Everything was quiet at first, then the sound of raindrops met my ears. It smelled like rain too, damp and clean and musty. I hesitated to open my eyes, hesitated to move, because the pain in my shoulder and side was pounding me like waves churning through a cave. Moving anything—even my eyelids—might make it worse.
The pain wouldn’t let me drift back to sleep, so eventually, I risked opening my eyes. Gil sat on a nearby bench, and he smiled when he saw I was awake.
“Welcome back, Rasheed.” He scooted the bench closer. “For a few days, we weren’t sure you would make it.”
“A few . . .” My throat was dry, and it hurt to talk, so I gave up.
“Four days since the battle for the acropolis. I suppose your next question will be, Where? We’re still in Neopatras, which is now entirely in the possession of Micer’s army, including the acropolis. The Catalans all surrendered or were killed. You got the outer portcullis and gate open, then we opened the second portcullis and its gate as the army came through. I didn’t actually see most of the battle, so I can’t give you details about that. By the time we got the portcullis up, we were out of crossbow bolts, so we went to find you. And then we were trying to stop you from bleeding so much.” He held up a cup and helped me take a sip of water. “I suppose Querini is the one responsible?”
I nodded.
“He’s dead.”
“Cecilia?”
“She left with her uncle. Yesterday.”
“He must have made her go.” She wouldn’t leave on her own, not when we were in love and her betrothed had proven himself vile and violent.
Gil eyed the floor. I wasn’t so groggy that I couldn’t figure out that there was something he didn’t want to tell me.
“What?” I asked him.
Gil rubbed a hand on his knee. “I was worried about that—that her uncle would make her go. When she came to say goodbye to you, no one was in the room except you and her and me. I promised her we would help, regardless of what her uncle wanted, but she said leaving was her decision.”
Disappointment pierced me as sharp as Querini’s crossbow bolt. She’d chosen me—that was why she’d left the diagrams, opened the sally port, and helped me lift the portcullis. Had she changed her mind?
“She was by your side for hours those first few days.” Eudocia joined Gil on the bench. “I thought she would stay, given how concerned she was about you, but Neopatras is now in Florentine hands, and she is a Venetian. She and her uncle feared for their safety. Micer let them go. For her sake, not for Bertaldo’s.”
“I’m sorry, Rasheed.” Gil frowned. “I wanted you to find happiness, and I thought she was finally the one.”
Cecilia had been sure God had a purpose for me. It seemed part of that purpose included pining for women who could never be mine. I’d thought I’d loved Zubiya back when I was seventeen. And I would have loved her had we married. But maybe what I had most loved about Zubiya were the feelings I’d had in our brief time together. Love, purpose, belonging.
Those feelings had all come back with Cecilia, but they’d been deeper, created in a heart that knew more of life than that boy in the bathhouse courtyard back in Valencia had. The pain of losing her, like the love that had grown, was stronger, fiercer, more overwhelming.
“You could try to find her.” Gil said the words, but he didn’t look convinced. “I will go with you, if you wish, as soon as you’ve recovered.”
“It could take years to find the Sea Maiden, and her uncle could arrange another marriage before I caught up to them. Hopefully, it will be to someone who is kinder than Querini.” Cecilia had told me she wanted someone who listened to her and valued her insight. Someone who would go after her regardless of how risky or foolhardy it might be. I could have been those things, almost. With me, she would have been heard and treasured. I would have risked life and limb to save her against almost any odds. But some odds were too extreme, too futile. Trying to find one galley on the vast Mediterranean was a fool’s errand, even if that ship was known and recognized by Venetian, Catalan, and Turk.
I’d wasted sixteen years of emotion mourning for my broken chances with Zubiya. I wouldn’t waste my fortune and my safety for a woman who might be married when I found her. If she’d left with her uncle, duty to her family and her republic was still more important to her than being with me. If I hadn’t been able to change her mind in the time we’d had together, I doubted I’d be able to change her mind after, even if I found her again.
“Where’s Aban?” I asked.
“He’s been sitting by you at night, so he’s sleeping now,” Gil said.
“Any of you injured?”
“Nothing worse than a few blisters, but it was close.” Gil glanced at his hands. “The battering ram broke through one of the entrances about the time you lifted the outer portcullis. Eudocia and Aban held them off until I wheeled up the inner portcullis.”
I nodded. My head hurt. So did my side. “So now we can go back to Thebes and hope everyone leaves us alone.”
“Yes,” Gil said. “We’ll want to take a few precautions for a while. Aban is eager to increase his abilities with the sword, and he is proving competent with the crossbow. That will help.”
We’d been cautious before. Threat still hung in the Duchy—from ambitious sultans, marauding pirates, and squabbling Italian, Catalan, and Navarrese adventurers. But for now, we had the hope of peace, at least for my friends and my brother. Life for me might be free of bandits and enemies, but without Cecilia, the future seemed gray and unappealing and turbulent.
I glanced out the window. Storm clouds billowed past, and the rain continued without letup. I lay in the main hall of the townhome Micer had arranged for us. They’d moved my bedroll close to the hearth. Another bedroll caught my attention. There were enough rooms for them to sleep elsewhere—extra, even, since I was here instead of up in the chamber I’d lent Cecilia.
