Taffeta, with the peculiar gleam of spider-bat silk. It was twisted around a long, woollen thread of vivid green. McHoughty tartan. Scottie had been in that shed, and alive enough, awake enough, to leave a sign.
Too bad he hadn’t said where he would be headed next.
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE SUN WAS creeping toward the sea when Sarah sank down onto a bench in the Giardini Reali. “We’ve been all the way to the Castello and back. I refuse to take another step without some idea where to look.”
Maddie dropped beside her, wiggling her toes in boots that felt very much too tight. She waved one gloved hand at the water across the avenue. “The parade will be passing right there. If we sit here long enough, we can follow the shark from this spot.”
“It will be full dark by then,” said Sarah absently, huddling her feather muff up to her cheeks against the chill off the lagoon. “We stand a better chance of seeing it in the last daylight, when it comes to join the parade. At least we’d know where to start tracking its route back to the new hiding place.”
Maddie tipped her head side to side, stretching out her neck. A clock tower chimed and her hat ribbons fluttered in time with it. The wind was changing to onshore for evening. Soon the kite-baskets would wend their rooftop-skimming way toward the leeward islands, carrying home the day-workers. The kite-baskets . . . She sat up straight and grabbed Sarah’s hand.
Twenty minutes later they were atop the basket station rising up from the roof of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Peering from its minimal platform out over the Grand Canal, Maddie ignored the jostling of tired workers as they shoved past to reach the next in the string of kite-baskets. She hardly heard the mutterings about “turisti stupidi” as she shielded her eyes with one gloved hand and focused the oculex with the other. Below, boats were already gathering in a giant flotilla that would, in the next hour, sort itself into a water parade that circled the Giudecca before winding back past her and into the serpentine stretches of the Grand Canal.
“There must be a hundred floats down there already,” said Sarah. “How will we ever spot that shark?”
“Look where the smaller canals open into the big one. I’ll take the far bank. If we spot it coming out, we know exactly where to start tracking back its route. After all, it’s not likely they’ll be dragging Scottie around in the shark all day and night, right? He was out of it last night, in that old boat-shed.”
“If you say so.” Sarah tilted her wide blue hat-brim to smooth out the breeze’s effect on her dancing peacock plumes. “Hey, isn’t that your gondolier down there? The one they call The Puppet?”
“Fantoccio, yes.” Maddie yelled and waved, but she was too high up to get his attention. Then she saw the float ahead of him. It gleamed silvery-peach in the setting sun. “The shark. He’s following the shark. Fanto-o!” She started to push down the stairs, against the tide of workers coming up.
Sarah tugged her aside. “No. If we go down we can’t see where they’re going. Look: there’s no waterside walkways after the Gritti. Let’s take the next basket and watch from up here. Then we’ll get off at a nearer station to where they’re headed.”
It made too much sense for Maddie to bother arguing. She turned and went with the flow, trying to maintain her place in the line while keeping her eyes fixed on the tri-legged podium of Fanto’s distinctive gondola. Soon they were airborne, swinging gently over the red roof tiles while the setting sun made a hazy, golden halo around their kite. Now, removed for the first time all day from the bustle of the city, she drew a deep breath and let it out to mingle with the murmur of the breeze through the wicker basket.
“Can you still see it?” Sarah asked, leaning out to see past the palazzos lining the waterway.
“I see Fanto. He’s still on the same course. The shark’s not getting into line for the parade. It’s past the Gritti already.” Maddie looked straight down, mapping out the canals that cut through the city below. Which one would the shark take? She noted a larger campo where three canals met. If it started off toward that square, she had to reach the place first. She checked the position of the next kite-basket stations: one at La Fenice and the next at the Campo San Stephano. The latter would leave them a short foot-race to several canals, and even out to the Grand Canal at San Luca. If the shark was still going strong, they might signal Fanto to pick them up there in passing.
