Amanda McCabe - High Seas Stowaway

For an instant the humid taverna faded, and she was a girl again, standing on the walkway outside her house as she listened with rapt fascination to Balthazar Grattiano talking of ships and navigation, of the wide, wondrous world to be found outside Venice. Talking of glorious freedom.

He had gained his freedom, it seemed, for here he was, in the New World, thousands of miles from his privileged Venetian realm. But she was still locked in her prison. It went with her wherever she turned.

“Is it really him, señora ?” she heard Delores say. The awed whisper dragged her back from Venice to the rough wooden floor of her taverna.

“Him, Delores?” Him—the devil?

“The captain of the Calypso ! I had heard tell he was here, in Santo Domingo, but I did not believe it.” Delores sighed. “He is certainly most handsome.”

“Whatever he might be, he is a customer,” Bianca said, with a brisk calm she was far from feeling. She thrust a tray into Delores’s trembling hands and proceeded to fill it with goblets of punch. “And hopefully a thirsty one. Go on now.”

She leaned against the counter, watching as the maid sashayed across the room to Balthazar’s table. As she laid out the drinks, Balthazar glanced up at her with a sensual half-smile.

If Bianca had harboured any doubts at all that this was not Balthazar Grattiano, that smile banished them. It was the same charming smile she remembered, alluring, beautiful, carving deep dimples in his cheek that made a woman long to touch them with her fingertip. To kiss them, to feel the rough silk of his sun-bronzed skin under her tongue.

A lovely, sex-laden smile—with a strange, empty sadness behind it.

He was older, yes, just as she was. Hardened by the sea and the harsh sun. Yet still Balthazar Grattiano, the love of every woman in Venice.

And still just as irresistible to women, Bianca thought wryly as she watched Delores giggling. Most of the men who came to the tavern Delores turned away with a saucy word. She was faithful in her way to Alameda. But she seemed in no hurry to leave Balthazar’s side.

Bianca didn’t have much time to worry about Balthazar and his charm, though. A fresh crowd of customers came in, wanting their rum, and she was kept busy again. Slowly, inexorably, the noise level grew once more as a game of dice commenced. The throng closed around Balthazar, blocking him from her view.

From her view, perhaps, but not from her thoughts. She was all too aware of his presence, of the sparkling tension within her. He was near her again, after all this time! The man she had once been so infatuated with; the man whose father killed her mother.

And what was she, Bianca, going to do about it now?

As she rinsed more goblets, she thought of the Calypso, that “legendary” ship said to be able to cross the Atlantic in three weeks. To be impervious to attack and storms. And Balthazar was her captain? How had he gone from his life of luxury in glittering, sophisticated Venice to being such a great seaman, the captain of his own vessel and the scourge of the seas?

She laughed with disbelief. Perhaps his father had bought him the ship, and hired a mage to ring it round with spells. Ermano Grattiano had always seemed enthralled with the occult.

As she set the clean goblets out on the counter, she caught a blur of movement from the corner of her eye. Somehow that flash, out of the kaleidoscope of the room, caught her attention. She turned just in time to see the mysterious cloaked stranger from earlier. The hood was still drawn up, concealing his face, but he moved with a stealthy, swift purpose. As Bianca watched, bemused, he drew a thin, lethally sharp dagger from beneath his sleeve.

Her stomach lurched. Violence was a constant threat in Santo Domingo, quarrels threatening to break out at any second, over any tiny slight, and spill out like a river of blood into the cobbled streets. A place so far from the civilities and comforts of home, a place so full of treasure and rum and rivalry—yes, danger was a constant. Hot tempers flared under the hotter sun. But not in her taverna. She had seen enough violence to last her a lifetime.

The cloaked man vanished into the milling crowd. Every nerve in her body tense, Bianca reached for her pistol. As she hurried around the counter, Delores let out a high-pitched shriek.

And the dreaded pandemonium broke out.

Men’s shouts, the crash of crockery and splinter of wood added to the cacophony of Delores’s screams. Bianca shoved her way through the thick crowd, sensing their readiness to join in any fight, even one not of their own making. One man drew a blade from his boot, but Bianca kicked it away, pushing him out of her path.

“Get out of my way, you poxy whoresons!” she shouted. “I’ll not have this in my tavern.”

Some of the men around her fell away, yet she still heard curses and crashes from the central knot of the trouble. At last she shoved through to see Balthazar’s table overturned amidst shattered pottery and spilled rum. Delores was still shrieking, and Balthazar’s men dashed around shouting, swords drawn as if to menace any who stood in their way. One of the men held the wraith’s ripped cloak, though the man himself had utterly vanished.

And Balthazar—he lay on the floor, his left shoulder bleeding from a dagger wound as his men closed ranks around him.

It would almost be comical, if it wasn’t so very dangerous. And threatening to become even more so, as Delores’s screams and the men’s bellowed threats and clashes of steel grew ever louder, like a match tossed on to dry timbers.

Bianca knew words would do no good. She had no hope of even making herself heard. So she pointed the gun at the ceiling, braced herself and released the matchlock.

The exploding recoil nearly knocked her from her feet. Whitewash from the blasted hole rained down on them as the explosion reverberated deafeningly. Thick clouds of acrid smoke billowed in the suddenly silent air.

“I told you I’ll not have riots in my place of business,” she said calmly. “Now, everyone get out. Unless you mean to make yourselves useful and clean up this mess.”

She swung the pistol in a wide arc, and most of the would-be brawlers fled, leaving the door swinging in the breeze. Soon only Delores and the men from the Calypso were left.

Bianca shoved the gun at one of them and knelt down beside Balthazar, ripping off her apron to press it against the wound. It was not terribly deep, but she could tell from a cursory glance that it would need cleaning and stitching. A mere few inches lower and the blade would have found his heart.

She was not the only one who hated Balthazar, then.

One of the men leaned over her, his bearded face peering down intently at the captain. “Is he dead, señora ?”

Before Bianca could answer, Balthazar opened his eyes and growled, “Of course I am not dead, Mendoza. My hide is tough enough to resist such a puny blade and bad aim.”

“Not so puny as all that,” Bianca said, lifting her wadded apron to peer at the wound. “It’s caused enough bleeding. You are fortunate the man’s aim was off, Captain Grattiano, or I’d have to deal with a corpse in my tavern.”

He stared up at her with his moss-green eyes, his gaze sharp and steady, as if he sought to peer into her very soul. “How do you know my name?”

Bianca had no answer for him. She tore her gaze from his, shifting him so his head rested on the lap of her grey wool gown. The apron was becoming soaked, and Delores’s sobbing was so loud Bianca could scarcely think.

“Oh, shut up, Delores!” she cried. “Go fetch me some water and some clean rags for bandages. Now! And you—Mendoza, is it?”