beneath her. A delighted pole-boy scampered forward and scooped up the coin that had landed on his boat, shouting, “Thank you, signora!” up at the bridge.
“You’re welcome!” the woman shouted back. She turned toward Belinda, looking through her and beyond her, a smile curving her full mouth. She waved; Belinda looked over her shoulder to see the gypsy man bowing deeply and extravagantly. The woman laughed and turned away again without meeting Belinda’s eyes; without giving her any sign that she was to be approached.
Belinda looked back at the water, watching the shadow of another bridge swallow the second gondola the woman had gifted with a coin. She tapped one finger against the stone wall, and decided: she would wait, and see how fate ruled a third time.
When it ruled in favour of another coin thrown to a bright-eyed young gondola lad, Belinda tilted her face up to the sun and swore under her breath.
“Gone and left you then, has he?” The woman across the bridge had a warm alto, a burr to her voice that gave it an edge of sultriness. A voice practised for the bedroom, Belinda thought, and glanced at the woman. There was still a chance; her father had never before sent a woman to meet her.
“Abandoned and left cold,” she replied. “Ungrateful bastard.”
The woman laughed again, a rich comforting sound, and crossed the bridge to lean next to Belinda, her hands turned wrist-out against the stone wall. “Was he rich?”
“No,” Belinda said. “Nor handsome, either.”
The woman arched finely shaped eyebrows. “What’s the point, then?”
“I suppose it’s all in what we do for God and country.” Belinda spoke the coded words with a shrug. The woman’s eyebrows shot up.
“Sod God and bugger country. I want a palmful of coin and a feather bed.”
Belinda let herself laugh aloud, relaxing against the rail. The dark-haired woman at her side was certainly not her contact. Despite what had seemed to be the signal coin, her answer left everything to be desired as a pass code, though not as a brazen woman. “With four posts and a canopy?” she asked. The woman shook her head vehemently.
“Canopies gather dust, and the only thing more foolish than a naked man is a naked man sneezing his skull off.”
“Oh,” Belinda said, drawn into surprise, “no. A naked man in naught but stockings is worse yet.”
The woman’s laughter rang out once more, and she put a hand out. “Ana. You’re not one of the usual bunch.”
“Rosa,” Belinda said. Ana’s grasp was as solid as a man’s, slender bones in her hand full of strength and conviction. “And no, I’m not.”
“Would you like to be?”
Belinda looked down at the patient boy in the gondola, waiting for her, and thought of the contact somewhere farther down the canal who expected her. “Yes,” she said. If only for a little while. “It is not among my assets,” Belinda insisted over a cup-another cup, but she had lost count of how many anothers she’d had-of small beer. Ana waggled her head and her finger in tandem, dismissing Belinda’s protest as the women gathered around their elbows giggled and prodded at one another. Sunset had long since come and gone. Fish pasties baked in a good light dough had been ordered, demolished, ordered anew, and demolished again. The group of boisterous women had altered somewhat over the hours, but its core, made up of Belinda and a now entirely drunken Ana, remained the same.
“Your assets are quite clear. That-” Ana was interrupted by the vocal rise and fall around her, as happily drunken women cried “Oooh!” and pushed Belinda to her feet, examining her assets. Belinda waved her beer over their heads, shaking her hips in a fruitless attempt to loosen their hands. “Lovely,” an outrageously coifed redhead proclaimed, and another girl sniffed. “Her tits are too small.”
“We haven’t all got docks big enough to tie a gondola to, Bernice.” Ana mocked tossing a rope toward the girl, who sniffed again and subsided as Ana turned back to Belinda with a sniff of her own. “She’s only jealous of your throat. Long and lovely, that. Aristocratic, or meant for hanging.”
“Thank you,” Belinda said drily. “Dangerous thoughts, Lady Ana.” More dangerous than the courtesan could know, and to be headed off as readily as possible. Belinda edged back toward her seat, trying to reclaim it.
