I blurted out my quest.
“So it is a ship you want.” He smiled and the ring bobbed with pleasure in his ear.
“Only one way. With captain and pilot. For my lady.”
“I’m sorry. I’m already quite full now. Too full to take on a passenger of quality. I’m only looking for cargo.”
And for a moment I’d thought we were bargaining. For a moment the Epiphany had seemed almost perfect. I nodded my comprehension, however, as well as my disappointment, and watched the never-disappointing sea.
Under the Epiphany’s prow, a tender was loading. It was headed out to a French galleon riding at anchor, the wharf for foreigners being so circumscribed that not a third of the commerce could expect an actual berth. I supposed anyone who knew anything about ships was with the Turkish fleet. These fellows were inexpert enough. It was a wonder how they’d ever found their way here, or how they hoped to find France again, considering how unstably they were loading the little craft and their clumsiness with oars and lines. Finally, in a gesture of exasperation as well as instinct, I interrupted the conversation—which seemed to have reached a dead end in any case—to help out with the tangle of one of their ropes. When I returned to the Epiphany ‘s master, his eyes were measuring me with unabashed amazement. Well, I suppose it must have been odd to see a figure in eunuch’s skirts handling ropes. Then I chastised myself, realizing perhaps I’d been a little too expert. If my past were known, how much more shameful was my present state!
But I read no scorn in those olive-black Chian eyes.
And suddenly he was talking about how he probably could farm out most of the tonnage he’d already acquired to compatriots. I heard a quick catalogue of his cargo, destinations and alternatives, that meant little enough to me but which culminated in this:
“Yes, I think that, save for those spices bound for Chios, I can offer you an empty vessel. A stop at Chios to unload should give your mistress no difficulty, I think?”
“We would do that anyway, wouldn’t we? On the way to Izmir?”
“Exactly. And a few crates and sacks of rhubarb and cloves in the back of the hold, these won’t bother your lady, will they?”
Speaking directly about my lady to a stranger and a foreigner besides was hardly good form for a eunuch. But by suggestion I let him know Esmikhan was of such a modest demeanor that she would never wander down in his hold. Why, he would hardly even realize she was on board. I might have been describing a pet.
And suddenly, there I was on the Epiphany, feeling the rock of the sea below me, gentle and comforting as the rock of a mother’s arms.
We spent an hour or more discussing the arrangements. Accommodations must be prepared. I needed to set up a sort of tent so my lady could enjoy the feel of a watery journey without the loss of privacy. Where might her luggage go? Her provisions? How soon could I send workmen to see to this and that? To see that she had every comfort she wouldn’t even notice unless it were missing.
In fact, once I felt the sea below me, everything was settled. My tongue engaged these dutiful topics, but my mind was ever and again distracted by a thrill that matched the rocking of my feet and pounded with an excitement no more articulate than this: The Sea! The sea! I’m coming home!
Over the Horn, then, from Aya Sophia and the city’s comb of minarets, the fine hair of the muezzins’ voices drew, mournful, distant as the call of gulls. I gave them as much mind as gulls, caught in the moment’s deeper compulsion.
And the moment I did ignore the call to follow Allah’s will, it seemed the very wind began to blow a new direction. Certainly Giustiniani began to speak a different tack, laying yet another offer on the table of our bargain. Before I understood quite what he was driving at, however, I remembered one last thing for which his native harbor was world-renowned.
Chios, sitting as it did at the Turk’s doorstep, yet solidly part of the Christian west, maintained an actual public office which existed only to help Turkish slaves to freedom. Uncle Jacopo and I had never had a fear to anchor there. The Chians wouldn’t help the other way, a Turk off our oar benches. But we knew Turkish ships would demand a very serious storm before they’d be forced into that bay.
Not only that, but Chian agents were known to wander through the Muslim empire, helping to plot escapes wherever they could. A slave on the run could light a fire on the Asian shore, be seen by the boatmen on Chios, vanish from Turkish lands before daylight. On Chios he’d be hidden where no passing janissary could find him. He’d be fed, given Western clothes, hastened home to the bosom of his kinsfolk. The Chians accepted gratitude, the blessings of Lord Jesus, His Holy Mother—and whatever partial ransom payments the families had raised to offer the Turks.
“I’m out a mate,” Giustiniani hinted broadly now.
And I returned with equal candor, “Signore, you cannot want a eunuch for a mate.”
Giustiniani shrugged one worn-leathered shoulder up to his earring. No, my condition wasn’t news to him. “It might keep me from losing you like I just lost my last one. Run off with his tart, if you can imagine. Decided her thighs were better than the sea and food on the table.” The master’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t suppose I’d have that trouble with you, now, would I?”
Even I had to chuckle at the notion.
“But I cannot very well push off with you now,” I said. “Not with Piali Pasha and his flotilla riding like a hurricane upon the Bosphorus.”
“Of course not,” Giustiniani said, winking.
Now I
