The Mourning Emporium (36 page)

The Venetian mermaids swam alongside the boats. Some were armed with shields and tridents. Other mermaids waved their “noggin’ boots”—old sailors’ boots mounted on sticks, designed to stamp on the automaton scolopendre about which Teo had warned them. The parrots hovered overhead in disciplined formation.

Teo noticed that the tousled curls of the Venetian mermaids were looking particularly bouffant in the dim dawn light. Then she realized that each mermaid bore on her head one of the large Sea Spiders who had woven the protective cocoons for the Venetian paintings. Catching Teo’s eye, Flos indicated the fish-bone catapult hanging around her neck on a coral chain.

“Won’t that be rather cruel?” asked Teo. “To the Sea Spiders, I mean. To hurl them from catapults?”

Lussa smiled. “The Arachnids have volunteered their Services. Who are We to refuse any Aid in this desperate Moment?”

“Speaking of aid, where are the London mermaids?” asked Renzo.

“Dey’ve all come down with da Nervous Prostration and da Biliousness,” spat Flos contemptuously. “And da Internal Wastings and da Diseased Irritability. But Nerolia sayed mayhap dey’ll come when dey has finished slatherin’ demselves in mentholated Vaseline and taking turns on da Oxydonor Electropoise. Don’t ask.”

Flos made a noise like a scolopendra exploding.

“Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask …,” suggested the parrots wisely.

“Sssh,” hissed Renzo. “We’re getting close to the Bombazine.”

The Trojan ark approached the Bombazine from the larboard, the other boats and the mermaids quietly making their way to hide in the shadow of the stern.

“Now!” ordered Turtledove.

The animals on the ark burst into an eloquent yapping and yowling.

Miss Uish’s beautiful brow and piled curls appeared promptly over the taffrail. Her eyes widened at the sight of all the plump animals carefully arranged on the decks and balconies of the ark.

To some hovering Ghost-Convicts she snapped, “Bring the creatures aboard!”

Over the silent river, her voice rang out in all its steely cruelty, with a slight slur hanging on the consonants.

Ann Picklefinch whispered in an expert voice, “Yon lady is moroculous on gin. I’ll bet she’s hangin’ coggly on ’er feet!”

Teo was shivering, her skin remembering all the punishments ordered by that cold voice, especially when it was under the influence of rum. Her heart ached for the fat squirrels, foxes and rats, all so willing, so stouthearted—so like sacrificial victims.

But these sacrificial victims had been drilled by Turtledove, and they had no intention of ending up as marrowfat in a pail.

As soon as they were winched onto the Bombazine, they went into action in their different special ways. The weasels nipped the ankles of the Ghost-Convicts; the foxes bit their thighs. The squirrels took flying leaps that toppled two Ghost-Convicts at a time. Their joint strategy, brilliantly achieved, was to get the Ghost-Convicts to fall flat on the floor, where they would entangle the legs of their colleagues and become easy targets for the fishskins.

In the resultant confusion, the Incogniti, the Mansion Dolorous gang and Teo and Renzo boarded the ship. Teo looked longingly at the booby hatch. Her parents were belowdecks, not even aware that she was about to rescue them.

“But I mustn’t lead the enemy down there. They are safe for the moment,” she persuaded herself, turning back to the job at hand. She pulled a fishskin out of her pinafore and launched it into the thick of the thrashing heap of Ghost-Convicts, who were still struggling to rise to their feet but were perpetually tripped up by the fat animals.

All around her, Tig, Pylorus, Giovanni, Renzo and Sebastiano were doing exactly the same thing: fishskins raced straight to their targets, who were shouting “What the flaming hell?” and “ ’Strewth!” And then there was a gray shimmer, a vile stink and the tinkle of cutlasses and billycans falling on deck.

The next rank of Ghost-Convicts was now advancing. Fortunately, Hyrum, Thrasher and Bits already had their fishskins primed. Signor Alicamoussa was a few yards away, in hand-to-hand combat with three human Hooroo criminals at once. The pumpkin-sellers, led by Uncle Tommaso, were decapitating braces of Ghost-Convicts with swinging arcs of their metal trays.

The Ghost-Convicts began to grimace with fright. Some of them moved backward, crushing their comrades behind. In the density of ghosts, each bursting fishskin dissolved three or four of them at a time.

“Starve the lizards, what a stink!” shouted Signor Alicamoussa.

Turtledove shook a Ghost-Convict’s arm out of his mouth. “Where’s that child-hurting female Uish going?” he demanded.

