A/N: Thank you to everyone for their reviews for the previous chapter! I am so delighted by every review, especially from new readers. So do please keep them coming, as they make me very happy! :) Also thanks to OrangeShipper for being a great sounding board as usual and for betaing the chapter, and catching an all-important missing negative!
Some trivia: It took me ages to come up with a title for this story. For ages the working title was 'Saint George Abroad' which would have been a rubbish title for the whole story, but this chapter is nevertheless quite important! More trivia, this turned out to be quite a personal/autobiographical chapter. I used to live in Venice. Once upon a time my mum and I arrived by train in exactly the same way that Mary does. As for the Scuola Dalmata in the third part of the chapter, I did a project on it for my class in Italian school.
And yet more information: Due to fanfiction's disallowance of external links in chapters, I've decided to post links and references for each chapter on my profile. I suggest you head over there now, or at least before reading the third part of the chapter!
Finally, divertitevi! I had fun with this one. :)
Chapter Seven: Saint George Abroad
There is only one way for the modern traveller to arrive in Venice and that is by train across the nineteenth century causeway from the mainland.
The dowager countess was nevertheless unimpressed. "When I went to Venice with Lord Grantham," she said to Mary as they hurried along the platform at the Gare de Lyon, Gwen and three porters following them pushing their trolleys of luggage, "we took everything much more slowly and instead of rushing there by train straight from Paris we broke the journey in Verona and then chose to get a boat from the mainland directly to our hotel on the Grand Canal. We'll have none of that elegance this time; one station is much like another!"
Mary sighed. She liked her grandmother's nostalgia better than the anticipation of arrival in twentieth century Venice as her father had arranged it. Surely the causeway must spoil the magic of La Serenissima, making it too modern, too much like the rest of the world? It clashed with Mary's image of the city drawn mainly from the paintings of Canaletto and the writings of Henry James.
"Did you enjoy it when you went before?" she asked her grandmother later in the dining car as the French countryside flashed past them in a blur of telegraph poles and stone farm houses.
"Yes, we did," she replied, then added, "if I forget about the stink from the canals."
Mary did not bother to hide her smile. It was only the two of them after all.
They had passed a productive four days in Paris; productive in terms of shopping, that is. Yet more clothes, hats, gloves and jewellery had been purchased by both travellers.
"I'm afraid we shall return to England with almost double what we set out with if we continue at this rate," commented Mary ruefully to Gwen as the latter packed up on their final day in Paris.
Mary had managed to sneak in a little culture, however, for while Violet had been to the Louvre before, she obviously had not. One afternoon while the countess was resting, she enlisted Gwen as her chaperone and they visited the gallery together. Naturally they prioritised the Mona Lisa.
"I wonder what she was thinking about," said Gwen not very originally.
Her mistress shrugged. "Probably about how boring it is to sit for a portrait and about all the other things she might be doing if only she could."
Mary was not overwhelmed by it. Moreover, they had been stuck behind a group of noisy French students and had had to wait nearly ten minutes to get a glimpse of the portrait. Still, at least she could now say she had seen it, which was surely half the point.
Anyway, after conquering Paris in this way in four days, they continued on to Italy, which they were going to reach almost sooner than seemed possible. In the early evening they boarded the night train in Paris; the following morning they would find themselves in Venice.
Mary had a compartment to herself. There was nothing unusual in that by itself of course, but she found a certain unexpected charm in a room that contained everything she could need squashed into a space that could be crossed in four, small steps. Above her bed was a hook from which she could hang her watch, and a little net basket into which she could put her book. It would obviously not be possible to survive in such cramped conditions for long (and the bed was terribly hard with only one pillow), but for one night it was really rather darling.
Sleep, when it came, however, was not uninterrupted. The rocking of the train was much greater than on the boat and more uneven and this was combined with the greater interest of looking at the countryside outside the window. Mary woke regularly when the train stopped in stations and crawled to the end of her bed, and lifted up the blind to stare out into the clear, fresh night. A deserted platform with a strange name, a lone guard stamping up and down in the cold with his lantern swinging, the slam of the train doors as they were once more closed before departure and perhaps, as the train drew out of the station, a glimpse of the hulking Alps, shadowy in the background. Once, when Mary looked out as the train had been crawling for some minutes, she saw a sign by the side of the tracks, boldly saying, "ITALIA – FRANCE". They were in Italy.
