Sofia (6 page)

No matter how many times I told myself that to my mind such crates must only contain salted fish, my heart skipped a beat every time I read the stencil. They certainly didn’t give off the odor offish. Every once in a while, I’d catch the fragrance of lavender or cloves from between the slats. And the crew had an easier time hoisting this lighter burden from the tenders over the sides of the ship and into the hold than they ever would have had with fish.

Still, the planks of a ship were not like a convent garden, not like noble drawing rooms where I felt young and awkward. I was first mate here; I was at home, and the accustomed work, the rapid obedience by the crew of every order I gave, made me remember my betrayal in the halls of the Foscari in a different light. Here, I knew what was expected of me and did it. I did it well. That put the weight of all of Venetian society on my side. A disobedient young girl had no hope of having her way against such a weight. I had no need to be unnerved by her like a landlubber in his first storm.

“Now that is one thing I have always liked about Turkish,” Husayn interrupted my thoughts with his again. “They are not so particular as either Italian or Arabic about the gender of things, so similes can be many things at once.”

“Come, my friend,” I said, elbowing him more impatiently than was necessary toward the spot where he could better oversee the stowing of his cargo. “You must be careful how you speak of your native tongue. One of my oarsmen might have heard you just now, Husayn, and no one must know you are not what you seem.”

“Surely you are afraid of pirates, my friend?” Husayn smiled.

“Turkish corsairs? Not with you on board.”

“I had in mind more certain
Christian
crusaders.”

“You mean, perhaps, the Knights of Malta?”

“Truly no better than pirates.”

“All right, no better.” I agreed with him to hasten our exchange along.

“They don’t want anyone going to Constantinople. They are opposed to all trade and free enterprise.”

“It’s not the trading they oppose.”

“The idea of material gain offends their spirituality.”

“The material gain of
Christians
presents no problem.”

“That of Muslims, on the other hand—”

“I apologize for my co-religionists,” I said.

“As I apologize for mine.”

“My point is, Husayn, you are a Syrian, a subject of the Turks.”

“You find fault with my Venetian?”

“Your Venetian is nearly perfect—as is your Turkish and your Arabic and your Genoese and your French. Being plump and rather fair-skinned, you need only a change of costume to make a proper merchant of the Republic out of you.”

Husayn laughed at my appraisal of him and shifted the taut waist of his gold-worked doublet with vanity so the hem of it reached properly below his knees again.

“Granted, you love the clink of ducats more than the niceties of religion. You think nothing of drinking wine, eating pork sausage, crossing yourself, or even saying a ‘Hail Mary’ or two when the need arises. Still, when a longing for home hits you, I can detect the Muslim beneath the gloss.”

Husayn thoughtfully smoothed his moustache into his beard.

“I didn’t give it a second thought when Uncle Jacopo agreed to transport you, seventy bolts of textiles, and four dozen carefully straw-packed crates of glassware to Constantinople on this voyage. I only rejoiced, thinking of the company.”

“My friend, I thank you.” Husayn’s exaggerated gracious -ness was not devoid of sarcasm, but good-natured enough. “You and your uncle will always display the most lavish gratitude for my business.”

“I would like to keep this company.”

“And the business. As I appreciate the season’s earliest possible return to trade and escape from this land of ignorance.”

“My uncle knows you are harmless, I know you are harmless.”

“Now, is that a compliment or not?”

“You are only trading in the finished product, after all, not in the technical secrets that made Venetian glass the wonder of the world.”

“Secrets for which men have lost their lives in your serene Republic.”

“All I’m saying is that with self-righteous pirates on the seas, it is prudent not to burden any more souls than necessary with your true identity.”

Husayn flashed me one of his guileless smiles, sparked with the vanity of gold teeth, and said, “Very well, my friend. No more Arabic or Turkish lessons on this voyage.”

“Thank you, Husayn.”

“But then you must stop calling me Husayn.”

I blanched at my slip. “Enrico,” I stammered. “Enrico.”

