The Mourning Emporium

by Michelle Lovric

  Venetian Treacle was a magical medicine made of sixty-four ingredients. Teo and Renzo had discovered a secret cache of it at an old apothecary called The Two Tousled Mermaids by the old gates to the Ghetto.

  “But Renzo?” Teo’s voice wobbled. “Did you …? Is he …?”

  Lussa hung her head. “The Victims were too Many, and We were too Few. We were also too Late for dear Lorenzo’s Mother. He is now as You are, Teodora, an Orphan Child.”

  Teo wailed, “Not his mother!”

  “Rendered Unconscious by an Iceberg & Smothered by the heartless Waves.”

  “You mean murdered by Bajamonte Tiepolo! Poor Renzo, I must go to him.”

  Tears leaking from the sides of her eyes, Teo ran toward the stairs.

  “Teodora! Come back! You shall not find Lorenzo at Home. He’s been taken to the Scilla.”

  “The floating orphanage?”

  “The Human Mayor has signed Lorenzo yonside for a Sailor.”

  At the words “Human Mayor,” a violent hubbub broke out among the mermaids: “Sufferin’ seahorses! He doan know Christmas from curried eel!” and “Busy as a cat buryin’—”

  “Ladies!” interrupted Lussa in a scandalized tone. “Belay your Indecencies in front of the Undrowned Child! The Human Mayor is truly Destitute of the Bowels of Compassion, but He is hardly worth a Toothful of Scorn. Our True Enemy …”

  “I hate him,” growled Teo.

  “Indeed ’Tis your Trade to hate Him,” Lussa reminded her. “Whensoever & Whithersoever Il Traditore raises his Ugly Head, ’Tis Ordained that You shall be There to push It down, as the Undrowned Child of the Prophecy.”

  “I failed before. You’ll have to get yourselves another heroine this time,” said Teo miserably. “I resign. Everyone dies or loses people around me.”

  The parrots in their gilded cages took up her words, repeating “Everyone dies, everyone dies, everyone dies …” until the echoes of the grim words faded to silence.

  “But,” mused Teo, “all the way to the cavern, I’ve been thinking. I don’t feel as if he’s actually here. Bajamonte Tiepolo, I mean. I don’t feel him. When his spirit was abroad in Venice before, there was a kind of crackle in the air, something frightening. I had a sense of him everywhere.”

  It was true. Last time there had been sharks in the Grand Canal and fountains of poison gushing from the wells. Wooden statues had come to life. A vast creature had stirred in the lagoon, heating the water to a perilous temperature. The ghost of a cannibal butcher had stalked the streets, hunting children.

  Lussa mused, “The Fact is that the Whirlpool probably sucked Il Traditore a great Distance from Venice. Maybe even Continents away. Of course He has other Scores to settle too. The English Melusine & Sea-Bishops helped to defeat Him. The poor South Sea Dolphins may have already felt his Wrath. Yet there may be another Reason why He’s not among Us. As We know, Il Traditore is not Notable for his Courage. In Fact, He’s Distinguished mainly by his Cowardice.”

  The mermaids snarled, “That wibbling wheyface!” and “Beslub-bering blue-funking barnacle!”

  “Indeed, Ladies,” agreed Lussa dryly, “I suspect He would be too Afraid to return to Venice while She is still inhabited by his Twin Nemeses, the Undrowned Child & the Studious Son of the Prophecy. Moreover, his old Allies—the Ghosts of the Dalmatian Convicts, the Serbs, the Dark Elves, the Dwarves—were All thoroughly Defeated & Humiliated in the Battle. Il Traditore, if He is indeed Revived, shall need to look Elsewhere for Friends now.”

  Teo caught sight of something cat-sized, furry and brown. “Hideous!” she squealed, backing away.

  A dozen spiders, each the size of a large cat, were spinning silk around a sorry collection of battered paintings. Cautiously leaning forward, Teo recognized some of Venice’s great art treasures—Tintorettos and Titians. The spiders worked industriously, but their movements were slow. They too were hampered by the cold.

  Lussa explained, “We saved what Art We could. Now the Sea Spiders are weaving the Paintings securely into Cocoons, for There is Worse to come by Way of Weather, I believe.”

  Teo noted anxiously, “These are all Madonnas and scenes from the Bible. Why are there no pictures of Venice herself?”

  “You are ever Observant, Teodora. Mayhap Bajamonte plans to destroy all such Paintings, and so too the very Image & Memory of Venice.”

