done?”
Once or twice she opened her mouth like a fish gasping in air, but she could not bring herself to speak the name of the atrocity. She had to take me across the deck, through all the benches of heaving rowers, and show me. Our progress halted on a stretch of forecastle where we could see the spray mowed before us in golden sheaves and the twilight sky above caught in a web of rigging.
There was my uncle’s man, in the place I expected him. Legs crossed in his long, exotic white cotton trousers, he was dutifully mending ropes in the day’s last light. But beside him, perched on a great coil, was Governor Baffo’s daughter.
She had changed her costume. It was plum velvet now, flashy with gold chains and rings. But the pink silk was still with her. She had spent the afternoon, it seemed, ripping and cutting up the skirt and now, armed with needle and thread, she was in the process of making it up into a shirt for old Piero. After a morning spent playing mad on the quayside and swinging on the gibbet, there was little use in her trying to salvage it for another display of fashion. Nevertheless, how well the color suited my uncle’s man had not been lost on Baffo’s daughter, either.
She hadn’t progressed far with the project—firstly, because she was not a very good seamstress. Her second difficulty was that she was maintaining an extremely active interest in Piero’s work to the neglect of her own. She watched his fingers, commented on their agility, asked any question that came to her head as if she would be required to mend ropes herself the very next day.
While I stood and watched with the aunt, I saw Baffo’s daughter bend over the slave twice, once dropping her thimble in among the coils, which he gallantly retrieved. As this produced no more result than that, she bent a second time with feigned interest in the ropemaking that served to reveal more of her cleavage than of his hemp. It seemed very clear that Madonna Baffo had decided to begin her flirtations with, of all the men on the ship, her rescuer of that morning, our black slave.
I had to laugh out loud.
“Signore!” the aunt said, appalled. “This is not a joking matter.”
“No, Sister, certainly not,” I said. “But I don’t know what you expect poor Piero to—” I clamped my mouth hard upon the thought and tried to suck the bitterness of the nun’s face into mine to keep the corners of my mouth turned down. “Send your niece to me in our cabin. I will speak to her.”
“My niece!” the nun said. “I most certainly will not. It’s your man that needs curbing, not Sofia. And I certainly will not allow her to enter a strange man’s cabin. Alone? Unchaperoned? God have mercy on me.”
“As you wish, Holy Sister. But our man is not very bright. He will stand right in front of you and nod at every word you say, but turn around and do exactly what you asked him not to do the next minute.”
“Signor Veniero, I am not talking about a simple scolding. I want your brazen man punished—whipped, scourged— whatever is customary here at sea.”
“Even that, Holy Sister, rarely has any effect. He is as big as an ox, twice as tough, and three times as dull-witted.” I had to direct the nun’s attention elsewhere to keep her from seeing the broad winks with which Piero was greeting my attempts to get him out of his fix. “Just look at the scars across his back and shoulders there: beatings that would have killed an ordinary man. But they made no impression on him. He is quite incorrigible, I’m afraid.”
“Then I wonder that your uncle keeps him,” the aunt replied with a tight breath of air.
“What we could get for him would not be worth the trouble.”
I lied, of course. Piero was more than our slave. He was part of the family and clever enough to cover for me if ever I were kept from my mate’s duties. But the nun, being the simple, sheltered soul she was, believed me at once.
“Very well,” she said. “I will
Once or twice she opened her mouth like a fish gasping in air, but she could not bring herself to speak the name of the atrocity. She had to take me across the deck, through all the benches of heaving rowers, and show me. Our progress halted on a stretch of forecastle where we could see the spray mowed before us in golden sheaves and the twilight sky above caught in a web of rigging.
There was my uncle’s man, in the place I expected him. Legs crossed in his long, exotic white cotton trousers, he was dutifully mending ropes in the day’s last light. But beside him, perched on a great coil, was Governor Baffo’s daughter.
She had changed her costume. It was plum velvet now, flashy with gold chains and rings. But the pink silk was still with her. She had spent the afternoon, it seemed, ripping and cutting up the skirt and now, armed with needle and thread, she was in the process of making it up into a shirt for old Piero. After a morning spent playing mad on the quayside and swinging on the gibbet, there was little use in her trying to salvage it for another display of fashion. Nevertheless, how well the color suited my uncle’s man had not been lost on Baffo’s daughter, either.
She hadn’t progressed far with the project—firstly, because she was not a very good seamstress. Her second difficulty was that she was maintaining an extremely active interest in Piero’s work to the neglect of her own. She watched his fingers, commented on their agility, asked any question that came to her head as if she would be required to mend ropes herself the very next day.
While I stood and watched with the aunt, I saw Baffo’s daughter bend over the slave twice, once dropping her thimble in among the coils, which he gallantly retrieved. As this produced no more result than that, she bent a second time with feigned interest in the ropemaking that served to reveal more of her cleavage than of his hemp. It seemed very clear that Madonna Baffo had decided to begin her flirtations with, of all the men on the ship, her rescuer of that morning, our black slave.
I had to laugh out loud.
“Signore!” the aunt said, appalled. “This is not a joking matter.”
“No, Sister, certainly not,” I said. “But I don’t know what you expect poor Piero to—” I clamped my mouth hard upon the thought and tried to suck the bitterness of the nun’s face into mine to keep the corners of my mouth turned down. “Send your niece to me in our cabin. I will speak to her.”
“My niece!” the nun said. “I most certainly will not. It’s your man that needs curbing, not Sofia. And I certainly will not allow her to enter a strange man’s cabin. Alone? Unchaperoned? God have mercy on me.”
“As you wish, Holy Sister. But our man is not very bright. He will stand right in front of you and nod at every word you say, but turn around and do exactly what you asked him not to do the next minute.”
“Signor Veniero, I am not talking about a simple scolding. I want your brazen man punished—whipped, scourged— whatever is customary here at sea.”
“Even that, Holy Sister, rarely has any effect. He is as big as an ox, twice as tough, and three times as dull-witted.” I had to direct the nun’s attention elsewhere to keep her from seeing the broad winks with which Piero was greeting my attempts to get him out of his fix. “Just look at the scars across his back and shoulders there: beatings that would have killed an ordinary man. But they made no impression on him. He is quite incorrigible, I’m afraid.”
“Then I wonder that your uncle keeps him,” the aunt replied with a tight breath of air.
“What we could get for him would not be worth the trouble.”
I lied, of course. Piero was more than our slave. He was part of the family and clever enough to cover for me if ever I were kept from my mate’s duties. But the nun, being the simple, sheltered soul she was, believed me at once.
“Very well,” she said. “I will
Similar Books
