The Mourning Emporium (24 page)

“Dint touch the sides, that,” noted the dog approvingly.

Now that he had fed Teo and Renzo, Turtledove seemed to feel that the Venetian orphans were his own. “Look at them roses bloomin’ in yer cheeks!” he exulted. “Who loves yew?” he asked, cuffing them lightly with his paw. “So yew’ll be joinin’ us then, little ’uns? In the meantimes, I mean, while we finds yer Incogneekies and yer mermaids for yew? Magical creaturs doan get thesselves easily found. They will take some lookin’ for.”

“Join him?” thought Teo, Miss Uish’s cruelty still fresh in her feelings. “I’d like to hug him!”

“And the Bombazine?” asked Renzo.

“We’ll keep on eye on the Lloyd’s Register.”

“She’s a ghost ship. Adult Londoners will not be able to see her. Nor the Ghost-Convicts.”

Teo ventured, “And we need to tell our friends on the Scilla what is going on. They’ll be worried about us. But we can’t go ourselves because the ship is in quar …”

Renzo broke in, “Sealed up by the customs officers.”

“Of course, yew wants to tell yer friends yew’s safe,” said Turtledove reassuringly. “Nothing simpler. I’ll have a word wiv Pattercake.”

Pattercake, it emerged, was a barge dog on the Thames.

“He knows a bit of Eyetalian. He works nights in an Eyetalian restaurant. He’ll run a message to yer friends on the Scilla. Customs officers won’t bovver ’im.”

“How does a dog work in a restaurant?”

“He’s a washer-up. Dogs is very handy that way. Can lick a plate clean quicker ’n an ’ooman can wash it. Yew two good for readin’ an’ writin’? Good. Write a letter. Pattercake will deliver it.”

Greasy offered some sheets of black-edged notepaper and a slim black pencil.

“Mourning pencils?” asked Teo. She began to write rapidly. Eventually, she handed Renzo the paper and he added a page of his own.

… And so we’ll be safe here at the Mansion Dolorous, and have found a way to keep ourselves until we can find Lussa and the Incogniti. We hope that the quarantine ropes will serve to keep our enemies off the Scilla, as well as keeping you in.

Renzo smiled at Teo, and then folded the sheets, and tucked them into a black-edged envelope, which he handed to Turtledove. “But we also need to get food to our friends. There’s nothing much aboard.”

“Not to worry,” said Turtledove. “Pattercake’ll take care o’ that. They’re right generous wiv the leftovers at his restaurant. Bits, take this letter down to Pattercake at Old Compton Street, do.”

As Bits departed via the secret entrance, there came the jingle of a key in the lock of the Mansion Dolorous’s front door.

“Messrs. Tristesse and Ganorus!” Turtledove growled. “Are the coffins shipshape? Good. Get that grin orf yer face, Greasy. Woan suit, woan suit at all. Stand in line an’ look proper miserable,” he ordered, pushing his head into a masterpiece of black straw. Jauntily set on top was a heart-shaped pincushion of jet beads from which sprouted curled black ostrich feathers.

He nudged Teo and Renzo in front of him.

“Why, Turtledove, have you found us two new children?” asked one of the two tidy old gentlemen who now walked into the main hall of the mourning emporium.

The writing above his head was neat and pleasant. Teo decided to like him. “Which is Tristesse and which Ganorus?” she asked.

Turtledove did not answer, but sat demurely on his brindled haunches, his head on one side. Teo realized, “With adults, Turtledove doesn’t even try to talk. London must be like Venice—the adults have lost the ability to hear animals speak.”

“Not that we’re not grateful for the children, dear Dog,” added the second gentleman, a small dapper person seemingly stitched into a tight buttonless black waistcoat. Teo saw a more imaginative and looser script above his head. He patted Turtledove’s broad back.

“These two orphans is from Venice, Italy, sirs,” volunteered Tig, “so they’s bound to be uncommon good at sad, hain’t they? Given the ice flood an’ everybody drownin’ an’ all on Christmas Eve loik. And they speaks the Queen’s Hinglish.”

Their faces bright with curiosity, the two men approached. The dapper man smoothed the hair from Renzo’s forehead with a manicured hand. “Look at this, Mr. Ganorus,” he twittered, “hair, mouth and eyes of an angel. You cannot by any chance sing, boy? Jay’s have just got themselves a singing mourning boy, and we’ve heard he’s surpassingly popular. Do you read notes, boy?”

He handed Renzo some sheet music entitled “Little Sister’s Gone to Sleep.”