  “And the postcards of Venice have turned black—it’s all part of his plot, isn’t it? The books about Venice will be next, won’t they? What can we do? We have no ghosts left! They all redeemed themselves in the battle last year … who is going to help us now?”

  “We still have our Undrowned Child and our Studious Son,” said Lussa, but her voice was not quite serene.

  Teo knew, from past experience, that Lussa always had some kind of plan prepared for her. “Should I join Renzo? But,” sighed Teo, “the Scilla’s just for boys. Girl orphans have to go to the nuns.”

  The only nuns she knew lived in the House of the Spirits, directly above the mermaids’ cavern. They were sweet souls. But sedate convent life did not appeal to a girl who’d become accustomed to astonishing adventures on a regular basis.

  “Please, please, don’t send me to the convent!” she appealed to Lussa. “It would be like being buried alive.”

  “The Abbess is waiting. She shall help You with What You must do Next.” Lussa smiled mysteriously.

  Flos called, “Prithee take ye care, Undrowned Child. Remember dat ye is right precious to us.”

  Teo dragged her feet up to the garden of the House of the Spirits. Night had fallen. In the dense darkness, barely lit by stars, the garden topiary—mostly saints trimmed out of box hedges—looked as if it was carved from licorice. With her head cast down despondently, Teo did not notice the magòga waiting on top of a leafy Virgin Mary. But when it saw her, the big seagull began to hop about excitedly, shaking its tail as if performing a rude kind of folk dance.

  These monstrous gray gulls had once been the minions of Bajamonte Tiepolo. After his defeat, they’d repented, and been forced to eat bitter insects as their punishment. Since then, they’d claimed to be as loyal as the egrets. But Teo still had her doubts about them. Those pitiless yellow eyes had never softened.

  The magòga now put its head on one side, leaning forward to examine Teo’s tearstained face. Then it exclaimed “Caw!” and sped off with great purpose. Teo winced instinctively at the sound and the grim memories it carried, and she gazed fretfully after its departing shadow darkening the frost-whitened grass.

  The Abbess welcomed Teo with a kiss on the forehead. Her robes gave off a delicious scent of candle wax and lavender as she ushered Teo into her lamp-lit study, where jeweled Bibles and richly tooled hymnbooks glowed on deep mahogany shelves.

  In spite of these agreeable surroundings, Teo’s shoulders clenched.

  This was going to be difficult.

  She and the Abbess were old friends. This nun had held Teo in her arms when she was a tiny baby just rescued by the mermaids and still damp from the sea. The convent had been Teo’s home for a few months, before the Mayor dispatched her to Naples. And this delicate old lady was a member of the Incogniti too, like Signor Alicamoussa the circus-master and Professor Marìn.

  “I’m not really very good material for a nun,” Teo began. “I’m always messy and I’m not awfully obedient, and I—”

  “Don’t fret, child.” The nun’s lips twitched. “That the mermaids and I had calculated for ourselves. We’ve another idea.”

  She pointed to a sheet of blue paper on her desk. “After the tragedy of your real parents’ drowning, your birth-documents were lodged here with us. Here you see your original name, ‘Teodora Gasperin.’ ”

  Teo bent over the form, intrigued. The paper was speckled with official stamps and scrawled with various signatures. She frowned at the sight of the most ornate one, executed in flourishes of purple ink.

  “Do you see with what haste the town clerk scribbled ‘Teodora’
?” inquired the Abbess. “He barely finished off his letters. Do you not agree that the final ‘a’ of ‘Teodora’ looks rather like an ‘o’?”

  Teo understood immediately. “ ‘Teodoro,’ a boy’s name. And no one, not even Bajamonte Tiepolo, would think to find me as a boy.”

  “And as for your original name, ‘Gasperin’—what a muddle the clerk’s made of that word. The ‘G’ looks like an ‘O.’ The ‘sp’ seems to be ‘ng.’ In fact, it looks more like ‘Ongania,’ doesn’t it? Especially now.”

  The nun deftly added half a dozen tiny marks to the blotted word.

  “Perfect!” exclaimed Teo. “I’m safe!”

  The girl Teodora had needed to hide from the Mayor’s policemen. The boy Teodoro Ongania could walk—no, swagger (That was what Venetian boys did, wasn’t it?)—with his head held high.

  The nun folded the paper into a fine lambskin pouch, handing it to Teo with a smile. “And now Teodoro Ongania can join the Scilla.”

