Sofia (8 page)

She also avoided poor Piero as if he had the plague and never did make him his pink silk shirt. I did see her in conversation with my friend Husayn several times. At first I assumed she was trying to make me jealous and so I studiously ignored it. Then I thought perhaps it was my duty to write her a little treatise on why young Christian maids should not consort with Muslims lest they find themselves in the dark harems of the East. Perhaps the notion of such a treatise appealed to me because I relished the idea of having her alone in my cabin again, rich purple and gold in the swaying lamplight, nursing another goblet of my uncle’s best wine.

Fortunately, before I made such a fool and traitor of myself, Husayn assured me that she spoke with him because, besides my uncle and myself, he was the only person of her class on board who was not sick. My uncle was a man of business and “had no time for children” as he put it. As for myself, as far as I could tell, she never even let her eyes stray in my direction.

I suppose I should have been grateful for the peace and quiet. But I was young and could not escape the haunting feeling that if Baffo’s daughter arrived uneventfully in her father’s arms within the next three days, she was not the only one who would have lost the only opportunity for true adventure and power that life would ever offer her.

I’m not sure what part of my musings I first spoke aloud to Husayn, but I remember his answer given with a sparkle in his eyes, caught from the gold of his smiling mouth. “Just as I thought,” he said.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“You are in love, my friend.”

Nonsense.

“Very well. Have it your way. You are not in love.” Husayn gave a shrug. Then he stood staring over the black night water with a teasing grin.

“All right!” I exclaimed at last in exasperation. “You win. But is it so obvious?”

“About as obvious as are her feelings for you.”

I felt myself burn with humiliation like a child caught at some prank. “Yes, I know she loathes the very sight of me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Husayn said, trying to cover his grin in a thoughtful purse of lips. “But if so, then that loathing is twin sister to your love.”

“Did she tell you this?” I asked, violent with jealousy at their confidences shared on the other side of the ship.

“No, no, my young friend. We only speak of the weather and of Venice, nothing more. But I can tell, as I can tell with you.”

“My friend,”—I laughed and brushed all his comments away with a wave of my hand—“you come from a land where no self-respecting woman ever shows her face in public. You can’t read women’s thoughts; you have no practice. If you had been paying any attention at all, you would have seen how studiously she’s been avoiding me the past week. I’ll bet you a solid-gold ducat that even now she’s over there, hanging over the port side for no other reason than that I am over here on the starboard.”

“Keep your ducat, my friend,” Husayn said. “I am sure you are right. She does avoid you like the plague.”

I was glad for his refusal, for a quick perusal of the figures across the oarsmen from us revealed only men lounging there. She must have gone to her cabin early tonight, I thought, convinced I had spent so much time watching her figure from afar that I could recognize it even in the weakening light. I said nothing, but let Husayn continue.

“You two are like a pair of cats which must hiss and scratch and yowl before you mate,” he said. “Personally, I prefer a business match. The father gives you his daughter in exchange for trading privileges. Much easier on the purse and on the heart. One lives longer.”

“And you, Husayn, have as many wives as you have trading connections. One in Aleppo, one in Constantinople, one in Venice...”

“Praised be the Prophet who allows me such blessings. Even with twenty wives, I would outlive you, my friend, with your scratch-and-bite romance.”

“What do you propose I do, Husayn? Present myself to Governor Baffo? ‘At your service, sir. Do not marry your daughter to your Corfiot nobleman. Why should you want to stabilize factions on this island when you can have me for a son-in-law? I—a shiftless sailor. Of a good Venetian family, perhaps, but one that has seen better days. A godless man who drinks and swears, a man who will be gone nine months out often, leaving your daughter alone in Venice...’“

“Venice is where she wants to be,” Husayn counseled.

“By God, I wouldn’t leave that girl untended in Venice with money and freedom to spend it if it were the last place on earth.”

“No, that would be rather unwise,” my friend agreed, visions of the lattices of his harem before his eyes.

“And how could I, Giorgio Veniero, settle down to life in Venice as a stodgy old merchant with nothing to do all day but sit in my warehouse and count ducats? I am married to the sea.”