Something dark and soft-looking poked from the blankets, like hair or fur. Then it moved. Eudocia watched with a contented smile.
“What is that?”
Gil grinned. “One of the local priests gathered up a few lost children when the city was taken. Four or five of them. You know how chaotic everything can be when a city falls. They were all claimed, eventually. Parents, aunts, grandparents. All but one. No one knows who he belongs to. There were a few likely bodies among the fallen, but they couldn’t talk, and neither can he, so the priest said we could keep him.”
The hair moved again.
“Is he waking?” I asked.
“I believe he is.” Eudocia leaned down and picked the child up. She pulled him close. Anticipation, awe, and joy lit her smile and her eyes. The motion looked a little unpracticed, but neither child nor adopted mother seemed to mind. He was small, with big eyes and curly dark hair.
“Do you know how old he is?” He wasn’t an infant anymore, but to my eyes, he didn’t look older than two.
“We’re guessing a year and a half,” Gil said.
“Does he have a name?”
“Someone gave him one, I’m sure. He’s on the thin side, but I don’t think he was neglected.” Eudocia ran a hand along his unruly curls. “But he can’t tell us what it is. We’ll have that in common, I guess, him and me, not knowing the names our parents gave us.”
“But we’ll give him a proper name, of course, not just a nickname,” Gil said. “We thought of calling him Stephen, after Eudocia’s father. But we know so little about him, so maybe we’ll call him Sebastie.”
“I’m happy for you.” Adopting a foundling might not take away all the pain they’d been through with their lost babies, but it had to help. God had allowed them to be torn apart, but now they had each other again, plus the child they had longed to have for years.
“I think he needs a fresh cloth.” The little boy seemed content to suck on his fist, but Eudocia took him out of the room, leaving Gil and me alone.
His face grew grim. “I feel guilty, you know, getting everything I want, when you’ve just had your heart broken again.”
“I would never begrudge you your happiness.”
“I know, because you are like a brother to me, the best sort of friend. But that just makes me wish all the harder that things would have worked out for you. You deserve to be happy more than anyone I know. Do you think she might change her mind and come looking for you?”
I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured Cecilia walking across the courtyard and into the hall. I wanted it to happen, but even in my imagination, she was blurry and faded. More ghost than real. “With Querini dead, Venice has lost a weapon. Venice and family are important to her—their pull will be even stronger now. I imagine she’ll feel the need to protect Venice since she played a role in the events that led to Querini’s death.”
Gil was quiet for a long time, staring at the fire. “At least now you know you can love another woman after Zubiya. Maybe there’s hope.”
“This was deeper than what I felt for Zubiya.”
Gil pursed his lips. “I suspected as much. I don’t mean to make light of what you feel. But you have one of the biggest hearts I know. There’s room inside it for more love. Someday. God willing, it will be soon.”
He was trying to help, and his words held truth, but they didn’t make me feel any better.
Gil pointed to my side. “That will probably heal more quickly. Nasty wound, but the surgeon said it missed everything important. He’s been dousing it with wine twice a day. He’ll be around soon.”
Indeed, after my trying to stand—and deciding it could wait until the next day—the surgeon came to visit again. He’d removed the bolt from my side shortly after the acropolis had fallen, then stitched up that wound and the one in my arm.
“The arm wound wasn’t too deep,” he explained. “You can expect it to be sore for a while longer, but if you keep moving it, you’ll get back your full range of motion. The crossbow bolt—well, it’s a miracle you didn’t die of infection. Just a few days’ fever and it was gone. God is looking out for you.”
It was hard to recognize the blessings in my wounds while dealing with a heart that had been shredded to pieces, but I nodded and told myself to pray with gratitude. If I couldn’t manage it today, then maybe tomorrow or the day after. I needed to heal my body and heal my heart. I would focus on the first. Maybe, eventually, the second would follow.
* * *
We stayed in Neopatras a fortnight, and in that time, Sebastie wrapped his new parents completely around his fingers and I promised him that I would become his favorite uncle.
When we set off for Thebes, only an hour passed before I gained a sincere appreciation for the child’s limited experience with riding horses. We had to stop often. He needed time to rest even more frequently than I did and saved me the trouble of admitting that I probably should have stayed in Neopatras to recover a while longer.
Micer would have hosted me for as long as needed, but I was eager to get back to Thebes. Perhaps my life was destined to be lived as a solitary man, but that didn’t mean I wanted my livelihood disrupted any more than it already had been. I had a bathhouse to run. I could have sent Gil and Eudocia on ahead, but I was sick of Neopatras, tired of walking into the courtyard and seeing the spot where I’d kissed Cecilia and promised her my heart. I wanted to go home—or at least back to the place that had been the closest thing I’d had to a home since I’d disgraced my family and fled Valencia.
