It took Paolo a moment to register that Nathan was being sarcastic. He grinned and nodded, then wiped the sweat off his brow. Charlie jumped ashore, followed by Topaz.
‘Bonjour – Agent Topaz St Honoré,’ she introduced herself. ‘Agent Chieverley – and Jake Djones.’ She turned to Jake, who had remained on the ship.
‘He’s just observing,’ drawled Nathan.
Paolo blushed bright red at the sight of Topaz. ‘Actually, Miss St Honoré, I believe we have already m-m-met?’ he stuttered. ‘In Siena, the spring of 1708? I was with my parents? I made you some lemonade?’ He made every statement sound like a question.
‘I do remember,’ said Topaz, her face lighting up. ‘It was the best lemonade I’ve ever had. You were going to give me the recipe.’
Paolo giggled and turned redder still.
‘Where do Point Zero find these jokers?’ Nathan rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath before asking Paolo wearily, ‘So, are you based in Venice?’
‘In Rome, actually … home is … Rome,’ Paolo stammered. ‘Although my aunt lives here. I came to meet the last lot of agents, the ones who disappeared.’
Topaz gave Jake a sympathetic look, embarrassed by Paolo’s tactlessness.
‘My brief,’ Paolo went on, ‘is to take you to the Venetian bureau and help you generally with all matters Italian.’
‘The Venetian bureau then – let’s go!’ Nathan strode off along the quayside.
No one else moved.
‘Actually it’s this way,’ Paolo pointed out nervously.
Topaz couldn’t mask a sly grin as Nathan turned round sharply.
‘Do I stay here on my own, or can I …?’ asked Jake hopefully.
‘Come with us for now,’ Topaz said, relenting, ‘but when work starts, you return to the ship. Understood?’
In a flash, Jake had leaped ashore.
* * *
Paolo led them along the waterfront through the bustling afternoon crowd.
‘Crazy here during rush hour, isn’t it?’ said Nathan, as he lifted his hat to a pretty flower seller. ‘Do we have time for a hot chocolate? If memory serves, Florian’s in St Mark’s Square do the best hot chocolate in the Adriatic.’
‘You can try, but Florian’s won’t be open for another two hundred and fourteen years,’ Topaz pointed out.
‘The ship there’ – Paolo stopped and pointed at a small caravel – ‘is the one Mr and Mrs Djones arrived in.’
Jake’s stomach lurched. Eagerly he inspected the small wooden craft: her sails were furled neatly around the boom and her decks were completely bare. Curling letters bore her name: the Mystère. The Mystery, Jake thought; the name couldn’t have been more appropriate.
‘Should we have a look?’ he asked politely, wanting to jump aboard and examine it thoroughly for any signs of his parents.
But Nathan had already swung himself up onto the deck and jumped down into the cabin. Moments later he reappeared, shaking his head.
‘It’s like the Mary Celeste down there,’ he said, leaping back onto the quay. ‘This was the only sign of life.’ He opened his palm to reveal a handful of pips.
Jake was familiar with the sight – painfully so. ‘Tangerines,’ he murmured. ‘My mum’s obsessed with them.’ He was about to reach out and scoop them up when Nathan tossed them over his shoulder into the sea, where they sank without trace.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ sighed Topaz, taking Jake’s arm, ‘his insensitivity is on a par with his vanity.’
They slowly made their way into the city. As they came into a square, they saw a crowd gathered around a man on a pedestal who was addressing them passionately, his voice hoarse. He had a long, unruly beard, wore torn velvet robes and was holding up a watermelon.
‘What exactly is he saying?’ Nathan asked Paolo. ‘My Italian is a little rusty. I take it he’s not selling watermelons …’
Topaz interrupted before Paolo got the chance to speak. ‘He’s saying, “This is the shape of the world. It is not flat, but as round as this fruit. We are not the centre of the universe – the sun does not revolve around us, it is we who revolve around the sun!”’
Paolo nodded in agreement at Topaz’s perfect translation.
‘Actually, the gentlemen is way ahead of his time,’ Charlie noted. ‘Although the theory has been about since the Greeks, Copernicus doesn’t set out his theory of Heavenly Spheres until 1542.’
