Elizabeth smiled.
‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but I do not look down on trade. One of my uncles is in business in London, and even if that were not so, I would not hold it in contempt, for it is trade that supplied Darcy’s friend, Bingley, with the money to rent Netherfield, and without it I would never have met my husband.’
There was general laughter, and Darcy looked at Elizabeth with admiration and approval.
‘Excellente! Well said! Then we have a great deal in common, as was to be expected, for we both love trade and hate Napoleon,’ said Alfonse with a laugh.
‘Napoleon!’ said Giuseppe, and he became sorrowful again. ‘That upstart! What gave him the right to march into our city, destroying in days what it took us centuries to build, robbing us of our greatest treasures? What gave him the right to drive something wonderful from the world?’
The mood was becoming melancholic and the men were becoming morose. The women were uncomfortable, turning their fans in their hands or arranging their skirts to hide their disquiet.
Sophia proved her worth as a hostess by immediately lightening the mood and hitting upon the one thing that could rescue them all from their melancholy: a celebration.
‘Let Napoleon have his edicts,’ she said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand, ‘let him give Venice to Austria. Let them all conspire to control us. They will not break our spirits. Let them say what they will, we will have a ball, a great masked ball in honour of Elizabeth and in honour of the splendours of Venice. Let us show Elizabeth how we Venetians used to live.’
The idea caught hold at once.
‘But yes, let us show Elizabeth some of Venice’s former splendour. A masked ball for Elizabeth!’
The mood had altered. The melancholy had disappeared, to be replaced with pleasure and excitement. Everyone had their own suggestions to make and the details of the ball began to take shape.
‘Let it be a costume ball,’ said Maria.
‘Yes! A costume ball! And let it reflect one of our greatest centuries, let us wear the clothes of a bygone era. We will dress in the clothes of the thirteenth century,’ said Alfonse.
‘No, the fifteenth,’ said Maria.
‘The sixteenth,’ said Giuseppe, ‘the time of the great artists, of Titian and Tintoretto.’
‘Very well,’ said Sophia, ‘the sixteenth century.’
‘I have no suitable clothes,’ said Elizabeth with regret, for the ball sounded exciting.
‘You shall take from me, I have plenty, and masks, too, with which to surprise the gentlemen,’ said Sophia.
‘But of course,’ said Lorenzo. ‘That is all part of the excitement, trying to guess what face lies behind the mask.’
‘We will let the others make the arrangements whilst we do something more interesting: I will help you to choose your clothes. Come, Elizabeth,’ said Sophia. ‘We will enjoy ourselves!’
She led Elizabeth upstairs, through corridors lined with great works of art, and took her into a grand apartment with high ceilings and huge mirrors all around. She rang for her maid and soon the room was ablaze with light as candles blossomed into life.
‘Here!’ said Sophia, throwing open a huge pair of doors and walking through into an antechamber full of clothes. They were of all styles and colours, some new and some very old. ‘These are the ones we will wear at the ball, from here,’ said Sophia, showing Elizabeth a collection of gowns at the back of the anteroom. ‘These are from the days of Venice’s glory.’
As Elizabeth looked at the clothes, she saw that they were very old, the glorious fabrics faded with age, but exquisite in their beauty.
‘Do you never dispose of gowns in your family?’ asked Elizabeth, amazed at how many there were.
‘In my family,’ said Sophia pensively. ‘No. They remind us of other times, other balls, other lives, other loves. And that is what we live for, is it not, to love? You, who are so newly married, know that it is true. See, this dress, it is the one I wore when I met Marco Polo.’
‘When you met Marco Polo?’ asked Elizabeth in amusement. ‘That would make you 500 years old!’
Sophia’s hands stilled on the fabric of the dress. She said, ‘You are laughing. Then Darcy has not told you?’
‘Told me what?’ asked Elizabeth.
Sophia became so still that she looked like a portrait, extremely beautiful but somehow unreal. Then, just as Elizabeth was beginning to be unnerved, she gave a slight shrug of her shoulders and said, ‘It is not important, only that he has not told you my English, it is not very good. You will forgive me if the things I say do not always make sense?’
‘Of course,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Your English is, in any case, far better than my Italian.’
They laughed and then Sophia turned back to the clothes and said, ‘Now, which dress is for you?’
Elizabeth looked through the glorious gowns made of rich fabrics in blues, yellows, and scarlets. She took out a dress of deep blue velvet, which was criss-crossed with a latticework pattern in gold, matched by the slashes in the sleeves which allowed the gold silk of the undersleeve to be seen. She held it up, the candlelight winking on the gold thread woven into the latticework.
‘Ah, yes,’ Sophia said, ‘That is very beautiful. It is well chosen. Try it on!’
Sophia helped Elizabeth to slip out of her own gown and into the antique costume. As Sophia fastened it, Elizabeth looked at herself in a mirror and was surprised at what she saw.
‘I look quite different,’ she said.
‘Already the transformation, it takes place,’ said Sophia, standing behind her.
The dress was fitted at the waist, showing Elizabeth’s figure, which was usually disguised beneath her high-waisted gowns, and the fuller skirts flowed in folds to the floor. The dress was cut low at the neck with a square neckline, and it was richly embroidered with more gold thread.
Elizabeth was reminded of her childhood, when she and Jane had dressed up in Mrs Bennet’s old clothes for a game of charades. They had loved the rich fabrics and hooped skirts, and they had taken great pleasure in trying on a variety of wigs.
‘And now, you must choose a mask.’ Sophia showed Elizabeth a collection of masks of all shapes and styles, saying, ‘We Venetians, we love our masks. We have worn them always, until Napoleon; he banned them. But they are a part of us, a part of our heritage. We love mystery and the thrill of the unknown. It is a good thing for a nation of explorers! So much do we love it that even at a ball, we must explore: we explore each other.’
She picked up one of the masks.
‘See, here, we have a mask that covers the whole face; the features, they are richly moulded. And see,’ she said, picking up another mask, ‘here we have the flatter masks. This one, it has no fastenings, only a bar at the back to be held between the teeth.’
Elizabeth looked at it curiously, saying, ‘It must be very uncomfortable.’
‘But yes, it is true, that mask is not comfortable at all, and it makes conversation impossible. You will not wear that one. Perhaps you like this one?’
She held up a full face mask which was supported on a stick, but after holding it in front of her face for a few minutes, Elizabeth realised it would soon make her arm ache.
‘I think this one,’ she said, choosing a half mask that was held on by a band passed round the back of the head.
‘Si, that is a good one. It is still possible to eat and talk with the mouth being uncovered, but the nose and eyes are obscured, as well as the cheeks and forehead, so the mystery, it is preserved. You will set the others guessing! Your hair, it must be changed too. The styles of the day were similar but not the same. It must be parted in the middle and smooth over the top, with waves down the side of the face and the fullness pulled back into a—’ She broke off and said something in Italian. ‘No, it is no good, I do not know how to say it in English, but no matter, my maids, they know how to arrange such styles and I will send one of them to help you on the day of the ball. It is very important to make it right,’ she said, ‘otherwise it spoil things.’