THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED.
As soon as we sailed out to sea, leaving Saint Nicholas over our right shoulders, the wind picked up.
At once our oarsmen began to mutter and curse.
“Bora!”
“God against us.”
“God’s teeth!”
“Worse wind, sir,” one of the sailors told me, and he compressed his leathery face. “Bora is bad worse wind.”
Ahead and aft and all around us, our great fleet began to dance. Gaping galleys strained their graceful necks and reared up; the horse carrier nearest to us jerked and lifted and dipped through the water, foaming at the prow, and I thought of poor Bonamy and all the other horses tethered and swinging in their stalls; and the giant transport ships, the ones seventy paces long that hold a thousand men, Violetta and Eagle, Pilgrim and Paradise—the waves parted for them, frothing and gnashing.
Then the bora really opened its mouth, and the sailors scaled the mast ladders and pulled down the sails. Lord Stephen and my father and Milon took refuge in the sterncastle with the captain, and almost everyone else except the sailors and oarsmen went below deck because the saltspray kept flying into our faces, but Bertie and I sheltered behind a landing skiff.
That was when I saw it. The Violetta, the biggest ship of all, the one Silvano named after his wife, was in terrible trouble.
She was listing, and scarcely moving. Hundreds of men packed the deck, white hands waving. They must have been shouting for help but, because of the noise of the wind and waves, they could have been dumb men.
Bertie and I waved and yelled, and our oarsmen began to swing our galley round, but she was so heavy, and the fierce wind kept barging her back.
The Violetta was sinking. It seemed to happen so slowly, it happened so fast. Water began to break over the leeward gunwale, and it must have gushed down through the hatchways, and the huge ship settled, darker and deeper, and all her pale sails panicked.
Then she went down, not prow first, not upended, but as a stone sinks. The body of the boat sank; there was nothing of her left but the tops of her masts and sails and the upper stories of her two castles, fore and aft. Then they too went down. Down into the dark water. They slid out of sight.
Bertie clutched my wrist, and I kept swallowing and my mouth was so dry. Our sailors and oarsmen went silent. Without a word they pulled us towards the Violetta. Our rowlocks and oar-holes groaned.
Hundreds of men were floating facedown in the water, and many hundreds more must have died below deck. Just a few wretches were clinging to the sides of waterlogged skiffs, oak planks, oarsmen’s benches.
Our oarsmen were very skillful. We drifted up alongside one of the skiffs, then held firm, and the sailors threw out four lines, and the survivors grabbed them. Then we lowered a rope ladder, and one by one, they heaved themselves up and flopped aboard.
At least, the first three did. The last of them had only the strength to climb halfway up.
“Come on!” shouted Bertie.
“Now or not!” the oarsmen yelled. “Not?”
“Wait!” I called out. I can’t swim but I climbed up onto the gunwale and then…then I just stepped off.
The water was freezing, but when I surfaced, choking, I was very close to the rope ladder. I clawed the water and grabbed the ladder, and began to climb, pushing my head hard into the buttocks of the man halfway up.
“Come on!” urged Bertie. “You’re doing it! Come on!”
He reached right out and down, grabbed one hand, grabbed both, and hauled the wretch up.
I dragged myself up the last few steps and collapsed over the gunwale right on top of him.
Such small hands. Sandy-pink.
“Simona!” I cried. “Simona!” I put my arms right round her.
Simona was like a sodden sack. Unable to support herself.
“Help me carry her,” I said.
“Who is it?” Bertie asked. “How do you know her?”
Bertie and I lifted Simona away from the gunwale and laid her out on the deck. She looked up at us with her dark Venetian eyes, and her teeth began to chatter.
“Who is she?” Bertie asked me again. “What’s her name?”
“Simona. The Master Shipwright’s daughter.”
Simona began to cough. Then she turned on one side, and spewed up. I knelt beside her and gently held her head.
Behind me, I could hear several of the oarsmen muttering.
“Woman.”
“Witch!”
“Bad worse.”
“Ship-woman no.”
Simona gazed up at me.
“I’ll look after you,” I said.
“I will too,” said Bertie forcefully.
“I didn’t even know you were coming,” I said. “You’re alive! At least you’re alive!”
Simona sighed feebly. “My father,” she said, and her voice was quite expressionless. “Where is my father?” Then she sighed again, and closed her eyes.
Silvano! He must have drowned.
It wasn’t because of the periwinkle, was it? The one I gave Simona? Violette des sorciers.