Read Online The Girl Behind the Mask by Stella Knightley - Free Book Online Page A

though church is where I have my best naps. Maria rarely notices because she is so busy mooning over the priest.
    Maria unlaced my dress and helped me into my nightgown. She unfastened my hair and combed it out. I have told her several times she doesn’t need to comb my hair. I am perfectly capable of doing it myself. But tonight she insisted. I don’t know why. She certainly doesn’t seem to enjoy the job. Though I suppose I should be grateful she doesn’t seem to be doing the task for the pleasure of hurting me either. When she finds a knot, she very rarely bothers to untangle it. At that point she hands the comb over to me.
    I washed my face and hands and Maria joined me by the prie-dieu as I said my night-time prayers. I prayed for my father and my brother, my mother in Heaven, for Maria – I was rewarded with a sort-of-smile for that – and for all those on the water that evening. Maria’s brow wrinkled.
    ‘All those on the water?’
    ‘I heard there might be a storm,’ I said.
    While Maria fussed about the room, letting down the curtains round the bed and blowing out most of the candles, I completed my prayers in silence. I wasn’t sure what God would make of my request for the safe passage of my gondolier and his master, but I made it all the same.
    ‘Goodnight,’ said Maria.
    ‘Goodnight,’ I answered from my place on the pillows. Knowing she would turn round when she got to the door, I made a show of finding it hard to keep my eyes open. I let my body go limp and my eyes fall shut. I was the very image of an innocent girl in her dreams.
    But as soon as the door shut behind my chaperone, my eyes were open. I listened to the sound of her footsteps in the dark. I listened for the creak of the board halfway down the corridor. She was going straight to her own room. Good. I waited for a minute or two more before I swung my legs out of bed and found my still warm slippers on the floor. I wrapped my dressing gown around me and padded to the window. Softly, I opened the shutters. There is always a danger that one of them will squeak but tonight they were good to me, complicit in my plan.
    The night air rushed in. It was so cold my first breath almost stopped my heart. Such a night! Who would be out now by choice? Mist swirled along the water, curling its way up to my balcony. I listened to the campanile strike twelve and hoped I would not have to wait too long.
    There was, of course, no scene being played out at the house across the canal that evening. I’d overheard Maria and the cook saying it would be a couple of weeks before the husband ventured out alone again. I leaned as far out of my window as I could to see the distant entrance to the Grand Canal. Thanks to the fog rolling in from the lagoon, I could see next to nothing, but the voices of the revellers let me know they were still there. Snatches of song, shouts and whistles met my ears, though they were softened and distant, like the voices of the dead.
    You can imagine then how ghostlike was the black gondola this evening. Just this once, I heard it before I saw it. I heard the gentle slap of the oar in the water as the gondolier steered skilfully towards my house. Then I saw the polished ferro , and the gondolier’s hat. He lifted his lantern towards me. The light shining on his face, illuminating that alone, made him look like some sort of floating demon. I ducked back into my window. He whistled up.
    ‘Hey! Hey! It’s the Madonna of the Window.’
    I leaned back out, putting my finger to my lips. He was going to get me into trouble.
    ‘Have you written your reply?’ he asked.
    I showed him the paper, folded and sealed with a piece of string and a plain blob of wax from my bedtime candle. I don’t have a seal so I used the end of my pen to scratch my initials into it. I hoped my correspondent would understand this embarrassing lapse.
    The gondolier reached up his oar and I fastened my letter to the end of it. He plucked the letter off and