My life, the entire world, seemed to teeter there in the balance. But that world also contained—I couldn’t forget—my lady’s life as well.
And then my nose, unconfused by sight, caught the smell of bilge water coming up from the hold. “Strong enough,” as my uncle used to say, “to make a blind man see.” A putrid “hellhole” made sailors rejoice. It meant the hull was sound; there’d be no back-breaking bailing this voyage. Dwellers of the most congested, filthy cities would clear the decks of such a ship. My lady countered it with ambergris and clove-stuck oranges. But seamen were willing to put up with the stench for a little peace of mind and “freedom”—so they called it—from pumping.
I felt crushed by the swells of that freedom. In their loneliness was a hidden enslavement.
And then, still with my eyes closed, I could see. I saw the threat of Giustiniani’s earring. The cross branded itself red in the back of my brain because, along with little else, it had caught the single lantern’s light.
And then, in the darkness of my still-closed eyes, I saw the simple jewelry of the other men. I remembered their trinkets, rather, from the many times I’d seen them before: combing through an enviably hairy chest as the anchor heaved, dangling from the fingers in an idle moment. Perhaps I had even seen some sign of chafing when the Genoese Giustiniani ordered a psalm read. Whatever I remembered, bits and pieces, they all came back to me now, whole and in a flash, on the breath of the incoming tide.
In spite of the show of unity, at least half of the men before me, if they wore crosses, wore the symmetrically armed crosses of the Greeks.
Four years ago, if I’d registered this detail at all, it would have been to condemn these men as benighted heretics. Four years had taught me more sympathy for other points of view, though I could never recommend my way of learning compassion. Genoese were Roman Catholics, in the Pope’s pocket; they ran this island. But the majority of the inhabitants followed the Greek rite. What of them? They made half the ship’s crew. And they had chosen their Greekness no more than I had chosen castration, nor was it much easier for them to shake.
I remembered once having heard the question asked, “How shall we tell Greek from Turk if the matter comes to blows?” It was during some threatened fray in my uncle’s ship along the Adriatic.
To this a Venetian seaman had replied, only half in jest: “Just kill them all. The fact that the Greeks are overrun by Turks only gives positive proof that God is displeased with their blind heresy. This is their deserved punishment.”
I wondered just how much of the Turks’ success in these lands where Catholics had once lorded was due to the Greeks’ displeasure with this ascribed status. At least, they might not care one way or the other who their masters were, Turks being, from their point of view, no worse than Catholic Christians; conceivably quite a bit better.
Genoa, I further remembered, for all her talk of democracy since Andrea Doria’s reforms but thirty years ago, was now little more than an arm extended eastward from Spain. And Spain bespoke “Inquisition” to my mind. Had the Genoese been using these tactics to rule this island?
Such twists and turns of logic came not from my mind, not by reasoning, but all at once, in a flash of inspiration, I could only say, or in a panic of fear, and in a much shorter time than I took to tell of it. When reason returned, I clung to this lead; I had nothing else. I opened my eyes and gave it a try.
“Yes, I will go with you. I will bring my lady and go with you.”
Was that a gasp of pain I heard from the curtain behind me? Esmikhan was listening? Esmikhan, who could understand a little Italian? I couldn’t think of that now. I had to forge ahead before the vision left me, before all courage did.
“Yes, for I would certainly rather have the fortress’s walls between her and Piali Pasha’s guns than this flimsy timber. And much rather the fortress than your plaster houses and simple tile roofs under which your wives and daughters cower. For do you think the Genoese are going to let your wives and daughters have a place in the safety of that bastion? Not unless your name’s Giustiniani.”
Good, good. I could feel the shift of that half of the men, as subtle but as perceptible as a change in the tide. And under the awning behind me...No time for that now.
“Or perhaps,” I continued, warming to my subject, “they’ll find you a cozy place in the dungeon—when they’ve charged you with heresy for no greater crime than following the faith of your fathers. Then, who is your torturer? The Turk? Or the Giustiniani?”
I felt another, stronger wave of support, strong enough to urge up a murmur with its motion.
“You think Piali Pasha comes with eighty vessels just to check on things in Chios? That the Giustiniani can fast-talk their way into yet another compromise? That the Turk may be satisfied with other promises? You know what such promises are worth. You’ve listened to them yourselves, but only because you have no choice, not because you are fools enough to believe them.
“The Turk is no fool, either. He knows these are empty promises when he hears them, empty because they are based on the pockets of moneychangers. Will the infidel forget his shame at Malta? I assure you, he will not. Or...”
I swallowed for spittle—desperately—then pushed on. “Or do you hope you can hold off all those galleys full of
