Eight Years Later
Asking a small squad of children to help paint the wall of the bathhouse courtyard hadn’t been my most brilliant idea. The wall had fared well enough, but Lucia had a streak of white running across her cheek, and paint covered her hands and wrists. Smaller speckles appeared on her clothing. She was seven, with my hair, her mother’s mouth and nose, and skin a shade somewhere in between mine and Cecilia’s.
Besina, at age five, looked like a slightly smaller version of her sister. The scarf meant to protect her hair had slid back sometime during the process, and she’d gotten splotches of paint all throughout her tight curls.
Sama, Aban’s daughter, was only slightly less covered in paint. Those two—Besina and Sama—had been born within a fortnight of each other and were often mistaken for twins. Both had smiles bursting with mischief, and Sama giggled over her cousin’s plight.
Sebastie, however, had kept the mess confined mostly to the end of his fingers, with a splotch or two on his wrists. He hadn’t been slacking, but he was meticulous, and he’d helped paint before.
I wiped at Besina’s face with a damp cloth. “What will your mother say when she sees all the whitewash in your hair?”
Cecilia’s laugh carried from the courtyard gate. She’d been at home, and I hadn’t expected her at the bathhouse quite so soon. She held our infant son and walked closer to examine the children and the wall before speaking. “Their mother will tell them they did an admirable job on the wall, and it’s fortunate that their father owns a bathhouse so they can wash all the paint away.”
She handed Piero to me, and I cradled him in my arms. He still seemed so small, so new. He squeezed his eyes shut against the afternoon sunlight and gave a few contented wiggles before relaxing into me.
“Do I have any on me?” I asked her. I’d painted the top half of the wall and the gate and had assigned a different child to the bottom half of each of the four walls. I’d already washed my hands, but I hadn’t checked my reflection.
Cecilia scrutinized my face with the mischievous smirk our second child had inherited, then stood on her toes and planted a soft kiss on my mouth. “No paint, just a scar and a few very distinguished-looking gray hairs.”
I shifted my son. “If Piero doesn’t start sleeping better, I’ll have more than a few gray hairs.”
“Give him another fortnight and I expect he’ll improve.” Cecilia kissed Piero’s forehead. Then she led our second daughter to a shaded bench and motioned for Besina to stand in front of her. “Lucia, why don’t you start on Sama? Pick out what’s dry, then we’ll try soap or olive oil on what’s left.”
“Yes, Momma.”
“How did you stay so clean?” I asked Sebastie.
He shrugged. “The paint was meant to go on the wall, so that is where I put it.” One of his feet shuffled to the side nervously. “Can we do something different for training today?”
Normally, I insisted on a specific set of drills when I worked with him on his sword skills, but he’d painted the longest end of the courtyard and had done a good job. If he’d asked for the afternoon off, I would have agreed. “What did you have in mind?”
“A duel with a twist.”
“Fine, but if you want to duel with me, you’ll have to wait until the cleanup is finished.” I gestured to the bench where Besina and Sama were having the whitewash removed from their hair.
Sebastie gave me one of his sober smiles. “I know a few people who love to hold babies.”
Before I could tell him not to bother his parents, he darted off to find them. It wouldn’t really be a bother. Gil and Eudocia enjoyed holding Piero, just as they’d enjoyed holding Lucia and Besina and little Brigida before the fever had taken her. I drew Piero a little closer, remembering his frail older sister. God had been good to Cecilia and me, but that didn’t mean our lives had been free of pain. Yet, with the sadness had come blessings. No one had yet come looking for the mysterious Venetian asset once connected to the Sea Maiden, who could expose the weaknesses and secrets of a castle or an acropolis in a single visit. We’d been safe.
The same couldn’t be said of Neopatras. Less than four years after we’d helped Micer drive out the Catalans, Nerio Acioli had lost Neopatras to Sultan Bayezid. We’d feared the sultan would continue south, but lately, Bayezid had been busy elsewhere, besieging Constantinople, subduing rival Turkish tribes in Anatolia, and slaughtering the Hungarians and their allies who had gone on crusade against him. The sultan’s conquest of Greece was on hold. Permanently, we all prayed.
Gil walked into the courtyard. Gray now lightened the hair around his temples, but he remained as agile as ever. “Sebastie said you’re looking for someone to hold Piero.”
