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She carefully smoothed the tangled hair back from his sun-browned face, watching the glint of light on the small gold hoop in his ear. She remembered the pearls and diamonds he had worn in Venice, the riches that set off his fine looks to such perfection.
Bianca glanced at the clothes tossed over her chair, the leather jerkin, the torn shirt and scuffed high boots. The fine silks, too, had been cast away with the jewels.
“What have you been doing all these years, Balthazar Grattiano?” she whispered. “And what in St Iago’s name are you doing here?”
He groaned in his sleep, rolling away from her on to his side. Bianca drew the sheet up around him, careful not to wake him. Much as she wanted, needed, answers to her questions, she couldn’t face him again quite yet. Not until she had repaired that chink in her heart’s armour.
She quickly washed her face and brushed out her hair, confining the unruly curls in a knitted caul. She dressed in a plain brown bodice and skirt of light wool, and a pair of sturdy boots. She was certainly no fine lady of Venice, she thought as she studied herself in the looking glass, tying on a wide-brimmed straw hat. Balthazar would surely never have kissed her if he saw her now, as she truly was! But she would do for the market.
And when she returned, hopefully she could also know what to do about that man sleeping in her bed.
Chapter Five
Bianca hurried out of the tavern, her basket over her arm, and turned towards the town’s central plaza. The street of her establishment, and indeed most of the streets of Santa Domingo, were narrow, closely packed with houses and shops, but they were cobbled like those of any European city. In the morning light, the yellow stones and red brick of the buildings gleamed, and the air was cool and clear with the tang of salt. Only later, when the sun rose overhead, would the thick heat set in and the shutters of the houses be drawn closed.
She descended the sloping streets, answering the greetings of her neighbours as they opened their shops for business. Later she would have to stop at the bakery, and look in at the office of her sugar supplier, who brought in goods from the inner-island plantations. But for now she was intent on her errand. The cathedral bells had rung out long ago, and soon the plaza would be crowded and the best meat and vegetables gone.
At last she emerged from the maze of streets into the open, central part of town. Santo Domingo was built atop a hill, to give a natural defensive position against any who would try to attack. The governor’s fortress, the storehouse of treasure and seat of the cabildo, sat at the highest point, locked behind thick walls and guarded walkways. There was no sign of any Spanish contessa there this morning, though, as Delores claimed. As Bianca gained the ramparts, she could see the ragged, green-black mountains that hid the island’s jungle interior, which she had never visited. A soft breeze swept down from the lush mountains, carrying her on her way.
She hurried past the gallows, blessedly empty of swinging bodies today, and found herself gazing down at the harbour. The mouth of the Rio Ozama formed a natural port, with anchorage for dozens of ships. Usually, unless the flota was in on its way to Spain, there were not so many vessels as that. But the storm had driven many to seek shelter. The sapphire-blue waters were crowded with a forest of masts, the ships’ decks crawling with the rush of activity. From her place on the ramparts, Bianca could hear an indistinct chorus of shouts and sea ditties.
She paused to stare down at the crowd of vessels, wondering which one was the famous Calypso. They had said the mainmast was damaged, but many of the ships were undergoing such repairs. Surely such a one would stand out, like the flagship of a mighty fleet. It would bear the mark of magic.
Yet she saw no such thing, only the usual caravels and carracks, tiny pinnaces, weary after the storm. As she watched men climbing the riggings, swabbing down the decks, she remembered her voyages with Juan Montero. The endless creaks of a vessel at sea, the wide open vistas of the shimmering water. It had not been an easy life, but the freedom of it all, the vast mystery—oh, it had been glorious!
“Señora Montero?” she heard someone say, the words jolting her from her daydream of the high seas. She turned to see Mendoza, Balthazar’s quartermaster, hurrying towards her.
“Ah—Señor Mendoza, yes?” she said.
“Yes, indeed. I was just on my way to your tavern. How fares the captain?”
“Well enough. He was sleeping when I left, and has no sign of fever. My maidservant is watching over him.”
A smile actually broke across Mendoza’s glum, rough countenance, glowing through his thick beard. “That is excellent news, señora! The men will be relieved to hear it. They have been praying for the captain through the night.”
“Have they?” Bianca said. “No doubt they fear to lose their wages and their posts, if the captain were to die.”
