by Primula Bond
‘So. You enjoyed Carnivale this evening?’
‘Yeah. It was wild.’ I closed my eyes. I was nearly asleep there on the cushions. ‘It was fantastic. Crazy. This quiet, elegant city transformed into a kind of mass rave. Something to remember when I slink back to London.’
‘The guy in the piazza. He didn’t make you come though, did he, Sister Perpetua?’
‘So? Plenty of time to find someone else who can.’ My giggle choked off. ‘How do you know my name – my, er, other name?’
‘Everyone knows who you are by now.’ His evil chuckle was like a cartoon vampire. ‘You’re the only woman in Venice not wearing a mask.’
There was something familiar and dastardly in his clipped, cold tones. The gondola rocked violently as he knelt between my legs, pushing my billowing skirt up. Ice replaced the treacle that had weighed down my limbs earlier. I was too frozen with shock and confusion to move even if I wanted to but, despite all that, fresh pleasure squirmed inside me.
The water slapped beneath the underside of the boat. It could almost be slapping my bare buttocks, spread open on the cushions. Presumably in Casanova’s day people wore delicate lace drawers. Or perhaps Casanova’s conquests came to him well prepared, sans culottes.
Some revellers ran over the bridge above our heads, disturbing the peace by blowing whistles like the carabinieri. I tried to scream but the man’s mouth pressed down on mine.
‘I’ll make you come, Sister. Like you say, something to remember.’
The way he kissed was amazing. Tentative, but determined. Sensitive, but wholly masculine. The way his lips held still while his tongue probed – I was on fire immediately. As I reached up to touch his face his hat fell off. His head was closely, brutally shaved. Rather like my poor cropped Sisters in the convent.
‘Who are you?’ I whispered. He’d kissed me before, I was sure of it. The best kisser I’d ever had.
‘Just one of the many you’ve corrupted since you came to Venice. And I had further to fall than most,’ he growled, and pulled back, tugging at the tiny buttons running down the swell of his velvet fly. ‘So if you really are leaving us I want to fuck you while I have the chance.’
If he meant it to sound like a threat it came out like a delicious promise. I decided to keep schtum about my suspicions and wriggled again with renewed impatient pleasure, watching him unpick each button, the tail of his blousy lacy shirt sticking through the opening, then I could see slices of bare white stomach. He grabbed my legs and hooked them over his shoulders to keep me still. Through the slits in his green mask his glittering eyes could now see my open, wet cunt.
And then he was ready. Laughter lines grooved down either side of his rather grim mouth as the mask eyed me silently. Moonlight caught on the silvery bristles starting to push through his skin, and I was almost certain I knew who he was. The green velvet fly fell open and there was his cock, standing up tall like a candle in the moonlight. His hands in their velvet gauntlets pushed up my skirt and opened up my legs. The gondola bowed sleepily at first, then nodded into life, then with its slow, steady rocking it started to show what we were up to. Show whoever might be watching. I glanced up to the bridge and yes, the flowing tide of pageantry had slowed. A silent crowd of watchers were up there now, sequins and jewels glinting in the dazzles off the water, all of them watching my masked lover holding his stiff cock and pushing it up between my white thighs.
He thrust it slowly into me, deep and hard, pushing me under him, down into the cushions. I didn’t even attempt any token resistance. I lay there, luxuriating and loose in every sense, so tired I was practically hallucinating, I was so far away from everyone and everything, gasping for breath, light-headed with it all, doing little, saying less, letting him take me whichever way he wanted, lying back on sumptuous cushions, missionary position, a good hard cock inside me fucking and fucking in front of an audience – I had better relish all of this because tomorrow it would be gone.
‘Thank you, Father,’ I gasped, then any other words became screams of pleasure, the racket ricocheting off the walls all around us as my masked lover fucked me and the gondola rocked wildly and yes, he made me come. And come. And come.
