Amanda McCabe - High Seas Stowaway

And how much further it was from here, an entire world away. There was no capon for her simple table, just pork haunch and roasted cassava. Rum and ale in place of wine.

“Did you hear, Señora Montero?” one of the merchants asked, as she examined his vegetables. “One of the storehouses was robbed last night! I hope there are no pirates abroad again.”

“Especially with a contessa at the fortress,” his wife added. “They say she is Señor de Alameda’s special guest…”

Bianca made appropriate noises about how shocking it was, but she walked away still distracted by her own thoughts. She had not remembered home in a very long time. It did her no good to remember, as this place was her life, her reality, now. The bittersweet, jewel-like beauty of Venice was lost to her, just as her mother was. Just as the coins from the storehouse were lost to “pirates”.

It was surely Balthazar who made her think of it now. Who made her so very confused and uncertain. Who made her…

Who made her wish she had baked peacock to offer him instead of stew. She should not care one whit what the man ate, where he went, or what he did. What he had done these last seven years.

She should dump the stew over his handsome head and push him out her door.

Bianca had to laugh at the vision of Balthazar with dark, greasy broth dripping down his face. No matter what happened to him in these last long years, surely it had never been anything so undignified as that.

As she turned back towards the tavern, the heavy basket balanced on her hip, she remembered what Mendoza had said. It had been nearly seven years since Balthazar went to sea. Thus he must have left Venice soon after she herself fled. Why was that?

Ah, yet another mystery. Surely enough of them surrounded Balthazar to fill that now-empty storehouse. She was a patient woman; she would discover all in time, and then she would know how to act. But for now she had work to do. The sun was high in the cloudless sky, and the hours were getting away from her.

She couldn’t allow even Balthazar Grattiano to interfere with her business.

Yet as she hurried along the ramparts, now crowded with people out to gossip about the thefts, she couldn’t help but glance towards the cove where the Calypso sheltered. It was not a large ship, she noticed. A midsize caravel, perhaps seventy feet long and twenty-five feet wide. Once her mainmast was repaired, it would have the square-rigged mainmast and foremast, and a lateen-rigged countermizzen just aft the mizzen.

It was not a conspicuously rich or impressive vessel, especially marked with storm damage as she was, but, after her years with Juan, Bianca could see the true worth of any ship. “The best ships that sail the seas,” Juan used to call caravels, and this one was a beauty. Lightly built, versatile, it could go anywhere, even sail in crosswinds with a skilled captain at her rudder. With a stern rudder, and those lateen sails, it would be very responsive—especially at the hands of someone like Balthazar.

Bianca had no doubt that Balthazar was a skilled captain indeed, as capable of charming a ship as he was of charming a woman.

But Bianca was determined not to be charmed. Not this time. Not ever again.

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