled with more exotic scents, heady on the evening air that was rapidly warming from all the torches and cooking fires.
Half dizzy from the heat and the scents, Maddie unpinned her black cloak and hung it over her arm, hoping she wouldn’t get the white and black Arlecchina costume too badly coated with conflicting perfumes. A steam calliope started up, wheezing, and was instantly out-sung by a choir in full Renaissance dress, determined to complete their recitative and aria before being drowned out by the mechanical melody.
“Where are we?” Serephene yelled over the din.
Scottie got the attention of someone in the garb of an opera buffa soldier. “San Marco?” The man pointed in the direction they were going, and then veered off after a young woman in a green fairy costume. Scottie walked in that direction, leaving a nice gap in his wake for Maddie and Serephene. At the next intersection, he tapped on a musician’s shoulder. “San Marco?” he repeated. The man pointed to a side calle, and off they went again. After two more intersections, the massive colonnade at the famous campo’s narrow end rose above them.
“That was remarkably easy,” said Maddie, pausing for breath in a lull between the street and the packed square.
“Trick I learned from a Yankee sailor,” said Scottie, putting one arm protectively around Serephene as a drunken trio staggered past. “You don’t need the lingo if you can say the p
lace you’re going. The locals always point while they explain, so you just go that way a bit and then ask someone else. Works every time.”
Serephene shook her head, the glittery lips and eyebrows on her white mask shimmering in the light from fireworks exploding high above. “Until you ask someone who wants to misdirect you and rob you.”
Scottie grinned down at her. “Not a man in ten is that crooked. Ask often and you’ll soon get redirected.”
Muttering something about naïve inventors, Serephene used his arm for support as she scrambled up onto the rim of a fountain. She peered out over the mass of coifed, wigged, crowned, or papier-mâché heads. Then she pointed.
“I can see the stage, halfway up the north side. Geppetto is setting Pinocchio on his feet. He’s learning to walk. So clumsy! We need to get closer.”
The crowd was swirling in a slow but determined counter-clockwise motion. After pushing against it a bit, Maddie pulled the others with her and went with the flow, all the while edging away from the walls. Down the middle of the long square was a strip where entertainers danced, sang, juggled, and tumbled for whatever pennies the tourists would throw. Some fire-dancers were at work there, with a wide area to either side. As soon as they paused for a break, she darted through. With Scottie and Serephene behind her, she edged across the human current until she was right in front of the Pinocchio stage.
The players were a lively lot, breaking from their scripted songs and dances to jest with the audience. When they spotted a Geppetto in the crowd, they beckoned and yelled until he was pushed up on stage by the crowd. They handed him an outsized adze and mimed extravagant motions for him, which he mimicked with a huge grin while they capered around him. As he was helped down, someone behind Maddie yelled “Pinocchio et qui.” Someone else yelled too, and soon a dozen people were chanting, “Pinocchio. Pinocchio.” Scottie was pushed toward the stage. He looked back and yelled something, but his words were lost in the hubbub.
“We’ll wait here,” Maddie screamed back, but the sound echoed from the smooth inner surface of her mask. She waved, hoping he understood.
Serephene grabbed Maddie’s arm. Together they twisted their way past a few more broad backs until they could see Scottie being yanked up onto the low stage. Maddie tucked her hood back on the side where TD nested and tapped the green gem on his breast to activate his night-sight camera. She might never explain to Serephene how she had images of Scottie on stage, but they would make a charming wedding gift should that happy day arrive.
The players made a big fuss over Scottie’s height, counting him in hands, unfolding wooden measuring sticks, and broadly miming their amazement. He stood there grinning and shaking his head, and even performed a creditable caper when an actor approached his ankles with a giant wooden saw. After that they looped strings around his hands to turn him to a puppet and he shuffled along in their antic dance. TD must be capturing some good images among all this fun.
When they’d done all they could do with him, the players mimed throwing him to the crowd and then let him jump down on his own. For a moment, his head was lost to view. When it surfaced, it was at the far end of the stage and getting further away every second.
“Where’s he going?” Serephene started forward, tugging at Maddie’s arm, but the swirl of humanity carried them two steps away from Scottie for every one they managed forward.
“Go behind the stage,” Maddie yelled in her ear.
The crowd carried them a little further than they wished, but soon enough they were out of the worst. By dodging among the theatre troupe’s props, they soon cleared the stage. Maddie hopped onto a costume trunk, slid her oculex from her sleeve pocket, and scanned ahead. Scottie was almost at the stone lions that delineated San Marco from the Piazzetta dei Leoncini. What was he doing? It was almost as if he was running away from them.
Then, in a burst of pink fireworks, Maddie saw a familiar gown not far ahead of the inventor: Arlecchina, white and black, a twin for her own costume. Turning, showing a smooth, white mask, this new player beckoned to Scottie with one slender, sleeve-draped arm.
“He’s being lured.” Maddie jumped down and ran. Serephene soon took the lead, and leaped onto a stone lion to peer ahead. She pointed, leapt off the lion, and pushed onward.
