A Grand Tour

By Anna Austen Leigh

Best friends Horace and Hal set off on the Grand Tour - and quickly find it's an introduction to sensuality as well as to masterpieces of art.

Social butterfly Horace has a number of light hearted affairs with ladies and ambassadresses; meanwhile, Hal has fallen in love ... with another man.

Through eighteenth century Venice, Rome, and Florence, their adventures continue, including espionage, cocksmanship, and a little light poetry. But the two English travellers out for a good time eventually find their feelings are deeper than they'd thought.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Austen Leigh
• Release date: Dec 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465871992

Anna Austen Leigh

Anna Austen Leigh quit the stock market while she was ahead to forge a new life as a full time writer. She now writes erotic adventure and romance, and spends her spare time managing her investments, rather than the other way around.

Book preview

A Grand Tour

Anna Austen Leigh

Published by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Anna Austen Leigh

Discover other titles by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords.com:

Emma

The Duel

The Netsuke

Natural Sympathies

The Swing

and with other publishers:

The Diligence de Lyon

Pilgrim for Love

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Chapter 1

No one could understand why Hal and Horace got on so well. They were, after all, so very different.

Horace was the son of a lord; Hal was a City trader's son. Horace charmed with his huge liquid eyes and winning smile; Hal won pity with his extreme pallor, so thin he looked as if he might faint at any moment. Horace had the plump satisfied face of a beautiful girl, whereas Hal's ugly nose and surprising, icy blue eyes made him look like a mad poet or a changeling.

Hal was the elder of the two, already set in his solitary ways, and renowned as the leading scholar of his year at Eton. All the boys were supposed to take exercise, and for most of them this meant riding or running, or sometimes rowing on the river, but for Hal it meant taking long walks along the riverbank under the leaf-bare trees of winter, or sitting under a willow in the spring light with a book on his knee.

Then one day Horace joined him for a walk, and thereafter their two silhouettes would be seen, every day, on their long peregrinations.

What do they talk about? one of the tutors asked the senior scholar, wondering what was the secret of this mismatched friendship.

Oh, it depends, the scholar said. Propertius, and medieval stained glass, and on one occasion, how to milk a cow... or so Horace says, anyway.

The tutor shook his head. He didn't understand it; but at least it wasn't subversive, or immoral.

While for the most part Eton gave its boys a classical education, the school play had become a regular part of the summer term's excitements, and Hal's last year was no exception. It was Antony and Cleopatra this year, a classical theme but in Shakespeare's English verse; Horace, already a flirtatious and outgoing young man, was given the part of Cleopatra - hoping his voice would not break before the play was over - and Hal, as the leading scholar, was given the part of Enobarbus, though he was no actor, and stood gawkily on the stage as if he wished himself anywhere but in the limelight.

Not much of a part, one of the boys observed to Horace.

I beg to differ, Horace answered.

Not many lines. Not like Antony, for example.

No. Not many lines. But every single one is pure poetry.

And that was true; you couldn't help but notice it when Hal, forgetting his self-consciousness and his thin, uncoordinated limbs, and the eyes of the other boys on him, let himself be caught up in the poetry. His voice became warm, fluid, caressing the lines, and you could feel the light of Egypt and the stately flow of the Nile in his oration.

Still, it was Horace who won all hearts. Antony was a brute - a handsome brute, but no one really cared when he fell on his sword at the end of the play; but there was not a dry eye in the house when Cleopatra died. Horace looked well as a girl, too, in his flowing draperies, adapting the elegant mannerisms of a lady, with languid gestures, looking up from under his eyelashes flirtatiously. Everyone was half in love with Horace; and Hal was wholly overcome.

That was supposed to be Hal's final year, but he stayed on for another term to take his entrance exams for Cambridge. Any other boy would have gone up straight away, but Hal needed a scholarship - his family didn't have enough money to afford his tuition; so as Christmas approached, and the nights grew longer, he found himself more and more often in Horace's room, helping his friend with the horrors of Virgil's Aeneid, Book Two.

Horace was smart enough, but his Latin was barely adequate; he'd got away with things so far by his sheer charm, and an innate taste which meant that his translations, when he bothered to hand them in, might be a little approximate in meaning, but were beautifully written.

"No, Horace dear, quorum pars magna fui, that's quorum - of which, pars magna, a great part. Pars agrees with magna."

Oh. Then; Myrmidonum Dolopumve - what Myrmidon, or Dolopian, or stern soldier of Ulysses...

Horace! Hal was shocked. Soldier of stern Ulysses!

That's what I said.

"It's Ulysses, not the soldier, that is stern. Duri agrees with Ulixi."

Does it matter? The effect is, after all, the same.

But the meaning is different.

Well... Now dewy night falls from the sky, and the setting stars call us to sleep.

You missed out a line there.

