Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley Read Free Book Online

were strung, to each side of the seat. The seat itself was leather, smooth and yielding underneath me, and in case of extra passengers a rather ornate chair had been positioned to my right, in front. The only less-than-reassuring feature was the gleaming silver ornament that topped the long, up-curling prow—a curious thing like the blade of an executioner’s axe, pointed perpetually outwards as if to keep all other boats at a distance.
    Rupert got in and the gondola rolled and I clutched at its sides; grasped them harder when the gondolier stepped on behind us, taking up his oar and pushing off with a cheerful farewell to his partner, left back at the bridge calling ‘Gondola-Gondola!’ all by himself.
    Rupert settled himself on the cushion beside me, adjusting his camera. “Relax,” he said, testing his lens with an experimental snap of me in profile. “It’s perfectly safe. Just like punting on the Cam.”
    “Yes, well, we didn’t all go to Cambridge,” I reminded him, but I tried to relax all the same. I didn’t want to spoil Rupert’s pleasure at showing me the sights. To distract my rolling stomach I glanced over my shoulder and watched as our gondolier shifted his feet on the small Persian rug that protected the polished black boards in the stern, using his own weight as much as his oar as he steered us through the shadows underneath the little bridge.
    Rupert, mistaking my fierce concentration for a lack of confidence, said, “It’s a mostly inherited trade, gondolier. There can only ever be five hundred of them at any given time, that’s the law, so it tends to get passed on from father to son. Our chap here is probably not the first man in his family to do this.” The gondolier, when asked, confirmed in passable English that he was indeed fourth-generation. “You see?” Rupert told me. “So no need to worry, he knows what he’s doing. Ah, look there,” he said, distracting me by pointing to the left as we passed an intersecting canal. “See way up there, that bit of land in the lagoon, that’s where they blow the glass. The island of Murano.”
    I caught only a glimpse as we glided by, and a bracing clean whiff of the sea—the first time I’d smelled anything at all on these canals, in spite of all the things I’d read and heard. Perhaps the recent rains, I thought, had cleansed the ancient waterways, or maybe it was simply that we’d come in spring and not a few months later, when the summer’s heat and still more tourists took their toll on the city’s hygiene. Whatever the reason, apart from a faint breath of sea air from time to time all I could smell was the rich scent of greenery, lacy pale branches of trees hanging high overhead and the ivy that clung to the crumbled brick walls of a small side canal.
    My stomach settled. The noise of the crowds at our backs grew progressively fainter, disappearing entirely as we rounded the next corner, leaving only the lulling splash and pull of the gondolier’s oar and the creak of the boards as he balanced himself. The hushed and huddled buildings pressed us closely, painted pink and green and ivory, windows shuttered, with a laundry line hung here and there between the rusting railings of their balconies. I heard the small repeating click of Rupert’s camera shutter, and the slap of pigeons’ wings as they rose flapping from their hidden perches, seeking higher places; heard the water gently lapping at the old walls with their softly greening stones. And as I exhaled on a sigh I knew that Rupert, who’d been watching me again, could now rest satisfied.
    Here, at last, was the Venice I’d dreamed of, the Venice of Shakespeare, of Byron, of Browning; faded a little, perhaps, like a magnificent Renaissance painting that had lain too long in the sunlight, but still standing, silent and agelessly beautiful; still worthy of the name La Serenissima—the Most Serene.
    We floated on peacefully, our gondolier calling out ‘Oi!’ as a warning