The last time she woke it was to the jangling of a bell as the conductor moved down the corridor. "Venezia Ferrovia Santa Lucia! Un'ora a Venezia! Venise Gare de Santa Lucia! Une heure à Venise!" he shouted as he roused the sleepers.
Mary rubbed the sleep from her disturbed night from her eyes, got out of bed, and shrugged on her silk dressing gown. It was light outside and when she lifted the blind, the train was speeding through a very different kind of countryside. She splashed her face, loosely tied her hair up and then, desperate to escape the confines of her compartment, went outside to the corridor while she waited for Gwen to help her dress.
She leaned on the rail and looked out of the window, drinking in her first glimpses of the north Italian countryside. It was very flat and fertile, with green fields divided by irrigation canals. The landscape was broken up by clusters of poplar trees, instantly giving it a more Mediterranean feel compared to what she had observed the previous evening coming from France. The houses were different too. They were low and white washed with stucco outsides and their roofs sported the distinctive bright terracotta tiles of southern Europe. The September sun was already shining brightly in a mostly clear blue sky and when a gust of air blew through an open window further down the carriage, Mary caught a whiff of air that was warmer and spicier than Paris.
A few doors down from her, a man emerged from his compartment. He was olive complexioned and his dark hair was sleekly oiled down. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he had not yet shaved. He looked her up and down openly and then grinned as she pursed her lips, blushing, and stared out of the window, regretting coming outside without being dressed first. She tried not to look at him, but her eyes kept shifting in his direction all the same.
"Buongiorno, signorina!" said Mary's first Italian politely and cheerfully enough when he had finished his thorough inspection of her person.
"Buongiorno," replied Mary quickly, and immediately ducked into her compartment as the train began its arrival into Padua station.
By the time she and her grandmother were dressed and had had breakfast, they had almost arrived in Venice. Mary returned to her spot in the corridor, leaning on the rail by the window to watch for the first appearance of the lagoon.
There was even more water now. The railway ran parallel with a widening marshy river and Mary looked keenly at the little hints that Venice was near: the flat bottomed boats moored to posts painted in bright stripes, and the occasional sight of a Palladian villa, rising white and classical out of its enclosed gardens.
The train passed rapidly through the Medieval town of Mestre and then with hardly any warning they were on the causeway. Water was everywhere, the morning sun glinting on it and catching the spray from the wake of a fishing boat that passed near to the bridge. The further they drew from the mainland, the more Mary could see of it stretching out to the left behind them until it disappeared into a haze. She turned to the right and sucked in a breath. There, shimmering on the glassy water like a mirage was the city itself. From the approaching train it seemed even smaller and more unreal than she had imagined. All that could be seen was a mass of houses and roofs of different levels interspersed with bell towers of every shape or size. Mary could not help being a little disappointed. The setting was magnificent but the city, at least on approach from the mainland, lacked the splendour she had been promised.
"La sua prima volta a Venezia?" asked her friend from earlier with a grin, watching her reaction.
Mary stared at him. It had been years since she had spoken or heard Italian and the unfamiliar sounds had not yet arranged themselves into meaning in her brain.
"Your first time at Venezia?" translated the man, his 'r's still rolled in his heavily accented English.
She flushed and looked away from him. "Sì."
On her other side, the countess peered round her to see who she was talking to, frowned, and muttered, "I wish you would not speak to strange men, Mary. It gives quite the wrong impression!"
Mary glanced at the Italian again and then back at her grandmother. "I thought that the point of this trip was for me to speak to strange men, or does it only count if they are obviously rich?"
"My dear!"
