Sofia

by Ann Chamberlin

  He suddenly cut short what had all the makings of another long discourse to scurry across the deck like a well-fed rat and yell at the careless seaman he’d caught manhandling his crates. “Ho! You clumsy oaf! Watch how you toss that glassware around!”

  Curses are the first thing a trader learns in any tongue and my friend acquitted himself flawlessly, progressing from “Son of a cow!” to “The Madonna of your quarter is a whore! Not worth two tapers!” and “Your saint couldn’t work a miracle to save his life!” Had anyone guessed he was a Muslim, the entire town would have been up in arms. But such blasphemy was taken lightly enough between Christians and, since things soon settled back to business on deck, I felt my earlier fears unfounded.

  “And now shall we see if we can tame this sultry, watery mistress of ours?” Husayn said with a wink when his attention returned to me.

  “Aye, aye, Uncle Enrico, sir.”

  I joined in Husayn’s laughter and he clipped me heartily on the back as he set off about his business and left me to mine.

  VI

  I’m afraid my activity consisted of entirely too much leaning against the landward bulwarks; I draped myself like the rigging there. Mist and rain had risen that morning for the first time in days, revealing Venice as I shall always remember her. The city grew straight out of the water. Oversized chimney pots jumbled on the sky line with the city’s banners. The Piazzetta opening onto the Basin rose like bread in baker’s pans up to the domes of the Doge’s Palace and the tower of the Basilica of San Marco.

  And all around as far as the eye could see was the life this parton saint engendered, life as I imagined it would always be. Nurses strolled across the square with their young charges, past the gibbet on which a pair of malefactors had hung since dawn. A midwife scurried around the families of beggars. And the beggars sat comfortably displaying their dead in hopes of garnering alms enough to bury them, one corpse forced to perform the service until the stench kept even the most charitable away.

  Seaward, merchantmen like us dominated the view, loading and unloading goods from a thousand ports. A spice trader with an exquisitely carved prow and a hull of the newer, swifter, stabler cog-shape rocked off to our port. She was close enough that the scents of cumin, cinnamon, and pepper wafted over us in succession.

  Amongst the bigger, ocean-going vessels were the humbler, but no less vital, local ships. Flat barges hauled crops of winter root vegetables with the fragrance of Brenta earth still clinging to them. The fishers bounced from swell to swell along with the day’s catch and a powerful smell of calamari.

  The scream of gulls intermingled with the shouts of straining seamen. Between the steady marking of the hours from every church tower was the ring for the dead in one parish, a wedding in another.

  Dominating all this mixture of human and animal, life and death, land and sea, was the hiss of waves and creak of hulls on the ear, as the reflection of water and sky colored everything that met the eye. It was the combination of so many ingredients, like the baker’s loaf, that blended into one, daily, nourishing unity. The smells, sights, and sounds, some obnoxious on their own, when part of the whole, seemed as wholesome as new-baked bread, browned on top to a crisp crust, dipped into one large bowl of January-cooled milk that was the Basin.

  But that day was different from any other time I’d seen the same scene.

  “‘O Titian, where are you? And why aren’t you here to capture this scene?’” Uncle Jacopo had quoted his favorite Aretino to me in one of his quick passes as he, about his business, was urging me to mine.

  Our proximity to the spice ship made me think of more than the daily staff of life. A special holiday loaf, laced with cinnamon, currants, and the subtle sweetness of honey, made me linger with anticipation longer than I should have over the panorama of sights and sounds.

  It was Saint Sebastian’s Day, the incoming of the tide. It was also a Sunday, but the sea and the year’s first voyage could not wait for Sabbaths.

  All Saturday I had wondered if I wouldn’t have to return to shore and lend the old aunt a hand in dragging the girl bodily from the convent. But I had seen the two women arrive on the Piazzetta in good time that morning with servants and parasols, lap dogs and canaries—a walking market of possessions. It was not the convent, of course, that Madonna Baffo was loathe to leave. It was only now, in the public of the Piazzetta, that her machinations began in earnest.

