Party crashers exposed in the Piazza

It was the next day.

A large crowd of tourists had assembled in the Piazza San Marco, in the heart of Venice. Pigeons perched on the Campanile and the spires of the Doge’s palace, cooing at each other and wondering what the fuss was all about. Charlotte and the rest of Class 1-A had found themselves comfortable seats with a good view of the action, and were watching eagerly as a white horse dragged a wheeled cage across the flagstones and deposited it in the middle of the wide-open public square.

The cage was lined with velvet curtains, so nobody could see what was inside. Two guards in fancy uniforms flung open its doors, and made a beckoning motion. There was a long moment of hesitation.

Seven extremely beautiful women, all of them naked and blushing hotly, walked out of the cage with their hands on their heads. Their bottoms glowed as red as their faces. After the long hours of dancing, Bianca had taken them down to the old medieval dungeons beneath the Ca’ di Sfortuna and spent more long hours explaining to them exactly how much pull she had in Venice and exactly what would happen to them if they didn’t do as they were told. Fiona couldn’t speak for the other girls, but she personally had found it very convincing.

“Guardate! Donne nude e imbarazzate!”

“Che bei seni! Che bei culi! Che belle fighe! Che umiliazione!”

“Perché non hai vestiti? Non sei timido?”

“Ballate per noi, ragazze nude!”

The cage was wheeled away. The guards stepped back, leaving the girls stranded on the wide expanse of pavement. Fiona bit her lip, feeling the sun on her skin, the wind teasing her nipples and the smell of salt in the air as she stood totally and inappropriately bare naked in the middle of the Piazza, before an ocean of masked revellers in outrageous costumes and curious tourists from all across the globe with surprisingly cheap portable cameras. It was this or a trespassing conviction, and six long months in Bianca’s dungeons.

Bianca, who’d entered with the cage, raised her voice so that everyone in the square could hear her. “These silly girls tried to crash my party!” she said, to a ragged chorus of cheers. “But then all their clothes fell off! They thought they were so clever, sneaking in as guests! They didn’t expect to become the entertainment!”

More cheers. “And now, in my munificence,” Bianca declared, gesturing grandly to the squirming septet, “I have decided to share that entertainment with all the good people of Venice. Girls? Entertain.”

She snapped her fingers, and a nearby string quartet struck up a lively tune. Still, Fiona hesitated. Hundreds of people were watching her, all smiling in a way she didn’t like. Surely, she didn’t really have to do this horrid, dreadful, humiliating thing?

“Now.”

Ah. Yes. She most certainly did.

And so, led by Fiona, the seven red-faced girls had to dance the mazurka naked in the middle of the Piazza San Marco, before the eager eyes of an endless crowd of cheering tourists. They had to dance the polka naked, the quadrille naked, the two-step naked and the Highland reel naked, as well. They took a break to sing a rousing chorus of Roses Of England and The Maiden And The Thief, and then went on to dance the minuet naked, the gavotte naked, the waltz naked and the galop naked. And then they had to dance the mazurka naked again, just to round things out.

Finally, once the girls had danced naked every dance they knew, Bianca snapped her fingers a final time.

And the blushing septet had to walk naked through the streets of Venice, over bridges and canals, with gondoliers whistling at them and masked figures leering from rooftops, all the way from the Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge. They climbed up to the top of the bridge and, one by one, with great ceremony, jumped naked into the Grand Canal.

Only then, once they had clambered from the water, drenched and nude and mortified beyond belief, with both banks of the canal lined with tourists, and hooting spectators leaning from the narrow windows of medieval buildings to inform them about how cute their tits looked, were Fiona and the rest of the girls released from their obligation to provide naked entertainment for the Venetian public. Of course, it still took them a very long time to scurry home.