Then there was so much water in Venice. Everywhere there was water. The streets were full of it. You had to make a boat journey to ride a horse, on that ridiculous island they called Lido. On Lido, too, you had to wear a swimsuit, to he about on the sand near naked while men you did not know and would not wish to love looked at your body. This disgusted her, but Dyton-Blease insisted on it.
Selina walked to the shuttered window, looked out on the moving, aqueous light of Venice, green, shimmering, brilliant. Below her was the Grand Canal; across it a majestic parade of palaces. From the window to her left she could see the piazzo, the piazzetta, Saint Mark's, the Doge's palace. Moored to the steps of the palazzo a motorboat waited to take her to Florian's, Harry's Bar, and a dozen churches crammed with masterpieces. Selina didn't care. She wanted desert, scrubland, the sight and sound of horses. She was—what was the word that man had used— homesick. A real man, that one, slow because of his sickness but ready to fight, if necessary to kill. Without fear. Power and courage in the gray northern eyes. To he on the beach in front of that one—she dismissed the idea. He was a liar. He had said he was English.
With a sigh she let fall her dressing gown, prepared to struggle once more with the clothes European women, Dyton-Blease told her, managed so easily. Brassiere and suspender belt and panties and stockings clipped on to the belt, then slip and dress and your hair all over the place. She looked at herself in the mirror, and for the first time since she was three years old, contemplated the possibility of crying. Then Dyton-Blease knocked on the door. Everyone knocked since Trottia had walked in to find her in her slip and she had beaten him unconscious with a silver-backed hairbrush. On its back was a rehef of Actaeon surprising
Diana bathing. Dyton-Blease had laughed, but not Trottia. Diana's quiver had torn his scalp. Dyton-Blease said: 'The man we need will be here tonight.' Selina sighed in relief. Soon she could go home.
'He is giving a ball,' said Dyton-Blease. 'You and I will go. We will be able to talk; it will be quite safe. I will see that no one interrupts.'
Selina looked, appraising, at Bernard's enormous size. Huge but not lumpy. Smooth-muscled. Speed to match his strength. She wondered how the man who lied would cope with a strength and speed like this. And yet she had no wish to be loved by Bernard. Since he first came to Haram she was sure he loved no one but himself.
'When you meet this man Naxos, he will agree to buy. All your father will sell him. Then you will go home.'
'But why?' she said. 'Why should he want such terrible stuff?'
'To sell to someone else at a profit. He's a businessman after all,' Dyton-Blease said, and sneered. 'That's all I can tell you.'
'And if he won't buy?'
'He will. He must,' Dyton-Blease said.
Another knock at her door. Trottia's knock.
'Trottia,' Dyton-Blease said. 'See him, please. He has your costume ready.'
'Costume?'
'Tonight will be a costume ball,' Dyton-Blease said. 'You are going as an odalisque.' He flushed for a moment as she looked puzzled, then started to explain. Selina understood the flush at once. An odalisque meant sex, and sex terrified Dyton-Blease. She smiled and his flush deepened.
'You don't mind?' he asked.
'I don't know,' said Selina. 'Let me see my costume.'
Trottia brought it in, as plump and sacerdotal as a priest displaying a relic. Slave bangles for ankles and wrists, filmy pantaloons, a velvet jacket, gold lame breast coverings, gold necklace, a velvet cap, gold-trimmed, and a muslin veil to hide her face, but not her body. Selina looked at Trottia who stepped back two paces. His scalp wound had only just healed.
'Someone will pinch me,' said Selina.
Trottia's face paled, and his carefully preserved Titian-red hair flamed scarlet against its whiteness. He re-
membered the appalling moment on the Accademia bridge when somebody had pinched the little fiend's bottom, and she had swung at the nearest male and only just missed. The nearest male had been a Dominican friar.
'No one will pinch you,' said Dyton-Blease. 'These people are different.'
'I hope so,' said Selina. 'But if these are what I am to wear—why all this?' And she swept her hand in a fury down her dress.
'It may be necessary to stay with Naxos for a while, on his yacht,' Dyton-Blease said. 'It depends—' 'On what?'
'An Englishman,' said Dyton-Blease. 'I expect that he will be ill by now. If not, it will be necessary to kill him.'
'What does he look like?' Selina asked.
'You've met before,' Dyton-Blease said. 'But then I didn't know who he was. I wish to God I had.' He took a photograph from his pocket, and handed it to her. She found herself looking at Craig, and realized that he had not lied.
* * »
The ship turned westward, seeking the opening in the long, low shoreline. The ringing blue of the Adriatic became shallow, opaque. Along the eastern reef there were a straggle of fishing villages; violently painted fishing boats, each one decorated on the bows with an eye or a star to ward off evil; a maze of nets, drying in the evening sun; and other boats, restless, searching for the comfort of the city. Motor-boats, dinghies, barges, wary of the shallows. The
Craig stood between Flip and Naxos, and looked at the city, its waters alive with gondolas, barges, sandolos, vaporettos, and crowded on to the land, pushing in hard for room like the home crowd at a cup tie, the palaces and churches, gorgeous, arrogant, triumphal as the men who made them.
'Aren't you glad we had to come here?' Flip asked.
'It's magnificent,' Craig said, 'but it's dangerous.'
'That's part of its charm,' Phihppa said.
Naxos said: T own one of those,' and nodded at the line of palazzos on the Grand Canal. 'That one.' He pointed, and handed Craig a pair of binoculars. Craig took the glasses and saw a slim, elegant building, with magnificent balconies and a vast shaded portico. Two gondolas tied up at the painted poles by its steps stained its honey-yellow marble. The gondolas too, were Harry's, but not the rabble of other craft that jostled to tie up alongside, row-boats, motorboats, barges, loaded with food, drink, carpets, glassware, crockery, chairs, even musical instruments.
'What on earth—'
'There'll be more round the back,' said Naxos, and turned to Craig.
'I'm sorry, John. We're having a party tonight.'
'How many guests?'
'About three hundred,' said Naxos.
'And reporters and photographers and TV cameras?'
'Well of course. It's a big party.' He paused. 'Trot-tia's designing it for me.'
'Trottia?'
'Yes,' said Naxos. 'It's very important for me, John.' 'Okay,' he said. 'You'd better show me a plan of the
house.'
He worked over it carefully, in infinite detail, with Naxos. There was one way in, and one way out. That was a gain. The house looked out in front on to the Grand Canal, and was a hollow square, enclosing a courtyard that was bounded on one side by a narrow waterway, on the two others by even narrower streets. It would be staffed by the stewards of the yacht, policed by its sailors. The band was to be flown in from Rome, the guests from half Europe.
