'The wedding day came and eventually the bride and groom were alone in their bedchamber. There was knock on the door. The man, cursing, opened it and saw a horrible apparition. A corpse, flesh dropping from its bones. Eyes staring from their sockets. Teeth protruding where the flesh had been eaten away by fish.

'The man screamed, as you might expect.

' "Who are you? What do you want?" the man cried.

' "I am the beggar you killed. I want burial," the apparition replied.

'Again the man ignored the request. He slammed the door, and bolted it. When he had recovered enough he went back upstairs to the bedchamber.

'But when he walked in the room, he turned pale and fainted.

'"What is the matter, my love?" cried the wife.

'She got up, and began to walk towards him. But as she passed a mirror, she turned to look at herself.

'Her face was white and skull-like, the hair torn out, the eyes staring from their sockets, the teeth protruding where the fish had eaten away the flesh.'

She was talking ever more softly, and I found myself moving closer to her as she told this hideous, fascinating fairy story. When she ended, I was close enough to feel her breath on my face. She looked openly and frankly at me.

'And the moral of the story is, never be unkind to beggars,' I said.

'No,' she replied softly. 'The moral is, do not marry a man who is cruel and heartless.'

I came to myself and stepped back. What had just taken place? I did not know, but it was as though a charge of energy had surged through me; I was in a state of shock. Not the story, but the teller, and the manner of the telling.

It was the way her eyes fixed on me that caused the true shock, so far beyond what was correct, and to which I responded. Or didn't; I initiated it, perhaps. Perhaps she responded to me.

'Now I feel dissatisfied to travel so ignorantly,' I said.

'Perhaps you need a guide.'

'Perhaps I do.'

'You should ask my husband,' she said, and registered the disappointment in my face. 'I'm sure he would allow me to show you the sights of the city.'

Again those eyes.

'Do I need to ask his permission?'

'No,' she said with a touch of contempt in her voice.

'I do not wish to trouble you. I'm sure you are very busy.'

'I could spare you some time, I'm sure. I would enjoy it. My husband is always telling me I should do more out of the house. He knows there is little of my own here, not that he does anything except apologise.'

I could not get the encounter out of my mind, then or later. It grew in me, like my feeling for the city itself, without me even noticing. But I was aware that what I saw and did was blending with my thoughts, almost to the point of not being able to tell one from the other. Although I wished to clear my head, I also wished the strange state to continue. It was luxurious to surrender to the least impulse, to allow any thought to pass through my head, to abandon that careful discipline I had steadily cultivated. To be other than myself, in fact.

I needed company for distraction, but I also wished to discover more about Louise Cort. What was her history, her nature? Why had she talked to me in such a fashion? What sort of person was she?

I had only met her on two occasions by this point, and only for a few minutes in all. Not enough to explain her place in my thoughts; certainly no other woman – and by then I had met many more charming, more beautiful, more notable in all respects – had such a rapid effect on me. For the most part I had forgotten them the moment they had passed from my sight.

I found my way to the restaurant a few days later as I again needed company to fill my hours; the Marchesa was perfectly happy to provide food, at an extravagant extra cost, but her cook was dreadful and she insisted on dining in state in the old dining room. Just her and me, at opposite ends of a very long table. Conversation was difficult, to say the least, and the predominant sound was of clinking cutlery and the noise she made as she ate, for she had false teeth which did not fit very well and which needed to be sucked back into place after every bite.

She would also, at least once every mealtime, get a dreamy look on her face, which I soon enough learned was the sign of a imminent visitation from the Other Side. On top of that there was no gas lighting; the only illumination after dusk came from candles, and the great multicoloured chandelier in my sitting room – though large enough to hold several dozen candles – had not, I thought, been lit since long before the extinction of the Serenissima. It was blackened with use, and covered with dust from disuse. It was dark and impossible to read after dinner.

Strangely, the person I most looked forward to meeting again was Macintyre. I found him curious, and my interest was heightened by the desire to discover what, exactly, a Lancashire engineer was doing in a city so far away from any industry. So I engaged him in conversation, ignoring Cort and Drennan, who were the only other people there that evening.

It was not easy, as conversation was a skill Macintyre had not mastered. Either he did not reply at all, or answered in monosyllables, and as he ate, he drank, which made his words difficult to understand. All my attempts to indicate an interest, to ask careful questions, met with grunts or non-committal replies.

Eventually I lost patience with him. 'What are you doing in this city?' I asked, bluntly and quite rudely.

Macintyre looked at me, and gave a faint smile. 'That's better,' he said. 'If you want to know something, ask. Can't stand these manners, skirting round things all the time.'

'I didn't wish to be rude.'

'What's rude about curiosity? About things or people? If you want to know something, ask. If I don't want to say, I'll tell you straight out. Why should I find that rude?'

He pulled a pipe from his pocket, disregarding the fact that no one else had finished their meal, filled it swiftly and lit it, blowing thick clouds of pungent, choking smoke into their air like a steam train preparing for a long journey. Then he pushed his plate away and put both elbows on the table.

'So how did you end up here?'

'By chance. I work for hire, shipyards, mainly. I served my apprenticeship with Laird's in Liverpool.'

'Doing?'

'Everything. Eventually I worked with a little group of people designing different sorts of propellers. By the time I left I was in charge of the entire design office.'

He said this with pride, almost defiance. He must have been used to expressions of blank indifference from the sort of people he encountered in Venice, who considered designing a propeller as an accomplishment of no significance whatsoever.

I wished to ask more. Laird's was an impressive company; its ships set the standards for others to match. But he was already standing up. 'That's too long a story for tonight,' he said gruffly. 'If you're interested, I might tell you. Come to my workshop sometime, if you've a mind to hear it. But I must go and see to my daughter.'

'I would like that very much,' I replied. 'Perhaps I could take you for lunch.'

'No restaurants where I work,' he said, but he was easier in his speech now; the roughness of resentment had eased off him. His final parting was almost civil.

'Well, you are the privileged one,' Drennan drawled as we both stood to put on our coats after the meal. The days were still lovely, but the evening air was now getting steadily cooler. 'What have you done to win his favour? No one has ever been allowed in that workshop of his.'

'Maybe I just showed interest? Or perhaps I was just as rude as he, and he was drawn to a kindred spirit.'

Drennan laughed, a pleasant laugh, easy and warm. 'Maybe so.'

Nor should I have been surprised by Macintyre's workshop, when I arrived there the next day, somewhat late due to the difficulty of finding its location. The part of Venice where he had settled was not only unfashionable among the Venetians, I am prepared to wager that not one tourist in a thousand has ever ventured into it.