Across the Grand Canal the high walls of homes closed in again, muting the chatter of vendors and the rumble of engines. Surrounded by ancient brick and plaster stained with centuries of damp, Maddie felt suddenly as though time had stopped. She might go on day by sunlit day, forever floating around this serene city that was already older than her Old Nobility grandfather’s most ancient castle.
That was her fatigue talking, eroding her usual grip on plans and schedules. Still, she was absurdly relieved to see, high up on an eroding balcony, a pair of rusty window-bots industriously scouring the glass of a door. Even in this seemingly timeless city, automatons performed the same functions as those that crawled over her father’s newer London mansion.
Another instance of modernity appeared in the form of a sub-surface scow whose creeping periscope blocked their way for a good quarter-hour. There were always scows creeping along the bottoms, collecting household garbage from the palazzos. Generally, they moved along the sides, under the moored boats. This one’s periscope stayed squarely in the middle of the narrow canal, blocking passage on either side, while its burbling exhaust stack belched fumes at the young ladies every few seconds. As soon as it turned aside, Fanto shot past. He veered expertly around a corner, under a low bridge, and along the last stretch of the Rio di San Maurizio toward Serephene’s Nonna’s palazzo.
This stretch, like the one by Madame Frangetti’s, was now busy with boats creeping along and people walking the left bank. Maddie gestured with one black-gloved hand. “You can’t climb up the wall in daylight.”
“I won’t have to. Stop at our water-gate, Fanto.” Serephene pulled from her bundle a black lace shawl and, tucking away the blue kerchief, draped the lace over her head and shoulders. “As far as anyone on this side of the house will know, I went out the calle door to the church, probably praying to find a husband soon. There I met a friend—that’s you—and accepted a ride home. My maid will confirm whatever I tell her.” She climbed from the gondola, ordered a pickup at the same time the following morning, and vanished into the gloom of the palazzo’s bottom floor. Then she hurried back. “You remember, tomorrow we’re staying all afternoon for my supposed fittings?”
“I’ll remember.” As Fanto guided the gondola toward the Grand Canal, glinting greeny-gray under a fitful sun, Maddie yawned. The glitter off the water pierced the black veil, and she lowered her lids to protect her over-tired eyes. She was half-dozing when Fanto veered abruptly into another narrow passage. She sat up straight. “What are you doing?”
Giant white teeth smashed down on the gondola’s prow.
Chapter Four
THE TEETH SHATTERED into a thousand flakes of papier-mâché. The immense jawbone splintered on the gunwales, its middle section settling almost weightlessly on Maddie’s thighs. Her black skirt paled under the settling powder. For a moment, there was silence.
From the flat front of a barge, a voluble argument broke out, a symphony in which Fanto’s bassoon imprecations overpowered other voices both piccolo and basso profundo. She shook her veil violently, releasing a fresh cloud of white dust, and immediately all the voices stopped mid-word. Then they began again, a chorus of “scusami, signora” and “perdonami,” a startled flute section of apology.
Behind her, Fanto asked, “Are you hurt, signorina?”
“No.” She stamped her feet to shake the flakes from her skirts. “What on earth is this? A papier-mâché whale?”
“Di preciso,” Fanto backed the gondola away from the remains of the giant jaws. “Is the whale which swallows Pinocchio and his papa.”
“Oh, for Carnevale?” Maddie lifted her veil for a better look, straight down the creature’s wide-open throat.
Completely covering the barge, which most likely transported vegetables the rest of the year, the whale consisted of a framework of curved wooden slats supporting a gray-white skin of fabric stiffened with glue and paper. The topmost jaw had slipped from the hands of the men attaching it and crashed down onto her gondola. It was, Fanto assured her, many years old and due for replacement anyway.
“You will write of Carnevale as she is now, assi?” He took one hand from his pole and pointed. “Here many parade floats are built. They are importante like the costumes. Returning the glory of Venetia that was taken from us by the conqueror.”
