“This is an awful place.” Miss Frobisher gasped out the words as she staggered on, her face bright, beetroot red. She was a large woman and not suited to the heat. “What on earth made you suggest it, Miss Browning?”

“We are on a cultural trip, Miss Frobisher,” I replied, trying to sound patient and optimistic. “Venice has such a brilliant collection of paintings and sculptures, and the buildings themselves are all works of art. The girls will find plenty to sketch and learn a lot of history.” I changed my suitcase to the other hand, trying not to show that I, too, was nearing exhaustion. “I was here myself when I was eighteen, and I was entranced by the city.”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed anything historic or noteworthy yet,” Miss Frobisher snapped. “A nasty, dirty train station, a mob of evil men who all smelled bad and tried to manhandle me. And did you see all those soldiers and those men in black shirts at the station? Mussolini’s thugs. I’ve read about them. Just as bad as Hitler.” She dropped her suitcase to the cobblestones, wiped off her hands on her skirt, then hefted it again. “At least we could have stayed in a proper hotel and not a heathen Roman Catholic establishment.”

“Not my choice, Miss Frobisher,” I said, my patience now wearing rather thin. “It was the school’s board of directors’. As you know, they were a little unsure about the wisdom of this venture. Reverend Cronin felt that the parents would feel more secure knowing their daughters were safely locked up for the night in a convent.”

“Will we be fed bread and water, miss?” Sheila Barber, a particularly annoying girl, demanded. “I’ve read about convents. They make nuns beat themselves with whips and pray twenty times a day and get up at four in the morning.”

“Not this one, I can assure you, Sheila,” I replied. “This order is an order of hospitality. That is what they do—host pilgrims or visitors like ourselves. I have been assured it is most welcoming.”

We trudged on. In truth, I was beginning to feel as disillusioned and worried as they were. When a group of parents had approached the school, suggesting that their daughters needed exposure to the great art of the Continent before the political situation deteriorated even further, and one of them had particularly mentioned Venice, it had been more than I could resist. As art mistress, I was an obvious choice to lead such an expedition. Also I am the only teacher on the staff under fifty. The rest are spinsters who were at the right age for marriage around the time of the Great War, thus they had little chance of ever finding a husband after a whole generation of young men had been wiped out. It seemed that most of them were reluctant to travel to Europe at such an unsettled time. Finally Miss Frobisher, the history mistress, was persuaded to go with us. We were to spend the first few days in Venice and then on to Florence.