  “And be with Renzo!”

  “Indeed—when Teodoro is properly outfitted for life on board, of course.”

  From a drawer, the nun pulled out a neatly ironed pair of bell-bottomed breeches, a sailor’s cap, a pea jacket with piping, thick wool socks and some underwear that did not in any way resemble Teo’s own lace-trimmed combinations. Teo gulped. “Those too?”

  “Sailor clothes will disguise your shape.”

  “I don’t have much of a shape to hide,” Teo muttered.

  The nun turned her back while Teo slipped out of her jacket, pinafore and dress and into the sailor suit. She quietly decided to retain her own combinations. The boy’s underwear was really far too scratchy.

  “Ready? Very convincing! I understand sailors don’t go in for frequent bathing, so it’s rare for them to have to remove all their clothes. In fact, it happens only if they are terribly wounded, and the doctor needs to amputate.”

  “If it comes to that I s’pose it won’t matter too much if they discover I’m a girl. So it’s just my hair now.”

  A pair of silver scissors lay on the Abbess’s desk. Eager to complete her transformation, Teo snatched them up to shear off a handful of her own curls. The nun remonstrated: “Enough! Some sailors still wear their hair long, tied in a queue. So.” She fastened a narrow black ribbon around Teo’s hair, making a neat tail. “Just one more thing.”

  The nun handed Teo a glass tube. “For … bodily functions. It may be necessary to use this, if the ‘heads,’ as I believe it’s called, lacks a door.”

  Blushing furiously, Teo thrust the tube into the nearest pocket, alongside her sailor cap.

  “To the Scilla, then, my child.”

  “There’s still one thing,” Teo blurted. “How will we account for the disappearance of Teodora Stampara?”

  “I believe the Mayor shall be quite gratified to add that particular name to the lists of the drowned.” The nun winked. Then she looked sober. “Teodora, there’s something you should know. We’ve just heard that there has been one other casualty of the ice flood.”

  She explained that when the waters subsided, it was discovered that the Column of Infamy, erected to the eternal dishonor of Bajamonte Tiepolo, had disappeared without a trace.

  “He’s erasing history again,” Teo whispered, “just like before.”

  The Abbess escorted Teo to the street door, clasping her hand tenderly all the way. Neither noticed the gull, who had returned and sat watching them with evident satisfaction.

  “Be kind to young Lorenzo,” the nun urged. “The loss of his mother … Teodora, you know how that feels, for you have lost not just one but two mothers.”

  “My adoptive parents may still be alive. They must have been kidnapped for what they know. So they’re too valuable to kill, aren’t they?”

  This was the thought that had kept Teo’s hopes afloat over the last hours. The Abbess said gently, “They cannot help you, child, wherever they are. You’re to have new companions now. I have often thought a ship full of sailors must be rather like a convent full of nuns. It is a true miniature of the world itself: a select, enclosed gathering. You may not leave. There is nowhere else to go.”

  Suddenly, Teo was less certain that the Scilla was where she wanted to be.

  “But Renzo will be there,” she reminded herself.

  “On a ship,” continued the nun, “as in a Venetian convent, you are safe from all enemies, except one—the sea—which can snuff out your life on a whim. And yet the ship, like the convent, is a thing that most inhabitants learn to love. Perhaps we humans always long for a mother, be it a church or a ship, to hold us safely to her bosom, and comfort us.”

  “Don’t worry! I shall look after Renzo,” Teo promised. She turned to kiss the silky cheek. Then she stepped out into the pitch-black street.

  As the door shut quietly behind her, a large hessian sack was thrust over Teo’s head, and a hand closed over her shrouded face, choking the breath out of her. Through the coarse weave of the cloth, she smelled the sour stink of rum, and felt the grip of sharp, malicious nails.

  Signor Alicamoussa kissed Renzo warmly upon both cheeks. “I would not for thirteen worlds agree to leaving youse here, my precious boy, except that I know youse’ll be in the handiest of hands. Belonging as they do to an old friend, in factiest fact.”

  At this, a familiar voice saluted them from the deck above. Over the rail appeared the kind, creased face of Professor Marìn. “Young Lorenzo! You and I join the Scilla at the same moment, son! I, as her new captain and director of studies, and you as our next top boy, I’ve no doubt.”

  Sargano Alicamoussa agreed, “You’re not wrong, Professor. Young Lorenzo’s tremendously nifty with the noodlework, yes. This boy takes the cake—no!—he confiscates the macaroon for brains!”