“A parade of boats?” Maddie looked along the canal. Wooden floating walkways had been rigged, u-shaped, each one acting as a mooring bay for a boat under assault by workers with tools and paint. Sharp scents of wet glue and drying plaster filled the shady canal. The craft themselves ranged from the immense whale down to a tiny round coracle of the type used by Welsh river-men. Some had wire frames and others wood, some half-covered in fabric or papier-mâché or a combination of both. A whole pine tree was being eased down by crane into the mast-step of a sailing vessel, an operation involving copious arm signals and much intent watching. As the foot settled into place Maddie applauded, and to her delight the crew blew kisses in her direction.
“You make them happy, signorina,” said Fanto as he poled past. “We take much pride in our water parades. On these very canals, we chased out those traditores, those Napoleoni. Someday, the Sicilian upstart will pay for his destruction of La Serenissima.” He spat over the side as he said it, reminding Maddie of Zaneta’s equally anti-French spirit. Napoleon Bonaparte, the Sicilian peasant who had once proclaimed himself Emperor of France, had been defeated before Maddie’s great-grandfather was born, and nowhere near Venice. But here, it seemed, his short rule was not yet forgotten. Or forgiven.
Maddie shrugged off Fanto’s vengeful words. Bonaparte had not long survived his defeat by the English Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, an event every English schoolchild learned about along with the date of the Norman Invasion (1066) and the coronation of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria (28 June, 1838). Some grudges, surely, were too old to be kept alive?
Around the next bend, they passed a boat being decorated in the French tri-colour of blue, white, red. Dummies in French infantry uniforms were draped over its prow and a teenager was hoisting a floppy body up a flimsy gibbet. Clearly this grudge was thriving.
Maddie covered her mouth with one gloved hand as a gaping yawn escaped. “This is very interesting, Fanto,” she said when she could speak. “But I must return to my hotel for a nap. Riposo.”
“Ma you are here, signorina,” Fanto pulled the gondola over. Maddie looked up to see a footman from the Hotel Gritti standing by with his hand out, ready to steady her return to the pavement.
“Thank you for the history lesson,” she said. “Same time in the morning?” She went indoors to make notes on the parade boats, reflecting on how chatty Fanto could be with her when Serephene was not in the gondola. She, of course, was the granddaughter of a powerful Venetian dowager, whereas Maddie, he probably assumed, was a mere working person. Like him, although English.
THE NEXT MORNING passed as the first one had, with less sitting and more skulking around the workrooms. Zaneta was eager to show Maddie, who she persisted in calling Maddalena, all the best of Frangetti’s fashions. Not only did she steer Maddie through the room of completed dresses—everyday dresses and evening gowns for Venetians of good family—but she promised, when Madame next left the building, to sneak Maddie into the secure costume storage behind Madame’s office.
“There you will see wonders, Maddalena,” she assured Maddie, pointing her back to the break room as the time approached for Madame’s morning inspection.
But Madame did not leave the premises. Maddie finished the morning writing alone in the stuffy cubby next to a tray of pastry crumbs and empty demitasses. Her stomach rumbled often, reminding her she had intended to ask the hotel to pack her a pastry for breakfast.
Chapter Five
ARRIVING IN THE airship-laboratory near lunchtime, Maddie and Serephene found Scottie bent over his fabric samples, standing almost exactly as he had been yesterday when they left. Had he moved? Eaten? Slep
t?
His eyes glued to twin cylinders on a brass machine, he waved a hand at them and said something that sounded like, “Put it over there.” Serephene replied with good humour that she was not his luncheon. He looked up then, smiled, and was across the room clasping her hand before Maddie had settled her skirts from the climb up the ladder.
Serephene looked past Scottie to the brass machine. “Is it working?”
“Not quite. Have a squint there.” While she bent over the eyepieces, Scottie wrote something on a fabric strip, rolled it into a thin tube and slid it into a strap that covered the rat’s back. As the rat scampered across the table, it passed through a circle of light. It was wearing a tiny leather vest to which was attached the strap, rather like a shot-belt for hunting. The belt’s loops were filled with slim twists of fabric. Leaping to the translucent tube, the rat ran along until it reached an access port. Then it adjusted its goggles down over its eyes and wiggled nose-first through the leather flaps. She could see it through the tube’s rounded side, clinging to wire staples as it dragged its tail fully in and twisted itself to face her.
