The Mourning Emporium (8 page)

“For now,” remarked Sofonisba, who happened to be passing.

On the fifth night in her hammock, Teo lay awake, trying to work out the tune for “Bobby Shaftoe” and a way to anchor her voice to the melody.

That was how she came to hear what she would only later understand was the noise of a bullet meeting human flesh, just above her on the deck. And then a faint, low scream. She lifted her head and sniffed the air—what was that acrid smell like burning metal?

“Cookie must be preparing something new for tomorrow,” she told herself. “Not one of his better efforts, I’d say. Hope there’s ginger cake for afters.”

With that comfortable thought, sleep at last overtook her. And once more it happened, after the welcome peace of the past five nights: her dreams were invaded by that dreadful night-nagging voice breathing hotly in her sleeping ear.

“Death and worse to all Venetians. Death to Venice. Blacken her very image. Death to her memory.”

“I never met a child I didn’t want to slap.”

Teo saw sharp staccato letters slashed in the air above the beautiful lady. It seemed impossible that such unpleasantness could issue from those rosebud lips. The woman’s skin was downy as a white peach. Her big brown eyes danced with pretty mischief under glistening curls piled high above her head.

The beautiful lady now smiled like an angel. Then she reached out and slapped the nearest child, Alfredo.

“Stop making those big, round, wet eyes at me. You look like a kitten on its way to the bucket.” An impish giggle intruded; then her voice flattened back to harshness: “No one cares. Do you understand?”

Alfredo bowed his head and bit his wobbling lip.

The smile sparkled like sunlight, but the cut-glass English accent was as cold as the frost on the Scilla’s rigging. The woman was dressed at the height of fashion in a sharp tailored jacket with naval trimmings. From her shell-like ears dangled earrings in the shape of tiny iridescent hummingbirds. Leg-of-mutton sleeves sprouted from her shoulders. Beneath the dress, her willowy body was encased in a corset that bent her back into an S-shape. Below the cruelly cinched waist, her skirt stuck out, rigid as a mountain.

Professor Marìn was nowhere to be seen. Sofonisba crouched by the water barrel, swearing terribly at the interloper.

“Miss Canidia Uish,” the woman introduced herself. “It is pronounced like ‘wish’ in English.”

“As in ‘wish we’d never met you,’ ” muttered Teo inaudibly.

“Henceforth,” continued the woman, “you will address me as ‘ma’am.’ Or suffer for it.”

The faces of the assembled boys expressed one single thought: “Who is this unpleasant female landlubber, and what is she doing on the Scilla?”

“Brats,” recommenced Miss Canidia Uish, “it has come to Queen Victoria’s attention that there are some poor wretched Venetian orphans who need taking in hand after the ice flood that devastated your city. So Her Majesty has decided to extend her patronage to those unfortunate orphans who exist outside the benevolent protection of her great Empire.”

She beamed. Then her expression changed dramatically, a vicious glance clattering down like a guillotine upon the young sailors’ feelings. “Stand up straight when I address you, you insignificant pieces of offal!” she shouted. “Where’s your gratitude? Don’t you know that you are privileged to be under my protection?”

They shook their heads humbly.

“I have been sent here on the express instruction of the prime minister of Her Majesty’s government, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, ninth Earl and third Marquess of Salisbury, who is my personal friend and a great favorite of the Queen herself. Which means, brats, that I represent Queen Victoria’s interests”—she looked around her disparagingly—“in this dismal corner of the globe. Do I not, Malfeasance?”

An ill-favored man of middle years stepped out of the shadows. Dark stripes of discontent furrowed his cheeks.

“Malfeasance Peaglum, my second-in-command, and now yours too,” announced Miss Uish. “Disobey him at your peril.”

“Where’s Professor Marìn?” asked Teo boldly. She refused to add “ma’am.”

“History does not relate.” Miss Uish gave another of her strangely poisonous yet radiant smiles. She bent her head to stare at Teo. “Write that boy’s name on my list, Malfeasance. What a poor specimen it is too. In England we have a name for weaklings like him—we would call him the Nestle Tripe, or runt of the litter.”

Peaglum produced a black notebook from a crevice in his greasy waistcoat. He sidled up to Teo, nudging her with his elbow. “Well?”

“Teodoro Ongania,” she said proudly, trying to keep her voice low. He scribbled it down with a grin. “You don’t want to get put on this list again,” he snarled, “Teodoro Ongania, Nestle Tripe.”