Somewhere a bell began to ring. It was the coda for Sister Perpetua. For me.
I staggered out on to the wet pavement in my green rags. Above me was the looming building with the cross on the top. And in the crumbled old wall, a door was opening, and there was Natalia. She looked tired, pale and extremely solemn. We stared at each other. She was head to toe in the grey habit, even the cloak and lace-ups, and was luminous with virtue. I was barefoot and in tatters, and hysterical with fatigue. How had I fallen so low?
My voice came out in a croak. ‘Oh Natalia, I’m so sorry for everything. The sooner we’re out of here the better!’ Then I burst into tears.
I couldn’t have timed it better if I’d been a consummate actress. If I’d been Natalia, in fact. Because she ran to me and wrapped her arms round me, pulling me against her body, warming me in her grey cloak, warming me right through. I allowed her to pull me out of the wind and pressed my face against her soft cheek, closed my eyes. She licked away the salty line of tears. I turned my head and caught her lips with mine, not sure if she would kiss me or slap me, but she didn’t move, so I pressed a little harder, and then we were kissing, really tenderly, our breath and my sobbing mingling in my ears, then more passionately, pushing open each other’s mouths, sucking on tongues, grinding our bodies hard against each other.
‘Have you any idea how much I hate you right now?’ she growled furiously, pushing her hands up my tattered skirt. ‘And how fucking sexy you are?’
There was nothing to protect me, no knickers, just a bare pussy still sticky with spunk from my masked lover and tangled with my own juices, and she knew it, she could feel the sticky honey and smell it, and I wanted to get my hands on her but layers and layers of clothes kept her from me.
I fell against her as she pushed her fingers into me, opening my legs for her. I thrashed frantically against her, shocked and rendered helpless with the quickness of my climax as she fucked me with her fingers right there against the door.
‘You’re mine now, cara, and I love you, but you have to understand I will always have to share you with the others.’ There was a hiss in her voice I’d never heard before. My heart gave a dull thud, stalling the blood in my veins. She pulled away from me, sucking my juices off each of her white fingers.
‘The others? I only want you, Natalia!’
‘And you can have me, but only if you make your choice. They are all coming for you. Your friends from London, and the Sisters, too. They will fight for you, but you have to decide, right now, before they tear you apart. Think of that crowded emptiness you endure in your worldly life, and then think of those silent sins you enjoyed with us.’
I could see the white face of my priestly lover in the gondola and the way he kissed. The chapel suffused with incense and the singing sting of Mother Superior’s whip on my willing buttocks. Zippo’s strong hands opening me, opening our wine. My Natalia’s soft pussy.
And her face waiting for my answer from the deep shadow of her cloak.
But she must have sensed the tiny warning whispering in my ear because all at once she lifted her hand in a slap and pushed me back into the boat.
* * *
And then I woke up. I was absolutely freezing. I had lost all sense of time and space. I couldn’t even remember when I’d last had a full night’s sleep. And when I prised open my gritty eyes I remembered I wasn’t even in a proper bed. I was out in the open air, my floor the sea, my ceiling and walls the mist of another old morning.
I sat up on the velvet cushion. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh, because the gondola was, after all, parked right outside the Danieli Hotel. Cry, because Natalia had felt so real in my dream and to be torn away from her felt like grieving. But I had to get real. I had been had by all of them, like a lamb to the slaughter. I was b
attered, bruised, ripped and penniless. I had to get back to some kind of normality.
Right on cue two figures appeared at the door of the Danieli Hotel like avenging angels. Hazel and Signora Martelli, positively vibrating with anger. Beside them, my packed suitcases. Signora Martelli seemed to have aged since I last saw her. She was thinner, and paler, and, well, older. She held my iPad and my phone away from her as if they were grenades. Hazel had my shoes and coat tucked under her arm.
‘What, I’m not even allowed to get dressed in my own room?’ I heard the petulance returning to my voice as I stood there, hands on hips, on the pavement in the freezing morning light.