Most people in the crowd just stared at the man, but some of them booed and whistled. Then a group of thick-set men in armour and spiked helmets pushed through and grabbed hold of the speaker; they pulled him down off the platform and propelled him, still shouting, out of the square. The crowd were ordered to disperse.
‘That’s become a common sight in the city,’ Paolo noted. ‘A lot of people are wary of the new philosophies.’
‘The new philosophies?’ asked Nathan.
‘He’s referring to the trend towards humanism that is starting to sweep across Europe,’ Topaz explained.
‘Really? I wasn’t actually asking you, but … humanism – yes, I thought so.’
‘He hasn’t got a clue what that is, of course,’ Topaz confided to Jake. ‘He probably thinks it’s something you catch in a swimming pool.’
‘Humanism affirms the dignity of all people,’ retorted Nathan in a studied English accent, ‘regardless of the doctrines of religion and supernatural beliefs. In vocabulary you’ll understand, it states that all men are equal.’
‘All men and women.’
As Paolo looked between Nathan and Topaz, smiling unsurely, Charlie whispered in his ear, ‘It’s just an act. They love each other really.’
The young Italian led Jake, Topaz, Nathan and Charlie out of the square and along a canal. Jake caught a glimpse of a man training monkeys and another charming snakes out of a basket. Paolo took a furtive look around and climbed some steps to an old, shabby-looking building, motioning for the other agents to follow. On his way in, Jake noticed, carved into a wooden plaque beside the door, a very rough version of the History Keepers’ symbol of the hourglass and planets.
They came into a bright, vaulted room, humming with activity. There were eight cooks at work, all covered from head to toe in flour.
Nathan’s eyes lit up. ‘A pizza bakery!’
‘Actually it’s galette flatbread, a new invention from Naples,’ Paolo corrected him.
‘Looks like pizza to me.’ Nathan shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s a great cover for a bureau.’
‘Oh, it’s not a cover,’ continued Paolo. ‘It’s fully operational – the best in the city. As it is manned only sporadically, the bureau is in a rented room at the back.’
‘I love the way Italians do business, it’s so … laissez faire,’ Nathan sighed as he scooped up a slice of flatbread fresh from the oven.
‘Go ahead, just help yourself.’ Topaz saw that that the head chef was not impressed by Nathan’s pilfering.
‘Emmental, if I’m not mistaken …’ Nathan continued. ‘Charlie – what would you say?’
Charlie tried a piece, chewing it pensively. ‘I believe it’s Gouda, though nuttier than usual,’ he decided, ‘with a hint of nutmeg. It’s inspirational.’
The chef, who had been unimpressed by Nathan, recognized Charlie as a kindred spirit and gave him a genial nod.
Topaz quickly brought them back down to earth. ‘When the feeding frenzy is over, perhaps we could discuss the small matter of the Code Purple and forthcoming world catastrophe.’
The young agents went into the little back room of the bakery. It looked to be, as indeed it was, a storeroom filled with boxes of fresh basil and tomatoes – a million miles from the grand austerity of the other History Keepers’ headquarters that Jake had seen.
‘I suppose that is the bureau?’ asked Topaz, somewhat bewildered. She was pointing at a single lopsided desk at the far end of the room, where a tatty-looking Meslith machine sat amongst various cheeses.
Paolo’
s guilty shrug answered the question.
Topaz went to examine the desk. The Meslith machine, like all the others, had a crystalline rod protruding from its back. ‘This must have been the machine that Alan and Miriam Djones sent their SOS from,’ she concluded.
Jake was drawn to inspect it. He reached out his fingers to touch the crystalline rod and received a sharp electric shot.
‘That’s what happens when you do that. Lesson learned,’ said Charlie, before turning back to Paolo. ‘So where exactly did Alan and Miriam Djones go?’
Paolo took a messy bundle of notes from his pocket and tried to read his own writing. The first page confused him a good deal, but finally he worked it out: ‘Oh, that’s a shopping list from my mother. She collects Venetian glass. She loves the colours!’
‘Fascinating,’ muttered Nathan.
Paolo moved onto the next page. ‘Here we are. They arrived in Venice on Tuesday night. On Wednesday they visited the house of a Signor Philippo in the north of the city; he is a famous architect who, earlier this month, disappeared quite suddenly on his way to work.’