Husayn smiled. “You are but young in this sort of business, my friend, to be lecturing me of pirates and disguise. But you will do well in time. Enrico is my name, if you please. Enrico Battista. Until we reach Constantinople. Then I may well call you Abdullah, the servant of Allah—”

He suddenly cut short what had all the makings of another long discourse to scurry across the deck like a well-fed rat and yell at the careless seaman he’d caught manhandling his crates. “Ho! You clumsy oaf! Watch how you toss that glassware around!”

Curses are the first thing a trader learns in any tongue and my friend acquitted himself flawlessly, progressing from “Son of a cow!” to “The Madonna of your quarter is a whore! Not worth two tapers!” and “Your saint couldn’t work a miracle to save his life!” Had anyone guessed he was a Muslim, the entire town would have been up in arms. But such blasphemy was taken lightly enough between Christians and, since things soon settled back to business on deck, I felt my earlier fears unfounded.

“And now shall we see if we can tame this sultry, watery mistress of ours?” Husayn said with a wink when his attention returned to me.

“Aye, aye, Uncle Enrico, sir.”

I joined in Husayn’s laughter and he clipped me heartily on the back as he set off about his business and left me to mine.

I’m afraid my activity consisted of entirely too much leaning against the landward bulwarks; I draped myself like the rigging there. Mist and rain had risen that morning for the first time in days, revealing Venice as I shall always remember her. The city grew straight out of the water. Oversized chimney pots jumbled on the sky line with the city’s banners. The Piazzetta opening onto the Basin rose like bread in baker’s pans up to the domes of the Doge’s Palace and the tower of the Basilica of San Marco.

And all around as far as the eye could see was the life this parton saint engendered, life as I imagined it would always be. Nurses strolled across the square with their young charges, past the gibbet on which a pair of malefactors had hung since dawn. A midwife scurried around the families of beggars. And the beggars sat comfortably displaying their dead in hopes of garnering alms enough to bury them, one corpse forced to perform the service until the stench kept even the most charitable away.

Seaward, merchantmen like us dominated the view, loading and unloading goods from a thousand ports. A spice trader with an exquisitely carved prow and a hull of the newer, swifter, stabler cog-shape rocked off to our port. She was close enough that the scents of cumin, cinnamon, and pepper wafted over us in succession.

Amongst the bigger, ocean-going vessels were the humbler, but no less vital, local ships. Flat barges hauled crops of winter root vegetables with the fragrance of Brenta earth still clinging to them. The fishers bounced from swell to swell along with the day’s catch and a powerful smell of calamari.

The scream of gulls intermingled with the shouts of straining seamen. Between the steady marking of the hours from every church tower was the ring for the dead in one parish, a wedding in another.

Dominating all this mixture of human and animal, life and death, land and sea, was the hiss of waves and creak of hulls on the ear, as the reflection of water and sky colored everything that met the eye. It was the combination of so many ingredients, like the baker’s loaf, that blended into one, daily, nourishing unity. The smells, sights, and sounds, some obnoxious on their own, when part of the whole, seemed as wholesome as new-baked bread, browned on top to a crisp crust, dipped into one large bowl of January-cooled milk that was the Basin.

But that day was different from any other time I’d seen the same scene.

“‘O Titian, where are you? And why aren’t you here to capture this scene?’” Uncle Jacopo had quoted his favorite Aretino to me in one of his quick passes as he, about his business, was urging me to mine.

Our proximity to the spice ship made me think of more than the daily staff of life. A special holiday loaf, laced with cinnamon, currants, and the subtle sweetness of honey, made me linger with anticipation longer than I should have over the panorama of sights and sounds.

It was Saint Sebastian’s Day, the incoming of the tide. It was also a Sunday, but the sea and the year’s first voyage could not wait for Sabbaths.

All Saturday I had wondered if I wouldn’t have to return to shore and lend the old aunt a hand in dragging the girl bodily from the convent. But I had seen the two women arrive on the Piazzetta in good time that morning with servants and parasols, lap dogs and canaries—a walking market of possessions. It was not the convent, of course, that Madonna Baffo was loathe to leave. It was only now, in the public of the Piazzetta, that her machinations began in earnest.