In answer, Renzo raised his eyes and let loose a few soulful notes that had the District Disgrace positively shivering with delight and Pylorus Salt rolling his eyes.

Mr. Tristesse clasped his hands to his breast, bleating with pleasure. “That’ll give Jay’s something to think about!” he crowed. Then he cast a shrewd eye on Teo. “This one’s terribly thin. Good eyes, though. Can you weep a few drops, child?” he asked Teo kindly.

Teo had only to think of Professor Marìn’s death and her missing parents, and the tears spurted from her eyes in clear streams that sparkled in the lamplight.

“Highly pathetical,” said Mr. Ganorus approvingly. “That girl can mourn as well as any orphan in London.”

Mr. Tristesse leaned down to pat Teo and Renzo affectionately on their heads. “Greasy, find these dear children some warm mourning clothes. And I think that Numbers Two and Thirteen coffins will do nicely for them.”

Sleeping in a coffin, however softly padded, held few charms. As soon as he laid himself down, Renzo missed the roll of the sea and the rough enfolding comfort of his hammock, not to mention the sleepy late-night chatter of the crew of the Scilla.

Renzo was also distinctly dubious about his six-foot elm coffin, ebonized and gilded, lined inside with ruffled satin over a wool mattress.

Teo’s small mahogany coffin was quite humble in contrast. Its mattress was of cotton, the shroud of linen. There was only the merest graze of fretwork on the lid and handles. Teo’s most urgent concern was to make certain that the lid was firmly bolted open. Once sure of that, she enjoyed stretching out inside her voluminous black flannel nightdress. Her eyes drooped. The District Disgrace sobbed inconsolably in her sleep. Greasy snored to an ecstatic rhythm. The mourning clocks—carriage, grandfather and wristwatch—ticked soothingly.

“Teo!” Renzo whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Slightly,” she yawned. “What is it, Renzo? Don’t you think we’ve been amazingly lucky?”

“But this isn’t finding the mermaids. What if they’ve been attacked by whatever killed the Melusine and the Sea-Bishops? What if the Bombazine …?”

“They were prepared. And Turtledove said he’d help us find them and the pumpkin-sellers. Isn’t he adorable? Much better than trying on our own. We don’t know the first thing about how to get around London.”

“You’ve got maps in your head, memorized, haven’t you?”

“True, but that’s just paper. And we need friends.…”

Before she finished speaking, sleep had overtaken both Teo and Renzo.

Suddenly, Tig was opening the black curtains on a gray London morning, and it was time for Teo and Renzo’s first funeral. Dressed to the neck in crepe, and smothered in mourning hats, the two of them walked in time to Thrasher’s drumbeats beside an open hearse, on which lay a white-draped coffin with a spray of white ostrich plumes nodding on top. Renzo’s tender singing, accompanied by Fossy’s heartbreaking violin, rose above the sound of the city traffic, causing passersby to stop and stare at the coffin with tears in their eyes.

The carriage was drawn by four splendid Flemish geldings, black as jet, rippling their magnificent manes in tidy formation. The horses wore feathers on their heads, also in the deepest black. Satin rosettes decorated their velvety ears.

Turtledove waddled in front, his muzzle held at a noble angle.

The dead man was a minor member of an aristocratic Irish family. So the hearse was followed by a dozen carriages decorated with noble crests and driven by liveried coachmen. Yet all the carriages were empty. As they passed through the salubrious suburbs of Mayfair and Belgravia, Tig explained, “Friends of the great famblies doan attend. It hain’t done. They jist send the carriages as a sign of respeck. Doan look shocked. If the famblies came thesselves, we’d be out of a job today.”

“What about ordinary people? Surely they come to their loved ones’ funerals?”

“They do, bless ’em, but they still hire mourning children when they can afford themselves a bit of a show. They loik us to do the picturesque weepin’.”

“Hoi, there’s Tobias and Bits! They’re mountin’ the mournin’ outside the corpse’s own house, to show ’tis a place of sorrow today. Doan fret, Tobias’s been scrubbed with carbolic.”

Both boys wore long gowns of alpaca trimmed with velvet. From the tops of their hats flowed two thick ribbons of white Irish linen, tied in a bow. They stood solemnly to attention outside the stylish house, each holding an upside-down broom wrapped in black fabric and tied with enormous black bows on the stave. As the Mansion Dolorous mourners passed, Bits and Tobias remained aloof and poker-faced, neither greeting nor smiling at their friends.

“Have we done something to offend them?” asked Teo.

“Oh no, they hain’t allowed to talk or smile when they is mournin’.”

At that moment, Bits dared a subtle wink.

