* * *
‘Goodness, girls, isn’t this splendid, and so many schoolchildren; there must be nearly two hundred of you here!’ Miss Morrison beamed, flinging her arms wide but still cutting a tiny figure in the grandeur of the ballroom. ‘It’s such a privilege for our school to be invited here. Just look at the frescoes on the ceiling.’
Natalie found herself standing up a little straighter; it wasn’t a room that called for slouching. Only Tall Polly hunched her shoulders in a vain attempt to appear shorter than the group of boys – the boys from the art gallery were here! – who were strolling across the terrazzo floor as though they owned the place.
‘Look what they’re wearing,’ Shy Kelly whispered. No homemade masks paired with ordinary clothes for those top-notch students and their teachers; they must have splashed out in one of the city’s hire shops for they were decked out from top to toe in authentic Venetian costumes. Some had chosen colourful carnival masks, others traditional whitebautaface masks paired with long, black cloaks, strutting around like sinister penguins. A handful even wore the creepy, long-beaked mask, hat and gown of the Plague doctor.
A live orchestra started to play; the musicians dressed in pastel-coloured frock coats and breeches, their hair covered with curled, white wigs. Waiters carrying fancy silver-plated trays circulated the room, servingcicchettito the assembled throng. Natalie tried an oval slice of toast topped with creamy-whitebaccalà mantecatowhich Miss Morrison explained was cod whipped into a fluffy mousse. Cathy and Julie giggled in the corner.
The musicians stopped for a break, replaced by chamber music piped through the loudspeakers. Miss Morrison was talking to one of the boys’ teachers; Mrs Nickson was studying a painting of a hawk. Natalie moved quickly. She pushed open the great wooden door that led to the hall. A few strides across the chequerboard floor and she was outside.
Thecampowas quiet; the church of Santa Maria Formosa was closed up for the night, the fruit and vegetable seller gone. No tour groups gathered in the corner by the entrance to the Querini Stampalia museum where just a few days ago, Mrs Nickson had gone purple with rage when Julie plinked a key on an antique piano.
Natalie walked past the church, her mask dangling from her wrist. The street ahead was quiet, lamps glowing in the window of a trattoria. Beyond that, a row of shops selling stationery, chandeliers and artworks. She kept walking, not caring where she was going. Across a small bridge, the road widened. The wall of a church seemed to check further progress but she found a passageway to her left.
The route became busier, with diners clustered at outside tables; Natalie strode with greater confidence. A lantern hung from an archway ahead of her. Beyond a crush of people, she glimpsed a lion on top of a soaring pillar. She had reached St Mark’s Square. She pushed her way into the piazza through a gaggle of tourists.
A clanging sound startled her. She swung around, stepping back to gaze up at the tower behind her. Above the royal-blue zodiac, the Virgin Mary nestling in a nook and the winged lion of St Mark, the two bronze Moors were striking the hour.
She turned away from the clock tower, walking ever so slowly around the basilica, craning her neck to look up at the colourful mosaics of turbaned men, the horses over the main door that looked as though they might gallop off at any moment. Her class had come here on their first day in Venice but the basilica was such a riot of arches and columns, statues and carvings, that she’d barely had a chance to take in a fraction of its riches before they’d all been ushered inside the famous church to marvel at its golden mosaics and marble floor.
Eventually, she got tired of looking. She strolled along the covered arcade of the Doge’s Palace towards the twin pillars at the edge of the piazza. She passed between them. How tall they were! How dramatic everything was compared to back home! There was now nothing ahead of her but the end of the Grand Canal, widening here into a bigger body of dark water, the passing craft providing dots of light. Across the way, she could make out a spur of land, a white church glowing almost ghostlike. She followed the sound of music back across the piazza. Outside the Caffè Florian, an orchestra was playing. The tiny audience of café patrons wore pashminas and jumpers around their shoulders against the slight chill of the evening. She shivered in her thin dress.
With one last glance back at the basilica’s façade, she crossed out of the piazza into a street she didn’t recognise. The beautiful, sapphire sky had faded away, replaced by dark, gathering gloom, but she’d be okay if she kept to the main streets, avoiding the deserted, narrow passageways and the darksottopassaggithat ran under the buildings. She kept on walking; the streets became quieter. She was conscious of footsteps behind her speeding up and slowing down to match hers but when she glanced over her shoulder, no one was there. Every so often, she swore she could hear a muffled cough, spied the movement of a black cape swishing out of the corner of her eye, but it was just her imagination.
A theatrical supplier, its windows filled with feather headdresses, hats, masks and curious puppets, intrigued her enough to stop and look. Her own reflection stared back from between the puppets’ wooden faces. A dark, cloaked figure loomed over her shoulder: a man, dressed all in black, hat pulled low, his face hidden behind the unmistakeable mask of the Plague doctor. She tried to scream but all that came out was a strange gulp.
‘It’s Natalie, isn’t it? Don’t be scared.’ The voice was quiet, as though speaking from behind a velvet curtain.
She forced herself to turn around, searching for clues in the parts of his face that weren’t covered by his hat and mask. His skin was plump and pink, belonging to a young man or a teenage boy. It was then that she noticed his trainers, the dayglo yellow laces incongruously paired with the seventeenth-century costume. It was him! The boy from the gallery who had shared her love of Giovanni Bellini’s painting. The fear slowly began to subside.
‘Oh, it’s you! Why is your voice so strange? You sound different.’
‘I sound strange because I am the Plague doctor.’ He made his voice even more sinister.
‘Oh, that’s creepy.’ She gave a nervous giggle. ‘Why are you here? Why aren’t you at the party?’
‘I saw you go.’
‘You were following me all this time?’ Her whole body tensed.
‘I was worried about you. You’re safe now. I’ll walk you back to the party. It’s this way.’ He gestured to a dingy sottopassaggioleading off to one side.
‘Are you sure?’
‘You do trust me, don’t you?’ His gloved hand closed over hers. He gave it a comforting squeeze.
‘Of course I do.’ She wasn’t sure if she did but at the Accademia, he’d seemed so nice, so ordinary amongst his swaggering classmates. And she was lost.
The passageway was narrow, gloomy. On one side, rusted grills were set into boarded-up windows. If she stretched out her arms, she could touch both of its rough stone walls.
‘Are you sure this is the way?’
He kept hold of her hand and started to walk faster. She hurried along beside him. The passageway darkened.
‘I… don’t like this. I want to go back.’
The boy gripped her hand tighter. Fear walked down her spine like a cold hand.