  What whining, pleading, and sobbing went on, I could only guess, being too far away for sound to carry. But in the bright pink gown she wore, it was impossible to miss her antics. Indeed, the girl drew a crowd to her as if she were an actress or a dancing bear. Some were sympathetic and cheered her on. Others thought her wicked and told her so with wagging fingers and gestures of appeal toward the higher authority of either the Doge or heaven itself.

  Baffo’s daughter fainted. Baffo’s daughter threw fits. Baffo’s daughter ran away and had to be chased and dragged back by the members of the crew who were trying to coax her into the tender. She flirted with the crew. She showed them her ankle. She shifted her bodice lower. Her eyes toyed with them over her fan. She blew them kisses, paid them bribes of gold ducats, and even fell to her knees in tears before them. When all this failed, she “accidentally” let her puppies and canaries loose and would not set foot in the tender until they had all been recaptured.

  It could not last forever, neither my distraction nor its cause, and finally my uncle ordered, “Call them out, Giorgio. They’ve wasted enough time kissing their tarts good-bye. We must sail before the next bell or wait for another tide.”

  I flagged to our men on shore and then watched with full attention to see what would happen next.

  For the canaries, it was hopeless. People would be seeing their flashes of yellow and hearing their songs over Venice’s canals for weeks. But every dog, the old aunt, and the servants were all in the tender now in various states of ill ease. I saw the spot of bright pink being handed down off the wharf and into the small launch.

  “Very well—”

  I barely had time to form the words under my breath when, suddenly, Sofia Baffo shot up like a belch of cannon fire. She ran straight for the center of the Piazzetta where the two great, red-granite pillars of Venice stood, dispensing their firm justice. The bright blur of pink leaped up onto the gallows, grabbed a spare rope, and proceeded to hang herself next to that morning’s executions.

  The aunt fainted dead away. The crowd gasped, shrieked for the guards, or stood as still as statuary about this bizarre sort of Calvary. Husayn, watching beside me, slipped into Arabic to murmur a charm against the evil of disbelief. The rope was about her neck, fit in between the strands of daintier stuff—the pearls, emeralds, and gold. She was a tall girl, as I had already noticed. She did not have to stand on tiptoe to fill the space of a condemned man.

  With a kick, she sent the little stood off the scaffold and fell—into the great black arms of my uncle’s man Piero. I had charged him with her safe arrival on board our ship and I knew he would not fail me, but even I let out a sigh of relief at his near miss. Then I laughed heartily with all the rest, both on board and on shore, as old Piero sat down on the stool beneath one of the dead men, turned Baffo’s daughter over his knee, and gave her the spanking she deserved right there upon the gibbet with all Venice to cheer him on.

  I shall never forget the picture they made, the great black man and the flailing pink arms and legs. The contrast of colors pleased me so well that I resolved to buy my uncle’s man a bit of coral for his ear when we should reach Constantinople. With this thought, I returned to my work with a single mind. Madonna Baffo would not waste any more time in coming on board.

  The public taming of the signorina gave me confidence that I could be master of myself as well. I had watched her antics all that morning with the detachment of an audience, of a harem woman behind her grille. I felt the power of that. From the distance of the middle of the Basin, her physical beauty had no effect on me. All
her machinations had come to naught. They seemed foolish and juvenile. I need have no fear of her. With the slap and surge of the sea under her, Sofia Baffo would be humble.

  A brisk wind was behind us, filling the wedge of our lateen sail and sending our ship singing over the billows like the strings of a zither. The sailors were fresh and exuberant, and by evening the peninsula of Istria was already a low, gray mass along the port side. The lowering sun hit the coast with such brilliance that any detail was impossible to make out. But the winds carried the smell of oak forests upon our ship, the source of the ribs, keel, and planking that rocked beneath us. The vivid colors of the sunset, like a noblewoman’s silks, gave promise of good sailing on the morrow. The evening star was a diamond in milady’s ear, the whip of Saint Mark’s banner over our heads the whispering of her words of love. Dolphins leapt for joy before the bow.

  I had my work to do, ordering the sails to the proper tack with the evening rise of winds, fine-tuning with the oars when needed to pass a particularly difficult channel. When I was obliged to use them, the rowers flashed water rainbows from the sweep of their oars as if showing pleasure in the activity.

