Free Sofia by Ann Chamberlin Page A

whose full satin skirts catching on a splinter had been the cause of the mishap.
    “Who was that?” I gasped.
    “You need to ask, my friend?” Husayn said.
    “My God! Baffo’s daughter. I wonder how much she heard.”
    “Everything,” Husayn said, and gave me a smile that was curiously somber and fate-resigned.
    The humility of what I immediately saw as the girl’s first real triumph over me sat like bad food in my stomach. I rehearsed the conversation over and over in my head, but there was no escape. She had come over to my side of the ship one single time—to hear me confess my love for her. There could be no denying that this is what she had heard. The thought of her gloating, laughing, counting the stones of ammunition she now had with which to attack—it was unbearable. I thought of a thousand defenses, but they were all lame. I was stuck with the overwhelming handicap of a weak and simpering confession.
    The more I thought of it, however, the more certain I was that Husayn had extracted that confession from me with his teasing smile. Like a testimony given under torture, one could not believe it. I certainly did not believe I loved the girl. She was a child, after all. A mere child, a naughty child with more spunk than wit, more ambition than either affection or sensuality. I satisfied myself I could and would be in control of the situation—firmly, violently if necessary—but it took me all night to struggle to that assurance. And when, before dawn, I was called on deck, I was haggard and raw-nerved from lack of sleep. I never stopped to think that in all she’d overheard, there was something far more dangerous than just a profession of love.
IX
    “Ship ho!” was the cry that brought me and my uncle out, and I immediately found cause to be short-tempered with the lookout. Because of the darkness of the night, he had thought the approaching lantern was only a star and ignored it. But by dawn they were close enough that we could see the device on their flag. It was a jagged white Maltese cross on a black ground—the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem.
    “Thank God,” the nun said with a clasp of hands and a glance heavenward. “I was so afraid they might be pirates.”
    I suppose my nod and grunt of reply were full of wariness, for she caught the skepticism there.
    “But surely they are friends,” she exclaimed. “They fly the banner of Christ.”
    “They will want to board us anyway,” I replied. “They will search the ship.”
    “Whatever for?”
    “They are looking for Turks.” I gave the door to the hold an angry kick as I passed it.
    “Well, that’s all right, then. We have no blasphemous Turks here. Have we?” She looked at me.
    “Of course not,” I said quickly. “But it will slow us up considerably. It may take us another two days to get to Corfu now.
    When the ship—a small carrack in high disrepair but armed to the teeth—came alongside to board, the nun had her niece and all their party out on deck, on their knees praying furiously. Had I been a Knight of Saint John, this display would have seemed too pious to be real and I would have smelled Turk at once. But perhaps the old woman’s simplicity was too great to possibly be feigned, for they were soon passed by. Then again, perhaps it was the unfeigned gold of the signorina’s hair that convinced them. I saw their captain finger it longingly, but there was no way in heaven he could find Turkish property there, much as he would have liked to. I burned with anger, not so much at that caress, but at the fluttering eyes and coy little smile with which the girl answered it.
    The captain of the Knights was a thin, knobby man with rat-brown, chest-length hair as limp as wet linen. He was the only one of his crew who wore even the surcoat of the once-proud knightly uniform and, instead of the traditional broadsword, he had armed himself with a pair of fierce silver pistols. Hand-to-hand or even with swords, I was certain I could