The far end of the piazzetta narrowed into a calle lit with flaring torches. A drunken Harlequin tried to kiss Maddie, but an older woman in a Judy costume slapped him away with a huge, red fish. A stilt-walker stumbled over Harlequin and fell onto the revellers ahead of him. This blocked their way for several precious seconds. When at last they struggled out the other side of the knot, Scottie was nowhere to be seen.
They ran up the crest of a bridge and stared in every direction. Along the pavements, no Pinocchio head. On the water, no Pinocchio. Serephene leaned as far as she could over the railing, peering into the shadows beneath overhanging balconies. Still no Pinocchio.
As another firework burst overhead, splashing coloured lights onto the water, a float in the shape of a giant shark came poling up from under the bridge. The men steering it leered up at her, calling out invitations too crude for Maddie’s formal Italian education to translate. Serephene spat something that sounded equally vulgar and slapped her upper arm with her hand.
Across the next bridge, a trailing white sleeve was flipping away. The other Arlecchina! Maddie pulled Serephene along the pavement past people scrambling into or out of gondolas. She dodged a group belting out a tune she barely recognized from the Pinocchio operetta, and hurtled over the hump of the bridge. The pavement veered sharply but she couldn’t make the turn. She steadied herself against a plaster wall, only to be crushed against it by Serephene. As they peeled themselves away from the wall, she felt a pain in her cheek. Lifting the mask, she rubbed the sore spot.
She and Serephene surveyed the narrow campo below and the even narrower calle that led out from it. Family parties were holding a dance. There were Foxes, Cats, an Owl, and at least two homemade Crickets dancing with fairies of several hues, and a few grandmothers in no costume but that of venerable age. But no Arlecchina.
And no Pinocchio.
Chapter Seventeen
THE FRUITLESS SEARCH dragged on through the night. Mist thickened to rain. Flambeaux fizzled out. Campi and calli emptied of revellers. Their masks in their hands and their hearts heavier than their sodden hems, Maddie and Serephene trudged toward home. As they turned the last corner toward Nonna’s doors, the street blazed to life. Footmen carrying lanterns scurried from the palazzo, scaring rats and casting crazed shadows up the high walls.
“Something’s wrong.” Serephene picked up her skirts and ran.
Maddie hurried after her, only to stop abruptly as a large man, his bare head showing the trademark teal streak of the AcquaTiempe, stepped out of Nonna’s front door. Serephene’s papa. If he recognized her . . .
In that brief hesitation, Lord AcquaTiempe reached his daughter. He snatched her into a fierce hug, then pushed her to arm’s length to yell at her in rapid-fire Italian. She gestured to Maddie, standing stock still among the dancing shadows. Maddie barely shoved her mask up to her face before he loomed over her.
“You,” he roared. “I don’t know who you are or where you have been taking my Serephene, but you are no relation of mine. I will summon the police and have you arrested as an impostor.”
It was surely an idle threat, for no police had leisure during Carnevale to investigate a woman returning an unharmed friend to her home. But Maddie could not risk being hauled into the light where he might recognize her face, nor present her newspaper credentials to the police without Madame Frangetti wanting her charged with spying on the fashion house. She backed away, trusting to Serephene not to betray her true identity, and darted down the nearest dark alley.
Twenty minutes later, having taken a circuitous route to the Gritti, she sank into a chair in her own bedchamber. Mud pooled from her boots and oozed from the soggy hem of her once-white underskirt. It was probably
oozing from the black over-hem too, but she could not care. What a disastrous night! Everything Serephene had worked for was dashed away: her apprenticeship, her hopes of running her own atelier, her chance to marry where she chose. With her father on the scene, taking charge of the husband-hunt and supervising her every move, she could not even search for Scottie.
Well, Maddie could and would look for him. They wouldn’t hurt him, she was sure. Well, almost sure. His knowledge of the fabric formulas would keep him safe. Even if he told them everything immediately, finding spider-bats and setting up equipment to test his formula would take time. No, Scottie would be unharmed for days yet.
More vital was where to start looking? The matching Arlecchina, almost certainly that thrice-blasted Sarah, probably knew where he was. Who was she working for? Where was she staying? Without Obie to help, how could Maddie hope to find her in this island city awash in revellers?
OPENING HER EYES in the morning light, Maddie saw two beady eyes peering down at her from the headboard. Not TD’s friendly little eyes, but those malicious, knowing ones belonging to the automaton rat. It had sat quiet in the wardrobe for so long she’d almost forgotten it was in the room. Now, for its own dubious reasons, it was out. She rolled away from it and scrambled out of bed.
“Ugh. I wish you’d go back into the closet.”
The rat scampered over to the writing table and sat on a stack of paper instead. “Go.” No reaction. Maddie huffed. “Why didn’t you come with instructions?” She turned her back on it and began to wash, feeling hideously like it was watching her every move. Yet, whenever she sneaked a peek, it was simply sitting, unmoving, staring at nothing. It might as well be a paperweight.
Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta Page 9