  For the first time since his mother died, Renzo’s face opened into a smile. “Professor Marìn!” he exclaimed. “Captain of the Scilla! But I thought you were writing another book?”

  “I’ve just finished my Meticulous Maritime Manual for Young Salts. It’s time to put it into practice. Where better than on a training ship for young Venetian sailors? And sadly a new captain was urgently needed. The Scilla’s captain was ashore last night. He was one of the ice storm’s victims.”

  Professor Marìn’s voice softened. “Lorenzo, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  The policeman saluted Professor Marìn with a click of his heels. He would not have been so matter-of-fact about it if he had realized that the celebrated author was also a leader of the Incogniti, the secret society of protectors of Venice, and friend of mermaids, good ghosts and talking beasts.

  The circus-master asked the professor, “Youse’ll have heard about young Teodora’s parents? And what of the dear girl, her dear self?”

  “It’s a bad business, Sargano. The parents are both gone, all their notes and equipment too. Teodora was taken to the Mayor’s office, but she escaped. The Mayor’s men are hunting for her.”

  “Suffering stink-beetles!” exclaimed the circus-master. “What a confloption!”

  The policeman looked up in not-altogether-disappointed surprise. “Lost that girlie, did they? Let’s hope she didn’t slip on the ice and drown.”

  Signor Alicamoussa growled, “Drowned? Any more of that drongo tanglemongering, and I’ll land youse a right fericadouzer on the chops, sir! Our Teodora’s a peppery little party, not to be sherry-trifled with. Feather me! She’s plainly playing possum where your tallow-gutted Mayor cannot find her.”

  Renzo knew exactly where Teo would have run. Suddenly, he wished he was there himself. He turned to the circus-master. “Signor Alicamoussa, will you look for Teo? Could you ask … our particular friends?”

  Renzo did not judge it safe to mention the mermaids in front of the policeman. The only adults who could see mermaids were all members of the Incogniti, like Signor Alicamoussa, Professor Marìn and the Abbess at the House of the Spirits. Anyway, the policeman worked for the Mayor.

  “Cer
tainly, certainly,” the circus-master cried, “ ’twill be the doings of the utmost urgency! Darling Teodorina! Dear little bandicoot she is! In fact, I’m off upon that errand now, quicker than a bare-eyed cockatoo to a water hole, yes. Smackeroo kisso, one and all!”

  Another pair of kisses and first Signor Alicamoussa’s fragrant mustache and then the man himself whisked away.

  “My mother …?” Renzo’s voice quavered against his will.

  “I’ll go to the funeral myself,” promised the policeman. “I’ll see it’s done proper, lad.” He eased the bunch of carved violets from Renzo’s hand.

  “Now come aboard, Lorenzo,” urged the professor. “Oh, and there’s a most important personage for you to meet. That’s it, up the ladder, son. Here is Sofonisba come specially to welcome you.”

  A large gray tabby cat strolled across the deck just as Renzo’s head reached that level.

  His eyes flew to the furry sides to check for wings. Some of Venice’s most beautiful and luxuriant cats were of the Syrian species, which not only grew to outrageous size but also kept discreet furry wings tucked up against their flanks. Syrian cats had in the past delivered Renzo from certain death at the beaks of a thousand seagulls. They had helped to save the lives of dozens of gondolier children during the final battle in the lagoon against Bajamonte Tiepolo.

  “Or was it the final battle?” Renzo could not keep this dismal question out of his head any longer.

  If the cat Sofonisba had wings, they were very well concealed. She stopped dead and looked Renzo straight in the eyes: “Oh, another dirty little boy. Worse luck!”

  Renzo had come across several talking cats during the campaign to save Venice from Bajamonte Tiepolo. None were overly respectful. However, none had been quite as rude as this.

  “I was promised something better,” lamented Sofonisba.

  “I’m awfully sorry.” Renzo smiled.

  “You will be,” said the cat.

  When Teo awoke, it was to the sounds of water dripping and waves surging.

  Hours must have passed since the sack was thrust over her head, for the first glimmerings of dawn were visible and her hair was stiff with frozen water. An intense and painful sensation of cold slid down her spine. She was still wearing the sack in which she’d been kidnapped. Its bottom end had torn so that her head stuck out. She tried to sit up, but found that her neck, arms and legs had been tied with sturdy cords. She was lashed to an iceberg the size of a small carriage.