This Rough Magic

Spiro grunted with effort, and the boat moved up some more. 'You should hear what sorts of taxes some of my mother's people on Ithaca pay. So little they have to eat roots and bark to pretend they're being starved.'

'Uh-huh. Is that the people you said were no better than—'

'Shut up, Kosti!' said Taki, hastily. Young Kosti still hadn't learned that it was all very well for a man to insult his own relatives, but you'd better not do it for him. Even if he had said it to you earlier. 'Let's cover the old scow up with this driftwood. I want it to look like it's all part of it.'

'That shouldn't be hard,' said Kosti.

Taki gritted his teeth and set about stepping the mast. Kosti really had better learn to watch that mouth of his. Spiro was as sarcastic as a man could be, but somehow you always knew that he was joking.

Yani came along in his dingy at about midday. 'Hurry up, Taki. I've still got some wine to move out.'

With the four of them in the dingy, water had been slopping over the gunwales. Still, they made it back to the shore without throwing Kosti overboard. Then Yani and Taki loaded a few limestone boulders into the boat, took the dingy back out into the cove Taki launched out of. Having firmly anchored it with some rocks in a net-bag . . .

They sank it.

Yani knew his cousin well enough not to doubt what he'd seen off the Albanian coast. And Taki was ready to bet there were a good few carefully sunken boats around the island. A sunken boat couldn't be burned, smashed, or stolen. With a bit of patience and a few oxen—or even enough donkeys or just strong backs— it could be hauled out again.

* * *

Maria put the platter of grilled fish on the table in front of Umberto. 'The prices in the marketplace today are just unbelievable. I wanted some chestnut-flour to make castagnaccio. Apparently, never mind chestnut-flour, there is no flour to be had at all. What's going on, Umberto?'

The gray-haired man rubbed his eyes tiredly. 'There's a rumor about that there is a fleet of ships up the coast. Of course everyone believes they'll come here. It's probably nothing more than a bunch of pirates. They'll not trouble Venetian shipping or Venetian possessions. Put off buying for a few days. The prices will come back down. And maybe I'll be able to get those idle fools in the boatyard to stop begging for news and doing some work instead,' he finished irritably.

'There's no truth in it?' she asked, rocking Alessia's cradle with a foot.

He shook his head. 'I doubt it. Some fisherman came in with the story. The man's a notorious drunkard, to hear the locals tell of it. You'd probably find the ships were pink and crewed by worms if anyone bothered to question him properly.'

Maria nodded. And resolved to go and buy what she could. As a canaler, rather than a guildsman, she had a lot more faith in what fishermen claimed to have seen. She'd already bought basic household supplies in the first days, being pleasantly surprised by the low prices here, this far from Venice, of things like olive oil, honey and wine. She'd been unable to resist the bargain of a huge crock of olive oil. She had ample flour for a month . . . Salt fish had still been available . . . dried figs. They'd get used, eventually.

'I did think we might buy a goat. There is a pen in the back yard. And a chicken coop. I've never kept these things, but the goat would be useful for milk and cheese. Chickens lay eggs.'

Umberto nodded. 'So long as you don't spend too much on them.'

'Very well. I'll see what I can find. Will you be back for lunch?'

Umberto shook his head. 'No. I'll take something with me. There is a sea of paperwork to catch up on.' He sighed. 'This is not an easy task. The yard is an unhappy place, full of fighting. And the Greeks and the guildsmen are all as lazy as can be. My predecessor made up for lack of method by ordering huge stocks of everything. So: I have several years worth of stock of cladding timber, some keel and mast timbers we'll likely never use and enough pitch to caulk the entire Venetian fleet—but no brass nails, and barely a handful of tow.'

When he had finished his breakfast and gone back to work, Maria took her largest basket and Alessia, and walked. There was no point in heading for the market, not when she was looking for living things instead of foodstuffs. But this was not such a big place that she couldn't reach a peasant cottage outside town.

After an hour's walk, Maria was less convinced she'd find what she was after. By the deserted status of the peasant houses, they certainly believed there was trouble coming. She was now away from the coast, and she could see the scallops of azure bay, and Kerkira, white in the morning sunshine. The air was already thick and warm and full of the scent of the fine-leaved shrubs by the roadside. Bees buzzed lazily while collecting their bounty from the flowers. Except for the empty cottages, stripped of everything moveable, it would have been hard to believe there was anything that could go wrong in this Eden.

Eventually she found a man and his wife struggling to remove an iron bedstead from a cottage. There were a couple of hens in the yard.

'Good day.'

'Day to you too, kyria.'

Maria was startled. Kyria? Lady? She'd dressed in an old dress, a relic of her days as a canaler. Then she realized that she spoke Venetian-accented Frankish, not Greek. The Venetians had been here for more than a hundred years and all the islanders she'd met could certainly understand the language. But Maria had rapidly gathered that there was a strong divide between even the lowliest Venetians and the local people. Among the women of the garrison this seemed to be even more of an issue. Greeks were servants! And one had to keep them in their place. You didn't speak to them. You gave them orders. Besides . . . she wore shoes. That set one apart from peasant women.

Maria set the basket and Alessia down, and took a hand with the bedstead. It was obviously the poor cottage's pride and joy, and the most treasured piece of furniture. A bed and the bedclothes were the one thing that the rent-collectors could not seize for debt, so they were usually the finest piece of furniture in the peasant houses, she'd been told.

The man and his wife nearly dropped it when Maria came to help. Their jaws certainly dropped.