Doctor Who: The Legends of River Song by Jenny T. Colgan & Jacqueline Rayner & Steve Lyons & Guy Adams & Andrew Lane

Author:Jenny T. Colgan & Jacqueline Rayner & Steve Lyons & Guy Adams & Andrew Lane [Colgan, Jenny T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2016-02-10T14:00:00+00:00

Death in New Venice

Guy Adams

1

You have to love Venice, it’s the law.

Of course, it depends on the year. If you make the mistake of visiting during the late twentieth or early twenty-first centuries, you’re going to have to squint a bit. The crowds, the floods, the corpulent tourists taking selfies with busking violinists… The Gondoliers, singing any old tosh in an Italian style to appease couples whose approach to romance is to throw money and cliché at it. (I once watched a Gondolier hammer out Tom Jones tunes, his face empty, his customers entranced, as if ‘Delilah’ might, perhaps, just possibly have been written by Verdi.)

These are the fast-food moments. The compromises. This is what happens when a place is forced to sell off a piece of its soul in order to keep the money rolling in. After all, you have to keep the lights on somehow.

But one of the main advantages to time travel is that you can shop around. Take the late fifteenth century, for example: it smells worse but it has class. It also has a fairly libertarian attitude (love a libertarian attitude). I mean, yes, after a lovely couple of days pottering I did end up being chased by the Doge’s guards but, fair enough, I had broken into the palace, so they were only doing their job. But then, so was I, something I had to explain to Docherty on what seemed like a daily basis.

‘Professor Song,’ he’d say, ‘please, just do your job.’

But we’ll get to him later.

So, yes, I had to take a closer look at the Doge’s Palace, because…

Well, we’ll get to that later.

Anyway, I was having a fine old time, mooching around the corridors, eyeing up the paintings, having a cheeky tasting in the wine cellars, all in the name of honest research. And yes, I’ll admit getting caught in the Doge’s bedroom was awkward for all concerned, but I simply had to try his sheets and, give me some credit, I’ve done worse, at least the Doge wasn’t in the room at the time. And yes, trying to gather up my clothes while soldiers were waving swords at me was something of an irritation (but you simply don’t appreciate good cotton unless you feel it next to your skin). And yes, I do think the Captain of the Guard was overreacting a bit when he tried to brain me with a decorative axe but, live and let live, it was a startling five minutes for all of us and I’m sure he’s probably an absolute poppet when not being thrown through the air by a partially clothed woman.

I kept my calm and didn’t let the situation distract me from my research. I even took the time to appreciate and memorise the delightful stained-glass window that looked out over the Grand Canal. I’ll admit I did then smash it with the aforementioned decorative axe but when a girl needs an exit she does what she must. There was a simply spectacular sunset that evening, I noticed as I let gravity have its wicked way with me.

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