Oh never mind, Horace said crossly. Look, Hal, the setting stars are calling us to sleep. Or at least, to a glass of sherry before we do so.

Hal had to laugh then, despite his crossness with Horace's translation. It was difficult to be a hard taskmaster when Horace was pouring the drinks already, and it was impossible to be angry when Horace was smiling at him in such a beguiling way. Picking up the glass, he clinked it against Horace's.

Minister vetuli puer Falerni inger mi calices amariores, he chanted.

What?

Boy who serves the pure Falernian wine, make a stronger tipple mine.

I'll drink to that! Horace said, and downed his glass in one before refillling it immediately.

Horace proved really incapable of concentrating on Virgil, though. He had odd passions for poets no one else had heard of, and which the classics tutor considered harmful to the formation of his mind.

I'm not surprised, Hal said. These strange old writers; Varro, for instance. He's archaic. He doesn't even write real Latin. There are all kinds of odd Sabine words turning up in his works.

That's part of the charm. Did you know we only have fifty words of Sabine? A whole language, and only fifty words of it left!

Hal sighed. And Propertius. I don't think the tutor approves of Propertius' effect on your style. He says it's over-imaginative.

He means lubricious, Horace said, with a slight turning up of one side of his mouth. Or to put it bluntly, I'm in danger of losing my morals by getting a hard-on.

And do you?

Not often.

Hal raised an eyebrow. This was a little more frank than he really liked Horace to be, even though the younger boy's surprising honesty was part of his charm.

It could be worse, Horace said, wheedling.

It could?

Oh yes. I could be reading Catullus. All kinds of rude words in Catullus - irrumabo for instance. Irrumabo vos et pedicabo!

He didn't have to translate. Hal knew what that meant; and he realised he was blushing. Then he realised that was exactly what Horace had meant him to do, and started laughing instead, until the two of them were both crying with laughter like mad things, and needed another glass of sherry to calm them down before bed.

***

Horace managed to scrape through the entrance for Cambridge, though he admitted that if he hadn't, his father would just have made a large enough donation to the college (which needed a new Fellows' Building) for them to take him anyway. Horace was going to King's - an unusual choice for a rich boy, but his father had gone there - while Hal would be at Magdalen. But term didn't start till September, which left the rest of the year free; eight whole months to be occupied in some useful activity.

So when Horace's father proposed that he should take the Grand Tour, like the other noble boys, Horace agreed, but on two conditions; that he took no tutor with him, and that he took Hal. There was some difficulty getting Hal's mother to agree, even when she realised that Horace would defray all the expenses of the journey; but at last, it was agreed that the two youths would depart at the start of January, travelling through Italy to acquire a smattering of art history, and the manners of men of the world, and returning at the end of August to take up their scholarships in Cambridge.

Chapter 2

Let us pass over the journey quickly - the crowd and vomit stink of the boat, long jolting days in the carriage, the blizzards and rutted roads of provincial France. The Alps, which Horace found dull and grim, and Hal enthused over - The vastness, Horace! The vivid impressions of fear and solitude! And just as they thought their journey was coming to an end, the cart got stuck in boggy ground near the Brenta, and they had to take a boat along the river instead, reaching Venice in driving rain that prevented them seeing anything of the Grand Canal, and arriving cold and wet at their lodgings.

But the next morning, Hal threw open the shutters on a clear blue sky and the gentle ripple of water in the canal below; light reflected from the water dappled the opposite wall with shifting golden rays. Far off he could hear seagulls, and the cry of a gondolier: stali-e, ah stali, echoing along the canal. Hal could smell the sharp, dark aroma of coffee from downstairs; suddenly he felt hungry.

He looked back into the room, now flooded with sunlight. On his own bed the covers were thrown back; but Horace was still asleep, lying on his front with one arm thrown out, his hand hanging over the side of the bed, his curly hair untied and tumbling over his shoulders. He couldn't be allowed to miss the best of the morning. Hal grabbed the coverlet quickly, and pulled it down and off the bed.

Gods! Horace yelled. What are you... He turned over, his skin already prickling in the cool air. "What the hell are you up to, Hal?"

Hal grinned. It's a beautiful morning.

What time of the clock?

Oh, about eight, I imagine.

Horace threw himself back on his front, tugging the bedclothes back over him. Doesn't exist, he grumbled.

What?

Eight o'clock in the morning doesn't actually exist. It's a fiction. Invented by schoolmasters and mothers to frighten the younger boys. I think you'll find no time in the morning exists before... oh, half past eleven. Not in a civilised country, anyway.

Ah, Hal said, amused despite himself. It doesn't exist, hmmm? And coffee doesn't exist yet, and brioche doesn't exist yet, and... his hands crept towards the top of the bedcovers.

And what? Horace's voice was muffled by the blanket he'd pulled over his head.

And I don't exist either, obviously. I must still be asleep.

What?

