The Mourning Emporium (13 page)

Indignant squawking from below announced the arrival of fourteen crated hens, a rooster and several ducks. The “supplies,” shrouded in sacks, clinked loudly. There were also sacks of flour and flasks of vinegar.

“Why are we provisioning the ship like this?” Teo asked Renzo. “It’s as if we’re getting ready for a voyage. We’re not going anywhere, are we?”

The temperature plunged, freezing the mercury inside the Scilla’s thermometer. Stalactites hung from the Rialto Bridge. In the smaller canals, the water no longer writhed under the crust of ice, but lay stilled to the consistency of cold porridge. The crenellations of the palaces were laced with ribbons of frost.

It was not just Venice that was freezing: the Venetians themselves were chilled to their souls. On the morning of January 8, the first person had fallen ill with a mysterious new malady. By that evening, hundreds had taken to their beds, the color draining from their complexions, the skin turning stiffly waxen on their faces and hands.

Someone coined an ominous name for the sickness: the Half-Dead disease.

People with the Half-Dead disease were easily recognized. Their heads nodded pale and frail like snowdrops; they were indifferent to every suggestion, caring not a jot about what happened to them. Sufferers claimed they saw everything through a thick white veil. They hallucinated, whispering of ghosts and mythical creatures. And they were never hungry, or thirsty. Their gums blackened. They just wanted to lie down. Many would never get up again.

The old, the weak and the miserable were quickly carried off by the pestilence. By the third day, it had begun to gnaw on the feelings and the bodies of the healthy too.

The Half-Dead disease was spreading as fast as the Plague that once destroyed a third of the city’s population. The Mayor, as ever, tried to play it down. Piffle! he scoffed in a newspaper interview. Some people will do anything to get the day off work, when all they have is a simple head-cold.

Miss Uish was delighted by the advent of a new way to “toughen” her “lily-livered Venetian blanket-sops.”

“Half-Dead disease?” she purred to the boys lined up on deck. “Let me tell you my simple cure. Hard work and a light diet! I want this boat utterly seaworthy and quick smart. Anyone who snivels gets six lashes.”

The snivel froze in white trails under their noses.

Just after supper on January 10, a flock of cormorants winged blackly out of the mist and settled on the masts of the Scilla. It seemed as if they brought a new shudder of cold with them. Miss Uish walked around the deck, rubbing her hands with pleasure. She murmured to Peaglum, “At last! We’ll have our justification tonight, if I’m not wrong. If it all works out … we’ll be there at exactly the right moment!

“And the beauty of it is—the idiot Venetians will be so grateful to us for getting their orphans away from the dangerous ice!” She giggled.

The young sailors were ordered to scrub the cormorant droppings off the deck—a thankless, endless task in a rising wind. They went to sleep shortly after midnight. Three hours later, they were jolted awake in their hammocks by a loud crack, like a cannon being fired.

“What’s that noise?”

Another low banging noise echoed through the Scilla.

“It is the ice, surrounding us,” whispered Massimo.

“If the Giudecca Canal freezes over, it will crush the ship,” Emilio said in a quavering voice.

“And drag us down to the sea floor with the weight of the ice,” added Marco quietly.

Miss Uish’s voice rang down joyfully through the booby hatch, “Malfeasance! All is ready! So get those whining laggards on deck!”

“They’re sleepin’ like lambs, Mistress,” simpered Peaglum.

“Then poke them with the toasting fork till they wake. Tie every tenth child to its hammock. Make sure you get … you know the one. And we might as well keep the Nestle Tripe, as it speaks English so well. And any other remotely useful ones. Send me two strong little brutes immediately for duty. Put the others ashore. We’re setting sail!”

The Scilla crept out of the bacino in the dead of night. Sebastiano and Marco were set to bracing the yards, brailing the spanker and cluing up the mizzen-royal.

Lashed to their hammocks, the remaining sailors exchanged fearful whispers.

“Where are we going? Did Miss Uish tell the school inspectors that we were leaving?” demanded Emilio.

“And why did she put most of the boys ashore?” wondered Teo.

“So as not to have to feed ’em, I s’pose,” sighed Giovanni.

“How many of us are left,” asked Massimo, “all together?”

“There’s you, Teo, Renzo, Emilio, Fabrizio, Rosato, Alfredo and me,” counted Giovanni.

“And she’s got Seba and Marco up on deck with her. Ten. And Sofonisba,” agreed Alfredo tenderly. He loved that cat, and she had come to an understanding with him, sometimes allowing him to stroke her.

