than with her. “I have told you that I am going far away to Rome in a few days.”
“So is your father. But it has not prevented his getting
“True, and we quarreled about that. I did not think it right. But his new wife seems perfectly content.”
“And so would I be. For now, let us pretend, Marco, and afterward I will wait, and you will come back. You said so—when there is another change of Doge.”
“You look ridiculous, little Doris. Sitting here naked and talking of Doges and such.” But she did not look ridiculous; she looked like one of the pert nymphs of old legend. I truly tried to argue. “Your brother always talks of what a good girl his sister—”
“Boldo will not be back until tonight, and he will know nothing of what happens between now and then.”
“He would be furious,” I went on, as if she had not interrupted. “We should have to fight again, the way we fought after he threw that fish so long ago.”
Doris pouted. “You do not appreciate my generosity. It is a pleasure I offer you at the cost of pain to myself.”
“Pain? How so?”
“The first time is always painful for a virgin. And unsatisfying. Every girl knows that. Every woman tells us so.”
I said reflectively, “I do not know why it should be painful. Not if it is done the way my—” I decided it would be maladroit of me to mention my Lady Ilaria at this moment. “I mean, the way I have learned to do it.”
“If that is true,” said Doris, “you could earn the adoration of many virgins in your lifetime. Do show me this way you have learned.”
“One begins by doing—certain preliminary things. Like this.” I touched one of her diminutive nipples.
“The zizza? That only tickles.”
“I believe the tickling changes to another sensation very soon.”
Very soon she said, “Yes. You are right.”
“The zizza likes it, too. See, it lifts to ask for more.”
“Yes. Yes, it does.” She slowly lay back, supine on the deck, and I followed her down.
I said, “A zizza likes even more to be kissed.”
“Yes.” Like a lazing cat, she stretched her whole little body, voluptuously.
“Then there is this,” I said.
“That tickles, too.”
“It also gets better than tickling.”
“Yes. Truly it does. I feel …”
“Not pained, surely.”
She shook her head, her eyes now closed.
“These things do not even require the presence of a man. It is called the hymn of the convent, because girls can do this for themselves.” I was being scrupulously fair, giving her the opportunity to send me away.
But she said only, and breathlessly, “I had no idea … I do not even know what I
“You could easily see your mona with a looking glass.”
She said faintly, “I do not know anyone who owns a looking glass.”
“Then look at—no, she is all hairy down there. Yours is still bare and visible and soft. And pretty. It looks like …” I reached for a poetic comparison. “You know that kind of pasta shaped like a folded little shell? The kind called ladylips?”
“You make it feel like lips being kissed,” she said, as if talking in her sleep. Her eyes were closed again and her small body was moving in a slow squirm.
“Kissed, yes,” I said.
From the slow squirm, her body seemed to clench briefly, then to relax, and she made a whimpering noise of delight. As I continued to play musically upon her, she made that slight convulsion again and again, each time lasting longer, as if she was learning through practice to prolong the enjoyment. Not ceasing my attentions to her, but using only my mouth, I had my hands free to strip off my own clothes. When I was naked against her, she appeared to enjoy her gentle spasms all the more, and her hands fluttered eagerly over my body. So I went on for quite a while, making the music of the convent, as Ilaria had taught me. When finally Doris was shiny with perspiration, I stopped and let her rest.
Her breathing slowed from its rapid pace, and she opened her eyes, looking dazed. Then she frowned, because she felt me hard against her, and she shamelessly moved a hand to take hold of me, and she said with surprise, “You did all that … or you made me do all that … and you never …”
“No, not yet.”
“I did not know.” She laughed in great good humor. “I could not have known. I was far away. In the clouds somewhere.” Still holding me in one hand, she felt herself with the other. “All that … and I am still a virgin. It is miraculous. Do you suppose, Marco, that is how Our Blessed Virgin Lady—?”
“We are already sinning, Doris,” I said quickly. “Let us not add blasphemy.”
“No. Let us sin some more.”
And we did, and I soon had Doris cooing and quivering again—in the clouds somewhere, as she had said— enjoying the hymn of the nuns. And finally I did what no nun can do, and that happened not roughly or forcibly, but easily and naturally. Doris, sleek with perspiration, moved without friction in my arms, and that part of her was even more moist. So she felt no violation, but only a more intense sensation among the many new ones she had been experiencing. She opened her eyes when that happened, and her eyes were brimming with pleasure, and the whimper she gave was merely in a different musical register from the previous ones.
It was a new sensation for me, too. Inside Doris, I was held as tightly as in a tender fist, far more tightly than I had been in either of the other two females with whom I had lain. Even in that moment of high excitement, I realized that I was disproving my onetime ignorant assertion that all women are alike in their private parts.
For the next while, both Doris and I made many different noises. And the final sound, when we stopped moving to rest, was her sigh of commingled wonder and satisfaction: “Oh, my!”
“I think it was not painful,” I said, and smiled at her.
She shook her head vehemently, and returned the smile. “I have dreamt of it many times. But I never dreamed it would be so … And I never heard any woman recall her first time as so … Thank you, Marco.”
“I thank you, Doris,” I said politely. “And now that you know how—”
“Hush. I do not wish to do anything like that with anyone but you.”
“I will soon be gone.”
“I know. But I know you will be back. And I will not do that again until you come back from Rome.”
However, I did not get to Rome. I have never been there yet. Doris and I went on disporting ourselves until nightfall, and we were dressed again and behaving most properly when Ubaldo and Daniele and Malgarita and the others returned from their day’s excursion. When we retired into the barge to sleep, I slept alone, on the same pallet of rags I had used once before. And we were all awakened in the morning by the bawling of a banditore, making unusually early rounds because he had unusual news to cry. Pope Clement IV had died in Viterbo. The Doge of Venice was proclaiming a period of mourning and of prayer for the Holy Father’s soul.
“Damnation!” bellowed my uncle, slapping the table and making the books on it jump. “Did we bring bad luck home with us, Nico?”
“First a Doge dies, and now the Pope,” my father said sadly. “Ah, well, all psalms end in glory.”
“And the word from Viterbo,” said the clerk Isidoro, in whose counting room we were gathered, “is that there may be a long deadlock in the Conclave. It seems there are many feet twitching with eagerness to step into the Fisherman’s shoes.”
“We cannot wait for the election, soon or late,” my uncle muttered, and he glowered at me. “We must get this galeotto out of Venice, or we may all go to prison.”
“We need not wait,” my father said, unperturbed. “Doro has most capably purchased and collected all the travel gear we will need. We only lack the hundred priests, and Kubilai will not care if they are not chosen by a Pope. Any high prelate can provide them.”
“To what prelate do we apply?” demanded Mafio. “If we asked the Patriarch of Venice, he would tell us—and with reason—that to lend us one hundred priests would empty every church in the city.”