But I was tired. So tired.
‘You don’t have a room. You haven’t been seen for nearly three weeks!’ Hazel stepped forward and grabbed my arm. ‘If I hadn’t come out here to sort out your mess this business would have gone down the tube. While you’ve been in cloud cuckoo land, I don’t know where, some cult or fancy-dress party or orgy or something, I’ve been to Murano, seen the glass being blown, ordered the items, sealed the deal, while you?’
‘I wasn’t far away. I was at the Santa Maria Convent.’
Signora Martelli frowned. Hazel turned to her, and Signora Martelli tapped the side of her forehead.
‘I’m not mad!’ I shouted, realising how demented I looked in my bare feet and tattered dress. ‘I’ll show you! I was imprisoned there. I was a nun. I was even flogged!’
The two of them approached me warily.
‘Honey, we have to go. There’s a water taxi waiting,’ Hazel said, her usually raucous smoker’s voice deliberately lowered, as if she was talking to a frightened child. ‘You’ll be fine once we’re back in London.’
‘Oh God, I’ve got to get back there. I’ve got to get her. Look, give me five minutes. I’ll show you where it is. I know the way!’
And I took off, with the two of them cantering after me. Holding my skirts up, I rushed through the piazza, where streamers, wine bottles, discarded shoes, confetti, bras, masks and sweet wrappers all floated on the green incoming acqua alta like flotsam and jetsam.
‘The Carnivale was real, see? It was all real!’ I gave a sob of relief. ‘And now we have to get Natalia out of the convent.’
They didn’t say a word, but puffed and panted on their heels behind me as we passed through the colonnades on the other side, past Signora Martelli’s shop and down the alleyways.
And there it was. My red scarf. Hanging limp as a used condom on the rusty nail where I’d planted it, on the corner of the crumbling wall. I ran past it to bang at the little door. There was no answer.
‘By the way, Signora Martelli,’ I said, turning slowly to her as a thought struck me. ‘How did Carlo get that livid scar on his wrist?’
Signora Martelli went white and fell against the wall. ‘He put his hand through a glass bowl when he was training at the foundry. It very nearly ruined his painting career. But that was when he was a teenager.’
‘He’s living here now. I expect you knew that. He’s painting the chapel.’
‘Oh, he was taken on when there was talk of restoring it, but they abandoned the project. Some said it was haunted. Anyway, he’s certainly not here now. In fact, I wish he never had anything to do with this Godforsaken place. The effect on him was devastating.’
‘You’re wrong! How do you think I knew about his scar? He was here yesterday, full of beans – I saw him with Mother Superior!’
‘He broke my heart, Miss Coombs. He’s in the Midwest of America now. He became a priest twenty years ago, and he’s running a mission over there.’
I started screaming and banging again at the door. ‘Natalia! Natalia! Sister Benedicta!’
I banged until my fists were bruised, begging the twigs of the dead lemon trees inside the garden to give me an answer, but nobody came.
Signora Martelli and Hazel whispered together like conspirators.
‘Jennifer.’ Signora Martelli glanced at Hazel, who was also looking green around the gills now. They stood on either side of me like sentries. ‘There’s nobody here. This place is closed. Derelict. It’s been empty for more than fifty years.’
But I know I’m not mad, because as the water taxi finally backed away in a boiling froth of water from the Riva degli Schiavoni, and I stared through bleary eyes at the city and all its treasures receding like a withering flower bed, I saw her. Natalia. Gliding across a spindly bridge, not far from the convent, her head bowed, her red lips moving in prayer. She was trailing my red scarf on the ground behind her, and sliding down her cheek under the shadow of her veil was one solitary tear.
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Copyright
This novella is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Mischief
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An eBook Original 2012
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Copyright © Primula Bond 2012
Primula Bond asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
EPub Edition © February 2012 ISBN: 978 0 00 747766 1
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