“Venice,” Miss Uish continued, “is a backwater now. A Nestle Tripe among cities, as it were. Her glory lives only in the dim past. What pantaloons the Venetians are, preening and thinking that everyone admires them still! Believing that anyone cares about their flood? About their so-called history? Their gaudy art? Hardly!”

Peaglum sniggered, a disgusting sound like someone treading fatally on a toad. Miss Uish pronounced, “Everything around here has to be tightened up, shipshape, British-style. Starting with the younger Venetians, who might have a hope of reform. The older ones,” she sneered, “are too idle and decadent to bother with. If they’re not drowned already. Queen Victoria is gracious with her charity, of course, but personally Her Majesty feels that if Venice had not deserved her present calamity, it would not have happened to her. Queen Victoria does not believe in magic, but she certainly believes in just deserts.”

She giggled and whispered something to Peaglum that sounded strangely like “That old bezzom!”

The young sailors were dumb with shock. Queen Victoria was known to be a bit of a dragon, but could she really be as cruel and unfeeling as that?

Miss Uish rapped, “Now, stop pouting. Abandoned orphans cannot always have all things to please them. You think sympathy and sugared Earl Gray tea should be brought to you in china cups for free? Just because you’re orphans? Do you think life owes you a favor because you were so stupid as to have parents who floated out of your houses and drowned?”

The hummingbird earrings quivered on Miss Uish’s earlobes. Teo realized: “They’re real! Or were. Poor little stuffed birds! How cruel.”

Having silenced the Scilla’s crew, Miss Uish consulted a fob-watch attached to her left shoulder by a fleur-de-lis picked out in black brocade.

“I must attend a reception at the Town Hall. On my return, I shall expect to find that mast revarnished in its entirety. Am I understood? First, a word about feeding arrangements.”

“Feeding?” thought Teo. “Like animals?”

“Cake is henceforward banned,” announced Miss Uish. “I’m imposing a dietary regimen much more suitable for unwanted orphans. Have the cook brought forward!”

Peaglum frogmarched Cookie in front of Miss Uish. The poor man shook uncontrollably. His waxen face was distorted, as if he’d been punched. He could not bring himself to look at Miss Uish, or to speak.

“Here’s your new recipe book for feeding these whelps.” She threw a slim volume at his head. He ducked and knelt humbly to pick it up from the deck.

“I believe you already have some idea of what might happen if you don’t follow my instructions?”

He nodded wordlessly, clutching the book. Teo saw a tear slide down his plump cheek. “What’s she done to him?” she raged silently.

Miss Uish fastened on her head a hat that looked like a tea tray with a vast meringue on top. Then she stalked away, slipping down the gangplank with grace, and leaving in her wake a cloud of expensive-smelling yet slightly metallic perfume.

Over her shoulder, she called, “Malfeasance, count the brats and write down all their names. And what they’re good for, if anything.”

While Peaglum busied himself bullying boys with his notebook, Teo and Renzo rushed to Professor Marìn’s poop-deck stateroom. There was no sign that he had ever occupied it. It was now overflowing with Miss Uish’s considerable wardrobe of clothes and accessories. An ornate black cuckoo clock ticked menacingly on the wall.

The colors of Miss Uish’s clothes were strident: electric blue, magenta, purple, arsenic-green, acid-yellow. She favored shiny checks and stripes, made up into costumes with a faint naval flavor, grandly ornamented with frogging.

Renzo’s eyes popped open wide at the sight of the stiff rows of corsets, all black, yet decorated with pink stitching and jaunty pink satin bows. The hooks and lacing grommets almost seemed to strain with the hidden presence of their owner. He did not feel comfortable turning his back on them.

An open box on the dresser revealed a large heart-shaped locket on a chain, a link bracelet fastened by small heart-shaped padlocks; even her gloves had four heart-shaped celluloid buttons. Somehow, the effect was the opposite of romantic.

“She said she was ‘Miss’ Uish,” Teo commented.

“She wasn’t wearing a diamond solitaire engagement ring either,” added Renzo. “Mind you, I can’t imagine any man in his right mind wanting to marry her. In fact, I’m not even sure she’s human.”

“Do you think she’s a ghost? But she doesn’t make you feel cold around her.”

“How can we tell? We’re always cold since the ice storm.”

The desk was littered with magazines: The Ladies’ Gazette of Fashions, illustrated with color plates, and the Court Circular, which described Queen Victoria’s daily engagements.

