This Rough Magic

The doorway had two broad buttresses outside. Inside, the door to the room that they were trying to take the bedstead out of was at such an angle that the bedstead just couldn't do the corner without hitting the strut. After a few moments of struggle Maria asked: 'How did it get in?'

The man shrugged. 'I do not know, lady. My grandfather put it in before I was born. There was only one room then.'

Maria's patience was exhausted. Besides, she'd walked a long way carrying a baby on a hot morning. She took charge. There were some advantages to being a lordly foreigner. The peasant wouldn't have taken such instructions from his wife. 'Put the end down. It'll have to stand on end to get it out.'

At an angle, stood on end and scraping the white-washed clay, the bedstead came through.

The peasants grinned. 'Lady, you are clever. And strong too,' said the man admiringly. 'Where do you come from?'

'Venice.'

The peasant shook his head. 'Can't be. Eh, Eleni? The women who come to the garrison and villas, they all are weak.'

The wife nodded. 'Anastasia is in service at Villa Foiri. She says the woman cannot even pick up a dish for herself.'

Maria laughed. 'They aren't weak, just lazy. Too lazy to do for themselves what they can pay someone else to do!'

This provoked laughter from both. 'Why, lady, they say we are the lazy ones!'

Alessia stirred, and Maria went to her. The peasant wife looked longingly and adoringly at the baby. 'She is so beautiful, lady.'

Maria wondered why people always said babies were beautiful. She loved Alessia more than anything, but she wouldn't have called her baby 'beautiful.' Plump, yes. Soft and tiny, yes. Adorable, yes. 'She is very lovely when she's asleep.'

The peasant was plainly keeping out of this women's talk. 'Eleni, why don't you bring us some of that young white wine and some food. It has been hot work, but now, thanks to the lady, the worst job is over.'

Eleni nodded. 'Sit, lady.' She motioned to the bedstead. Her husband had already taken up the important task of supporting a tree, by sitting against it in the shade.

'I'll give you a hand,' Maria offered. 'I was brought up to know my way about a kitchen, never mind what the others do.'

They went into the cool, dim cottage. The kitchen was around the back, actually a separate little room—the only light coming either from the hole in the roof or the door. The only 'furnishing' was a hearth a few inches high, and a few small soot-blackened shelves. By comparison, Maria realized her little home was a palace.

The young peasant woman had plainly decided that such a person could be trusted with the innermost secrets of the heart. Questions about pregnancy and birthing followed as she took bread, olives and cheese, and a clay jug of wine from places in her kitchen and loaded these onto a board.

'I think I am pregnant,' she confided in a whisper. 'I have not . . . Yani and I have been married for three years and I have had no children. But this year I have been to the mountains. To the holy place for the dancing.' She giggled. 'It was very cold without my clothes on. But I will be blessed this year.' She touched Alessia with a gentle hand.

She seemed to assume Maria knew what she was talking about.

They went outside, and woke her husband. The wine was cool and crisp, the bread crusty. The olives, wrinkled, tiny and black, were flavored with some rosemary. They ate in silence. Peasant table manners were simple: Talk and food did not go together. Maria smiled. Back in the days she'd been trying to learn to be more ladylike to please Caesare, one of the hardest things she'd had to try to master was the idea of eating and talking at the same time. It gave you indigestion. It was pleasant to slip back into the business of taking food seriously and talking later.

But when the eating was done, then it was time for talk and for business.

Maria found herself learning a great deal about the fleet that had been spotted at the bay of Vlores. She also found herself walking back to Corfu town leading a kid that did not wish to be led, and with a dozen fresh eggs, a crock of olives and some cheese. And with two disgruntled-looking brown chickens in her basket, their feet tied with twine and attached to the wicker.

 

Chapter 28

On the slopes of Mount Pantocrator, two bored mercenary cavalrymen were preparing a late dinner of a skinny fowl that some peasant was going to be very upset about in the morning. Spatchcocked and grilling over the flames, it had more of their attention than the sea-watch their not very impressed capi had ordered them to keep. They had every intent of finishing their chicken and some young wine, and sleeping beside the embers of the olive-wood fire. Gurno'ec was a Slovene, and his companion from Lombardy. Their loyalty to the Venetian Republic was purely financial.

Still, when the one got up from the fire and wandered into the dark a bit to relieve himself of some of that young wine . . . he did glance at the moonlit sea. He nearly wet his boots.

'Chicken looks about done, Gurni,' said his companion, from the fireside.

'Forget the sodding chicken! We'd better get to our horses.' His tone of voice told his Lombard companion that this was no joke. The man stood up and came away from the fire.

'What is it?'

The Slovene pointed at the sea. 'This wasn't the stupidest idea that Commander Leopoldo ever had after all.'

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