Salamander Read online

  – This was on a ship.

  – Oh, mouse, I swore –

  – Tell me, please.

  The midwife glances around, and Pica is startled to see fear in her eyes, fear of someone or something other than the nuns. Finally she moves closer to Pica and speaks in a hurried whisper.

  – It was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen. High at the ends, like castle towers, and made up of different sorts of planks, as if it had been knocked together from a hundred shipwrecks. Steam billowing out of the portholes, and all these frightening rumblings and other noises too. I got a good long look, you see, because they rowed me to it. The ship was anchored in the lagoon, out past the Lido.

  – Here in Venice?

  – Yes. I thought it was strange they wouldn’t just bring your mother to the lying-in hospital, and then when they hauled up the side, all of a sudden I thought, The plague. I was sure that’s why they were bringing me out in secret, and I started blubbering and carrying on. Then the man in black sticks a gold coin under my nose and says, You see this? This is all you need concern yourself with. He takes me in to the locked room where your mother is already well along, and the last thing he says to me is, You will not speak a word to her. She is not to know where we are. That was when I knew the poor girl was their prisoner —

  Sister Beata appears on the steps of the Ospedale, glaring at the midwife, who moves away from the gate.

  – Now you’ll be in for a hard time of it, mouse. I’m sorry.

  – I don’t care. Just come back again, please.

  They were leaving the castle. The coach was already waiting on the ferry.

  He sat in the entrance hall on a chair with the velvet torn from its back, while Pica, Djinn, and the boatmen went back and forth with the baggage. He was not strong enough yet to help, and the sight of the unroofed sky filled him with dread. They had only convinced him to leave his cell by telling him he could bring along his press and the rest of his printing equipment.

  He gazed around the draughty shell of the castle. Sliding walls hung crookedly, arrested forever in their unfinished paths. A winding staircase ended in mid-air. The remaining bookshelves stood motionless, some toppled, their shelves plundered. Pica had told him that when the Count died, the servants ran off with almost everything that might be of value.

  She had found what was left of the automaton of her mother just inside the doors of the castle. The glass eyes had been removed, the russet wig torn away, one of the arms broken off. At first she had insisted on bringing the thing with her when they left. Ludwig, after all, had been crated up with the rest of Flood’s printing tools and sent downriver on a barge. But at the last moment, she decided to leave the automaton where it was, propped up against the door, a ring of keys in its one remaining hand, as if she wanted something to be there to greet her should she ever return.

  The man from the Imperial Court who had been hovering around all morning finally had Pica look over his heap of documents. From what Flood understood, she had to sign away to the state all the Count’s land, to pay his immense debts. What remained of his possessions was hers.

  Like me, Flood thought.

  She had told him a little about herself, but he had found it difficult to follow the thread of her story. She would break off unexpectedly, wind time back and forth, carry on somewhere else without telling him how they had got there.

  And where they were going …

  From the rumours Pica had gathered at the Ospedale she described the strange vessel to Djinn and he had nodded in recognition. Turini, the carpenter, lived now on the Count’s ship with his wife the contortionist and their two children, identical twins. They made their living as acrobats, giving performances up and down the Danube. He had written to them, Flood gathered, let them know the daughter of the Countess wished to see the ship.

  A very old ship, Pica had described it. With strange machines on it that give off steam.

  Only now did Flood realize that this had to be the same doubtful vessel that had brought him from London all those years ago.

  – Signore?

  He looked up to see Pica beside him, her hand hovering just above his shoulder. Djinn stood at the doors, watching him as he always had, with guarded curiosity.

  – We must go now, Pica said quietly. This place doesn’t belong to me any more.

  An orchestra and choir of thirty-three girls in white linen robes, playing and singing Salve Regina. The concertmaster claps his hands once to call a halt and the music collapses with a dying wheeze. The concertmaster points an accusing finger at Pica, who lowers the violin from her shoulder.

  – As the immortal Horace wrote, Lament, friend, among the chairs of your lady pupils. You are running ahead of the rest of us, child.

  – I’m sorry, signore. Francesca dal Contralto stepped on my foot.

  – She’s lying, signore. I did not.

  The concertmaster rubs his temples.

  – How on earth did the Maestro endure this for twenty years? I sincerely doubt he wrote this piece with the intention of having it sound like an overwound watch. The truth is, child, you are always ahead. Am I to believe that someone is perpetually treading on your foot? No. It is clear you cannot keep time, and so you are excused.

  The violin lies at her feet. She scratches at the burning red patches on her arms. Her furious nails climb to her neck, are caught by a thin ribbon, which she tugs out of her bodice. She holds up the strange key, examines it for the thousandth time.

  Two tiny letters are engraved on the haft:

  NF

  Today is visiting day. All afternoon the flustered nuns come and go. One by one girls are called out to the visiting chamber, where ladies in hooded cloaks and men in masks are gathered expectantly on the other side of a long wirework grille, like customers in a shop.

  Sister Beata appears at the door to look for Francesca, who has gone missing. Pica holds up the key.

  – This was my mother’s.

  – I have told you all I know, and all I wish to know. You would do well to follow my example.

