The Thief Lord: Chapters 44-53

Renzo led Scipio and Prosper to an arbor behind the house. Frozen leaves hung from the wooden trellis.

The arbor led into a labyrinth. The hedges were overgrown and the labyrinth had turned into a dense thicket.

I told you it was his idea to pay you with fake cash. He even procured it for me.

He thinks, of course, that he's dealing with the Conte Valaresso, who is so impoverished that he has to sell off some of his family's treasures every now and again.

The merman held his trident in his wooden fist, the mermaid looked into the distance out of pale green eyes, dreaming of the waters of the open sea.

“Where are you taking me, you little squirt?” they heard a voice say. “I’m already as bristly as a cactus.”

“Duck!” he whispered to Prosper and Renzo. They all cowered behind the platform.

Renzo stared with loathing at Barbarossa.

Barbarossa shouted, “Darned contraption!" and it sounded to Prosper as if his voice was already higher-pitched.

The merry-go-round lurched through one final round, and finally the figures shuddered to a sickening halt.

“It wouldn't stop!'' Barbarossa cried, holding his arms up protectively. Renzo kept flailing around blindly, until Prosper jumped on to the platform and held him back—with his one good hand.

He put his stubby hands on his hips.

“The merry-go-round will never turn again, little redhead," he said. “All thanks to you. Nor will you be going back into town, at least for the time being. Who knows what other catastrophes you would cause there. No. You heard what Renzo said: You are now his prisoner. And to be honest: I don't envy you.”

“How are you going to get back to the island?” Scipio asked him as they moored the boats by a jetty in a secluded canal.

“I've forgotten the combination!” he said. But Renzo gave him such an ominous look that it immediately came back to him.

Scipio and Prosper had forgotten all about the redhead. How small he looked between all the valuable and worthless things he had greedily amassed.

“Once I’m big again,” he mumbled, glowering at Scipio and Prosper, "I'll take revenge on everybody who didn't stop me from getting onto that cursed merry-go-round. I'll—”

The walls were decorated with whatever they had managed to salvage from the movie theater.

But many of their favorite pictures and photographs were still hanging on that movie theater wall, above the empty mattresses, along with their homely scrawls and scribbles.

Then Mosca said with great deliberation, “Boy, Riccio, that was a real speech!”

Barbarossa was enthroned in Ida's best armchair like a king forced to watch a bunch of mediocre actors perform.

“If you think so," Victor grudgingly assented.

“If you think so," Victor grudgingly assented.

“Some people are really incredibly gullible.”

“What if she's really stingy? Her money won't be of any use. And she definitely won't be allowed to send me to school. Ernesto Barbarossa is not going to sit among a bunch of screaming, snotty-nosed brats who can't tell A from B. What if Aunt Esther doesn't understand that?”

“I am not prepared to look after them again!” Esther interrupted her brusquely.

“I will deal with it,” Ida answered, and Lucia gruffly left the room.

Barbarossa stood by the door, looking very small and forlorn.

“Mother Ida?" he queried as he put his hand on the doorknob. “May I ask when we will finally go on that excursion to the Accademia Museum? I would so much like to see Titian's paintings again.''

The redbeard is really laying it on rather thick. Esther's enraptured look, however, quickly set him straight.

They said good-bye to Prosper, Bo, Hornet, Ida, and Lucia, who also gave them two plastic bags full of provisions.

His feet ached, he was tired, and he would have loved to be sitting next to Ida on the couch. Why hadn't he done just that? Instead he had gone traipsing through the night.

She eyed Scipio furtively, as if he was someone whose name she couldn't recall.

“Soon the whole of Venice will know that Victor Getz is looking for Dottor Massimo's son. What were you thinking?”
“It was a sort of intuition.”

Nobody, not even Prosper, ever asked Scipio whether he regretted having gone on the merry-go-round. However, maybe the new name he had given himself, the one he put on Victor's door, already gave the answer: Scipio Fortunato, the fortunate one.