Only when the brown fur ruffled up and the fabric twists flipped around did she realize an air current flowed in there. The rat let go of its staples. Zoom! It headed straight for her. Or rather, it rode the current inside the tube. Its tiny feet weren’t touching the walls at all. The creature was, to all intents, flying.
She watched, fascinated, as it loomed larger, its pointed nose pinkly twitching. It passed directly above her, sailing smoothly around the corner of the lab before zipping unchecked along the opposite wall. The tube disappeared into the shrouded box on the end wall. The rat zoomed in but did not appear out the other side. Whatever it was doing with the tiny rolls of fabric, it was doing it in hiding.
And quietly. Now that Serephene and Scottie had stopped talking in favour of examining individual cloth strips with magnifying glasses, Maddie could hear everything: boatmen calling to each other on the Rio di Noale and the whistles of steam-launches on the lagoon. A lone bell tolled on the Isola di San Michele, signalling a funeral on the cemetery island. Closer at hand was a strange scrabbling sound, and what might be hissing. Another leak in the balloon? She put up her hand but felt no air movement.
The movement put her ear near the translucent tube. There the scrabbling was louder, a dozen claws all scraping around on a smooth surface. The hissing was louder too, followed by a chitter from the rat. Ah—the tube was carrying noises from inside the box. The chitter grew to a higher, faster, frantic sound. So did the claws. Then came a tiny shriek, so lifelike and terrified that Maddie half-squeaked along with it. She clapped her hand to her lips.
Serephene looked up. “What’s wrong?”
“The box,” Maddie said. “The rat. It kind of . . . screamed.”
“Gears! He’s trapped.” Serephene lunged for the box and flung aside its covering.
Inside, the rat darted side to side along the bottom, its vest-strap dragging off one shoulder. Above it were three creatures unlike any Maddie had seen before. Night-black they were, gleaming with an oily sheen in the sudden light. Spider-like legs moved, while from their black, bulbous bodies sprouted bat-like wings. They hovered over the terrified rat, stabbing at it with their many legs. A claw caught it down the side, tearing its fur. She rushed along the aisle, yelling at Serephene.
“Get it out of there.”
Chapter Six
AS THE RAT squealed again, Serephene slammed her hand on the side of the box. Red light pulsed. The nightmare creatures recoiled, crawling away to the upper corners and hanging upside down, their leathery wings folding around their heads for all the world as if they were shielding their eyes from the light. Serephene took up heavy leather gauntlets and, flipping open a trapdoor in the box’s underbelly, reached in to retrieve the trembling rodent. By the time Maddie reached her, she had the box closed and the rat cuddled in one glove while she stroked its little patch of head-fur above the goggles.
“Lend a hand, Maddie,” she said. “Try to get this vest completely off without disturbing the damaged fur.” She held the rat up to expose its belly.
Maddie stripped off her black gloves and fumbled with tiny buckles. As she lifted the vest clear, three fabric twists slid from their loops and fluttered to the plank floor. She dropped to her knees to retrieve them. Unrolling one, she saw the notation, “Taffeta 204 / white-pink-lilac.” It was stiff like taffeta, but although she turned it this way and that to see any other shades, it looked merely white to her. The next twist, a wisp light and sunny as an afternoon breeze, read, “Chiffon 78 / yellow-green-blue.” She supposed these were Scottie’s test samples, with a note on each about which colours of dyes he had tested on them. They must be stored inside the ferocious creatures’ cage, carried there by Gus through the lab’s pneumatic tube. What a hiding place! If a person didn’t know to turn on the red light before reaching inside, their arm would be torn to shreds.
When she stood up, Serephene was sponging blood from the rat’s shoulder with a damp cloth. “Is it okay?” Maddie asked. “What on earth are those things?”