  – The old woman said she didn’t die.

  Sister Beata scowls.

  – That midwife is a drunkard and a fool. (She sighs and shakes her head.) My child, my child, be content with your lot. Never forget how fortunate you are to have been accepted here, where so many care for you, for your welfare. You can never make yourself legitimate, but in this place, with God’s help, you may make amends for your birth.

  Sister Beata sweeps angrily from the room and after a moment Francesca crawls out from under a bed. She always hides on visiting day. She hates the men who come to look at her and tell her how lovely she is growing to be, and that if they are kind to her she is sure to be kind to them.

  She creeps catlike to the doorway, listens, then turns to Pica.

  – Don’t believe anything that old witch says. Go on, ask them who your father was. I dare you. They’ll tell you he’s dead too. It means one of them, your mother or father, was titled and the other one wasn’t.

  – You mean like a lord or –

  – I’ve heard stories. From the girls who’ve left. They say your grandfather is a Hungarian prince, or something like that, who lives in a castle on an island. That key of yours probably came from there. Things like that always happen in the books. Your grandfather must have had you brought here, when he found out that his darling son or daughter … you know …

  Pica waits wide-eyed for her to finish. Francesca snorts.

  – No, you don’t know. Here, read this. (She hands Pica a tiny book bound in red cloth, its fore-edge grimy with much handling) There’s a scene in here that will explain what your parents did to make you.

  – I’m not finished the last book you gave me.

  – Take it anyways. You’re better at hiding things, magpie. If Sister Beata catches me with another novel I’m done for.

  She crouches in an alcove just off the refectory, holding the book to the light of a single wall taper. Sin
ce she first began reading Francesca’s forbidden novels she has memorized paths through the Ospedale that avoid the undeviating routes of the nuns.

  … her shining Eyes swam in a Sea of Languor, her Cheeks glowed anew like Embers, her Bosom heav’d more quick: a sweet Confusion reigned in every Part. The transported Lover snatch’d her to his burning Breast, printed unnumbered Kisses on her Lips, then held her off to feast his Eyes on her yielding Charms; – Beauties which till then he knew but in Idea. His eager Hands were Seconds to his Sight, and travell’d over all –; while she, in gentle Sighs and faltering Accents, confessed she received a Pleasure not inferior to that she gave …

  She hears a sound and shuts the book. Two of the younger nuns glide past, whispering to one another, wrapped in their own conspiracy. She has heard that some of them were shut away here for the same crime as her mother’s. That was what Francesca called it: a crime. That was why she was a prisoner on the ship. Pica tries to imagine her mother and father in the scene she has just been reading. Two people without faces. They burned for one another, as Francesca’s books always say.

  She came from that fire.

  Distracted by a flicker of light, she turns to the candle. The flame, slender and faintly wavering, looks to her like a fragile living thing, weaving, searching. Slowly she reaches out and touches a hand to the flame.

  Everything was moving too quickly. One day they were in Vienna, the next Pressburg, and two days after that Buda, where Turini and his family awaited them. Each day of their journey began with the trial of stepping outside the inn they had put up at the night before and facing the limitless world. He was almost left behind several times, lingering in rooms and courtyards long after it was time to carry on, bewildered by the swiftness with which things were happening and desiring, like a child, to flee from what he could not control.

  In the cities, crowds swept through the streets like flocks of startled pigeons. Didn’t they see how fast they were going, that they were bound to smash headlong -? After eleven years in a small trapezoidal room he needed the world to conform to that maddening, essential shape. He walked with his hands stretched out in front of him like a blind man, anticipating walls and corners. He shrank into his cloak as they sped along in the coach, unable to bear the sight of the road rising, falling, curving away ahead of them and behind them with such reckless freedom.

  The world, things, seemed to be carved of exquisite crystal, every facet, every sensation brilliant, miraculous. The sight of cobwebs jewelled with dew in a dead tree at dawn. The reek of wet straw wafting from a distant farm. The whack of a hod carrier’s missile of spit against a gatepost. It was not long before Pica stopped letting him pay the coach drivers and porters, since he would give them most of the money in his purse, enchanted by the dull clink of coins falling into an open palm.

  In the coach Pica had begun reading to him from her little collection of books, and he realized eventually that she was trying to keep his wandering mind occupied. She read from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Gulliver’s Travels, and the seventh volume of the Libraria Technicum, which Flood had found where he had concealed it eleven years before. He had told her it was a favourite of her mother’s, but before he gave it to her he proceeded to name its parts. Fore-edge. Joint. Rib.

  – Before I teach you to print a book, you should take one apart and put it back together.

  – Not this one, she said, tugging the seventh volume out of his hands.

  – Only when you unbind books, piece by piece, do you truly learn to love them.

  After that she would not let the book out of her sight. Now she read to him from it cautiously, repeating words until she was sure of them.

  Inoculation: From earliest Times the Women of remote Circassia have communicated the Small-pox to their Children, by making an Incision in the Arm and putting into it a Pustule taken from the infected Body of another Child….

  He asked her to read that entry again and she looked up from the book.

  – Djinn says my mother was very sick when she was a girl, she said. Was it smallpox?