“And she is a harsh mistress,” Husayn said with a smile.

“Husayn, my friend. I think I prefer you Arabs’ image of the sea as a man.”

“A master lets you go home at the end of the day. A mistress is more jealous and greets you at the door with your slippers—and more demands.”

“What should I do, Husayn?”

“That is one matter in which—for all my costumes and my perfect Italian—I shall never be a Venetian. You like our images of the sea. Perhaps other images will serve you as well. You Venetians always wonder, ‘What should I do, what should I do?’ As if there were power in your hands to change the world. Nay, as if the whole responsibility for worldwide good rested on your vain but nonetheless narrow shoulders. My friend, it is in Allah’s hands, for all that we little ants can do. ‘
Inshallah
,’ we Muslims say. ‘May it be as Allah wills.’

A sudden noise startled us from our philosophy. A stack of wood just on our left tumbled to the deck with a clatter. As my companion and I turned toward the sound, we saw a figure fleeing from it, a figure whose full satin skirts catching on a splinter had been the cause of the mishap.

“Who was that?” I gasped.

“You need to ask, my friend?” Husayn said.

“My God! Baffo’s daughter. I wonder how much she heard.”

“Everything,” Husayn said, and gave me a smile that was curiously somber and fate-resigned.

The humility of what I immediately saw as the girl’s first real triumph over me sat like bad food in my stomach. I rehearsed the conversation over and over in my head, but there was no escape. She had come over to
my
side of the ship one single time—to hear me confess my love for her. There could be no denying that this is what she had heard. The thought of her gloating, laughing, counting the stones of ammunition she now had with which to attack—it was unbearable. I thought of a thousand defenses, but they were all lame. I was stuck with the overwhelming handicap of a weak and simpering confession.

The more I thought of it, however, the more certain I was that Husayn had extracted that confession from me with his teasing smile. Like a testimony given under torture, one could not believe it. I certainly did not believe I loved the girl. She was a child, after all. A mere child, a naughty child with more spunk than wit, more ambition than either affection or sensuality. I satisfied myself I could and would be in control of the situation—firmly, violently if necessary—but it took me all night to struggle to that assurance. And when, before dawn, I was called on deck, I was haggard and raw-nerved from lack of sleep. I never stopped to think that in all she’d overheard, there was something far more dangerous than just a profession of love.

“Ship ho!” was the cry that brought me and my uncle out, and I immediately found cause to be short-tempered with the lookout. Because of the darkness of the night, he had thought the approaching lantern was only a star and ignored it. But by dawn they were close enough that we could see the device on their flag. It was a jagged white Maltese cross on a black ground—the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem.

“Thank God,” the nun said with a clasp of hands and a glance heavenward. “I was so afraid they might be pirates.”

I suppose my nod and grunt of reply were full of wariness, for she caught the skepticism there.

“But surely they are friends,” she exclaimed. “They fly the banner of Christ.”

“They will want to board us anyway,” I replied. “They will search the ship.”

“Whatever for?”

“They are looking for Turks.” I gave the door to the hold an angry kick as I passed it.

“Well, that’s all right, then. We have no blasphemous Turks here. Have we?” She looked at me.

“Of course not,” I said quickly. “But it will slow us up considerably. It may take us another two days to get to Corfu now.

When the ship—a small carrack in high disrepair but armed to the teeth—came alongside to board, the nun had her niece and all their party out on deck, on their knees praying furiously. Had I been a Knight of Saint John, this display would have seemed too pious to be real and I would have smelled Turk at once. But perhaps the old woman’s simplicity was too great to possibly be feigned, for they were soon passed by. Then again, perhaps it was the unfeigned gold of the signorina’s hair that convinced them. I saw their captain finger it longingly, but there was no way in heaven he could find Turkish property there, much as he would have liked to. I burned with anger, not so much at that caress, but at the fluttering eyes and coy little smile with which the girl answered it.

The captain of the Knights was a thin, knobby man with rat-brown, chest-length hair as limp as wet linen. He was the only one of his crew who wore even the surcoat of the once-proud knightly uniform and, instead of the traditional broadsword, he had armed himself with a pair of fierce silver pistols. Hand-to-hand or even with swords, I was certain I could have beaten him easily. God had blessed him with neither wit nor brawn. But with those pistols (probably stolen), heaven was turned quite unnaturally in his favor and we had to cower before him like sheep before a wolf.