“I’m content holding him longer, but I think his mother would disapprove if I tried to hold him and use a sword at the same time, even if it’s only a wooden practice sword.” I glanced at Cecilia, who pulled a piece of dried paint from our daughter’s hair. She met my eyes in agreement. No weapons while holding an infant. I handed Piero over to Gil.
Gil cradled Piero next to his neck and inhaled. “I love that new-baby smell. I think I’ll borrow him for a few days.”
I chuckled. “You might change your mind about the third watch of the night when he wakes up wanting to be fed.”
Sebastie returned to the courtyard. I grabbed two wooden practice swords and handed one to him. “All right, what type of duel did you have in mind?”
“A reward if I disarm you.”
Sebastie learned quickly, and I suspected he would be a great swordsman before he grew his first facial hair, but he was currently only ten years old, maybe nine. He’d never yet disarmed me. Still, I could go easy on him. He worked hard, he obeyed quickly, and he brought joy to people I cared about. I’d been fond of him since that first day I’d seen him in Neopatras.
“What type of reward?”
“I want to marry your daughter.”
I stared at him, wondering if I’d heard right. “You’re ten, and you want to marry my seven-year-old daughter?”
Cecilia and Lucia had stopped their work, and Lucia’s mouth hung open.
Sebastie nodded. “Not for some years. But now that she is seven, betrothals are no longer discouraged.”
I glanced at Gil. “Did you know anything about this?”
“No.” He stepped closer to his son and crouched so their faces were level. “What brought this on?”
“You told me to plan ahead.”
“I was referring to how fast you’ve been growing out of your clothes, not about finding a wife.” Gil chuckled. “Maybe you should ask for something else. One of Maria’s bread loaves or a morning without chores, something like that.”
Sebastie frowned at his father, then looked up at me. “Would you be unhappy if I joined your family?”
A few moments before, I would have been glad to think of our families uniting—at a distant date in the future. Now I didn’t answer the boy. “What do you think, Lucia?”
She laughed instead of answering. Her cheeks turned pink, and her feet swung back and forth until she accidently kicked her cousin.
“That is the laughter of a young girl not yet ready to commit to anything like a betrothal.” Cecilia kept up her work on Besina’s hair, but a note of amusement wove into her words.
Sebastie set his mouth. Eudocia joined us in the courtyard, and Gil explained what their son had just requested.
“But you’re too young to get married,” she told Sebastie.
“But I am not too young to plan for it.”
Eudocia studied the determination in the boy’s face and walked toward me. She lowered her voice. “You know how stubborn he can be. I doubt he’ll drop it, but there isn’t much of a chance that he’ll beat you, is there?”
“Not today.”
“Then disarm him.” She glanced at her son. “But please be careful with him. He’s too young to want to marry her for any reason that might earn a father’s wrath.”
I forced the grip on my sword to loosen. Eudocia was right—Sebastie’s motives would be pure, if misguided. “How about this, Sebastie? If you disarm me, you can marry Lucia when she’s of age, if she wants to marry you. If I disarm you, you aren’t to ask about it again for ten years.” He’d be twenty then, and she’d be seventeen.
He glanced at my still-blushing daughter and nodded solemnly. “Agreed.”
We stepped to the center of the courtyard, away from the girls cleaning paint from their hair, away from Gil and Eudocia, who were doting on my infant son and watching their own son with a mix of surprise, mirth, and worry.
“I expect any suitor who wishes to marry one of my daughters to treat her with the utmost respect.” I also expected him to be a man with plans for the future rather than a ten-year-old still learning to read and write.
“Of course, sir. I plan to love my wife as much as you love yours, as much as my father loves my mother.”
I took the edge off the glower I’d been giving him. Sebastie was a good lad, and perhaps a type of love lay at the center of his request. He’d taken a piece of advice meant for something else and carried it too far, but that was an easy mistake to make when he saw Lucia, Besina, and Sama most days. Aban no longer worked at the bathhouse, but Besina and Sama spent most days together, either at the bathhouse or at the villa Aban ran with his wife and Maria’s widowed mother. He would laugh when he heard the story—but had it been a request for his daughter in marriage, he would have thumped Sebastie on the head with the hilt of his sword.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Yes.” Sebastie brought his sword up to the high guard position.