“But why us?” Rosato asked.

“I guess we’re all good for something,” realized Massimo. “I’m best at net repair and sewing, Teo and Renzo are clever at English, and just about everything in books. Renzo’s our wheelman, Giovanni’s the top parrot-trainer, Emilio’s brilliant at telling the weather, Sebastiano’s the master knotsman, Fabrizio’s got the sharpest eyes and ears, Rosato is good at woodwork …”

“Sssssh! There’s her lamp. She’s coming. Pretend to be asleep.”

“Show a leg, sack-rats!” roared the dreaded harsh voice. Each child in turn felt the rasp of her cold hands as she slit their bonds. “All hands ahoy! Amain! You lot are to be on deck in five minutes. Up the crow’s nest, Fabrizio. The others, scrubbing and seaming for you.”

“But it’s not yet light, is it?” whimpered Emilio unwisely. “Ma’am.”

“Will that matter, on your hands and knees? You can smell the dirt that close up. Put Emilio Ghezzo on my list, Malfeasance!”

“Please, ma’am, can we …?” pleaded Giovanni. His growling belly finished the sentence.

“You’ll get food when you’ve done something to earn it.”

The faintest dawn light in the porthole revealed that the Scilla had already passed into a remote corner of the lagoon. Then the mist opened in pockets to show ghostly jujube trees weighed down with rotted black berries.

“We’re heading toward open sea,” whispered Renzo to Teo at the water barrel, where they were breaking ice.

They passed islands where ragged nets hung on poles that leaned out of the water at crooked angles. Teo’s and Renzo’s eyes met sadly: they both realized that the fishermen who once tended those nets must have been drowned in the ice storm.

“Renzo!” exclaimed Teo. “Look at all those books!”

Jostling between the poles were hundreds of Venice’s lost volumes, which had been borne away by the flood.

“Can you see The Key to the Secret City?” Renzo bent eagerly over the rail.

“Too many of them to know. But look how the books are pushing the poles together,” Teo said. “It’s as if they are forming letters and words.”

“Your eyes are playing tricks on you, Teo,” said Emilio. “It’s barely light.”

“No, I’m sure I’m right.” Teo turned to Renzo, and traced the lettering below them with a silent finger.

The other boys saw it too now. They grew as pale as she was.

The poles said TURN BACK NOW. PERIL AHEAD.

Hope faded in ten young hearts in that moment.

“It means she’s going to kill us all, one by one,” wept Sebastiano.

Miss Uish steered the ship away from the shores of the Adriatic, and as far away as possible from any passing craft. The sea seemed uneasy; sharp waves broke almost vindictively against the prow. Great hollow-fronted rollers snarled around the stern like hungry jaws.

The Scilla strained against the swell. Miss Uish showed the poor old ship no mercy. The sailors spent all their time attending to the Scilla. They patched canvas, spliced ropes and pumped the bilges. To keep her watertight, they had hacked the old oakum from the seams in the boards with a jerry iron. Then they prodded new oakum into the gaps with the caulking iron, carefully ladling hot pitch to seal it.

Miss Uish ordered Massimo and Giovanni to be lashed about the waist and ankles, then suspended upside down over the side of the ship to tar her outer seams. The boys were eventually hauled back up, soaked to the skin, numb and feverish.

Even when the swell receded, the waves whispered like malicious girls gossiping in a schoolyard. And what was down there, below them? Sometimes there were juddering noises in the water, and a sound like deep, heavy breathing. Teo overheard Emilio and Massimo talking about giant sea monsters.

“Everyone,” Emilio insisted, “said that something more powerful than water must have smashed the seawalls on Christmas Eve.”

“Quiet!” shouted Miss Uish, coming up behind the boys. “Less talk and more speed.” She muttered to herself, “The birds say the old bezzom’s fading fast.”

At dawn on January 12, a roll of drums summoned all the sailors to the deck. Sofonisba was howling in a cage, her tail puffed up like a feather duster.

“This is how I deal with ill-discipline aboard my ship,” announced Miss Uish. “This creature has spurned the rats so plentifully provided, and this evening committed the impertinent act of stealing my roast chicken supper—the supper of the representative of Her Majesty Queen Victoria!”

She brandished a cutlass. “My first thought was to drown the creature in the water barrel. I thought you’d like that, brats, a little extra flavor to your drinking water. But that death would be too quick.”

