The Mourning Emporium (7 page)

“Professor Marìn!” Teo almost choked on her delight. Her old friend was the perfect person to run a school for sailors, and the kindliest.

Hugging the professor, she asked anxiously, “How is Renzo?”

“He’s safe, at least. But what of you, Teodora? Where have you been all night?”

Dry and freshly dressed in a new sailor suit, Teo explained her adventure in the lagoon. Professor Marìn knitted his white brows. “This is bad news, child. Bajamonte Tiepolo may not be here—and I personally agree with your theory about that—but there are minions of his abroad in Venice. And they know who you are, unfortunately.”

The cat had followed them into the mess, and sat cleaning rat blood off her whiskers in a pensive sort of way. She remarked, “The magòghe have turned—that’s the word in the alleys. The cormorants too, this time. It’s being put about that the seagulls spied on the gondoliers’ sons when they buried Bajamonte’s bones in those separate secret places. All six graves have recently been disturbed. Now, someone had better tell the nuns and the handsome circus-master that their Undrowned Child is safe. I suppose that someone had better be me.”

Nimbly, Sofonisba scaled the companionway. Through a porthole, Teo watched the cat jump down to the fondamenta and disappear in a westerly direction.

Teo tugged the professor’s sleeve. “The Mayor has already written me off as ‘presumed drowned.’ My death was designed so that there’d be no trace of me. The Vampire Eels were to see to that. So whoever tried to murder me will not suspect I’m still alive. Or that I have come aboard the Scilla.”

“But, my dear, you must have been wearing that sailor suit when they kidnapped you.”

“It was pitch dark. Whoever it was, they were waiting outside the House of the Spirits. The magòghe must have told them where I was. But I was attacked from behind. They couldn’t have had a good look at me. The first thing they did was bundle me into a big sack. I was still wearing it when I woke up on the iceberg.”

Professor Marìn reflected, “That’s true, Teodoro, young man. If they think the Undrowned Child is dead, they won’t be looking for her anymore. You shall be under my protection from now on, child. Come, meet the rest of the sailors. They are at elevenses on deck. And young Lorenzo needs to see you.”

Professor Marìn led the way, calling, “How chear ye, fore and aft?”

He winked at Teo. “That means ‘How fares all the ship’s company?’ I’m getting them in the mood for sailoring.”

All the young sailors were sitting cross-legged on the deck, swigging warm chocolate milk from Murano glass bottles and eating big pieces of cinnamon chocolate cake. Teo’s eyes scanned the party for Renzo, hoping that he would not give her away as a girl.

She was at first afraid that she might see some of their friends, for their presence here could only mean one thing: that their parents had been drowned. Rows of sailor-suited boys looked at her curiously. They were all strangers. When Sebastiano dalla Mutta, the erstwhile first watch, was introduced, he stuck out his tongue. But his brown eyes were smiling. Teo returned the courtesy in kind, crossing her own green eyes for further effect.

Renzo was sitting by himself, away from the other boys. He looked trim and handsome in his sailor suit, but he might have been a shop dummy for all the life in his face. He gazed out across the Giudecca Canal. He had not touched his milk or cake. He was turning a little penknife over and over in his hands. Years before, Renzo had carved its handle into the shape of a gondola’s tailpiece. He had once used this same ferro penknife to save Teo from the ghost of the child-eating Butcher Biasio.

Teo dropped to her knees in front of him and took his hand. “Renzo! I am so sorry about your mother. So very, very sorry.”

He stared at her sailor suit and cap. “What …?”

Teo quickly hugged him hard, taking the opportunity to whisper in his ear, “Shhh. No one’s to know I’m a girl.”

He mumbled into her hair, “Where have you been?”

Teo whispered at a furious speed, “I was kidnapped, and tied to an iceberg with Vampire Eels inside. I escaped with some seals.… Now we need to look at The Key to the Secret City and find out what to do. It’s obvious that Bajamonte Tiepolo is back.”

Renzo pushed her away, blurting, “The Key got taken by the ice flood.”

The news struck Teo like a fist in her stomach. Without the book, Venice would have fallen to Il Traditore the year before last. More than that, The Key was like a living thing, like a friend. But, looking at Renzo’s stricken face, she found it in herself to lie. “It doesn’t matter. It’s only a book.”