We stopped at inns each night. Aban took the first watch each evening, and no one ever woke me to take my turn. On our fifth day of travel, Thebes came into view as the sun sank toward the horizon. The first time I’d seen the city, it had been a target, one we’d planned to infiltrate so we could defeat its rulers and claim it for the Navarrese Company. Now, seeing it brought comfort. Even Sebastie, babbling away while playing with the pommel of Gil’s saddle, quieted down for a good look.
“There’s something about the walls in the evening sun.” Eudocia’s smile held contentment and a hint of weariness.
“Beautiful,” Gil said. “And returning home is going to be beautiful too.” He studied his wife rather than looking at the sunset or the walls—both would be blurry for him at this distance.
“Aban and I can stop by the bathhouse to see how well Michali managed while we were gone.” I glanced at my brother. “You don’t mind, do you?”
He held his arm up to his nose and inhaled. “Stopping by the bathhouse sounds like a wonderful idea.”
As we approached the gates, we passed farmers returning to their fields after a day at the market, silk merchants heading to Negroponte, and a few of the richer inhabitants riding to their villas in the countryside. Everything felt normal, almost as if we’d never left. But I carried new scars now—on my body and in my heart.
We rode into the Cadmea together, then split up when we passed the turnoff for Gil and Eudocia’s home.
“I might join you later,” Gil said. “As soon as things are settled at home. We’ll want to know how things have fared while we were gone.”
Aban and I left our horses with a stable and arranged for their boarding, then continued the final stretch to the bathhouse on foot. The tall, arched entrance came into view, just the way I remembered it.
Michali looked up at me with a grin when we walked inside. “You’re back!”
I nodded and glanced around. Nothing seemed out of place in the anteroom. “We are. Gil and Eudocia as well. How was everything here?”
Michali shrugged. “About normal as far as the number of patrons. We had to work a little extra to manage, but . . . well, I hope you don’t mind. I told everyone you’d pay us all a little extra when you returned.”
“Did you specify how much extra?”
“No, sir.”
I grunted. “Fair enough. Is anyone bathing now? I smell of horse.”
“I was just getting ready to close.” He scratched his head. “No one ever taught me how to keep the ledger, so I’ve been writing down who came and how much people paid to their accounts, but you or Gil will have to figure out most of it.”
The wound in my side pulled with pain, and I had a feeling studying a disorganized ledger would make my head feel about the same. “We’ll look at it tomorrow. Thank you, Michali. It’s good to come back and see everything as it should be.”
After we filled each other in on some of the details of the past month, Michali went home. I avoided the ledger but took a closer look at everything else. The water was clear and the correct temperature in the various rooms. The towels looked and smelled clean, and the soap and pumice were properly stocked. The pile of wood was lower than we normally let it go, but Gil would no doubt have all the storage full in a few days’ time.
“Is it good to be back?” Aban asked.
I nodded. “This is something I know. And owning a bathhouse has its perks.” I went to the apodyterium and stripped off my clothes. Aban joined me, and we washed away the road’s grime in the tepidarium, then lounged in the caldarium’s pool. The hot water helped ease all the tightness and weariness and pain of the last few weeks. If I floated just so, I couldn’t even feel the ache in my hip or the sharpness in my side. Life was like that sometimes—it wore you out and left you beaten and sore. Then, every once in a while, God granted a little moment of peace and contentment, when all the pain fell away and everything was as comfortable as the caress of a warm bath.
Gil joined us after a while. He plunged his head under the water and then pushed the hair off his forehead. His scar still drew the eye—red, perhaps even more so in the hot water.
“I heard something when I was coming in. I hope it’s not mice,” Gil said.
I groaned. We’d run into trouble with mice before but not since last harvest time. We talked about the possibility of getting a cat and discussed payments for our workers and our tasks for the next few days. We would plan today and get to work in the morning.
“I should get back soon,” Gil said. “Little Sebastie likes me to sing him to sleep at night, and Eudocia will want to hear that the bathhouse is still running smoothly.”
“You’re going to spoil the boy if you’re not careful.” Aban chuckled.
Gil shrugged. “I don’t think it’s possible to shower a child with too much love, but I’ll keep it to no more than three songs a night.”
Aban and I followed Gil into the frigidarium, and then we dressed, locked up the bathhouse, and made our way to our homes. Maria greeted Aban and me warmly and found food for us, which was generous since we had arrived past the normal supper hour. She chatted while we ate, and even though Aban probably understood less than half of her Greek words, I caught him smiling more often than he frowned.
That night, when we went up to my rooms, I asked Aban roughly the same question I had the first night he came. “Shall I find a job for you in the bathhouse?”
“I am good at chopping wood and washing towels. I’m even useful for keeping toddlers from falling into pools. If you’ll have me, brother, I’d like to stay.”
I nodded, glad for his decision. “On the morning we left Thebes, when we were out behind the bathhouse, you said you were seeking redemption. Did you find it?”
“I found a brother. And I found several friends.” He gestured to the rug that lay on the floor, facing toward Mecca. “I’m still not sure if Allah hears me when I pray, but if I never speak to Him, then I’m cutting myself off. Much like my anger and resentment cut me off from you when I arrived.” A smile softened his features. “You forgave me. Maybe He can too.”