  – I don’t think so.

  She flipped back and forth in the book, settled on another entry.

  Huguenots: French Protestants, fleeing Persecution and Slaughter, who have found Refuge in more tolerant Nations, such as England, Holland, and the American Colonies. Many are skilled Craftsmen and Artisans, working in such Trades as Watchmaking, Weaving, Printing….

  – That’s us, Flood said.

  The girl looked up from the book.

  – Us?

  – You are Huguenot, on my side.

  She took this in, then read the rest of the entry in silence. When she was finished she closed the book.

  – Tell me about us, she said.

  Now that he was not speaking about his craft, his words came haltingly. He told her that his great-grandfather had come to London in the last century and set up a print shop. He had changed his name when he discovered that the English were not quite as tolerant as he had been told.

  – Your mother liked to read about London, he said.

  She flipped through the book and found the entry. She read it out loud, then after a while fell silent so that he glanced at her and saw that she had returned to the beginning of the volume. She was reading the whole work through, every word, from time to time marking passages with scraps of newspaper she collected as they travelled. She lay the strips of paper carefully onto the pages, the way a priest might mark his place in a Bible.

  – A man came to see me once, she said. He spoke French.

  She has never been called to the visiting chamber, and so when Sister Beata appears at the door with the summons, she is too shocked to move.

  She is already dressed in her best clothes. All the girls must wear their finest on visiting day, and so all she need do is follow obediently and keep her eyes on the floor. But she cannot move. Her heart is hammering and a cold sweat has broken out on her forehead. She wonders if she is about to be sick.

  Her name is hissed again from the doorway and she moves at last, following the hem of Sister Beata’s habit to the audience chamber, scarcely daring to breathe. She has been drilled in the proper etiquette: she stands beside her chair, eyes on the floor, waiting for the invitation to sit. It comes, in a man’s voice. On the verge of fainting she obeys, and then at last raises her eyes to the grille.

  A tall, thin man stands there, dressed in a priest’s black cassock, a pair of black gloves and a mask in his hands. He looks her over in unreadable silence for a long moment and then speaks, his voice soft and yet cold underneath.

  – Signorina, I bring you greetings from your grandfather. As he heard I was on my way through Venice, he asked me to stop and visit you. He wishes me to send word to him that you are happy and in good health, which I trust you are.

  – Yes, signore, she says, as she has been taught. I am grateful to be here. Thank you.

  He has spoken, and she has replied, in French. He seems pleased to hear how well she speaks the language.

  – You like to read, I’m told.

  – Yes, signore. Very much.

  – So do I.

  The stranger toys with the mask and gloves in his hands, his eyes never leaving her.

  – Good. I’m glad to hear that all is well. Then … it would appear that I have fulfilled my commission.

  The stranger tugs on his gloves. Pica glances at Sister Beata, who is just turning away to fetch the next girl. She leans forward and clutches the grille.

  – Excuse me, signore. Please. My grandfather … who is he?

  The stranger frowns, as all adults do when she asks the wrong questions, but Pica is certain she sees something else in the dark eyes that watch her so carefully: a glint of amusement like the glimmer of a distant star.

  – I am sorry, signorina, but I am not at liberty to divulge that information. Your grandfather, let me say, is a man who prefers the posing of riddles over their solutions. However, I have no doubt that you will
be enlightened in due time.

  The stranger is already turning away when the midwife’s words come back to her.

  The man in black.

  He held up the raw potato she had bought from a roadside peddler and peeled to share with him.

  – Pretend this is a piece of copper.

  In his other hand was a piece of type.

  – The type-founder strikes the steel punch into it. There, like so, a sunken impression of the letter a.

  A raven croaked close by and Flood looked up expectantly into the sombre wet trees along the roadside. The coach had gotten stuck in the mud a few miles outside Buda. Djinn had gone with the postilion to fetch help and had not yet returned. The sky, which had been clouded over all day, was now brightening, and Flood felt the familiar anxiousness squeeze his heart and the thought of that limitless sea of blue. He turned back to Pica, who was gnawing a carrot and gazing distantly out at the hills. Was she even listening?

  – The copper matrix is placed in a mould, he went on, and into the mould is poured the molten alloy. The metal fills the impression, hardens, and there is your piece of type, with the raised letter backwards again on its surface, like the original punch.

  – Then why not just use the punch, Pica said, to print with? Wait, I see. You need lots of a’s on each page.

  – Right. This way the type-cutter can cast as many of each letter as desired, each one exactly the same. Any other questions so far?

  – Are you going to eat that potato?

  – Take it. Now we place our piece of type, our finished letter a, in the composing stick, this way

  – That’s upside down.

  – The printer’s first lesson, Flood said, nodding. Sometimes you have to sneak around your common sense.

  He heard a shout from down the road and looked up to see a haywagon pulled by a pair of oxen, and Djinn beside the driver, waving.

  She is sitting up in bed with her shift pulled over her shoulders, leaving her back bare. The doctor’s fat, greasy fingers probe her ribs, tap her breastbone, squeeze her neck. Sister Beata’s horrified whisper slithers out of the shadows behind him.