Miss Uish was to be glimpsed disappearing below. Renzo shouted, “She’s off to get Bajamonte Tiepolo!”

“I’ll be on to her, then,” growled Turtledove. He bounded back on deck and padded straight down the hatch. But, by the sounds that emerged from beneath them, Teo could tell that he’d been distracted from his pursuit.

“He must have seen the treadmills,” she realized.

And indeed, it was clear that Turtledove had gone utterly insane with rage to see the children at their grim work. After howls of fury, and endearments to the children and dogs, came the crash of wooden machines being reduced to matchwood.

Seconds later, the wan faces of Greasy Ressydew and Marg’rit Savory appeared through the booby hatch, followed by dozens of other emaciated boys and girls, all blinking, weeping and fainting. The Haggis-munchers, Fossy and the District Disgrace, as arranged, led all the poor captives to safety, guiding their weakened legs down the ladders to the tenders that the mermaids had “borrowed” from bigger vessels along the river. The mermaids swam their frail cargo to shore, where they were revived with small spoonfuls of curry, hot lime juice and warm black blankets from the mourning emporium.

Sibella was escorted on deck by Massimo and Emilio. “Where shall we put the prisoner?” they asked Signor Alicamoussa.

“Out of harm’s way,” he answered briefly. “Youse just tie her securely, yes. Somewhere below, but within cooee of the main deck. Need to be talking to her later.”

And then he went back to smashing suntanned criminals between the blades of his twin rapiers, like a textbook illustration of “our handsome hero’s derring-do.”

The London ghosts fought with their various weapons: Roundheads and Cavaliers with their muskets (“Now die like the dog you are, sirrah!”), chimney sweeps with their brushes (“Take that, yew scum!”) and Roman soldiers with their swords (“Dabis, improbe, poenas!”).

Rosato was meanwhile creeping about the deck with a huge pair of shears and a bucket, cutting all the wires and dousing the sticks of dynamite. All but three of the rescued children and dogs had been safely taken down the ladders when something dark flew overhead.

“Sea Spider ahoy!” called Flos from below.

One after another, the Sea Spiders allowed themselves to be hurled from the mermaids’ fish-bone catapults. When they reached one of the Ghost-Convicts, the insects wrapped blinding silk around their eyes, making them easy targets for the fat little dogs and foxes, who gnawed their ankles till they fell to the ground. At that point, the Venetian sailors deftly trussed them in the most devilish combinations of knots known to any navy on the face of the earth, but always including at least the monkey’s fist, the carrick bend, the constrictor and the timber hitch.

Then the London ghosts carried them across the river and up into the railway arches, where they dragged their bodies deep into the stones. A sound of grinding brick echoed from the arches over to the Bombazine.

“They’re not coming out again!” Teo noticed. “The London ghosts … They’re staying in the stone.”

Renzo lifted his telescope to his eye. “They are plugging up the walls with their own bodies!”

From below, Lussa called, “And so They shall ensure that our Enemy’s Soldiers stay There as well. This is how They redeem Themselves & their Immortality.”

And from under the bridge floated the voice of a Roman centurion: “Nocte una quivis vel deus esse potest.”

“One night like this can make any man a god,” Renzo translated.

There was a sudden lull in the fighting. The misty air that swirled around the deck grew colder, if possible, than it had been before. And Bajamonte Tiepolo appeared on the companionway, his expression livid, his right arm raised. In it was a cutlass dripping with a green liquid. Miss Uish stood beside him, armed with a green-tipped dagger. And next to her loomed Lieutenant Rosebud, missing an arm, but equipped with a sword in the one that was left, and with the customary shark’s tooth protruding from his back. Rosebud’s sword was also coated with something viscous and emerald-green. Bajamonte Tiepolo yelled menacingly, “Come and get some, Venetians!”

“Poison!” shouted Renzo. “The weapon of cowards!”

“I’ve been waiting some time to see you again, Studious Son,” hissed Bajamonte Tiepolo. “And to hear your pathetic platitudes and your whining moralizing.”

Renzo grabbed a cutlass from one of the fallen Ghost-Convicts and brandished it above his head. “Worse luck for you, then. Round two, I think?”

“I never conceded round one to you that day in Venice,” sneered Bajamonte Tiepolo. “You were in pieces. I was about to have your life when the Undrowned Child started cursing me. You could never have beaten me on your own.”

