This Rough Magic

belladonna-widened eyes at first. He was just looking gray and stooped. He took the cup of wine gratefully from her hand, then swallowed a long, appreciative draft. And then blinked at his wife. 'You're looking beautiful tonight, dear. And your hair is done up in that way I like so.' His nose twitched. He smiled tiredly. 'I'm a lucky man. And I don't appreciate you enough. And how is our little girl tonight?'

Maria felt truly guilty. Like a complete slut. 'She's fine, asleep now,' she said gruffly. She decided that directness and honesty suited her better than feminine wiles. She was better at those than seduction anyway. 'Umberto. I need to talk to you about the wives of the Corfiote laborers.'

'They're hiding in the back sheds at the Little Arsenal,' he replied conversationally.

She didn't need the belladonna to widen her eyes. Had everyone known except her?

'I'm sorry dear,' he said apologetically. 'That's what kept me. There was a fight between one of the Illyrians and a Corfiote—something to do with the women. I'm afraid both of them are with the hospitalers. I had to see to it.'

'Oh, hell!' she said in dismay. 'Will this mean fighting between the Illyrians and Corfiotes?'

He actually laughed. 'Not unless they both don't recover from being hit by me with a cladding plank.'

She stared, seeing a man she hadn't known hiding in Umberto's very ordinary frame.

'I had to do something,' he said, uncomfortably. 'The Corfiote accused the Illyrian of betraying the women to the guards. But Guildmaster Grisini asked the guard to organize more food, quietly.'

'Two guards called Oliviolo and Nona.'

It was Umberto's turn to gape at her. 'How did you know—?'

'Because far from organizing more food, the pair of bastards have been extorting money and food from the Corfiotes,' she told him with savage satisfaction. 'The Corfiotes blame the Illyrians, which is where your knife-fight came from.'

Umberto shook his head. 'I don't understand them. They're our people. Why didn't they come to us? The scuolo looks after its own.'

Looking at him with a mixture of pride and love, Maria realized that the perfume probably wasn't wasted after all. And she realized that—just as old women always said—you didn't have to be in love with the man you married to learn to love him. 'Can I get you some supper?' she asked, rubbing his shoulders.

He looked at her. Speculatively, with a shy smile. 'Maybe . . . later.'

 

Chapter 64

The end came faster and more abruptly than any of the conspirators had anticipated. And it came at a damned awkward moment for Maria.

She'd gone up to the governor's palace the day before and missed seeing the contessa. Not wishing to make herself too obvious, she'd waited until this morning. Umberto had told her last night that the two guards had been transferred on to another duty, so something must be happening.

Renate De Belmondo had been organizing. Among the things she'd organized, Maria found, when she got up to the palace, was a huge basket of foodstuffs. Maria had the muscle in her back and shoulders from years of working heavy loads in a small boat—this basket she could hardly carry. 'It's too heavy, milady.'

Renate De Belmondo smiled. 'You'll manage. There is considerable stage-management to be done before we can bring them out of there. Those women and children need food. And there are a lot of them.'

So Maria had staggered down to the sheds. They were a good place to hide, actually; their men had chosen well. Although the sheds were within the compound, they were well away from the rest of the yard—up a steep bank, where there was a winch for loading materials from the street and a chute for sending timbers down to the workshops or the ship-gate. They were used when ships were in port and kept securely locked when they weren't. At the moment there just wasn't the call for cladding or masts. Getting up there unnoticed was considerably more difficult, but as Umberto's wife she could at least get into the shipyard.

She was distributing the contents of the contessa's basket when a hoarse whisper came up the bank. 'Hide!'

Maria found herself dragged hastily into a long cavity roofed with masts and stacks of timber. It was dark, hot and airless.

And also a vain effort. Captain-General Tomaselli's men knew exactly where to look; somebody had plainly told them where to go. The women, Maria included, were hauled, blinking, into the bright July sunlight.

Maria knew that the one thing she must not do was to reveal who she was. At the moment the scuolo could still claim injured innocence; if they found her here, the cat would be out of the bag. Alessia was safely with Stella, but any baby would do for camouflage; almost all of them were awakened by the rough handling and almost all of them were crying. The poor mites were mostly hungry. She 'borrowed' one, hastily. If there was one thing she'd learned since Alessia's birth it was that very few men will look directly at a breast-feeding woman that is not their own. It was as near as she could come to disappearing. She also realized that the moment was more serious even than she'd thought. There were some seventy of the captain-general's soldiers—quite enough to deal with frightened women and a gaggle of children.

What the captain-general hadn't taken into account was that there were some hundred or so Corfiote porters and laborers in the Arsenal. And they weren't about to watch their wives and children being herded away without a fight. Even if they weren't soldiers, they were men in a shipyard full of edged tools.

And more than just tools. Within less than a minute, a dozen angrily shouting laborers were standing on the walls around the compound holding, one between each two of them, pots of boiling pitch.

There was something very persuasive about that boiling pitch. A few of the troopers had been behaving with a fair amount of roughness to the captives. They suddenly became positively respectful.

'What do you men think you're doing?' demanded the captain-general.