Renzo shook her off. “Don’t patronize me, Teo. The Key to the Secret City is not ‘only a book.’ You know better than that. I couldn’t save it. I couldn’t save my mother. I am utterly useless.”

Then, looking thoroughly ashamed of himself, Renzo suddenly clamped his mouth shut and stared fiercely at the deck, thrusting his penknife into a plank. It stood quivering between them.

Sailing school was more demanding than land school. For a start, living on a ship meant learning a whole new language.

The professor would point to various parts of the sail or rigging, and then pick a boy, who was expected to shout, without hesitation:

“That’s the gooseneck, sir, at the end of the boom!”

“That’s the jigger tackle for hauling the bunt of the topsail, sir!”

“That’s the shoulder-of-mutton sail, sir!”

“What is the measure of the cat-harpins?” the professor would ask.

“One-eighth the hoist of the topsail, sir!”

They learned to read charts, taste the winds for danger, and to diagnose the tug of a current. They applied fresh coats of best Stockholm tar to the rigging. The Scilla creaked out into the lagoon each day to give the boys practical experience of life under sail. Every evening, the old boat returned to the safety of the Zattere, and moored for the night.

Then, after a hearty supper, there was the language of flags to be mastered, and a hundred different knots, from the tiny monkey’s fist to the formidable sheepshank.

Meanwhile there were also things to forget, sailoring being a highly superstitious profession. The boys had to banish from their vocabularies all the words that must never be uttered aboard ship. Teo and Renzo had a head start there: the mermaids had already taught them that at sea one must never mention any part of a rabbit. Also banned was any uttering of the names of goats, hares and pigs. As the professor explained, “A boat is easily bewitched. And witches are particularly inclined to turn themselves into such beasts in order to wreak their mischiefs.”

All the orphans were obliged to throw any item of green clothing overboard: that too was supposed to bring bad luck. And whistling was absolutely forbidden, lest it conjure a gale.

“You must treat your ship like a goddess,” warned Professor Marìn.

“Or a cat,” added Sofonisba. The boys had quickly ceased to marvel that she could talk: they were more interested in learning how to read her tail.

An unusual feature of shipboard life was teaching the Scilla’s parrots to speak, using mirrors. Each boy would hide his face behind a mirror and patiently talk to his parrot. The bird, staring at a parrot face reflected in the glass, would believe another of his own species was engaging him in conversation, and would answer in kind. Although easily tricked in this way, they were otherwise highly intelligent birds and seemed to rejoice in increasing their vocabularies. Professor Marìn’s trained parrots were in great demand for transmitting messages: the telegraph office and the telephone exchange in Venice were both still submerged in mud.

The young sailors had ordinary lessons too, but in roundabout ways. Mathematics was taught by stacking and measuring supplies. They studied geography by poring over charts. They learned how to mend ripped sails, darn nets and, finally, to sew shrouds. That last lesson was accomplished in a subdued mood, with several boys—those freshly orphaned by the ice storm—quietly weeping while Professor Marìn explained how the last stitch was to pass through the nose of the corpse. This was done in order to avoid any chance of throwing a body overboard while life still remained in it.

“Remember, boys,” urged Professor Marin, “the pain of having a stitch passed through the nose can be depended upon to rouse a barely living sailor.”

Rosato demanded, “Why can’t you take a dead person home to his family?”

“A ship with a corpse aboard will always sail more slowly,” responded Professor Marìn gravely. “A dead body is thought to bring bad luck. Crews have been known to mutiny if one is kept aboard.”

Fresh air and physical activity made the young sailors strong and rosy-cheeked. Luncheon and dinnertime found them hungry as piranhas. Even over the well-laden mess table, lessons continued. They learned the names of the traditional naval dishes prepared by Cookie, the Scilla’s jolly chef, an old merchant sailor too plump for active duties these days. Most often requested were schooneron-the-rocks, a joint of meat with roast potatoes around it, and bloodworms-in-the-snow, which consisted of thin and extremely tasty sausages with creamy mashed potatoes. Cookie’s galley calendar was splattered with gravy.

The more frightening lessons took place late at night, by candlelight. Then Professor Marìn gathered all one hundred boys (and one girl) together to hear him read from his own stories of pirates’ devilry and murder. These savage tales were somewhat softened by being delivered in the professor’s kindly voice, and accompanied by deep mugs of hot chocolate and thick slices of Cookie’s excellent spicy ginger cake.

