Chapter 22: If the Wind Loves Us

The desire to arrive and the arrival itself were two different beasts, and between them lay nineteen days of salt, rope and boredom taking turns until Vito could no longer guess which day it was, even if you had offered him his life in exchange for the answer.

He spent the entire voyage trying to bash into the crew a handful of habits he considered too obvious to need explaining. Wash your hands, keep the filth away from where you eat, use the latrine rather than the nearest convenient corner of the ship, and do not touch food after touching things that should not be anywhere near food.

The sailors considered this the silly concerns of a pampered nobleman who had discovered that sailors were, in fact, sailors. So Vito offered a grosso for every man who followed the rules, two for anyone who caught another man lying about it, and a deduction from the liar’s eventual share of the venture if either report proved false.

That got their attention, and by the end of the first week, men who had laughed at him were reminding one another to wash their hands.

Meanwhile, Bepi maintained his daily argument with a sky that could not decide whether it meant to rain, shine, or merely inconvenience everybody.

Yet four days stood apart from the rest, clear enough in Vito’s memory that he could have told each story twice, and often did, whenever he found some poor fellow willing to sit still and listen.

On the third day, the fleet went through a strait so narrow that Vito could have spat from one shore to the other if he had possessed the leisure and the necessary lack of manners.

Low brown hills climbed away on the Asian side, close enough that even the men who normally considered looking at land a waste of working time slowed down to stare.

Somewhere along that coast, or somewhere near enough to it that eight centuries of scholars had failed to agree on the exact spot, a whole war had once been fought over one stubborn woman and one very large horse.

Vito could not help himself. He never could when history was standing there in front of him instead of sitting safely on a page.

He told Orso first, because Orso was nearest and happened to be hauling rope. The rope became a matter of no importance the instant the wooden horse came into the tale.

Orso planted his two boots wide, dropped the coil, and raised one enormous hand as if he had just presented him with the worst business proposition in history.

"So, nobody in the whole city thought to walk over and knock on the thing first?"

"Not one man."

"Ten years of siege, and not one clever bastard among them?"

Vito laughed, "Ten years grinds a man’s judgment, amico. By the end, they would have thanked a plague for the novelty."

Pellegrino, close enough to catch the end of it, crossed himself without thinking.

"Pagans. God rest them, every foolish one."

Orso was not finished. He was rarely finished once an idea had got itself comfortably installed behind his eyes. "Then that’s our plan for Candia. We build a wooden fish, a very big one. Sail it right up to their dock, wave politely, and climb out the back when they drag it to the docks to see what sort of idiot has brought them a fish."

Vito shook his head, grinning. "Try telling them that history repeats itself. See how far you get before some fool puts a spear through your fish."

Day eight found them becalmed among the Cyclades, the sails hanging slack as old washing and the whole fleet lying close enough together that a man could shout a joke from one deck and hear the laughter on the next.

Naxos sat low and green off the flagship’s bow, near enough that they could smell the goats, though nobody aboard had anywhere better to be until the wind felt like they had suffered enough.

By the thirteenth day, well beyond Negroponte’s shadow, Vito had learned exactly how far Caterina’s patience extended where the record books were concerned.

It turned out to be nowhere near as far as his own optimism had hoped.

She found him in the cabin with the venture’s accounts spread before her, one finger holding down a particular line while the deck rolled underneath them.

"Vitale."

Her voice was particularly dangerous. "Explain to me what ’provisions, miscellaneous’ means, written in a hand suspiciously like your own, on the day I distinctly remember you buying six jars of wine from a merchant in the city who charged us double for the crates alone."

"Nothing but a matter of necessity."

Vito lay into the chair opposite her, as innocent as a man could reasonably hope to look.

"For the continued survival of my soul."

She clicked her tongue, "If your soul requires six jars of wine to survive a voyage, I begin to understand why God gave us oceans."

"At last, someone who understands divine planning."

"Then your share can pay for it."

Caterina drew a line through the entry and reached for the column beneath it.

Vito’s smile faltered. "My profits?"

"Divine planning has its limits, Vitale." She dipped her pen again. "Apparently, so does mine."

Vito lips parted open, then he thought better of it.

"Fine."

He raised both hands.

"Personal expense. I’ll pay it from my own share."

"Wise decision. I do hope your instincts for money are better than your instincts for restraint."

"I could behave, of course."

Vito grinned.

"But then what would you do with yourself?"

She ignored him.

Vito had learned by then that this was one of Caterina’s more efficient forms of conversation.

The fog found them on the seventeenth day, somewhere in the last stretch of open water before the coast of Crete was supposed to appear.

It came down thick and quick, so thick that the flagship’s bow disappeared from the stern rail in the space of a single bell.

Nico had the forward watch that night, one hand clamped around the rail in the fashion he was not certain his legs intended to remain under him.

He was a green hand, barely old enough to grow the beard he was so plainly determined to acquire, and in a little more than two weeks at sea he had already made himself memorable.

Off Imbros, he had sworn blind that a drowned sailor sang to him from the water for nearly an hour. Near the Cyclades, he had seen an island that nobody else could account for on any map, and which had vanished by morning.

Orso had taken to calling him ’the Prophet,’ and by then the name had more habit than mockery.

So when Nico’s voice came out of the fog, thin but certain, nobody rushed to obey him.

"Ship!" he called. "Off the bow, no fire, no answer when I hailed her."

"Naturally there isn’t."

Orso was too lazy to rise from where he sat, sharpening a blade that did not require sharpening.

"First a mermaid, now a ship. Give him another week and he’ll sight the damned coliseum."

But Bepi was on it, faster than a man his age had any right to move.

For some reason, Vito had the premonition this one wouldn’t end in laughter and mockery again.

He rushed just in time to see it, or near enough to count.

There was a shadow in the fog, low and dark, sitting badly in the water like an old wreck.

No lantern.

No answer when Zaccaria, dragged up from below, put both hands to his mouth and hailed her twice across the water.

Then the fog closed again, thicker than before.

When it thinned a quarter hour later, there was nothing there.

Not even a floating spar to give grown men scared out their bones some relief.

Bepi turned on the whole deck like he had just received divine confirmation of a tale he had been making for years.

"I heard whistling."

He said it flat, leaving no room for argument. "Don’t lie to me. I heard it plain as my own name, not an hour before that fog came down. The sea hears that, and she sends a sign back to remind a man why he ought not do it twice."

Nobody confessed, though multiple men suddenly found excellent reasons to become interested in their own hands rather than look Bepi in the eye.

Crete rose from the sea two days later, and Vito knew it instantly, because he had spent a lifetime reading descriptions of this very moment by men who were supposed to be better writers than he was.

Not one of them had come close.

Mount Ida appeared first, high and blue-grey against a sky finally clear after so many days of fog and flat calm.

It was a real mountain rather than the idea of one, which Vito found an important distinction, and old enough that men had once sworn a god was born somewhere on its slopes and hidden there from a father who wanted him dead.

Vito had known that story since he was young enough to believe half the things he read.

The deck went on around him as though nothing remarkable had happened.

The oars rowed and rope was hauled around. Behind him, Bepi was already barking course corrections nobody had asked him to shout twice.

Vito let himself keep the moment while it lasted.

Then the lower coast began to take form through the haze, and Candia appeared a piece at a time.