“Spider-bats.” Serephene patted the rat’s fur smooth with a clean corner of her cloth. “They provide the raw material for Scotty’s fabric.”
Maddie gazed into the box with mingled revulsion and fascination. The creatures each trailed a long thread of web-silk. Periodically, a rod swept their cage from end to end, gathering up loops of the sticky stuff that were slowly pulled through a mechanism to the bicycle-wheel spinner outside. It was light as gossamer, drifting sideways on the slightest puff of air, more like dandelion fluff than silk. How could something so fragile withstand being woven into these fabric samples? And what was so special about the fabric beyond its exotic fragility?
Serephene set the rat on the table, fed it a pellet of what looked like dried maize, and turned a knob that released a flurry of large moths into the spider-bats’ box. As she tugged the dark curtain over them, she said, “Hunting their food will calm them down.”
Maddie shivered. “I’ve never heard of such creatures. Where did he find them?”
“He remembered them from a cave in Andalusia, that his grandmother took him to as a child. Or so he says.” Serephene tied a bandage around the rat’s shoulder, holding a clean gauze in place over his nasty scrape. “As if I believe an Honours scholar from St. Andrews University was raised by gypsies. But wherever he learned of them, he brought plenty back for this experiment. The rest are in the cellar, producing their silk in the quantities Madame demands.” She lifted the rat to his violin-home and wiped her hands. “Now, if you promise to tell nobody, I’ll show you what Scottie’s working on.”
“I’d already guessed it’s fabric, or why be moored to a fashion atelier?”
Serephene moved toward a door at the prow. “Good point. Promise me, though, that you won’t write what you’re about to see until it’s made public. Rival fashion houses would give a lot to get their hands on his fabric.” She glanced over her shoulder at Scottie, who was paying them no attention at all, and lowered her voice. “In fact, I suspect someone is already trying to get it. Those recurring leaks in the balloon could allow someone up here disguised as a repairman.”
Fashion house espionage? Maddie suppressed a grin. Wouldn’t her boss back in London be thrilled if her alter-ego, the secretive investigative reporter Knott, turned up a second industrial spying story? “I promise, no articles until after it’s made public by other means.”
“All right then. Come in.” Serephene slid open the pocket door and stepped aside, allowing Maddie into a tiny, triangular room that made up the air-lab’s prow.
All around the triangular space were ultra-lightweight machines made of balsa wood and wires. Those on Maddie’s left were twisting the spider-silk off a pair of bicycle wheels, stretching it, and winding it together with what looked like ordinary silk thread. Aha! The natural silk brought durability, allowing the spider-bat silk to withstand the rest of the p
rocess. Other mechanisms took up the combined thread, feeding it to tiny looms where it was woven across warp-threads of black, red, or gold silk. Each tiny loom wove a slightly different fabric: here the crinkles of a crepe-de-chine, there a ribbon-width of stiff damask, and beside it georgette half afloat on the waft of air through the open door. At her right hand was a two-finger strip of gauzy fabric so sheer as to be almost invisible.
To make the tiny looms was surely the work of a dedicated miniaturist, but why bother? Surely an ordinary loom would do as well? She turned to ask Serephene just as her friend crowded into the tiny room and pulled the door closed.
“Shh!” said Serephene, and raised a finger to her lips in added warning.
At first all Maddie heard was the whisper of the tiny balsa-wood machines. Then came a distant creak. A door opened far down the ship. Footsteps echoed along the floor. Madame Frangetti’s French accent was even more apparent in English than it had been in the Italian she spoke around the workrooms.
“Monsieur McHoughty. How does it advance today?”
“Well enough,” Scottie replied. “Although I’m no’ yet happy with the tensile strength of the taffeta.”
“How much longer?” Glassware jangled as Madame brushed against it. Serephene turned panicked eyes on Maddie, one hand at her mouth. Madame was coming this way. She’d be furious to find them in this lab, seeing the secret fabric being made. She might even throw them both out of the building. Maddie’s heart thudded in the silence. Or maybe it was Serephene’s, so close together were they crowded.
Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta Page 3