Mendoza looked startled. “Not at all, señora. The men will be paid no matter what, and there is always a berth for an honest sailor in the Velazquez fleet. But there’s no other captain we’d be as proud to serve under as Balthazar Grattiano.”
Bianca gazed down at the bustling port, remembering the near-mythic tales she heard whispered of the Calypso and her captain. “He cannot have been a captain for long,” she murmured.
“Nay, he first went to sea near seven years ago, apprentice to the navigator on the Elena Maria,” Mendoza said. “He bought the Calypso two years ago, and his crew has followed him ever since. With a fair wind, he can see us to Spain in three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” Bianca said, startled. “He must be a magician.”
Mendoza laughed. “So some people say. But it’s only if charts and astrolabes be magic. He can steer a ship through any storm, too. He’s one hell of a sailor, señora. The crew would follow him anywhere.”
“Not everyone, so it would seem. What of that man who tried to kill him in my tavern?”
A dark scowl obliterated Mendoza’s grin. “Diego Escobar.”
“Was that his name, then? Who is he? Why did he want to kill your captain?” Bianca thought of the cloaked man, of the dead darkness in his eyes. Had he, too, lost something precious to the Grattianos? She could well believe that an entire crew of men would follow Balthazar; his charisma had been such in Venice, too. But she could also believe that someone sought revenge for some insult or crime.
“He was a navigating officer, come aboard a year or so ago from Vera Cruz,” Mendoza said, his tone reluctant, as if she forced the tale from him. “He and the captain were friends, until…”
“Until what?” Bianca urged impatiently, taut with suspense.
“’Twas a woman.”
“Oh.” Of course. A woman. Somehow, Bianca was rather disappointed it should be something so sordid, so ordinary. “No doubt some doxy this Diego thought was his, until she transferred her affections to the captain.”
“No, no, señora! It was not like that.”
It was always like that. Bianca saw it in her tavern every week, and cleaned up after it, too. But she gave Mendoza an encouraging smile, hoping he would continue with his tale. “Then how was it, pray tell?”
“Diego had a wife, a native woman he met before he joined the Calypso. Esperanza. We all knew about her, but we didn’t think anything of it. Lots of the men…” His voice trailed away, as if he was embarrassed to speak of such things with a European woman.
“Lots of the men have sex with native women, with their wives back in Spain all unknowing,” Bianca said.
“Yes,” Mendoza answered, still obviously uncomfortable to be gossiping about such things with her. Yet she found she could not let him squirm free. She had to know what happened.
“But Diego married the woman, in the church in Havana,” he went on. “She had been baptised and everything. Afterwards, we put out to sea, heading to Peru for a shipment of silver. That was when it happened, a few days out of Cuba.”
“What happened?” Bianca whispered.
“The captain found that Diego had his wife aboard, in the hold. She was pregnant, and ill.”
Bianca could imagine. The ceaseless pitch and roll of the waves, the dank stink of the hold. It was surely no place for a pregnant woman. “What was he thinking of?” she muttered.
“It was like he’d gone moon-mad, señora,” Mendoza said. “The captain insisted on setting the woman ashore, but Diego argued. Threatened, even. But Captain Grattiano wouldn’t hear him. He made to turn back to Cuba, even as we lost precious time, and he left her there with a nurse, in a house of her own.”
For once, Bianca thought Balthazar was quite right. “What else could he have done?”
“Naught, of course. But she died anyway, poor soul, and her baby, too. Diego vowed to kill the captain, to have revenge for what he had done.”
“And he happened to catch up with him in my tavern.” Bianca shook her head at the madness of it all. The whole blood-soaked scene had not been for money or position, then, but for love. The greatest insanity of all.
“Captain Grattiano will pay for any damage, señora,” Mendoza hastened to say. “We’re all very grateful for what you’ve done.”
“You shouldn’t thank me yet,” she said. “Go, see to your captain. I must finish my marketing.”
“Of course, señora.”
As they parted, Mendoza on his way to the tavern and Bianca turning towards the steps that led down to the plaza, she suddenly called back, “Señor Mendoza!”
“Yes, señora?”
“Which ship is the Calypso?”
He pointed towards a vessel in a small, sheltered cove, somewhat apart from the other vessels. “’Tis that one. The repairs are nearly finished, you see. As soon as the captain can travel, we’ll be setting off.”
“Setting off for where?”
Mendoza smiled again. “For home, at last! It’s been an age since we saw Vista Linda.”
