WITHOUT BREAKING MY STEP, I STOOPED AND picked a periwinkle growing amongst a scruff of weeds, and then I ran up the ramp.
“Are you mad?” Sir William shouted. “Throw that bloody flower overboard! Do you want to drown us all?”
“What do you mean?” I panted.
“Periwinkle!” Sir William snapped. “Violette des sorciers. The flower of death.”
“Death!” I yelped.
I stared at the blue star and twirled the stalk between my left thumb and forefinger. Then I sent it spinning over the gunwale.
As the Venetian oarsmen rowed us out from the quay, the priests began to ring bells. And from all the galleys around us, bells answered. What a clangor! Contrary and spirited, quicksilver, gruff, they held their own water court: heaven’s messengers, riding with us, washing over the little marshy islets, appealing to the four dark corners of the world.
But the seawater slapping our prow was sharp. Tart. Abrupt. Short sounds without memories.
Then the sailors hoisted the lateen sail. Canvas snapped, rigging whipped, the mast screeched. We turned to face the open sea.
For a moment, I thought of Oliver and one of the old poems he recited to me:
Then those warriors stowed gleaming war-gear
deep within the galley; they launched
the well-built boat and began their journey.
Foaming at the prow and most like a seabird,
The boat sped over the waves, urged on by the wind…
A maelstrom of gulls whirled above us, silver-white and screaming. I stood on the prow and hurrahed to high heaven.