Tig instructed, “Now work them tear-pumps, Teo! We need to show the corpse’s neighbors that the fambly has paid over for the very ’ighest quality o’ grief. When they pays but two pounds and tenpence we can walk quite ordinary, but for twenty pounds we has got to go all out—at least a pint of tears between us. Tristesse and Ganorus pride thesselves on a spiffin’ first-class funeral.”

“You mean there are second-class funerals?”

“And third-class. And paupers’ funerals at unmarked pits. We doan attend those, nat’rally. An’ the street children wot die—we doan do it for the likes of them. No one pays for them to be buried. Their parents leaves their bodies in the streets, for to avoid the shame of a pauper’s funeral.”

“But that must be most rare …,” pressed Teo anxiously.

“I should just ’bout think it isn’t,” said Pylorus Salt, from behind her shoulder. “It said on the Times billboard last week that one child dies of hunger in London every hour.”

After the funeral, Turtledove wriggled out of his finery and disappeared, saying, “Going to find yew some o’ them Eyetalian zookymen, or a taily lady or two, childer! Dint I promise I would?”

As Turtledove departed, Pattercake, a genial collie, arrived with a letter from the Scilla. All was well. The guards posted at St. Mary Overie Dock were not the most vigilant specimens of the force. The night watchman slept peacefully through his shift. (Perhaps Cookie’s offer of a large cup of warm rum—gladly accepted in the cold—gave him sweet dreams.) Giovanni and Emilio had slipped off the Scilla in the early hours and had already found day-work with the bargemen. Their Venetian marine skills were much appreciated. Meanwhile, repairs were already underway on the Scilla, battered from her long journey and the encounter with the colossal squid.

As soon as we can afford a plank, we’ll buy it and sneak it aboard, wrote Emilio. We’re already fixing the masts. Piece by piece we’ll bring the old girl back to glory.

He added, I never thought I’d say this, but we’re actually grateful to Miss Uish for the English lessons. Without them, I’m thinking we would have starved.

Cookie had been taken to a blacksmith who gently removed the torturing wooden casings welded to his jaws.

Sibella, Emilio reported, was desperate to get ashore to the fashionable haunts of Belgravia and Pall Mall, where she apparently knew all the best people. She will keep on about it. Emilio quoted: “This low end of London is quite unknown to me, yet it is plainly detestable. I shall die of disgust.”

Teo muttered, “It’s actually quite surprising that she’s survived this long without a new dress.”

But we’re keeping her aboard, continued Emilio. We’ve decided that there’s something about Sibella we can’t quite trust. We’ve been thinking about what Teo said about her and the leeches and speaking spells to them. What’s more, she doesn’t like cats. Sofonisba doesn’t like her either.

The next lines were in Fabrizio’s slanting handwriting. And have you noticed that Miss Uish didn’t even try to get a ransom for her? As if no one wanted her back? She never talks about her family, only about her dresses. And sometimes, when she thinks I’m not watching her, I see a really odd look go across her face.

Sibella had given all of them coral necklaces. According to Emilio, who had obviously seized the pencil back, She said they will change color and warn you if you’re sickening for something.

They didn’t believe in them, but the boys wore them anyway, just in case.

Despite the good news, Renzo’s face was pinched and pale. He clenched a damp, tattered newspaper in his hand.

“Why the long nose? Woan do, woan do at all!” Teo mimicked Turtledove, “You see, they are doing famously on the Scilla.”

Renzo held out the paper. “I just picked this up in the gutter outside.”

Teo too paled on reading the Times’s report of violent art thefts in cities all along the western coasts of Europe. In Cádiz, Oporto, Bilbao and Bordeaux, famous paintings had been ripped off the walls. Innocent guards and curators had been killed. And the stolen masterpieces? All Canalettos, Carpaccios and Longhis. And their subjects were invariably Venice and the Venetians. Looking at the map printed alongside the story, it was clear that whoever was stealing the art was gradually making their way toward London. And in every city where the Venetian art was pillaged, so too were the prisons broken into, and thousands of prisoners melted away into the countryside, with reports that many were later seen making their way north, toward the French coast. A separate story related immense losses among flocks of coastal sheep from southern Spain to France.

Renzo asked quietly, “And how shall we know when the Bombazine arrives in London?”

“When people start to die.”

Next morning, the Mansion Dolorous was inundated with requests for children’s funerals. Sixteen children had died overnight of mysterious wounds after somehow falling in the Thames. Of course, the richer children were to be buried by Jay’s of Regent Street. But the Mansion Dolorous had eight funerals to prepare, using up the entire stock of size two coffins.