The Girl Behind the Mask by Stella Knightley Page A

the Rialto. At first, I felt sure I would have the greater delight of making your acquaintance on dry land, but my inquiries led me no closer to knowing who you are and why you sit at your window night after night when a beauty of your tender years should be dancing. Please, forgive my impertinence, but I find I can stay away from you no longer. The sight of your shining hair tumbling through the window is the only sight Venezia has worth seeing. Tell me, fair maiden, how I may know you better, or otherwise tell me to forget you and I will have my gondolier choose another route to my house. You may return correspondence by the same manner tomorrow night. GC.
     
    Oh. I have read the letter a dozen times or more. He has noticed me. And I thought I had been so discreet. But, how wonderful! His language is both eloquent and daring. I feel my heartbeat grow faster as I press his words against my breast. He has inquired after me. I have to know more about him too. G C ? What does that GC represent?
    I must write my reply, of course, and then the only thing to do is make sure Maria doesn’t find it before I have a chance to pass it to his gondolier tomorrow night. That hateful woman is like a dog in search of a rat when it comes to secrets. I am amazed she has not already found this diary, as she found the small bottle of perfume I secreted under the mattress last year. I will tuck the letter inside these pages. May there be many more to come.

Chapter 10
    I glanced up at the clock and did a double take. It seemed as though I had entered the library only minutes earlier, but now the clock was telling me I had just two minutes left until the old retainer would return to escort me from the premises again. What a disaster. Even with my enormous Italian–English dictionary alongside me, I had only managed to read four pages of Luciana’s scrappy diary. Her handwriting had been difficult to decipher at first. So much so that I began to wonder if she was writing in code. Then there was the complication that Luciana’s Italian was quite unlike the modern Italian I had studied at school. Or even the Latin. And she used plenty of Venetian slang. I had no hope whatsoever of translating that in a hurry. The Venetian dialect was as foreign to me as the Arabic from which much of it derived.
    I stared at the clock as though willing the hands to travel backwards. I felt as though I had only just started to hear Luciana’s voice, but at midday on the dot, the door to the library swung open and the old retainer waited impatiently while I gathered my notes and my dictionary. Please God, I muttered to myself, don’t let this be the last time I am here.
    I expected the old man to accompany me all the way back to the waterside, or to the street, but instead when we got to the courtyard, he merely asked me whether I would be going back by boat or on foot.
    ‘On foot,’ I replied.
    ‘Then you need that door there,’ he said. ‘Go straight down the passage and you will emerge on to the Calle Squero. I trust you’ll find your own way. I have work to do.’
    Then he turned, leaving me quite alone in the hall.
    Obviously, I could not have failed to notice that my presence at the house was not entirely welcome, but with the old man gone, I couldn’t resist taking a longer look at the courtyard garden and the surrounding galleries as I passed through. The fountain still wasn’t playing, but a leaking washer somewhere in its plumbing meant that every so often a drop splashed from the fountainhead into the surrounding stone bowl, where years of such innocuous drops had eroded a little dent. Two sparrows were taking it in turns to wait for a glittering drop to fall, taking a sparrow-sized shower before they dried themselves off in the sunlight. It was magical.
    Though it was still only January, there was life in this sheltered garden. London’s greenery was still deep in hibernation, but the first signs of spring were already in evidence on the edge