It is a full moon and he can see her almost as clearly as in the day: though the cold light makes her appear all the more otherworldly, like a creature underwater. Her black hair fans out about her head as though the strands are afloat. She is so still that he places a palm above her nose and mouth, to check that she is really alive. The breath comes as a shock, a surprising warmth against his skin.
Alone and unobserved he looks at her greedily, noticing all that he had not had the leisure to see before. The black eyebrows, two perfect curves, as though etched with the compasses he uses on his charts. The nose: too strong to be conventionally feminine, but somehow well suited to her face. The pale pillow of her lips. His gaze lingers there longest of all. He tears his attention away and looks, instead, at those bruises on her ankles. They are dark, purplish: evidently of recent creation. And he realizes, suddenly, that they are matched by similar patterns about her wrists. He cannot believe that he did not notice them before: was he so obtuse as to have been distracted from them by her naked body? What was she? A prisoner of some sort? But what monster would imprison such a woman? Though, of course, no crime is too heinous for the Pisans.
Eventually, having satisfied his need to look, he turns to make his way back to his cabin. But as he does he has an awareness of being watched, a sensation so powerful that he can feel it prickle down his back. He turns, and just stops himself from starting with alarm. Silently, she has raised herself from the bench so that she is sitting up, and her eyes are open. She is watching him. Quickly, he recovers himself, though he is certain that his first expression must have betrayed his shock.
‘Hello,’ he says, slowly, not sure she will understand him. ‘I hope you are feeling recovered.’
There is a long pause. He is uncomfortable beneath her gaze, but he steels himself not to look away – that much would be a sign of weakness. Just as he has decided that she clearly does not understand him, she speaks.
‘Yes, thank you.’ She speaks in Italian, though her accent is strange.
‘You were such a long way out,’ he says. ‘How did you come to be in the water, so far from shore?’
She frowns, and takes a long time to answer. Eventually, she says, ‘I don’t remember.’
He isn’t sure that he believes her. How could someone forget something like that? Her gaze on him is unwavering. It gives him a certain thrill, to have so much of her attention focused upon him. It unnerves him too.
‘Where are you from?’ he asks her.
‘Oh, nowhere you will know, sire. My background is a humble one.’
He waits for her to say more, but she does not. He senses a reluctance in her to reveal her origins to him. It only intrigues him further. He wants to find out more about her, and is about to ask another question, when she says, gently. ‘If you do not mind, sire, I am very tired.’
‘Oh.’ He steps back. ‘But of course. Forgive me for disturbing you.’
Just as he is about to draw back the drapes, she calls to him. ‘Thank you, sire. Without your assistance I would perhaps have perished.’
There is no perhaps about it, he thinks, but does not say it. He did save her life. ‘You are welcome, signora.’
The storm appears out of nowhere the next morning, bruise-dark, the hue of the marks on the girl’s legs. The clouds gather themselves astonishingly fast, and there is barely time to reef the sails before the first gusts come upon them, whoomping against the fabric, shivering over the deck. The thunder feels extremely close and loud, almost personal. And then there is lightning, following only a moment behind. It forks into strands of fire, a phenomenon the captain has never seen at this time of year. The wind, too, is strange. He can’t work it out. Any Genoan knows the eight winds as well as he knows the names of his own wife and children. They are like a litany: Scirocco, Tramontana, il Grecale, il Ponente, Mezzogiorno, il Mare, Borrasca, Maestrale. But this one is schizophrenic, shifting, impossible to read.