I brought my sword around and waited for him to make the first move. He cut, and I blocked. His strikes were firm, though not hard enough to disarm me. I could have knocked the sword from his grip with a solid enough strike, but if I beat him too quickly, he might feel he hadn’t been given a fair chance. I wanted this well and truly laid to rest for a good decade, so I would take my time.
Even as we fought, I paid attention to his footwork and his posture. Habit, I supposed. I tutored him in sword work most days, as did his father. The girls had begun learning too, though thus far, Lucia favored archery over the sword.
We moved along the courtyard with everyone watching us. Sebastie cut, and I blocked. When I judged we had been at it long enough, I blocked, then cut toward him with a bit of heat. He stumbled backward but kept hold of his sword.
The next time I cut toward him, he evaded. He had quick legs. Normally, I would have congratulated him on a deftly performed evasion. Today, I cut again. He managed to block and put enough of a pull on my blade that I felt it slipping from my grasp. I grabbed more firmly and caught the hint of a smile on Sebastie’s face. He’d learned a new trick and had nearly disarmed me.
Lucia and Besina both watched every strike, every block. I couldn’t tell who they wanted to win. It could be beneficial to have a daughter marry someone I’d watched grow from a toddler to a boy to a man, but I would never settle on an arrangement when she was only seven. She wouldn’t be forced into a marriage the way her mother almost had been. My daughters would be free to marry whom they wanted.
I blocked another of Sebastie’s strikes and cut toward him with three blows in quick succession. With the third, I knocked the sword from his hands. It clattered to the paving stones and the sound echoed around the courtyard.
“Sebastie, someday you will be a great swordsman. And someday, no doubt, you will be a good husband to a wonderful woman. But not when you’re ten.”
He took a deep breath, set his face, then nodded. He retrieved his sword and handed it to me when I reached for it.
“You made a valiant effort. We can continue this conversation, if you wish, in about ten years.”
He sighed. “Ten years is a very long time.”
I ruffled his loose, dark curls. “For you, it will seem long. For your parents, it will fly by.”
I put the swords away and went to the bench where my wife and daughters sat. I picked Lucia up from the bench and put her on my lap so I could sit next to Cecilia.
“You’ve got to admire his boldness, I suppose,” Cecilia said softly. “Maybe we should tell him the stories of how we met. If numerous Turkish pirates couldn’t defeat you, what hope did a lone boy have?”
Across the courtyard, Sebastie’s lips pulled down in dejection. His mother said something to him, but it failed to chase his frown away. Gil handed Piero to Eudocia and drew Sebastie to a storeroom half full of chopped wood, where they could speak in relative privacy.
Lucia watched with a soft smile. Cecilia noticed and tried to cover a laugh with a cough.
“All right, all three of you, into the bathhouse.” Cecilia waved the three girls toward the doorway. “I’ll follow you in shortly to make sure the paint gets washed out.”
As the girls left, I wrapped an arm around Cecilia’s shoulders. “I’m not ready for our children to grow up yet.”
Cecilia leaned against me. “Piero was only born a few weeks ago. He’ll hardly grow up overnight. Nor will the girls.” She motioned at Sebastie, and I followed her gaze. “I thought it was sweet. So did Lucia. She blushed.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Well, now you can stop worrying about it for ten years.” She chuckled. “You said something once or twice about the difference between a boy loving a girl and a man loving a woman. They’ll find the difference, too, eventually.”
“Good, because in ten years, he might be able to beat me. He’s quick. And by then, I’ll have more than a few gray hairs.” My leg had been more healthy than painful the last several years, but the threat of a flare-up never disappeared, and we’d taught Sebastie to spot an opponent’s weaknesses.
“I may have a few gray hairs myself by then.”
I studied her smooth, fair hair. “Then you’ll look like an enchantress in the sunlight and in the moonlight.”
Cecilia smiled, then ran her hand along my jaw and gave me a kiss. After eight years of marriage, her lips still changed the way I breathed, still made my heart gallop. Life was never dull, not with a baby who didn’t yet sleep through the night and a young boy who wanted to get an early start on courting one of our daughters. Never dull and, with Cecilia by my side, filled with joy and purpose.