When I still wouldn’t rise, she collapsed her form to kneel and bundle beside me. “I owe you,” she said, the instant before our lips met.
What a lovely, lingering moment was then, each touch untainted by sense of payment due, by looking towards some future goal. All was glorious in and of itself. Each fondle, each caress held perfect existence for itself alone, each touch an independent climax of its own. When lovers promise “for eternity,” they mean only ‘til the need is spent. Then they will roll over and sleep on it. Our ardor, appetite, and food all at once, knew no such conclusion...
...But then the world coughing for admittance outside our door intruded. With one last swirling taste of her chin, I rose to go, letting her know there was more freedom in serving her than in all of Christendom, letting her know in truth my service as well as my love was forever. There was nothing left about my person that could even stir for any other.
***
And so, as the Chian sky began to silver, we weighed anchor and unfurled the sails. The predawn breeze was brisker than the previous day had promised; the canvas overhead filled with the crack of whiplash. But still the movement was sluggish. We were terribly overloaded, daredevil toddlers and weeping old women to the gunwales.
Giustiniani had command. When he’d succumbed to our plan and brought his wife and daughters on board, I thought that was enough assault to his pride. I didn’t need to captain a ship. I had all I’d ever want in the safety of Esmikhan behind her curtains and her veils.
When my lady had invited the captain’s family to crowd under her awnings with her and her maids—well, that was fine. No time for dalliance in such a throng. Besides, I should keep a watch on deck and on the water before us. I’d have Esmikhan to myself plenty of time in the years to come—inshallah, for the rest of our lives, and even in the unphysicality beyond.
So I came to mate our desperate sail to safety that morning.
Exhaustion fairly nauseated me. More ship’s biscuit to prepare for the long Ramadhan day ahead didn’t help the stomach. But I would sooner cut my own throat than cut ties with Esmikhan by breaking the rules of her fast now. And in their scramble for possessions, few of the Chians had thought to bring any food. I’d eyed a number of chickens and a milch goat with interest—less interest now that I’d stepped in their droppings a time or two. Besides, I’d promised safety to these forlorn souls, and until I was certain Piali Pasha wouldn’t despoil them, I couldn’t very well do so myself.
Until then, I found distraction in the wind upon my face and a detached scrutiny of Giustiniani’s style and skill. I was glad the smooth hand of God in wind and sails prevented our means of locomotion from picking up their captain’s style, which at the moment was as rough as cullet with guilt and nerves.
“We’ve got a good start. We know the sandbars in the dark, we native Chians. And the Turks, the Turks are all asleep. We’ll be past them before they have an inkling.”
He kept muttering things like this over and over as he paced among bundles of belongings and sleeping Chians along the Turk-ward, starboard side of the rail. He said it to anyone who asked, anyone who’d listen, sometimes just to himself. He said it with the inflection of an Ave Maria. Well, those tones were easy enough to pick up. Anyone awake on deck was saying it, if they weren’t murmuring some Greek prayer in its place.
Had I been captain, I’d have soon put a stop to both of them. The same wind that blew us alongside the Turks would carry the cant ahead of us. But of course I was the irredeemable skeptic. I’d Ave’d myself ‘til bile rose in the dim little house in Pera—and saw that heaven did as it damn well pleased, for all our petitions. Still, how could I begrudge people their comfort where they could find it?
As long as they left me mine, I thought with a protective glance towards my lady’s curtains, drifting with the same breeze that propelled us.
All this “they sleep,” however. This “the Turks are still asleep” was delusion. Giustiniani deluded himself and anyone who believed his prayer. The Turks were awake, filling their bellies for whatever they had planned for the day, filling their hearts with Ramadhan fervor. The coating of biscuit and—did I taste it?—weevil on my teeth told me this was so. Indeed, before I could even tell sail from sky, I was certain I heard the Ramadhan drums across the straits, louder than both Christian prayers. The drums roused the faithful early, roused them so they could eat before sunrise. Made them alert.
I thought in good faith I should tell Giustiniani what my communion with the Turks—in my stomach at least—told me. After prayers, I thought, was soon enough. If I could find an inch of deck on which to spread my rug. Maybe without Esmikhan to share prostrations with, maybe I didn’t care about prayers.
But then I overheard another verse to our captain’s prayer: “We’ll pass them by. Yes, we’ll pass the flotilla by and then, with the princess as our cover ‘til we’re far beyond Greece, we’ll make it safe to Genoa. As God is my witness—Genoa.”
He wished us dead, that’s what he wished. Overloaded and underfed as the vessel was, I knew a trip to the mainland was about all we could hope for. My lady and I would be destitute if not enslaved in Genoa. Genoa was not a port for which I’d ever set the helm. Let the man pray “Genoa” if