  Truth to tell, I had quite forgotten about our willful passenger until then. She had been very quiet.

  But, “when the children are quiet,” my old nurse used to say, “I know they’re up to mischief.”

  VII

  My uncle brought the old nun to me. “This is my nephew Giorgio, the ship’s first mate,” he said. “He will see to your difficulty.” A roll of his eyes as he left told me privately that he did not have time for the foolishness of the problem.

  The nun’s face was tear-stained and already a little green from the movement of the ship. She faced me with courage, however, clutching her beads for support, and defied me to resist the divinity contained in them.

  “Holy Sister?”

  “Young Signor Veniero.” She heaved an ample bosom in my direction with anything but eroticism. “Signor Veniero, I demand that you discipline your man.”

  “My man?”

  “That monster of a blackamoor, Signore.”

  “Piero? Why? What’s he 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 do as you ask. But I will stand outside your door and hear your every word. If my niece should but draw her breath... Besides,” she muttered as she tripped over the ropes to where the unlikely pair sat, “I don’t know what you can say to correct her that I haven’t already tried. Sweet Jesus, it we can only get to my brother safe and alive...”

  And with the girl’s virtue intact, I silently read the end of the sentence in the old nun’s lace.

  ***

  “Come in, Madonna Baffo,” I said to the knock on my door. “Come in,” I said again as she entered and closed the door behind her. Sitting in my uncle’s great armchair, I thought, gave my voice strength and authority.

  “Have a seat,” I invited her.

  She sat.

  “Have some wine?” I offered, pouring. “It’s very good. Last year’s vintage from Cyprus.”

  She looked at me warily, but she took the dare and the goblet. I raised my own drink to her, but she did not return the toast. She quickly put the wine to her lips and drank. She was not used to drinking on board, however, and a sudden swell sent the strong liquid up the back ol her throat and into her nose. She choked and sputtered. The aunt burst into the room at the sound.

  “Auntie, it’s nothing,” the girl insisted, trying to conceal the breathlessness that still lingered in her throat. I knew she was humiliated, and I smiled quietly at this first triumph as the aunt grudgingly left the room again.

  To make up for her original defeat, Baffo’s daughter turned to me now with a haughty fire in her eyes and a rigid perfection in her limbs. I had to fight the disability the sight of her gave me. She was perfection. The plum color, I thought, suited her best of all. And the velvet was as soft a^ night. Her face was like a clear, pale, cold moon in that night. It could easily turn a man mad. I was in grave danger of losing my advantage.

  “Madonna Baffo,” I said. “It seems you have—er, fallen in love, shall we say?”

  “What business is that of yours? You have got me on the ship, and that is all your duty.”


  “It is no business of mine,” I agreed, “except that it is our man you have dropped your kerchief for.” I took a sip of wine and looked at her askance. “Truly, Madonna Baffo. A lovely young lady such as yourself. A ship full of healthy young sailors. And a black slave is the best you can do? By San Marco! You’re much too intelligent a young woman to feel you must reward a man simply because he saves your life. And of course, you must know I paid Piero to watch out for you and promised him a coral earring for his trouble. He has been recompensed. If anyone is your creditor, then I would say it is myself.”

  I could see by her eyes that she did not like being in my debt. I counted it as another point in my favor.

  “Well, lest I bring your auntie in here for my presumption, let me immediately say that I quit you of all repayment. I need no reward. It was my duty to see you safe on board. It was business. No—more than that. It was a pleasure.”

  Baffo’s daughter sniffed her skepticism.

  “However, on one point I am still unsatisfied.”

  Baffo’s daughter stirred in her seat.

  “I cannot understand why—why Piero, of all the sailors...?”

  The girl leaned toward me, showing off the white softness of her cleavage again, which the cabin’s lamp highlighted and shadowed far better than the light on deck.

  “Guess,” she said, and took a sip of wine.

  “Very well.” I thought for a moment. “You want to make your aunt jealous.”

  She giggled. “No.”

  “You want to hurt me. Get at me for some offense committed”—I blushed as I thought of the offense she could hold against me, of the burn of her arm on mine in Foscari’s hall, then struggled to recover myself—”committed unwittingly, I vow—and so you pursue my man.”