Right! I'm not here, and I'm not tickling you! Hal yelled, and grabbed Horace round the middle, digging his fingertips into the younger boy's ribs.

Horace wriggled. Horace screamed. Horace finally begged, breathless, for mercy.

Only if you get up.

Horace scowled. It's still far too early. And it's cold.

Not really. And the sun's out. Come and see.

Horace winced at the cool air as he threw the sheets off, and then strode, quite naked, to the open window. He stood just where Hal had stood a few minutes earlier, looking out. Hal could see the blondish down on his arms shining in the sun, so that his skin seemed to shimmer with gold.

Get dressed, he said, and realised his voice was thick and congested. He coughed gently. I need coffee.

***

There was coffee downstairs, and fine rolls stuffed with butter and honey, or fig jam full of tiny gritty seeds and flavoured with orange rinds. They spent the next hour discussing their plans; Horace was for the Accademia and the paintings, or perhaps the Doges' Palace, while Hal wanted to take a boat out to Torcello, the furthest point on the lagoon, where he'd heard there was a church with the most amazing mosaics.

Typical. Horace pouted. We've just got here, and the first thing you want to do is to get as far away as possible.

Torcello was the first city - even before Venice. And now it's just ruins, except for the church, and a single house. Imagine how romantic it must be.

I think Venice is quite romantic enough.

I'm not sure I'm equal to a whole afternoon of viewing paintings, though.

Well. What about... if we went to the Madonna dell'Orto?

What's there?

Two Tintorettos.

Hal groaned.

But it was Tintoretto's own parish church; he did them for free. We can visit his house. And there's a house somewhere near there with camels carved on the wall.

Why?

No one knows.

Tintoretto, camels. Hal put his head in his hands.

And then we can wander around the Cannaregio.

"More Tintorettos?

No. Absolutely not. Just canals, and wharves, and a couple of palaces.

Hal looked up. You promise only two Tintorettos? And that's it?

Horace reached his hand across, and took Hal's hand firmly. I promise. My word as a gentleman.

For what that's worth! Hal laughed.

In the event, though, Horace's word held good. Even the Madonna dell'Orto wasn't unalloyed misery for Hal; it was a sweet Gothic church in red brick with white stone parapets as delicate as lace, on a brick-paved square just off the placid canal. He couldn't quite understand what Horace saw in these dim canvases, but dutifully allowed Horace to explain the mysteries of great art to him; it might have been better, he thought, if the lighting had been good enough to let him see what he was supposed to be looking at.

They found the house with the camels; to his great delight, he managed to find another couple of carvings showing merchants wearing huge turbans.

Turks, Hal said. But Horace wouldn't believe him.

Venetians dressed up, he said.

Like that?

You'll see. Horace smiled that infuriating smile, the one he used to excuse his rather approximate translations of Virgil. They like dressing up.

After the Madonna dell'Orto, they spent the afternoon wandering the Cannaregio, and Hal started to enjoy himself. They saw one man moving house by barge; as they watched, a huge gilded harpsichord was swung out of a second floor window and hauled down into the boat, where it stood on its curved golden legs as if it were considering making a run for it. In one place, washing lines were strung across the canal, bright red shirts clashing with the white linen. Little wooden towers and galleries had been built on some of the houses; a blowsy blonde girl looked giggling down at them from one of the balconies. At the end of one quay, they found a huge brooding warehouse, only when Horace looked it up on his map it was the Scuola della Misericordia.

Never finished, he said sadly. They ran out of money.

And throughout that whole afternoon, Hal realised, he'd become accustomed to the smell of Venice - the smell of salt water and slow rot and perfume, all mingled, that he would never forget, any more than he could forget the slow, incessant ripple of the canal against the foundations of the houses.

There were many more days like this, wandering the alleyways of Venice or taking a boat out to one of the islands. Sometimes they agreed to split up for half a day; Horace would go to see his pictures, and Hal would find something interesting - a gondola making squero one day, or a church full of silver gilt votive hearts and flickering candles - and they'd meet up, always, at the same place, by the pillar that bore Saint Theodore and his crocodile high above the Piazzetta.

Of course, Horace - infuriating as ever - knew exactly why Saint Theodore had a crocodile. It was supposed to be a dragon; but the Venetians, clever as they were, trading with the eastern countries, had seen crocodiles and obviously put two and two together, to make five, as Horace said.

Hal wrote that dutifully down in his notebook, as he wrote down everything. Horace teased him about it every so often. There's no examination at the end of this trip, you know, he'd said once, and Hal had a feeling his diligence appeared rather lower class to Horace, but he carried on writing. After a while, he even felt some of Horace's art-historical knowledge was beginning to rub off on him; he'd learned to recognise Tiepolo, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, and could even get quite enthusiastic about Carpaccio.

I'm glad your father didn't make us bring a tutor, he