Now, where was he? Almost at Nonna’s palazzo. For the hundredth time, Maddie spared a thought for Serephene, a virtual prisoner under the eyes of her father and grandmother, unable to hunt for the man she undoubtedly loved. Even if Fanto had got a message to her last night, she’d had no word all day today. She must be frantic. Sending a wish for her to be comforted soon by news that Scottie was found, and safe, Maddie looked for the shark again. It was turning down Rio de San Maurizio, the same canal in which she had picked up Serephene all those mornings. It would pass right under her friend’s window.
“Keep your eyes on it, Sarah,” she urged. “I’ll find us an intercept route from La Fenice.”
As their basket paused above the roof of La Fenice, the famed Venice opera house, they scrambled out. Below their feet the metal grating trembled with the strains of violins and blare of big horns, of sung scales and shouted stagehands’ orders. Down the stairs they hurried, pushing past the workers who trudged up, uttering many a scusate mingled, in Sarah’s case, with muttered forebodings about the effect of all these feet on her beaded hemline. Snatches of an aria reached their ears from within the building.
“Iris by Mascagni,” said Sarah, sounding cross. “I’ve seen it twice. Really, the most depressing Japanesque opera ever staged, and a very poor choice of performance if a gentleman is bent on seduction. The woman is kidnapped by an impatient suitor, publically shamed by her own father, and ends by throwing herself into an abyss. Give me good old Gilbert and Sullivan any day.”
Reaching the pavement, they hurried around to the Calle Fenice. Right outside the hallowed portico of La Fenice were a group of comic-opera gondoliers, belting out a tune Maddie had heard many times at the Savoy in London. Who but the English would sing an English operetta that mocked Venice, right in front of the Venetian opera house? Despite the urgency of her hunt, she had to smile.
The streets closed in fast. Although she peered anxiously along each of the canals from every bridge, she was no longer sure which was the one the shark float had used. It all looked so different at water-level. Tall buildings shut out the tangerine and primrose of the sunset, leaving greeny-black water muttering against the brick foundations. The city had that peculiar hush that often fell with the dusk, as if everyone has closed their doors, leaving the streets and alleyways to take a peaceful breath before the revels of the night.
“Oh, where is that shark?” she muttered. “I’m completely turned around.”
Sarah stood at the crest of a bridge, gazing up at the sky with one hand securing her peacock-plumed hat. She turned, pointing dramatically with her muff-hand at a blank wall. “That one. The sunset is coming from exactly the opposite direction.”
Her mouth open to protest, Maddie stopped. From overhead, she had noted the sharp corners of the Rio de San Maurizio, the canal she knew so well from her morning traverses with Serephene. The one she had been staring at so anxiously ran parallel to it except for where San Maurizio went squarely around a rectangle of houses across from La Fenice.
“You’re spot-on,” she told Sarah quietly. “I know the way from here.”
“You’re just going to follow the shark, right? That’s what you said. Follow it to the hiding place. Then will you call the polizei? I don’t want to be there when they arrive.”
“You’re not wanted for anything here, are you?”
“Not yet.” Sarah bit her plump, pink lip. As they rounded a corner and saw the shadowy walkway stretching alongside the darkening water of San Maurizio, she said again, “I don’t want to be there when they arrive.”
“I’m not sure I’
ll call them. I have to find out where the shark’s going, that’s all. Scottie might not be with them at this moment, and I’ll have to follow on to another hiding place. What’s wrong with you? You’ve been such a trooper all day I forgot you were the one who got us into this mess. You can’t run out on me now.”
“Run out. Such an ugly word.” Sarah tilted her head. All trace of the coquettishness with which she turned sensible men foolish had vanished. “I said I would help you find the shark float, and I have. It has taken longer and left me more worn than expected. This evening I have a dinner engagement with a prospective source of income, with which your concerns cannot be allowed to interfere. Unless you would consider paying me, our pleasant association is at an end.” Sarah spun away with the grace of a ballet dancer and summoned up a gondola with one flutter of her peacock-feather muff.