However, they were distracted. The water traffic had been increasing as they approached the city but now, finally reaching the houses, they saw for the first time the silver ferrò and black prow of a gondola glide silently out of a canal into the lagoon. The front was followed by the tasselled black canopy and finally the gondolier himself emerged and turned his craft elegantly away from the causeway. Mary could not help smiling as her heart fluttered in anticipation, and at that moments the bells of Venice started to ring.
The first day after her sister and grandmother left for the continent, Sybil felt bereft. She felt acutely aware of Mary's absence when talking to Edith in the drawing room that afternoon, and of Gwen's absence when Anna came to dress her for dinner for the first time in weeks.
The following morning, she felt differently. Mary had been away from home many times before and in fact Sybil did not spend enough time with Gwen to make her absence really all that noticeable. She had only been inclined to dwell on the changes to the household because she knew they were so different to Mary simply going to stay with Aunt Rosamund for a couple of weeks.
By the end of the first week, however, she started to feel a genuine emptiness in her life. She had been so focused on Gwen's career for so long and more recently, on preparing for the trip abroad with her and with Mary that she did not know what to concentrate on now. She needed a new project.
She began to cast around for ideas and soon fixed on university. The letter she had received from Vivian Beresford about her cousin's acceptance to Cambridge was inspiring. If Grace Beresford could go to Cambridge, surely she, Sybil Crawley, could go as well? She already read a great deal of history (well, for a woman of her age) and some politics and she determined to read more. She might not have qualifications but she had had an education of sorts and she was blindly convinced she could get herself up to university standard if she only put in a bit of effort. She was not afraid of hard work.
Firstly, she wrote a friendly and effusive letter to Grace. She might not have seen this lady for about five years but this did not prevent her from claiming friendship. Next, she decided to try to talk to people who might know something about applying to university and about education for women. She went to Crawley House.
On enquiry, it turned out that Mrs. Crawley was still at the hospital, but Lady Sybil could come in and wait as she was expected back at any moment. Sybil gladly accepted and was ushered into the drawing room.
She had not spent much time in Crawley House since her cousins had come and despite sitting down politely as expected, as soon as Molesley had left her she stood up again and wandered round, restlessly inspecting the pictures on the wall and looking out onto the front drive from the window. She wondered what this house was like in comparison with the one they had lived in in Manchester. From Sybil's experience it was not a terribly big house but perhaps to a middle class family from a big, dirty city like Manchester (or so she had heard at any rate) it was quite luxurious.
On a table by the settee were two books. Sybil hesitated before picking one up and looking at the spine. Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. She guessed that Isobel was probably the novel reader here, and picked up the other. She raised her eyebrows. An English translation of Boccaccio's Decameron. Rather curious, she opened it and her eye fell on a formal dedication plate on the first page announcing that it had been presented to Matthew Peter Crawley for overall academic excellence by the High Master of Manchester Grammar School in the year of our Lord 1904.
Sybil bit her lip to hide her smile at the thought of a young Matthew going up to collect his prize at school speech day, cousin Isobel watching proudly in the audience. There was a ribbon marking his current progress in the book and she turned to it just to see what was so special about this work of literature. Her eye fell on the following paragraph:
"This horrid beginning will be to you even such as to wayfarers is a steep and rugged mountain, beyond which stretches a plain most fair and delectable, which the toil of the ascent and descent does but serve to render more agreeable to them; for, as the last degree of joy brings with it sorrow, so misery has ever its sequel of happiness. To this brief exordium of woe-brief, I say, inasmuch as it can be put within the compass of a few letters-succeed forthwith the sweets and delights which I have promised you, and which, perhaps, had I not done so, were not to have been expected from it."
"And a happy ending all round clearly!" murmured Sybil to herself, wrinkling her nose at the convoluted style. "Rather you than me, Matthew, I have to say." She put the book down with no particular desire to pick it up again.
At that moment, just as she sat back down, Cousin Isobel returned from the hospital.
"Cousin Sybil, what a lovely surprise!" she said as she came into the room. "Molesley said you were here."
"Yes, I hope you don't mind me waiting. I did very much want to talk to you."
"Oh?" replied Isobel and then asked Molesley to bring in tea.
