The Girl Behind the Mask by Stella Knightley

people make their true feelings known except from inside a disguise?
    All I know is I wish I had a mask. But I do not want the one kind of mask my father has offered to buy me. Despite making me spend my childhood in a plague doctor’s mask to keep me from my mother’s terrible fate, these days he says if I want to hide my face from the sight of God in broad daylight, then I must wear a servetta muta , a mask only held in place by a button between my teeth so I may speak no evil while I am wearing it. Apparently, the servetta muta is very popular with the husbands of Venezia.
    Anyway, the lovers finished their exertions, but that was not to be the end of the evening’s entertainment. I heard the bells of the Chiesa degli Scalzi sound the quarter to. And then I saw the husband. He was early! Oh! If only I could have given the poor wife a warning. Instead, the husband and the lover met in the most unfortunate circumstances. When the lover let himself down from the wife’s balcony, he almost landed on her husband’s head.
    You have never seen such a pantomime. It drew a crowd until the canal was quite solid with boats. No one could get by but nobody cared. Here was a fabulous free show.
    I was so absorbed by the spectacle I didn’t notice at first that the black gondola had stopped right beneath my window. I slipped back behind the curtain, hoping to hide myself, but I was too late. The gondolier looked upwards and caught my eye. He gave me a smile. I stayed behind the curtain but he beckoned me back out. He looked towards the canopy and its mysterious occupant and, while I watched, a hand, in a white cuff that was stark against the darkness, snaked out and handed the gondolier a letter. The gondolier duly spiked the letter on the end of his oar and – horrors – passed it up to me.
    I did not know what to do. My first thought – the thought my father would have liked me to stick with – was that I should tell the gondolier to take the letter back. How insulting to be passed a note in such a manner! But my second thought was that I was desperate to know who had written it. Until that moment, I had not even known whether the mysterious occupant of the felce was a man or a woman. I guessed now, from the size of the hand in the frilly white cuff, it was a man. Though having said that, Maria does have rather large knuckles.
    So, what did I do? Well, I nodded to the gondolier. Curtly, as befits my status compared to his. I wanted him to know it was inappropriate of him to smirk at me as if we were equals. Then I snatched the letter from the end of his pole and retired to my room, slamming the shutters behind me.
     
    And here I am. Though I am happy that the gondolier can report back to his master that I accepted the letter quite coolly, I cannot tell you how excited it has made me. This is the first letter I have received in years. The last was from my grandmother, writing to console me after the death of my mother, her only daughter. I treasure that letter and read it often, but how I have longed for some lighter correspondence. There’s not much joy to be had in reading when the only reading matter available to a girl is a letter of condolence or the Bible. The Bible lately is a lot more boring, since Maria has taken a sharp knife and cut out all those pages that make reference to breasts or emissions. The book is a good third less thick.
    Well, I have something much more interesting to read now. The letter is addressed to ‘The Nocturnal Madonna of the Open Window’. The seal bears a monkey’s head. It is not a crest I recognise, as I surely would had I seen it before. A shiver goes through me as I slide my thumb under it. It seems to be the emblem of a great man.
    The handwriting is impressive too, with grand sweeping strokes and luxurious curlicues. And the words . . .
     
    To the Nocturnal Madonna of the Open Window. For the past four weeks, I have had the pleasure of seeing your face as I make my leisurely way to