Maddie stared after Sarah, feeling like she’d been abandoned. So often she had friends and helpers on her quests, or within call. Now she had nobody. Not even the devious adventuress. Or Henry Wellesley’s automaton rat, which had apparently stopped following her once it found the thread of Scottie’s tartan. The blasted creature might, at this very moment, be leading Henry to Scottie’s prison. The hapless inventor might wake up tomorrow sold to some American industrialist or Hong Kong tong.
She gave herself a shake. Sarah had helped her last night, and been a surprisingly good companion this afternoon. Now she clearly felt she had atoned sufficiently. It was up to Maddie to sort this out. Well, she knew what she had to do: find the hiding place of the shark float, hopefully before Henry’s rat did, and send TD in to record what images and conversations he could. Armed with that information, she would decide how to proceed.
As she set off along the paving, her eyes piercing the shadows for any trace of the silvery shark, her stomach grumbled in a most unladylike manner, reminding her that the sarde and insalata had vanished several hours ago. She looked in vain for a street vendor’s cart selling fritelle or, indeed, anything edible. They too were apparently taking advantage of the dusk lull to rest their feet and restock their wares. The only person in sight along the length of the canal was an old man, bent almost double, trying to haul a wicker trunk up over a door-sill. She helped him out of the way with a shove on the wicker, and walked on.
Her footsteps echoing from the opposite wall, Maddie made her way around the three sides of the San Maurizio canal’s square-off portion. Along the stretch leading to the Grand Canal was an arched bridge, which she remembered passing each early morning on the way to the atelier. Now it kept her from seeing how far along the shark float was. It might pop out from under that span at any moment. Would the men poling along have seen her clearly enough to recognize her in the sedate, unveiled young lady strolling along? She thought she had still been covered by the full, white mask during the brief encounter behind San Marco, when they’d rowed off with Scottie right under her and Serephene’s noses.
Oh, yes, her bruised cheek. She’d cracked that mask against a wall a few minutes after the shark passed. They wouldn’t know her. She strode more confidently forward, peering under the bridge as she approached it, then up and over the other side, determined to show no sign of recognition when it appeared.
There was no float.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE SHARK FLOAT could not have simply vanished. But it had. The last, dark length of water, all the way to the Grand Canal, was utterly still, silent save for the clink of mooring clamps among the householders’ boats. Had the shark slipped past while Maddie was finding her way from the kite-basket station at La Fenice? Surely not. It took a good while to oar through that narrow waterway without scraping the boats tied up on both sides. Even a skilled gondolier like Fanto had to take his time. So where was the shark? She walked slowly, conscious of the evening chill creeping around her tired ankles. This morning’s clothing was too light for evening. She’d been lucky in the weather but to be outdoors during the dew-fall would leave her shoulders and skirt heavy with damp.
A water-gate across the way sent a breath of musty cold toward her. It seemed empty, as best she could determine from three gondola-widths away in the creeping dark. So did the next, and the next. Nonna’s palazzo was not far now. Hers was the last water-gate on this canal. Fleetingly Maddie entertained the prospect of a conspiracy between Nonna and the Russians, to remove Scottie before Serephene got any more attached to him. If so, they’d left it too late. Against that theory was simply that Nonna would have taken immediate steps rather than let Serephene go on meeting him for two weeks. Without quite realizing she had stopped walking, Maddie stood opposite Nonna’s water-gate. She looked through its grill at the empty porter’s stool. Doubtless the man was in a warm kitchen, eating a hot and hearty meal. Her stomach rumbled so loud it sounded almost like that burbling steam-launch from her first morning of picking up Serephene.
That launch . . . The arch that launch had driven into was on her side of the canal. Why hadn’t she seen it, or felt its chill when she passed? She looked at the wall, and down at her feet, and up at the wall again. Moving a few steps back the way she had come, she looked again. Then she put out her hand and watched it disappear into solid plaster.
The arch, like the bow doorway in Scottie’s airship lab, was disguised.
Once she knew, Maddie could see the faint outline where the holographic plaster wall met the solid one. What had looked like an erratic line of paving stones underfoot was the edge of the movable walkway she had heard being shifted while she and Fanto huddled in darkness further up the canal. The only reason she didn’t feel a chill there was, she realized, because the holo-curtain was ever-so-slightly warmer than the surroundings.