“Not a bit of that.” The woman seated behind her lifted her feet to plant them against Belinda’s bottom and keep her away from the chair. “You owe us a song.”
“My voice,” Belinda protested again, “is not chief among my assets.” The woman behind her straightened her legs, sending Belinda stumbling up onto her toes. Ana stood up and grabbed her wrist, climbing onto the table and tugging Belinda with her.
“That’s not the point.” She clutched Belinda’s waist as they both swayed dangerously on the tabletop. Belinda leaned on Ana and squinted at her own feet, alarmingly distant.
“Was the table this crooked before?” she asked in a low voice. Ana snorted laughter.
“You haven’t spilled a beer tonight, have you? There’s a terrible puddle at the end of the table. A drunk man built these.” She nodded, exaggerated, and slung an arm out, lifting her voice into a bellow. “Hey! You there! Me and Rosie, we’re going to sing you a song!”
Three-quarters of the bar’s patrons turned expectantly. Belinda elbowed Ana’s ribs. “Hold your tongue! I told you, I can’t sing!”
“So what’ll it be then? Do you know ‘Era Nato Poveretto’?”
“God,” Belinda said, “barely. Born poor?” she brazened, then caught her breath, searching for another song. “‘C’и La Luna.’ Will it do?”
“Well enough,” Ana said with a firm nod.
Belinda drew in a deep breath, gave Ana one dismayed look, and began to sing.
“My God,” Ana gasped at the break between verses, “you’d best be able to fuck like a dream, with a voice like that.”
“I told you,” Belinda snapped. Ana snagged her arm through Belinda’s as they began the second verse, starting a jig that made Belinda’s voice even hoarser with breathlessness. In counterpoint, Ana’s voice rose and strengthened, until she was carrying the whole melody and Belinda only croaked out a word or two when she caught her breath. The crowd’s cries blurred from jeers into shouts of approval.
A hand clasped around her ankle, making her stumble. She looked down to find a cheerily drunken man beaming toothily up at her. “Give us another one, bonnie Rosie,” he begged. “Your voice makes my wife’s sound like a golden harp, and God knows I need something to take away the edge!”
Belinda shook him off with a kick that missed clipping his temple by a scant inch or two. Then she found laughter bubbling up inside her chest, pressing against her breastbone, and after a moment she let it free. Her singing voice might shame a crowing cock, but her laugh was bright and warm.
“Oh, so that’s how you do it,” Ana said with a knowledgeable and approving nod. Belinda leered at her, flung her own head back, and began to sing the raunchiest song she knew.
Howls of approving laughter roared up to the rafters, while stomping feet shook the floor as the pub patrons kept time. She couldn’t, perhaps, sing, but she could keep a beat, and now she was caught up by it, consequences be damned. As if sensing her abandonment, even the men who had shouted her down earlier courted her for more now. Torches twitched with exuberance, hopping in their nests and sending puffs of black smoke up to the ceiling. Ana grabbed her arm again and Belinda swung her around the table, slipping in spilled beer. The aroma splashed upward, hops mixing with wood smoke in a rich thick scent that made one part of her mind sleepy even as she reveled in the raw country life of it. Her circumstances allowed her few opportunities for unconstrained play, and her temperament fewer yet. It was a chance, rare in a lifetime of duty, to forget who and what she was, and why. Most of all, why. Belinda drank it in, letting the raucous music she made settle all the way down to her bones, where it might leave an impression. A memory for another time, when she would not be able to allow herself the freedom she had tonight.
Stolen freedom. The thought flickered through her mind and she banished it again. The coin from the bridge was a common signal from her father’s men. That it had this time been happenstance leading to rough decadence was…not her fault would be too strong. Belinda had chosen her path for tonight, chosen to deliberately misinterpret and forget. Her voice broke on a high note and she laughed with everyone else, dropping into a deeper register to try the remainder of the verse.