‘Disappeared? Might he just have slipped into a canal?’ asked Nathan.
‘No, that’s the thing,’ Paolo explained, suddenly animated. ‘You see, at least ten architects have gone missing in recent months. Not just from Venice – from Florence, Parma, Padua. Everywhere. It’s been the talk of the town.’
‘Why would anyone want to do away with architects?’ asked Nathan with a weary sigh. ‘Quite a harmless race, I would have thought.’
‘Maybe they weren’t doing away with them,’ Jake found himself suggesting. ‘Maybe someone needed their services.’
Topaz looked at Jake, impressed. Nathan shrugged nonchalantly. ‘So Djones and Djones returned …?’ he asked.
‘Briefly,’ continued Paolo; ‘then, at seven in the evening, they set out for St Mark’s Cathedral. I waited up all night. They never returned.’
There was silence for a moment. Topaz squeezed Jake’s hand.
‘They told you they were going to St Mark’s?’ asked Charlie.
‘They asked for directions there,’ Paolo told him.
‘Religious, your parents?’ Nathan asked Jake.
‘Not unless eating mince pies at Christmas counts …’
‘Mince pies are certainly sacred to me,’ mused Charlie to himself.
‘Il y a quelque chose ici,’ announced Topaz, examining an apparently blank piece of parchment. ‘Someone’s written something on top of this. You can see – the inscription has come through.’ Nathan reached out for it, but Topaz ignored him. She held it up to the light and made out the faint words. ‘Do you recognize this handwriting?’ she asked Jake.
Jake looked at it. He saw the ghostly writing – the big, cartoony letters, the endearingly clumsy mix of capitals and lower case – and his heart sank. Usually when he saw that writing, it was on a note warning him about the wet paint or explaining an absence to pick something up at the corner shop.
‘It’s my dad’s.’
‘Could I …?’ asked Nathan again.
Again Topaz paid no heed. She read the inscription:
‘Ah, Amerigo Vespucci!’ interrupted Nathan when Topaz read it out loud. ‘I’ve heard of him. He was …’ His voice trailed away. ‘Who was he, again?’
‘He was a renowned Italian explorer who gave his name to America,’ Topaz informed him, ‘but what has he got to do with St Mark’s?’
‘Obvious – he’s buried there.’ Nathan once again reached for the message.
‘No,’ said Topaz coolly, ‘he was buried in Seville, Spain. I have visited his grave.’ Finally she deigned to pass the message to Nathan. He tossed his hair out of his eyes as he snatched it.
‘Confess. St Mark’s. Amerigo Vespucci,’ he repeated. ‘Well, I’m sure a visit to the cathedral will make things clear. After dinner, obviously … Wouldn’t want to work on an empty stomach.’
In silence the five agents made their way through the crowds back to the Campana. It was the time of the afternoon that the Italians called the passeggiata: everyone had finished work for the day and was sauntering up and down the streets, looking at everyone else. The agents forged their way through in single file. At one point, Jake sensed something behind him and looked round. He thought he caught a glimpse of crimson, but he was swept on by the surge of people.
At that same moment, the figure in the deep-red cloak and hood crept behind a pillar, where another red-cloaked form was waiting. From the shadows they watched the agents weave their way towards the quayside.
12 ALONE IN HISTORY
‘WE’LL BE GONE an hour – two at most,’ announced Topaz, coming up on deck with Charlie. She had draped a cloak around her shoulders as the evening was already becoming cooler.
Jake shrugged. ‘Isn’t it better to stay together?’
‘It’s better not to get killed in your first week.’ Nathan had changed into a whole new outfit and was busy inspecting his reflection in a gilt mirror fitted to the mast (which he had installed himself ‘in case of emergency’). ‘Does this colour suit me?’ he asked, referring to his doublet.
‘Peacock green. What could be more appropriate?’ offered Topaz.
Nathan was too taken up with his own reflection to realize that she was teasing him. ‘It doesn’t drain my eyes?’ he asked, turning to Jake.
Jake was no fashion expert, but he remembered something his mother said sometimes. ‘I think it … compliments your skin tone.’