After a morning’s search, however, the Knights turned up nothing suspicious and had to be appeased by an invitation to join us for dinner. The cook served up salt pork with fried apples and biscuit, which we washed down with quantities of wine. All on board partook—the nun more piously than was good for her sea-sickened stomach and Husayn as nonchalantly as any Christian weaned to the stuff.

I could relax somewhat and joined in the toasts to a sea “free of Turks.” I put my feet up against the mast, leaned back against the hatch, and felt a surge of well-being that erased the effects of a night awake with a cankered spirit. The food and wine were good, the sun was warm, but tempered by a freshening breeze. The sky was a perfect blue and the sea reflected it like a polished mirror. Among the empty rigging, gulls were preening themselves, making themselves at home.

Alas, the unction was as short-lived as it was blessed. It was interrupted by a stare as sensible as a slap on the back of my neck. I turned and saw her eyes, jealous of my ease. Now we shall see, those sultry brown eyes said, closing to an intense squint. Those words were as clear to me as if they had been spoken aloud. Her eyes dropped as soon as I met them, but there was plenty of time for the message to be passed. She thought, I suppose, that it was only fair to give me warning of what she was about to do. Either that, or she was so certain of victory that she took no care to have it be an ambush.

When Baffo’s daughter was assured she had my attention, she got up from her place and moved to the one her aunt had vacated to go and rid herself of salt pork. The place just happened to be at the elbow of the Knights’ lanky captain.

“Venerable Knight,” the girl began tentatively.

“Yes, Madonna?” The Knight sat up to attention and blushed to be so addressed.

Madonna Baffo herself remained as white and cool as cucumber flesh. She continued, “Venerable Knight, why do you search Christian vessels for Turks? Surely good Christians have no commerce with the heathen?”

“You’d be surprised, Madonna. They’re like rats, and no ship on the sea is free of them.”

Madonna Baffo was shocked and amazed—at least, she pretended to be so. “But what sort of Christian would allow such a thing?”

“It’s not always easy to tell a traitor from the outside. But I will tell you this, Madonna. Your Venetians are the worst offenders. Worse than the Spanish, worse than the French!”

“I can’t believe it!”

“As God is my witness, it’s true.”

“But why?”

“Because they love money more than Christ Jesus. Because they’ve been on the Turks’ side since we took Jerusalem. As the Lord said, ‘they are whited sepulchers, full of death and corruption within.’ :

“I cannot believe it,” she said again. “/ am Venetian.”

“Ah, but you are pure and innocent, Madonna. Innocent of the ways of the world. It gives a man pleasure to protect such innocence. It makes me feel that the job I do is worthwhile.”

“I thank you for it,” she told him. “And may sweet Mary and the angels bless you.”

She was playing stupid for him. For this man she had to play very stupid indeed, and I knew it was a dangerous game she was playing, even had their talk been of other matters. I got slowly to my feet and walked with feigned nonchalance to the dying fire on which our quiet ride at anchor had allowed the cook to heat his pork. There I furtively picked up a glowing coal in a pair of gunner’s tongs. Pretending absentmindedness, I continued to listen intently to their talk.

“But how should I know these corrupted men when I meet them, Messer Knight, if you are not about? You have assured me greatly that this ship is clean. And yet, how should I have known otherwise? I might have thought that there were Turks aboard. How should I know our captain, Signor Veniero, for example, from a friend of the Turks? He seems harmless enough, but. . .”

“How has Captain Veniero raised your suspicions, Madonna?”

“Well, it’s foolish of me, of course...”

“Perhaps not,” the Knight said, intensely interested. “You can never tell. What has the captain done?”

“Nothing, really. But there is his great black slave. He got him in Constantinople, they say. A Turk and a heathen, I am almost certain of it. He frightens me senseless. See how I shiver, just thinking of him.” And she tugged up her sleeve to the elbow to show the gooseflesh and, incidentally, a fine white arm.