It was hard to believe that any voyage could be so uneventful. But for one that carried that she-demon Baffo, it nothing short of unnerved me. Certainly I saw her again. She spent no more than a day locked up in her cabin before the moans and smells of her aunt’s sickness drove her to seek fresh air and diversion outside. But somehow she always contrived to be at the other end of the ship from me. If I were helping the men drag in fish on the starboard side, she would be interested in the coasts off the port. If I went port thinking to point out the landmarks we passed, she would find the sunset more attractive. If I had conversation with the pilot in the stern, she would be at the very point of the prow, leaning forward like a figurehead, as if she couldn’t wait to be in Corfu. And if I went forward, she hung over the stern longing for the places we had already been.
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