Sometimes Professor Marìn read to them in English, explaining, “Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy rules the seas—it behooves us to understand her language, though we must never lose our own Venetian tongue. Our words are ourselves, and they must survive flood, ice and loss.”

The young Venetians nodded gravely.

And it wasn’t too strenuous or boring to learn English from such exciting volumes as Captain Mayne Reid’s Ran Away to Sea, and Captain Marryat’s Mr. Midshipman Easy, or the general favorite, Marryat’s masterpiece, Rattlin the Reefer.

Other nights, Professor Marìn read from his own books about the monsters of the deep, including the giant squid and its even bigger cousin, the colossal squid. He also taught the boys about every kind of shark. At these lessons, Renzo and Teo drew instinctively closer together, for they knew what it was to come face-to-snout with one of those ruthless monsters.

Teo didn’t truly relish it when Renzo’s high scores in astronomical calculations nudged her own out of first place. Renzo found it ever so slightly irksome to be trounced in an exam on Venetian sea-life by a girl who hadn’t even been brought up in Venice.

With an amused eye on the young rivals, Professor Marìn taught a special lesson on the more subtle aspects of shipboard comportment. “It is by no means enough that a sailor should be a capable mariner; he must be that, of course, and also a good deal more. He should be, as well, a gentleman of unfailing courtesy and with the nicest sense of personal integrity. A Venetian sailor should care more for honor itself than for carrying off the prize in petty competition.”

Then Professor Marìn introduced singing lessons. Apparently, any sailor worth his salt had to know a great many sweetheart songs and sea shanties. In this, Renzo, with his beautiful voice, shone. He was never embarrassed at how romantic the words were. When they listened to him, all the young sailors fell silent. Teo was defeated. Her own voice might be compared, unfavorably, with an untuned piano.

Renzo was also best at the wheel, and indeed took his place there unquestioned for every excursion into the lagoon. He had a natural coordination of hand and eye, always kept his weather eye to the windward side of the ship and seemed to know instinctively when to meet and when to slide against a wave. Everyone jumped to when Renzo called, “Give that keel a bite of water.”

And Professor Marìn would lay a proud hand on Renzo’s shoulder, saying, “Well done, son.”

And so the first five days aboard passed in a blur of cold, salty busyness. Professor Marìn had a way of making the young sailors regard sailorliness, shipshapeliness and spick-and-spanness as points of pride and not a chore. At night, they slept like dormice: even Teo. Her night-nagging dream seemed to have washed away.

As, perhaps, had the bodies of the missing children and men of Venice. The Gazzettino—now in print again and delivered daily to the Scilla—mused gloomily, All the adult female victims of the ice flood have been recovered. But the children’s corpses, being lighter perhaps, must have floated away on the tide. However, we cannot explain the loss of at least three dozen men.

The Gazzettino wrote of funerals held for the lost children, with flowers and their favorite toys buried in their empty graves. With so many missing, the disappearance of Teodora Stampara rated only the barest mention. Teo noted indignantly, “All it says is that my funeral was conducted at municipal expense!”

The Mayor had also succeeded in hushing up news of the kidnapping of the two scientists from the island of the Lazzaretto Vecchio.

Fortunately, the Scilla’s sailors were too absorbed in their tasks and homework to notice when Teo stole away to a quiet part of the boat to wash and change in privacy. The heads had a door, so Teo was spared the dread embarrassment of the glass tube. She tried to keep her voice low. And she never, never cried, no matter how much it hurt when, with her native clumsiness, she got tangled in a bowline bridle or skidded on a slippery deck.

The worst thing about keeping her cover was that she had to sleep in a hammock in the forecastle cabin putrid with snoring boys who were under no compulsion to wash their socks, and whose favorite after-hours conversations were about the stupidity, vanity and general uselessness of girls. Renzo, she noticed, never said anything to defend the species—or to help her out.

“Sorry, can’t be gallant. You’re supposed to be a boy,” Renzo whispered, when she sprawled flat on her face in front of him after yet another mishap with a mop and a bucket of water.

“Don’t need your help,” declared Teo. “Thank you very much all the same.”