Piled in one corner were boxes labeled FINEST AUSTRALIAN LAMINGTONS and HOADLEY’S FRUIT JELLIES.

“Where’s Professor Marìn?” lamented Teo. “He wouldn’t just abandon us.”

Renzo, visibly thinking of his mother, murmured, “Unless something … happened to him.”

Teo threw him a sympathetic look. “He certainly wouldn’t leave us to a creature like her by choice. I think she’s raving mad! Did you see how she changes from second to second: one minute acting sweet as pie, the next minute, like a wolf?”

“And how can we be sure she’s even qualified to run a sailing school? I don’t see any certificates or official papers here.”

“What about the school inspectors and the magistrates?” demanded Teo. “If she’s an impostor, surely they will see through her? And the mermaids? Won’t they have seen all this in the turtleshell?”

The mermaids’ turtleshell showed moving stories. They used it to see beyond their cavern, and sometimes even back into past events. Via that shell, Teo had learned the whole history of the wicked life and sorry death of Bajamonte Tiepolo.

“It seems not. Well, there’s still Signor Alicamoussa. He won’t let this happen. He’ll find Professor Marìn.”

“He has to. And Renzo, I’m worried about Cookie,” Teo added. “Did you see how strange he looked? So pale, too. And he didn’t speak.”

“Go and see him. Maybe he knows something. I’m going to sneak ashore and see if I can find Signor Alicamoussa.”

Then they jumped in terror, for the cuckoo clock suddenly struck the hour. Instead of a wooden bird, a black bat shot out of its carved chalet. It did not sing. It spat tiny droplets of black ink that smelled strongly of ancient, rotten fish into a chamber pot positioned below.

In the galley, Cookie was hunched over a saucepan, one hand nursing his jaw. He shuffled through cooking pots tumbled ankle-deep on the floor. The gravy-stained calendar hung askew.

“What’s happened in here?” asked Teo. “Do you know where Professor Marìn’s gone?”

Cookie shook his head despairingly.

“How did she get on board?”

More head shaking, and a pair of tears trembled on Cookie’s swollen eyelids.

“Why don’t you say anything?” cried Teo, in exasperation.

At this, Cookie’s face crumpled completely. Teo put her arm awkwardly around the man. He smelled of boiling water and blood. Sobbing, he opened his lips and showed her what was inside.

Someone had rammed crude wooden casings over his teeth, upper and lower. The contraption was welded with wires so that Cookie could not open his mouth more than a quarter of an inch.

Teo backed away in shock. His gums were lividly swollen where they were not covered by the tight wooden casings.

“The pain must be unbearable!” she cried. “You poor dear! If only I had some Venetian Treacle!”

But The Two Tousled Mermaids Apothecary, where the medicine was to be found, was far distant, at the old gates of the Ghetto, just about as far as it was possible to be away from the Scilla’s mooring on the Zattere.

Now Teo remembered the night before: how she had heard a scream and smelled burning. Could that have been Cookie’s poor jaws being welded together? And the other noise—now, in retrospect, she was sure that it’d been a pistol shot she’d heard just as she slipped into sleep. Was that what had happened to Professor Marìn? Had Miss Uish shot him and thrown him overboard?

If she could torture Cookie, then murder was not beyond the woman.

“Did she shoot Professor Marìn?” she asked Cookie. “Miss Uish?”

He made inarticulate sounds of distress.

“Write it down!” Teo ripped the galley calendar from the wall and pulled a pencil from her pocket.

Cookie shook his head helplessly.

The unwelcome face of Malfeasance Peaglum inserted itself through the galley door.

“Is this piece of scum interfering with you, Cookie?” he demanded in a threatening tone. “Teodoro Ongania, isn’t it? The Nestle Tripe! You’re already on Miss Uish’s list, skinny boy.”

“Cookie can’t do his letters,” Teo improvised quickly. “I’ve come to read him the new recipes.”

The cook nodded eagerly. Teo had no idea if this was true or not, but she had an instinct that it might prove useful.

“As you were, then,” snapped Peaglum, “and be sharp about it. Here’s the new provisions for the job.”

He dumped a bloodstained sack on the floor and scuttled off. The sack stank of old fish and putrid meat. A thin line of blood ran from it across the floor to Teo’s feet.

Teo opened the recipe book. “ ‘Mock fish soup,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Take ten loaves of old bread and boil in water alongside a sailor’s boot for flavor.