So Sybil told her all about her latest plans to improve her education. "You see," she finished eagerly, "if I had a degree I would be taken seriously. People would have to listen to me. Did you go to university, cousin? Was that where you learned nursing?"
Isobel shook her head. "My father was a doctor, as was my husband. I learned from them. If you want to know the ins and outs of Oxford, you should talk to Matthew about it."
"I shall ask him!"
"Yes. I'm sure he'll be happy to help you."
Sybil sipped her tea and frowned pensively, then she asked with a little more hesitation, "Cousin Isobel... do you think I could do it? I haven't been to school, I haven't done any examinations; I know I would have to study very hard for one, maybe two, years, but I would do everything I needed to, I really would!"
"I'm quite sure you would, Sybil." Isobel paused a moment and then said, "I don't see why, if you manage to fulfil their entry requirements, you should not stand as good a chance of acceptance as somebody with a school education. I for one would think you would be an ideal candidate to benefit from women's admittance to university."
Sybil beamed at her over her tea cup. Perhaps even in Gwen's absence she had found a new ally in the form of her cousin. She would have to talk to her about women's rights as well. Moreover, she thought, Branson would be pleased to discover another supporter at Downton.
If Paris had been an exercise in consumerism at the expense of culture, Venice was the reverse. Unlike later in their trip, when they were planning to spend an extended period of time in Roman society, the Crawleys were boarding in a hotel in Venice and were there purely as tourists. By the end of the first day, Mary had already seen the inside of Saint Mark's Basilica, drunk coffee at Florian's, and promenaded up and down the Riva degli Schiavoni outside their hotel after dinner. She was pleased to realise that the city greatly surpassed her first impressions (her grandmother was right about the universality of stations) and by the end of a few days stay was in love with its narrow, dark alley ways, the quiet courtyards with their covered stone wells and water fountains, and the sound of the splosh of a gondolier's oar as he emerged noiselessly from under a bridge.
They saw the Accademia, the church of the Frari, and the Rialto. They took a boat out to the island of Murano and bought glass to be shipped back to Downton for all the family, and shivered in the afternoon sun one day as they crossed the Bridge of Sighs from the Doge's Palace to the famous prisons.
"I don't know why you want to see these!" complained Lady Grantham as she followed Mary and their guide round the dank, underground corridors, and pressed her handkerchief to her nose.
To Mary, however, this momento mori hidden away next to the glittering splendour of the palace was as fascinating as any architectural gem on the more traditional tourist trail. She wondered what the poor prisoners would have thought about it all, locked away and forgotten down here and awaiting execution at the caprice of a despot while outside the barred windows the most beautiful city in the world revelled in extravagant frivolity, its sequinned mask firmly in place.
It was the undiscovered Venice that attracted Mary. The popular sites were popular for a reason and she enjoyed seeing them all, but her heart only quickened when she saw a little passageway branching off into the unknown, a shadowy, caped Venetian disappearing round a corner at its end, as strings of brightly coloured washing fluttered many feet above.
So it was that when the lady at the hotel desk asked her if she had seen the paintings at the Scuola di San Giorgio just round the corner, which she had never heard of, she straightaway persuaded her grandmother that they should go and see them.
This small gallery had used to be a meeting house for Dalmatian immigrants but it contained some very fine paintings by the Venetian artist Carpaccio. Despite the quality of the art, however, it was little known as a tourist destination and when Mary and Violet visited late in the afternoon on their last day in Venice, there were only two other tourists there, a middle-aged and a younger woman.
Mary found herself soon standing next to the young woman in front of a large and impressive painting of Saint George killing the dragon. George, a serious figure with curly blond hair, had his eyes fixed intensely on the job in hand while his horse delicately looked the other way as his spear stabbed the leaping dragon right through the head and out the other side as it reared up. It was a gripping painting for the liveliness of the expressions of both hero and monster and the movement it conveyed.
After a few moments of silent observation both of the picture and of her equally reflective companion, Mary turned to her and asked in her best schoolgirl's Italian, "A Lei piaciono i dipinti?"