Vista Linda. Home. Where would that be? But before she could ask him, the quartermaster set off, whistling a sea chanty into the breeze. Bianca turned again towards the plaza, more puzzled than ever.
Her mother had always dealt in the uncertainties of life, the mysteries. Love, death, changes in fortune—she could glimpse it all. Bianca preferred the realities. Work, companionship, a cosy fire, a goblet of good wine. Things she could see, quantify. Despite all the allure of the vast, wide sea, of adventure and freedom, she knew that such things did not last.
Balthazar Grattiano was like the sea. Changeable, stormy, ever beautiful and intriguing. And, like the sea, he could swallow up all she had, all she was, in a moment. A person had to be tough, cruel even, to survive in this New World, and the Grattianos had never been noted for their gentle benevolence. Why, then, had Balthazar bothered to turn back to Havana for the safety of a woman? And what had he done to make his crew so devoted they would follow him there so willingly?
Well, most of them followed. Bianca shivered as she remembered that man, Diego, and his dead eyes.
Those thoughts all swirled around in her head, indecipherable as a dream and twice as confusing, as she entered the main plaza of Santo Domingo. At one end of the cobbled square rose the cathedral, Santa Maria La Menor. Unfinished, it was still grand and imposing, gleaming a pure white in the harsh morning light. The doors stood open, beckoning the faithful into the cool, shadowy gloom, where they could lay their sins before the gilded altar.
Bianca turned away from the solitary splendour of the church to the bustle and noise of the market. At the centre of the plaza was a raised stone cross, and around this were arrayed the tables and booths of farmers and merchants. Every week they took the long journey from their inner-island estancias and smallholds to ply their wares to town dwellers.
Bianca surveyed the fruits and vegetables: brilliant oranges, lemons and guava, mounds of starchy cassava. There were barrels of sugar, left from what had not been exported from the island’s thirty-four mills, jars of molasses for rum, and small buckets of precious spices. But these were not what she wanted. She examined the beef from the cattle stations, the pork from the wild pigs who ran free all through the mountains. Her patrons liked familiar, Spanish sorts of food, and these would make the hearty stews and roasts she sold so well.
As she paid for her purchases, she remembered Venice, and the tales her mother told of banquets in the grand palazzos. The long, damask-draped tables covered with platters of chicken amarosa, trout and leeks with lemon sauce, capon, plump strawberries, bright Majolica bowls overflowing with sweetmeats, goblets of fine wines. The hundreds of wax candles casting a warm glow over the silver and gold plate, the satins and jewels of the patrician diners. It all sounded like a fairy story to her, as far from their simple home on a back alleyway as the gods on Olympus!
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.
Chapter Six
Balthazar eased the clean shirt over his head, gritting his teeth against the ache in his shoulder. It was surely a mere scratch to other wounds he had received; it didn’t even bleed now, after Bianca’s careful ministrations.
Ah, yes. Bianca Simonetti. Bianca Montero now, it seemed. Balthazar laced up the shirt, remembering the girl he had known in Venice. She had been pretty enough then, if too thin and simply dressed. She had smiled at him shyly, hardly daring to look at him directly when he would come to her mother’s house with his father. But he had liked her. Her intelligent conversation, her questions about his books on navigation and geography, made those irksome visits enjoyable. He even came to look forward to the times his father would insist he accompany him to those silly tarot readings, for it meant he could talk to Bianca.
He knew women aplenty in Venice, women of great beauty and practised charm. Bianca Simonetti had neither, but her dark eyes were fascinating, her mind full of curiosity and longing that matched his own. She listened to what he said, truly listened, unlike anyone else ever had. And she made him think in turn, with questions and observations he had never considered.
But then she had vanished—she and her mother dead, they had said. And his own life had exploded in one fiery night. He had been forced to make a new existence on the high seas. Over the years of exploring new lands, Bianca Simonetti had become a memory. A regret—one among so many.
Once she told him her name, he could see the girl in the woman’s face, in those brown eyes, now so hard and wary. She, too, had made her own existence. And now their lives had intersected again, and she had saved him.
Balthazar glanced around the bedchamber. It was larger than his cabin aboard the Calypso, but not by much. There was room only for the bed, a table and chair, and a scarred old sea chest. The walls were whitewashed, and there was one shuttered window, half-open to let in the morning breeze, but no rugs or paintings. No velvet cushions or ivory boxes.
