“His name was Doge Marino Faliero,” a female voice announced at my side, in lightly accented English. I looked round to discover that I was being addressed by a pirate captain. Chunkily high-heeled boots brought her almost to my height. Her jacket hung, attached like a hussar’s, from one shoulder. The rest of her uniform appeared motley, arranged to look thrown together: baggy breeches, brass-buttoned, an extravagantly frilled blouse, a half-undone waistcoat worn like a bodice, a tricolour sash plus beads and various chains and some sort of brass plate like a half-moon slung around her neck, which looked pale and slender. Her mask was black velvet, misted with what looked like tiny pearls set out in spirals. Beneath the mask her mouth looked roseate, amused. A few locks of black hair escaped a crumpled cap of navy blue surmounted by a cocky burst of gaudy feathers.
I glanced back up at the veiled space in the succession of Doges. “Is it now?”
“He was Doge for a year in the mid thirteen hundreds,” my informant told me. Her voice sounded young, melodious, confident. “He’s covered up because he’s in eternal disgrace. He tried to make a coup to sweep away the republic and have himself declared prince.”
“But he was already Doge,” I said.
She shrugged. “A prince or a king would have had more power. Doges were elected. For life, but with many restrictions. They were not allowed to open their own mail. It had first to be read by the censor. Too, they were not allowed to conduct discussions with foreign diplomats alone. A committee was required. They had much power but they were also just figureheads.” She gestured with one hand (black-gloved, silver rings over leather). Her sword – or at least a scabbard for a sword – swung at her left hip.
“I thought perhaps he was only veiled for the ball,” I said.
She shook her head. “In perpetuity. He was condemned to Damnatio Memoriae. And mutilated, and beheaded, of course.”
“Of course.” I nodded gravely.
She might have stiffened a little. Was I talking to a local? “The republic took such threats to its existence seriously,” she said.
I executed a fraction of a bow, smiling and tipping my head. “You would appear to be an authority, ma’am.”
“Hardly. Merely not ignorant.”
“I thank you for relieving me of some measure of my own ignorance.”
“You are welcome.”
I nodded to the swirl of people. “Care to dance?”
She moved her head back a fraction, as though appraising me, then bowed a little further than I had. “Why not?” she said.
And so we danced. She moved with a lithe grace. I sweated beneath my mask and robes, and understood the wisdom of having masked balls in winter. We talked over the music in the rhythm imposed by the dance.
“May I ask your name?”
“You may.” She smiled slightly, fell silent.
“I see. Well, what is your name?”
She shook her head. “It is not always the done thing to ask someone’s name at a masked ball.”
“Is it not?”
“I feel the spirit of the late Doge looks down upon us and demands due reticence, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Probably not even if I knew what you were talking about.”
This appeared to amuse her, as the soft lips parted in a smile before she said, “Alora.” For a moment I thought she was telling me her name, but of course it is simply an Italian word, nearly identical to the French “alors.” I found her accent impossible to place. “Perhaps we come to names later,” she said as we danced around each other. “Otherwise, ask what you will.”
“I insist; ladies first.”
“Well then, what do you do, sir?”
“I am a traveller. And you?”
“The same.”
“Indeed. You travel widely?”
“Very. You?”
“Oh, extraordinarily.”
“Do you travel to a purpose?”
“A series of purposes. Yourself?”
“Always only with one.”
“And what would that be?”
“Well, you must guess.”
“Must I?”
“Oh yes.”
“Let me see then. Your pleasure?”
“I am not,” she said, “so shallow.”
“Is it shallow to seek pleasure?”
“Exclusively, yes.”
“I know people who would disagree.”
“So do I. May I ask what you’re smiling at?”
“The scorn in your voice when you mention those people.”
“Well, they are shallow,” she said. “This proves my point, no?”
“It certainly proves something.”
“You are smiling again.”
“I am aware that my mouth is almost all you can see.”
“Do you think it is all I need to see of you?”
“I would hope not.”
She tipped her head to one side. “Are you flirting with me, sir?” she asked curtly.
“I’m fairly sure I’m trying to,” I said. “How am I doing?”
She appeared to think, then moved her head side-to-side, like a nod rotated ninety degrees. “It is too early to tell yet.”
Later – the music echoing down stairwells and through chambers and corridors – we stood in front of a great wall-wide map of the world. It looked reasonably accurate and therefore late, though of course in some ways I would be the last to be able to judge. We stood close, both a little breathless after the last dance. We still wore our masks and I still did not know her name.
“Does it all look present and correct to you, sir?” she asked as I gazed up at the configured continents and cities.
“We return to my ignorance,” I confessed. “Geography is not my strongest subject.”
“Or does it then look wrong to you?” she asked, then seemed to drop her voice a little. “Or too limited?”
“Too limited?” I asked.
“It is, after all, just the one world,” she said calmly.
I looked at her, startled. She returned her gaze to the map. I recovered my composure. I laughed, gestured. “Indeed. A starry vault or two would not go amiss.”
She stood still, looked at the map, said no more.
For some time I divided my attention between her and the map while various individuals, couples and groups of people passed to and fro, chattering and laughing. Then, in a lull, I reached out to take her gloved hand. She moved away and swivelled. “Walk with me, would you?” she asked.
“Where to?”
“Must it be to anywhere? Might we not just walk?”
“I think you’ll find that when you stop walking you’ll have arrived somewhere.”
She fixed me with a stare. “I thought geography wasn’t your strong point.”
We collected our cloaks. Outside, in the Piazzetta and then the Piazza, a misty rain was falling, blurring the lines of lights set high on the great square’s walls between the lines of dark windows.
She led me north through a succession of narrow, twisting calles and across small bowed bridges over dark narrow canals, quickly leaving behind the scatter of people in and around San Marco, our steps echoing from overhanging buildings, our shadows – unbearably dramatic in our out-belling cloaks – dancing around us like ghostly partners, sometimes ahead of us, sometimes behind, to one side, or just a pool of darkness at our feet.
She found a tiny bar off an ill-lit calle which would have been too narrow for us to walk down side by side. The establishment was shady, almost empty save for a couple of workmen sitting near the back nursing beers – we were given slightly contemptuous glances – and a diminutive blonde bar girl in jeans and a baggy jumper. My companion ordered a spritz and a bottle of still water. I accepted a spritz as well.