None too gently, Peaglum poked the cat out of her cage with a pole.

“Now, walk the plank!” ordered Miss Uish.

“Throwing the ship’s cat overboard is guaranteed to bring on a storm!” Teo spoke desperately and fast.

“Do you think a fine British lady like me would lower herself to believe in such murky feline superstitions?” cried Miss Uish. “Queen Victoria and her Empire are utterly and irreproachably rational!”

Sofonisba looked around at the sailors. Her triangular face was tight with fear. Her eyes filmed over with what looked like tears. Her flanks trembled. Yet even in extremis, Sofonisba refused to talk in front of her enemy. Alfredo reached toward her, and Miss Uish cracked her whip once, sharply. Shrieking with pain, the boy tucked his hands under his armpits.

The cat nodded sadly. Alfredo was the only boy she half tolerated. But it was clear that she did not want any more children hurt on her behalf. Slowly, Sofonisba walked along the plank until she reached the very tip. Her weight made the plank vibrate slightly. For a moment, she rocked there. She gave one final long look back, a look that broke the heart of every sailor on the deck; then she lifted her head proudly, stepped off the end of the plank and was seen no more.

There was not even a splash.

“Sofonisba,” wept Teo, not caring who saw her.

“Extra scrubbing duty for the crybaby Nestle Tripe,” shouted Miss Uish.

The sailors braced themselves for the expected storm. Instead, the sky waxed a deadened gray, with no more wind than would stir a sigh in the sails.

In the absence of Sofonisba, the rat population quickly trebled. The rats scorned cod sponge and mock fish soup. Instead, they took to gnawing on the oakum and the woodwork, apparently finding it tastier than the boys’ rations. While the others pitched and sealed, it was full-time work for Rosato and Sebastiano just baiting and emptying the rat-traps. All the rats they dropped overboard disappeared instantly, as if being sucked below by powerful currents.

Other jobs were more mysterious. Why, for example, were the sailors required to spend the next evening blowing on their frozen fingers while they sewed flags of every nation in Europe?

And why was Miss Uish so fretful at their lack of speed, constantly and bitterly bemoaning the lack of wind? They crumbled the increasingly greenish bread for their watery gruel, which, in that pale, sinister light, looked like liquefied ghost strained into a bowl. They snatched sleep in their damp quarters, which stank of hot tar, swampy bilge water, boiled bones and unwashed bodies. And the next day they rose before dawn and did the same again.

It was oppressive, often painful and dismally dull. On their starvation diet, the sailors began to grow vague and dreamy. They had visions of roast beef and sausages, except Teo, who saw chocolate cake and pea risotto. Once, in her delirium, as she plunged a red-hot loggerhead into a bucket of tar, Teo even thought she saw, through the hissing steam, a cat just like poor Sofonisba. Mysteriously, this phantom cat was dashing down the companionway with a pear in its mouth.

She shook herself, whispering, “Hallucinations! Isn’t that how the Half-Dead disease starts?”

Miss Uish rapped, “Full assembly at five bells and there shall be no more sulky faces. Cookie, you should mark this on your calendar! January 15, 1901, a red-letter day!”

At five bells, the sailors gathered nervously on deck, to find Miss Uish nailing a large notice on the wall of the forecastle.

“Welcome to your Swearing-in Ceremony, brats!” She showed them her sharp white teeth and pointed to the notice.

It was entitled CODE OF CONDUCT.

“Read it and weep,” said Miss Uish cheerfully. The sailors crowded around the forecastle and peered at the words.

1. The crew shall heed the captain’s commands without exception. When so ordered, they shall board other ships, take spoils and capture prisoners.

2. No female, excepting the captain and certain hostages selected by her, shall be permitted on the vessel, on pain of certain, painful and lingering death.

3. Shares of the spoils: the crew shall be entitled to precisely none.

4. Punishment for stealing food: to be marooned on the nearest island.

5. Punishment for insubordination: infinite, at the discretion of the captain.

6. Punishment for attempted mutiny: to have the nose and ears split with a silver dagger, followed by death.

Teo scanned the list, feeling increasingly weak at the knees, especially at the sight of item 2. Renzo finished reading while everyone except Teo was still on the first clause. He exclaimed, “This isn’t a Code of Conduct. This is a pirate charter! Pirates are murderous cowards. They attack unarmed vessels. They rob! That is completely un-Venetian! And completely un-British, by the way! I’m not swearing to this!”