Sofia by Ann Chamberlin

And yet, how should I have known otherwise? I might have thought that there were Turks aboard. How should I know our captain, Signor Veniero, for example, from a friend of the Turks? He seems harmless enough, but. . .”
    “How has Captain Veniero raised your suspicions, Madonna?”
    “Well, it’s foolish of me, of course...”
    “Perhaps not,” the Knight said, intensely interested. “You can never tell. What has the captain done?”
    “Nothing, really. But there is his great black slave. He got him in Constantinople, they say. A Turk and a heathen, I am almost certain of it. He frightens me senseless. See how I shiver, just thinking of him.” And she tugged up her sleeve to the elbow to show the gooseflesh and, incidentally, a fine white arm.
    “He is a terror to look at, that black man, yes. Certainly to one of your delicate sensibilities. But he is—forgive me, Madonna—a eunuch and a slave besides.”
    Over the couple’s heads, I caught Piero’s eye as he stood testing the foot-ropes along the withdrawn sheeting so as to be ready to unfurl the instant we were allowed. I shot him a look of congratulations: he had been playing his part well. Then I shifted the tongs carefully in my hand so they remained behind my back as I continued to work my way around the deck.
    The Knight pursued his topic: “You have nothing to fear from him. I trust your captain has had him baptized a proper Christian name and has actually done much to save the poor devil’s soul by bringing him here to these waters.”
    Baffo’s daughter could not hide her disappointment that she was not to see Piero, her first disgracer, shot full of the Knight’s lead. But when she had recovered from that, she began at once to seek other satisfaction.
    “I’m certain you are right about Captain Veniero,” she said. “You have so much more experience than I in such things, and I trust your judgment implicitly.”
    The Knight reeled with flattery; he was ready for the strike.
    “And yet, there is his nephew, the young Signor Veniero, the first mate. I just happened to overhear such a curious conversation of his last night.”
    “What conversation was that?” the Knight asked.
    “Well, he was speaking to Messer Battista, the merchant on board.”
    “Yes?”
    “Only, instead of calling him Enrico, he called him Husayn.”
    “Husayn?”
    “Well, it sounded something like that, anyway. It was certainly no name I’d ever heard before. And we all know that Messer Battista’s Christian name is Enrico. Isn’t that strange?”
    “Yes, it is,” said the Knight, but without her notes of puzzlement.
    “But it wasn’t...”
    “Madonna Baffo,” I said. I said it quickly, but with enough force that she could not ignore me. “Don’t say another word, Madonna, or I shall have to do something we may all regret.”
    The Knight, the young lady, indeed, everyone on board turned in my direction. They saw me with my live coal only a hair away from our cannon’s fuse, and the cannon was trained dead center on the Knights’ carrack. At that range, the charge would easily split the little ship in two.
    The Knights’ captain went for his pistols, but, “Throw them to the ground,” I told him. “And that goes for all your men, too.”
    They did so.
    “Now,” I continued, “very quietly and calmly, I would like you all to go back to your ship, cast off, and allow us to go peacefully on our way to Corfu.”
    My uncle was by my side now. He did not physically try to stop me—I don’t think there was any way he could have done that. But he did speak in that very soft tone of his which could easily have stilled many another mutiny. “Giorgio,” he said. “What do you mean? Putting so many lives—Christian lives—in jeopardy? For what? For a single Turk and his few bolts of cloth?”
    I have said, my uncle was the father of my material needs, but Husayn had provided the spirit. “Yes, for Husayn I will do this. But I will also make certain that