Something plopped into the water just behind her. Ripples lapped at the stone balustrade, jostling the boats moored opposite. A low whistle came from above, and she looked up to see Serephene waving from a high window. Leaning out so far Maddie feared she might fall, Serephene pointed urgently to her own family’s gate. “Go in,” she mouthed, and pointed again.
Go in? No. Unwilling to risk speaking out loud and attracting the attention of Nonna or her servants, Maddie shook her head and pointed to the hidden archway. She pushed her hand in for good measure. If the shark was in there, Scottie might be too.
Serephene nodded frantically and made some complicated motions with the hand that wasn’t clutching the windowsill. Then she pointed again to Nonna’s gate and mouthed again, “Go in.”
Resisting the urge to simply walk into the unknown, entirely alone, Maddie looked for a way across the canal. The little bridge was a ways back, but that platform Fanto had to edge past each pre-dawn was only a couple of houses away. It still stuck out across two-thirds of the canal. Very close to it, moored on the opposite bank, was the stern of a rowboat. Maddie waved to her friend, pointed to the platform, and hurried off. In a trice, she was over the platform, pulling the rowboat with a handy boathook to the very end of its tether, and hopping down. After a brief balancing act in the madly rocking boat, she made her way to the gondola moored after it, and so on until she was at Nonna’s gate.
The porter’s stool was still empty, but Serephene’s maid, Brighella, waited within. She bundled Maddie into a voluminous apron and tied an enormous white cap over her head, hat and all. Then, putting a finger to her lips, she led the way through a small door under the stairs, through a busy kitchen, and up a back stair to the third floor. Serephene was waiting. She grabbed Maddie’s arm and hustled her into a room.
“Supper now, Brighella. Lots of it.” To Maddie she said, as she closed the door behind them, “Fanto’s gone off looking for you. He followed that shark float from somewhere until it slipped right under that walkway into nowhere. There must be a hidden water-gate.”
“There is. We saw it, Fanto and I.” Maddie tiptoed across elegant parquet flooring and sank onto a stool by the window. From up here, the wall opposite looked just like, well, a wall. “One morning, when we were coming to pick you up, it was
lit. The walkway lifted to let a launch go in. In the darkness, I assumed it was a normal water-gate, and I never noticed it wasn’t there in daylight.”
“Gosh, the things you find out when you’re sulking in your room!” Serephene plopped onto the stool at her dressing table and set about painting her eyes with flowing lines of black. “I’ve been dying of fear up here, not knowing what’s going on. I’d still have known nothing if Fanto hadn’t begun to sing, very loudly, like he’d been sent by a suitor. I threw him a flower and sent Brighella down to get his message. He didn’t know anything except that you were hunting for that float, and he’d last seen you near the Giardini. You didn’t find Scottie yet?”
“No, but I’m sure they won’t hurt him.” Maddie repeated her reasoning about his value to his captors. “And now I know who has him: some Russians who ran around wearing Fox heads. They paid That Woman to lure him away from the men in the Cat heads. The Cats work for Madame Frangetti.” She looked into the canal below, almost invisible now with the light of the room glaring on the window. “Can we turn down the lights while we talk? I don’t want to miss that float if it leaves again.”
As she brought Serephene up to date, the other girl gasped. At the end, she hurried over to clasp Maddie’s hands. “I can’t believe you were in such danger, and all from hunting for my Scottie. Thank you.” Returning to her makeup stool, she asked, “Who has all his research now? Can we get it back, do you think?”
“The Englishman under the Cricket mask has that, I’m sure. He hasn’t got Scottie, though. In fact, I suspect he’s had me tailed so I’ll find Scottie for him. But I’ll cross that span when it looms before me. I’m sure the shark will lead me to . . .” Maddie trailed off as the maid came in with a laden tray. “. . . to another fun night of Carnevale,” she finished. “I’m starving. But won’t they wonder why you are eating up here?”
Maddie Hatter and the Timely Taffeta Page 13