Nathan beamed. ‘I like your style.’
‘Take this, Jake,’ said Topaz, holding up a little silver chain with a vial attached to it.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s atomium. The anti-ratio to return to Point Zero, in case you need it,’ she told him. ‘May I …?’
Jake’s heart raced as Topaz put the chain around his neck and tucked the vial inside his doublet. ‘Look after yourself,’ she murmured. ‘We shan’t be long.’
‘I left you some spinach quiche in the galley,’ said Charlie, interrupting the moment. ‘It’s passable, but not my finest effort. I’ve literally over-egged it.’
Charlie, Topaz, Nathan and Paolo then jumped down onto the quay and disappeared into the crowd.
Four hours passed. Night fell and the moon rose. They still had not returned. Jake sat on deck, on the steps leading up to the prow. A chilly breeze now blew in from the sea. The old ship creaked and the sails flapped in the wind. The waterfront was almost deserted. Jake could see the silhouette of two young lovers sharing a secret kiss in a doorway. An old drunk stumbled along, cursing to himself. Then there was silence.
Jake reached inside his jacket and pulled out the silver vial that Topaz had given him. A minute rendering of the History Keepers’ emblem was etched into the casing. He carefully opened it and inspected its glistening contents, then closed it and put it back.
He noticed something lying on the pile of ropes beside him: his school blazer, which he had discarded the night before. ‘The passports!’ he said to himself, suddenly remembering that they were still in the inside pocket. He took them out and gazed at the photos: his parents’ smiling faces stared back at him.
Once again Jake pictured them in their kitchen, back when everything was normal: his father cheerfully but cluelessly taking apart a piece of machinery on the kitchen table; his mother frowning as she created another inedible catastrophe on the stove. During her last attempt at Chocolate Nemesis, Jake had had to put out the fire with the garden hose.
As the wind rustled the pages of their passports, Jake looked around at the city and wondered if they were out there somewhere in the darkness.
Suddenly there was an ear-splitting cry that made him jump up in alarm. He stuffed the passports inside his doublet and rushed to the ship’s rail. Someone was coming along the quay towards him. It was Nathan. Although he was hurrying, Jake could see that he was limping and clutching his leg. He threw himself aboard, gasping for breath. ‘Quickly! We don�
��t have much time!’
Jake’s eyes widened: Nathan was in a terrible state. His hair was dishevelled, his doublet torn, and thick blood dripped from his thigh.
‘Pass me that! NOW!’ he barked, pointing at Jake’s school blazer.
When Jake handed it over, he tore it into strips. Jake knew he didn’t have much use for it right now, but even so … But then he looked down at the wound in Nathan’s leg. It was two inches wide and quite deep. ‘What happened?’
‘They were waiting for us. Someone must have tipped them off!’ Nathan panted – and the South Carolina twang was clear now. He tied one of the strips tightly around his thigh.
‘And the others …?’ Jake was almost too frightened to ask.
‘Captured? Dead? Maybe they got away. We were split up, so who knows?’
Jake felt his stomach lurch in terror.
‘Help me up!’
Jake supported Nathan as he got to his feet.
Nathan grimaced as he limped down the stairs. ‘Quickly – we have one minute before they get here.’
‘Who gets here?’ Jake wanted to know.
But Nathan simply made his way through the galley and into his cabin. Jake watched in confusion as he opened his wardrobe door and pulled out a trunk from the bottom of a pile, sending the others clattering to the floor.
‘Are you going to change again?’ Jake asked in disbelief.
‘Shut up,’ snapped Nathan as he lifted the lid and started chucking the beautiful clothes all over the floor. Finally he found what he was looking for and shook it out. Jake could hardly believe his eyes: it was a deep crimson cloak with a hood. Attached to it was a breastplate in black enamel.
Finally Nathan grabbed one last thing – a pair of silver scissors. ‘Quickly! Quickly!’
Jake shadowed him back up on deck. Nathan looked along the waterfront to see if anyone was coming. ‘Hold these.’ He bundled the cloak, breastplate and scissors together into Jake’s arms and hobbled over to the Meslith machine that Charlie had left on the deck. ‘Keep a look out. Shout if anyone comes.’
History Keepers 1: The Storm Begins Page 10