Venice

“I’m not quite sure about these columbine outfits,” said Fiona, as the seven girls drifted in a large gondola down the Grand Canal. “Where did you find the address of that costume shop, again?”

“It was written on the back of my hand in lipstick when I got out of bed.”

“How magical. Truly, Venice is an enchanted city.” All seven girls wore dresses sewn from bright, multicoloured cloth diamonds, which they’d been assured were the very best thing to celebrate Carnival in. All around them were jugglers and fire-eaters and dancers and magicians, celebrating the ancient festival tradition. With plenty of tourists, of course. “Isn’t Carnival normally in February?”

“Is it not February?”

“I thought it was spring.”

“Well, perhaps time is fluid in the haunted, mysterious city of Venice. By the way, aren’t you supposed to be racing around the world or something? Why do you keep taking all these breaks to explore the local scenery?”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty of time. It’s fluid, after all. Gondolier! Can’t you go a little faster! We’re on our way to a very fancy party!”

The masked gondolier put a finger to her lips. Fiona hadn’t known there were female gondoliers, but perhaps during Carnival you could get away with things like that. She planted her pole firmly in the canal, and **** the gondola into a sharp left turn, which had the effect of splashing all the girls with water from over the side of the boat.

“Oh, no,” squealed Miss Strappe, who hated getting wet. “I’ve got all wet!”

“We’ve all got wet,” said Fiona. “You’re not a very good gondolier, are you?”

The gondolier shrugged, but there were no further incidents as the seven girls made their way through to the Ca’ di Sfortuna, a fabulous palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal where the Duchess Bianca Vergogna was hosting a masked ball. Every eye in the house was on the beautiful young ladies as they strode down the steps into the ballroom, where oceans of champagne and the handsomest young aristocrats in Europe awaited for their dancing pleasure.

“Excuse me,” said the Duchess Bianca, who wore an extravagant rococo ballgown, and looked like Ornella Muti. A circle cleared around her on the ballroom floor as she confronted the seven girls, hands on her hips. “Who in the world are you?”

“We’re travellers on the Orient Express. You invited us.”

“I don’t recall inviting any peasants.”

“Here’s our invitations,” said Fiona, handing over the embossed cards. Bianca glanced at them, tossed them aside and said “These are obviously cheap forgeries.”

“But they were delivered special to our rooms only this morning!”

“Did you silly little plebs really think this would work?” said Bianca, as the water-soluble thread connecting the diamonds of the girls’ columbine costumes together finally gave way, rapidly turning all their dresses into a disconnected pile of fabric squares. The costumer had assumed them at length that it was terribly unlucky to wear underwear during Carnival, and the girls had seen no reason to doubt him. Now, as Fiona and her six friends found themselves standing naked in the middle of the crowded ballroom, with hundreds of counts, earls, princes, barons and even a few marquises gawping at them, plus of course the female versions of all those things, it began to seem an unwise decision.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Bianca, smiling coldly at the girls, who had compressed themselves into a huddle at the centre of the leering circle, concealing their nudity behind their hands and trying to hide behind each other. “You may stay.”

So, instead of being guests of honour, the seven nude and very red-faced ladies were punished for their insolence in gatecrashing a formal Venetian ball. They were marched out onto the dancefloor, the alternative being the police and a long stay in women’s prison, and made to demonstrate a number of old-fashioned Italian peasant dances, jiggling around in a circle performing high kicks with their hands on their hips while legions of masked sneering aristocrats made smug little jokes at their expense.

Maria protested that she was a countess, but Bianca pointed out that she was a duchess, and thus outranked her. And then she made the copper-skinned, raven-haired, dark-eyed woman, with a curvy figure, dark brown nipples, a midnight-black bush and perhaps just a trace of gypsy blood, dance the bolero and the flamenco, shimmying her hips and pretending to swirl invisible skirts while everyone laughed at her. “You’re not fooling me, girl! Only a peasant could dance like that! Dance, naked peasant, dance!”

Lakshmi complained that she was a maharani, and thus definitely outranked a duchess. Bianca admitted that was true, consulted with her advisers briefly and said that in Carnival all hierarchies were inverted. Maria pointed out that this meant a countess outranked a duchess, so Bianca had her spanked by the guards while Lakshmi demonstrated a number of twisting, shimmering Indian classical dances, with intricate finger-entwining gestures and subtle motions of the eyes, hips and bottom. Naked, of course.

Manon had to dance the can-can. Megan performed a Highland reel. Dorothy did her best solo square dance. Fiona and Miss Strappe shared an intimate waltz. And there were other, much sillier dances awaiting the seven nude ladies, all of which had to be performed in the middle of the dance floor before hundreds of laughing masked strangers, with no clothes on at all.

“What an enchanting performance,” said Bianca, watching the humiliated girls struggle through a bare-bottomed mazurka, while the assembled aristocrats whooped and chugged champagne. “Do you know, I think even the common folk might enjoy it.”