What whining, pleading, and sobbing went on, I could only guess, being too far away for sound to carry. But in the bright pink gown she wore, it was impossible to miss her antics. Indeed, the girl drew a crowd to her as if she were an actress or a dancing bear. Some were sympathetic and cheered her on. Others thought her wicked and told her so with wagging fingers and gestures of appeal toward the higher authority of either the Doge or heaven itself.

Baffo’s daughter fainted. Baffo’s daughter threw fits. Baffo’s daughter ran away and had to be chased and dragged back by the members of the crew who were trying to coax her into the tender. She flirted with the crew. She showed them her ankle. She shifted her bodice lower. Her eyes toyed with them over her fan. She blew them kisses, paid them bribes of gold ducats, and even fell to her knees in tears before them. When all this failed, she “accidentally” let her puppies and canaries loose and would not set foot in the tender until they had all been recaptured.

It could not last forever, neither my distraction nor its cause, and finally my uncle ordered, “Call them out, Giorgio. They’ve wasted enough time kissing their tarts good-bye. We must sail before the next bell or wait for another tide.”

I flagged to our men on shore and then watched with full attention to see what would happen next.

For the canaries, it was hopeless. People would be seeing their flashes of yellow and hearing their songs over Venice’s canals for weeks. But every dog, the old aunt, and the servants were all in the tender now in various states of ill ease. I saw the spot of bright pink being handed down off the wharf and into the small launch.

“Very well—”

I barely had time to form the words under my breath when, suddenly, Sofia Baffo shot up like a belch of cannon fire. She ran straight for the center of the Piazzetta where the two great, red-granite pillars of Venice stood, dispensing their firm justice. The bright blur of pink leaped up onto the gallows, grabbed a spare rope, and proceeded to hang herself next to that morning’s executions.

The aunt fainted dead away. The crowd gasped, shrieked for the guards, or stood as still as statuary about this bizarre sort of Calvary. Husayn, watching beside me, slipped into Arabic to murmur a charm against the evil of disbelief. The rope was about her neck, fit in between the strands of daintier stuff—the pearls, emeralds, and gold. She was a tall girl, as I had already noticed. She did not have to stand on tiptoe to fill the space of a condemned man.

With a kick, she sent the little stood off the scaffold and fell—into the great black arms of my uncle’s man Piero. I had charged him with her safe arrival on board our ship and I knew he would not fail me, but even I let out a sigh of relief at his near miss. Then I laughed heartily with all the rest, both on board and on shore, as old Piero sat down on the stool beneath one of the dead men, turned Baffo’s daughter over his knee, and gave her the spanking she deserved right there upon the gibbet with all Venice to cheer him on.

I shall never forget the picture they made, the great black man and the flailing pink arms and legs. The contrast of colors pleased me so well that I resolved to buy my uncle’s man a bit of coral for his ear when we should reach Constantinople. With this thought, I returned to my work with a single mind. Madonna Baffo would not waste any more time in coming on board.

The public taming of the signorina gave me confidence that I could be master of myself as well. I had watched her antics all that morning with the detachment of an audience, of a harem woman behind her grille. I felt the power of that. From the distance of the middle of the Basin, her physical beauty had no effect on me. All her machinations had come to naught. They seemed foolish and juvenile. I need have no fear of her. With the slap and surge of the sea under her, Sofia Baffo would be humble.

A brisk wind was behind us, filling the wedge of our lateen sail and sending our ship singing over the billows like the strings of a zither. The sailors were fresh and exuberant, and by evening the peninsula of Istria was already a low, gray mass along the port side. The lowering sun hit the coast with such brilliance that any detail was impossible to make out. But the winds carried the smell of oak forests upon our ship, the source of the ribs, keel, and planking that rocked beneath us. The vivid colors of the sunset, like a noblewoman’s silks, gave promise of good sailing on the morrow. The evening star was a diamond in milady’s ear, the whip of Saint Mark’s banner over our heads the whispering of her words of love. Dolphins leapt for joy before the bow.

I had my work to do, ordering the sails to the proper tack with the evening rise of winds, fine-tuning with the oars when needed to pass a particularly difficult channel. When I was obliged to use them, the rowers flashed water rainbows from the sweep of their oars as if showing pleasure in the activity.