“And I don’t require the glory of that,” answered Renzo coolly. “I am happy and proud to be helped by my friends, the mermaids, these brave Londoners, my Uncle Tommaso, the Incogniti, the London ghosts and Turtledove, and especially Teo. If you were ten times as strong and twenty times as evil, we’d still have the better of you, because we have that between us.”

Miss Uish advanced, murmuring, “Shall I silence the voluble little brat for you, dearest? Let this be my treat.”

Everyone else on deck had frozen to the place where they were standing when Bajamonte Tiepolo had appeared.

The spell was broken when Sofonisba pounced on Miss Uish’s head from high in the rigging.

“Thisss one’s mi-i-i-i-ne!” she yowled.

The two tumbled over and over on the deck, the woman raking at the cat with her long fingernails and biting tufts of fur with her pretty white teeth. Sofonisba slashed and stabbed with her talons, ripping Miss Uish’s hair with her pearly incisors.

And suddenly everyone was at war again, shrieking, slashing, punching and grabbing. Howls and dreadful Australian swearing filled the air. Renzo was dueling with Bajamonte Tiepolo; Signor Alicamoussa with Lieutenant Rosebud. Uncle Tommaso and the pumpkin-sellers were rounding up the remaining Ghost-Convicts and throwing them overboard, where Flos and the other mermaids could be heard battling with tridents and shields. The few remaining criminals had rushed to the lifeboat and were cramming it with sheep.

“Can my parents hear?” wondered Teo, flinging another fishskin. “I hope not. They would be terrified.”

Bajamonte Tiepolo shouted, “Uish! Why don’t you unleash your special forces?”

The voice of Flos called out from below, “Ye of tepid courage, ye dog, always reliant on da devices of others! Mean as monkey’s muck and twice as nasty, ye is!”

Holding Sofonisba’s head down to the deck with one hand, Miss Uish shouted, “Dearest, you know that my special forces are somewhat … difficult to control. So I planned to wait and see if these clowns caused us a minute’s worry. So far it has been child’s play to keep them down and out.”

At that moment, Sofonisba’s right front paw shot out and scratched a deep, jagged weal right down Miss Uish’s beautiful left cheek.

“Perhaps you are right, my darling!” she called to Il Traditore. To the nearest Ghost-Convict she shouted, “Free the insects!”

He lifted the ring of a trapdoor in the deck. Teo whispered, “Gristle and guts! The Russian-doll scolopendre!”

Flos, catching sight of Miss Uish’s wounded face, shouted, “Oi up there, Bagger, what a fright you do look! I heard dere hiring for house hauntings in Moldavia!”

No one had time to laugh. For a sinister mist of white insects flowed from the trapdoor. They swarmed over the bodies of the pumpkin-sellers and criminals alike, running straight toward their mouths.

Too late, Teo called out, “Close your lips and your eyes! Mermaids, throw up the noggin’ boots!”

A rain of boots flew over the taffrail, accompanied by the mermaids’ traditional scolopendre-killing cry of “Yoiks!” The Londoners and Venetians seized them.

But it was too late. For the scolopendre’s favorite ploy was to sting the tongue so it swelled and choked their victims. Three of the pumpkin-sellers fell to the deck. The others were writhing in pain against the stanchions, and now the tide of insects headed toward the boys and girls standing horrified by the forecastle.

Sofonisba whirled away from Miss Uish to deal with this new enemy. She crunched and kicked and head-butted the scolopendre until just half a dozen remained, mostly those defective models that simply ran around in buzzing circles or fell on their backs with their tiny mechanical legs whirring in the air. But the pumpkin-sellers had fallen numbly silent and lay glassy-eyed on their backs. The boys and girls ran helplessly among them, smoothing their brows, wiping their faces with grimy handkerchiefs. Uncle Tommaso was among the fallen, his bloodstained face already turning blue.

“They’re dyin’! Our hot-zookymen is chokin’ to death,” wailed Tig.

It was at this moment that the sound of refined voices was heard below. The London mermaids were to be seen swimming a ladylike breaststroke between the icebergs. On their backs were pretty straw baskets full of bottles and arrows. Slung over their shoulders were delicate bows made from the bones of fish.

“Make way!” Pucretia elevated her clipped voice. “We have a cure for all insect bites. Chameleon oil. Made from pure chameleons.”

Flos paused, her slingshot held aloft. “What yer babbling about now, ye great wet? And where were ye when we called for help? Trust ye to arrive when it’s all but over, ye warbling clotheslines!”

“It’s not quite over, actually!” cried Emilio, manfully struggling against a Ghost-Convict who was trying to pull him into a cupboard.