The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Book Five: The Book of Tears // Chapter One: The Fury of Clarinda Trevisan

The backhanded slap from Kenezki that threw Clarinda off the Viking longboat didn't break her nose, but she slammed face-first into the solid wall of the fjord's storm current and certainly cracked something.

Pain exploded throughout the girl's head, but she retained enough wits to clamp her lips to prevent inhaling water. Her body felt strangely constrained and she lashed out with her quarterstaff at the unseen obstacle barring her escape. Gungnir moved only half a foot in the water before rapping against an unseen barrier.

Pinpricks of white blinked in the murky, freezing water as she struggled to stay conscious. The feeling of claustrophobia (and an old fear of drowning in a confined space) stirred a memory from childhood. It flashed before her eyes in the darkness.

Clarinda and two girlfriends, all ten years' old, played a game of Hoodman's Blind on a late-fall day in the Venetian streets of the Campo San Lorenzo, near a Benedictine monastery by the Arsenale, and things were beginning to get out of hand. The game involved each child taking turns trying to tag the other players while wearing a hood Clarinda had woven. Beppe, Luciano, and Giancarlo — boys who were a few years older than Clarinda's friends and much too good-looking! — made the game dangerous when they began slapping the blinded player with their own rock-filled hoods.

After seeing one of the other neighborhood girls run off with a bloody nose, Clarinda told Donna and Isabella that they ought to head back to the Trevisan home. The suggestion was futile. Donna wanted to stay near Luciano and wouldn't hear of anything else. It didn't matter to her that he had a bad reputation, she just thought his dark eyes and brooding personality were "molto misterioso."

The air cooled and shadows continued to lengthen into evening, but the fear that Donna might try to steal a kiss from a young hoodlum kept Clarinda and Isabella from leaving the game without their friend. If Clarinda hadn't been arguing with Donna about leaving, she'd never have gotten tagged by Beppe and forced to put on the hood!

The three rogues, envious of her stories about the exotic lands across the sea that she'd seen on her father's ships, grabbed her and pummeled her as they dragged her to the edge of one of the docks. Clarinda landed a boot across one of the boy's jaws with a satisfying crunch, and two hands fell away, but the other two boys continued to drag her across the cobblestones.

Clarinda heard the shouts of the fishmonger, Signore Stagnaro, as he realized too late what the boys were doing, but then she plunged into the cool waters of the canal and sensed no more.

She'd felt the disorientation of being underwater in pitch-blackness, but instead of being trapped against this cursed wall as she was now, seven years ago she'd had the satisfaction of wrenching the hood off, surfacing, clambering onto the quay, and dashing after those tre facinorosi poco! Beppe wasn't one of Clarinda's targets because he'd already been sent sprawling by her desperate kick, and now Signore Stagnaro had the boy by the collar of his tunic and thrashed him with a fishing rod.

Clarinda sprinted past them, tackled Giancarlo Grimaldi and punched him repeatedly in the groin as they fell. Thanks to Pasquale's training, she knew exactly where to hit and incapacitated the teenager so quickly that he didn't even try to fight back—he keeled over and started wailing for the pain to stop. Alarmed at the turn of events, the last boy, Luciano, held his hands up in surrender, but Clarinda pushed right through him, not stopping her punches, knee-jabs, and kicks until some of the adults in the neighborhood pulled her away so that boy could crawl to his home.

That was the last time the three-boy gang ever frequented the Campo San Lorenzo, but it was also the last day of Clarinda and Donna Agostina's friendship. Donna never forgave her for attacking Luciano and his friends—since none of the boys ever came back to that neighborhood, Donna never had a chance at stealing that kiss!