The tavern downstairs was also simple and serviceable, though cleaner than most he had seen in the islands. Whatever had happened to her in these last years, she obviously worked hard for her livelihood. The eager, curious girl he remembered was gone, the light in her extraordinary eyes dimmed by a cautious, simmering anger.
Until they had been alone in the dark of the night.
Balthazar went to peer out the window. The town of Santo Domingo spread out before him under the sun, a sea of yellow, white and red that arced down to the harbour and up the hillsides. It could almost have been any seaside settlement in Spain, with its dark red roofs, the bell tower of the new cathedral, and the forest of masts crowding the sheltered port. But just at the edge of town, at the very boundary of a tenuous civilisation, the dark jungle waited.
Santo Domingo had not been Balthazar’s first choice of a haven. It was too settled now. His years of sailing the seas, of being his own master, had made him too fond of solitude. Of the rougher, wilder ways of the smaller, further-flung islands, like his own Vista Linda. There no one cared about his past, his family name. Almost everyone else had secrets to hide, secrets even darker than his own. He earned any respect on his own terms, as Captain Grattiano.
Even though he had a licence to trade in Santo Domingo, the administrative capital of the Spanish Antilles, Balthazar preferred other ports for his trade. Only the damage to the Calypso forced him here, but now he was glad they had come. For here he had found Bianca.
Most of his youth he had tried to forget, to drown under the salt waves of his new life, but there had been brighter flashes of light in Venice. Bianca Simonetti was one of them. Utterly unlike any other woman he knew, she was not one of the silent, haughty patrician ladies his father urged him to marry. Or like the beautiful, artificial courtesans he spent so much time with. He liked her intelligence, true, but he had also wanted to kiss her on those long afternoons outside her mother’s house. To sense the awakening of her hot sensuality and know it was his alone.
She had wanted him, too. He saw the flush of her cheeks, the quickening of the pulse that beat at the base of her slender throat. But she was young, and innocent. For all his careless debauchery, something in him could not bear to dim that glow inside of her, those idealistic dreams that he himself had never known.
He had been old and damaged. Bright innocence could never survive in his father’s house. Only by striving to equal Ermano in cunning and cruelty had Balthazar lived at all, but it had made his heart twisted. Bianca was not like that. She was a small, shimmering pearl, its perfection tucked away in a dark casket where only he could see it.
Balthazar thought of the woman who kissed him last night. She had Bianca’s dark eyes, her lush lips, but the bright hope had vanished. Was the girl he once knew hidden there, somewhere deep beneath the hard, cool surface?
As he watched out the window, he saw her coming up the street, a heavy basket over her arm. A wide-brimmed hat shielded her face, but he was familiar with her body now, with the shift and warmth of it against his, and he recognised it in the way she moved. She wore a plain brown gown, the square neckline revealing the edge of a white chemise and a modest expanse of sun-browned skin. She wore no jewels, and he wondered what she would look like in loops of pearls, chains of emeralds.
And nothing else. Aye, he thought with a smile, chains of jewels framing her bare breasts. Looping down past her navel, her flat belly, just touching her womanhood.
Bianca stretched backwards, her hand at the small of her back as she wiped her boots at the doorstep. Even the prosaic movement had an unconscious grace to it, but also weariness. He wondered again what had brought her here, to this life in a Santo Domingo tavern.
She pulled off her hat and wiped her wrist over her brow. As she tucked a loose curl back into her knitted caul, she glanced up and her gaze met Balthazar’s. For a mere instant, her expression was unguarded, her eyes wide and startled as a doe. She seemed younger in that moment, unsure and vulnerable.
Then her armoured visor dropped back into place, an unreadable mask. She gave him a brusque nod and hurried through the door.
Balthazar turned from the window, finishing the lacings of his shirt. Mendoza had brought the clean clothes and toiletries from his cabin, and promised to bring more men back the next day to fetch him to the Calypso. For once, his crew dared to override his orders and refused to let him walk Santo Domingo alone. Diego Escobar had not been apprehended, nor had he come near the ship. He was still out there, filled with that seething, murderous fury.
Nor was he the only one, Balthazar thought as he heard Bianca’s light footsteps on the creaking stairs. The innocent desire from years ago might be vanished from her eyes, but he had seen there something he knew all too well.
Anger. Simmering anger directed right at him.