The girl looked up at her out of wide, cornflower blue eyes. They were a quite different shade to Matthew's but Mary found herself reminded of him anyway and she blinked in surprise and unease at how easily her mind had jumped to him.
"Huh?" said the girl with a distinctly American twang.
Mary smiled faintly. "Do you like the pictures?"
"Oh! You're English!" She put her head on one side. "I guess they're very nice."
Mary was not sure that she would use the term 'nice' to describe a painting in which the foreground was strewn with the dismembered limbs of unsuccessful, slaughtered knights but she decided not to point this out in case the girl had not noticed them yet.
"I wish the princess was more in the centre though," she continued. "Seems a bit of a shame that she's just standing there in the corner like that."
"Do you think? If I were the princess I'd want to keep out of the way at this point!"
The girl considered this and shrugged. "Maybe in real life but I always thought the princess was pretty important. I mean, would George even have bothered with the dragon if it wasn't for her?"
"He's a knight," replied Mary, amused. "Slaying dragons is his job, princess or no princess."
"But the story's better if there is a princess, don't you think?" insisted the girl.
"Undoubtedly, especially to women!"
They fell silent again, as Mary pondered George's motives for slaying the dragon. Was the young American art critic right and the princess had been shunted aside on purpose to give greater importance to the conflict with the dragon or was the woman swathed in a red cloak at the back of the painting with her hands clasped in prayer the only consideration in George's heart as he viciously destroyed the monster and released her from her captivity?
The girl next to her sighed. "I wish there were heroes in real life! Imagine one riding up to rescue you on his horse like that! Wouldn't it be simply thrilling!"
Mary, slightly regretting her original polite enquiry and rolling her eyes upwards, tried to remain patient. "I would prefer not to require rescuing in the first place, but if I did I cannot help thinking that a modern motor car and less heavy armour would be more advantageous to success than a horse and a lance."
The girl pouted. "I suppose you're right... but cars aren't half as romantic as horses, are they?" She blushed, as if only just realising her situation. "I'm so sorry, ma'am! I don't you know at all and here I am running along like this. Please forgive me!"
"There is nothing to forgive," replied Mary with weary politeness and turned away from the picture to the next one. She would not have spoken at all if she had thought the girl would actually respond properly, and in her own language too.
It was too late, however. The middle-aged woman had joined them and the countess was also bearing down on them. "Who are you talking to, Hettie?"
Hettie looked between the two and looked a little more abashed. Mary felt compelled to intervene, seeing no help for it now. She plastered a smile onto her face. "Lady Mary Crawley. I am here with my grandmother, the dowager Countess of Grantham."
Mother and daughter, for Mary could see a strong family resemblance now, looked at each other with identical expressions of glee. Mary fancied she could tell exactly what was running through their heads and felt very superior in her viewpoint. For once she was glad of Violet's approach at her side and her dry, "Do introduce me to your new friends, Mary."
"My name is Mrs. Bowen," said the mother, "and this is my daughter, Henrietta. We're doing all of Europe!" They both dropped deep curtseys.
"I think we might be staying in the same hotel," put in Miss Bowen, a little shyer now in the presence of aristocracy and her chaperone.
"What a perfectly delightful coincidence!" said the dowager countess even more drily.
Mrs. Bowen failed to pick up on the sarcasm and beamed. "Isn't it just! Say, would you like to join us in the Piazza for supper? We can talk better there. I get the oddest feeling in here, as if it was a church."
There was no polite way of refusing this invitation as the Bowens were clearly respectable and wealthy, judging from their dress and the fact they were staying in such an expensive hotel.
Lady Grantham left the gallery first, followed by Henrietta and her mother. Mary brought up the rear, strangely unwilling to leave. She hesitated at the door and looked back at the painting of Saint George. Most of it was shrouded in gloom now, but she could still distinguish the knight's handsome face and look of frowning determination. She sighed and turned away, trying not to admit that Miss Bowen's naïve interpretation held any appeal for her. It did, of course.
A/N: Next chapter includes dancing! Matthew! Flashbacks! Not much plot!
The 'Decameron' quote is from First Day: Introduction, 004-006. Matthew has not got very far yet!